Bandages and Salt (PJO X BSD AU)

Chapter sixty-one

A/N: Rewrite of chapters ten, eleven, thirty and thirty-one of the manga. This chapter was difficult for me to write and I feel like it shows, so sorry.

Dazai POV

Being kidnapped by a little girl has to be one of the easiest things that I have done this year.

Sometimes it was easy to forget who I was just four years ago, it was even easier to forget that others did too. To those that have come into the Port Mafia since my departure, The Demon Prodigy would have been nothing more than a story that was told to keep the organization in line. A ruthless bastard that sat at the right hand of the boss and disappeared like smoke one night.

Every story has a little bit of truth, people forgot that as well.

I knew that revealing myself so openly to the younger mafiosos, even to save little Atsushi and the Tanizaki siblings, would have consequences. People looking for ghosts once more was one of them.

Akutugawa looking for a ghost that he should have long ago shunned was one of them.

So I let myself be taken by the child who no doubtedly works under the older Akutugawa's command. It was the easiest way to get into one of the Port Mafia towers without automatically alerting the boss to my arrival - though he is sure to have already heard by now and is no doubt either disappointed or suspicious - and I knew that the Agency wouldn't bother looking, not even if they knew exactly where I was. And I was sure that Ranpo did.

No one in the Agency is good, that was something that no one ever thought to warn you of when encountering the group of eccentrics. While they were on the side of good, the side that saves people, Kunikida is willing to throw kids back onto the street without a second thought about it for the sake of his schedule, the President's past is bloody, and Yosano's shares too much with my own. The list goes on.

No, none of them were likely to come looking or worry. They were used to my sudden absences from work after being exposed to them for two years now. Only Atsushi might worry, but he'll be dissuaded from looking after even mentioning the idea. Which works well because he will need to be somewhere public enough for Akutugawa to do his part - no matter how oblivious he is to his role. The pair need to meet as much as possible if this is going to work. And it will need to work.

Still, I could have done without being chained up for so long though. Even if I was only pretending by now.

The locks gave away easily after only a few easy ministrations from the lock picks that no one had bothered to check for.

Sloppy.

The self assured almost always are.

"You're as wily as ever, Dazai!" A horrified expression slips onto my face as the last of the players enters the stage, the angered voice seeping into my bones in a way that it hadn't in so long. "What a glorious view! Even better than some famous painting."

Chuuya Nakahara.

The other half of Double Black.

The older man's hair shined like flames even in the poor lighting of the mafia cells. His clothes were nicer than they had been the last time that I had seen them in person, which was to be expected of an executive. His anger... it still burned just as brightly as it ever did, so undeniably human even as those blue eyes glared as he descended the stairs.

I had hoped that time would dull my reaction to the other man. I suppose that truly was a foolish thought because he was still as beautiful as ever.

"Oh look," I smiled, something bright and false in a way that we both knew that it was but neither would ever willingly admit, "the little man in black is talking."