#suicide bomb attack

[gazetteweekly]

Six civilians killed in Afghanistan suicide bomb attack, second blast in 3 months 

Monday's blast was the second attack near the foreign ministry in Kabul in less than three months, and the first since the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began on Thursday in Afghanistan.

KABUL: A suicide attack on Monday near Afghanistan's foreign ministry killed six civilians and wounded several others, the interior ministry said.

Security has dramatically improved since the Taliban stormed back to power in August 2021, ousting the US-backed government and ending their two-decade insurgency, but the Islamic State group has proved an increasing threat.

The attacker was identified by Afghan forces who shot at him in front of a business centre near the foreign ministry, interior ministry spokesman Abdul Nafy Takor tweeted.

"With his killing, the explosives carried by the attacker also exploded which killed six civilians and wounded a number of others," he said.

Italian NGO Emergency, which operates a hospital in the capital, confirmed it had received two dead and 12 wounded, including a child.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Monday's blast was the second attack near the foreign ministry in Kabul in less than three months, and the first since the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began on Thursday in Afghanistan.

On January 11, a suicide bomber blew himself up near the foreign ministry, killing 10 and wounding 53 people, according to the United Nations.

The Taliban authorities, who have often tried to play down attacks challenging their rule, had said that five people were killed in that attack, claimed by IS.

The group has increasingly become a major challenge, killing and wounding hundreds of people in several attacks, some targeting foreigners or foreign interests in a bid to undermine the Taliban government.

At least five Chinese nationals were wounded in December when gunmen stormed a hotel popular with businesspeople in Kabul.

That raid was claimed by IS, as was an attack on Pakistan's embassy in Kabul also in December that Islamabad denounced as an "assassination attempt" against its ambassador.

Two Russian embassy staff members were killed in a suicide bombing outside their mission in September in another attack claimed by IS.

The Taliban and IS share an austere Sunni Islamist ideology, but the latter are fighting to establish a global "caliphate" instead of the Taliban's more inward-looking aim of ruling an independent Afghanistan.

[workersolidarity]

🇦🇫 🚨 💥SUICIDE BOMBER IN AFGHANISTAN STRIKES TALIBAN GOVERNMENT OFFICE IN NIMROZ PROVINCE💥

Afghan media is reporting an explosion resulting from a suicide bomber at a Taliban Governor's office in the Nimroz Province area in the southwest of Afghanistan, wounding three Taliban personnel.

In a statement issued to the Afghan International news agency, Taliban Ministry of Interior spokesperson, Abdul Matin Qane said that an attacker wearing explosives bypassed two security checkpoints as Governor Mohammed Qasim Khalid exited his offices for prayer.

Gul Mohammed Qadrat, a spokesperson for the local Police Command told local media that the suicide bomber detonated his explosives after being identified by the bodyguards of Governor Khalid, who opened fire on the attacker.

Residents in the city of Zaranj reported hearing explosions coming from the direction of the Governor's office on Sunday evening, and witnesses told local media they heard gunfire shortly after the explosion.

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[news4dzhozhar]

If you haven't been paying attention the past few days you may have missed that Israel bombed Irans embassy in Syria. Israel has such a bloodlust that they simply refuse to leave Palestine alone and know they are losing support financially and weapons wise especially after killing those aid workers. They've bombed Lebanon a few times in the past month or so but they wouldn't bite.

Iran has always been Netanyahu's favorite boogeyman and going after their embassy in Syria is killing 2 birds with 1 stone. It pisses off Iran AND it pisses off the US's favorite boogeyman...Russia because they back Syria. I swear WWIII is gonna have Netanyahus name all over it and most Americans are too stupid to see how blatant these tactics are. Sorry but it's true 🖤💚❤️ Iran isn't stupid though so they are now saying they won't retaliate against Israel if the US gets a permanent ceasefire put in place. Israel is playing checkers while Iran is playing chess. Truly insane times we are living through right now.

[autistichalsin]

In retrospect, four years later, I feel like the Isabel Fall incident was just the biggest ignored cautionary tale modern fandom spaces have ever had. Yes, it wasn't limited to fandom, it was also a professional author/booktok type argument, but it had a lot of crossover.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: a writer, whether fan or pro, publishes a work. If one were to judge a book by its cover, something we are all taught in Kindergarten shouldn't happen but has a way of occurring regardless, one might find that there was something that seemed deeply problematic about this work. Maybe the title or summary alluded to something Wrong happening, or maybe the tags indicated there was problematic kinks or relationships. And that meant the story was Bad. So, a group of people takes to the Twittersphere to inform everyone who will listen why the work, and therefore the author, are Bad. The author, receiving an avalanche of abuse and harassment, deactivates their account, and checks into a mental health facility for monitoring for suicidal ideation. They never return to their writing space, and the harassers get a slap on the wrist (if that- usually they get praise and high-fives all around) and start waiting for their next victim to transgress.

Sounds awful familiar, doesn't it?

Isabel Fall's case, though, was even more extreme for many reasons. See, she made the terrible mistake of using a transphobic meme as the genesis to actually explore issues of gender identity.

More specifically, she used the phrase "I sexually identify as an attack helicopter" to examine how marginalized identities, when they become more accepted, become nothing more than a tool for the military-industrial complex to rebrand itself as a more personable and inclusive atrocity; a chance to pursue praise for bombing brown children while being progressive, because queer people, too, can help blow up brown children now! It also contained an examination of identity and how queerness is intrinsic to a person, etc.

But... well, if harassers ever bothered to read the things they critique, we wouldn't be here, would we? So instead, they called Isabel a transphobic monster for the title alone, even starting a misinformation campaign to claim she was, in fact, a cis male nazi using a fake identity to psyop the queer community.

A few days later, after days of horrific abuse and harassment, Isabel requested that Clarkesworld magazine pull the story. She checked in to a psych ward with suicidal thoughts. That wasn't all, though; the harassment was so bad that she was forced to out herself as trans to defend against the claims.

Only... we know this type of person, the fandom harassers, don't we? You know where this is going. Outing herself did nothing to stop the harassment. No one was willing to read the book, much less examine how her sexuality and gender might have influenced her when writing it.

So some time later, Isabel deleted her social media. She is still alive, but "Isabel Fall" is not- because the harassment was so bad that Isabel detransitioned/closeted herself, too traumatized to continue living her authentic life.

Supposed trans allies were so outraged at a fictional portrayal of transness, written by a trans woman, that they harassed a real life trans woman into detransitioning.

It's heartbreakingly familiar, isn't it? Many of us in fandom communities have been in Isabel's shoes, even if the outcome wasn't so extreme (or in some cases, when it truly was). Most especially, many of us, as marginalized writers speaking from our own experiences in some way, have found that others did not enjoy our framework for examining these things, and hurt us, members of those identities, in defense of "the community" as a nebulous undefined entity.

There's a quote that was posted in a news writeup about the whole saga that was published a year after the fact. The quote is:

The delineation between paranoid and reparative readings originated in 1995, with influential critic Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. A paranoid reading focuses on what’s wrong or problematic about a work of art. A reparative reading seeks out what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art, even if the work is flawed. Importantly, a reparative reading also tends to consider what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art for someone who isn’t the reader. This kind of nuance gets completely worn away on Twitter, home of paranoid readings. “[You might tweet], ‘Well, they didn’t discuss X, Y, or Z, so that’s bad!’ Or, ‘They didn’t’ — in this case — ‘discuss transness in a way that felt like what I feel about transness, therefore it is bad.’ That flattens everything into this very individual, very hostile way of reading,” Mandelo says. “Part of reparative reading is trying to think about how a story cannot do everything. Nothing can do everything. If you’re reading every text, fiction, or criticism looking for it to tick a bunch of boxes — like if it represents X, Y, and Z appropriately to my definitions of appropriate, and if it’s missing any of those things, it’s not good — you’re not really seeing the close focus that it has on something else.”

A paranoid reading describes perfectly what fandom culture has become in the modern times. It is why "proship", once simply a word for common sense "don't engage with what you don't like, and don't harass people who create it either" philosophies, has become the boogeyman of fandom, a bad and dangerous word. The days of reparative readings, where you would look for things you enjoyed, are all but dead. Fiction is rarely a chance to feel joy; it's an excuse to get angry, to vitriolically attack those different from oneself while surrounded with those who are the same as oneself. It's an excuse to form in-groups and out-groups that must necessarily be in a constant state of conflict, lest it come across like This side is accepting That side's faults. In other words, fandom has become the exact sort of space as the nonfandom spaces it used to seek to define itself against.

It's not about joy. It's not about resonance with plot or characters. It's about hate. It's about finding fault. If they can't find any in the story, they will, rest assured, create it by instigating fan wars- dividing fandom into factions and mercilessly attacking the other.

And that's if they even went so far as to read the work they're critiquing. The ones they don't bother to read, as you saw above, fare even worse. If an AO3 writer tagged an abuser/victim ship, it's bad, it's fetishism, even if the story is about how the victim escapes. If a trans writer uses the title "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter" to find a framework to dissect rainbow-washing the military-industrial complex, it's unforgivable. It's a cesspool of kneejerk reactions, moralizing discomfort, treating good/evil as dichotomous categories that can never be escaped, and using that complex as an excuse to heap harassment on people who "deserve it." Because once you are Bad, there is no action against you that is too Bad for you to deserve.

Isabel Fall's story follows this so step-by-step that it's like a textbook case study on modern fandom behavior.

Isabel Fall wrote a short story with an inflammatory title, with a genesis in transphobic mockery, in the hopes of turning it into a genuine treatise on the intersection of gender and sexuality and the military-industrial complex. But because audiences are unprepared for the idea of inflammatory rhetoric as a tool to force discomfort to then force deeper introspection... they zeroed in on the discomfort. "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter"- the title phrase, not the work- made them uncomfortable. We no longer teach people how to handle discomfort; we live in a world of euphemism and glossing over, a world where people can't even type out the words "kill" and rape", instead substituting "unalive" and "grape." We don't deal with uncomfortable feelings anymore; we censor them, we transform them, we sanitize them. When you are unable to process discomfort, when you are never given self-soothing tools, your only possible conclusion is that anything Uncomfortable must be Bad, and the creator must either be censored too, or attacked into conformity so that you never again experience the horrors of being Uncomfortable.

So the masses took to Twitter, outraged. They were Uncomfortable, and that de facto meant that they had been Wronged. Because the content was related to trans identity issues, that became the accusation; it was transphobic, inherently. It couldn't be a critique of bigger and more fluid systems than gender identity alone; it was a slight against trans people. And no amount of explanations would change their minds now, because they had already been aggrieved and made to feel Uncomfortable.

Isabel Fall was now a Bad Person, and we all know what fandom spaces do to Bad People. Bad People, because they are Bad, will always be deserving of suicide bait and namecalling and threatening. Once a person is Bad, there is no way to ever become Good again. Not by refuting the accusations (because the accusations are now self-evident facts; "there is a callout thread against them" is its own tautological proof that wrongdoing has happened regardless of the veracity of the claims in the callout) and not by apologizing and changing, because if you apologize and admit you did the Bad thing, you are still Bad, and no matter what you do in future, you were once Bad and that needs to be brought up every time you are mentioned. If you are bad, you can NEVER be more than what you were at your worst (in their definition) moment. Your are now ontologically evil, and there is no action taken against you that can be immoral.

So Isabel was doomed, naturally. It didn't matter that she outed herself to explain that she personally had lived the experience of a trans woman and could speak with authority on the atrocity of rainbow-washing the military industrial complex as a proaganda tool to capture progressives. None of it mattered. She had written a work with an Uncomfortable phrase for a title, the readers were Uncomfortable, and someone had to pay for it.

And that's the key; pay for it. Punishment. Revenge. It's never about correcting behavior. Restorative justice is not in this group's vocabulary. You will, incidentally, never find one of these folks have a stance against the death penalty; if you did Bad as a verb, you are Bad as an intrinsic, inescapable adjective, and what can you do to incorrigible people but kill them to save the Normal people? This is the same principle, on a smaller scale, that underscores their fandom activities; if a Bad fan writes Bad fiction, they are a Bad person, and their fandom persona needs to die to save Normal fans the pain of feeling Uncomfortable.

And that's what happened to Isabel Fall. The person who wrote the short story is very much alive, but the pseudonym of Isabel Fall, the identity, the lived experiences coming together in concert with imagination to form a speculative work to critique deeply problematic sociopolitical structures? That is dead. Isabel Fall will never write again, even if by some miracle the person who once used the name does. Even if she ever decides to restart her transition, she will be permanently scarred by this experience, and will never again be able to share her experience with us as a way to grow our own empathy and challenge our understanding of the world. In spirit, but not body, fandom spaces murdered Isabel Fall.

And that's... fandom, anymore. That's just what is done, routinely and without question, to Bad people. Good people are Good, so they don't make mistakes, and they never go too far when dealing with Bad people. And Bad people, well, they should have thought before they did something Bad which made them Bad people.

Isabel Fall's harassment happened in early 2020, before quarantine started, but it was in so many ways a final chance for fandom to hit the breaks. A chance for fandom to think collectively about what it wanted to be, who it wanted to be for and how it wanted to do it. And fandom looked at this and said, "more, please." It continues to harass marginalized people, especially fans of color and queen fans, into suffering mental breakdowns. With gusto.

Any ideas of reparative reading is dead. Fandom runs solely on paranoid readings. And so too is restorative justice gone for fandom transgressions, real or imagined. It is now solely about punitive, vigilante justice. It's a concerted campaign to make sure oddballs conform or die (in spirit, but sometimes even physically given how often mentally ill individuals are pushed into committing suicide).

It's a deeply toxic environment and I'm sad to say that Isabel Fall's story was, in retrospect, a sort of event horizon for the fandom. The gravitational pull of these harassment campaigns is entirely too strong now and there is no escaping it. I'm sorry, I hate to say something so bleak, but thinking the last few days about the state of fandom (not just my current one but also others I watch from the outside), I just don't think we can ever go back to peaceful "for joy" engagement, not when so many people are determined to use it as an outlet for lateral aggression against other people.

[8d9d8e7d93e2936c]

Me & this guy Mitchell didnt lose a single tricolor battle for this whole ~40 minute run before the end of splatfest #LETS GO

[headlinehorizon]

Bomb Blast at Mosque Celebration in Pakistan Leaves Dozens Dead

A powerful bomb detonated near a mosque during a celebration in southwestern Pakistan, killing at least 52 people and injuring many more. The attack occurred during a procession to commemorate the birth anniversary of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad, known as Mawlid an-Nabi.

[sapper-in-the-wire]

Liberals wincing at the brutality of Hamas’ attack is even more smoothbrain when you consider that the Gaza Strip is objectively the worst concentration camp in the world.

It’s the 2nd most densely populated area in the entire world, 95% of water isn’t safe, they are only given 4 hours of electricity (imagine this with the population density and Mediterranean heat), medicine and basic foodstuffs like juice are embargoed. The average age in Gaza is 19 - the old and weak die quickly as their health care system cannot get supplies and doesn’t have stable electricity. More than half of youths under 18 expressed that they have no real desire to live and contemplate suicide regularly. 45% unemployment. Children get blown up playing soccer on the beach by advanced warships. It’s probably the most surveilled and spied upon place in the world. It’s a tiny strip of land 25 miles wide that is regularly subjected to bombing.

In 2018 mass peaceful demonstrations were organized, thousands and thousands of Palestinians marched along the border wall. Israel shot 2,000 of them with live ammunition, but only killed around 200 because they deliberately aim at legs to place even more strain on the depleted medical infrastructure and make an invalid that can’t contribute as well. 36,000 Palestinians were injured peacefully protesting.

Every year the IDF invades Al-Asqa mosque, gasses the worshippers and cracks heads open, and then they leave because there’s no point aside from violent harassment. And then there’s the constant news from other occupied areas of Palestinians being evicted, homes being bulldozed, the survivors fined and harassed. Palestinian olive trees, generational in their age, bulldozed by the occupiers.

Shooting civilians wantonly might be morally dubious in a situation like Hawaii, some place where an occupation makes you disadvantaged and a second class citizen. But Gaza is just flat out a death camp. Of course the commandos went berserk with rage, of course they brought bodies back to parade in the streets - everyone has been dehumanized for their entire lives. Treat people like animals and they might just act like animals once they get their hands on you.

[thecloudsarefalling]

Just kinda want to rant

I cannot stand what Israel is doing in the slightest. It's nothing short of a genocide. But on a more personal note, they're ruining the childhood of one of my closest childhood friends.

She would travel to Palestine every summer to visit family, I was never entirely sure of the exact place, but I definitely remember checking her location from time to time while looking over the Snapchat map to check my cousin's backpacking trip through Europe over that same summer, and I had definitely seen her within the Gaza strip many times

She has so many family members in Gaza, a handful had been caught in the US, lucky enough to evade the genocide, but not all of them. It's disheartening to see her childhood ripped apart by an overzealous army who have no idea who she is

Who any of the people in the Gaza Strip are

or those on the West Bank

When I repost the hundredth TikTok of the day about the genocide in Palestine, I mean it. I mean look at all of these people having their lives ripped away from them. I mean look at the lives of all of these children who will never get to experience the beauty of Palestine in the way my friend has. I mean look to all the people who have passed and those who continue to pass. Those committing suicide because their outlook for the future is dim. I mean look to those who could never begin to escape, killed by disease, illness, and the destruction of Gaza. I mean watch for the journalists who are being slaughtered in constant bombings and targeted sniper attacks for speaking out against Israel. I mean the family of both my childhood best friend and all of those whose lives, and land, are currently threatened by this genocide.

No one should have to be a martyr, not because of the cruelty of Israel, famine, disease, and most certainly not of greed. No parent should have to witness the death of their child, nor child witness the death of their parent. No partners, siblings, pets, or families should be torn apart because of greed.

I am outraged over this, but I feel so small because I don't have any way to help people escape Gaza. All I can do now is use my voice, and though I no longer subscribe to any religion, I pray for the freedom of those in Gaza, and for those in Palestine, that they'll be able to survive and live freely as they are meant to.

[sayruq]

Amid Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Gaza, maternal healthcare faces excruciating challenges. Deliberate and systematic Israeli attacks on hospitals and medical centers, and critical shortages of humanitarian aid, including medicine, have created a crisis that is endangering the lives of both mothers and newborns. The situation is critical. There are an estimated 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza and some 180 births every day. Israel’s decision in October to prevent food, water, fuel and electricity from entering Gaza created a desperate situation. Inadequate nutrition, exposure to cold and hot weather, the absence of clean water, and poor sanitation weigh heavily on the wellbeing of women and children. The circumstances force them to consume contaminated water, heightening the peril of dehydration and waterborne diseases, particularly among vulnerable groups such as expectant mothers, new mothers and young children. Fuel shortages and the constrained capacity of the few remaining medical facilities exacerbate the difficulty for women in labor to access hospitals. Um Amin, a mother with a few children, confronted with the harsh reality of displacement, recounted her family’s struggles during Israel’s aggression. As bombs relentlessly fell on their neighborhood, reducing their home to rubble, Um Amin had to seek refuge at a school run by the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) in the northern Gaza Strip taking only very few belongings. She was pregnant. And in the school there was little by way of basic necessities such as clean water, food or even clothes for her children. She considered moving south, where food might be a little more accessible. Her husband refused, causing conflict between them.He feared not being able to return. And while she believed that the Israeli army was attempting to force them to leave, she also felt it was a matter of life and death for her children. “It was heart-wrenching to witness my kids fighting over scraps of bread. My 4-year-old started stashing away bread in his pocket for later. I was shocked. Before the war, I never slept without knowing my children were fed. Now, most of the time, I am certain they never feel satisfied.” Her entire motivation to carry on became a matter of feeding her children She denied herself food for their sake, but had also to remind herself of the child within her. “The baby inside me is also a priority, so I had to eat too.” She found the balancing act incredibly challenging, an unbearable burden of motherhood. “I am going to share something I’ve never told anyone I know: I contemplated suicide to escape the weight of this responsibility.”

After the Israeli army unexpectedly stormed al-Rimal, a Gaza City neighborhood, for a second time, Um Amin panicked and fled again, this time going from the UNRWA school to a relative’s house. But her fear caused her to enter preterm labor. A doctor, at the nearby al-Sahaba medical center, had to resort to a cesarean section. It was hell, Um Amin said. There was insufficient anesthesia and she could feel the scalpel cutting into her body. There was no electricity; the doctor had to use a handheld flashlight to see. Um Amin’s cries of pain could not drown out the crashing of shells around her. The operation left her utterly drained. She couldn’t believe she was still alive.She needed nourishment to recover what she had lost during the bleeding and to breastfeed her son. But hunger was stalking Gaza. Food was scarce, there was no white flour in the markets, and Israel was blocking aid trucks from entering the north. “All I had to eat was bread made from animal feed and water. When I had my other children, I relied on foods rich in animal proteins, but it was impossible this time. The price of meat was five times higher than normal.” Unable to adequately breastfeed her child, she had to find infant formula. But the price was multiple times higher than it used to be and more than she could afford. Eventually, she was forced to buy formula that was past its expiry date. “You might blame me, but there was literally no other option. I didn’t have enough money. It wasn’t clumped together, so the doctor told me it could still be used.” She would never find out. Due to the lack of clean water, she prepared the milk with non-potable water from a well. The baby refused to drink.

[zvaigzdelasas]

Do you have an analysis on Sinwar being the new politburo chief? Very unexpected choice.

Have a couple thoughts:

Dissolving more of the barrier between Hamas as a political organization & as an insurgent organization

Spitting in Israel's face who was hoping that a decapitation strike would leave hamas with a leader lacking broader political legitimacy in the organization or create divisions/deepen divisions between civilian governance & militant organization

Lessens the leverage Qatar has over Hamas as they were providing Haniyeh with refuge

Since Sinwar is (presumably) in Gaza, his presence will likely be used to justify decreasingly discriminate attacks even moreso than it was before

Likely much more uncompromising (not to imply Haniyeh was) in negotiations

Israel and the US will have to directly negotiate with someone they despise

Dropsite News describes sinwar as such:

Despite the sinister portrayals, Sinwar’s writings and media interviews indicate he is a complex thinker with clearly defined political objectives who believes in armed struggle as a means to an end. He gives the impression of a well-educated political militant, not a cult leader on a mass suicide crusade. “It's not this black image of Sinwar as a man with two horns living in the tunnels,” said Hamad, the Hamas official who worked directly with Sinwar for three years. “But in the time of war, he's very strong. This man is very strong. If he wants to fight, he fights seriously.”

In 1988, just months after Hamas was founded, Sinwar was arrested by Israeli forces and sentenced to four life sentences on charges he had personally murdered alleged Palestinian collaborators. During his 22 years in an Israeli prison, he became fluent in Hebrew and studied the history of the Israeli state, its political culture, and its intelligence and military apparatus. He translated by hand the memoirs of several former heads of the Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet. “When I entered [prison], it was 1988, the Cold War was still going on. And here [in Palestine], the Intifada. To spread the latest news, we printed fliers. I came out, and I found the internet,” Sinwar told an Italian journalist in 2018. “But to be honest, I never came out—I have only changed prisons. And despite it all, the old one was much better than this one. I had water, electricity. I had so many books. Gaza is much tougher.”[...]

Sinwar, unlike leaders of Al Qaeda or ISIS, has regularly invoked international law and UN resolutions, exhibiting a nuanced understanding of the history of negotiations with Israel mediated by the U.S. and other nations. “Let's be clear: having an armed resistance is our right, under international law. But we don't only have rockets. We have been using a variety of means of resistance,” he said in the 2018 interview. “We make the headlines only with blood. And not only here. No blood, no news. But the problem is not our resistance, it is their occupation. With no occupation, we wouldn't have rockets. We wouldn't have stones, Molotov cocktails, nothing. We would all have a normal life."

Throughout 2018 and 2019, Sinwar endorsed the large-scale nonviolent protests along the walls and fences of Gaza known as the Great March of Return. “We believe that if we have a way to potentially resolve the conflict without destruction, we’re O.K. with that,” Sinwar said at a rare news conference in 2018. “We would prefer to earn our rights by soft and peaceful means. But we understand that if we are not given those rights, we are entitled to earn them by resistance.”[...]

After the end of Israel’s 11-day bombing campaign against Gaza, Sinwar spoke to VICE News and sought to frame the Palestinian struggle in a U.S. context, using recent cases of lethal police violence against African Americans. “The same type of racism that killed George Floyd is being used by [Israel] against the Palestinians in Jerusalem, the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, and in the West Bank. And by the burning of our children. And against the Gaza Strip through siege, murder, and starvation.”

And additionally (echoing the words of Hagari)

Support among Palestinians for Hamas and its Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, according to the recent poll, “remains very high” and has increased during the past three months. At the same time, while two-thirds of Palestinians polled in the occupied territories believe that Hamas will “win the war,” only 48 percent of those in Gaza agreed.

Hamas has insisted the war cannot destroy its movement and will remain part of the tapestry of Palestinian factions governing its besieged and occupied territories. “What matters is that you finally realize that Hamas is here. That it exists. That there is no future without Hamas, there is no possible deal whatsoever, because we are part and parcel of this society, even if we lose the next elections,” Sinwar warned in 2018. “But we are a piece of Palestine. More than that, we are a piece of the history of the entire Arab world, which includes Islamists as well as seculars, nationalists, leftists.”

Daniel Hagari has also echoed this last bit [TimesOfIsrael is Israeli Private Media]

“Hamas is an idea, Hamas is a party. It’s rooted in the hearts of the people — anyone who thinks we can eliminate Hamas is wrong,” he continued.

Rumors are that Netanyahu is trying to figure out necromancy in order to bring Haniyeh back

Also check out this interview conducted by Vice

[newscast1]

After US & UK, Saudi, Australia issue security alert for citizens in Pakistan's Islamabad

After US & UK, Saudi, Australia issue security alert for citizens in Pakistan’s Islamabad

Embassies of the US and the UK have issued advisories for their citizens in Pakistan’s Islamabad warning them of a possible terror attack as the capital city remains on high alert after the recent suicide bombing. New Delhi,UPDATED: Dec 26, 2022 23:09 IST A suicide bomber killed at least one police officer on December 23 in the Pakistan capital Islamabad. (File photo: AFP) By India Today Web…

[notaplaceofhonour]

it’s october 7th. you hear about the attack by seeing people you followed glorifying the terrorist attack—a massacre, a pogrom—as victory & justified resistance, glorifying a terrorist group that was founded with the explicit intent to kill your entire people

you make a post in which you make it clear you support palestinians and oppose the ways israel has wronged them, explaining that the terrorist group is still not good. you know you will probably get some flacc from the pro-Hamas side, but naively underestimate how much.

you get thousands of notifications on that one post, the majority of them hateful comments.

some of the response is positive. multiple messages thank you for the post, expressing bafflement that it’s controversial.

a few Israelis are upset at the loaded language in your post, but explain their problems with it civilly. you called Israel “apartheid”. they ask you what apartheid laws Israel has. you admit you honestly don’t know.

your inbox is flooded with anonymous hate from anti-Israel leftists.

over the course of a few weeks you have received hundreds of death threats, a dozen rape threats. people accuse you of being pro-genocide. you’re a literal Nazi. you’re racist, you thirst for the blood of Palestinians. you’re brainwashed by propaganda, a shill for The Zionist Entity. a few of the hate messages are from literal Neo-Nazis; the overwhelming majority are from leftists, many of them queer.

you are considering suicide.

you see footage of the october 7th attacks. you see footage of the bombings in gaza. you see footage of a Jewish man being murdered at an anti-Israel rally.

a popular creator you follow posts in support of an antisemitic hate group that masquerades as a Jewish organization. this organization regularly posts blood libel and other antisemitic rhetoric, works with groups that are even more explicitly antisemitic, including celebrating October 7th, holocaust inversion, blood libel, “Khazar theory” and others. more than one of the orgs they work with is pro-Putin.

your former roommate liked the post.

graffiti appears on a street you frequent that says “#freepalestine” and “end settler colonialism”

the boyfriend of the friend you spent most of the summer with makes his first post about the war. it’s a reposted comic that mocks and downplays the october 7th attack.

you doubt he’ll be receptive to criticism. he’s shared leftist memes about “monied elites” pulling all the strings and evangelicals being modern day “pharisees” in the past, and getting him to understand why that was antisemitic was like herding cats. you try anyway.

another of his Jewish friends also pushes back. he smugly dismisses her, tells her she’s falling for Zionist propaganda and uses several antisemitic tropes. you go off on him. he just deletes your comment.

you give up. you’re done. you block him.

you see anti-Israel posters and billboards around town

you mention what happened with the guy you went off on to his girlfriend—the friend you’ve grown very close to, who you’ve been listening to as she unburdens her fears for the future and complains about her bf’s BS over the last year. she doesn’t respond to you.

a friend of a friend shares posts tokenizing fringe groups that spread blood libel and have collaborated with holocaust deniers. you know they don’t know what you know, so you explain what those groups are. they seem somewhat receptive, apologize, and take it down

the next day they share several more posts that dip into antisemitic tropes. you mention this to your mutual friend, that you’re worried about them being radicalized. you’re not sure how receptive they’ll be to continued criticism

you have a confrontation with the foaf. in the meantime they’ve shared even more antisemitic posts. they say they didn’t mean to cause you distress but instead of stopping they effectively block you.

the “end settler colonialism” vandalism has been counter-vandalized with the words “commie propaganda” in place of “settler colonialism”. you don’t know if this is an improvement.

a month passes. the friend whose bf you went off on still hasn’t spoken to you. you see she shared a post defending an SJP chapter that posted Nazi cartoon caricatures of Jews repurposed in “Anti-Zionist” memes. you unfriend her on all social media platforms but you can’t bring yourself to block her number.

you see a friend of someone whose couch you surfed when you were homeless harassing Jewish celebrities with “Free Palestine” comments. you block them.

you’ve lost count of how many people you’ve unfollowed or blocked, or who’ve blocked you. friends, content creators.

when a friend takes an unusually long time to respond you worry if it’s because of your posts about antisemitism.

most of the podcasts, youtube channels, and other content creators you regularly engaged with no longer feel safe. you wonder who will be next

a couple friends wish you a happy hanukkah. you don’t celebrate much aside from lighting the hanukkiah and making some latkes.

you see posts about a destroyed chabad menorah, antisemitic comments on Jewish celebrities’ Hanukkah posts.

your neighborhood is covered in pro-Palestine & anti-Israel posters. some are seemingly innocuous, some are JVP “not in our name” posters. some call for intifada. “globalize the intifada” “Zionists fuck off!” “solidarity means attack!”

a man kills himself shouting “free palestine”. you learn about his suicide by seeing posts from several popular accounts you followed glorifying it.

you follow a bunch of jewish accounts on social media and commiserate with them about everything happening

your jewish friends post screenshots of the dead man’s antisemitic, pro-Hamas views. you look at his reddit and find even more horrific shit: anti-Ukraine posts. mocking Zelensky. “elites” are “lizard people”; the only named individual he calls a lizard person is Jewish. you start to notice a pattern: a lot of the people he dislikes just so happen to be jews.

several people you know share a post glorifying this man’s suicide. most are acquaintances, one is someone incredibly important to you.

you wonder how they would respond to your suicide.

you tell the close friend that shared this post how it scares you. you show them the receipts of the man’s antisemitism. their response is a single sentence. they didn’t know about the antisemitism.

they don’t apologize.

you notice none of your irl friends, even your closest ones, interact with your posts about antisemitism. you are able to vent to a couple friends, but no one has reach out to you

you try not to read into it. you try not to take it personally.

you haven’t slept well in months. you’ve always been an insomniac but not like this. you’re not sleeping until 4am, 6am, even 9am. even when you get to bed at a decent hour and get a full night’s rest it takes you hours to get out of bed.

a few weeks go by. the friend with the single sentence response shares a post saying they’re excited and proud to join a group to help palestinians. you’re excited and proud for them.

a couple days later, they share a post about a fundraiser to help a palestinian family get out of gaza. you note to yourself this is a much more effective & less concerning form of activism than the pro-suicidal antisemite post.

your friend shares another post about the fundraiser. it’s a joint post between their group and another group.

you open the other group’s page

the page is just a wall of signs from rallies. you swipe through one after another: “from the river to the sea”, “by any means necessary”, justifying/denying the atrocities of october 7th, calling for violent revolution. anything done in the name of resistance can’t be terrorism, all Israelis are terrorists. Jews aren’t indigenous; they’re white colonizers. holocaust inversion. other vile, thinly veiled violent rhetoric

you feel sick to your stomach imagining talking to your friend about it.

you already feel like you’re burdening the few friends you can talk to about this. you already feel like you think about it too much, talk about it too much. but you can’t not think about it; it affects every aspect of your life.

you’ve filtered out relevant keywords on more than one social media site to avoid the worst of it. some still manages to leak through.

there isn’t a single friend you regularly interact with that you don’t fear the moment when they will switch from listening to your concerns to seeing you as the evil zionist or indoctrinated hasbaranik they’ve been warned about.

it’s not an irrational fear. it keeps happening. you knew it would then, and you were powerless to do anything about it before, and you continue to be as it happens again and again.

you don’t know what to do about any of it.

[womenswrongssupporter]

As the Genshin Natlan controversy rages on, I feel the need to rant

Holy frick Arknights gets away with so much shit. The game has three times as many nations as Genshin does, yet compresses all brown, black, and American indigenous cultures into a single country (Sargon) vs Genshin's two. The vast majority of playable characters to come from the region are white, and includes Manticore's belly dance and Gavial's white girl dreadlocks (yes I like Gavial, but this is still notable when 15/20 Sargon operators are white). Of the NPCs, there are some good designs (Picale Tulla is very cool), but also I have to note that, throughout the entire history of this game's story where there is a disease that makes you a potential explosive after death, the singular suicide bombing in the story is done by one of the brown Sargonian NPCs.

And of course, there's this lovely passage from Carnelian's profile

She may seem charming and open, getting along with the other operators well, and always wearing a smile on her face, but it would be a mistake to forget Carnelian hails from Sargon. All those who fought alongside her described her with words like "fierce," "violent," and "cruel." The elegant, exquisite techniques she demonstrates in battle are all facades imposed upon her by Leithanien to hide her primal thirst to attack. Carnelian doesn't try to hide her true self much. No matter the circumstance, she does things according to her principles. Be it the kindness she shows her friends or her cruelty toward those she sees as her enemies, she will never hold back. Leithanien can never truly keep such a Sargonian in check.

Reminder that this singular nation out of 23 is the only representation for any brown, black, or American indigenous culture (the Wendigos don't count because the name seems to be a self aware joke on Wendigos being confused with Leshy in popular culture and Arknights Wendigos both resemble the latter and are based on Slavic culture), so making this one nation the savage one is not a good look!

[jewish-vents]

I’m losing the ability to feel any empathy for Palestinians. Their whole culture and national identity is built on Jew hate and historical revisionism. They raise their kids on holocaust denial. They celebrate every suicide bombing, every rocket attack, Oct 7. The “civilians” that were working in Israel drew maps for the Oct 7 invaders. And I’m supposed to feel sorry for these people? When we’ve got decades of things like mothers proudly proclaiming their children dying in suicide bombings against Israel would be an honour, I’m supposed to feel bad that the children of supposed doctors and journalists who’ve kept hostages as slaves are dying just like their parents and chosen leaders want? Arab colonists built their mosque on our holy site, proclaimed our land their own, refused to live alongside us when we returned, cried “Nabka” after they failed to drive us out again, and have been crying “genocide” each time their repeated attempts fail ever since. This is more of the same and I’m tired of pretending this latest war is a tragedy and not a suicide cult getting exactly what it quite literally asked for.

A large part of the tragedy and horror of the situation is the way it steals our ability to be compassionate toward one another.

There are children on both sides. There are innocents on both sides.

And the worst players on both sides seek to corrupt that innocence and radicalize the children into violence and hate.

We cannot build a better future without seeing the humanity in one another.

It is crucial to remember that the people of Gaza did not choose Hamas; that the Hamas they voted into power presented itself as significantly less violent and radical than they later proved to be, and that the last election happened nearly two decades ago.

But we also need to make space to voice our pain and anger, because if we do not, it will fester until it consumes us.

[the-sunflower-room]

✧ to die by your side ✧

dazai x fem!reader

☆ genre: angst, hurt/comfort

☆ wc: 9.5k

☆ summary: dazai’s girlfriend is kidnapped by a revenge-seeking enemy and must count down the agonizing minutes to her death. dazai and the rest of the ada race to save her before time runs out.

☆ warnings: kidnapping, violence, language, mentions of blood/torture/drugging, dazai-typical suicide mentions, brief mentions of throwing up, self-loathing dazai, panic attacks, etc- overall just pretty angsty! slightly canon divergent with the way i wrote dazai’s ability. i also threw in some comfort at the end as a little treat <3

………………………………………………………………………………….

Pain. Blinding pain.

That was the first thing Y/N noticed as she slowly regained consciousness. Her skull felt like it was on fire, her temple throbbing and wrists aching. A heavy weight sat on her chest and made the simple act of breathing difficult. A faint but persistent beeping noise seemed amplified in her ringing ears, worsening her pounding headache while the heavy scent of blood in the air made her stomach churn.

What was going on?

Confusion persisted until her mind began to register the other noises in her surroundings.

A man’s voice she didn’t recognize.

The soft beep of a video camera starting to record.

Something about the agency.

Dazai’s name.

Her body broke into a cold sweat at the sudden mention of her boyfriend.

Realizing her eyelids were too heavy to even open, Y/N couldn’t help but wonder what the hell had happened. The last thing she remembered was kissing Dazai goodnight outside of her apartment, then quietly getting ready for bed once he had left. What could have possibly happened between then and now? Whose voice was echoing around her? Why did her body feel so heavy, and why were her thoughts so incoherent? If she could just get up-

Oh.

Oh.

Her wrists were bound behind her, the rest of her body anchored to the chair she was sat in by chains of steel. There was something large strapped to her abdomen emitting a beeping noise every few seconds.

Her heart nearly stopped beating in her chest as she slowly put together what was happening in her hazy mind.

“-Pay for your crimes by letting her die. This pretty little thing only has three hours left,” the gruff voice continued, sounding much clearer and much closer than before. Her panic increased tenfold as she realized the mystery man was directly behind her. Before she could fully prepare for it, a large hand suddenly grabbed a fistful of hair on her scalp and yanked her slumped head upwards. The pain forced her eyes open and she was greeted with a camera pointed at her, along with a room full of armed men. Her eyes slowly widened in terror and clarity as it all finally clicked in that moment, no matter how much she didn’t want to admit what was happening to her.

I’ve been kidnapped as a means to get back at the agency.

There’s a bomb strapped to me.

I have three hours to live.

The tears started then. Even though she could vaguely recognize that she was being recorded for the Agency’s viewing and it would only worry Dazai more if he saw her in so much distress, she couldn’t help her panic. No matter how strong she wanted to be for him, this was terrifying. Her life was suddenly on the line and she would die at the hands of these men if the agency couldn’t find her in time.

“Please,” she cried, squeezing her eyes shut and feeling pathetic as she let out a choked sob. Her voice cracked from disuse and she felt like she might hyperventilate. “Please, no. I don’t want to die.” The room filled with cruel laughter at her naive pleas, and she could only sink further into despair as the gravity of her situation became painfully evident. These were ruthless killers who were happy to see an innocent woman die for nothing more than the sake of revenge.

“Hear that, detectives? She’s begging for her life. What are you gonna do about it? The clock is ticking,” The man behind her sneered, grabbing her face in his calloused hand and squeezing it. She weakly attempted to yank her head away from his grasp and maintain her last shred of dignity. He was taunting them with her, the bastard.

Weaponizing their good nature and care for her. Trying to break them; trying to break her sweet Dazai.

Oh god- Dazai.

The more she thought about him, the more her tears flowed. Dazai, whose greatest fear was putting her in danger with his line of work. Dazai, who had lost so much more than a person should. Dazai, who loved and cared for her more than anyone she had ever known. The mere idea of him sitting at the agency headquarters, watching in horror while these unknown men teased him with her life, was too much to bear.

Through her cries of terror, Y/N could just barely overhear the man saying something else into the camera before ordering one of his subordinates to cut the footage. Dread filled the pit of her stomach as they turned their full attention on her and she realized she was truly alone with these psychopaths.

She had no way of knowing if the ADA was coming for her, or if they would be able to get to her in time. Hell, she didn’t even know if they would be able to diffuse the complicated bomb even if they did manage to reach her before it was set to detonate. She certainly didn’t want them to risk their own lives just to save her, even if the thought of dying in an explosion shook her to her core.

She felt her hope drain away with each new tick of the bomb, her body shaking with fear. Three hours was an awfully short time.

Please, Osamu.

My time is running out.

~

Dazai had never felt a rage quite like this before.

He knew that something was wrong the moment the agency had received a video from an untraceable source and Y/N hadn’t texted him about her day. That didn’t stop his heart from dropping clear to his stomach when he saw her on the monitor, chained up and bloody with a bomb on her chest.

No. Not her.

He avoided the nervous gazes of Atsushi and the rest of the agency members as he stared at her unconscious body on the screen, jaw clenched unimaginably tight and hands gripping the wood of the conference room table. The man standing in front of her was droning on about how Dazai had personally wronged his pathetic organization —something about putting a stop to their human trafficking network with the help of Kunikida— but he couldn’t bring himself to listen or even care.

He was attempting to keep his composure by focusing on the facts of the case. Namely, the extent of her injuries and her location.

Blood was dripping down the side of her face from her temple, some of it dried and caked in her hair. The bastards had likely hit her with some sort of blunt object to knock her out. His fury only grew at the thought of her being treated with such senseless violence. She still seemed dazed and confused as the man forced her awake to face the camera, a sure sign of a concussion or even drugging to further subdue her. She had a few more bruises and bloody cuts on her face, and he knew by the way the metal chains cut into her skin that they would cause serious irritation at the very least.

He couldn’t help but screw his eyes shut and let out a shuddering breath as her weak and desperate pleas reached his ears. The complete and utter terror in her voice as she begged her captors for mercy was nothing short of gut-wrenching to him. Even worse, the man was taunting Dazai with her pain. Smugly showing off her broken body like some sort of prize. She’s suffering because of you, a small voice in his head spat, making Dazai grit his teeth even more. No. Focus, you idiot. Focus on where they’re keeping her.

She looked to be trapped in some kind of metal room, potentially reinforced with anti-ability precautions to keep them from easily reaching her. The cell was dingy, dark, and silent, leading him to wonder if she was being kept somewhere underground. That would be a likely spot for these despicable cockroaches to hide. There were just over a dozen guards surrounding her, although they wouldn’t be an issue in the grand scheme of things; the ADA could certainly handle a few thugs with guns. What concerned him most was the bomb strapped to her chest.

There were plenty of geniuses among their ragtag team, but bombs were tricky. There could be dozens of triggers on it, or someone could detonate it remotely if anyone got too close to her. A single misstep or miscalculation could immediately cost Y/N’s life, and that was a risk Dazai certainly wasn’t willing to take.

He was furious at himself for letting this happen. He was so careful- always keeping tabs on her, steering her away from involvement in ADA antics, keeping an ear to the ground for trouble in the Yokohama underworld. He was constantly calculating and preparing for every outcome, always several steps ahead of his enemies with his dizzying plans. And yet, somehow, this measly organization he could hardly remember had managed to snatch his girlfriend out from under him with almost no trouble at all.

She was in mortal danger, and it was all his fault.

“Snap out of it, Dazai, I can hear your thoughts from all the way over here,” Kunikida piped up from across the room, his voice sympathetic but stern as he glared at his partner. “You need to keep your head on straight if we want to get her back.” He could tell just by reading Dazai’s expression how much inner turmoil the man was going through. How much he blamed himself for Y/N’s capture. But if they were going to rescue her before the three hours were up, there was no time for wallowing in self pity.

“Kunikida’s right,” Fukuzawa’s booming voice spoke, causing Dazai’s distant gaze to snap over to his boss in an instant. The fact that he was involved in the case at all revealed just how seriously the entire agency was taking her kidnapping. “Time is not on our side. We must be swift and rational if we are to have any hope of getting to Y/N and disabling the bomb in time.” Their words struck Dazai to his core. It was hard to remember that the other ADA members also cared deeply for his girlfriend, and they were willing to go so far as to put their lives at risk to help him get her back. Their unwavering support seemed to snap him out of his stupor and focus on the task at hand.

Get her back from those sorry motherfuckers.

“Right,” he nodded curtly, his expression suddenly devoid of all emotion as he turned to face the team with renewed focus and determination. “Ranpo-san, what’s the plan?”

The raven-haired detective, who had been quietly perched on the window sill and shadowed by the deep orange sunlight filtering into the room, suddenly jumped down from his seat and whipped out his pair of glasses in a flash. His trademark smirk spread across his face as he placed the glasses on the bridge of his nose, poised to activate his ability.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

~

Fifteen minutes.

That’s what the little timer read—from what she could tell, anyway. Y/N’s heart felt like it would burst out of her chest. She was drenched in sweat from the overwhelming fear taking over her body, despite her cell being practically freezing. The men had left her alone a while ago, but not before roughing her up for good measure. She now sported a throbbing bruise under her eye and a few new cuts on her face and neck, but she had blocked all of the pain out. All she could feel was pure panic as the countdown to her impending doom grew shorter and shorter.

She had no idea if Dazai and the rest of the ADA were even close to figuring out where she was, and her hope was beginning to run out. How could they possibly find her and disarm the bomb in a mere fifteen minutes? It didn’t seem at all possible, no matter how skilled they were. A single tear ran down her cheek as the reality set in. She was really going to die.

Trying to find some form of comfort as the seconds ticked away and she neared what she assumed were her last moments, Y/N squeezed her eyes shut and forced her mind to go somewhere else—anywhere else—to escape this hell.

Dazai’s soft laughter filled her ears.

It was a lazy Sunday morning- the couple’s favorite time to lay in bed for the whole day and forget their actual adult responsibilities. They were tangled up in fresh sheets, warm sunlight streaming through the windows as Dazai playfully teased her about her refusal to let him get up.

“Five more minutes!” Y/N grumbled sleepily, burying her head into the crook of Dazai’s neck and breathing in his fresh scent. He still smelled like the floral body wash he had used in the shower the night before; the same body wash she had bought him when he insisted he loved the way it smelled on her and needed some for himself. Catching traces of its scent on him always brought a smile to her face.

“You said that five minutes ago,” he chuckled, his voice still husky from sleep. His hand absentmindedly massaged her scalp as he held her tight to his chest. “You can hear my stomach practically begging for food. Are you trying to starve me, my love?” Y/N was seemingly unaffected by his dramatic ploy to escape her embrace. “Yes,” she answered simply, burrowing further into his t-shirt to hide her smile that would give away her crumbling resolve. Of course, there was no hiding anything from Dazai Osamu.

“I saw that!” He gasped, playfully poking at her face. “My Y/N does care about me, who would have thought!” She couldn’t help the small giggle that escaped her lips at her boyfriend’s theatrics. He was always blowing things out of proportion, but she would be lying if she said she didn’t love it.

Daring to peek up at him with heavy eyelids, her eyes met gentle brown staring back at her with nothing but warmth and fondness. The lovesick smile plastered across his face sent butterflies rushing through her stomach and she suddenly felt shy. His eyes were so pretty. “If you get up, I’ll be so lonely without you,” she pouted, hands snaking around his waist as she gave him her best puppy dog eyes. She knew she was playing dirty by pulling the pity card, but she also couldn’t stand the thought of being away from his comforting embrace for even a moment.

Dazai heaved a sigh, a mischievous twinkle in his eye as his hand moved to her face and gently brushed some of her hair away from her eyes. “Well how could I ever say no to that? I would rather starve than see my belladonna lonely and upset.” She rolled her eyes a let out an amused huff at his words, craning her neck so she was mere inches away from his face. “So you’ll stay?” She whispered, knowing that she’d already won the minute he hadn’t actually gotten up when he announced he needed breakfast.

Instead of responding right away, Dazai leaned down and planted a gentle kiss to her pouting mouth. She was just so irresistible. “Of course, darling,” he murmured against her lips, pulling her head back into his chest and smiling as he felt her snuggle closer. She truly was his everything. “Five more minutes with you is nothing short of pure bliss.”

Five minutes left.

Y/N thought she might pass out from the sheer terror that consumed her, threatening to pull her under completely. She would never see her friends again, including all of the agency members she had grown to call her family. She would die before saying goodbye to her loved ones- to Dazai. How would he react when he found her body, or what was left of it? How would he cope? The very thought forced a watery sob from her throat.

This is the end.

I’m going to die without seeing him one last time.

Suddenly, a loud bang sounded outside of the door to her prison and startled her out of her despair. It sounded like someone throwing their body against the heavy steel door. She froze, swallowing back her tears and preparing herself for the worst. Maybe the men were back to torture her one last time before setting off the bomb. As her mind came up with the worst possible scenarios, a familiar grunt reached her ears through the metal walls. It couldn’t be. After a beat, she heard the noise again. Then- “Y/N?”

She nearly stopped breathing at the sound of his angelic lilt. “…Samu?” She called out weakly, afraid to let herself be filled with hope in case it was some kind of cruel trick. “Y/N!” He yelled back, a mixture of desperation and relief in his voice as the banging noises continued. It was incredible how quickly hearing his voice had managed to relax her, even if she knew she was still in immediate danger. He always did have a calming effect on her. “Osamu, I don’t have much time left,” she gasped, desperately struggling against her restraints. Now that she knew he was here, she wanted nothing more than to be with him.

“I know, I know. I’m gonna get you out of here, baby,” he assured her through the cold metal door, giving the handle another frustrated jolt. Why couldn’t he have been blessed with a strength-related ability? “Those assholes had some ability users up their sleeve, so the others are busy trying to break through their defenses,” he explained in a rush, throwing his body into the door again despite the blooming pain in his shoulder. He wouldn’t have the help of Atsushi or Kenji like they had originally planned, and that worried him. “I promise, I won’t stop until I get into that room and you’re safe.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” a voice suddenly boomed over a hidden speaker, catching the attention of both Dazai and Y/N as their heads snapped upwards in near unison. Her blood ran cold as she recognized it as the voice of her captor. “Break into that room, and we’ll set off the bomb early. Didn’t you listen to us? This is your penance, Dazai,” he spoke, clear amusement in his tone. The bastard was watching them from somewhere else in the underground facility, enjoying their pain. Using it as entertainment.

Three minutes left.

Dazai grimaced outside of the door, hands balling into fists as a new fear and rage ignited inside of him. There was never going to be a way to reach her without the bomb going off. It was a cruel way to torture him; forcing him to either live with the guilt of leaving her and save his own life, or stay with her until the bitter end. It wasn’t a difficult choice to make.

As Y/N pieced together the new information, she quickly came to the same conclusion as her boyfriend and felt her eyes go wide. “Dazai, NO! Get away from here, now!” She screamed, fresh tears already burning in her eyes. She knew that he was selfless and loved her more than anything, but in that moment she wanted him to turn his back on her. To break her heart and leave her behind to save himself.

Ramming his now probably broken shoulder into the cold, unforgiving metal one last time, Dazai shook his head as he slowly sank to the floor. His hands were raw and bleeding from practically clawing at the wall for a weak point, but he didn’t care. Nothing else mattered anymore but staying with her. “I won’t leave you,” he said simply, leaning his head against the wall. The agony of knowing that she was in that room, alone and afraid, minutes away from her death, was crushing. But if he could offer her even the smallest comfort before that timer hit zero, he would do it in a heartbeat.

Meanwhile, Y/N was on the verge of a panic attack. Tears streamed down her face and she struggled to breathe, completely overwhelmed by what was happening. To have to accept that she really was about to die a horrible and graphic death in a few minutes was terrifying, but to know that Dazai was right outside the door and would also die if he stayed; that was too much. She knew how stubborn he was, but she had to try to make him leave anyway. Anything to get him to save himself.

“Please,” she cried desperately, consumed with grief as sobs wracked through her body. “You can’t stay, Dazai, you have to GO!” Hearing her in so much pain was like a thousand knives to the heart, but despite everything, Dazai couldn’t help the small smile that made its way onto his face. She really didn’t get it. “Go where, huh? There’s nowhere in this world I would go without you,” he spoke softly, shutting his eyes and letting out a small sigh. He seemed strangely content.

She continued to sob, choking on her breaths as the timer reached one minute. He was so stupid and selfless and wonderful- she couldn’t let him die. “Please…you can’t do this to me, you have to leave…you can’t stay,” she whimpered almost incoherently, barely able to yell anymore. Her strength was running out, her body exhausted from all of the mental turmoil. Still, she continued to strain against the chains wrapped tightly around her as if she could break them by sheer will. “Don’t be scared, Y/N,” he called to her, the smile still on his face. “I’m right here with you and I’m not leaving you. It’s gonna be okay.” Through the walls he could hear her voice break as she wailed in agony at his words, the sound blood-curdling.

Thirty seconds.

Dazai thought it ironic that this was the way he was going out; a tragic double suicide with his lover. It was almost funny. Almost. “I love you, darling. My sweet belladonna. Not even death can keep us apart,” he reassured her, opening his eyes and staring at the wall as if he could look straight through the metal and meet her gaze. His heart squeezed in his chest as she let out another horrible, strangled sob. “There- isn’t much time- left,” she gasped in between breaths, her whole body trembling. Why couldn’t he leave her? Why couldn’t he save himself? He was too important to the ADA, to the world, to die. The guilt was eating her alive.

Ten seconds.

“I love you, Y/N,” he repeated, and he was never more sure of his words. She let out one last piercing, guttural scream, pulling at the chains so hard her skin started to bleed. She thought she might faint from the agonizing anticipation as the clock counted down her last moments of life; their last moments. “I’m so sorry,” she sobbed, squeezing her eyes shut in defeat. He shook his head once again. She had nothing to be sorry for. “It’s gonna be okay,” he whispered one final time, placing his bloody hand against the door. Offering his comfort in their last seconds alive.

Three.

Two.

One.

Silence. A flash of white hot light. A horrible booming noise. Then, nothing.

~

The rest of the ADA halted in their battle at the sound of the explosion, staring at one another in horror. Smoke billowed out from one of the dingy tunnels, the familiar scent of flames filling the air. There was no way they had failed…right? The couldn’t have lost Y/N and Dazai; not when they had worked so hard to get out of the situation with everyone unharmed.

The sound of cackling laughter echoed through the underground base mere moments after the explosion, drawing their attention to a man emerging from the shadows. They immediately recognized him as the man from the video- the organization’s leader who had personally tormented Y/N.

“The great Dazai Osamu is dead,” he shrieked, his crazed laughter forcing him to double over. The rest of the organization’s thugs began to jeer and laugh along with him, celebrating their victory over the ADA’s elusive genius. Atsushi felt tears welling in his eyes, not just for the tragic and sudden loss of his brilliant mentor whom he deeply cared for, but for Y/N as well. Those pieces of shit didn’t even care that they had killed her too; to them she was just a means to an end. The sweet woman who had shown him nothing but kindness when he joined the ADA and brought so much joy into their lives…dead.

To his left, Kunikida was also fighting back angry tears, refusing to accept that his frustrating but brilliant partner had truly been killed by these incompetent fools. Kyoka and Kenji’s eyes were blown wide in shock while Tanizaki panted heavily, his mouth gaping. It seemed that none of them could actually comprehend that the pair were truly dead and gone.

“You detectives are nothing but a bunch of sentimental fools!” The man cackled, face red and eyes bulging. He looked insane. “I can’t believe your genius was lured and killed by such an easy trap. All it took was kidnapping that little bitch and blowing her up!” All of the ADA members tensed, looking visibly appalled by his cruel, demeaning words. Not only was this man completely unhinged, but he was outright mocking an innocent woman’s death.

It was sickening.

Just as the sinking feeling of dread began to settle in the pit of Atsushi’s stomach, a distant but familiar voice called out from the smoke to interrupt their little celebration. “Ah, you underestimate me…” the voice drawled, jerking everyone’s attention to the smoking tunnel. All of the color drained from the leader’s face as he watched three silhouettes slowly emerge from the haze. “No…that’s impossible!” He screeched, all confidence gone and white as a ghost as he pointed at the trio with a shaking finger. “I watched you die! I-I saw it with my own eyes!”

Dazai, Y/N, and Dr. Yosano appeared at the entrance of the tunnel as the smoke cleared, Y/N leaned against Dazai for support while Yosano brandished her weapon. Y/N looked slightly stunned and shaken up, but the two survivors otherwise seemed completely unharmed, no trace of any injuries on their bodies.

“You did,” Dazai flashed his signature shit-eating grin, eyes flicking over to their team’s resident doctor. “Thankfully we had a backup plan in case you tried anything dirty, like you did.”

Ranpo had luckily had the foresight to bring in Yosano from a different entry point and position her near the cell that Y/N was being held in once they figured out her location, in the event that things went wrong and the bomb went off. That way she was there to immediately patch them up with her ability once it detonated, making it so that the harm was only temporary. There had never been any real threat of death; as long as Yosano worked fast enough, that is.

“You were a fool to play with this woman’s life to get back at an enemy,” Yosano spat, pointing her cleaver at the now trembling man before her. “Those who do not properly respect life will receive the ultimate punishment!” The rest of the thugs glanced around uneasily, sensing a shift in the power dynamic of the fight. Suddenly their main target was alive and well, and the rest of the agency seemed even more bloodthirsty than before.

“I-Impossible! No!” He cried, slowly backing towards another tunnel. The ADA members adjusted their stances and stared him down with what could only be described as murderous glints in their eyes, making it clear that he wouldn’t be getting away without a gruesome fight. He gulped. “Take this as a lesson!” Dazai announced cheerfully, still smiling but now with a terrifyingly cold and emotionless look in his eyes.

“There are grave consequences for those who hurt the people I love. And you’ve stupidly chosen to hurt the person I love most.”

It was a blur after that, all hell breaking loose. Dazai quickly ordered Tanizaki to cloak Y/N with his ability and get her safely to the surface as fighting broke out all around them. She wanted to protest, but the look in his eyes told her that he just wanted to get her out of harm’s way for the time being and that’d he be back at her side as soon as he was done dealing with the room of pitiful men. She certainly didn’t want to stick around and see what he and the rest of the ADA had in store for them. He pressed one last comforting kiss to her forehead before sending her off to escape with the ginger detective, his fiercely protective gaze never once leaving her as she fled the scene.

Covering the two of them with Light Snow, Tanizaki grabbed Y/N by the wrist and rushed her out of the disgusting underground hideout, pulling her away from the violent fight that had broken out. He knew that it would only be a few minutes until the team was done putting those miserable scumbags in their place.

They eventually reached the entrance of the base after a few tense minutes of running through winding tunnels, finding Ranpo and a trusted driver from the agency waiting in a running car. Tanizaki carefully opened the backseat door for her and made sure she was safely in the car before stepping back, flashing a comforting smile. “I’m so happy to see that you’re safe, Y/N. Ranpo will take care of the rest and make sure you get back to the agency safely,” he quickly explained, nodding at the driver before closing the car door and giving her a small wave.

Although she was still shellshocked, she managed a small wave in return and and even smaller smile. “Thank you,” she mouthed as the car pulled away, grateful for his help in getting her out of that hellhole. She was happy to leave the horrible place behind.

“Good to see you, Y/N,” Ranpo greeted from the seat next to her, drawing her attention away from the now small spec that was Tanizaki. Seeing her old friend sitting next to her filled her with so much relief she could hardly breathe. She opened her mouth to thank him for everything, knowing that the elaborate rescue plan was his doing, but the words caught in her throat. Everything had happened so fast that she barely had any time to process it. The bomb going off, practically dying, being saved by Yosano, briefly reuniting with Dazai, escaping the underground labyrinth. She was so overwhelmed with emotion as she realized she was actually alive and safe. Dazai was alive and safe.

We survived…

but we almost didn’t.

She promptly bent over and threw up onto the floor of the car.

Ranpo shrank into the corner of his seat, looking wildly uncomfortable but biting back his usual snarky and tone-deaf remarks. She had been through a lot, and her body had to expel all of those suffocating emotions somehow. “I had a feeling you would do that,” he grimaced, but he nonetheless leaned over and gently pat her back in a small act of comfort. Coughing on bile, Y/N felt hot tears burning the back of her eyes at the detective’s kind gesture. Everyone at the agency had shown up to help her in one way or another, and it was staggering to see just how much they cared.

Even in this very vulnerable moment, Ranpo was offering his genuine support, something that was incredibly rare for him. She would have to buy him a big care package of his favorite snacks later to show her gratitude for all he had done for her.

Eventually the car arrived at the agency, the normally bustling streets of Yokohama quiet and deserted in the late hour. Y/N apologized profusely to the driver for the small mess in the car, thoroughly embarrassed even though she hadn’t been able to help it. He simply dismissed it with a wave of his hand and an understanding smile. “No problem whatsoever, miss. You just take it easy.”

With that, Ranpo carefully guided her into the safety of the agency, leading her upstairs with one arm draped over her shoulder. When the pair finally reached the office, Y/N practically collapsed into one of the couches in the lounge area, letting out a sigh and massaging her temples to try and soothe her pounding head. Being dehydrated and malnourished for nearly 24 hours wasn’t exactly helping her stress-induced headache that had quickly developed in the car ride over.

Once again, as if reading her mind, Ranpo disappeared for a moment before returning with a water bottle, a few snacks, medicine, and a blanket in his arms, placing them on the coffee table in front of her. It was like he knew everything she needed- and he probably did. “Rest up and take care of yourself,” he instructed, his tone leaving no room for debate. “I’m sure Dazai will be here soon to take you home, but in the meantime try to relax and get some food and water in you. You’ve had a long day.” She smiled gratefully, albeit a little tiredly, at the gesture. Yet another rare display of his care.

“Thank you, for everything,” she whispered, trying to convey just how sincerely she meant those words. She wouldn’t soon forget his help. He flashed her a small, lopsided grin before waving her off dramatically. “It was nothing for the world’s greatest detective!” He declared, pointing a finger into the air before turning on his heels and making his way back to his desk, munching on a snack of his own. Just like that, Y/N was alone.

She quietly opened one of the snacks Ranpo had provided her, washing down some pain-relief pills with the water after she’d eaten a few bites. When her nauseous stomach began to protest the food, she forced herself to stop. Although she was still incredibly hungry, she certainly didn’t want to end up with another mess to clean up. Shuddering at the thought, she wrapped herself up with the plush blanket and tried to calm her racing heart. Her mind was still reeling from everything. The constant thoughts of the traumatic events she had just undergone only made her headache and nausea worse by the minute, and her brain felt like it might explode.

She was exhausted.

If she could just clear her mind and close her eyes for a moment…

~

Without even realizing she had dozed off on the couch, she awoke some time later to the feeling of a slender hand cupping her cheek, stroking her jaw with delicate precision. She didn’t even have to open her eyes to know it was Dazai. “Wake up, my love,” his hushed voice cooed, immediately pulling her from her slumber. Slowly blinking her eyes open, she was met with his comforting smile, but his eyes were unimaginably sad. Her heart ached.

“Ready to go home?”

Nodding sleepily, Y/N slowly picked herself up from the couch, shrugging the blanket off her shoulders and neatly folding it up before placing it back on the coffee table. After gathering her bearings, she realized that some of the other agency members had also returned to the office, likely to fill out paperwork before heading home for the night. She felt a pang of guilt shoot through her as she realized they would have to do extra work because of her. If you hadn’t gone and gotten yourself kidnapped, they would all be home sleeping right now.

A dreadful thought suddenly crossed her mind. Would she have to fill out paperwork and recount what had happened to her? It seemed likely, as they kept track of nearly every incident like this. The very idea made another wave of nausea roll through her.

As if sensing her worry, Kunikida rounded the corner with a stack of papers in-hand, taking in her dead-tired appearance with a single glance. “Just so you know, we will need a statement on what happened eventually, Y/N, but I don’t want you to even think about it until you’re recovered and ready to talk,” he instructed, concern and sympathy evident in his expression despite his no-nonsense tone. He was truly glad to see her safe and back under the protection of the agency. Y/N nodded, relieved that she wouldn’t have to recount the traumatic events until she was ready. At the moment she couldn’t even imagine a time when she would ever feel ready.

Turning his attention to Dazai, the sympathetic look vanished from Kunikida’s face and morphed into one of general annoyance. “Don’t think that you’re getting out of doing the paperwork just because you almost died,” he barked, jabbing an accusing finger at his partner’s chest. “It’s no excuse to be lazy.”

Dazai placed a hand to his heart and looked aghast, as if the very insinuation of him trying to avoid paperwork was ridiculous. “Me? Getting out of paperwork? Really, Kunikida-kun, what do you take me for?” He gasped, earning a growl and a sharp smack to the head with a roll of papers.

Their antics miraculously drew out a soft chuckle from Y/N’s lips, but it was half-hearted at best. As enjoyable as Dazai and Kunikida’s banter was, her eyes still drooped with fatigue and her anxious mind longed to rest in the comfort of her own home. She just wanted this horrible day to be over with. Gaze dropping to Y/N’s face at the sound of her reserved amusement, Dazai quickly noted the weight of her exhaustion and took it as their cue to leave.

“I think it’s time for us to get home,” he announced, glancing back up at Kunikida and sharing a knowing look with him. The blond held his stare for a moment before sighing, giving a small nod before politely bidding the two a good night and moving on to pester Ranpo about doing his work.

Placing a hand on the small of her back, Dazai carefully led Y/N out of the agency and into the streets of Yokohama below, glancing at her every few minutes to make sure she was doing ok. She was quiet during the walk home, her expression blank and her eyelids heavy. He found himself wishing he could figure out what she was thinking. Normally he could read her like a book, always knowing exactly how she was feeling or what was troubling her. Now she just seemed numb. A dark part of his mind feared that she was distancing herself from him because their relationship had nearly gotten her killed.

Would she even want to be with him anymore? Would she leave him to heal the trauma he had caused her? He shuddered at the thought.

Eventually arriving at their destination, Y/N quickly realized that Dazai had led her back to his apartment instead of her own. That’s right. Mine was broken into, and no one’s been around to clean up the mess that was probably left behind. She was grateful for his thoughtfulness. There was no way she would’ve been able to keep her composure if she had walked into her home and seen the evidence of her capture.

Walking into the entryway after Dazai had unlocked the door, Y/N immediately wanted to cry as the warm, familiar scent of his apartment hit her. It just smelled like him, something she thought she’d lost mere hours ago. The familiarity of the space nearly brought tears to her eyes.

It was overwhelming, to say the least.

Noticing her distant, watery gaze, Dazai quickly swooped in to distract her, helping her slip out of her shoes and guiding her to the bedroom to change out of her clothes. Although Yosano had done away with all of the physical injuries on her body, she still felt dirty, the scent of mold and metal clinging to her shirt. It drew her back to that room and the horrible, agonizingly slow ticking of the bomb. The memories lingered in the back of her mind as she discarded her old clothes, slipping into a comfortable t-shirt and a soft pair of shorts that she kept in Dazai’s drawer for the nights when she slept over.

“Better?” Dazai questioned softly when she had finished changing, eyes searching hers almost frantically for any sign of discomfort. He wanted to help her in any way possible, but for once in his life, he didn’t know what to do. The day had taken a toll on him as well and he was struggling to maintain his calm facade. Staring deep into his eyes, she gave the slightest of nods and opened her mouth to reassure him, to tell him that she was ok now. She was home, she was safe thanks to him, she was with him- everything had turned out just fine. But for the second time that night, the words refused to come out.

Instead, she just stared in silence before collapsing into a sudden fit of sobs, knees buckling and sending her falling to the hardwood below. Panicked, Dazai scrambled to meet her at the floor, strong arms holding her steady while she attempted to muffle her pained cries with the palm of her hand. Her sudden tears had him terrified that he had done something wrong. “Hey, hey, what’s the matter, angel? Please, let me help-“ he couldn’t even finish his sentence before she threw herself into his arms, holding him tighter than she had ever held anyone.

Her desperation to feel him and be close to him now was due to the fact that their reunion in the underground base had been so short lived. Y/N was in too much shock, not understanding how she had gone from dying a gruesome death to perfectly fine in only a matter of seconds. She could barely even register Dazai’s arms wrapped around her in a bone crushing hug or the sweet encouragements he was whispering in her ear.

Dazai was used to Yosano’s incredible ability. Having been saved by it countless times, being revived by the dark-haired doctor was practically second nature to him. But Y/N was still reeling from the excruciating pain she had experienced moments ago that had just vanished. It was like it had tattooed itself under her skin, a painful memory of her near-death.

The shock of being revived clouded her mind as Dazai had clutched her body close, kissing her forehead and squeezing her tight. She couldn’t even enjoy the pure relief that normally would have filled her when she pieced together that she was alive and safe in her loving boyfriend’s arms. Before she could comprehend what was going on, he had already helped her off the ground and had begun to walk her down the hallway with Yosano, headed towards the main fight.

Now, on the floor of Dazai’s dark bedroom, her mind had finally registered exactly what had transpired mere hours ago. He sacrificed himself just so I wouldn’t be alone in my last moments. He stayed with me until the very end, and he was the first thing I saw after I was healed by Yosano. He means more to me than anyone ever has- and I almost got him killed.

Shushing her cries of despair, Dazai cradled her head to his chest, feeling tears building in his own eyes. He just wanted to take all of her pain away. “Shhh…it’s alright, darling, you’re safe,” he whispered into her ear, feeling her grip around him tighten even more. She was gasping for breath, practically hyperventilating. It seemed her distress was never ending. “Please, my love…please tell me what’s wrong…I want to help you,” he muttered, stroking her hair and pressing gentle kisses into the crown of her head. Her muffled cries only grew louder and he only felt more helpless.

Eventually, after a few minutes of his hushed reassurances and tight, comforting hold, she managed to catch her breath enough to speak. When she pulled away from his chest and finally looked up at him, her eyes held a sorrow so deep that it broke Dazai’s heart all over again. “I- I’m so sorry,” she rasped, sounding completely broken. “You almost died because of me. I hurt you.” Another watery sob escaped her throat before she hung her head and pressed a hand to her lips yet again to stifle her pained cries.

Her words left him in utter shock. He couldn’t imagine how she could possibly think any of this was on her. Not when the truth was the complete opposite. It was time for him to be honest about his feelings, no matter how terrifying it was. “Hey…will you look at me?” He questioned gently, tilting her chin upwards with his finger to guide her gaze back to his. The smallest of smiles graced his lips when she finally complied, glassy eyes locking on his own. “There you are. It hurts that you blame yourself at all, darling. Especially when it’s me you have to blame for all of this.” When her distraught expression morphed into one of confusion, his hands made their way to her own, squeezing them tight. She absentmindedly stroked her thumb along his wrist in a comforting gesture, urging him to explain.

“…I knew Yosano would be there the whole time we were trying to rescue you. I knew she was waiting for us in case things went wrong, and that she would heal us if the bomb went off,” he began, staring intently into her eyes as he spoke. “But listening to you in there, scared and alone, waiting for it to detonate, was horrible. It was the worst possible scenario that we tried so hard to avoid. And knowing that you would have to endure the god awful pain of the explosion even for a moment, and I could do nothing about it, made me sick. It was just another cruel reminder that I always end up hurting the people I care for.”

His sincere confession had stunned Y/N. Though she and her boyfriend were incredibly close, Dazai was a fairly private person who didn’t often air his deep insecurities. The fact that he was being so vulnerable in this moment told her just how genuine his words were, and it hurt like hell to hear. Before she could say anything to rebut his confession, he continued. “I just feel like…a curse to the people I love most. They’ll always be hurt or worse because of me. And it’s so hard to live with myself because of that.”

Eyes widening, Y/N shook her head in disbelief. She couldn’t even imagine where his horrible self-deprecating talk was coming from. “How could you even say that? You saved me. I’m only here and alive because of you and the agency.” He let out a soft, humorless chuckle at her words, his gaze distant. “I failed you, my love. You were almost killed because of me.” He practically spat the word out, like he was disgusted with himself. His grip on her hands tightened.

“The whole reason those men took you in the first place was to get revenge on me. To force me to choose to live with the guilt of letting you die, or die alongside you. The fact that you had to be wrapped up in all that, traumatized and hurt and almost killed because of my enemies, my line of work…” he trailed off, his voice nearly breaking as his eyes begged her to understand. “No matter how careful I was and how much I tried to protect you, it meant nothing in the end.”

The guilt inside of him was all-consuming. Yes, they had saved her. Yes, they had made sure that the organization would never lay a finger on her or anyone else ever again. But what if something had gone wrong? What if they had been outsmarted, and Yosano hadn’t been waiting in the wings to heal them after the bomb went off? Y/N had been tortured, terrified, in pain because of him. To know that it was his fault that she had been scarred so deeply was his own personal hell.

In a way, the assholes who kidnapped her had won. It was Dazai’s penance, as their leader had called it- still living with the crushing guilt even after he had saved her. Hating himself over and over again for putting her in that position in the first place. Remembering her in the video, bruised and bloody and scared for her life. Constantly reliving her desperate cries for him to leave her in those final moments while he was utterly helpless to save her.

It was torture.

He just felt so stupid for being outsmarted by the lowly organization and allowing his precious lover to get hurt in the process.

“Dazai,” Y/N spoke sharply, effectively snapping him out of his spiral. She rarely called him Dazai unless she was being serious, and she couldn’t stand hearing him blame himself for one more second. “I won’t lie to you and say that today wasn’t one of the worst days of my life. The fear I felt, knowing I’d been taken from my home, having to count down the minutes to my death…” she paused, squeezing her eyes shut and shaking her head as if willing away the unpleasant memories. He patiently waited for her to come back to herself, giving her hands a comforting squeeze.

“…It’ll take me a long time to get over that,” she finally admitted after a moment. “But the worst part of it wasn’t being kidnapped, or hurt by those men, or waiting for the inevitable explosion. It was thinking that I was going to lose you too. All I could focus on in those last minutes was you behind that door, too stubborn to leave me. All I could think about was how much I loved you, and how much I wanted you to be selfish for once and save yourself.”

She watched as he blinked back tears, a mystified expression in his face. As if the very thought of someone worrying about him and his life was completely foreign. Wanting to make herself absolutely clear, she kept going, no matter how much it hurt to see him struggling to understand her love for him. “I could never blame you for what happened. Those men did this to us- they caused all this pain and hurt. Not you.”

Her words left him dumbfounded, to say the least. They managed to remind him of why he loved her as fiercely as he did- she was the good in his life. Even after such a traumatic experience, she was incapable of blaming him for what had happened. Her love and compassion for him despite the darkness he brought into their lives was eye opening, forcing him to realize that no matter how much he thought it untrue, he was capable of being loved.

And how lucky he was to be loved by her.

Unable to articulate his complicated feelings any other way, Dazai cupped her face and surged forward, pressing his lips into her own and kissing her with such genuine fervor that it left Y/N breathless. Although she was momentarily shocked by his sudden show of affection, it quickly wore off as she melted into him. This was the first time they had truly kissed since reuniting, and they were each aching to communicate just how much they loved one another. How close they were to losing their other half; the person that completely them.

Her hands raked through his brown curls almost erratically, desperate to compensate for those long, torturous hours spent away from him. He seemed equally if not more hungry for her touch, like he was trying to prove to himself that she was really there with him after their near death experience. His slender fingers glided across her body and gripped her closer to him, nearly feral in his pursuit to feel every inch of her. She tugged at the hair near the base of his head and elicited a low, rumbling moan in return.

“My beautiful girl,” he rasped as he briefly pulled away, eyes roaming over her body with a look of complete infatuation. She was the most perfect thing he’d ever seen—and he’d almost lost her. His arm snaked around her waist to tug her impossibly closer, practically pulling her into his lap. She didn’t mind.

He continued to plant kisses all over her face, her hair, her jaw- anywhere he could reach. His lips ghosted over every inch of skin that had previously been covered in blood or bruises, almost as though he had memorized the exact locations of all her injuries just from watching the video hours ago. Knowing Dazai, he probably had committed all of her injuries to memory.

In between kisses, he muttered gentle praises and affections into her ear, all of which made her face flush a deep red. She would never tire of the way his whispered adorations made her heart race and the feeling of his soft lips against her skin. “My darling. My sweet belladonna. You’re everything to me. Everything,” he breathed, kissing the tip of her nose. “Words cannot even describe how much you mean to me. I’m nothing without you.”

Y/N rolled her head back as his lips trailed up her neck and neared her jawline, sucking in a sharp breath when his hands moved into her hair and his grip tightened. His kisses were becoming more passionate, more anxious to prove to her how grateful he was that she was finally back in his arms. That he would never let anyone lay a hand on her again. She allowed his love the wash over her, happily reciprocating when his lips finally captured her own once again.

He tasted like salty tears and home.

Eventually breaking away from one another to catch their breath, Y/N rested her forehead against Dazai’s and let out a shaky sigh, finally letting herself feel safe after what had felt like an eternity of fear and unease. Just being in his presence was enough to help alleviate some of crushing panic she had felt just hours ago.

“Thank you for being with me. For always protecting me, even when you think you’re not. And for never leaving me behind,” she whispered, glancing up into his big brown eyes that were mere inches away from her own. Although the thought of him almost dying with her in the explosion filled her entire being with dread, his determination to stay with her and offer her comfort until the very end meant more to her than she could explain.

“I wouldn’t dream of abandoning you. I’ll spend every day of the rest of my life protecting you and making sure something like this never happens again,” he assured her with nothing but sincerity in his soothing voice, taking her hands and gently brushing his lips over her knuckles. Her eyes fluttered closed at the gesture. “You are the most wonderful thing in my life. My reason for living at all. It’s hard to wrap my head around what I’ve possibly done to deserve you, but I promise I’ll do everything within my power to cherish you and keep you safe as long as I live.”

Y/N felt herself genuinely smiling for the first time in hours at her lover’s words. She was filled with such utter relief to be back in the safety of his arms. To be home, alive, and in love despite it all. Her heart felt like it would burst from all the love it held for Dazai Osamu.

“I love you,” she breathed, eyes meeting gentle brown once again. She was desperate for him to understand just how much she meant those words. To convey how safe he made her feel, and how much his presence comforted her. That no matter the danger she was in, she knew he would always be there for her.

“I love you too, Y/N,” he replied effortlessly, a part of him melting at the sight of her smile. He would burn the world just to keep that beautiful expression on her face. He made a silent vow to himself in that moment— no matter what it took, he would never lose her again.

The two eventually ended up in Dazai’s bed, practically clinging to one another as they shifted into a comfortable position. There would be no such thing as personal space that night. Y/N, who had been worried that the horrors she had faced would keep her exhausted body awake through the night, was pleasantly surprised to find that she was calm and content in Dazai’s embrace, already dozing off. He chuckled softly as her whole body relaxed against him.

“Sleep tight, my love. I’ve got you,” he mumbled into her hair, his warm breath fanning across her neck. She shivered and nuzzled herself further into his embrace, a soft smile on her face. No harm would come to her so long as she was in his arms.

Though they were both still riddled with guilt and turbulent emotions from the terrible night, they silently agreed to let go of their baggage for the time being and just appreciate one another, falling asleep in each other’s embrace.

Safe and home at last.

………………………………………………………………………………….

☆ note: yeahhhh dazai fic! i literally haven’t written in ages but i’ve been knee-deep in my bungo stray dogs era and dazai is taking up most of my brain capacity at the moment. this feels both rushed and wayyyy too long at the same time lol, i just had that feral writing energy and had to get it off my chest as soon as possible. it might be a mess but i’m exhausted and i’ve reread it too many times to catch all my mistakes lmaooo whatever. thanks so much for reading :)