𝓒𝓱𝓲𝓵𝓭𝓻𝓮𝓷 𝓸𝓯 𝓓𝓪𝓻𝓴𝓷𝓮𝓼𝓼 | 𝘥𝘢𝘻𝘢𝘪 𝘰𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘶

𝒱𝐼𝐼. 𝐹𝒶𝓁𝓁 𝑜𝒻 𝑅𝑜𝓂𝑒

The shadows don't exactly communicate in words. It's more of a disembodied set of whispers, like the wind howling outside a window. Distant and chilling.

And just as they don't exactly have a language, they do not have a tone of voice. It depends on the speed at which they communicate with her by which (Y/n) is ever able to tell the urgency of the contents of their report.

The first time she heard a 'frantic' shadow, however, her heart dropped and felt like it hit her diaphragm.

The shadows never approached her unless she was open to being approached. Whenever she was on missions or occupied with something of high priority, she made sure that she would not be disturbed.

As such, the shadow could only really speak to her once she'd finished with her assignment and reported to Mori.

The moment she stepped out of the man's office, the shadow materialized before her, informing her that Dazai had been in that very office a few minutes before she entered and that Oda Sakunosuke had died in combat against André Gide-- the leader of Mimic.

She'd heard and understood the shadow perfectly, but her brain just couldn't process the information. How had she missed so much in such little time? Her mind went blank, static buzzing around the forming thought of 'Oda is dead'.

And then the crushing weight of reality sank in, bearing down on her shoulders and making it hard to breathe for a moment because I was supposed to look out for him.

And what about Dazai? Oh, the poor boy had, once again, lost something dear. Only this time, it was perhaps the dearest of them all and it had been taken away from him again, and some part of (Y/n) wondered if she could have maybe saved Oda.

Nothing made sense. There was too much volume in the nothingness that was filling her head. Too much she didn't know. Too much she couldn't comprehend. It was all too much.

She took a deep breath, filling air into the lungs that felt crushed in her ribs, and forced herself back into a state of coherence.

She had to get to the Mimic headquarters first, and then she'd go from there.

Through the fuzz in her brain, she did notice that the sun had set and bathed everything in an orange-golden glow. It was a beautiful sunset, she observed dully, wondering if Oda would've liked it. He seemed like the kind of man who would appreciate the poetry behind the little moments in life.

The Mimic stronghold reeked of ferrous and gunpowder and sulfur. The floors were littered with bodies and painted with dark, dark red that left droplets and stains across the walls. (Y/n) grimaced, her head and chest aching with reminders of a fallen Cosmos, feeling as though she was living through the memory and the present at the same time.

She followed the nauseating trail of carnage and the whispered directions from the shadows to the big room where she caught sight of Dazai knelt beside Oda's body.

The brunet stood up at the sound of her footsteps echoing in the deathly silence of the room, but didn't turn to face her even as she came to a stop beside him.

Her stomach churned unpleasantly at the sight of Oda's still figure and his closed eyes, and she swallowed thickly. It would do no good for either of them to stay there any longer. She gripped Dazai's forearm, tugging gently to turn him away from the corpse of his dearest friend. "Let's go, Dazai," she muttered, her voice heavy and quiet.

He didn't protest, letting her steer him out of the room with a sure grip on him, as though she were trying to tether him to reality in fear of him floating away somehow.

It wasn't the first time Dazai had lost someone to the clutches of death. Oda's death had simply left a more different kind of impact on him, however, and Dazai's head felt too heavy to fully decipher the weight of his dead friend's parting words. The light hurt without the bandages covering one of his eyes.

He did not think the world ought to have been so bright when a good man had just died twice in one day.

Oda deserved so much better than the death he'd had. He deserved to have gotten out of the Mafia and led the life he wanted. If anyone deserved to live their dream, it was Oda.

Once again, the world had been unfair.

"You know," Dazai began after a long moment of heavy silence in which (Y/n) led him to the car he'd arrived in, "I always thought that between Odasaku and I, I'd be the one to die first."

The young woman stopped, turning to face him with an age old sadness etched into the lines of her face. Wordlessly, she enveloped him in a tight embrace, crushing their bodies together as she whispered over and over to him, "I'm sorry."

She did not know what else to say. Dazai did not know what he wanted to hear.

He clung to her, relishing the warmth of her body because it proved that she was alive and well. "Hey, Nightshade, you aren't planning on leaving me behind anytime soon, right?"

(Y/n) tightened her hold around his shoulders, shaking her head in reply. "I'm not going anywhere, Dazai."

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Golden child,

Lion boy;

Tell me what it's like to conquer.

Fearless child,

Broken boy;

Tell me what it's like to burn.

-oh darling, even rome fell || p.s