Little Doll (Mafia!Dazai x reader)

(C. 2) The Clinic

Dazai carried out his research in secret, sneaking down from the room he occupied into the dark maze of the office below in the dead of night. He scoured the records, for any trace of the girl's existence, unable to comprehend what had caused his sudden change of heart with regards to her.

His research yielded very few results, but he devoured the ones it did. The only thing he ever found for certain was a record of her serious injury few years previously. The file was a single sheet of paper, bearing a picture and a name. 

L/n F/n, 12 years old.

Massive trauma to the head, recovered.

Was all it said. He wondered about her miraculous recovery, what Mori had done to pull her from the grips of death's doors. He wondered who had damaged such a young girl or if she had in fact done it to herself. He pictured her, twelve years old, throwing herself from the building's roof the way he had so often thought to do to himself. If she were twelve then, he realized, she must be fourteen now, same as him. She always seemed so much younger, maybe it was just because she was so small. Never taking up space, physically or metaphorically, she manifested her presence as much younger.

There was nothing else official, but he caught glimpses of spaces elsewhere, spaces in her shape. There had been a man, for instance, brought in by his eight year old daughter many years before. His throat had been slit, he had bled out in the clinic. His daughter was the only person listed beneath the designated area for next of kin.

Dazai had not just begun researching the girl, but watching her as well. She went everywhere with Mori, to speak to the patients of the Clinic one on one even. She arrived with him in the morning and left with him at night. Never paying much mind to her before, his new observations only raised more questions. Had she always so frequently had bruises blooming on the soft expanses of her legs? Had she always come in so often, wrists ringed with red? What purpose did she serve for Mori, what connection did they share?

He had always assumed the girl was his daughter or something of the sort from the way he held her on his lap as he did his work, from the possessive hunger in his eyes when they landed on her form. It was now, he began to notice, she really looked nothing like the man who kept her on such a short leash. His mind wandered to the eight year old girl and her long dead father.

Through the fine things she wore, the neatness of her hair, he imagined what sort of a life she must have lived. In his minds eye, he saw her young, he saw her six years old, still a perfect little doll. Even in his terrible circumstances, Dazai had been gifted some of the glories of childhood, of wild youth. He couldn't picture a world where she had received the same.

"I don't like it, it's itchy." he heard her whining one time as he entered the Clinic's back office unannounced.

He hung by the door, ravenous and silent.

"I don't care." Mori responded coldly, "I told you to wear it and you will wear it."

"But-" whatever retort she was about to make was stopped in its tracks.

"Y/n." it was the first time Dazai had ever heard his mentor say her name. His tone was harsh and cold, it commanded.

She lowered your gaze to the floor in shame, hands clasped apologetically before her. They sunk into the red, ruffled, tulle skirt of the dress she had been complaining about.

"I'm sorry sir." her voice was soft and meek, all the defiance drained from it.

Mori patted his knee and obediently, she sat. Dazai cleared his throat, walking the rest of the way into the room.

"There's someone here to see you in the waiting room." he said, "They've lost a leg in some fight or another."

Mori wrapped his hands around her waist, picking her up and placing her on your feet before standing himself. She followed him, shadow she was, out to the front of the office.

Dazai pictured her, the red of her dress the same color as the blood leaking from the man waiting beyond the door they had disappeared through. He wondered what terrible things her wide eyes had held in their depths, he wondered what she had lost, how it had lead to the creation of the girl he saw today.

The clothes she wore became a new object of Dazai's attention after that. Always appearing in different shades of red and black, always vivid and dangerous. The way she would uncomfortably fidget with high collars and tight sleeves was not something that escaped his notice any longer. The click of the kid heels on the shoes she always wore carried different meaning. Before, they had just been an annoyance. When he had started to pay a bit more attention? A coordinated choice, always perfectly matching whatever else she had on. Now, they seemed more like a bell on a cats collar: she couldn't go anywhere without being heard unless she took them off.

He pushed away the little nagging voice telling him he was overanalyzing. He knew men like Mori from experience, nothing they did was ever anything but the most calculated choice.

Her behavior was another thing. He had never payed it much mind, until he started to pay all of her mind, until her gentle voice graced his ears. At her age, the same as his, she was a testament to temperance. He knew from his own life, his own learned way of self presentation, that something like that could only be born of great pain or great terror. She was fully committed to her role of Mori's little doll. Something like that didn't come about without a cause, and the tenants of teenagerdom crossed positive reinforcement off the list. No fourteen year old he had ever heard of or encountered was tempted enough by praise and reward to act as unfalteringly as she.