Even though I hardly write anymore, I still think Beyond is sexy.

Oh right, hi everybody who happened to have clicked onto this. Uh, I haven't been writing because I've been dealing with some terrible, terrible inconvenient happenings that seem to have been plaguing me since the end of last year and all of this year. Yay for that!

*cough hack cough*

… that sounds like Matt right before he lights up yet another cigarette.

Song: Testify by Rage Against The Machine

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Chapter 26: Shards

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Rocking back and forth on his chair, Beyond Birthday studied himself in the small, dirty mirror on his desk as he twiddled his thumbs together while resting his bare feet against the surface of the desk. He wore nothing but a pair of ripped blue jeans that were now a size too big for him.

Beyond hadn't left his room in three whole days; he hadn't eaten or showered at all during that time, and when he had the urge to use the bathroom facilities, he held his bladder instead, for as long as he could until it became far too painful to deal with and so he made use of an empty lemonade bottle he sneaked from the kitchen the week before.

He was experimenting on himself, to put it one way. His aim was to observe the rapidity of weight and muscle loss on his own body. To put it another way, he was also preparing himself for a role. To his pleasure, he could already see his ribs poking out from underneath his milk white skin, his cheek bones now sharply jutted out and his eyes were hollow, partly due to lack of sleep. Beyond hadn't expected himself to look so close to perfection so quickly, but that could have been because of his former lifestyle, where he still lacked proper nourishment.

Beyond wanted to grin at his achievement, but he knew it would not fit. If he let himself grin once, even in the privacy of his own room, then he'd let himself grin again when he was supposed to be 'in action'. Instead, he climbed off his seat and stooped over, hunching his shoulders and observed the movement as thoroughly as he possibly could as the world around him turned upside down and spun around, along with a splittingly sharp headache that slashed across his mind. He quickly clutched onto his forehead and steadied himself against his desk as his knees gave out and he fell to the floor.

"It's not right." He muttered; his voice never betraying a sharp, growling hiss. He levered himself back up onto his feet with his hand still planted firmly on his desk and stood still for several seconds, waiting for the dizziness to pass as his vision clouded over with dark specks that stole his sight and caused his mind to break in pain.

I'm pathetic.

When he deemed himself able enough to stand without the aid of leaning against something, he flung his mirror across the room with the back of his hand. The mirror cracked and pieces flew across the floor as the mirror itself fell out of its stand and slid underneath his bed.

"God damn it!" He snapped and walked towards his bed to locate the mirror, as slowly and as steadily as he could. Each step he took was like a nail hammering deep into his brain and each time he stepped across the glass shards scattered across the floor, the cutting pain was unregistered and the blood drops falling from the bottom of his feet went unnoticed.

He knelt down, feeling the world turning upside down again and the black specks swarming across his vision returned. A forcing sort of pain which felt like something was pressing his brain to the front of his skull appeared and his ears started to ring. He wanted to curse out loud, but refrained from doing so because he knew it would take too much effort and he would end up with another addition to his headache. It just wasn't worth it. Instead, Beyond reached underneath his bed, brushing his fingers across the dusty floorboards and around old boxes until he found the smoother surface of his now broken mirror and he pulled it out and studied it.

"Seven years bad luck." He noted, remembering the old superstition that meant absolutely nothing in modern times, anymore.

The several cracks in the mirror were attached to one large one that ran down the middle – the 'vein'. It ran right across his reflection, cutting his face into two. The smaller three cracks ran across his face, one underneath his right eye, another across his right cheek and the last was past his top lip. There was one large chunk missing from his left eye down to his chin that had shattered to smaller pieces when it hit the floor. Just looking at what was once his mirror, reminded him of how incomplete he was feeling; how imperfect he was. It made him angrier, but he didn't resolve that by throwing the mirror again. Instead, he attached the frame back to its stand and placed it back where it belonged on the surface of his desk.

He picked up a miniscule mirror shard from the floor and held the sharp pointed end right at the thick artery that connected his hand to his forearm and considered letting himself go and drawing it across, letting his flesh rip open at the mercy of the roughly edged end and peeling away the skin to let his lifeblood stain his floor, but he quickly changed his mind and let the shard drop to the floor.

L doesn't do this. He never succumbs to a weakness or pleasure like this. He's stronger than that.

Instead, Beyond climbed to his feet. He felt weak and sick. His head was spinning and it still felt like something was driving several nails through his skull and into his brain. That was what he got for not eating and sleeping, after all. It was only expected.

Beyond lightheadedly trudged over to his wardrobe and pulled it open. His usually worn black long sleeved shirt was draped over his pets. He pulled it over his head and left his room, locking the door behind him with the key that was always in his pocket.

.-.

"Where is he?"

"Who?"

"A is gone."

"Why do you even care about him? He's a lost cause; he's too damaged to fix. It's hopeless."

"He… he's getting better."

"Zero… He tried to kill himself."

"He's getting better! He is, trust me."

"But-"

"Shut up. That was a long time ago. He – he talks to me, now. He…."

"What?"

"He knows a lot about… about him. It's hard to get him to talk about it, but he…"

"Who is 'him'? What is it that's hard for A to talk about?"

"Shh! Anyone could be listening right now."

.-.

Hood woke up with the feeling of someone slapping her in the face. Her head was thrown to the side, wrenching pain at the side of her neck due to the force. Her cheek felt like it was on fire and her ears were ringing, but she didn't respond the same way she would have, the year before. Her heart was jumping of course, but she didn't yelp or cry out, nor did she even bother cupping her cheek. Instead, she curled into a ball and tried to calm the flooding shock-adrenaline within her.

It was probably just part of her dream, she figured. She'd read about people having bone-breaking pain in their dreams, which follow them into their waking life. There wasn't an explanation to how that was caused, but it was common among many people. She believed it was just the brain playing tricks on you, making you think you were in pain when you really weren't.

"Do you want me to slap you again? Wake up!"

Her eyes shot open at the voice; that hard, familiar voice - one that she hadn't heard in almost an entire week. Because of that, she began to think that she'd done something wrong when she, forced by impulse, kissed him.

"Backup?" She felt groggy, especially by the pool of light that her eyes were now sharply absorbing.

Another slap, hard, sharp, and cutting; right across her other cheek, drawing her head to turn the other way.

"It's Beyond. You should know that by now."

This time, Hood let herself cup her new, throbbing bruise before she turned back to face him. She didn't say anything. She waited for him to speak, instead.

"You're not wearing your birthday present." He noticed as he pressed his finger into the centre of her throat.

"It's over there." Hood pointed over to her desk and Beyond grabbed it before throwing it onto her bed.

"Put it on."

Without another word, Hood picked it up and unclasped the red leather collar before sliding it around her neck. "Can you do it up for me?" She asked, almost ashamed; ashamed for following his demands without argument, but she knew, deep down in some twisted place within her, that she liked his attention.

Beyond pushed the leather tab through the buckle as tightly as he could without strangling her, although he was almost tempted to do so, but he knew that she couldn't die. Not yet, at least.

"You look terrible." He commented, pulling away from her to lean against the wall by the window.

Hood knew that he was, without a doubt, being ironic. He was pastier than usual, he looked like he'd lost weight and his face was thinner. He was unhealthy, to say the least. Very unhealthy.

"What do you want?"

"Haylee, my darling, I need you to assist me with something seeing how at the moment, I don't trust myself and Mihael is…. Well, I can't really trust him with sharp objects, at the moment. He seems to like them a little too much, if I may say so myself." He grinned in his usual malicious way.

Hood pressed her lips together, some spike of fear pressed into her chest but she didn't want that to show. "What do you want me to do? You're not going to hurt-"

"Hurt someone? As much as I'd love to, no. I need you to cut my hair for me. You interrupted me last time I was going to do it." He explained.

The fear inside of her slowly melted away at the pure innocence of the idea. "Why can't you do it yourself?"

Beyond's grin faded. "Because I'm actually quite angry today."

Beyond didn't offer a full explanation to Hood as to why he was angry. He didn't clear up why that made him not want to cut his own hair. If he did that, that would be one way of admitting how weak he really was; how pathetic he was. If he couldn't control himself, what hope did he really have? He was either going to cut himself, or cut someone else if he had access to anything sharp, just to pool out his rage. He loved the sight of blood dripping out from torn flesh, he loved the strange, metallic sting his skin left him with when he drew the metal blade of his knife across any place on his body – especially his thighs. He loved the tingling feeling of fire blistering the tips of his fingers. But he especially loved observing pain on others; to see the way they reacted to such a thing was pure heaven.
He needed to learn control if he was going to be number one; if he was going to be L.

.-.

Just a quick, incredibly short chapter. I thought that this would be a nice place to end it.

Anyway, if anybody noticed, I'm trying to subtly give a slight taste of Zero's second agenda when it comes to A. I know that his and Xanthus's part was incredibly choppy with absolutely nothing to hold it down with other than speech, but I thought it fit in well due to the nature of the chapter. It's called 'Shards' and that was just a 'shard' on the surface of the story.
We're getting close to the end, finally!

And well, I'll apologise for the procrastination period. I can't get into a regular rhythm of writing, like I used to, anymore. But I suppose that having a long break between each chapter actually makes my writing flow a lot easier and the details actually come in more natural that way. It isn't rushed if I do it this way, and it's a lot easier to read.

Anyone else notice that mirrors seem to be a bit of a recurring theme throughout the story, or am I just imagining that?

Anyway, thankyou for reading, I hope you enjoyed the chapter, and please review. It motivates me to continue writing this. All critique is welcome!

Song: Pumped Up Kicks – Foster The People