a/n: I apologize for the lateness of this chapter; I've been way too happy these last few days and I couldn't find it in me to sit down and write angst. I'm currently writing a HIM parody in Persian, which suits my mood perfectly, but I'll promise to come back to this as soon as I get down. Thank you.

a/n2: again the words in italics are in Finnish ;)

Chapter 11: Time to Breakdown

"Ville, damnit, open the fucking door! You can't lock yourself in there forever!"

Mige only heard a muffled 'fuck off' and then some more sobbing. Two weeks had passed since they took Ville back home and ever since, Ville had been a crying mess. He hadn't said a word; well, not anything that would make sense to anyone but him. He just shouted at anyone who dared look in his way and threw things at whomever brave enough to start a conversation with him. Mige had a broken nose on the first day from where Ville had thrown his steel mug at him. He wasn't particularly shocked at the act itself, even though violence was something that had never gone with the name 'Ville' in the same sentence. He just couldn't comprehend the expression on that beautiful, pale face when Ville looked at the blood dripping down Mige's nose. It looked so much like satisfaction; like a sinister glint in a murderer's eyes after pulling the trigger and watching the dead body hit the ground.

Mige didn't want to admit it, but Ville was not the same person he knew.

He had become cruel. And it scared him.

"Mige! Bam's here."

Burton shouted from the stairway, long hair tangled and dark circles under his eyes. Mige was not the only one taking Ville's shit; everyone else was.

"Can't you just…tell him to fuck off?" Mige pleaded with him, exhaustion weighing down at him. For reasons still unknown to everyone but apparently Ville himself, Bam was always the trigger to send Ville into a crazy mode. Just the sight of him made Ville extremely violent and unstable. Bam had his own share of broken bones as well. Whenever he opened his mouth to say something, Ville would look at him as if he was going to beat him into silence. And he always did. It was a scary sight.

"Like he'd listen." Burton shrugged, tiredness darkening his features.

Mige sighed in frustration, sent a dirty look at the locked door, cursed at Ville loud enough for him to hear, and climbed down the stairs.

Burton left him alone with Bam in the living room as he headed for the kitchen. Mige cursed at him in Finnish and collapsed in the couch opposite the blue-eyed man.

Bam looked like death.

"Don't you ever learn your lessons, Bam?" asked Mige unkindly, sinking more into the couch.

Bam threw him a dark look.

"I'm not in the mood for your sarcasm right now." He sounded like an old man. In any other situation, Mige would have laughed his ass off. He couldn't remember how to anymore.

"If you're here to know how Ville's doing…"

Linde suddenly appeared in the doorway, with his hair down. He looked paler than ever-if it was even possible- and his soft features were tinted with a grave expression.

Ville wasn't the only one who'd changed.

"Mige, where have you put Ville's guitars?"

Both Mige and Bam turned to give him an inquisitive look.

"What do you want them for?"

From how Linde was leaning against the doorframe, it seemed he couldn't handle his weight on his own.

"I don't. Ville does."

Mige noticed how pained Bam's expression grew every time he heard Ville's name. He didn't like the guy, but at times like this, he pitied him. It was one thing knowing what you were hated for and completely another when you didn't know for what goddamn reason you were suddenly attacked by someone you were in love with.

"Well, what does 'he' want them for?"

Linde looked at the verge of tears. If there was still one thing unchanged, it was the fact that Mige hated to see Linde cry.

"Mige, c'mon. You know why he wants his damn guitars. He wants to smash them into the wall, what else?"

It was all said so nonchalantly Mige couldn't find the urge to feel shocked.

Bam only let out a whimper and robbed the spot on his shoulder where he'd been crashed into the wall by Ville's shoving hands. Mige could never forget the expression on either the faces of Bam's and Ville's. While Bam looked like a man chocking on his own blood, Ville was smirking the cruelest smirk.

Something had died in Bam on that day that Mige wished he had never been a witness to.

"You're not going to give them to him, though, are you?"

A desperate expression broke on Linde's face.

"I'm the only one he asks for things."

He explained shortly but Mige knew the unspoken words. Ville was perhaps a little less cruel to Linde than he was to everybody else. If he wanted anything, like asking for his stuff, he would only ask Linde and Linde alone; and if Linde was going to deny him whatever he wanted…it meant losing the only contact they had with Ville.

And that they could not afford.

Bam suddenly sprang to his feet.

"Can I…"

"No!" Mige and Linde both shouted at the same time, causing Bam to take a step back.

"I was just going to ask…" he began in a small voice, with arms thrown up in the air, looking as scared and hopeless as a kid who had just lost his mom.

Mige felt a pang of pity at seeing that desperate, lost expression on Bam's face and regretted being so harsh to someone who was apparently taking it a lot harder than the others.

"Bam, are you a masochist or what? You know he doesn't want to see you, why do you insist then? Wanna take more beating? Hear more insults? What? Just what the hell do you want Bam?"

Upon seeing the defeated expression on Bam's face, Mige instantly regretted his words. He didn't know what was with him. He wasn't in control of himself anymore. More often he found himself saying and doing things he wouldn't normally do if he was more conscious about his behavior.

He just simply didn't give a damn anymore, and that, at times when he did, made him extremely helpless.

"I just…I just want my Ville back."

There was something about the way Bam had said those words that Mige couldn't help but realize how Bam's dream was far-reached. His Ville would never be back. And what made it worse was that they all knew it, too.

"Bam, please go home."'

It was Linde's soft voice speaking to Bam for the first time in the past two weeks. Bam looked up at him, with a defiance that wasn't there, and let his emotions wash over his face.

"I don't have a home anymore." If possible, he sounded even more miserable than before. "Missy's asked for a divorce."

So that was why he was here. Mige wasn't really surprised at the news, and neither seemed Linde. But Bam seemed to be especially upset at the new circumstances. What was he really expecting to come of his relationship with Missy anyway? They had fights on the phone all the time. Missy had also threatened to get a divorce if Bam continued staying at HIM's rented house instead of going back home to her. Mige would have been relieved at the news if he were Bam. But Bam had never been your typical man to begin with.

"What are you going to do now?" it was Linde again, asking in his soft voice. Mige wondered for a brief moment why Linde gave a damn. He had never been the curious type and he didn't particularly like Bam.

"I don't know." he gave a half-hearted shrug. "To be honest, I'm not in the mood for a divorce right now. I've asked her to wait a bit longer 'til…'til we sort things out; you know, with Ville and everything…but she's standing her ground. She wants to do it as soon as possible and I can't stand her whining anymore. Sometimes she makes me want to shoot my head off."

He gave a humorless laugh at that; one that made Mige cringe at the sound of.

"I thought that was Ville." it was Burton, with a can of beer in his hand, walking toward the couch to flop into. Bam robbed his hand fiercely against his face, frustration pouring from every cell of his being.

"Can't you lot just…fuck off? I have enough shit on my hand as it is, I don't need any more crap from you heartless bastards."

Burton, quite unattractively, snorted into his drink. "Look, Bam-Bam, I may not exactly know what was going on between you and Ville, but I'm not that stupid not to know whatever it was, it's been all somehow your fault."

Bam looked a little surprised at that; it made a huge contrast to his usual miserable, defeated expression.

"My fault?" his incredulous tone was a bit higher than usual. Mige sensed a change in the air and became a little alarmed. "How's Ville acting like a jerk my fault?"

Bam was now standing right before a seated Burton, looking a little intimidating in his pose. But Mige knew Burton was far from being intimidated, and by Bam no less. He sneered cruelly at a seething Bam, placing his now empty can on arm of the couch as he got to his feet, towering over the American.

"You can't seriously be that ignorant, can you?" asked Burton in his cold voice, arms crossed against his broad chest.

"I don't know what the fuck you're talking about." Snapped Bam, irritated and seemingly not in any mood for mind games and solving silly puzzles.

Burton opened his mouth for another biting comeback, but was cut off by a deep voice coming from the stairway.

"Linde, I asked you for my fucking guitars! Where the fuck you've gone?"

The first thing that came to Mige's panicked mind was to get Bam away from those seething green eyes as soon as possible. The second thought was that it was too late.

"Bam?' that sinister smirk on those full lips never ceased to scare Mige, or Bam apparently. "So disgusted to see you."

Mige grimaced at the harsh words, but Bam, unaware of what Ville was saying, only looked confused.

But he wisely kept his mouth shut.

"Your guitars…they're in Gas' room." Mige suddenly spoke up, trying desperately to distract those revengeful green eyes from boring holes in Bam's skull.

"Yeah, they are, aren't they?" the smirk had yet to leave his lips. "I was going to smash them into the windows but seeing as our dear Bam is here…"

He left his sentence unfinished, but the look on his face was enough to make them all feel uneasy. Bam shifted uncomfortably under that gaze, looking every bit a troublesome kid dreading his punishment. Mige didn't want to pity the guy, but he knew whatever wrong he had done to Ville in the past, he did not deserve Ville's harsh treatment now.

"Ville, please…" Linde pleaded with him, eyes welling up with tears. Mige remembered a time Ville would break over every single tear that spilled from Linde's gentle eyes.

God, what had gone so wrong?

"Please?" Ville turned to him, one brow raised in question. "Bam-Bam, tell our lovely Lily here how many times I had told you 'please' and you had ignored them every single time like I didn't matter."

Ville's cold voice sent a shiver down Mige's spine. He looked at Bam's face and noticed he was the most scared of them all; and he had every right to be.

"How many times Bam?" he almost barked, his deep voice rising to several octaves.

"Ville…" Bam began tentatively, too scared to make eye-contact.

"SHUT UP!" Ville wasn't looking at him either. He had his hands buried in his long hair, pulling fiercely at the ends, eyes tightly shut. "SHUT UP! DON'T YOU FUCKING DARE SAY MY NAME AGAIN!"

"Please! Just tell me what my fucking fault is!" Bam asked him desperately, even though he should have known better than talk to Ville in his current state.

This gained Ville's attention as those fiery green eyes rested on Bam's watery blue eyes, a wild flame burning in the depth of them as he looked right through Bam's soul.

"What your fucking fault is?" Ville started laughing hysterically, a streak of tears running down his pale cheeks. Mige was now officially scared out of his wits. "He says what his fucking fault is!" he was now looking at Burton, who was perhaps the most collected of them all.

"I fucking killed myself and you ask what your 'fucking' fault is?"

When Mige took his eyes from Ville's furious face to look at Bam's, he noticed how suddenly pale the American had turned. His lips were quivering, like he was trying to say something but couldn't find his voice. Mige tried to find the reason as to why Bam looked suddenly so shocked and upon hearing his trembling 'y-you k-killed yourself?' everything dawned on him. Bam had no clue about Ville's suicide. He still thought Ville's incident was just an accidental case of overdose when he was in the middle of an attack and too panicked to realize how many pills he was throwing into his mouth. And nobody ever bothered to tell him the truth. Why hadn't anybody filled Bam in? Mige remembered how reluctant Linde was to be the one telling Bam about Ville's suicide and when he refused to tell him, Mige just tossed the idea aside, unconsciously deciding that Bam wasn't worth the trouble anyway.

Damn, that was probably the reason why Bam was still here, trying to get 'his Ville' back home with him. He had been probably the most confused of them all, not being able to comprehend how a case of an accidental overdose would damage somebody beyond recognition. And now that he had finally found out…

Damn, this was getting worse and worse.

"You didn't know?" somehow Ville managed to sound both surprised and furious at the same time. He turned around, facing Mige. "He didn't know?" his voice cracked and Mige had a wild moment of panic that Ville was going to cry. He sounded small and exhausted, clearly at the verge of a breakdown.

Bam looked to be going to have a breakdown himself.

"Why…why nobody…nobody ever told me?" seeing Bam cry was perhaps even more of a shocking scene to Mige than seeing Ville being cruel was. He had never seen Bam cry before; not even when he heard of Ville's critical condition, not even at those sleepless nights he spend at Ville's bed, talking to him, singing to him, pleading with him to wake up.

Mige suddenly felt extremely guilty that he had been so ignorant of Bam's suffering. How could he so simply forget about Bam? He felt even crueler than Ville was.

"Why?" it wasn't Bam, asking everyone's unanswered question. It was Ville, asking Mige why he hadn't told Bam.

"We…we forgot." Mige mumbled under his breath, suddenly feeling all alone on his own, lost in a place he didn't have the map of. He cringed inwardly at the sound of Ville's snort.

"You forgot?" damn, how he wished Ville was addressing somebody else. He hated to be speechless under than seething green gaze. "What kind of a fucking answer is that?"

Mige didn't even feel brave enough to raise his head. "Fucking answer me! How could you forget telling him I had tried to take my fucking life? HOW COULD YOU?" Ville screamed in his face and Mige braced himself for a punch that never came.

Instead, he was shoved roughly to the ground. His head hit the edge of the couch pretty hard and his back collided roughly with the carpeted floor as his left ankle hit the leg of the glass table. He groaned in pain and robbed his hand over his throbbing head. He probably deserved the shove, but deep down, it still hurt seeing Ville with his back on him already, not caring a bit if he had survived the fall or not.

"I…I thought…God…you had…after…after…I told you…told you I'd love you as long as…you were alive…and you just…God, oh my God…" Bam put a hand over his mouth, tears running fast on his cheeks. Mige was still too dizzy to understand what he was talking about, but the expression on both Linde's and Burton's faces, which was pure horror, told him that something horrible had just been revealed.

"Oh my God…" Bam sobbed and started backing away, weeping eyes still glued on Ville. From where Mige was sprawled on the floor, he could not see the expression on Ville's face, but the horror and disbelief on Bam's was proof enough that it wasn't a pretty one.

Damn, what was happening?

Before Mige could find the strength to pull himself together, Bam dashed out of the house still sobbing and whimpering, and as the front door slammed shut behind him, Ville suddenly dropped down to his knees, arms hanging lifelessly along his sides as he stared dazedly at the closed door.

When the unmistakable sound of tires screeching came from the driveway, Burton slowly slid down in front of the still Ville and took his frozen body into his arms, rubbing his back gently and whispering reassuring words into his ear.

Mige looked at Linde who had collapsed on the floor, hugging his knees, and silently begged him for an answer. Linde only looked grimly at him, holding his eyes for a few seconds before dropping his head on his drawn knees and starting to cry.

And only when he heard a heart wrenching sob coming from Ville did he allow himself to break down as well.

-tbc-