Note:I do not own these characters, and this is a story line already in existence(Fight Club is an excellent book and movie, I promise). Though I have altered the story line greatly, so I suppose this would be considered an AU heavily inspired by Fight Club. This is actually one of the things I've written that I am most proud of, so I really hope you enjoy it. Thank you to all of you who review, or even just like the things I write. I'm sorry I rarely respond, blame it on the fact that I am terribly scatterbrained. I really do appreciate your kind words and praise. This is rated M for dark themes, brief mentions of abuse, cursing, and a few other things. This chapter is relatively tame. I'd like to give a special thank you to Lueurdelaube, Marshofsleep, and Twin Lupis for helping me get through this and giving me so much feedback. I probably would not have gotten the courage to post this without the encouragement. OKAY. Onward to the story. Enjoy!

Back when I used to sleep, there was this place I would go in my dreams. Just this dark pool, thick like molasses. In the dream, I walk along the surface, and it changes under my bare feet, morphing into opaque black glass, unidentifiable liquid sloshing between my toes.

It's warm.

Walls I can't see pulse like a stuttering heartbeat around me.

It reeks of pennies and dread.

Then fingers break the surface of the black waves, and I grab on, pull at them as hard as I can, because this place is strange, but I can only imagine it gets stranger the deeper you go. Breathing this sticky air is like inhaling storm clouds, electrically charged and suffocating, choking me in my own fear, drowning me in it while the person attached to those fingers, an innocent for all i know, is sinking with me, because of me.

I wake up and I never know who the owner of those ink-stained fingers are, but I wish I did, 'cause I could find them one day and tell them to run, get away before I pull you in too deep, save yourself, don't let me destroy you.

It's been weeks since I've dreamed. I would be thankful, except the dreams stopped when my sleep stopped, and now everything just blends, everything is so far away, like I'm looking through the wrong end of binoculars.

I went and saw Doc about it, but he's useless. Frank wants to psychoanalyze me, cut me open and see how I operate. I just want some fucking Ambien. He got pissy when I said so. I have to exercise more, he tells me. Maybe I'll start with a good old fashioned beat down, crush his smug face in and sleep for a week.

But no. Chances are he's got a scalpel on him at all times. Guess I'll just use the treadmill I hang my dry cleaning from. No scars, no jail time, money well spent. Iknew I would need that thing at some point.

My boss calls me 8 am sharp on my Sunday off. I don't complain, I never went to sleep so what does it really matter?

He tells me in that perpetually cool, calm voice of his that we have a situation, and I can vaguely remember a time in my life when I would have shut him down, told him that no, we have no situations on my Sundays off.

Now apparently a restaurant Bossman had invested in heavily has a roach infestation, and it's my job to make sure this never becomes a well-known fact.

Yeah, I got it boss, call the usual guy for cleanup, pay off the patrons who got crunchy little treats in their super special, vegetarian, egg white only omelettes, make sure no one goes to the paper, yadda yadda, I've been through this a thousand times.

Protect the investment, he tells me in his super serious voice, and thank God or whoever that I'm too tired to mock this nitpicking bastard.

This situation calls for a clean, crisp blue dress shirt, silver tie, black slacks, belt and shoes. Neutral tones, Bossman taught me early on, keep people calm. Never wear red when you want someone to relax, the colour is agitating. He looked directly into my eyes as he said this, like a challenge, his own golden eyes glittering with malice and glee as he watched me swallow down and choke on my battered pride.

Go back to music school, where they called you only by your last name to watch you squirm, when my professor informed me that I really ought to give up the idea of becoming a famous composer, that the things I created were 'Scary' and 'Unsettling'. I told him to go fuck himself, he's a bitch for not being able to handle something real, something raw and truthful. I told him,

"I am your repressed thoughts asshole. You can shove me into the back of your mind, but I'll still always be there to get to you when your guard is down."

The dean of the school, when informed of this exchange between the dear old professor and me? He didn't understand, didn't get that I was being metaphorical, poetic even.

Expulsion was the obvious solution.

Since that time, I've made a point of toning it down, lying to others to preserve their fragile psyches. I'm the monster under the bed posing in hardly human skin. My father told me this when I was five years old, just after I played for him my first song.

I've learned normalcy. I go to work, give it my best, come home to my stylishly furnished apartment, make dinner in my miniature kitchen, go through all the motions. Anyone who looks sees an average Joe.

Just what I've always wanted.

Who cares about becoming something great? Such a hassle. I have all I need right in my little home. Perfect contentment.

I haven't slept in three weeks.

Now, I discovered the bane of my existence at a meeting for people who were raised in emotionally abusive households. She didn't say a damn word until week five, after some chick with the name tag labeled as 'Liz' spoke about raising her little sister while their mother went out to get high and fucked every night. 'Liz' said their mom would come home around four in the morning, lipstick all messy and hair ratty, missing some clothing, and promptly tell Liz she had to do a better job, how useless she was, how disappointed she was in Liz.

Liz didn't cry. Liz was stony faced as she spoke to all of us, far too adjusted to her reality to bat an eye at something like that.

Maka Albarn though?

She was not adjusted at all.

With her big, green eyes glittering with tears, she said just one word, choked it out so quietly I hardly even knew she spit out anything even resembling human language.

"Unfair.."

In that moment my heart broke for her. Because life is unfair, and if she's been coming to these meetings, she should have been well aware of that by now.

After the meeting was over, and her tears all dry, I introduced myself, as a favor to her, I thought. Maybe I could break the truth of the world to her gently? Help her come to terms gradually, even save her. Looking back, it's kind of ironic.

"Lucas, huh?" she asked me. I flinched, 'cause It sounded so foreign when she said it, like she knew I was a liar before I even walked in the door of that old church basement.

"I saw you at Starbucks a few times. Once you were Dave. Another time you were Alexander… A different day, you were Wes, I think?" She smiled a little, a smile tinged with pity. I told her, it's tough to accept who you are when you know your existence is essentially meaningless.

And she went cold. Her glare froze my heart in my chest.

When she spoke, it was with a kind of surety that I'm still angry at myself for coveting. No one I ever met possessed something like that, and I'm still sure I never could.

"Death would be the easy way out. You just have to live long enough to figure out what your purpose is."

On an old receipt she scribbled something out so quickly I couldn't even see, and tucked it in my shirt pocket.

"If you ever need to talk,'Lucas'," she said, and left me with such an ache in my chest, I was out of breath. When I went home and got undressed, I finally pulled the receipt out of my pocket. It was from the bookstore downtown and alarmingly long, and on the back in messy cursive was her name and number.

After I studied the list of books on her little note for an hour, I fell asleep for the first time in a few days.

I slept until three in the afternoon, missed eight calls from Bossman, but God, it was glorious.

She stopped going to meetings after that though. I had her number memorized, but lacked the courage to dial.

Sleep escaped me since the moment my brain realized i've been abandoned.

Again.