A/N: this took a while. Sorry about the delay, things got hard for me.

This chapter's shorter and just contains a Len section. He's still pretty flat, so I'm trying to flesh him out (Morgan am I doing this better...?)

I've changed the rating and added some more warnings as this fic will get pretty messy...

Also Loucetios has been discontinued, and I'll take it down shortly.

L

I sat in the chair, taking deep breaths as my heart refused to slow down. My mouth still tasted of bile.

"Len…" Mum sat in the chair next to me, her eyes wide and anxious. "What happened? Was it the eggs?" Her pale hands clutched a glass of water.

"I don't know." My voice shook a little. I knew perfectly well. "I'll be fine."

She leaned closer, holding the glass out to me. "Len," she said, "you just threw up, for no reason." Her eyes studied me, the blue like the endless sky that saw everything. "Was it because of…?"

I pressed my lips together, drumming a rhythm on the tabletop with my fingers. I hated this.

She sighed, setting the glass on the table. "I still don't understand…why people like that…why you react like this."

"I don't want to explain again." I rested my head in my hands. I was confused as well. I shouldn't need to explain. It was so plain to see, but their shoddy acts and masks of normalcy fooled too many people. And my mother was the most vulnerable person I knew.

"But Len…they haven't done anything wrong."

"They existed," I snapped, my voice hardening. At the sight of her paling face I bit back my words. "I'm…I'm sorry."

She slumped back in the chair, running a hand over her face. Her eyes had dark patches beneath them. "Len…"

I shook my head and pushed back the chair, the movement sending nausea swirling through me. "I don't want to discuss this now. I'm gonna lie down."

She let me go, too tired to protest. I glanced back as I left the kitchen, and saw her resting her head on the wooden table, her hands tangled in her straw hair.

I mounted the stairs slowly, slowing constantly so I wasn't sick again. Goddammit, why did this happen to me…

I entered my room and hit the mattress, sending pain through my leg as my knee collided with one of the springs. I gasped and held onto it, rolling over to stare at the ceiling.

My room had a wardrobe and a small cupboard that doubled as a bedside table. Both were made from a dark, scuffed wood, and the steel screws were showing through, the sharp ends rusted. The light by my bed was just a bare bulb on a cord that shone glaringly bright, and was propped on a plate so the heat it generated wouldn't burn the cupboard.

My clothes were tossed about, a pair of jeans hanging off the door handle. A crumpled shirt lay beneath my head.

I tried closing my eyes, to see if I could sleep a bit, but it only made me notice the heat more. My skin was sticky with sweat. I got up to open the window, but the air outside seemed twice as hot as inside, and since the aircon didn't seemed to work that well I resorted to taking off my shirt and trousers and lying on the bed in my underwear. It was a little cooler.

I wanted everything back to normal, when it was me and Rin and Mum and Dad, living in the same house, eating at the same table, where the air wasn't stretched tight by tension and I wasn't scared to speak. I wanted a world without freaks in it, without flaws, where everything went perfectly, followed plans to the letter, where nothing went wrong…

The phone buzzed as my mind was starting to fog with sleep. I groaned in frustration, reaching over to check who the hell wanted to ring me.

Rin. Rin wanted to ring me just as I was falling asleep. Great.

"Yes?" I slurred, rolling over to lean on my elbows.

"Are you drunk or something?" was her response. "It's midday."

"Midday."

"Yes Len it's the middle of the day." She waited as I mumbled something incoherent. "Wake up."

"I was sick all over the bathroom just then. Cut me some slack."

"Eurgh. Mate, that's disgusting. Why were you sick?"

"Rin…" I groaned again.

"The freaks again, huh?"

"Are you gonna yell at me too?"

"Mum yelled at you?! She doesn't yell!"

"No, Rin, she didn't yell at me," I muttered, closing my eyes. "But it felt like it."

"I don't blame her," came the voice from the other end of the line. She said it so matter-of-factly. Like I was the one doing things wrong.

I let the line sit for a while, listening to rustlings as Rin moved around, probably rearranging papers or something.

"What happened?" she finally asked. "Also, in case you didn't notice, I got a new mobile."

"Yeah…mobile. You sound American or something." I briefly glanced at my phone's cracked screen.

"Americans say cellphone." She sniffed. "What happened?"

"There's this kid in my year and he keeps stalking me—"

"Stalking? As in following you home?"

"No, but he's in all my classes and he keeps wanting to talk to me." I didn't mention that he did follow me halfway home and pulled me out from in front of a speeding truck. "He has…scars…"

"Len." Her voice was hard as steel. "If Dad wasn't home I'd yell at you. You can't—"

"Don't tell me," I hissed, "what I can do."

"You can't fix this bloody family is what you can't do, dear brother, and bothering other people isn't gonna help either." She let out a long, frustrated breath. "I'm gonna hang up before you really get on my nerves. Talk to you tomorrow."

"Bye."

I dropped the phone and let myself collapse onto the bed, my nose squashed painfully against a spring. I couldn't breathe with my face squashed against the cloth but I lay there for a few moments anyway, listening to the aircon and my mother moving around in the kitchen.

When Rin got angry she became like Dad, red-faced and harsh voiced.

I guess that made me like Mum. Frail, weak, brittle. But I wasn't. I was better than that.

I was better…