Thanks for all the reviews! So sweet of all of you.

!Warning!: Triggers for some in this chapter (and the rest) so tread lightly


It took Saruhiko until he was six to realize he saw the world a little differently than other people. He just wanted the nice girl in pigtails to brush the giant purple caterpillar off her face. He didn't mean to make her cry, to get scolded by the teacher for "making up stories". But Saruhiko saw the caterpillar, even though one else seemed to see it...

His world was a colorful one filled with brightly colored creatures that no one else could see and the people with no faces who would talk to him. Nothing ever hurt him, nothing ever was scary to him-the creatures made him laugh and the faceless people were nice-they'd wait for him when he crossed the street and checked the closet for monsters. One of the Faceless, a woman with brown curly hair, would sing him a lullaby every night because his mother was always too busy. He called her Maria.

He had always just assumed that it was normal to live in a world where the grass was purple and the sky was yellow during the day and bright blue at night. During the day the clouds would turn into funny shapes and dance across the sky as they sang him songs, and the birds would tell him funny stories and the dogs would always complain about lazy cats. His life was happy, and he was happy, and things were fine.

When he was seven he learned that things weren't fine, at least not like he'd thought they were. When his parents argued and got too loud to play at home Maria would walk with him to the library so he could read, and that's where he realized he had something called Schizophrenia. That the things he saw weren't real, and that real life was boring compared to his colorful world of happiness and smiles. He accepted that he was sick, but he decided he didn't care and that he would continue on as he'd always had.

His parents always expected him to be better than everyone else, and he was already years ahead of his classmates. His mother kept him in the same grade to spare him the alienation of being thrown with older kids, but that was the only kindness she'd ever shown him. His parents were politicians and award winning scholars, and he was expected to grown up and be something great. He had to get perfect grades in every subject, and if he got anything less than absolutely perfect they locked him in the garage. But it was okay, because the wall would write on itself and his friends would appear and play games and tell him stories.

He was a bubbly, excited, and always smiling child who was shunned by his classmates for talking to the air and forced by his parents to become a self taught genius. His teachers never seemed to notice that whenever they taught he was whispering to the empty seat next to him and laughing quietly at unheard responses, so his parents never caught wind of his sickness. At least that was what Saruhiko thought, otherwise they pretended not to notice that their perfect boy wasn't so perfect after all.

When he was eleven he went with Maria to play at the beach, and she made a sandcastle taller than the highest building in Shizume city, and he'd laughed and rolled in the sand until a mother came over to ask why he was laughing when he was just sitting by himself. He brushed her off and continued to play with Maria, the mother eventually left-probably thinking he was too old for imaginary friends. The ocean was orange and the green sun smiled happily in a bright yellow sky.

And Saruhiko was happy.

On his thirteenth birthday, however, everything changed. Saruhiko knew how things worked, knew what Omegas and Alphas were, and always thought he'd be the former. He knew how sex worked, but he didn't know when exactly he'd get his first heat-because his mother was always too busy and his father would just wrinkle his nose and say that if Saruhiko turned out to be an Omega they would be gravely disappointed. Saruhiko didn't want to disappoint his parents, but he couldn't help be docile and kind-couldn't help that he watched mothers walk their kids to school and felt a wave of longing. It was just the way he was.

He came home from school on his thirteenth birthday feeling strange. His stomach was all twisted up in knots and it was hard to breath correctly. His colorful world was blending the shades, like a watercolor painting, and it hurt his eyes to look at. Maria fretted at his side worriedly when he sat down in a secluded alley way, cramps too painful to move anymore. He was aroused, too, which was weird in and of itself, and he could swear that the back of his pants were stained with something wet. It was a horrible feeling, a cloying atmosphere and melting colors that made him nauseous.

He suddenly smelled something heavenly, something amazing that turned his nerves to flames and made his mouth water. His vision was blurry, when did he lose his glasses, but he could see a vague shape of a person closing in around him. At first he thought it might have been Maria, but Maria was screaming something in the background, garbled from the roar of blood in his ears. The person was touching him suddenly, rough and wanting, but Saruhiko felt like he was on cloud nine. Every touch of skin on skin as the person pulled down his pants was like liquid fire, and he couldn't find it in himself to resist such heaven.

It was only when he found himself on his stomach on the cold alley floor did he find himself with a bit of clarity. Something was against his rear, something hard and unpleasant, and although his body loved the feeling his mind was suddenly in full blown panic. He had a vague idea of what was happening, that someone had found him during his heat, that he was indeed an Omega and he was about to be bred. His breath went out of his lungs when the Alpha pushed into him, when searing pain turned to overwhelming pleasure and his rationality went out the window.

Throughout the whole thing, as he was rutted like the bitch in heat he was, he couldn't stop the pleasurable noises from leaving his throat and the frustrated tears spilling down his face. Maria was a roar of sound, his world was melting like a popsicle left in the sun, and he couldn't tell what anything was anymore. He felt the Alpha start to swell inside him, and in his panic he swung his arm back intending to strike the man's face, but the man caught it and there was a blinding flash of euphoria as something happened to his wrist, and Saruhiko blacked out from the over-stimulation.

When he woke up he was in a land of oranges and red and greens and blues- all swirling and melding and without borders. He himself was just a swirling figure and the world didn't have up or down, and Saruhiko fell into the void once more.

Again he awoke, and this time the world had regained its shapes, but he hurt all over and he felt dirty and sick and was no longer in heat. Maria was at him side in an instant, petting his hair and cooing to him softly as she cried from eyes she didn't have. He made it home eventually, after the sky had turned bright blue as the sun left its perch, and his parents were a shrieking mess of sound and scolding. He was dizzy and incoherent, but he remembered his mother shrieking something about being a failure as a parent and his father was shouting at him to get a grip and stop shaking. He couldn't deal with it all and welcomed the embrace of darkness yet again.

Weeks passed and his life was turned upside down. His father stopped speaking to him entirely and his mother would avoid looking at him whenever possible. On the third week he vomited his cereal on the floor of the kitchen, and his father didn't even put down his newspaper and his mother continued to watch her soap on the television. Later she took him aside and handed him a small glass of something like milk, but it was dark blue and the cup kept screaming the word 'failure' over and over as his mother told him that he was pregnant and that they had to get rid of the baby for the sake of the honor of the family. He didn't want to kill his baby, didn't really understand what killing it meant, but he didn't want to disappoint his family even more.

Because Saruhiko was a good boy who did what he was told.

His mother said it would be uncomfortable, that it would feel unpleasant and he would be sad for a while but he would get over it soon enough. He brought it to his room after dinner and sat on the floor with Maria, who kept telling him he didn't have to drink it. He drank it anyway, because his parents told him too, and it tasted bitter and laughed at him as it slid down his throat.

As he lay in his bed Maria paced around the room and tugged at her hair, his abdomen hurt and he felt like throwing up-but he would be good so his parents would be happy. It was only when it was around three in the morning did it really get bad.

When the baby started screaming.

It was a horrible high pitched cry of an infant in distress, that rattled his windows and broke his heart. His breath left him and he couldn't even cry as the screaming child started to gurgle and choke on something, and the noise was so horrible he found himself mimicking his baby's screams of agony. He screamed and screamed until his baby was quiet and screamed some more until his parents came bursting into his room.

He recalled very little of the events afterwards, only that he was in pain and he had puked on himself and he felt an emptiness and loss that he had never felt before. His throat was raw from screaming and head hurt so bad he felt his eyes throb in agony. His parents rushed him to the doctors, who asked him what was wrong-and against his will he spilled everything.

He told about his world of colors and Maria and the screaming baby, about the hands that touched him and his clouds that sang.

His mother cried somewhere in the background that 'he was a failure as their child' and his father was nowhere in site. The doctor gave him something that dulled the pain and a bottle of green and yellow pills that made him scared for his colorful friends. His parents wouldn't take his pleading and at home they forced the pills down his throat, all the while shouting that he wouldn't disgrace the family and that he would get better whether he liked it or not.

He didn't get better.

He remembered the book he read so long ago, the book that said schizophrenia didn't have a cure, and wished he could turn back time. Even before he took the first pill, on the way to the doctor's, his world was already beginning to change. His magical creatures melted on the street as they sped by, the light blue sky turned a sickening dark gray, and the moon turned from pink to black. Maria was nowhere to be found, none of his friends were, and he was left along in his new world surrounded by monochrome sky and a depression he didn't know he could feel. The pills took away his energy, made things boring and plain, and left him with no life in him at all. The only thing they didn't do was stop him from seeing things.

It started when the imaginary crack in the mirror started to talk to him.

Whore, it called him, failure, it said, in a voice that sounded like Maria's. Cracks appeared everywhere, on the walls, on the street, on the sheets of his bed-all saying the things he felt but never said. They mocked him, scolded him, shrieked that he was a worthless slut, but Saruhiko didn't say anything to anyone about his changing world.

The worse crack of all was the one on his stomach.

You let me die, it would say, mommy why did you kill me, it would ask. Saruhiko named the voice Mariko, and made a small grave in the park with flowers and stones. Days and nights were indistinguishable to him, the sky was always gray and the sun or moon was always just a black hole of nothing. Years ticked by and Saruhiko found himself in highschool, bored with life and lazier than ever-but not because he wanted to be. He met a boy named Misaki Yata, an Omega like him, who reminded him of the energy he used to have. Misaki proclaimed themselves best friends after just one conversation, and Saruhiko found himself feeling hope for the first time in years.

When they were sixteen Saruhiko didn't take his medication for a while, flushing his pills down the toilet so his parents wouldn't find them. When he came to school the first time, happy and excited and friendly to everyone, Misaki pulled him aside and asked him what the hell was wrong with him and why he was acting so weird.

Saruhiko never flushed his pills again.

Afraid that Misaki would hate the real him, that he would lose his only friend again, he made sure he was always doped up and perfectly boring before he went to school. His father never spoke a word to him since he came home covered in body fluids that weren't all his, and his mother distanced herself to the point where he could no longer keep up the facade that they were a family at all.

When they were eighteen he left home with Misaki to join something called Homra, and his parents had not called him once since-instead they moved across Japan and left all his things in the driveway. He and Misaki bought an apartment together with the money they saved, and they lived like brothers. Homra, to Misaki, was the family he never had-his own parents drunken and abusive, but to Saruhiko all he was the potential he no longer possessed. All these kids with their smiles and their energy, with their laughter and their play-none of them had killed their child, had lost their colorful world.

He found himself losing Misaki bit by bit, as the other focused more on Homra than his old friend-and Saruhiko felt Maria's betrayal flushed anew. He burned Homra's tattoo from his skin and left Misaki with harsh words and false smirks, when inside he screamed and cried and Mariko's crack laughed at his pain. He joined Homra's rival, Scepter4, which was the Red Clan's opposite in every way. These people were organized and efficient in their work, and were the type of person that Saruhiko knew his parents had expected he'd become.

A year flew by in which he filled reports and led missions, bored with the world and everything in it. He would always be alone, and no one would ever love something as broken and fragile as him.

That's what he thought, until a coffee mug that wasn't his was set before his computer.