I have this thing that I really wanna do, and I was wondering if someone would want to participate.

I'm writing a lot of whumpy Dazai fics lately, and the reason I write them is that I wanna read them. So I was wondering if anybody would want to write a Dazai Whump fic for me based on my work, and I'll write a Dazai Whump fic based on your work in return? And also, if you haven't written anything but would still like to give this a go, I'd still be happy to write a fic in return, if you'll send me a few key-words (and if you're an artist I would happily trade works too- but I'll spear you all my chicken-scratches and write something of course).

I also just recently made a twitter account. I don't really know how to use it, cause I'm old AF (not really but kinda), but it's there! So please follow me for updates on the progress of my stories and… I don't know, other stuff. Possibly. Probably. MissTinfoilHat is the name, of course. Give me a follow! (I still have yet to post anything, cause I'm not going to talk to myself in there, baha).

I'm also available for private messaging on tumblr, and discord (#5905) all under the username of MissTinfoilHat. (This also applies for fanfic requests).

This basically means that I'm up for writing anything whumpy Dazai with or without return- but I thought it might be fun!


I always forget to thank everyone in the comments! It just feels a bit strange to me to answer in private messages, but maybe I should? I do read all your comments and get really happy and inspired by them. The lack of response is not because I don't care, it's just that I'm never sure just how to go about that. So, just know that I see each and every one of you and appreciate you immensely.

Oh, and also, if the spacing is weird, I'm really sorry. I post my stories on A03 and tumblr as well, and all of the different sites copies a bit differently, and I just can't be bothered to edit this text three separate times.

Okay, I'm done babbling.


Day 22: Hallucination (part 6 of Asphyxiation)

On the way to the hospital, Dazai's state was steadily declining. He had been on a downward spiral ever since they had found him, which made Yosano, who had been allowed in the helicopter because of her medical expertise, ecstatic that they had found him when they did. Only a few days (if not hours) later, and they would have taken a corpse home.

This was only solidified when only thirty minutes after the rescue, his heart stopped for nearly four agonizing minutes. He had been successfully given CPR by the medics, but he had stopped breathing and had been unable to breathe by himself every since.

Now, five days later in the local hospital, he still laid lifeless in bed, nearly transparent against the white bedspread and swallowed whole by wires, tubes, and machines. Each beep from the heart monitor buried itself deeper into the solemn atmosphere where the entirety of the Armed Detective Agency had set camp.

The hospital staff's fruitless attempts of getting them to leave went on deaf ears. Even Fukuzawa had turned his most defiant expression on as the head nurse told him on the second day that they had overstayed the visiting hours two times over, and refused to grant the accusations with so much as a grunt.

Dazai had been missing for six months and they still had yet to apprehend Dan Saito or any of the men responsible for his captivity. They weren't going to let Dazai out of their sight until they knew he was safe beyond absolutely any doubt.

Especially when Dazai had yet to wake up and couldn't protect himself.

The mood inside the crowded hospital room was heavy and intense. Each cough, deep exhales of air or noise of a stomach murmuring, sliced through the silence like a knife, and each jostle of fabric made everyone cast anxious glances towards the sleeping form on the bed.

But there was no movement. The steady beeping of the monitor kept echoing in rhythmic beats, and the shallow sigh from the ventilator was the only heart-wrenching noise that dared interrupt it.

Atsushi had taken a seat next to the bed. His fingers itched to catch one of the bandaged, emaciated hands laying unmoving at Dazai's sides in his, but he couldn't make himself do it.

Dazai looked so frail laying there, black and blue from bruises and scattered with stitches and bandages over burns and cuts and broken bones that were sure to leave him with even more scars (he already had so many- so unbelievably impossibly tragically frightfully many) and he was afraid he'd break him if he wasn't careful enough. The sharp-witted, blazè and mysterious detective was reduced to the most literal illustration of an empty shell that Atsushi thought he could imagine- and it hurt .

The only thing keeping Atsushi from crawling into bed next to his mentor and cling onto him, was Yosano reminding them all about how bad of a shape Dazai's immune system was in, and they had all taken to wear surgical masks while inside the room. There was no point risking infection in addition to the frail state he was already in.

Each centimeter between Dazai and him nearly hurt, and it felt as if he couldn't get close enough- like he wanted to crawl under Dazai's skin and stay there forever to make sure that he would never ever leave his side ever again! Because Atsushi couldn't make it without Dazai. He hadn't fully realized it before he'd been gone, and maybe the fact that he had been away- missing- maybe dead- for such a long time made it so much clearer- but he knew . He couldn't do it without him.

What "it" meant didn't mean anything- he didn't care . It was whatever. Because Dazai was the perfect mix between everything. A brother, friend, maybe even a father-figure. Now, Atsushi wasn't really sure what a "father-figure" was meant to be, but whatever it was, he had decided it was Dazai.

...you were supposed to cry when one's parent died, right? Well, he was done crying now. Because Dazai wasn't dead, and he wasn't going anywhere. Not now, or ever again.

Finally, he settled with resting his head on the mattress, watching the IV line that pumped pain relievers into Dazai's body, wishing there was something he could do as well to soothe the pain away.


It was in the middle of the night on the seventh day that strangled chokes startled Yosano awake.

At first, she shrugged it off as another wishful dream about her coworker waking up and all of this being over, but as the beeping of the monitor grew more urgent and footsteps gathered inside the room, she tore herself fully awake.

Quickly, she scanned the room; her coworkers were stirring slowly at the mattresses laid down on the floor for them to sleep on, all except Kunikida. He was standing with his head bowed and hand covering his mouth in a corner of the room, watching the numerous nurses hurdling around Dazai's bed.

Oh, God. Had his heart stopped again during the night? Were they performing CPR? She couldn't see! What the hell was going on?!

She staggered to her feet and huddled over to where Kunikida was standing, urgency and alarm written on her features.

"I think he's waking up," he said darkly, muted behind his hand.

"What?" she burst out in disbelief, trying yet again to make out what was going on behind the medical personnel with the new perspective, standing at the tip of her toes.

"I woke up to him nearly choking. I tried to calm him down, but the breathing tube must have made him panic. He was trying to pull it out," Kunikida explained, exhaling heavily and changing his stance back and forth restlessly. "It didn't look like he could see me at all."

He was clearly shaken, and Yosano knew what was raging inside him all too well; she had seen her fair share of torture victims over the years and it never got any easier. Witnessing their disbelief of being freed, not daring to believe it or simply being unable to comprehend it was scary and heartbreaking.

Still, it seemed somewhat different when it was happening with Dazai. He always seemed so carefree and unfazed by the darkness in the world. Things that made the rest of them shudder and feel uneasy, scared, even. They had both grown up in the darkest shadows of the underground and getting under their skin took more than most. Their shell was thicker. Breaking them, was harder.

Even as his own worst enemy (which was saying something in a world where Fydor Dostoyevski walked free) even Dazai couldn't truly break Dazai. He could only scratch the surface.

But this Dan Saito, he seemed to have come pretty damn close. Even Mori's toxic influence hadn't been that damaging on him. From what she had heard, wherever Dazai had come from before the Port Mafia got their grimy fingers on him, had laid a pretty solid foundation for whatever fucked up plans Mori had for him at the time.

She only wished he knew how far he'd come from that. Whatever Dazai was now, it was so much stronger than what he had been- stronger than the demon prodigy.

Luckily for Yosano, her ability made sure that she was treated nicely during her short time as a mafioso- to the extent that was possible. They needed her and her ability, in a different way then they needed Dazai. There had been boys and girls before Dazai… Boys and girls that didn't make it. She had been there. She had seen it- them.

No matter how the past had befallen, she had seen the compassion and kindness in Dazai's heart (a heart he might not even know he possessed, but that only made it all that more clear to her), and she also knew that while in his imprisonment, Dazai had probably endured all of this torture essentially because he thought he deserved it, just like he had done in the Port Mafia.

Something that, even if he'd never spoken sincerely about it, she knew he still struggled with, because he thought he was a bad person and deserved any lash, punch, slice, bullet or hit thrown his way.

What these people had done to Dazai could quite possibly be much more damaging than the rest of the Agency could understand, and she wasn't ready to explain. She just needed him to survive this, and then, if he did, they would take it from there.

They had to endure his recovery, his way back, together. He sure as fuck wasn't going to make it alone.

The asphyxiated struggle behind the medical personnel seemed to pick up and sounded violent and painful. Bandaged arms were flailing, fighting anything within reach and a broken voice wheezed desperate incomprehensible sounds.

Finally, Yosano was unable to stand back and watch the struggle anymore, and she elbowed her way through the crowd.

Dazai's eyes were wide and panicked- unseeing and wild. His arms were clawing at the tube stabbed down his throat, trying to pull it out- even with the huge cast on his newly surgically repaired arm, which had to be immensely painful. The nurses were attempting to tell him to relax- but he wasn't listening; too embedded in his trauma to see anything but horror and his torturers.

Yosano pushed them all back, ignoring Dazai's arms trying to tug at the tunnel and focused on looking deep into cocoa eyes, repeating her calming and soft words again and again, "It's okay. You're safe. It's okay."

His hands slowed down carefully, hesitant, as his eyebrows seemed to indicate that he was recognizing her- yet, reluctant to truly believe.

"Leave the tube, please. It's for your own good. It helps you breathe."

Dazai's eyebrows curved, his hands pausing close to the endotracheal pushing air into his lungs- Yosano knew it felt painful, but he couldn't remove it himself- that would end in disaster.

"You need to let the nurses remove it, okay? I know it's uncomfortable, but it's going to get better if you let them."

Dazai's stretched eyes didn't recline, but he did calm down. He even kept eye contact with Yosano as the nurses removed the breathing tube and replaced it with an oxygen mask. It seemed to bother him a little, as he shrugged his head mindlessly and tried to slide it off against his shoulder, but it couldn't be nearly as bad as the tube. Yosano adjusted the mask, centering it back onto his face and rested a gentle, ungloved hand on his head, pushing his bangs back affectionately and shook her head with a half-hearted smile.

At this point, the rest of the Agency were fully awake and wary, paying attention to each and every movement. Yosano paid them no heave. She was going to guide Dazai back to the now- because she could see it in his eyes; he was awake but not there. She knew he was awake, knew he recognized her, but he had no idea what was going on.

Dazai's frightful gaze hesitantly broke contact with her, peering around the room cautiously. Yosano's hands instinctively reach around him, grabbing his face gently and instructed back him towards her.

"Just breathe, okay? You're safe. So, the only thing you need to focus on is breathing. In and out, yeah?"

Dazai seemed to follow her for a moment before he once again got distracted by nothing and his eyes went darting through the room again. Yosano waved a hand in front of him to catch his attention.

"Okay?" she asked again, this time expecting a reply. Satisfied with a faint nod, she mirrored his motion, nodding along in his rhythm, nearly chuckling in relief.

"Okay… Okay. That's good, just… just keep breathing with me and let the nurses do their work, okay?"

He titled his head once, bloodshot eyes watching attentively.

Yosano smiled in relief- she couldn't help herself. She usually kept from showing too much optimism in any medical emergency she couldn't fix with her ability, but then again… she really hadn't ever been in a situation quite like this and Dazai seemed to respond and it felt like everything was settling into (nearly) the right place around them. Most importantly to Dazai.

Then it slowly dawned upon her; Dazai was awake . Dazai was awake and alive and responding and she had no idea what to do next. He was just looking at her with confused, tired eyes, ignoring the nurses and everything that was going on around them; any needle poking at him, questions being asked or lights being shone in his eyes. He was only looking at her as his one and only lifeline.

The faint sparkle in his eyes was undeniable. He could see her and he had hope, but didn't dare to fully give in to it. She could only imagine. He had probably hoped so many times, and was presumably terrified that this was nothing more than another false hope created by his mind- but just maybe, this seemed a little bit different; just a little bit brighter no matter how surrealistic.

She had no idea how she was going to prove to him that this time, his rescue was real. He would learn it with time, assuming he had time, but she wanted to prove it as immediately as possible. Because they needed his stubbornness and defiance right now to work for them and not against them. Even if he was in safety, he still needed to fight. He couldn't breathe on his own, and he was severely prone to infections.

As suicidal as Dazai had been before, she could only imagine how little he was willing to fight to survive the hell he had been in these last six months.

She shook herself out of her train of thoughts. If she was going to get Dazai back to the now, she had to be there herself. Careful not to jostle him, she slid onto his cot, her hand still resting atop of the oxygen mask. Her lavender eyes didn't waver from his umber, and she kept a soft expression, breathing with him until he was unable to keep his eyes open anymore, and he fell back into a fitful, yet probably the most comfortable slumber he had had, in months.


Dazai was sure he had seen Yosano the last time he was awake, even felt her hands on his face, through his hair... But that couldn't be. He was at the hospital wing at the military base, being force-fed again. He even had the tube down his throat. If she was truly there, she would have helped him, wouldn't she? Instead, she had kept him from fighting as the staff kept on. He didn't want the slob they forced into him. It made him feel so sick and if they were going to keep him from dying, he didn't want to be throwing up in addition to his already miserable reality.

Admittedly, he didn't feel particularly sick right now. And the device was out, so they had to be done. There could be a chance that...

No. He couldn't afford to hope anymore. As long as he was still alive, helpless and hopeless and absolutely destroyed, the only thing he could really do for himself was to get the most relief from the insufferable pain as he could. While the moments of delirium were the happiest times he had in this pandemonium, coming back out of it was far too painful for it to be worth it.

And yet, he couldn't get how real it all had seemed out of his mind. Maybe he could try to wake up again, just… to check. This time, he'd look really hard to make absolutely sure it was or wasn't her- it might be a new doctor after all. He had quite possibly killed the last one.

Fuck.

Okay, here it goes.


Aaaand I'm still shiet on ending chapters. But I still hope you liked it!