Bandages and Salt (PJO X BSD AU)

Chapter fifty-seven

Dazai POV

Looking back on everything now, I could remember the exact day that everything began to fall apart. Every detail of it down to the scent of gunpowder that clung to my skin for days after, and the images of blood that never seemed to leave my hands even long since they were clean.

I was eighteen when the careful world that I had built came tumbling apart.

I was eighteen when I lost everything.

—-

Chuuya had been sent out on a foreign mission, something that wasn't so uncommon as to draw attention to the boy, but I still felt his absence like the loss of a limb. I always did when we were parted, even though I was the one that placed an unclosable gap between the pair of us. I had hoped back then that by doing so it would leave the older boy unharmed by whatever schemes the doctor conceived, but the boy was still hurt anyways and it was still entirely my fault.

The slug had only been gone a day or so when what had seemed like a no name group at the time had attempted to steal smuggled goods from the mafia during delivery, something that we had - seemingly by chance - heard of in enough advance that I was able to lay tears for the unlucky souls foolish enough to do so. The only thing remarkable about the group had been how prepared they had actually been, going as far as to bring a rocket launcher of all things with them for the raid.

Even then they had put up a poor fight, and had barely escaped with their lives. Though one had been so unlucky as to be caught, but was blessedly spared my particular brand of interrogation as I had sought out another engagement instead, pulled to a certain bar like a dying man to water.

I'd known then that something was bound to happen, I could almost hear it whispered in the winds themselves. I'd hoped that it would be my own death, but had known somehow that it wouldn't be. I'd known that I would wish that it would be even more than I ever had before.

—-

It hadn't been long before Odasaku had walked into the bar, every detail of his the same as it had been two years ago when I had collapsed on his porch that first day.

I smiled at the older man and soon found myself telling him of my day just as I did every other night, and even with the burn of cheap whiskey in the back of my throat I couldn't help but think that moments like these would always be the closeted to normal as I could have ever hoped to receive no matter what path I had chosen back in Long Island Sound when I had frist left camp all of those years ago.

"You've got some new injuries I see," the older man observed, always doing nothing more or less than that.

I listened to every curve and clip of the older man's voice as if today would be the last time that I heard it, and prayed to every god that I didn't believe in that it wouldn't be.

"Yep," I replied childishly, and I found a small smirk curing on my lips as I thought of what was to come next.

Odasaku was one of the few that I would ever let so blatantly refer to the bandages lining my skin, but - even so - there was only one person that I would tell of their origin. That boy was out of the country and no longer seemed to give a damn about the damaged mess of a story written across my skin.

"What happened to your leg?" The older man asked as bluntly as always.

"I was walking and reading a book about not getting hurt when I fell into a ditch," I blatantly lied, not caring so much that I was doing so, and knew that the other man would accept the answer at face value regardless of its legitimacy. That's just who Odasaku was.

"And your arm?"

"Speeding around a mountain path and ran right off of the side." A small smile curved on my lips that I had behind the glass as I saw the other man so easily believe something so rediciouous, or maybe he just willfully chose to believe it rather than truly doing so. It was always touch and go with Odasaku on just how the man's mind worked.