Archive of Our Own

Fukuzawa had never had to withstand torture.

He'd never needed to. His talents were a notch above the rest – elevated enough that he could never have been caught by the kinds of people that would want to torture him. Even if anyone had both the inclination and the ability, one look at Fukuzawa would have deterred anyone: his willpower was clearly as hard as his blade, and that steel was written in his eyes and throughout his entire body. Fukuzawa wasn't the kind of person who could be broken with pain, and so no one had ever tried.

He reflects, faintly, on his fifth day without sleep, that this might have been an oversight, actually.

Fukuchi had last seen him nine days ago, and had left with nothing but cheerful threats and somber apologies. It had started two days after that: gas pouring in through the vents, settling into Fukuzawa's skin, into his lungs, into every fiber of his being. It was some sort of drug, and knowing that he was hallucinating did little to stop the feelings when the bodies of those he'd slain before came lurching at him.

Fukuzawa sat cross-legged on the futon, his hands in his lap, and concentrated on breathing. The air was still toxic, but it didn't matter: the beings that he could still hear (that he could still feel) weren't real. The pain was illusory; the fear was an automatic nervous system response that he could overcome.

He told himself this until he woke up from a sleep he did not remember succumbing to, dark bloodied lines down his skin and dried blood under his nails. He had no memory of harming himself, but the evidence was there – even if the injuries line up with the ones that he'd thought were only hallucinations inflicted upon him by others.

They'd stopped feeding him on regular intervals. He could keep track of time, more or less, but his ability to do so grew more and more unwieldy– the lights were never turned off, there were no windows, there was no one speaking to him from the door. The only sound was his own breathing and the periodic scrape of food being pushed through the door.

The food stopped when the noise began.

Fukuzawa had leaned against the wall to rest, the small cell too small for him to properly stretch out to sleep, and instead had jerked immediately when there was a clattering next to his head. It came from the adjoining cell: a sound like a metal-covered body ramming into the shared wall. When Fukuzawa settled back down, the sound of a small explosion went off from above him – the third time he attempted to sleep, it was the shattering of glass that jolted him awake again.

On the third day without sleep, it changed a final time: the noise became a consistent cacophony, oscillating from one side to the other, around every wall of the cell he was encased in, like a recording flicked permanently on. The water stopped then, too.

On his sixth day without sleep and his third day without water, silence falls.

Fukuzawa's eyes open. The bright lights of his cell are still unwavering, even as his ears ring in the sudden quiet, too far underground to hear anything. He thinks he must be imagining the sound of cicadas– but not the sound of footsteps, solitary, growing closer and closer. Fukuzawa recognizes the sound; the gait; the boots, but it takes him a moment to think through it. He feels oversaturated and slow, out of sync with the rest of the world,

It isn't Fukuchi. It's–

"Fukuzawa-dono," Mori says, as the cell door swings open. Mori is backlit by darkness, and he reaches out, lowering the intensity of the cell lights until they're a smolder instead of a fire.

Fukuzawa opens his mouth, but there's not enough saliva left for him to even begin to manage to speak, and so he just ducks his head in acknowledgement. It's so quiet. He feels like he could fall asleep where he's sitting.

Mori's boots click against the cement floor as he steps over, his gloved fingertips slipping underneath Fukuzawa's chin. Fukuzawa's eyes open again – when had he closed them? – and he allows Mori to tilt his head one way and then the other, Mori's gaze wandering down the half-healed scratches on his throat, on his collarbone.

"Oh? I wouldn't have expected you to look this rough," Mori says, and his voice is thick with that friendly violence that indicates this was exactly what he expected. "Dehydrated, sleep-deprived, drugged… and yet abandoned entirely. I admit, I didn't think anyone else in the world would have such a grudge against you."

Abandoned. The word rings in the silence, breaks through the never-ending tinnitus of Fukuzawa's hearing. Tortured, and for what? Not for information – not for the sake of anything but cruelty? Fukuzawa's stomach twists in agonizing worry for the rest of the Agency.

Fukuzawa manages a noise, from deep enough in his throat that the lack of water in his system seems an irrelevant fact, and Mori offers him a smile like a snake intent on suffocating its prey. His hands move away from Fukuzawa, and a moment later he's lifting Fukuzawa's arm, a needle in hand.

"My apologies for the unusual method of transportation," Mori says, unapologetic in his entirety, "but we're working quite outside of our normal parameters."

Fukuzawa closes his eyes, trying to think through the twist of Mori's words, to get to the end, to figure out what's actually going on–

Instead, the thick dizziness of artificial sleep drags into him, and Fukuzawa doesn't have the energy to find its presence anything but a relief.

-

Fukuzawa wakes up to several immediate points that he rapidly categorizes: he is in a bed, but it's too comfortable to be a hospital bed; the sharp burn of an IV is taped thoroughly to his arm, at odds with the fact that he is not in the hospital bed; he is hydrated, but on no stronger drugs, from how easily he can think.

He opens his eyes once all of this has been calculated, because the answer – Mori – is a threat best faced head on.

Mori, for his part, is sitting. Stripped of most of his outer layers, down to a button-down shirt and slacks, a tablet in his hand as he scrolls through something with an expression that's less of a frown and more of the absence of his normal smile. He looks more human, which is dangerous.

"Are you hungry?" Mori asks, his voice clear despite the fact that his eyes have not so much flickered up from what he's reading.

"Yes," Fukuzawa says, honestly, because there's no use in hiding it. His eyes track the IV; the bags are still labeled, innocent words that Yosano would know and Fukuzawa has only obtained through his extensive osmosis around doctors. "This is your room."

It isn't a question, but Mori answers it anyway, a cheerful hum of acknowledgement.

"It felt rude to put you anywhere but the best," Mori says, the unspoken words that it's also the most secure place falling to rest between the two of them. Fukuzawa doesn't see exactly what Mori does on that tablet of his, but it isn't more than a handful of seconds before Mori is standing up, withdrawing the accouterments of his side profession as he moves.

Fukuzawa does not protest it when Mori takes his blood pressure; listens to his heart; checks the healing wounds he'd inflicted on himself during the height of his hallucinations.

"Where," Fukuzawa says, after a long moment, "are my people?"

"Scattered," Mori says, and he sounds apologetic about it. "What have you heard of the outside world?"

Fukuzawa is quiet, allowing his silence to be the answer. He knows precious little that wasn't told directly to him, before–

His mind catches on it, the separation of before and now so jarring that he almost can't make sense of it. Fukuzawa is intelligent, certainly, but he's never had Mori's mind for scheming or Ranpo's ability to unravel a sequence of events until it's laid bare. His mind skips, and then presents a series of unrelated words in the voice of Yosano and Mori: trauma and stress disorder and isolation.

None of it quite seems to be real, everything one step removed from where he is now.

If he stays within this room, he thinks it might stay that way: unreal, kept at bay by the warmth of Mori's fingers as they dance across his pulse points, as they tilt Fukuzawa's head this way and that to look at his eyes, his ears.

"I don't think I need a full physical," Fukuzawa says, dryly.

"No," Mori admits, "but it's good to have a baseline. I'm afraid my records are quite outdated, when it comes to you."

Fukuzawa snorts. He's thinking of a response when Mori's tablet lets out a quiet ding, and Mori drifts over to the door to open it, converse in purposefully quiet tones, and then return with a small tray bearing a traditional Japanese meal, pared down for someone who hasn't eaten solid food in several days.

It tastes fine. Mori doesn't eat, but he has a glass of wine that he sips at once he sits again. Mori is gazing in Fukuzawa's direction, but through him. It's an expression that Fukuzawa is only too familiar with, so he finishes his food before he broaches the subject.

"What are you planning?" Fukuzawa asks, and Mori's eyes flicker to his, the corners of his lips turning up into a faint smile.

"Your Agency is on the run," Mori says, his voice carefully measured. "Several of them are here; more of them are not. Dazai-kun was last seen with the explosion of Mersault, and he, as well as one of my Executives, are both missing. A vampiric plague is sweeping the globe, and while you've suffered little losses in that regard, my own are quite extensive. It's being led by the leader of the Hunting Dogs, who seems to have something of a bone to pick with you."

Fukuzawa takes in this information, letting his eyes close briefly. His position is tenuous, and that of his people even moreso.

"None of that was your plan," Fukuzawa says.

"No," Mori admits. "But the background is important, if you're to make an informed decision."

Fukuzawa looks at him, steadily, and Mori's lips quirk again.

"I'd like to redeem the debt you owe me," Mori says, "and bring one member of your Agency to the Port Mafia, as agreed upon."

Fukuzawa knows how to control his breathing as well as anyone; he knows that it means little to Mori, who is so attentive and so unfortunately attuned to Fukuzawa. No tells are as obvious as real tells, to the two of them.

"Who?" Fukuzawa says.

"You," Mori says, simply, allowing the word to land like a physical blow. The wine glass is at his lips, but his attention is fully focused on Fukuzawa as Fukuzawa rolls the idea over in his mind.

"That's pushing the parameters of the agreement," Fukuzawa says, but it's a minor protest: if things are this bad, if Mori is even asking this of him… But the sheer scope of the ramifications is–

Mori moves again, slow and languid, allowing Fukuzawa to track his movements without straining. He presses down on Fukuzawa's arm, pulling the IV out and placing a bandage over the wound. It has several cartoon cats on it, and something inside of Fukuzawa feels a very specific, very complicated set of things in reaction to that.

He doesn't analyze it.

"As you can imagine," Mori says, "I wouldn't be asking if I didn't think it necessary."

"You're talking about dissolving the Tripartite Agreement entirely," Fukuzawa says. He swings his legs out of bed, and takes a moment to be relieved that he's dressed in an unfamiliar but functional yukata instead of a hospital gown.

"I'm afraid it's already been dissolved through sheer losses," Mori says. "Yokohama is barely standing. There won't be much to protect, if we wait much longer."

Mori opens the door, and Fukuzawa follows on his heels. They're not in the Port Mafia proper, Fukuzawa realizes, but one of the peripheral underground bunkers. Curiously, Fukuzawa sees very few other people stationed throughout the premises, even as they move through it. Mori takes him to what must be the impromptu surveillance room, a handful of people trying to keep track of several dozen screens that all show frighteningly similar signs of chaos.

He can see Yosano and Tanizaki: they appear to be doing their best to rescue what walking wounded they can, Yosano healing and Tanizaki using his illusions to wipe them from reality. He can't see many of the others– just members of the Port Mafia; civilians; a few suited bureaucrats desperately trying to hold their own against a fight they were never meant to be involved in.

"If I join you," Fukuzawa says, his voice low enough that only Mori can hear it, his hands gripping white-knuckled to the railing leading further down into the room, "you'll have access to the rest of the Agency."

"That isn't what I'm asking for," Mori says, easily. Rehearsed. Every avenue thought out before he ever spoke the words into a real existence. "Run your Agency as part of the Port Mafia, alongside me. Allow my remaining people to join under you, and those of your Agency who aren't opposed can work alongside my teams."

Fukuzawa's ability, then, is part of the solution.

"Do you know where Ranpo is?" Fukuzawa asks, and Mori looks genuinely sympathetic. Fukuzawa feels like the floor is dropping out from underneath him.

In the end, the locations of the Agency members only served to solidify Fukuzawa's decision. It was made before Mori even asked the question, Fukuzawa thinks; a foregone conclusion. Too many of his people missing; too many of them wounded.

He'd met with the handful that were available. Seeing Fukuzawa would normally have been a source of strength for them – but there was none of that in their eyes. Naomi missing, and Tanizaki hollow because of it; Yosano using her ability over and over and still watching people fall to become vampires instead of being dead or alive; Ranpo in a mess of papers and blueprints, desperately trying to find a way out of everything, his eyes red rimmed and guilty when he'd looked at Fukuzawa.

"Don't do it," Ranpo says, desperately, his hands shaking. "Even if you do it, there's no way to win."

Fukuzawa has protected Ranpo for years, and now they both have to face the fallibility of his leadership. That everything could crumble so entirely in a handful of weeks – that a decade of careful work could be undone so easily.

There's a cold anger that's building inside of Fukuzawa, mixed with resignation.

He reaches out, letting his hand fall onto Ranpo's head.

"Then," Fukuzawa says, quietly, "we'll redefine what it means to win."

Fukuzawa does not question it when Mori presents him with his sword. He assumes it was found when Mori first broke into the facility that was holding Fukuzawa prisoner. Mori holds it out, silently, and it's far heavier than it should be, when it's held out like that.

"There is a tradition in the Port Mafia," Mori murmurs. "When you recruit someone, you give them a piece of clothing. Due to the circumstances, I hope you'll accept this in lieu of anything else I could give you."

Fukuzawa centers himself. Are there other choices? Are there other roads to take? Surely, there are. He could hold as true to his ideals as Kunikida; be as unwavering and unsullied as possible – but Fukuzawa knows who he is, and knows what he carries inside of him.

Fukuzawa has always been a weapon, and if that means he can shelter whatever is left of the Agency, then he will take up the sword again without regrets.

He reaches out and curls his hand around the sword, familiar and cool.

"I accept," Fukuzawa says, simply. Mori doesn't smile, this time, even though he's gotten what he wanted. He merely presses his own hand – bare, despite him wearing the rest of the clothes that mark him so clearly as the Boss of the Port Mafia – down over Fukuzawa's, just once, like a reassurance. Then Mori steps away.

"Then," Mori says, "here's the plan."

The Plan, as it becomes, is a multi-step endeavor. There's something charming about watching Ranpo rip parts of Mori's strategy to bits, venting all his anger on the easiest target and then rebuilding it. When Fukuzawa finally hits the battlefield, he finds that avenue quite relatable: his rage melts seamlessly into the blade of his sword, and the silver wolf becomes bloodstained once again.

Fukuchi seems just as resigned as Fukuzawa is angry, when the two of them face off again.

"Looks like I brought the war to you anyway," Fukuchi says, and he sounds so apologetic about it, like he's terribly sorry for the inconvenience of the deaths of millions of people across the globe. Like he hasn't broken Fukuzawa's people.

"Then let's end this war," Fukuzawa says, his tone as cold as ice, and Fukuchi strikes.

The fight takes longer than it should have, but Fukuzawa lives through it and Fukuchi doesn't, which is the crux of the matter. Fukuchi grips Fukuzawa's shoulder as he bleeds out on Fukuzawa's sword, and his mouth works on words that he doesn't quite manage to get out.

Fukuzawa doesn't want to listen to them either way.

The Plan works, for whatever they can manage for it. They've overthrown the Decay of the Angels, but the cost was high, and the fallout extreme. Dazai might have managed to take out Dostoyevsky in mutually assured destruction, but his absence is as glaring as the others, when the Agency finally manages to assemble. Too many of them, killed at a distance too great for Yosano to cross in time – the light in Kyouka's eyes gone back out as surely as anything, her gaze shuttered down with the chair next to her still empty. Ranpo, who looks at Fukuzawa, sometimes, like he doesn't know what to do with him, like he doesn't know where anything fits into a worldview forced to change too much, too fast.

"What did we manage to save?" Yosano asks, quietly, grief still heavy in her voice. They reassemble at the remains of the Agency; they pack away the belongings they care about. Yosano's hands trail down the line of books on Kunikida's desk, all of them remaining where Kunikida and his ideals should still be seated instead. "Was there even a point to it?"

"We're still here," Ranpo says, doubling down on what remains. Ranpo has lost everything before; he picks up the pieces and he moves forward with whatever he can muster up, and it would be admirable if it wasn't heartbreaking.

"Are we?" Tanizaki asks.

Yosano just shakes her head, helplessly.

"We'll be working closely with the Port Mafia for the foreseeable future," Fukuzawa says, his voice even lower than usual. "If any of you would prefer to leave, I will do anything in my power to see that you can do so."

"This," Kyouka says, "was the only home he had… so I want to stay here."

"We're still here," Ranpo repeats, and nudges Yosano's elbow. She looks at him, and then sighs. She closes her eyes for a long moment, and when they reopen, she's steeled herself as surely as anyone else.

Fukuzawa allows himself to wish for a single moment that she didn't need to.

"Then let's get this place back into shape," Yosano says. "Even if it's just the furthest out office of the Port Mafia, it's still ours."

Fukuzawa returns to Mori's room out of habit. A war fought and won, and all the little habits and reactions that will take years to unravel have presented themselves in clarity.

Mori doesn't look up when he enters. Elise looks at him, her head cocked to the side, gaze sharp, but she stays silent, too. She's been quiet since Fukuzawa arrived in the first place.

Trauma, Mori's voice inside Fukuzawa's head offers. Trauma worn in a thousand little tells across everyone that's lived. Of course Mori wouldn't have escaped. Elise slips over to Mori, puts a hand on his arm, and then dissolves into light, fading back into whatever space within Mori she fits into when she isn't given corporeal form.

"There's a few of my people I think would do better under your leadership," Mori says, setting down the folder he was reading. Hard copy, this time, and there's a wrenching undercurrent of trust there that Fukuzawa doesn't know what to do with. He simply discards it as easily as he does his haori, folding it over and settling it on the bedside table on what has become – what has always been – his side of the bed.

Fukuzawa finds that he sleeps better when he isn't alone, these days.

"Tanizaki will thrive under yours," Fukuzawa allows, and Mori nods. There's exhaustion in the movement, and Fukuzawa can't help but think that neither of them are young anymore. Fukuzawa raises his gaze to meet Mori's. "Did you wait to rescue me?"

Mori is quiet for a long moment that's as good as an admittance of guilt, and then he offers Fukuzawa a small, tired smile.

"Edogawa-kun is certainly astute," Mori says. "I could have rescued you sooner, yes. Did he figure out why I didn't?"

"The torture made it more likely that I would agree to your terms," Fukuzawa says, but the reasoning doesn't quite feel right, doesn't slot into place with what he knows about Mori.

"I didn't need the torture for that," Mori says, and he sounds almost offended. "We were both backed into the same corner. Nor did I allow my people's lives to fall simply for the sake of this agreement. I would have preferred to have the Port Mafia intact and only have one of you."

"Then what, Ougai?" Fukuzawa says, exhaustion keeping his tone terse.

"I knew there would be ramifications after everything was sorted out," Mori says, explanatory.

"Ramifications," Fukuzawa repeats. Trauma, his mind offers, helpfully. Fukuzawa doesn't like to sleep alone, anymore. He closes his eyes, letting his breathing still within his body. "So that I would stay, this time."

"Yes," Mori agrees, and sounds the slightest bit rueful about it, like he hates that it's come to this. That he's chained the two of them together with blood and the undeniable thread of trust between them; like this offer of a place to be isn't a hell of their own making. "So that you would stay."

Double Black, three times over, and all but the first have been eliminated from the picture.

Fukuzawa sighs. "I'll stay."

Yokohama is recovering, piece by piece. The world is, as well, though Fukuzawa doesn't pretend he has the ability to keep an eye on everything overseas. The cases the Agency gets slowly become less about murder and missing pieces and pockets of vampire activity and become missing cats and orphanage restoration. There's no war between the powers of Yokohama, not with Sakaguchi in charge of the Special Divisions and an official agreement between them and the Port Mafia. Every night more of the city has power again; more of it is rebuilt, sprawling out in view of the Port Mafia's headquarters.

Life goes on, and swallowing becomes easier and easier as the loss becomes normal, a thousand coping mechanisms taking the edge off of everyone's pain until the screaming of the city falls into a dull roar.

For Fukuzawa, too, life goes on: Ranpo takes too well to the bladed plotting of the Port Mafia, and Mori politely sends all requests for Yosano's assistance through someone else so that they interact as little as possible. Tanizaki thrives even more than anticipated under the guidance of the remaining two Executives, even if Ozaki looks at him and clearly sees a different redhead reflected over his image.

They live, and sometimes that in of itself feels like the most damning torture Fukuchi could ever have inflicted upon Fukuzawa.

The feeling burns bright enough that Fukuzawa fears it might burn him out entirely, and those are the moments when he seeks Mori out again, the same as ever; allows the burning inferno in himself to slip out through his silent lips and his searching fingertips and his desperate skin.

He lies in bed with Mori, skin still sweat-slick and Mori breathing hard against him, and thinks that this is less of an ending and more of an inevitable repetition: the second verse, the same as the first, and everything in between was just a brief, blinding chorus that Fukuzawa will never hear again.

"Would I have stayed anyway?" Fukuzawa asks, the draping curtains of the bed stealing his voice away before it can escape further than the two of them.

"I'd like to think you would," Mori says, and the low light takes his eyes from amethyst to pitch black. "But I've never operated merely on what I hoped for."

Fukuzawa turns this over inside of himself for a long moment. What could have been avoided? Who could have been saved? What would he have sacrificed? What more could he have sacrificed, than everything he was, sliced away by Mori's unwavering scalpel until there was nothing left of a man but a blade?

His silence drags on, and Mori sits up, finally, reaching a hand up to drag his bangs out of his face. "Is it easier to pretend that this was a foregone conclusion that I orchestrated?"

"I've never operated on what's easiest," Fukuzawa returns, because it would be easier, to pin it all on Mori and pretend that Fukuzawa was helpless. It'd be equally dishonest, but it'd be easier.

"I've always thought that was one of your more admirable traits," Mori offers, brightly.

"Well," Fukuzawa says, not unkindly, "you would."

Mori slips out of the bed, stretching out as he slips a robe on for the few yards of distance between himself in the bathroom.

"But you're still here," Mori says.

"Yes," Fukuzawa agrees, quietly, letting himself step out of bed as well. "We're still here."