Chapter Text
There was once a duo so powerful that when they stood shoulder to shoulder, those across enemy lines knew the odds of returning home were slim. To face them head-on…. their combat prowess, their disciplined forces, their unwavering devotion to the Mafia…. was a death sentence. And yet, enemies still advanced, clinging to the hope that if anyone survived, they would at least be remembered as brave.
Osamu had no last name.
He was an orphaned errand boy, taken into the Mafia’s underbelly to handle the work that could not be named. The things too messy, too beneath the hands of men who still wished to believe themselves clean. Unfortunate souls like him were called slaves, though the name meant little beyond marking their disposability. He knew nothing of his family or where he came from. He only knew that his messy brown hair and dull brown eyes were inherited from someone who never stayed. He knew he was born of “poor blood,” a label that condemned him to chains before he could even understand what it meant to be human. That knowledge was pitifully small compared to everything he would never know.
When Osamu turned fifteen, the leader of the Mafia, always called the King, declared that anyone with a Gift could be trained and serve in real missions. Previous Kings had refused outsiders, fearing that strength would breed confidence, confidence would breed rebellion, and rebellion would topple a corrupt government built on treating the gifted as less than animals.
Under the former reign, slaves who were born, dragged or trafficked into the Mafia were traded worse than street vermin passed from owner to owner, abused until there was nothing left to take, then discarded. Survival was not living. It was endurance.
Osamu had the bitter fortune of serving directly under the King. Something about him earned a thin veil of protection. He was fed decently. Allowed to bathe more often than most. Given a bed that was thin, but his. He knew how rare that mercy was.
Yet even among those who had more than him, his mischievous grin and irreverent laughter never faded. His voice echoed through palace corridors as he needled cooks and gardeners alike, so persistent that even those who despised him found themselves smiling despite it. He felt bold enough to reveal the Gift he carried, something most slaves hid in terror.
Osamu could nullify the abilities of others with a single touch. An ability that would later be dubbed by his enemies, No Longer Human.
In his youth it was crude, inconsistent, and dangerous but powerful enough that the King personally encouraged his enlistment.
“This is exactly what the Mafia needs,” the King had said. “Your Gift. Your spirit.”
That was when Osamu truly met Chuuya Nakahara.
He had seen him before, in fragments. Passing between pillars, half-hidden by garden foliage. Pale, as though the sun never lingered on his skin. Hair a striking red, vivid as flame. Even then, Osamu could sense it: gravity bent subtly around him, responding to his presence. As he got closer to adulthood his gift also received a name, Upon the Tainted Sorrow
Chuuya was nobility in the Mafia world. His family’s service ran deep, his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all been decorated gifted Mafiosos. Around him were others like him: sons and daughters of long lines of Mafia elites, their pedigrees carrying weight before they even spoke.. When Chuuya was still a child, his father died. One might expect grief to soften someone but Chuuya’s expression never changed. If anything, his shoulders grew stiffer, his spine more rigid, as if he had accepted the weight of expectation without complaint.
When Chuuya turned sixteen and enlisted, the so-called “ice prince” stood beside Osamu as an equal. For the first time, Osamu noticed how blue Chuuya’s eyes were. They were cool and piercing, a quiet contrast to the fire of his hair.
As years went on, amongst the dirt of the training pits and dilapidated buildings, the classes blurred. They became a heartbeat in sync. By day, they were the Twin Executives, Chuuya leading the highborn, Osamu leading the reformed slaves. By night, in the stifling privacy of rented rooms, they were something the law called an abomination. They traded the weight of their gifts for the heat of each other’s skin, counting the ways they could make the other come, tethered by a secret that would mean immediate execution for Osamu. For Chuuya, disgrace at best. Exile, if mercy prevailed.
When the old King fell and a vengeful successor took power, the world soured. Mori Ōgai had a disdain for Osamu that was immediate and unmistakable. When Osamu’s second-in-command, Odasaku, made a catastrophic error that cost sixty percent of the slave forces, Mori declared it treason. He wrenched away the last traces of their humanity, locking their Gifts behind iron chains, and returned them to the hands of those who would own and discard them without a second thought. He denied the dead their graves.
Osamu begged for their dignity. He knelt on the red carpet of Mori’s Chamber, pleading for the souls of the dead. Mori responded with shackles around his neck and wrists that restricted Osamu’s gift. He then ordered him beat.
“You are fortunate this is all you receive,” the King said coolly. “Consider it mercy.”
For months, the boisterous Osamu disappeared. He became a ghost haunting bars and dark corners, his laughter replaced by a hollow, drunken silence. Then there were the painful times Chuuya had to witness Osamu’s summoning for Mori’s amusement.
In hindsight, Chuuya should not have been surprised.
Not after watching Osamu lose everything, his command, his soldiers, the closest thing he had to family.
When Chuuya returned from a brutal mission, a soldier stopped him at the entrance to his home.
“The King has issued a notice.”
Osamu had defected.
He had become the enemy’s Executive.
The battlefield was a carnage he recognized instantly. The pattern of destruction, the very air itself, reeked of memories. Memories of fighting at Osamu’s side. He forced himself to steady his breathing, and that was when he saw it: dark, unruly hair, familiar enough that his hand twitched with the instinct to reach for it one last time.
But when Osamu turned, his eyes were nothing like the ones Chuuya remembered. They were filled with malice. They were sharp, furious, and fixed squarely on him. Darker than the night. Darker than the feeling detonating in Chuuya’s chest.
"Osamu, tell me this isn’t true," Chuuya whispered, the gravity around him flickering with his grief. "Please... don't do this."
Osamu didn't flinch. He held up a silver noble’s pin, the one thing a slave-soldier was never allowed to earn. "Do you ever wonder why they never gave us these, Chuuya?" His voice was a serrated edge. "It would mean we were significant. We gave everything, and we aren't even worth a scrap of metal."
“What happened to you?” Chuuya demanded, his voice breaking as it rose. “What could drive you so low that you’d slaughter our own people?”
Osamu scowled and slipped the pin into his pocket.
“You do realize you’re alone,” he said calmly. “And surrounded.” His gaze darkened, even as the sun burned hot against the back of his neck. “Shouldn’t you mind your manners? Or do you think our past means I won’t kill you?”
Chuuya spread his hand. Gravity answered, the ground beneath them shuddering in a low, warning tremor.
Osamu laughed.
“Oh. I see,” he said lightly. “So you want to be buried with the rest of these animals.”
“Osamu,” Chuuya said quietly, carefully—like one wrong sound might spook him. “I know we owe you. We owe you everything. But this isn’t the way. I can’t fight you today. I won’t.”
“I’d like to see you try,” Osamu scoffed.
“Come back,” Chuuya pleaded, his voice shaking. “Mori, he’ll understand. If you need a life to convince you…” His breath hitched, tears gathering until they blurred his vision. “Then take mine. It’s yours.”
A beat.
“It’s always been yours.”
Osamu’s expression faltered for a fraction of a second. "You have always been such a fool, Chuuya. If you offer your life, I will kill you." The sword Osamu must have stolen from one of those who laid dead around them glistened under the sun.
In a blur of steel and Nullification, they clashed. Without his gravity to shield him, Chuuya was forced to rely on raw muscle memory against the man who knew every move he would ever make. Osamu leaned in, his breath a frost against Chuuya’s ear.
"If you thought we ever meant anything, you were a bigger fool than I thought."
The dagger went in with a sickening squelch.
Chuuya gasped as the world tilted, the air ripped from his lungs when Osamu tore the blade from his chest.
He dropped to his knees, staring up into Osamu’s cold eyes, unable to force his throat or mouth to obey him. No words came. Only a sharp, broken gasp that sent agony tearing through his chest. Tears welled, whether from the pain or the devastation he couldn’t tell, blurring the sight of Osamu’s beautiful, merciless face.
“I did say I would kill you.”
Osamu shoved him back without hesitation. Chuuya hit the ground on his side, vision swimming, but he could still make out Osamu’s silhouette as he turned away and walked off without looking back.
The sun overhead seemed to dim all at once, daylight collapsing into night
When his eyes opened up again, it was a month later. Osamu had officially become the enemy's Executive. He had slaughtered hundreds of their own soldiers. He was declared a traitor.
Standing orders classified him as kill-on-sight.