Beyond woke first. His arm was numb with the weight of the younger boy's head, and he inhaled quietly as the nerves skittered pins and needles in protest. Mello's breath rushed slow against his sleeve, labored and even. Beyond's other arm had not remained around the slim line of his hips during the night, instead retreating to lie between them with his fingertips on the floor. He could feel the warmth trapped there, but quickly grew bored with it. His head hurt. The floor had caught him just shy of the occipital and his luck at retaining his consciousness was cowed by the weight of the following headache. Bright colors danced behind his eyelids, hallucinations that sometimes twisted into strange numbers and names he never forgot. He twitched, a sharp tic in his shoulder, and pulled his arm out from under Mello's head without warning or grace. There was a faint sound, almost a hiss, and the boy tensed beside him. Beyond knew what was coming, and welcomed the excuse to curl his arm and restore the circulation when Mello twisted himself up off the carpet desperately. There was a slick popas his cheek cleared the wood. He made it as far as the stone hearth before the blood overwhelmed him and he retched, black thick mess spreading over the granite. He could have been vomiting a shadow off the wall. Beyond's nose curled.

The moonlight was high in the window, scarce shades distinguishing the blue of the night sky from the black of the bookshelves and the hollows of the room. The fire had long burned away to ash and ember, a faint trickle of warmth creeping across the floor in tendrils with the draft. Mello finally quieted somewhat, panting as he braced on shaking arms, staring at the pitch and taking in the acrid scent of it. It was a quite a lot of his own blood to be confronted with upon awakening, to be certain. Several ounces lay congealing on the hardwood, a stiff red stain in the white sleeve of Beyond's shirt…caked thickly across that fine cheekbone as though gravity had been in on the joke. There was another faint shiver and gag, but he didn't have anything left to give. Instead, he fell weakly back to sit near Beyond's knees. His fingers landed in a dark pool and he gave a groan of revulsion as he tried to scrub it off his fingertips into his jeans. Beyond relished the sudden jump when he noticed the pale shirt in his peripheral vision and turned wide eyes on the figure stretched out behind him. The older boy let him look, exhausted himself, refusing to do more than slit his eyes in acknowledgement. There was a wary expression on the boy's face as he rewrote his mental definition of Beyond, and not just the physical one, but the mental damage he'd just witnessed in all its glory. He was…for the most part unharmed. Everything he'd ever learned told him that it could have been much worse. Everything they'd taught him about men like Beyond had hardly prepared him for a man like Beyond. The hint of awe was immensely gratifying. The headache was not. He was smirking, in spite of himself, letting his chin dip as his fingers laced behind his head.

Mello blinked, working his jaw slowly and then turning away as he muttered, "Don't look at me like that."

His unsteady arm jerked up to swipe the blood off of his cheek, made contact, froze, and then proceeded at a much gentler pace. The lacerations inside his mouth must have screamed. Beyond's smirk deepened. "Presuming there's a 'like' anything."

"Do you always cuddle after fistfights?" He was trying to sneer, but the swelling marred the weight of the look and made him sound as though his mouth were full of cotton.

"Do you always bring bats to fistfights?" It was rhetorical in the worst sense, touching lightly on the obvious fact that Mello had doubted his own ability to win from the outset. Or had decided to up the ante. Which was complete madness in hindsight. Those facts flitted through his blue eyes until something like shame took them over and he drew his knees up, a deep breath and exhale his only response. It had been stupid, bringing a weapon into a physical altercation with one of the only people on the planet that could outthink him. Beyond remained quiet for a long time, wondering what the next logical step of the process would be. The amount of blood strewn around the library was disconcerting, but the staff would know at a glance that it wasn't life threatening. Mello could tend the cuts with superglue and an antiseptic mouthwash that was going to feel like swallowing burning gasoline. Aside from the headache and one or two potential bruises, Beyond himself was relatively unscathed…and rested. He stretched languidly as he sat up, elbows coming to rest on his knees and fingers lacing as they regarded each other in the dark. He didn't know what time it was. The gears clicked and jarred trying to resume their normal pace and Beyond was tempted to begin the fight all over again just to slow that tortuous return to routine. He had no idea what hour of the morning it was, how long they'd lain here in the floor, quietly sharing existence. It was…strange. Mello didn't meet his eyes, rubbing his fingers through his hair with another sigh and a timid swallow. He'd look rather ridiculous in another few hours, puffy and discolored. Somehow, the older boy doubted he'd ever see the damage. Mello's manner and dress spoke of a certain degree of vanity, a pride that dictated his complete isolation until every trace of the encounter had faded from his face. After that? It promised to be interesting.

When was the last time he'd looked forward to something?

XXXX

Beyond was fairly certain that symbol didn't exist in any written language he'd encountered thus far…which, as far as he knew, was all of them. He peered at it carefully as he slipped through the throng of students past the dining hall, marking the name in his memory with a pang of familiarity. Limitation of his human intellect aside, Whammy Academy had a voracious appetite for children and professors alike. The entry test was designed to root out higher functioning ability in toddlers whose diets consisted of bark and certain tape worms from unnamed islands in unclaimed oceans. The staff was hand-chosen and groomed for years before ever meeting the first student. It was a global endeavor and every written English material in the building had a translation into every otherform of written language. That small, strange curve and slash had never been seen outside of his own head, he was positive of the fact. There was no conceivable explanation for that secondary sight, either, but then again, Whammy hadn't really investigated the matter, and now Beyond had a growing stash of antipsychotics. The eerie red numbers and names over everyone's heads had remained a mystery to him until the day he followed a man to his death, a year or so before he joined the academy. It was a death clock…and not a human one, not by any design or cognitive grace that a human mind could interpret. The numbers could be up to nine figures long (that he'd witnessed, on an infant) and did not count down in any orderly fashion, the digits dropping at random. They weren't always human-derived denominations, either. His best assumption was that it was a stellar alignment of some sort, but with the scope of space being infinitive as it was, he had no concrete starting point to break the cypher. It always counted down. The names were also fluid. Some changed, some were utterly ridiculous, and some hearkened to key words and substances that he could identify as having terrestrial roots. It was how a person identified themselves, and it covered an impressive spectrum amongst genius children. Some took their assigned alias as the only identity they'd ever need, and others clung to names that once belonged to families, origins that they could no longer hope to return to. Mello was one such. Some, found younger or at least less imprinted with the world outside the academy, named themselves, giving a personable aspect to the creature that they were and how they chose to interact with other people. There was a four year old somewhere in the building that was named Leon, but his soul answered to 'Oak'. Beyond had never seen his own name and clock. Ever. He sometimes wondered if that meant he didn't have a 'soul', if whatever higher power existed had somehow missed him, or if perhaps Whammy had just…killed it. Despite his sociopathic tendencies, Beyond didbelieve in a higher power…he had to, after watching that man's brain roll across the bus window like a soft boiled egg. Something had seen that coming, the clock made it obvious. When he was younger, he'd wondered if it meant he was a god himself, somehow…not some religion-scripted entity designed to appeal to every dark submissive aspect of the human enigma, of course, but somethingdifferent. After his first round of psychotropic inhibitors, he'd learned to wonder quietly.

'A' was dead now. Years had passed since Beyond found the taut rope trailing out an open window. 'B' was a child of nightmares, an older version of himself that he'd shed sometime before 'C', 'D', and 'E' had failed the testing. Once it was determined that he was going to pass, the others had been systematically set aside and reintegrated into the academy's then-growing population to follow up other careers. 'C' had been the most successful; she was now a prominent surgeon in a respected hospital. Beyond believed she had simply been too old to handle the extensive reconstruction of her own psyche. If only he'd…been lucky? Was that the term to describe what he'd ended up as? The first child suicide recorded by the academy was his predecessor. Beyond had been nine, L himself only a teenager. They'd expected at least one during the procedure, but they hadn't told the man himself that. The death rocked the young detective and the two founding board members to the core, and all three had adamantly refused to provide continued funding for the program until they changed their method of handling the potential replacements and the Whammy descendant appointed his long-time estate keeper to oversee the children's welfare. His lip curled unconsciously into a snarl, remembering that invisible glass wall between them called moral standard. Stop killing the children or they wouldn't pay. He recognized it as the only power they possessed, but the weakness of it was galling.

'B' stood for 'Back-up."

Alternate.

Copy.

Duplicate.

Effigy.

The Nazis might have coined the procedure, but Britain had won the war against humanity in his humble fucking opinion. Beyond shook his head and the shattered glass in it, blinking at the carpet. That was a long time and a lot of medications ago. L had finally introduced himself to the students after the suicide, believing that a face to go with the idea would ease the cruelty. The others were rattled, but B had quietly informed the detective that he'd kept the rope Alternate had hung himself with. He then named himself Beyond Birthday on the document, refused the detective's hand, and left. Something human in the man's eyes had insulted him, he remembered, some caring aspect that he'd been trained to ignore in his own head. He never told him what he planned to do with the rope.

The girl turned a corner. Beyond followed.

What if that symbol was a number he couldn't even conceive of? What if it represented a depth of space and time that he could not physically grasp as a concept of reality, much like a god-figure? An all-encompassing deity, why was he the only one who could see these numbers, this clock, and why was said higher power fucking with him like—
Something solid swept his left foot back midstride with a hook, sending his balance off wildly until he rolled his shoulders and turned on his grounded heel to compensate.

Mello.

Cool blue eyes met his and then drifted over his shoulder until he straightened. Beyond didn't have to look to know that the girl had ducked into some classroom and he'd missed it. Mello appraised him openly in the great hall, and Beyond hoped that the staff had elected to drop the tail for the week. It took a second for him to realize that Mello knew that somehow. It was in the cocky slant of his hips, one hand hidden in his pocket and his hair loose about his features. Not a dare, but close enough that Beyond almost called him on it. Instead, he took the opportunity to do the same. Mello stood level with his chin if standing properly, and his leather jacket showed signs of wear at the elbows, one shoulder, and likely across the middle of his back just below the shoulders from sliding in an out of countless desks. The sleeves were rolled up his forearms, which were almost as worn as the leather itself. Impact marks from the edges of…sneakers, he supposed, striped his left arm, the guard arm, he was right handed. And he sparred outside of the gym, forbidden by the martial instructors, who demanded all students compete and test barefoot. Beyond had not given him those marks, implying that he liked to fight often, which could explain the staff's blind eye to the damage Beyond had inflicted just…

There, a faint rose of bruising on one side of his chin. Crimson eyes settled on it, and the din in his head retreated somewhat, like leaves rushed down and away across the pavement.

The younger man didn't speak to him, even when his gaze lingered on the mark. He tilted his head to obscure it instead, until the richly dark eyes returned to his own and blinked slowly. Breathing was simple. Beyond didn't remember ever listening to himself to breathe. If he waited long enough, his pulse would surface. He blinked again, and noticed that time. He could hear the papers in Mello's notebook shift when he closed his hand tighter on the wire holding it together, and some shadow passed over those blue eyes in the quiet. Doubt. Hesitation. Students moved to either side of them like water around a stone, and whatever fear Beyond inspired was somewhat echoed by the young man in leather before him. Sidelong glances found the floor, protests died at the acknowledgement of identities, and the Whammy Academy Orphanage drifted over the two of them in a rolling fog of organized chaos and tightly reigned insanities. Beyond wondered to himself how true that statement actually was. Mello glanced one more time over his shoulder to insure the girl's…escape, he supposed, and Beyond got the insane simultaneous notions that explaining himself was an option that Mello would at least consider due to his own religious nature, and, that uttering his real name, the scramble of letters drifting over his head, would injure him somehow. A stitch ripped loose, and Mello's eyes narrowed when the rage peered back at him, and Beyond watched him turn on his toes to walk away smoothly before Beyond could test either theory.

XXXX

It had been ten years since he'd last seen her face…that was roughly an encyclopedia's worth of education and an equally vast amount of rumination to sift through, but eventually her name did float to the surface. Sera Bevrie. She'd been a toddler when they'd last met eyes, and he wasn't entirely sure she would remember, or if he wanted her to. She was twelve now, but not much taller. Her arms and shoulders were painfully thin, thick glasses balancing on her nose and every motion stained with the tension of the naturally clumsy. Sera was more of a savant than a genius, if memory served, but he couldn't be bothered to recall what her talent had been. A thin, stringy braid fell just past her collar, the color a lackluster blonde, nothing like Me— Beyond cut that thought off abruptly, biting his tongue. She shifted her rucksack as though it had twice the weight of two books, but to her, it likely was. She'd always been sick. Some abnormalities of the heart and lymphatic system coupled with a crippling asthma. Sera had never known the supposed luxury of running and playing with the other children, and she'd spent her entire youth wandering the halls, infuriatingly delicate. Beyond wondered sometimes if she felt the same frustration he did, watching her dig a white inhaler out of her pocket and puff carefully on it as she trudged up the second story stairs. He lingered a few steps behind, thumbs hooked in his pockets in feigned nonchalance. He wondered if she knew what rage felt like.

His mouth was moving silently. She's not going to die, you know.

That statement had been his first full sentence at the academy. Beyond placed his hand over some small boy's face and pushed him out of his path. Sera was small too, and he didn't want to risk losing her until he got a better glimpse at thatnumber. The hall was full of sunlight and the fluorescents on the opposing wall, but to him, today, it glowed red. The…talent, as he thought, was subdued now that he'd managed to find a control for it. It had taken a few weeks of experimentation, but Beyond had spent hours cutting open his medications and grinding his supplements together into different compounds. The entire procedure had further convinced him that it was something that he was doing,not something happening to him. A skill…or a reflex. He couldn't turn it off, but he'd reduced it to a dim red haze that followed every soul in his presence until he stopped and focused on it, and letters and numbers began to twitch into existence over their heads, like roaches trapped in bright light, and no amount of pills could keep them away. Sera swept past the labs on the second floor and started up the staircase to the third, the dorm level of the MicroScience wing.

I can tell.

Beyond stopped in his tracks as he mouthed the statement from his memory, tasting his own arrogance and disconnected contempt from a twelve year old mind that had matured grossly in the last ten years. Mello was training on the other side of the building, too far away to interfere. Beyond was in no hurry either, his crimson eyes drifting up and down the girl's form as though there were some string he could pull that would make her unravel. His study of the clocks had been limited. Despite his training and natural inclination as a problem solver, Beyond had gleaned very few concrete facts about the numbers. However, he knew without question these two things; that the clocks were an absolute, subject to their own rules and that nothing he did would change the fact Sera Bevrie had less than an hour to live, by his best estimate. Listening to the dull roar of children moving some distance behind himself, he waited, watching her take another reassuring breath from her inhaler before she disappeared into an open bedroom door.

He lingered another ten minutes to be sure no one had noticed him slinking through the masses with a purpose, but none of the staff had paid him any mind. They were getting lax. Regardless, it wouldn't do for them to catch him anywhere in the vicinity after she …passed. The thought made his heart quicken slightly. Death was a curiosity he'd been hard-pressed to indulge since coming to the Academy. Beyond had no way of stilling the tickle of his own interest. Another cough brought his attention to bear on the open door again, and quietly, rolling on the balls of his feet with his notebook pressed to side of his jeans, Beyond moved to the doorframe.

Sera jumped, viciously startled, her gasp ragged and following by another grating rattle. She held her hand up politely as she turned her head to see it through, but when she turned back, her eyes went wide as they met his. Fingers shaking still, she had to clear her throat to get the sound clear of her teeth, her words quiet, rough, and gently pained. Beyond found that charming. "I know you."

Beyond's eyebrows rose a bit at the accusation. "You do?"

"…Y-yeah…I remember. Hold on, it'll come to me." She tried to clear her throat, and the clock hazed into view again. Beyond watched it for a long moment before he stepped inside the room so that he couldn't be seen from the hallway anymore. Sera didn't react other than leaning against the footboard of the bed and taking slow measured breaths. She looked tired. Allergies shot red into her eyes and put a tickle in her throat that made her miserable for weeks on end. She never quite recovered from the first major attack, either, her body struggling to separate the vital oxygen from the air ever since she was a child. Her entire existence was a carefully constructed façade of happiness and education. Whammy knew this was coming. All the more reason for him to not be here, but that clock was hypnotic. A handful of seconds passed with every moment she got air to clear her throat and lungs, slow and deliberate. She knew it was coming too. There was an old pain in her body, something that growled in the dark and woke her up, something that hurt much deeper than allergies should. Like a vice checking the bolts.. The garbage can beside her bed was full of bloody tissues and old abenesol canisters from her inhalers. There was no make-up, no jewelry, no dresses, nothing that signified growth or even youth in the room to behold. Nothing to indicate a future. Sera was fragile, rubbing her arms to keep from rubbing at the ache in her chest and the dull confusion because it felt wrong, didn't it?

Beyond's eyes were clear, glimmering quietly as he timed his breath to hers, watching with a great, open mind that was full of curiosities that no one would ever dare to hear out loud. He knew he couldn't stop this. Was he supposed to do something to aide it? No, that was a line he wasn't sure he could come back from yet. Eventually, maybe, when he had the rage under control. It would be another study, another investigation into the nature of the numbers and the names. Sera blinked at him, seeming to remember he was there and shaking her head. "Sorry, I don't…feel good."

"I know."

"But anyway—" She started, swallowing thickly and raising her eyes to his. They were bloodshot and blinking too rapidly, a hint of the coming blurred vision. He fancied he could see her heart working from here, too fast. "I do. I remember you, from when I was a girl. Those eyes, you know?"

She tried to smile weakly. "My name is Joan."

"….Beyond." He licked the edge of his teeth behind his lips, wondering what exactly she remembered. She'd been half dead, arched away from the carpet. There was an old, raised scar on her throat from where they'd manually cleared her airway with a scalpel…likely multiple times.

"I think…" She frowned, her brow furrowing and took a shaky breath, starting over. "I need help."

Is that what minutes looked like? "I don't think they can help you."
She squinted at him, but that quiet fear voiced aloud was too much. She shook her head and eased down to the floor, finally giving into the pain and resting a hand over her heart. "You don't understand…I just…I need my inhaler, and…the shot. Just call somebody."

Beyond shook his head. By the time they arrived with adrenaline and the appropriate steroids, they'd be performing CPR. She was going to die. She knew that, somewhere in the back of her head. She'd probably been preparing for it ever since she began the medical courses of study and learned in intimate detail all the ways her body had conspired to destroy her from birth. Another cough wracked through her slender shoulders, and something weak followed it, a sound that put him in mind of another set of hazed, pained, eyes. Beyond sank into a crouch, a snake coiling on itself as it settled for the hunting wait, but there was no prey here. Sera was already gone, the gag that chased her exhale sharp and bitter as her heart jumped into her throat and started to strangle her. Her hand covered it, applying pressure and begging it to level out. The measured pace of breaths was gone, replaced with something sharp and shallow as she fought down her panic and tried to think. Another convulsion in her chest robbed her of both strength and composure, the pain bringing sharp tears to her eyes as her beast reared its head and settled throughout her body. The old ache, the familiar ache, the one that whispered one day she wouldn't survive…finally woke. She turned away from Beyond, resting bluntly against the bed and a small hand dug into her pockets. The white inhaler appeared in her fingers and she cleared her throat to clear the blood and phlegm from too much pollen and the coming summer, and took a deep, deep pull, misting medicine and praying. It helped, but only for a moment. She was remarkably calm. He tried not to be disappointed.

Then again, she wasn't fighting yet. She still believed that she'd just overworked herself with the stairs and coughing and if she could just slow her heart a bit, she'd be fine. The denial was palpable in the look she gave the dresser. The cough returned, and it was brutal; Beyond watched her curl inward and draw her knees up, fighting to take another pull, but when she pressed the button and forced her lungs to open…nothing came. The canister failed her, and brown eyes went wide as she stared at it.

She's not going to die, you know. I can tell.

Then. Now? She tried again, but the medicine was gone, and the precious seconds that Beyond could have spent digging through her nightstand for a fresh one, or calling the staff to come make the obligatory humane attempt to ease her way…he spent watching it himself instead. How curious, the way her grip tightened until her knuckles bleached in frustration. Was this Sera's rage? No, Sera was too sweet, too kind, wasn't she? They'd worked really, fucking, hard, to keep her happy, to keep her stupid in all the ways that mattered, because what was the point. Whammy's was a corporation masquerading as a charity after all, and under different circumstances, they could have called this mercy, but in the end, Sera was a waste of resources. A waste. A dead end. A dead girl, now. The cough gave way to a whine, and then, the wheeze of air trapped and filtered through swollen flesh. She felt it coming now, her hands shaking in earnest as she tried to take another dose of the medicine, and again, again, pumping the button like her heart was pumping blood and fear through every inch of her body. She couldn't breathe… The hiss tightened again, further, until it stopped completely, and Beyond tilted his head, eyes roaming her face. There was nothing for a moment.
Then terror, pure and abject, filtered into those young features. Just like it had when she was five, and she'd fallen at his feet, completely enamored with the idea of life only because death was a great deep unknown, a dark thing skirting her vision. Her clock still had years on it then. There were no second chances here, no pounding feet and no glorious medicines that could turn back time and snatch a life back from the edge of the void. The darkness was going to swallow her this time. Dead. Sera was dying.

It came over her like a leaden blanket. She buried her face in her arms , rocking back and forth and sobbing, mouth hanging open as something like a scream tried to escape and only managed a low hum from between her lungs. She moaned in pain, tightening in on herself and then thrashing. There…that was rage. That was life fighting to eke out an existence when the machinery had all failed, clawing at her collarbone and falling to the side. She kicked the dresser once, then again with direct force that rattled the drawers. It gained her nothing, and she let it bear her down, sinking to a fetal position with her hands still clutched over her treacherous heart. The spasms put him mind of A beating his own limbs against the bricks for purchase. They'd found the dust under his bloody nails later, and said it suggested that he changed his mind just before the rope went taught. As though that would have given them hope, or illuminated his regret at his decision. The eulogy quoted him as having returned to the living in spirit in the seconds before his death, a brief respite from his suffering before the rope ended it for good and all. Beyond didn't actually believe his neck had broken, but he swallowed the lie and for years after, he watched the blue twisted features of A climbing into view in his bedroom window at night. Sometimes he'd left the window open, wondering if the ghost could speak…the ghost didn't have a clock either. Her eyes opened on Beyond again, narrowed but wild, clutching at the carpet and the hem of his jeans, begging silently 'Call them. Please Call them.'

Beyond brushed the hair out of her face so he could see her eyes better, his own bright and empty. Sera looked into them and knew she was about to die alone. She gripped at him, nails catching, but the asthma took hold and shook her strength away, her body screaming for oxygen in all the ways that her voice couldn't.

A few minutes, still. Beyond didn't mind.