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It’s been a week since the two had last seen each other. They had been on opposite sides then, Dazai fighting to stop both Shibusawa and Fyodor, Fyodor fighting to stop both him and Shibusawa. Despite being on opposing sides, they still shared a goal.
And now, a week later, they are still on opposite sides, just not in a fight.
Dazai stands on the other side of the railing, fully prepared to let go, and Fyodor watches him from his spot on the bridge, with the intent of stopping him.
“Seriously? Giving up now?” Dazai startles slightly at the voice behind him, then turns to look at him, his mouth contorted into an almost disturbing smile. He only ever smiles like that when his own death is involved.
“Yes, will that be an issue for you Fedya?” Fyodor shakes his head, his hair flailing about in the wind.
Dazai turns back around. “Good, good. I don’t suppose you’re here for no reason though?” Fyodor never does things without reason.
“Why now? You could have done this whenever you liked but you waited until now.” Dazai’s question is left unanswered.
Dazai laughs. “Well, I had wanted to commit double suicide with a beautiful woman but, I simply can’t wait that long.” He pauses for a moment, “If you think about it, I suppose I already have.” That's news to Fyodor.
“You have? Yet here you are still alive?” Dazai’s smile dims at that.
“Well, Shibusawa wasn’t exactly a beautiful woman, but he was close enough don’t you think?” He pauses for a moment. “Or he would have been, seeing as I did not really die.”
Fyodor hums and Dazai turns to face him once more. “If Shibusawa was close enough, am i?” At this Dazai actually startles, one of his hands slips off the railing and Fyodor is forced to stop him from falling off entirely.
“My my~ Fedya, are you asking what I think you are?” Fyodor’s eyes narrow.
“If you wish to be annoying, please do so when you’re not 2 seconds away from plummeting to your death.” Dazai frowns.
Nevertheless he regains his footing on the bridge and hoists himself over the railing, now standing right next to Fyodor.
“Y’know, if you wanted to commit double suicide with me, this bridge would have been the perfect opportunity.” Fyodor begins walking away, Dazai follows after him.
He sighs, “I will not die from something as barbaric as jumping off a bridge.”
“How will you die then?” Dazai’s tried all kinds of methods, he could suggest any number of things for them to try, but he doubts any will fit Fyodor’s standards.
“Poison.” Ah, He hasn’t had as much experience with that, seeing as it’s not as readily available as tall buildings or rivers devoid of all people.
He can understand the appeal though, a quick death, that could even be done while asleep if timed right, that leaves the corpse perfectly clean and intact, all damage contained to the inside, outside of view.
Commiting a suicide that doesn’t burden anyone is difficult if the person who finds you is forced to look at a mangled, grotesque corpse.
“You have some?” It’s a fair question to ask, poisons that are effective for this kind of thing are often hard to get your hands on.
Fyodor reaches into his pocket, holding up a pill case with only 2 inside. “Yes, cyanide. It is quick.” Perfect, Dazai doesn’t want to be left suffering for hours as he dies.
“Well, I can’t say I’m against the idea.” He pauses for a moment, thinking something over. “Ohh! We should have it with tea! We can have a little tea party! To celebrate our deaths!” Of course he’s joking, so Fyodor's response shocks him for the second time tonight.
“Alright. If you want a tea party then I suppose it can be arranged.” Fyodor knows that Dazai was joking, but he himself wouldn’t mind the idea.
They continue to walk in silence for a while after that, the only noise being the rustle of trees in the wind and their footsteps on the cold concrete footpath.
“So, Fedya, where are we going?” Up until this point he’s just been blindly following the man.
“The same place as last time.” Fyodor continues walking, as if the answer he had just given was actually sufficient.
Dazai, who had stopped walking for a moment upon hearing said answer, is forced to catch up. “Hey! Hey! What does that mean?!”
“You spoke of our incident with Shibusawa last week, saying it was ‘close enough’ to the double suicide you crave. We will be going there to die, just like last time.” Due to last week's incident, the building is currently closed off, meaning no one should find them until their hearts have stopped beating and their lungs lack any oxygen.
“That could work, it does have everything we need.” It wouldn’t be a bad place to die. If not for the suffering associated with it, Dazai would consider it beautiful. Fyodor would claim the suffering only adds to its beauty.
Fyodor always had a way to find beauty in the misery of others. “Yes, and I suppose you could include Shibusawa’s death as part of this. A triple suicide, if you will.” He feels somewhat bad for Shibusawa’s passing, but it had to be done.
“We could even wear the outfits he made! To complete the whole thing!” He pauses for a moment. “You still have yours right?” His is sitting inside the building, he had not wanted to taint it with the grime and ruin of his agency dorm.
It was something to be worn for one purpose and one purpose only.
Fyodor nods. “Yes, it is right next to where you left yours.”
“Good.” He did not want to make a detour in order to retrieve it, even if such a thing would be worth it in the end.
When they finally reach their destination, the outfits are waiting just a few meters inside, hidden under a false floorboard.
They both leave to seperate rooms in order to change. Once Dazai’s done he leaves most of his clothes on the floor, but carefully folds his beige trenchcoat and hides it under the very same spot as Shibusawa’s attire.
They both mean something to him, for very different reasons of course, but something nonetheless. He doesn’t want anyone else getting a hold of his coat once they finally find his body.
Once he’s done, Dazai takes the stairs all the way up to where he and Fyodor had spent that fateful night with Shibusawa. He’s exhausted by the end of it and struggling to catch his breath but the building lacks an elevator so he had no choice.
He finds Fyodor standing at a bench, currently steeping the tea that will later be used to kill him.
Fyodor is competent enough to make tea correctly, Dazai sure isn’t so he leaves the man be, searching for something else to occupy his time while he waits.
There isn’t much to do there anymore, Shibusawa’s ‘collection room’ as Dazai liked to call it, was destroyed during the incident, reduced to nothing but an entryway and a massive hole in the side of the building.
Besides said room the rest of the tower was incredibly lacking in furniture, it had a few benches and the table he, Fyodor and Shibusawa sat at, but that was about it.
So with nothing else to do, Dazai decides to take a look at what ‘The Collector’s’ fabled collection had become.
Upon entering the room it is everything he expected it to be, Giant hole in the ceiling and wall, spaces that once held crystallized abilities are now left empty, even the knife Shibusawa had stabbed him in the back with is left on the ground next to where his corpse once lay, before it was begrudgingly revived.
He sees something else shiny in the corner of his eye and turns to get a better look. It’s another knife, presumably the one Fyodor used to slash Shibusawa’s neck, but next to it is something even more interesting.
During the fight with Atsushi, Shibusawa’s only remains, his skull, was crushed. Leaving absolutely nothing behind, zero evidence of his existence besides the memories other’s held of him.
But lying here alone in this sealed off tower, was a splatter of blood, Shibusawa’s blood.
Huh, suppose it is impossible to truly disappear, isn’t it? He thinks.
Fyodor watches him through the doors Dazai had left wide open, as he waits for the tea to brew.
He sees Dazai stand there, completely still, and stare at the only remaining piece of Tatsuhiko Shibusawa.
If asked, Dazai would be sure to deny it, but he’s jealous of Shibusawa.
He, in a way, achieved what Dazai has spent years of his life trying to accomplish, in one single night. Even if that is not what the man had intended to do.
Shibusawa was, to start off with, dead. Dazai has of course spent years trying to become so, it is not that shocking he would feel some sort of envy towards the man. But there's more to it than that, Shibusawa hadn’t died the sad, lonely, death Dazai had always assumed he would end up with.
He’d gone out in a burst of flame, he burned bright and beautiful before finally being snuffed out.
Most of all, when he finally drew his last breath, it wasn’t alone in a darkened room where he wouldn’t be found until he was late for work the very next morning. It was barely minutes after someone else had drawn their very own last breath, or it should’ve been.
Shibusawa had managed to commit Dazai’s ‘Perfect Suicide’ without even trying.
It was quick, so any pain didn’t matter all that much, it was beautiful, and it was done in company.
Dazai had tried so hard to die like that and even now, that he’s fulfilled at least two of the conditions, it still isn’t perfect.
Fyodor believes Dazai is a fool for having a ‘Perfect Suicide’ at all. Death is not some ‘sweet release’ to be craved, it is something to be treasured, when the time comes, but not searched for every single day.
Dazai sees death as something beautiful, the sole release from all his pain and suffering, to the only path left to freedom from his sad pitiful life.
Fyodor thinks that death can be beautiful, of course it can, even now he’s attempting to create the most beautiful death he can, but the idea of death in itself is not.
To Fyodor death is simply the means to an end.
It is simply just the final step one must take in order to be freed of sin. It is beautiful, the way that everyone is equal in death. Death is the only freedom from sin, the only true forgiveness in the eyes of god. Sometimes, he can even find beauty in the aftermaths of death, the way blood splatters on the wall, or how the body turns still and cold, but death is not innately beautiful, at least not in the way Dazai seems to think it is.
That is one of their few differences, despite being so similar they cannot agree on something so important as the very meaning of death. It is part of why they could never truly get along.
Fyodor looks down, the tea is finally done.
He takes out the pill case from earlier and removes the pills, dropping one in each teacup, then mixing it around letting the outside dissolve until the powder inside is freed.
He looks back over to Dazai, who has stopped staring and begun making his way over to Fyodor, somehow sensing that he was ready.
They both sit down and Fyodor pushes Dazai’s teacup towards him. The bowl of apples is still there, and so is the single remaining dagger.
He makes eye contact with the man. “Any last words?” Dazai shakes his head.
”No, I don’t believe my life is worth wrapping up into a few final words.” He does not think his years of being alive contained anything good enough to put in a box and wrap up in ribbons before presenting it to someone as his final words. If he did so the package would contain nothing but the last moments of a rotten broken man.
Dazai drinks his tea as fast as possible, practically shotgunning it, and Fyodor glares at him for doing so while taking a much more reasonable sip.
It’s chamomile, Dazai had insisted, finding it somewhat ironic to drink tea intended to aid sleep right before what is essentially falling asleep forever. The irony continues when Fyodor takes note of the taste, it tastes somewhat like apples, but slightly sweeter then one would expect from the fruit.
He looks back at the bowl of apples in the middle of the table, apples that contain the very same poison Dazai is about to die from in their seeds, at their very core.
It reminds him of Dazai in a way, on the outside he appears sweet, unassuming, just your regular, though somewhat annoying, detective, but keep digging and he gets harder, more bitter, the further you dig the harder it is to keep going, but you do anyway, and when you reach the core you find nothing but poison and pain.
At his core, Dazai is poison, he poisons those around him, either killing them himself, inadvertently getting them killed or leaving them to writhe in agony and suffering. He comes from poison, he is poison and right up until his last moments he will always be poison.
Across the table, Fyodor can hear his heavy breathing, coming out in short bursts, his lungs unable to properly retain oxygen.
He continues to watch silently, one hand in his lap and the other on his teacup’s handle, as the Ex demon prodigy’s hand reaches up to clutch at his chest, struggling to bear the pain he must be feeling.
Soon, his breathing grows more erratic and the hand desperately clutching his heart begins to shake violently.
When his limbs begin to twitch and seize uncontrollably, Fyodor finally brings his teacup back to his lips and spits out the mouthful of tea he ‘drank’.
He lowers it back down on the table and allows himself to smile as he watches Dazai’s final moments play out.
Finally, after what feels like hours, he stills. Dazai's head falls down onto the table, knocking his teacup over in the process. His hands fall down into his lap and fingers curl in on themselves.
Finally, after 22 long years, Dazai had died.
Like an abandoned puppet without its strings, he lay there completely still. Somehow, despite the horribly painful death, there was still a smile on his face. He looked peaceful, Fyodor would say he was beautiful.
The way his constantly observing eyes had finally closed, how his mouth was pulled into possibly the most genuine smile he’d ever seen from the man, how his skin had begun to pale only seconds after his life had ended, even how his hair was swept to the side by gravity, causing it to cover the right side of his face, in the very same way his bandages used too.
It was a sight Fyodor wouldn’t trade for anything.
He’s said it before, Fyodor does not see death as a beautiful thing, but Dazai’s death was possibly the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
Fyodor stands up from his chair, causing it to scrape across the floor as it moves back, the sound grates on his ears, it’s nowhere near as beautiful as the sounds of Dazai finally taking his last breath.
He walks towards Dazai’s corpse, stopping less than a foot away.
“I apologize for tricking you, though I doubt you didn’t see through it, but I simply cannot die just yet. I’m sure you would understand.”
He reaches his hand up to the clasp on the front of his coat and slowly begins to undo it.
“Even though I shall walk away from this unscathed, surely my being here at all was good enough for you.”
Despite all his constant talk of double suicide, Dazai had never cared whether or not his partner in death actually passed on. He just couldn’t bring himself to die alone.
Fyodor takes his coat off and slowly, carefully, drapes it across Dazai’s shoulders.
He looks at the dead man for a moment, before leaning down and planting a kiss upon his now bloodstained forehead.
“I hope death is everything you wished it be.”