Work Text:
Two weeks after Yumeno Kyuusaku is pulled from the depths of the foster care system, two things happen.
The first is that Mori burns the file that had come with them. No record, other than Q’s memory, exists of their parents’ names or faces. They can assume that Yumeno was their family name, but they aren’t sure. From that day on, Q is nothing more than the Port Mafia’s ward.
The second is that they finally meet Mori’s other ward.
~
There is a boy sitting at the table, dark hair hanging over his eyes, wrapping bandages around his wrists and up his arm. The boy is tall, skinny, with black clothes that only seem to make him look paler. The most striking thing, however, is the bruise that marrs his right eye.
“Who are you?”
The boy spares him a glance. “I'm Dazai. Mori is my guardian as well, for now.”
Dazai’s mouth curls into a sardonic smile as he speaks, and if Q knew the word irony, that's what they would have called the association of the word guardian with Mori.
“And you?”
“I'm Q.”
Dazai hums.
From that point onward, Q is what Dazai will call them because it is how they introduced themselves. Kyuusaku comes later, and Dazai reserves it for times he had needed to impress his seriousness upon them. If anyone could understand the seriousness of the name one chooses to give, it would be Dazai, but Q won't learn that for several months.
“How old are you?”
“Fourteen. Fifteen in June.”
“I'm six.”
“A baby, then,” Dazai says, and Q hates him immediately.
~
Q already knows Mori is not a good person. Q, at the tender age of six, is not sure they believe in good people anymore. Either way, Q is sure that they are not such a person. No good person kills their own parents, even if their parents did hit them. A good person would not leave a string of injured foster parents behind them.
Q knows this, even if a small part of themself whispers that they wouldn't hurt if they didn't touch them, if they didn't hurt Q first.
Q is unsurprised by Dazai’s neverending rotation of injuries. Q worries only about themselves, these days. They no longer feel sympathy or act selflessly, as they had quickly learned even other foster children would turn on them. The world of an orphan is one in which they must fend for themselves.
When Q hears the door across the hall creak open every night, while theirs stays shut, all they can think is at least it isn't me.
~
Q doesn’t know until they’re older than Dazai was specifically given the task of discovering their ability, they only understand that Dazai pokes and prods at them cruelly.
The handprint burns away in a wash of blue-white light, and Q takes a step away.
Dazai tilts his head as he stares at the area the handprint had sat.
“So that’s your ability. Mind control.” He picks up Q’s doll, which is healing itself from where Q had torn off their head. “Pain as a trigger. That’s unfortunate.”
“What was that? No one’s ever…no one can stop it.”
Dazai looks at him. “My ability. No Longer Human nullifies any and all abilities I come into contact with.”
~
The day Mori pries the doll from their arms and carelessly hands it to Dazai to hold on to, Q cries so hard they pass out.
~
Q is not allowed out without Dazai, but Dazai may come and go as he wishes, as long as he always comes back. He rarely deigns to take Q along, so Q watches enviously from the sitting room as Dazai leaves their shared hell.
Dazai spends longer outside of the apartment these days, a change that is unremarked upon by Mori or Dazai himself. Q doesn’t understand until one day, they are allowed to accompany Dazai outside.
Not long after they enter the Mafia proper rather than the apartments, another boy falls into step beside Dazai. He has hair the color of fire, and even though he wears mafia black just like them, he seems so much brighter than anyone else.
“Dazai, who’s this?”
“This is my…sibling,” Dazai finally settles on.
The other boy raises his eyebrows. “You…have a…sibling,” he says, deliberately slow.
“This is Q,” Dazai continues, ignoring the disbelief. “They're five—”
“I'm six.”
“As I said, they're four—”
The other boy’s mouth twitches into a smile for a moment before he hides it, and he crouches down to offer Q a gloved hand. “I'm Chuuya,” the boy says, and Q loves him instantly.
~
Q closes their eyes, pressing as far back against the wall as they can, making themselves as small as possible.
The cells in the bottom levels of headquarters are insulated against sounds, but only on the outside. Inside the cell, the sounds of violence echo off the walls, and everything seems so much louder.
They can’t stop their own ability, but that doesn’t mean they have to watch the two women tear each other apart.
Q covers their ears with their hands, pressing their face to their own knees. Please, they pray, make it stop.
The door unlocks, but Q doesn’t look up. It might just be Mori, adding someone new. They prepare themselves for the increased sound of fighting, for this new person to beg and plead, but instead, it grows quieter.
“Q.”
Dazai. A hand on their leg, the flash of nullification.
“Q, it’s over. I finished it. It’s done.”
They don’t want to, but they have to see. They have to know if Dazai’s telling the truth.
The first thing they see when they lift their head is Dazai. A bloody knife sits on the concrete beside him, his hand bandages and white shirt specked with red.
“Don’t look,” he says, shifting to block Q’s view. “Mori didn’t tell me until a few minutes ago. It was a mercy.”
Q’s mouth trembles before they throw themselves at Dazai, burying their face in his shoulder. “I killed them,” he sobs. “I couldn’t stop it.”
Dazai pets their head, pulling them back so he can make eye contact. “No, no. I did that. You didn’t kill them. I did. Understand, Q? I killed them.”
~
Dazai is the only one who ever bothers to take the bandages off of Q’s arms.
But taking them off hurts just as much as putting them on, and eventually, Q grows to hate him for the additional hurts.
~
Q is good at hiding, at not being seen. They become quite good at sneaking out and hearing gossip that they repeat to Dazai, or sometimes to Chuuya, in return for candy and small treats.
They hadn’t thought they would ever be caught.
“Kyuusaku. I thought I said you were not to leave these apartments.”
Q swallows.
“How exactly have you been getting out?”
Q thinks of the small ledge below the window in the dining room, wide enough for them to walk until they hit the fire escape. They can’t allow Mori to seal the window.
“Dazai let me out.”
Dazai’s expression doesn’t change, but his eyes burn.
It was him or me, Q thinks, ripping the pathetic feelings of guilt out.
Mori turns on Dazai now, hand striking out.
The slap knocks him to the ground, where Dazai stays, knowing better than to try to get up.
“You may go to your room, Kyuusaku. We’ll discuss your punishment later.”
The crack of bone as they turn almost makes the guilt return, but Q stuffs it down. They have to protect themselves.
~
“I hate you,” Dazai hisses. “If you get caught ever again, I won’t help you.”
“I don’t need your help,” Q snarls back, and Dazai offers a cruel smile.
His punishment had been particularly bad, Q thinks, looking at the casted wrist and the tender way he moves. With a sinking feeling, Q realizes they have used up all of Dazai’s goodwill.
“No, but you need that window unsealed, don’t you? Get caught again and I’ll make sure Mori clips your wings.”
~
Throughout their fights, Dazai never locks them out of their own room, a fact that Q takes advantage of. Dazai’s room is safer than their own. If Mori goes looking for them, he won't ever think to look for them with Dazai.
Q can crawl into Dazai’s bed after Mori has left and hide against his back. No Longer Human washes over them like a cold wind, and that's how they know Dazai’s alive, no matter how bad he looks.
~
“Does Chuuya know?”
“No, Chuuya doesn't know. And he won't find out.”
“What if I told him?” Q says, spitefully.
Dazai looks at him, dead-eyed. The bandages that usually cover his right eye are off, showing off the black eye Mori had given him last night. The real reason Dazai’s eye never seems to heal, Q thinks privately, is because that’s the part of Dazai’s face he always goes for. “I would cut out your tongue before you got the first word out and then I would spend the rest of our hellishly short lives making you miserable.”
Q opens their mouth, but then the door opens.
Not loudly. No, Mori never slams the doors, never throws them open. The near-silent click of the lock is enough for the two of them.
They exchange a look, Q’s panic bleeding into their expression. If they dart across the hallway for their own room, they'll be seen.
“Hide,” Dazai says, “Now, Kyuusaku, go—”
Dazai never calls them their full name, which is why Q doesn't argue for even a second, just drops to the ground to shimmy behind the storage drawers under the bed, pressing themself as far back as they can get.
The light cuts off suddenly as Dazai drops something at the foot of the bed, but Q isn't afraid of the dark. They're afraid of Mori, though, especially when he's in a mood the way he is today.
Self-preservation is something Dazai struggles with, but Q has it in spades. They know to stay silent, even when Dazai starts to scream.
Q has never heard anyone scream like that. (They never will again, because Dazai will never give Mori his screams again.)
Dazai does not look alive when Q finally crawls out from behind the drawers under the bed. This is not to say that he looks like a dead person, because that's not it either. His eyes are blank, his expression vacant, his fingers twitching.
It looks like someone sucked the soul out of him and replaced it with a void. This is why Q knows that anyone who says Dazai is empty inside is wrong, because he's seen Dazai hollowed out enough to know there must be something there, something that Mori takes from him.
It is wrong to see Dazai this way, because there are ripped and loosened bandages gaping like wounds to expose the pale skin and scars under them. His mouth is bloody enough that every breath must taste like copper coins, but he doesn't move to wipe it away or spit the blood out. Dazai doesn't acknowledge when Q shifts the ones on his chest to cover the exposed breast, just stares, unblinking, at the ceiling.
It hurts when Q climbs up onto the bed, because there are bandages wrapped around their arms and everything will always hurt. They no longer understand how it feels to not be hurt. It hurts when they rest their head on Dazai’s bony shoulder, carefully fitting their body against Dazai’s, and he remains hollow.
Blood drips off of Dazai’s body, off the arm and leg that hangs off the side of the bed, to splash against the ground in a macabre form of white noise.
~
Dazai-kun has been hurt, Kouyou had said when she retrieved them, like that sentence isn’t meaningless to Q.
The hospital ward is unfamiliar, but Q knows that this is also Mori’s domain. Not safe. Dazai would never allow Q here.
They scan over the people present, ignoring Hirotsu and his Black Lizard members in favor of Chuuya.
Chuuya is good, Q knows. Even Dazai says so.
“Where’s Dazai?”
Chuuya doesn’t look at them when they speak.
“Dazai’s hurt,” Chuuya finally says, tearing his gaze from the wall to look at Q.
“He’s always hurt.” And doesn't Q know it? Who else sees Dazai before he's wrapped in bandages? Who else sees Dazai empty? Who else hears the pained gasps Dazai can't keep in, the echoes of a slap or worse?
“Not like this.” Chuuya closes his eyes. “He got shot. It was pretty…pretty bad.”
“He’s always hurt,” Q says again. Chuuya’s not supposed to know, but maybe he would fix it if he did.
“Q…” Chuuya’s voice is trembling. “I can't listen to you complain about him right now. Not while I'm covered in his blood.”
Q’s stomach sinks.
He doesn’t understand. No one does. What are two children worth, when weighed against the entire Port Mafia? Dazai had asked them, in one of the moods where he would be brutally honest. No one is ever going to save us. It’s best you know that now.
If Q were kind, they would pray for Dazai’s one wish to come true. Dazai craves the release of death the way some people crave love or success.
Q is not kind, and most of all, they do not want to be alone.
Q stares at Chuuya as they accept the bitter truths of their life for the first time, then they turn and leave.
They don’t need to wait here to know if Dazai will live. Dazai will survive because he is just as cursed as Q. Neither of them ever get what they want.