The glint of an eyeball beneath the bed, a shift from the depths of the closet in the middle of the night, a reflection in the mirror that falls just a little bit late in mimicking your movements. The pat pat patpatpatpatpatpat of your heartbeat as the anxiety crawls beneath your skin, your mind racing, trying to provide a logical explanation as to why you didn't just see what you thought you did. Monsters don't exist, it's only clothes in the closet, and your reflection - why is it smiling like that?

So you run, feet pounding against the floor, the pitter-patter paying homage to the pounding in your chest. So you run, screaming and crying until you find your mother, and she tucks you safely into bed, and dispels all the demons back to wherever they call home. And once more you are safe.

Fear is a children's toy. The older one gets, the less they fear the dark, and the monstrosities that lurk within it. It does not disappear, but takes a new shape, becoming more rational, as logic prevails over imagination. The sketchy man hanging around in shadows of the bar, airplane flights in unexpectedly harsh weather, the realization that your childhood dreams are no longer a possibility, those are the shapes that fear takes.

But the monster under the bed has ways of coming back to find you. Or rather, you can summon him back. Fear without logic, a scary movie watched alone as dusk settles outside, unexplainable creaaaaks and bangs from empty rooms late at night, the icy feeling of the basement floor against bare feet, the air still, too still, as it clings to your skin.

Uncontrollable fear, the monster itself, returned to me when I watched my brother die.

Every detail, the crunch of his skull as the bullet hit, the sickening thud of his body hitting the floor, the nails of my sister cutting into the flesh of my arm as we forced our screams down, everything had been seared into the backs of my eyelids. Eyes opened or closed, the image would never leave me.

White hair became stained red, as the puddle beneath him began to grow. I don't remember standing. I don't remember dragging my sister away from the door we were hiding behind. I don't remember us racing out the back door of our home - no, of the house. It wasn't a home anymore. I don't remember anything but the running. It was like a dream, I felt….nothing. It had been raining, a fitting setting for the horror story I had just lived, but I felt nothing. Not the rain smacking against my skin, or the tears sliding down my face. I heard nothing, there was no buzz or high pitched screeching that comes after a loud noise next to your ear, just...nothing. As if I had been sucked into a void.

I don't know how long the two of us ran, directionless, as fear led us away, away, away. Exhaustion led us to stopping, as Rin's legs gave out, and the second I paused to help her back up, I ended up following suit, dropping hard on the pavement. But even though I heard the crack of my knees against the stone, the pain didn't follow.

We sat in silence for awhile, neither knowing what to say, even what to think about the events we had just witnessed, minds racing too fast to process, too fast to understand. He's dead. He promised he would be okay. He promised. He promised. He promised… He lied.

It was a painful realization. Piko had been playing a dangerous game, all three of us knew that. But it had to be done if we wanted to survive. But he knew. He'd known how this would end, he knew that he was going to die.

Lifting my head, I knew Rin had come to the same realization, her eyes wide, eyebrows scrunched together, pain evident across her face.

"Why?" She questioned, voice cracking, as sound returned to me all at once. The downpour, the screech of carts in the distance, voices from far away laughing as if they had any right to, it was too much.

The questioned hung in the air, unanswered. I didn't have the words. He would've died either way. They came looking for him, and he knew if he'd hidden with us, we all would've been killed.

The anger came then, raw emotion burning across my skin, with nowhere to go but out. I screamed, loud and shrill, until my throat burned too, taking my voice with it. What right did he have to play martyr? What right did he have to leave us without an explanation, without a goodbye at the least? What right did he have to die, and leave both of us here alone, afraid? What right did he have….?

Rin had wrapped her arms around me at some point, a shambling attempt to comfort me, and though I knew it wouldn't help, I clung back, feeling her shake and sob into my shoulder.

What now? - The chilling thought invaded my mind, as I tightened my grip on Rin. What happens now? Piko was the brains, and that had gotten him killed. God, he was dead, he'd never tell another shitty joke again, he'd never smile again, he'd never come back in the middle of the night, arms full of new blankets, and food, and books on subjects I'd never comprehend, never again. How can someone disappear so fast? How can I be expected to accept that he's gone, that a tiny piece of metal took him away from me?

Metal. It's what draws me out of my thoughts and back into the real world. The chill of a metal barrel against my forehead. He was back. Long black hair, slicked back behind his forehead in greasy strands, stood the same man I had previously watched murder my best friend.

"Thought I heard some rats run from the house. Can't leave any witnesses, you understand?" He said, voice high-pitched and high-strung, like a string on a violin wound too tightly. Perhaps screaming hadn't been the best idea.

The click of the safety being released,

I scrambled to shove Rin behind me, a last ditch effort to protect her as much as I could,

A finger on the trigger, pulling back so, so slowly,

And then a bang.

Red was everywhere, warm, sticky red, splashed across my face, as I waited for the pain to finally kick in, waited for my vision to blur until it became nothing. But...The pain never came.

Just surprise, as I watched the white shirt of the man in front of me grow darker, blood spewing from a small hole in his chest onto the ground in front of me, while his knees gave out, and he fell. He'd been shot, but...by who?

What happened next can't be explained, or I can't do it justice, because it's the type of thing that only happens in fairy tales, or stories, just with more bloodshed than one might expect.

Standing a few feet away stood a tall man, dressed in clothes I'd never seen anyone wear before, strange blue pants that seemed stiff, and looked less than comfortable, and some flimsy excuse for a top, that had a colorful image of what looked to be the letter "S" on it. His hair was unkempt, strands sticking out every which way, as if he had no desire to even try and make himself look presentable. The strangest thing was that his hair was blue. Or perhaps stranger yet, he was holding a gun too, but this one wasn't pointed at me anymore.

Shock stole my voice from me once again, as I watched the man give an almost dopey grin, before tossing the gun to the side, but after what appeared to be a moment of thought, he abandoned the smile almost sheepishly.

"Sorry about that, Kagamine Rin and Len, right? Listen, I know this is going to sound strange, unbelievable even, and well, I mean I suppose it is. But the Master of the house has chosen to offer you two a way out."

Cheerfully, this man rambled on, talking and yet somehow saying absolutely nothing of importance, or sense. Forcing myself to do something, to talk, I eventually choked out a very confused "A way….out?"

"Oh! A new start, a new life. You've been chosen to leave this place, to start again, in a sense. Master has been watching you all for a little over a year now, he knows the hell that you've all been going through. If you accept, he'll give you a new place to belong, a new family. But it's a job offering of sorts, he wants you to do something in exchange, change fate, but that'll all be explained later. You can't change the past, the dead stay dead and all, but, what if I told you that you two don't have to die here? That you can, in a sense, see Piko again?"

My body jolted as the stranger mentioned my brother. Did he know him? Why did he know his name? Why did he know he was gone? What kind of bullshit offer was this?

"A year…? If that's true, then you both had a year to save all of us, Piko included!" I feel the anger return. "Don't give me this fate bullshit! My brother is dead! How could I ever see him again?"

Pity. All I could see on the man's face was pity, and it made my stomach burn. I wanted to hit him, but I found that Rin had taken to holding me back now. She had a strange look on her face, too much hope in her eyes, and I couldn't bear to meet her gaze. She couldn't seriously be listening to this guy, could she?

I mean, a new life? Seeing Piko again? Some sketchy job? We couldn't seriously accept that as the truth, could we?

A/N

So I've returned after years of life, and I have no idea what I'm doing, I'm gonna be honest. I likely won't get around to doing a full reboot, but I want to work on my writing skills, because I've found that school hadn't given me the time to do what I love to do in terms of writing. If there's anyone still out there in the LenPiko fandom that happens to read this, please hit me up with a comment because I'm always a ho for validation, and I'd love to hear from people! -A (man, it's been awhile since I've used this pseudonym)