Akutagawa Ryūnosuke was the type of man people warned you to keep away from.

They said he was merely a shadow of what a human should be; only the dark fragments left behind.

But then, you'd always considered shadows the best companions. They were loyal, steadfast creatures, impossible to outrun, impossible to catch, ubiquitous in nature. They never betrayed you, because they were puppets; your own body bled life into them; they had no face, no life or will of their own, they lived to serve, to be controlled.

Akutagawa Ryūnosuke.

He was a shadow, a puppet - but one who cheated his strings.

You worked for the same company as him, but your paths rarely crossed. When they did, one glimpse of that haunted face with those haunted black eyes was enough to snare you. He was unwittingly addictive. But then, you'd always been drawn to danger, to bloodlust.

Black and red.

That's the world you knew. A world where cruelty is repaid by cruelty. Blood is repaid by blood. It was a cold, lonely world. But the world you chose to live in, all the same.

And it appeared Akutagawa was no different.

Keep away from him, they said.

But how could you, when he had his strings around your neck.

~

Your shoes padded silently against the tiles as you slipped through the doorway, a black silhouette, and then stillness.

Another shadow moved some way ahead of you. This one was more intense, more prevalent - a crippling darkness that seemed everywhere at once. It stole around the corner with black threads snapping in its wake, and you lurched from your hiding place.

Short, sharp pants. Stacatto heels. Creaking leather.

The safety catch came undone. You could never be too careful.

You slunk around the corner, back pressed up against the cool bricks. The air hung thick with shadow, but one was missing.

Misty [e/c] eyes picked through the plaza, moonlight shedding like snakeskin across the rooftops, basking you in an ethereal glow. You inched forward, finger grazing the trigger of your gun, clasped in your sweaty palms.

One step forward... then another.

Something black warped across your vision at break-neck speed. Two shots pierced the silence, bullets slamming into the adjacent wall with dull thuds.

He'd seen you coming.

But you were oblivious.

And now he was working your strings, head turning this way and that, breaths tumbling out in unsteady pants.

Where did he go?

"What are you doing here?" His voice was cold and smooth like black quartz, betraying no emotion.

You shifted your weight, eyes flickering this way and that, blind. "I could ask the same of you."

Your voice was gritty and low, trained to mask your emotions from years on the job. People thought emotion made you weak, that it crippled your strength and blinded you. You used it to make you stronger, to fuel you.

A presence bloomed behind you, and you teetered slightly as something slid around the wrist possessing the gun. It felt coarse and scratchy, and you realised it was part of his coat. The garment that was rumoured to be a manifestation of the devil itself; it's what granted him his ability.

A clean snap and the barrel of the gun hit the ground. He'd sliced it in two, just like that. You angled your head to the side. "Akutagawa Ryunosuke. The silent rabid dog." Your own words hung in the air like thick smoke, choking your lungs of breath.

"[L/N] [F/N]. Port Mafia Assassin." He said you name as if it left a bitter taste in his mouth.

"You know who I am?"

The ground beneath you trembled as he moved, finally coming to rest in your sight. Your heart slowed down, stalled, and then started back up at a rapid pace as your eyes snagged his. Deep-set and soulless, face framed by coarse raven hair. He moved eerily quiet, gliding, translucent, like a shadow.

"Why are you here?" He repeated, walking ahead.

You tiptoed behind him. "It doesn't matter."

Akutagawa was quick to reply. "You were following me." It wasn't a question.

And you didn't have an answer. "What are you doing out here?"

Akutagawa stopped, his eyes crinkling as he glanced back at you, dancing silver and black stars unearthed within. "That's none of your concern."

You didn't hesitate to follow as he took off again, not bothering to hide it, but he didn't say anything either.

Past the market plaza - where, in the day, the stalls had wound up their flimsy tarpaulins and exposed all they had to offer in the department of traditional cuisine and exotic silks and leathers - and into the urban quarter, beyond the avenue of skeletal blossoms, salmon petals dancing around your ankles, and into the lower slums, where rats skittered to and fro and white eyes leered at you from the shadows.

You wrinkled your nose, footsteps cushioned by the thick layer of grime that carpeted the ground - slick with mud and sullied rainwater, wrappers, cloths, a miscellany of odds and ends that had been abandoned and left to rot.

Akutagawa walked smoothly through the street - with it's twisted, craggy houses and twitching curtains - as if the route was engraved into his mind. He never once turned to face you, to even acknowledge you. Maybe he was leading you into an ambush; into a death trap. Somewhere quiet and secluded, where he could have you all to himself as he tore the flesh from your bones, bit by bit, and succumb to the rumours of the estranged stray dog.

But that didn't stop you. You were drawn to him, a moth to a flame - knowing you'll get burnt, but unable to tear yourself away. He was, after all, your puppet master. You were a shadow of his shadow, a mere pawn.

All of a sudden, you stopped dead, your feet coming to rest with a small plume of dust.

The street was empty. Not a shadow stirred.

You stood, rooted to the spot, looking about frantically, until you heard it - a cough, a splutter of words, somewhere above you. You lifted your eyes and peered through the overhanging rooftops and patchwork tiles; a black silhouette was painted against the moon.

You were on the roof before you knew it, hoisting yourself onto the guttering and scaling up the rocks with hardly a breath in between.

He was sat with his back against the chimney-breast, one leg drawn up to his chin, black eyes trained on the sprawling suburbs below.

He shuffled his legs as you sat next to him, inhaling the mist that rippled across the skyline. Time passed slowly and quickly all at once, trapping you in the moment, before yanking you back into the reality of daylight.

You hadn't even noticed him leave.

~

"Why do you come up here?"

You asked that every night. And every night, you received the same quiet grunt in reply.

"Why do you?"

A shift of weight. Silence.

You had an inkling that both of you were ignorant. Ignorant of the truth.

But still, he never asked you to leave. Not once. You even made small talk on occasion, but his answers were always brief and blunt and never quite revealing the whole story.

Tonight was one such encounter.

"I heard you were injured in your last assignment," you mused aloud, shifting your legs so that the gun clinked against your thigh, a warning.

"A scratch."

"A scratch?" You echoed in a whisper, and he shifted his gaze away from you.

A man of little words, little emotion, yet he intrigued you like an impossible puzzle. There was something about him, something impossible, something you couldn't see, but rather feel - in the words he breathed, the air he stole, the steps he walked. A longing, a craving, for something right in front of him, but just out of reach.

"A scratch," he gritted, just as the wind scraped aside his hair to reveal a small, serrated line on his forehead.

Barely fluttering a breath, you shuffled over to him - rocks skittering beneath your legs - and pressed a finger to the cool surface of his skin, damp with perspiration as you traced the curve of broken skin.

"How did it happen?" You breathed, inhaling his smoky scent and retracting your touch as a sudden cold stole over you.

"I was reckless."

You sniffed humourlessly. "Reckless, huh? I know a thing or two about that."

Akutagawa inclined his head, black eyes finding yours. An eternal twilight, unbroken by stardust or moonlight.

You were simply a shadow in his world of perpetual darkness.

"You're on the run."

"I'm a cornered rat," you spat. "The police have power but the Mafia practically controls the city. I either stay and kill, or leave and be killed."

A crease appeared on his forehead, coat lapping about his waist like a puddle of black blood. "Do you like killing?"

You swallowed a lump in your throat. "It's become a hobby. You?"

"A way of life."

You ran your tongue along your top lip, chapped from the cold, toying with a loose thread on your jacket. "Don't you find it lonely, being an assassin?"

Akutagawa tsked. "Why? Because you end up losing everyone you love?" He spoke with spite, a kind of bitterness that made your heart bleed for him.

Then you remembered the fate that ushered him straight into the Mafia's poisoned embrace. "You know what that's like, huh?"

His face warped then, into something ugly and wicked, and yet sorrowful at the same time. He still mourned for them. He mourned for his loss, for his loneliness in life. He mourned and yearned for the same thing.

Is that why he let you stay?

~

You came to be known as the quiet ones.

Secrets didn't exist in the Mafia. They had rats in every corner of the slums, breeding lies and rumours into the ears of everyone who listened. And word spread like wildfire of the shadows that would dance on the rooftop to a silent symphony, letting the moonlight gallop around their feet and tangle in their hair.

People began to shy away from you too. They said the devil was nourishing his own power inside of you now, that you would form an undefeated duo, bent on wreaking havoc in the Mafia's name.

Lies.

Petty, petty lies.

~

You were asymmetrical, one a master, the other a pawn. He held your strings in the palm of his hand. He owned you. He controlled you. He breathed life into you. And he could rob it from you too.

You both lived under the same blackened sky, unlit by the stars. But when you were together, you were flint and stone, unwittingly igniting a spark between you. A dangerous, frenzied spark, that you struggled to keep under control.

But you were drawn to danger. You were drawn to him. And so you nursed that spark, let it grow and ignite and kindle into something wild and untamable. A beast.

"Weren't you ever told not to play with fire?"

Despite the warnings, fire became your plaything.

Once ignited, it wouldn't stop. Not until its flames had licked every thought that crossed your mind, lapped up every breath that parted your lips, devoured every beat of your heart. It would not stop until it consumed you whole.

And Akutagawa knew that. But still he stoked the flames.

You were a puppet. He was the puppetmaster.

You were a moth. He was an inferno.

You never stood a chance.