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can’t stop thinking about that one prompt about paladin!mike pulling the hood up for cleric!will (bonus point if they both have that doomed yearning look on their faces)

"Time slowed down."

"Time slowed down."

mike: what vow?

p!mike:

If you keep that in mind as a big motivator during his Mafia days to get stronger, because strength meant he would not be discarded by the Mafia, it makes sense why it confuses (and upsets) him so much when Dazai says Atsushi is more talented than him:

Strength is a safe haven to Akutagawa. It is the only safety he has ever known. It's not jealousy that drives him to fight Atsushi here. I think it's wrong to even attribute it to Dazai in any sort of way. The act of Dazai saying Atsushi is better affects him so much because it throws into jeopardy everything Akutagawa thought he knew about the world so far.

Akutagawa is still chasing real meaning to his existence, something he thought to have found in the Mafia – and then you have Dazai, the embodiment of the Mafia as far as Akutagawa knew, coming back and putting Atsushi in Akutagawa's way and basically saying, "your worldview of existence so far? Yeah, that's wrong."