AN: Hey Guys! This is the first story I have had the courage to post, so please be nice! Slight spoilers for L.A.B.B if you haven't read it, and depressing themes (none of the characters are really in the right mindframe). I don't know what possessed me to write this, it just happened as I was listening to Bayside on repeat (hence the title and the lyrics) and I should have been revising for mocks, oh well. I do hope you enjoy... Now on with the story!

A is for Acquiesce,

I looked at the sunset as it fades through the clouds burnishing the sky bright gold and smiled slightly. I was all alone and it didn't bother me half as much as it should have because, I had given up on humanity for deserting me. I don't mind, I find myself good enough company. I'm different to all of them, even though they are set apart from society but that's okay, I know that I'm different and I wouldn't change it for the world because it would mean that everything that I was had disappeared in a flash, why should I conform to their stereotype?.

At least, that's how I used to feel when B was still by my side. At first it was a friendship of convenience and that's all, two freaks bunched together forming an unholy coalition. But then, my feelings started to change for the boy in ways I don't even now and couldn't if I tried. I never knew where I stood with him because looking him in the eye was like looking into a locked room- empty and desolate: he wasn't all there, I knew that, and he didn't want to be found. Fine by me, the silence was comforting.

He would hide his real self away under the guise of makeup, a trait I couldn't comprehend. To me, he was most beautiful without it but when I questioned it he would shrug and say he felt vulnerable without it. He looked like him then, a sick sort of hero worship, I guess. Except for the eyes: his were a beautiful ruby red which he despised and I adored. I would make any type of scene just to feel his glowing gaze lock onto me and he would stare often, but not directly, always at the spot above my head with fervoured intent. It was enough for me.

I was not special like him. I was the definition of anonymous: bookish, small and weak with short mousy brown hair and mud brown eyes. No one knew me, I was a supporting character rather than a main role, one who faded into the background at a glance. I had no notable achievements or goals , but that did not bother me because I was secure in my position as third at Wammy's, right behind him as always and that was ok too, because trying was too much hard work and I was not made for that. I would live my life through as each day came and would not be remarkable in any way, no matter what they told me I would amount to, because it was not my style.

My face was plain, bland even when I smiled or tried my hardest to be pretty, it did not illuminate like his did without trying, though he did not smile genuinely for anyone but me, to others a small flash of sharp teeth was the only acknowledgement they would get. It was cliche, but made me so happy; it was the little gestures that intoxicated me, drugged me sent me flying. He was all I needed to get along and I knew my dependence was a dangerous habit but there was no way that I would ever break away because people didn't understand that it was actually the only thing tha was keeping me sane, that was keeping me living. I was reckless without it.

Ironic isn't it? Because he was anything but sane and I think I fuelled the fire more than I should have, letting him do what he wished with me, I encouraged him unknowingly. His childish fascination with the macabre and my blind masochism were a beautiful combination. Every day, new cuts would marr my skin and some shocked and concerned faceless and nameless person would ask why? or who did this to me? and I would just smile, wearing my scars with pride, knowing that my blood stained the sheets all over his bed that shocking violent red; a canvas for our chaotic and disfunctional relationship.

He would turn up outside my window late at night, when everyone else had left, his pale skin shimmering ethereally in the moonlight like the most terrible and beautiful dream I had ever had. I learnt to expect him and waited foolishly and habitually to appear. He was unaffected by our late night trysts, all whilst I was overwhelmed by the romance of it all. I wanted nothing more than to touch him, hug him, kiss him, break him, do anything that would get him to react to me. It became a skill of mine and a hobby of his, a rather perfect arrangement. From there, it would escalate until we fell blindly over the edge, stars shooting from the sky for us. Call me foolish and naive, I was, but I could not care less, for I was in love- something I thought was reserved only for fairy tales..

I do sometimes wonder if he ever loved me quite the way I adored him. I don't think that he was capable of that higher being of emotion; he was too robotic, he had made himself that way. So, he did what he could with his confused feelings to try to relate himself to others and it manifested itself in obsession of the worst form (regrettably not of me). People were scared of him for it; how could you blame them? They did not understand the way I did. He got counselling because they all said his mindframe was fragile, it didn't help him at all, being told he couldn't be himself, it made me sick and I think it warped him more and he became bitter and filled with hate. He wouldn't let me help him then. I couldn't help him.

It was at that point, L had to step in,our beloved and respected mentor. He was a couple of years older than us and the greatest detective in the world, tall and skinny to the point of starvation, he looked permanently worn and tired. His skin was so pale it was almost translucent and if you looked close you could see the faint outline of the thin veins running just under the surface. He had the look of a man who had seen the world and was bored by it. His face was a blank canvas and his jet black eyes were dull and jaded occasionally flashing to life if he let his carefully constructed mask slip, but he never did. Maybe the effort of this facade caused him to lie in bed all night awake, because those bruise like shadows under his eyes were inhuman.

I hated him, I did, because I saw the way B looked at him. He never looked at me that way, no matter how hard I tried to make him do so. He wanted L I could tell, but the depths of which he did, I did not know nor want to else I ripped my hair out in the frustration of it all. I hated L because he had something I could never have, B's full attention. L didn't like me either, well, I don't think he liked anyone except maybe for Watari and God forbid the day he ever did, but he loathed B but it only pushed him harder, teetering over the precarious and unseen edge.

I happened to walk in at the wrong time that day, you know you have when the room suddenly goes silent and everyone turns to look at you? It's been happening a lot lately after all that's happened. But that was the day that started it, the accursed day. Maybe L hadn't hated B in quite the way I had thought, regardless it had forced him to get closer to him than I ever wanted him to and B was an all too willing participant. They froze when they heard me enter, all naked skin and kiss bruised lips and fumbled to gather themselves together to hide from me but I knew; B kissed my cheek softly, but it held no love. It was a warning, a threat - my beautiful had turned against me and I could take it no longer. I ran as far as I could away. No one followed.

There, in the quiet melancholy of the dark I considered my options; I had few. The horrible feeling of bile rose in my throat as I replayed events in my head. It was not a good time to be a genius: my psyche carefully picking apart everything I had just seen and analysing it from every possible angle until I was sure my heart would stop beating in place because I couldn't carry on with it. I lay there gasping for breath, trying to ground myself, mollification of sorts or self pity if you prefer. It seemed that all my worries stemmed from him, from my B, but I suppose that it made me a more interesting person in the end because it made me human, gave a body to the name, some history to the legacy, the only real connection I had left to the world that I was growing farther from everyday.

It was his fault, it was always his fault but I could not blame him. We all want to escape to fantasy once in a while but I wanted to live there, because my real world was dying around me. He gave me the tools to do so, I was all too grateful for the escape. I remembered far too much from a past I wished I could forget and I had become dependent on him in the process. It was clear now. He needed me too, for I had delayed the explosion waiting to happen from the day he'd been dumped with all us other lost souls, building beneath the surface of the happy facade until it had burnt, ripples moving through the house now as it fell and crashed around us. It was the beginning of the end.

Our last kiss, a bittersweet goodbye. We had talked of the day in detail of the day we would run away together, build a future together. Of course, indulgent and out of reach fantasies and nothing more. But they served as placation for our bruised pride and egos, a childish game that we would play to pass our lives away in the evening hours. In our hearts we knew it could never be, no matter how long we whispered silent prayers and clasped hands under the moonlit sky. Neither of us would live long enough for our happy ending. He reassured me of that.

When I returned the next morning all red eyes and exhaustion, no one noticed my arrival and the house was quiet. It was dead, as if a reminder from centuries long gone, the inhabitants, ghosts of what they once were, going around their business sullen and silent. I knew then. He had done something terrible. They had both disappeared from my grasp in that one night,fleeting and mocking. The two closest to me, the saint and the sinner, the one I abhorred and the other I loved had abandoned me. The last tie holding me down broke then, something inside me snapped. I wouldn't make it out alive.

I am here at the bridge now. The date reads that fateful day in which all things will come to the end. My judgement day. He had been right, when he had told of this, that

today was the day I would die, I had laughed loudly, the rich sound permeating the silence. He had stared with his same red eyed gaze, stoic. In them I saw an understanding far beyond his years, fractured in the dim light. Then he had smiled sadly and shook his head, apologising for his morbid thoughts, trying to laugh it off, he never brought it up again. Perhaps, people should not be reminded of their own mortality.

Take this razor sign your name across my wrists

So everyone will know who left me like this

Sew me up my scars run deep

A reminder not to forget the times that we've had

But I am not afraid, it is getting dark now and the chill is setting in. I brace myself against the railings and let the wind ruffle my hair one more time, I will miss it, but it can go no other way, I know that now. I do not fight it anymore because you can't fight something beyond your control. It will be done one way or another so I savour my last moments while I can. I smile sadly, I hope someone will remember me for the right reasons, maybe recognise my face in a faded photograph or smile upon the memory of something I had done. I don't wish to hurt anyone with my actions, i don't want tears. I don't want to only to be known as more than a letter in a history book which catalogues my pathetic life. I hope there is more beyond this, or peace for me at last. I let go and it is done. I'm gone forever now and so be it. It is fate.

Empty fields move me

So much more than rooms filled up with friends

(The way the trees look dead)

It reminds me that there's more to life than living

And maybe giving up's not bad

But part of letting go of you.

Review?