A/N: A somewhat darker take on our beloved Wammy's Institute. It's not that I believe it to be this way, particularly, but I thought it'd be…interesting. Especially since it could be that way. And whatever I do believe on the subject, it's certainly not that Wammy and Roger ran the whole chain of 'em single (fine, double)-handed. So here's a hey-ho to whoever tried so very hard to create a wonderful world and all. (And failed.)

Enjoy, my dear friends.

O Brave New World, and the Ones Who (Didn't) Make It

'Whatever they are to do, they must not follow in Beyond's footsteps.'

Those were the orders written in slightly smudged blue ink on a scrap of paper that Roger had found on his desk one afternoon. He had gone out briefly, for a glass of water perhaps, and it had been there when he returned. L, then, it was typical of him not to deign to talk to Roger, even when he was visiting. It didn't surprise him that there was no identification of any kind: it would hardly do for L to start handing out monogrammed paper.

A few moments later, what little evidence there was that anyone had been in the office all afternoon but Roger himself had gone. Or rather, it had never been there to begin with, and no-one would find anything to suggest otherwise. Save for the dirtied piece of paper slowly drowning in Roger's water-glass, faint spirals of blue revolving away, like the life and colour from a paling corpse.

And just like a corpse, dragging it out from the water wouldn't have done the slightest bit of good.

***X***

Beyond, the kid with eyes that gave colour to his nature. It would be ridiculous to suggest that a sprawl of housing and recreational areas for fifty-odd geniuses and adults whose jobs were to outwit then into being malleable if not compliant had overlooked it.

It was hard enough just to ignore them, all those carcasses, small animals like squirrels, and even comparatively larger ones, cats and kittens, distorted and blood-smeared in their twisted, cruel deaths. It had been truly sinister, the way Beyond had raised the litter himself, feeding them the milk he'd dip his fingers in, stroking those fragile little heads, letting them clamber over his lap as he curled his limbs onto the couch, all the while grinning…

…and even now there are still the holes made by long, iron nails in the classroom walls, even though the children that pass through them have no idea of the crucifixion that took place. And conductive as it would be to point them out, just to drive the knowledge of Beyond Birthday as nothing but a degenerate further into their minds, it rather wouldn't be, for them to be getting ideas.

But at that time it was just following the chain of randomized attacks throughout the country, and as miserable luck would have it, it had taken out two Institutes with it, leaving just over a hundred and fifty precious, young (but sharp) minds in all; not nearly enough for all the crime in the world they'd be tackling in a few short years' time. Leaving a few of those as a margin for error, of course.

Beyond happened to fit into this leeway, but even so, if the iron was not so far cooled as to be completely hard, they'd do what they could to shape it, and prevent it from going to scrap. Wammy's Institute was a forge for what the rest of the world valued so highly that they rarely glimpsed them; every surplus trimming lost was a waste. And so Beyond had been kept and watched, and the boy had known it, and watched his observers right back. There had been an uneasy understanding between them: his ostensible obedience – which was to say, he restricted his experiments to animals and not people – in exchange for their silence on the subject.

Of course, they had kept him contained, too, it had been more than necessary: they had the well-being of fifty innocent children entrusted to them, how could they not.

Beyond Birthday had been well used to isolated rooms with walls of white long before the resolution of the Los Angeles Murder Cases.

And in the end white was still the colour that made up the majority of his (short, but then it had been useless) life.

***X***

L had wanted successors. Three, in fact.

And so Wammy's Institute, Wiltshire, had been sent scrambling to supply them. But first, to mould them.

***X***

Matt, whose lack of physical prowess they encouraged. He was the easiest to deal with by far; all they had to do was hook him on video games, and leave a few cigarettes lying around besides. Just a few, because then, it would be the problem of procuring yet more that would eat away at him mind (his lungs, too, but it was an insignificant sacrifice), and not thoughts of violence. (The video games had sparked some of that; the cigarettes had been added later to offset it.)

It was very convenient, really: introduce the hemlock and he would keep taking it for himself.

Beyond had had too much of his own mind and will; they made sure Matt hardly had any but for L's, Mello's and Wammy's.

If that meant he would go running into a hail of bullets just for a phone call ordering him to do so, well, it was a job well done.

***X***

Mello hadn't always been the chronic Number Two.

In fact, he'd held, undisputed, the place he then spent the rest of his life coveting. Why ever not, when he showed signs of L's own intellect, competence at anything vaguely athletic he came into contact with, and above all, dedication, paired with an ideal sort of pliability. The perfect specimen.

But then that blot on the records, Beyond. Similarities sprang up, and suddenly Mello became a faulty nuclear weapon in the making: the powerful spearhead of attacks, the ultimate ace up their sleeves. An ace that was on the precipice of a self-destruction that would take them all with it; an ace that was apt to spontaneously combust at any given second.

But all was not lost: distraction came in the form of Near, with his newly blank mind and supposedly all-comprehending (blank) eyes. And how ironical, too, that it would be his very obsession with getting ahead of the with-haired sewer rat that would check his actually doing so.

Ah, poor Mello, so they (never) thought.

When he set off in Beyond's own steep, thorny primrose-path of not quite dalliance, they weren't quite sure of where he was headed. Yes, unlike Beyond, his attention was wholly - almost - on his task, to hunt down Kira, and rip him to shreds. All very well, except he'd still seemed to harbour much the same mindset.

But fine, they thought, as he continued to nosedive. He could be the second Beyond to those of Wammy's. The boogieman of old, who snatched at what it so envied in pure, untainted children: their obedience. They had to behave, because otherwise they'd become just like him.

(They'd hate him, those children, hate him like he hated Beyond.)

Then he died. Simple as. Gone and burnt. Now, why would that ring a bell?

***X***

They said Near had a photographic memory, and they weren't wrong. They say Near has a photographic memory, and they say it with smirks. Sure, sure, he remembers every detail, and transfers them straight to the barren emptiness where something is missing. But let's not forget who created that emptiness. After all, if Near's mind is a store of rolls upon rolls of the highest quality camera film, then what happened to all those past years? Near's life didn't start at seven, no matter how much he remembers it to be that way.

The delete button, that's what happened. With Wammy's - the Institute, that is, not its too-soft-hearted namesake - unique approach, it wasn't so hard. Near, once his mental capabilities became apparent, he in turn became, ah, slave to them. But 'slave' is such a crude word. All efforts were dedicated to making the most out of them, would be a much more fitting description.

Yet there were complications, always complications. Like Beyond, and his sociopathic tendencies; A, the weakness that led to his own ridiculous suicide; Matt, and the mouth that could so easily get him killed before he had fulfilled his purpose; even L, especially L, who wanted a detective so very close to his carer, none other than Mr Wammy himself?

Near, he could definitely have done without all those slight, hesitant, shy smiles that developed over time, from when he was first hauled in from the streets, or wherever else a pathetically shivering heap of sodden-through once-white rags could have been picked off from. Linda had been in the way too, as was her irritating wont: she could have made it easier for them all by cutting out all that being-friends-with-Near idiocy. It was distracting him from his more important pursuits, and as proved time and again by those failures Alternative and Backup, feeling too much for one person, be it despair and admiration or almost fervent idolation, was nothing but a possibly disastrous drag.

It had to go, and go it did. Like spoilt clothes washed out with bleach - no, like the clothes Near had crawled over the threshold in, tossed into the fire with not so much as a filament of ash left. They may as well do it thoroughly, to the result of Near's mind being blank as a mistletoe berry after it
all. All that was left was a cold chasm whose walls friendship had once warmed, and fondness made its nest, where the concept of loneliness lurks in the shadows, but never more than that, lest it be speared by pitiless logic and tossed aside. Thinking now fills it, thinking and reasoning and knowledge, mechanical cogs that keep turning even after rust collects on it even as they move, as they whir their cutting edges, slower and slower but still turning, continuously turning, until it gives in on itself in a cracking of old, much-abused iron, or they see it has lost its efficiency, and take a hammer to it.

No need to re-introduce the overt use of his limbs. He shouldn't have re-discovered it in the first place; he had healed far too efficiently
for their liking. Conveniently enough, though, he showed no sign of going to that length again. But wiser are they who err on the side of caution; even Linda, who'd spent the most time with Near (with the exception of his re-educators), and who never gave up inviting him to play with her, believes Near has never walked.

***X***

Yes, Near is the most successful one of them so far, he really is. But perversely, they don't like him. Now that the puzzle, the seemingly-impossible challenge of crafting something useful and efficient from a set of loose cannons, has been solved, once all the pieces have been slotted together, after all that sanding and sawing at the edges to make sure they did...they are disgusted by how well it does. Too perfect, now where's the fun in having something with nothing at all wrong with it, save its own infuriating lack of flaws? Beyond, at least, had understood this line of thinking.

In truth, and oh are they not positively embroiled in that virtue, they would like nothing better than to walk up to that blank, blank puzzle, and kick
it to shattered pathetic broken little pieces. But they refrain. Not in the name of Justice; they've sullied it enough already, though their refraining from doing so now was not borne of any desire to throw a hopeless rice-paper shield before it, lest those insidious flames consume it wholly. Because it's all fine.

He might have everything going to him, but all they had to do was to look down on him, to where he invariably was, on the ground, and they are mollified.

Because it's all they can do to bite back sneers.