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Chuuya shouldn’t be surprised to see Dazai’s pupil leaning against the grave that he helped Gin make, but he is nonetheless.
The boy has his legs pulled up to his chest, his arms wrapped tightly around them. His forehead is resting on his knees, out of sight.
Chuuya walks up slowly, silently, and stares for a few moments before barking out a gruff, “Hey.”
Atsush startles violently, his head shooting up so fast that it bangs against the hard surface. He winces.
Chuuya scoffs. “Don’t give yourself a damn concussion,” he admonishes. “We can’t afford to have two of our best fighters down.”
Though Atsushi flinches a bit at the cool implication, he doesn’t react to the words beyond that. “Hi, Chuuya-san.”
“Hi,” he echoes, voice flat as he leans against a nearby tree. Then, “So I assume Gin told you?”
Atsushi blinks. “Told me about what?”
He crosses his arms over his chest. “About this,” he explains as he inclines his head to the stone. “About the grave.”
“Oh,” Atsushi breathes. “Yes, she told me.”
And though Chuuya already knows the answer to the question he’s about to ask, he decides to ask it anyway. He’s curious as to what Atsushi will say. “And why exactly did she tell you?”
“Oh,” Atsushi repeats, his voice cracking on the word. Then he looks up at Chuuya and holds his gaze. “Well, I’m sure you know the answer to that.”
“How about you humor me,” Chuuya says.
Atsushi just continues staring at him for a moment, clearly suspicious, before giving a resigned sigh. “We were the New Double Black — isn’t that what Dazai-san always said?”
Exactly, Chuuya thinks, a bit irritated despite himself. Exactly.
Because though the length and foundation of Atsushi’s partnership with Akutagawa differed from the one he shared with Dazai, the bond they shared was the same. So was the ending.
The cycle of loving and losing will never break, it seems.
For a moment he wonders if it would’ve been easier for him to be in Atsushi’s place right now in the aftermath. After all, Akutagawa didn’t choose to leave Atsushi. He didn’t choose to cut all ties, or to pretend that nothing happened, or to act like none of it mattered.
(Chuuya tries to imagine Dazai sitting at an empty grave like Atsushi is. Then he tries to imagine Dazai looking like Atsushi is — like nothing will ever be okay again. He isn’t able to.
So maybe he was wrong to say that Atsushi and Akutagawa’s bond was the same as the one he had with Dazai. Maybe theirs was even stronger.)
These thoughts on their own drain him so much that he finds himself sliding down the tree. He pulls his knees up and rests his elbows on them, his arms extended. He picks at his cuticle and says nothing.
Chuuya’s silence must encourage Atsushi to keep talking because all of a sudden the floodgates open.
“We were partners,” he continues. “He was my partner and I… I left him there.”
I used corruption because I trusted you, and You better take me to the extraction point.
When he came to, he was alone, laying exactly where he’d collapsed. Yet his clothes folded neatly next to him.
(He didn’t know what to make of that at the time. He still doesn’t.)
“What do you mean?” Chuuya asks, pushing the thought from his mind lest he begin to spiral.
“I just ran and I left him there!” he says, as if repeating it with more feeling will be enough to clue Chuuya in. “I left—”
He holds a hand up to cut Atsushi off. It works, surprisingly. “Alright, sure. Let’s say you left him,” he starts, and Atsushi flinches minutely at his words, clearly taking them as an agreement as well as an accusation. Chuuya doesn’t acknowledge it. “But when you did, what was he like?”
This seems to catch Atsushi off guard. “Huh?”
Chuuya actually wants to roll his eyes despite the tension headache that’s been steadily growing since this conversation began. “Do you need me to spell it out for you?” he asks. Then he sighs. “Could you have saved him if you stayed?”
Atsushi blinks again, slowly. “I don’t understand.”
This time Chuuya does roll his eyes. “After all, you sound so, so sure that he’s dead. You reported it. Are you trying to tell me that that was because of an assumption? That you reported it because you left him to be captured and just figured he’d be killed by the enemy when you did?”
The question has Atsushi’s expression shifting into an odd combination of horrified, offended, and indignant. “Of course I didn’t!” he fumes. “I would never—”
“Then that means you knew he was going to die,” Chuuya deadpans, and it’s a statement of fact rather than a question.
Atsushi laughs as he scrubs both hands over his face like he can scrub the weight of the world away. Chuuya knows this move all too well.
“You’re right.” The words come in pieces, almost as if both of them had to be extracted. “I knew he was dying and he did too.” He laughs wetly. “He actually told me to leave, did you know that?” He clenches his fists. “Did you know that he smiled at me? He smiled at me, Chuuya-san. It was small and weak but it was still a smile, and then he—”
There are honestly a myriad of things Chuuya can say about this, wants to say about this, but he won’t, because there’s a part of him that gets it; Chuuya is well aware that sometimes it’s easier to place the blame on someone or take the blame yourself than accept that you were helpless to do anything.
“I feel like this is the part where I’m supposed to tell you that you shouldn’t blame yourself,” Chuuya begins, cutting Atsushi off, “but it would be a lie to say it’ll take any skin off my back if you do. So I won’t.”
(And even if he did say it, the words would just roll off this kid's back; if there’s one thing that Chuuya has come to realize about Atsushi Nakajima it’s that the kid has a martyr complex the size of the fucking country.)
Chuuya sighs. “But I will say this — if you both knew he was dying then it doesn’t matter that you left. Besides,” he adds after a moment, “fuck knows what we would’ve done if you never told us all that you two learned.”
Atsushi’s posture goes ramrod straight like a bowstring at the indirect mention of Fukuchi.
“Chill,” Chuuya tells him firmly. “Save all that hatred for when it matters. Save it for when you need it.”
Atsushi studies Chuuya for a moment before taking a deep breath and slowly nodding.
It’s silent for a moment before Atsushi whispers, apropos of nothing, “You know, Ryuu really respected you, Chuuya-san, and he told me once that he was grateful to have you as a mentor.”
A rush of nausea hits Chuuya like a tidal wave, and it takes him a minute to compose himself. Then he decides to provide Atsushi with a sentiment living on the opposite side of the spectrum.
“He hated you when the two of you first met,” Chuuya says suddenly, almost as if the statement was news and not the equivalent of telling Atsushi that the sky is blue. “Fucking hated.”
Atsushi chokes out a startled laugh. “Did he?” he asks in feigned disbelief.
Chuuya nods. “You have no idea — he cursed you up and down,” he bemoans, and though Atsushi’s eyes are still shining with unshed tears his lip twitches up a bit. “I mean fuck, sometimes I thought I’d never hear the end of it.
“It would be a lie to say that I was much better,” he says. “Everyone in the ADA would be more than willing to confirm it.”
There’s a lull, not uncomfortable, before Atsushi’s lip twitches up a bit. “But he did cut off my leg, so it was at least a little justified, don’t you think?”
Chuuya huffs a laugh. “I suppose,” Chuuya relents. “I mean, I certainly don’t find it surprising.”
Then Atsushi’s expression sobers. “Besides, I’m sure you remember that time I nearly killed him.”
Yes, Chuuya does, and he can tell by the look on Atsushi’s face that he remembers it frequently.
But he has other memories of this as well, ones that Atsushi doesn’t have — he remembers the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it look of devastation in her eyes when Chuuya told her; he remembers how she couldn’t sit by his side.
Chuuya feels something akin to guilt as soon as the words leave his mouth, but what he says next is: “One could even say you almost got him killed right after that, too. Indirectly, at least.”
Atsushi’s eyes widen. “What?”
“The injuries he suffered during your fight being immediately followed by that sinking ship? It put him in a coma,” Chuuya goes on to say. “Some no-name faction tried to kill him while he was still under.”
Atsushi just sort of stares at him for a moment before quietly saying, “Oh.”
Then his gaze goes distant, falling into memories. Maybe that’s why he decides to say, “I didn’t tell you that to make you feel bad, you know.”
Awareness quickly returns to Atsushi's eyes, which he proceeds to narrow at him. “Then why tell me at all.”
It isn’t a question.
Chuuya grasps at straws. “To remind you that you wouldn’t do that again, I suppose. Or maybe to show you that compared to that, it’s impossible to claim that what happened yesterday was your fault. After all, you two weren’t like that anymore,” he ends up going with. “You would do well to remember that.”
“Exactly,” Atsushi agrees, “we weren’t like that anymore, and that’s precisely why I wish you never told me — because I probably would do it again, at least if I didn’t know what I do now.”
Then he buries his hands in his hair. “I had more than enough nightmare fuel before I joined the ADA, where I got even more,” he confesses. “I already have the memory of almost killing Ryuu when we fought on that boat and I remember thinking he was going to die when he got infected with Pushkin’s virus. I remember him actually dying not even 24 hours ago and I always will. I see it every time I close my eyes.”
Chuuya wonders if Atsushi has forgotten who exactly he’s pouring his heart out to or if he reached a breaking point that any living person would do as an outlet.
“I really didn’t need more,” he finishes.
There’s just something about the words that has Chuuya suddenly itching for a cigarette. It isn’t something that happens much anymore, though he does tend to keep a pack in his jacket pocket anyway. He isn’t sure why he does it, but Mori seems to think it’s because he’s a masochist. A “sucker for pain” or something like that. Chuuya had scoffed when he told him that, but sometimes he can’t help wondering whether or not there’s a bit of truth behind the assessment.
Well whatever the reason is he’s craving one.
And yet he remains still. He remains still because his mind suddenly conjures up the memory of the first time he’d successfully managed to drag Akutagawa with him to a bar, and with it the memory of Akutagawa trying to hide the fact that he was coughing a little more than normal after Chuuya had lit up his third cigarette.
So it feels almost wrong to smoke so close to the boy’s makeshift resting place even if his body isn’t there feels wrong — after all, well, he cared for Akutagawa quite a lot, and quite a lot, in fact.
“Chuuya-san,” Atsushi whispers suddenly, his voice so quiet that Chuuya almost doesn’t hear it. “Can I ask you something?”
“Depends,” he says, wanting to be difficult. Then, after he sees the look in Atsushi’s eyes, he just sighs. He wonders how many times he’s done that tonight. “Yeah, what?”
“Do you think he knew?” he asks. He pauses before rather uselessly elaborating, “Akutagawa, I mean.”
Chuuya blinks. “Knew?”
Atsushi nods. “How much I…” He pauses to adjust the lapels of the black coat he’s wearing. Akutagawa’s coat, Chuuya realizes with a start. “How much I loved him.” He clears his throat. “Do you think he knew much I loved him?”
And the thing of it is, Chuuya honestly isn’t sure. He knows that Akutagawa was aware of Atsushi’s love to some degree, but he can’t say with confidence that Akutagawa knew the depth of it. Chuuya himself certainly didn’t; he wouldn’t have fathomed it until now.
He lightly touches the choker resting on his throat and thinks about what used to be there. He remembers Kouyou’s insistence that he get rid of it just as he remembers hiding it in his closet before telling her that he did. He remembers how she never called him out on the lie that she knew it was.
He wonders if Dazai thinks he threw it out. He wonders if Dazai thinks about it at all.
Chuuya pushes that out of his mind just as soon as he thinks about it lest he himself spiral.
“When Akutagawa came into the mafia,” he begins, a subject change for the both of them, “do you want to know what I saw?”
Atsushi’s answer is immediate. “No,” he says firmly. “No, I don’t.”
Chuuya pretends not to hear him. “I saw a scared kid drowning in Dazai’s coat. His eyes were almost like black holes — he had no will to live and almost nothing to keep him going. If he was told on the day I met him that he would be dead in only a handful of years? Well, I can’t help but think that a part of him would be grateful.”
Atsushi makes a wounded, punched-out little noise but otherwise stays silent.
“But then I watched him grow during his time under Dazai’s tutelage… and I witnessed things I wish I hadn’t.”
Chuuya forces himself to ignore the way Atsushi winces at the words. After all, it’s a fair reaction, given what he’s implying.
And he can only imagine how hard it must be for Atsushi to reconcile that the man who saved him and the man who made Akutagawa’s life hell are the same person; sometimes it’s just as hard for Chuuya to reconcile that the man who did both of those things and the man that Chuuya himself knew are the same person.
But instead of thinking about that he chooses to focus on the he really respected you and the he was grateful to have you as a mentor that’s started ringing in his ears. “I watched him grow after Dazai left and he came to be under mine instead.”
Chuuya has to swallow and take a moment before continuing. “By the time that coat finally fit, he wasn’t scared anymore, just angry.“ He takes a deep breath; he had no idea these memories would cut so deep. “He was just so… angry. All the time.”
There’s a long pause. “Why are you telling me this, Chuuya-san?” Atsushi whispers, voice pained, and it’s actually almost heartbreaking how entirely lost he looks. “Haven’t you told me enough already?”
The question gives him pause because honestly? He probably has. No, he definitely has. And maybe he shouldn’t have in the first place, because now they’re both drowning in thoughts about the grim reality of Akutagawa’s life at the place meant to mark the end of it.
Rather than voice this though, Chuuya simply shrugs. “Probably,” he admits, and when all he receives in response he looks up.
He immediately regrets it, because Atsushi looks so… lost. Completely and utterly lost.
The urge to leave hits him out of nowhere, and yet despite everything there’s one more thing he wants to say. He isn't completely sure how Atsushi will react to the information, but Chuuya feels as if he owes it to him; it might break his heart all the more, but it might comfort him as well.
And so, he gets to his feet and says, before he can change his mind, “There’s something else I want you to know.”
“Will I want to hear it?” Atsushi asks blandly.
Chuuya lets out a startled laugh. “I’m not sure,” he says honestly.
He resolves to wait for an answer instead of just telling him, so while he waits he takes a moment to observe him. After a minute of silence he decides to urge him along. “There’s a reason Gin told you about the grave, you do know that right?” he asks. Bar your apart ass answer from earlier.
Atsushi has to tilt his head up now that Chuuya is standing, and the new angle reflects the tears in his eyes all the more.
Beast beneath the moonlight indeed.
Atsushi still says nothing, though this time Chuuya isn’t sure if it’s because he’s actually thinking of an answer or because he has nothing to say and is waiting for Chuuya to continue.
Chuuya sighs. “Though if you’re wondering, it’s about the two of you,” he says. “And I’m not gonna offer it up again, so it’s now or never.”
Silence remains; he scoffs. “Don’t think too hard about it, kid,” he says. “You’re more than capable of making decisions on the fly, aren’t you?”
Atsushi clenches his jaw and narrows his eyes at the implication. Then he releases a sigh of his own. “I can’t help but think I’ll regret it either way, so I guess I’d rather know than wonder,” he mumbles.
A pragmatic response; Chuuya takes a deep breath. “Akutagawa’s anger was obvious to anyone who met him, but there was something else.” He clears his throat and wills away the tears he feels beginning to form on his waterline. “Something that, though unnoticeable to most, was clear as day to me.”
Atsushi blinks. “What was it?”
Without his consent Chuuya feels the words get stuck in his throat, and perhaps that’s why he finds himself turning around and walking away before delivering his parting words; he’s decided that he doesn’t want to bear witness to Atsushi’s reaction.
It isn’t until he’s a few feet away that he stops, and without turning around he finishes, “How you changed him,” Chuuya tells him softly. “How you brought back some of the light in his eyes.”
Chuuya pretends not to hear the muffled sob behind him as he walks away.