Graveyard • Dazai x Reader

21. I Will Meet You at the Graveyard

Being used to obeying commands, you did as you were told. You sat in one of Yosano's rooms on your own waiting in a daze, your mind teetering in and out of daydreams.

You weren't sure about your feelings towards the agency's Doctor. There's an odd bitterness that has lingered, an unpleasant discomfort in the pit of your stomach. She doesn't really know you, and yet she has always looked at you a certain way, saying less than her eyes tell you. She's been a reappearing presence that you think to be very far removed from your situation and you want to dislike her for thinking she could have any effect on you.

But she does.

You want to trust her fully and yet a part of you fears her. You want to run now and go back to your small room in the mafia where the sun that touched Yosano's face could never reach you. But she saved you. Maybe you owe her to keep listening... like a good-

Your thoughts are interrupted by a sharp pain in your head and you groan, hand reaching to your temple and pressing hard as your eyes squeeze shut.

Being a good anything has always cost you in this life.

You think back to last night and the different ways Akutagawa and Yosano promised to help you; they way these deeds have been executed and the way neither was permanent enough. Still you've ended in Dazai's palms and suffering for all he would not let you forget as long as you breathed.

It only became more clear. Akutagawa had never been a choice, Yosano even less so. Though the doctor could save you, hold you, heal your wounds and promise her best efforts if she wanted to, you could never rely on her. You'd never believe her until you did, and then you'd only compare her to him.

To be taken care of is to cling to Dazai's memory forever.

A false memory where he is everything to you, and you are something to him.

I have to leave.

The thought goes against your nature, but an inexplicable anxiety shakes you. Instinct tells you if you don't act on it, it will never come again and you'll live the life of a corpse.

You get up from your seat, heart leaving echoing vibrations in your ears. Dizziness makes you nauseous, but slowly, lifting your limbs and finding the door with your searching eyes, you begin to move. Your breath quickens, hands shaking until they each find themself on the doorknob, the structure of the doctor's house only a blur as the wooden door stands solidly in front of you and unmoving.

Open the door, [f/n].

Leave.

Win.

You were willing to die to win. You still are, but you would not disrespect Yosano's wishes completely. She would help you, but not in the way she may have imagined as she left you in the safety of her home.

Not in the way you may have wanted her to when you felt her solid presence against you through her hug.

The doorknob twists.

And then there is sunlight and a leftover wind from the storms.

You stumble out but your quickening pulse does not slow down and you are not filled with relief. Not yet. Your body hurts because your mind is in pain, frantic and desperate.

Run.

And you do.

In your battered, crimson-stained shoes your legs carry you far, fresh air colliding with the inside of your lungs in an uncomfortable rhythm. You'd never had to run often.

All your life you'd spent waiting. Sitting in storage until you were needed and used to exhaustion. If you ran then or in missions, it was with someone else pulling at your wrist, moving you at their pace. Never your own.

Now you run on your own.

You run through neighbourhoods and streets you can not name until you recognize some of the signs above, following lines of shaken trees into sidewalks that lead to bridges over a familiar river. You run until you find stairs over grassy hills scattered with worn out stones, decorated with names of those passed, choking on the air and startled by the tears that had started to fall down your face again.

I will win.

And yet you stand there before the dead overwhelmed with a sorrowful envy.

A part of you thought that maybe if you had gone far enough to the borders of Yokohama you could simply disappear. Let everyone wonder what happened. Without a body, who could confirm any truth or lie?

Frozen in the clearing, trying to hold back a new wave of melancholia that shakes you, a scream lodges itself in the back of your throat, fighting to break through. If you disappeared, even then, you would not rest like these bodies loved enough to be remembered in their after-life.

Green grass flitters lightly with the breeze. If you did have such a place, would anyone even come?

Swaying as you catch your breath, your eyes read the names of the stones closest to you, and there's a silenced voiced in you that wonders if there is a plot of land or temple where there are names like yours. If they are visited, and perhaps know there is a name that will never find where it belongs.

Probably not.

You sink to the floor and hold your knees to your chest, resting your forehead on your knees and closing your eyes. Squeezing your own body, you take deep breaths to find some sort of reason within these feelings in disarray, guilt awakening itself as you imagine Yosano arriving back home without any sign as to where you went. That is not who you are.

Did you really have to run? Did you really think you'd succeed? Could you force yourself back up and complete what you'd set out to do?

Could you win?

"Win against who?"

Your head shoots up with your eyes wide open, body gone cold. A tremor passes through you and you hold yourself tighter, afraid to turn around and look for the owner of that voice.

Run.

"You aren't even going to look at me now?" The question has greater meaning to you and you both know it.

•••

Eight years ago, the first time you set eyes on Dazai, you had been hopeful. You did not fully understand where you'd been taken or the power that stood before you and behind you, holding your shoulder as the one in front extended his hand to you.

You looked to him and you had thought you'd seen something gentle in his eyes, something that wanted a friend as much as you did. You would have never guessed how good of a liar he was then.

"Hello [f/n]. We are going to have so much fun together," he'd said in that boyish, dangerous voice.

You had looked away shyly, but immediately he called out your name again.

"[f/n], don't look away."

You did not look away again.

•••

Run.

You looked away now.