Bandages and Salt (PJO X BSD AU)

Chapter sixty

A/N: Rewrite of chapter one of the manga. I'm still going to be jumping around some after this and hitting the important parts and will not be rewriting everything, just what I want and is needed for the final arc cause this is the last volume and will be a mix of BSD and PJO with people from both series.

Dazai POV

The river glittered nicely in the evening light, cleaner than anything that New York could ever have to offer as I walked alongside it, an itch building beneath my skin that I refused to give into no matter how strong it grew.

And it did grow stronger, everyday it grew like a beast carving out its place in my chest.

A sigh slipped past my lips, genuine and tired from nights without sleep and hours spent with a brush in my hand as my mind always seemed to work faster at night, tolling away the hours that nightmares would normally consume and alcohol couldn't always fix.

The train passed high above, undoubtedly filled to the brim with men and women going home to their families and ignoring the secrets that they each kept from one another like oaths. But everything about me was built on secrets - secrets, lies and the few undeniable things that no amount of time could hope to change - so I didn't judge. I hardly ever did, saving my energy for annoying a certain blond and for the criminals interesting enough to catch the Agency's eye.

Sometimes I wonder just what my life has come down to; most nights I knew better than to ask.

Some nights I find myself walking along the river, and I wonder what it would be like to be the sea, powerful and forever changing, and never having to pretend to be human. But then my lungs force me to breath and the water enters them and it hurts as I refuse to breath the way that I once did, and I think that, here at least, the sea would find me foreign too.

A hum escapes my lips as the familiar sound washes over me. It had taken longer that I would admit to adjust to the sounds of trains running through the city once more - something that was absent from New York and from each of the camps especially - to not think that it was a monster growling at my back. I still can hardly stand elevators, preferring to take the stairs rather than go near one. It was one of the reasons that I liked the Agency building as much as I did, it only has stairs and is close to the port.

Close to the river too.

An expectant grin curved across my lips as the phone in my pocket gave a lazy ring, a nosie much softer than the one that I had assigned to the Port Mafia's doctor all those years ago, still planned to be just as annoying though.

"Dazai!" The voice on the other end of the line yelled, clearly exasperated and already annoyed, it was a state that I took pleasure in forcing the other into day after day. "Where the Hell are you, you lazy bastard? We've got a case!"

I thought for a moment about how to answer and decided to hold off for just a moment on giving my location to the blond. "And what case would that be Kun ~ iki ~ da?" I asked in a sing - song voice that was sure to annoy the other man even more than he already was.

There was a faint growl on the other end of the phone line, but that was easy to ignore after all of the years spent at another's side. "There's a man eating tiger running around, the military police want it found."

I fought back the urge to roll my eyes, even though there would be no one around to scold me for doing so if I did. The man eating tiger had been roaming the streets with near constant sights for two weeks now, but only at night; never during the day. It was moving in a constant direction as well instead of staying to a predetermined area - a hunting grounds - as most animals did. It was obvious that the beast wasn't exactly normal, less so if the government was getting involved when some low rent cops with tranquilizers would have done the job well enough without invoking the Agency's involvement.