A/N: This stories cover image was sourced from Tumblr and credited to a Mark Henson. Thanks to a very special grammer nut, KonekoNoRenkinjutsushi, for taking the time to beta this. There is a song that summaries the whole story, which is Insane by Flume ft. Moon Holiday. It's worth it to listen while reading.

"Mr Brassing, can you turn to Mr Emerson and actually tell him that you're sorry? Or are you too cold-blooded for that, too proud, too not sorry."

The jury mumbled (he enjoyed torturing Mr Emerson?)

"My client has already admitted that he is guilty."

"And you're client admitted proudly, didn't he?"

The client, a sweet looking child, shot his head up and cut into the conversation. His lawyer gritted his teeth hard. The boy could never hold his tongue.

"Jamie had it coming, you're such a fucking bastard, shoving everyone and thinking you can get away with it."

No, this boy was defiantly not sweet.

"Mr Brassing, please reframe from swearing."

"You thought you were such hot shit, hadn't you?"

The jury muttered (he is rather quick to aggression, isn't he?)

"My client will not be answering such out of context questions."

"Not game? Scared? Need this suit to hold your hand now, Jamie? Reality caught up to you, huh, Jamie?"

"Mr Brassing, please."

The boy's lawyer leaned close, and whispered something as the veins throbbed across his forehead.

"Shut up."

The boy just glared across the room. The receiver, a greasy yet devilish looking teenager of the same age noticed, and mockingly blew him a kiss.

"Take your mind off Jamie; you're killing your chances with every word you spit."

The session ended much later, after much more debate over nothing, really. Ailuro waited in his chair as people filed out and flooded the doors. Observers hustled and wigged officials ambled off to their next job. He shifted about trying to shake the heavy suit his lawyer had loaned him (he didn't have one of his own).

"Would it kill you to pretend at least?" His double chin, pink skinned, hairy faced lawyer breathed into his ear. Ailuro wasn't even sure why the man was working for him, probably assigned by the government or something high up.

"Why should I?"

He was Ailuro Brassing. Everyone called him Panda through, it started because when he was young (young, young) he was pudgy and round, and always had at least one black eye. Panda, panda bear, not in years has he been Ailuro, let alone Mr Brassing. It was to the point where he didn't respond when people call out to him, couldn't recognise the name as his own.

Panda or panda bear.

"Ailuro," it grated him bad, that name, "you're only fifteen for gods sakes, let the water works rip, mention your parents, talk about being bullied into it, how you can't sleep at night."

"I'm not putting on a performance, Bill, and you fucking well know that."

"But they increase your penalty when you don't show remorse."

Panda just scoffed and walked away, down the grand wooden corridor.

Needless to say, his case ended in two years. But he didn't care. It had felt so good when his fist had grinded into the smirking face. That's all it had been. Torture, you say? The torture claim was just the other side milking the situation for all it had. A king hit, a flying through a window, a minced into the dirt. The piece of crap got what was coming to him.

Because he has no family, so all his love pours over his friends; his entire year level, in fact. And when you manipulate and toy and brutalise…

Expect to be put six feet under.

Later when he was wound in prison clothes and cuffed to a steel bar, he couldn't help but feel his heart lunged when he realised… he wasn't there now, he wasn't anywhere. And there was Jamie, walking free, patrolling around the school yard.

And here was his friend, visiting him in jail.

"He's taken it as if he needs to prove himself. It's so shitty. It's nothing we can't deal with though, but it's the younger grades that you've got to worry about, you know?"

When he was being walked back, something snapped and something dropped.

And something went "you're going to die now"

And something went "make me"

And then he went flat and stretched longer than the world. Nothing wanted to work, eyes, ears, mind, tongue. Waves were brutally smacking into him and wind hurling sand against him. He stayed like that, not wanting to move…not even thinking that movement was possible any more.

He was half sunken into the grimy sand, covered in seaweed and ocean gunk from the tide which had sunken far away downs the shore. His eyes were regaining, and they were telling him only trouble.

At first he had though he was under water, looking up at rolling and screaming waves crashing about, because the clouds, that's what they looked like. Sometimes when he was down on the beach, a wave would dunk him under and tear him about a bit. He would open his eyes and get to see the underside of the wave, in its glory.

The sour smelling foam pressed by against his face, sliding around his lips and nose. He needed to get up. Panda had- does live along a beach, he understands the signs and what was about to happen. He knows, and he struggles to his knees and moves. He crawls forward, to high ground, to shelter, to something. As he moves, the ocean's things start to peel off and fall from him.

By the time he is up off the sand, and into the grass, he knows that he needs to stand, and he needs to run.

But that's so difficult, so very impossible right now. So after falling like a doll enough times that purple bruises have started to crawl up his arms and chest and across his tender and unresponsive skin. He's worried, because he shouldn't be bruising so easily and also he needs to get up, uphill, up mountain, up staircase, up something.

But the land is flat, and there is nothing but patchy, tangled grass and bald, stunted trees. Wait, there's something else now, something like a row of cubby houses far in the distance. He remembers now, he used to be able to see in colour and beyond his hands. His eyesight hadn't been as fixed as he'd thought. His mind seems to reviving itself next. Now he isn't experiencing primitive, urgent instinct. He isn't just listening to a voice screaming for high ground for a reason neither can recollect.

Why was he searching for high ground anyway? He can't remember now, all he wanted to do was just curl up and sleep. Pain was seeping in, and it was spreading through his veins and pooling in his stomach and tearing into him life a bloody starved wolf.

Maybe he won't admit that he cried, loud; maybe he doesn't remember, like you don't remember your birth; maybe it never happened, maybe it undoubtedly did.

He was happy when the rain screeched in, soothing his burning skin. He was happy when water seemed to scoop him in its arms and cradle him, taking him somewhere, in or out or across, this somewhere is big and blue, vast and figureless This water was steamy and also cold, fast with current, slows with dead spots and slopped sometimes as if the world had been tipped while he hadn't been looking. He wasn't looking, so it could he possible; he was just letting himself be taken. This somewhere drowned him, sunk its teeth into him and tore his apart between waves.

Yet, eventually, it ended with him being slumped and rested against the shore. The very same, no, this doesn't feel familiar. This one was different, this one was pebbly like millions of tiny turtle shells and covered in scores of birds all waiting patiently for helpless nibbles to be washed just like he had been onto the shore.

Panda died, there on the ugly shore, amongst the feral birds and polluted waters. Covered in factory slick and ocean treasures.

Then he woke up again, and he wondered, how many times had he died since he had arrived?

Sixty two… not that he knows.