Apologizes like a mad person for not posting this on time

Now that that's over with... I believe that this is the last chapter before Click, which will be posted here. Anyways, life appears to be getting at least somewhat regular, which should mean continued chapters of this, at the very least. La Royame I'm not so sure about. I've started writing again at last, but all that seems to be rattling about in this stupid brain of mine is Pylar. I will do my very best to work on the things I need to work on, but there are no guarantees. This is me, after all.

With love, Jiia

A year had gone by.

One full year, full of nightmares and sleepless nights. A year of pointless meetings with Hatori, saying nothing he didn't already know, revealing nothing except what he wanted the man to see. A year without the blissful numbness of a blade cutting his skin, flesh peeling back, hot blood coursing over his frozen skin.

A year since the botched suicide attempt he hadn't been aware he was making.

He remembered how it had felt, to push the razor just a little bit deeper, to feel it pass through skin and muscle and hit vein. It had felt good, in the same way it always felt good. It made him numb, took away the pain that ate at his soul and made him wake up screaming. He had felt the touch of death that day, and it hadn't been nearly as frightening as he had imagined.

It hadn't been until he sat in his room alone, all his visitors having come and gone and left him on his own, that he realized what he'd done. He had tried to kill himself. He hadn't meant to, hadn't realized what he was doing until it was too late and he'd cut too deep to fix it with a band-aid. He could have picked up the phone, called 911, done something to save himself.

But he didn't. He just lay back in the swirling red waters of his bathtub waited to die. It wasn't until Hatori's voice, Hatori's pleading, Hatori's angry desperation, that he had forced himself to act.

And even then, it was only to ask the other man to keep his secret, to make sure that nobody knew what he'd done. He'd wanted to leave good memories, not save his own sorry skin.

That had been his mistake. He shouldn't have fumbled for the phone. He should have just lain there, listened to the lies, and let himself slip away. It would have been so perfect, so beautiful. It would have been such a good way to go, randomly out of the blue and without any knowable reason.

Now it wouldn't be quite so sudden. After his death, the secret would come out, and they'd all know how much of a failure he really was. He couldn't even take his own life. What a loser. Never did anything right his whole useless life.

He couldn't leave good memories, not now. There would be no carefully sculpted image of him imbedded in the other's minds, suave and smiling. He'd just look even more pathetic than he already did.

That would have mattered to him a year ago. He'd have wanted people to love him, no matter what. He would have cared.

Not anymore.

He'd had one too many nightmares to care what the rest of their little cult thought about him. He'd woken up to the phantom burn of imaginary touches to think that what any of them felt for him was love. He'd watched too many people walk out the door to think he mattered to them at all. He was alone, and the only one who would notice his absence sitting in the his bathtub, going through the familiar ritual of taking the razor blade out of its protective case.

It felt just as good as ever. He didn't cut deep, not this time. It was eight days until the one year anniversary of his trip to the hospital. It would be so much better to wait, to drop hints and taunt them. To play a game with those who claimed to care for him.

In eight days, he'd sit back in his bathtub and press the blade to his wrist as hard as he could and watch as his life just drained away.

For now, he'd do just a little cut, not enough to leave a mark. No one would notice, no one would know.

And then the door burst open and Shigure waltzed in with a basket of flowers and what appeared to be a giant stuffed teddy bear in bondage gear.

"Well, shit."