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Being in jail isn’t even that bad. But it definitely gets boring after a bit. Especially when you have a world-wrecking plan setting in motion outside of this cube of nothingness and you can’t be out there to witness it. Jail gets boring when you don’t dream at night and have to spend the days playing mind games.
Jail can be boring for Fyodor, even more so when there’s a maniac in the cell next door and he wakes in a bad mood.
It’s become a common occurrence, now. Dazai will wake up, the nostalgia will get to him, and he’ll spend the day muttering, listing dates and names of places and people. He doesn’t even bother Fyodor that much anymore, choosing instead to stare into nothing and recall hell knows what. Sometimes he’ll even speak about it and flood the silence of the prison with stories of people and crimes. It’s insanely annoying. Even playing three simultaneous rounds of mental chess was more fun.
Jail’s been boring lately, and Fyodor can’t help but feel like he misses things too.
When he does, it’s dreams of the world falling to his feet, of bloodied cities and white doves. But there’s a particular scenario that’s been recurring in his nightmares recently.
So he lets Dazai’s scheming and muttering become background noise of the soulless prison they’ve gotten themselves into, and as he lays in the cold and stiff mattress that is his bed, hands behind his head, his memory brings the dream afloat from the deep sea of the devil’s mind.
A sordid room, all empty white and memories of old whispered prayers. Old furniture, papers splayed on the table, candles forming apprehensive shadows. No windows other than a tiny opening on the back wall, no locks on the rotten wooden door. The vague silhouette of a master plan silently coming to shape, slowly, in bits and sizes of disaster.
Two sinners with no intent on salvation. A bird singing on a tree nearby.
“Quick, quiz time!” said Nikolai with a grin too bright for a killer. “What am I thinking of right now?”
“Birds, naturally.” answered Fyodor in a patient tone. It’s not a hard thing to guess, after all. Freedom, birds, cages, death. Nikolai has always spoken of that.
“Correct!” Nikolai sat next to him on the beaten-up chairs the room had to offer. Fyodor had been since early morning, writing and scheming. Nikolai arrived to keep him company, or so he said.
“That was way too easy a question, wasn’t it?” Nikolai wove his hands ceremoniously as he spoke, in big gestures and tiny flutters of gloved fingers. His never-ending act seemed a bit off, here, in a small room with an old friend and very little to hide. But he remained in his clown attire, half of his face masked, left eye hidden to the truth. “Now you have to guess what I dreamt of!”
Nikolai has always dreamt of cages and of stars. Not once in years has that changed.
Fyodor could easily infer the clown had something in mind, though. That wasn’t difficult to read from his chosen questions.“Kolya, your quizzes are never this easy. What exactly do you want to say?”
At that, the clown stilled in his tracks. He turned to face Fyodor, his face full of unidentifiable emotion.
“What bounds you?”
The question threw Fyodor a little out of his depth. What bounds him where? “I don’t know what you mean, Kolya.”
“Something has to bound you. There’s got to be a thing that keeps you tied to it.”
“My plan, then. I am to stick to it, prove I am a god.”
“I see.”
“Why do you ask?” The conversation sparked Fyodor’s curiosity, the unknown way the other’s mind worked still surprised him after so long.
“Fedya, what would you do if I left you? If I didn’t play my part in your plan?”
Those words caught him off guard. A nearly imperceptible crack in his mask, be it emotion or just surprise, let itself be seen. What is Nikolai talking about?
The always-rational part in him instantly supplied the possible changes and replacements in his schemes. Nobody can be irreplaceable or even necessary, can they? Another, unidentifiable part ached with the possibility. In less than a second he composed himself. A god ought to be on the higher ground at all times, in control.
“And why, Kolya, would you leave me? Have I not given you the freedom you wish for?”
“You have, but then I have to stop and ask myself. Is attachment to you not another form of chains? Will my loyalty to you not bound me and keep me tied to the ground? You know that’s not what I want.”
“This is nonsense. I gave you the Decay of Angels, the freedom you seek for. And I need your ability for my plans. It’s as simple as that.”
Nikolai leaned closer, his visible eye glinting dangerously. “Is it, my dear Fedya? Is it simple when I’ve known you far before you called yourself a devil? Is it really that easy if my attachment to you isn’t born at all from loyalty, but from something else?”
“And what would that be?”
“I thought you would know, Fedya. I don’t know what it is, but it burns.”
Perhaps Fyodor knows what he means. Something in the shape of a cello hidden deep in his chest, with a crow tugging restlessly at the strings. An ache he can’t know the reason for, or ever hope to soothe it. What is it? He is supposed to know it all yet he can’t know what this is. What burns at the heart, ties him invisibly to another, brings him unexplainable happiness in the disguise of misery?
Love. An unwanted wave in the sea of his memory supplies. A demon can’t love.
A demon can’t love, but Fyodor has noticed how Nikolai looks at him, how he acts towards him in irrational ways that only the heart could motivate and only feelings could explain. Maybe he played his part in it, too. Giving guidance to Nikolai, enabling his dreams of freedom, having a friend on his side.
Does Nikolai also feel a bird’s claws tugging frantically at his heart?
Suddenly it all makes sense, the moments fitting and tying themselves to a single sentence. So he is loved. If he is loved then it has to be a painful thing for the other, to love someone who could never let himself do the same.
Yet Nikolai is too close, with his mask off, both eyes visible and looking at him with anger, fondness, hopelessness all at once.
What is this?
Their lips met with a touch so fleeting it was almost never there.
“So this is,” said Nikolai in a whisper, “what it was.” His face always so blatant, so sincere. He grinned, both his eyes gleaming.
It was okay, Fyodor can admit. He’d never kissed someone before. He allows himself to let out a tiny smile for a moment. They stay quiet, calm with closeness, sitting together and drinking in what just happened. He could almost feel understood. Not that he’d ever admit it to himself.
The bird in his chest seemed to have stilled. Perhaps the kiss shot it dead.
“Love?” Asks Fyodor, entirely out of it. Can he even love? Does he?
“Oh, Fedya.” Answered Nikolai with a strange tinge of sorrow in his otherwise cheery voice. “I wouldn’t know.”
Okay, maybe Fyodor lied. Maybe he dreams of this every single night and tears his supposedly demonic mind apart trying to figure out the answers. But what’s he supposed to do? Dazai doesn’t shut up with stories of his silly romances. It’s completely normal for Fyodor to also recall important events.
And the bird inside Fyodor’s heart seems to have torn all the strings.