His first plan hadn't worked.
Of course he hadn't really intended it to. It was a test run, an experiment. A little tiny stick poking the hornets' nest, meant to be followed by a baseball bat. It went about as well as expected, which is to say that almost everything turned out like he thought it would.
Except one.
One little thing.
One cursed wretched, little thing.
So he's going to remedy that. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not for years. But, right now is the start.
Fyodor jumps neatly over the wreckage, a direct result of his own meddling in this town, and before that something even more sinister. The tower he, Dazai, and Shibusawa occupied is barely standing, looks like it might blow over in the slightest breeze. Snow drifts onto his face as he looks up, watching a feather slide through the mangled floor boards of the beautiful structure.
Marvelous. He's almost there then.
As soon as his feet reach the slant, he can barely stop himself from skipping down the hill, past the countless homes that have been built out of scrap wood and plastic lids, past the emaciated bodies and the flea bitten dogs. Even from up at the very top of Cone Street, he can make it out; the line that humans don't cross. The place where living things steer clear of. The bottom of the crater.
It's mostly flat down there, with boulders and steel beams half buried in the dirt. Not a single person lives there, nor dog or rat. The nearest shack to it is halfway up the crater side and looks to be long abandoned. Fyodor almost pities the little fools that built their home so close to a grave. Animals should really have better instincts; this place was used for something horrible, for something wicked in the past, and this feeling of foreboding, of bone chilling terror is a warning to stay away.
And yet here he is, walking straight towards the door of Hell itself.
He wants to laugh and throw his face up towards the sky, but he contents himself with turning over the jewel he keeps in his pocket and whistling a jaunty tune.
He found the stone after Shibusawa was destroyed. A glowing red fragment, half buried in the rubble. Its power wasn't obvious at first. Resurrection? Healing? The words fit, but not perfectly, like a glove being forced onto a larger hand. But that one little discovery was enough to assure him that his plans weren't over yet, that he might've found a solution.
And after a month of research, here he is, placing one more piece of the puzzle. As his feet carry him into the bottom of the crater, his whistling stops, his grin grows wider. This is it, he thinks, noting the white tiles littered in the wreckage.
Fyodor Dostoevsky is not a man who values physical work and brute strength, but he drops to his knees and starts digging, using his hands to claw through the dirt and metal bits, heedless of the sharp edges biting into his skin.
The deeper he gets, the more he finds; a nurse's ID badge; scraps of white lab coat; a metal lunch tray; padded restraints; a cracked syringe with what looks like blood still staining it. More and more evidence of the lives destroyed here, the lost little orphans crushed beneath the heel of science that really didn't care.
And then, just as his hands start to cramp, his back aching and strained from bending over, he feels it. Something warm. Soft. Fleshy. Meaty. Fyodor barely stifles his laugh, reaching down to hurriedly scoop the dirt away.
It's an arm.
A living, warm arm.
Over the course of the next hour, moon rising higher in the sky, Fyodor unearths the rest of the body.
It's a male, like Fyodor knew it would be, naked, curled on his side with his knees tucked to his chest, a child sleeping. But where he was expecting youth he instead finds adult proportions, bearded chin. Intriguing, he muses, strange but not unusable.
The man looks like a healthy upper-twenties man should, if a bit skinny. His skin is paper white and completely blemish free, save needle marks in the crook of his elbow, too professionally done to be the work of a drug addict. His dirty flax hair has the faintest sheen of copper to it, his dark irises visible through the whites of his eyelids. His limbs are long and elegant, though their muscle tone seems to be low. Even his teeth are mostly neat and straight in his skull. It seems that while this creature has been frozen like this for years, his body has continued to age, to grow prettily.
Fyodor reaches for the crystal in his pocket, and as soon as he unveils it to the moonlight, he knows its true power.
Awakening.
Trivial. Childish. The kind of power given to a simple-minded farmer. If the animals are sleeping, wake them. If someone is unconscious, open their eyes. Practically useless for anything truly important.
Fyodor wants to laugh, to truly throw back his head and bawl.
With this one little ability, everything will be moved into place. That one player, that stupid, useless little shepherd will be removed.
And then Yokohama will be Fyodor's. The book will be Fyodor's.
Dazai will be Fyodor's. To kill. To befriend. He hasn't decided. He might never.
The thought is enough to send his pulse racing.
The man is heavy when Fyodor drags him out of the hole, draping the muddy head over his own white pants. His lips are chapped when Fyodor forces the jewel between them coaxes it past his dry tongue and to the edge of his throat. "Wake up," he coaxes, "wake up, moi horoshiy."
For a long moment nothing happens. The air is still and quiet, and not even the snow seems to reach them down at the very bottom of Cone Street.
And then the man swallows. Weakly, followed by a fit of dry coughing that wracks his body. Fyodor finally allows himself a delighted laugh and then helps him turn, watches as the newborn man vomits up his own grave dirt that buried him fifteen years before.
When the man collapses back onto Fyodor's lap, his eyes finally open and Fyodor grins down at him, wants to be the first thing that this wretched creature sees in his rebirth.
Dark eyes lock on his own, a puzzled expression taking precedence. "Where am I?" he murmurs quietly, childishly. Fyodor would feel scorn if he wasn't so amazed by the thing in front of him, so invested in its mission.
"There, there," he soothes, wiping dirt and spit off the man's chin. "You must be scared."
The man frowns, slow, but he looks confused, like he isn't sure whether to push Fyodor away or to allow him closer. "Do you remember anything?" Fyodor asks softly, grinning.
The frown deepens. Dark eyes land on his own, accusing and questioning. And then suddenly, they widen, a door being unlocked, a window being thrown open. Fyodor watches gleefully as the emotions wash over the man's face; shock, anger, fear, loss, sadness. Wrath.
Unbridled, bubbling just beneath the surface. So pure and unrepentant that it almost brings a tear to Fyodor's eye, another laugh to his chest.
A white glow begins to envelope the man and Fyodor's fingers tingle where they're still resting on the man's cheek.
"I remember everything."
He feels the man's words rather than sees them, the light growing so harsh he can barely even make out the man's beautiful anger. And then, just like that, the light starts to fade as the man exhausts his power.
"My, my." The man collapses back into his arms, seemingly too tired to move, and Fyodor brushes his hair back gently. He can smell the sweat and grime coating the other when he bends to bring his lips close to a filthy ear. "That thing you desire… I know where it is."
He pulls back with a grin to find the man's expression, a bit confused, a bit excited, a bit angry. So like a child still, even though his body doesn't remember that.
"Do you want me to tell you?" he asks.
That night, for the second time, a god is born in the bowels of Yokohama.
o^o^o^o^o
NOTE: Hi everyone, I'm working on posting this fic over from my AO3 account. I've been working on this fic literally since I first saw Dead Apple, so I have quite a few chapters written that mostly just need some editing and cleaning up. This fic follows the first and second season, then Dead Apple, then is canon-divergent after that. I will be taking some liberties with canon but I'll do my best to point them out so it's pretty obvious.
Also, I will be adding chapter warnings on applicable chapters for things like violence, language, etc., just know that this story builds up into Chuuya whump and will get pretty dark. But hey, if you're here for that kinda stuff then you came to the right play (yay!) :) So anyways, thanks for reading and enjoy :D