TLDR AN: I know I should be finishing Aftermath, but I have all these scene snippets for the last chapter that would rather sit in the document and stare awkwardly at each other than mesh into a nice cohesive ending. So I'm letting them stew for a while and tackling this instead, as it's been simmering on the backburner for a few months now. Rating may get bumped later on for dark themes and violent references but I haven't made up my mind yet.

RE prequels/companions: Sequel to Sins of the Father and Under One Roof, both of which I recommend reading first, as all of the Dukes will figure prominently (though you might be able to scrape by just skimming over A-L in the Character Glossary in UOR Ch.62). This will be in much the same format as UOR, but centered around BB, A, and the events of the House before Mello and Near came along. Not sure how long yet. I'm vaguely aiming for roundabout 20, +/- 5.

RE sociopathy/psychopathy: Now referred to by psychologists as Antisocial Personality Disorder, though I find the term 'sociopath' rolls easier off the tongue. I've been doing some research on the subject and just wanted to throw out there that the ethics of sociopathy is a rather touchy issue, and in this story I am neither trying to portray sociopaths as subhuman or inhuman, nor condoning the antisocial attitude. I consider my portrayal of BB to be on the far sadistic end of the spectrum, and not necessarily typical of all sociopaths. Not being one myself, I cannot vouch for the accuracy of my writing.

DN and LA:BB do not belong to me.

I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me.

Psalm 22:14


1: Clarity

The first real words his mother ever said to Beyond were not until half an hour after their first meeting since his infancy. She'd never had custody of him and had never pursued visitation rights, but she had still come to social services to pick him up—for appearances, Beyond assumed. Clearly she had never wanted him before. Not suing for custody and not taking charge of her dead ex-husband's otherwise-orphaned son were for some incomprehensible reason two entirely different levels of indifferences to Empaths, though: one a little sad but the other unforgiveable.

In the social worker's office, Meridian Davies-Birthday smiled and embraced him and said many plastic words, and he responded with more smiles and plastic words and a return of the embrace. When she hugged him, thought, Beyond could tell her warm arms and eye-crinkling smiles were as practiced as his. He had inherited her black eyes, too.

She will be more difficult to lie to than Don was, Beyond concluded, annoyed.

And perhaps, he thought with sudden anger, perhaps she had passed on more than the clarity that Empaths lacked. Was it possible that Meridian saw the red numbers and letters, too? Was he not unique in the world after all?

Either way, she only had two more years to live. Hardly an ideal supporter for a child his age. Oh well. He'd deal with that when he got to it.

He was certain she was not an Empath, but he tested her anyway. He cried for his poor dead daddy on their way out to her car, and she held his hand and said plastic words as a man passed them on his way inside. As soon as she had buckled him in and the car doors were shut, Meridian said,

"Cut that out. You're only wasting an act and annoying me."

Beyond stopped crying immediately.

"You don't want me," he said as she started the car.

"You got that right, kid," his mother said, black eyes flickering down to examine his face for a second as she looked out the rear window, backing out of the parking lot. "But I've got you anyway. Just so we're on the same page, I'm your last living relative. If you prove to be an asset, I'll play mommy until you're legal. Otherwise I'll get rid of the extra baggage. And since I don't have anyone to pass you off to, I'll just have to make do."

"Makes sense," Beyond answered coolly, hiding his amusement. Idiot. You're going to die in two years anyway.

"Don said you were a smart kid."

"I'm a genius."

"Yeah? Did that make Donnie proud of you?" A subtle sneer curled off the end of the question.

"Perhaps," Beyond said, the idle cut glancing off without making a mark. "He said I was a lot like you."

"Yeah? We'll see."

-o-

Meridian was a publicist. Beyond soon learned that what that meant was that her job was to make people believe that they were special, and make others believe that they were special too.

"That sounds stupid," he said when she explained it to him (in nearly those exact words).

"It is, but it makes good money and it's easy. So who cares?"

Beyond conceded that made sense. He'd never had to make his own money, but clearly the best way to do it was with minimum effort, if it could be done. She was full of useful gems like that, so Beyond figured it wasn't so bad living with her, even if she wasn't going to last long.

The other easy way that Meridian got things was by dating. Men who thought she loved them would buy her pretty things, expensive things, and take her out to dinner, fix things around her house, change the oil in her car. This, it turned out, was part of why she hadn't wanted him.

"People all say they like kids," she explained to him once while he sat on the floor of her bedroom, watching her redraw her lips with a carefully chosen shade of berry lipstick in preparation for a dinner date. "But the truth is, they don't want other people's brats. Go figure. They'd rather date people who don't have kids already. I have to aim for a higher age now, guys who are more ready to settle down with a mom, maybe have their own already."

"Evolutionary genetic preservation?" Beyond suggested around a mouthful of macaroni and cheese topped with jam. Meridian didn't much care what he ate, so long as he finished it off. For someone who had so much money, she was awfully picky about waste. Maybe that was why she had money.

"You'd know more about that than me," Meridian said disinterestedly, her mouth forming a small O as she applied mascara lightly to her lashes.

Which was true. He'd been reading about genetics lately. Meridian let him buy as many books as wanted as long as he was a model student (easy), kept his mouth shut around her boyfriends about her other boyfriends (also easy), and got her coworkers and boyfriends and their kids to think he was the most charming child they'd ever met (not quite as easy, but he was getting better with practice, mimicking his mother's easy smile and light laugh almost perfectly).

"Knowledge is power, even if the knowledge seems stupid," she often commented to him, and supported all of his intellectual pursuits (if not giving a damn about what he got up to counted as support). It was refreshing in some ways, especially after Don Birthday, who had always handled his son like a muzzled pit bull—carefully, and with fear, and with the rather pathetic hope that he could somehow tame him through trying to understand him. The time Don had caught Beyond curiously cutting the paws off his pet hamster with the paring knife to see how it would try to walk without them, he had been furious and horrified, and had tried to get him in to a counselor. When Meridian came across him in his room similarly torturing a squirrel he'd trapped in the backyard, she simply backhanded him and said, "Do that in the kitchen, or in the garage. If you get blood all over the carpet you'll be the one scrubbing it up."

By the time Meridian's numbers were down to one day, Beyond had learned a lot: how to cook almost anything with jam in, how to say "I'm sorry" so that anyone would believe it, and how to dissect both small mammals and the minds of Empaths.

He also learned that he was unique. His oh-so-clever mother thought she knew everything, but like the Empaths, she was blind to the names and ticking numbers. He tested her again and again, and she never rose to the bait, even when caught unawares.

Beyond Birthday was smarter, clearer, and more perceptive than any Empath, and he had an edge over non-Empaths too, if there even were any others. He was special. So losing the benefit of having his mother as a caretaker and mentor, though somewhat inconvenient, could be no great setback. Clearly he was destined for greatness.

The last day, Beyond sat out on the back porch in the darkening dusk eating strawberry jam from the jar with a spoon and watching the neighbors over the fence through their dining room window. His mother didn't like it when he ate straight from jars or drank from cartons, because she said it spread germs. Meridian wouldn't be coming home from work today, though, so it was ok. When it started to get chilly he went inside to watch TV to pass the time. He didn't have to wait long for the police to come and tell him she was gone for good.