Sorry – I love you
Halfway through the mission, Atsushi knows that he and Akutagawa are truly fucked.
They are backed into a corner, enemy ability users surrounding them from all sides except from the wall. Akutagawa had gone down from a particularly nasty blow earlier, when Rashoumon had been too slow in forming Devoured Space to block the knife that tore a deep gash in his side. Atsushi isn't any better off, wounds littering his body as the tiger in him struggles to heal himself and protect against further blows at the same time. Desperation curls through him.
He can't – they can't, there's not enough time to call for backup, and Atsushi knows, with rising dread, that even with Beast Beneath the Moonlight, he can't possibly survive a fight with all of the ability users against him, not with Akutagawa lying injured behind him, struggling to breathe through the pain. There's simply no way they can't all survive this, not without – He stops short, then casts a glance behind him. Rashoumon is fluttering weakly, trying to support its master, but he knows the beginnings of blood loss like the back of his hand. (He'd gone through plenty of those at the orphanage, all the blows and beatings he'd been given until skin split, blood dripping all over the floor and making it hard for him to run, too easy to slip in the halls and fall right back into the path of another blow) He runs through the options again, searching, hoping, for one where they can both survive – because he loved that darkly-dressed mafiaso that he'd fought and hated once upon a time, and he'd be dammed if he left him to face the world alone, dammit – but time is running out for both of them.
With a growl, he launches himself – not forward, to where the enemy is, but upward, tearing through the beams and sending shards hurtling down. Rashoumon manages to cover Akutagawa in time, devouring the shards and preventing any harm from reaching its master. As for the enemy, there are mixed results – some fall back from the onslaught, suffering injuries that momentarily put them out of action, but a great majority of them are unharmed, one even reversing the movement of the shards to send them speeding back towards him. He twists midair, avoiding the attack, then angles himself back down, heading towards the centre of the group. He does not look back at Akutagawa.
I'm sorry, Ryuunosuke.
I love you.
A tiger's roar fills the air.
The sensation of fresh air filling his lungs is as foreign as it is welcome. Ryuunosuke breathes, his eyes closed as he tries to work through the dizziness in his head. He can't hear the sounds of fighting anymore, which means that either Jinko's won and is taking a breather as well, or the fight has moved somewhere else. Judging by the lack of sounds other than his own breathing, he'd bet on the latter. Finally, gathering enough energy to sit up, he opens his eyes, squinting through the moonlight that pours into the ravaged warehouse, illuminating the blood and the corpses that decorated the floor. No sign of Atsushi.
With a grunt, he pulls himself up with the help of Rashoumon, who swirls around his feet like a puppy, worried for its master. He vaguely remembers Rashoumon shielding him from something, Jinko leaping away to fight the enemy, but he'd been too groggy to remember much after that. Forming Rashoumon into a makeshift cane, he limped his way towards the trail of destruction leading away from the warehouse, gingerly stepping through the gaping hole in the side of the warehouse, opposite of where he'd been recovering. He sucks in a breath at the sight in front of him.
Bodies litter the ground, limbs torn apart and twisted beyond recognition. The smell of blood permeates the air, overpowering and choking. Ryuunosuke finds himself coughing a few times before he recovers enough to limp past the carnage, further on to the docks. His heart freezes as he catches a glimpse of snowy white hair. "No-!"
He runs, almost tripping on the bodies that progressively pile up the closer he gets to the weretiger. Closer up now, he can see his Jinko, his Atsushi, speared through by an earthen spike. Ryuunosuke barely acknowledges the ability user who must have sent it, neck ravaged as though a monster tore through it lying nearby, as he rushes up to Atsushi, who slowly lifts his head up, purple-yellow eyes cloudy with exhaustion. "Ryuu?" The nickname is swallowed by a cough that sprays blood onto the ground.
"Shit – Jinko, Atsushi, don't move, you'll make it worse," Ryuunosuke dithers, panicking as he notices more wounds littering the weretiger's body, wounds that haven't closed yet even with his healing ability. His useless attempts at mitigating the injuries are stalled by Atsushi's weak hand grasping his own. "Ryuu," he rasps.
Fading purple-yellow eyes meet desperate gray ones.
"I love you."
The brilliant eyes close, and Akutagawa roars.
Later, the ADA and the Mafia show up, too late, to the scene of Akutagawa hugging Atsushi to his chest and crying, begging for Atsushi to wake up please don't be dead Atsushi don't go don't leave me alone Atsushi please Atsushi I love you Atsushi – and it takes Soukoku to pull him off Atsushi in order for Yosano to approach the injured weretiger and use her own ability. But the with the time lapse and the severity of the injuries, even Thou Shalt Not Die is incapable of reviving Atsushi from the coma he has slipped into.
In the end, Ryuunosuke sits in the medical ward, head bowed as he holds on to the pale – too pale, too clammy – hand of the lone patient in the ward who lies unresponsive, the beeps from the machine to his right the only sign that he is still alive. Dazai and Chuuya watch him from the doorway, unsmiling, the Soukoku worrying over the Shin Soukoku like how the latter had done for them in the past.
"Please," Ryuunosuke's voice is hoarse, overused from all the crying and begging he's done over the past 24 hours, "Please, Atsushi, wake up." He pressed his lips to the hand held in his own.
"I never got to say 'I love you' back."