Guys! For the record, juggling is going very well. I can now do it and stop by catching one ball in my MOUTH! It's awesome.

Um, sorry for the wait... no excuse really... BUT I WANNA FINISH THIS TODAY! So T-minus eleven hours til midnight. We'll see if I can get it done. AVPM! HELP ME THROUGH!

While I'm here, I'm going to shamelessly advertise StarKid. If you've never heard of them, their this theater that performs my top three favorite original musicals that are ALL flawlessly done on YouTube. Like... Okay. Seriously, if you've never seen A Very Potter Musical, A Very Potter Sequel, or Starship, you're missing out on Cheeky's top three favorite things to ever happen.

Honestly, I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up until I watched Starship. Now I know I wanna be A STARSHIP RANGER! ANYTHING FOR THE DREAM! Guys... It's not even okay. I WANT STARKID... and a rocketship.

Numb. Completely and utterly numb. That's all Logan could feel, if you could even call it that. He could see his friends deteriorating along side him, the pep in their step being sucked away by his dreary existence, but he couldn't bring himself to talk, let alone do anything about it.

He had shifted into silence after that delightful conversation... you know, the one that shouldn't be named. He sang in the studios, he answered when spoken to, but he wasn't the same Logan anymore, and he knew it. He didn't even feel right to himself. Logan knew how pale he looked; he knew how dead his eyes looked. It wasn't like there weren't mirrors in 2J. Logan was painfully aware of his appearance, and how it was draining the life out of everyone around him, but it was just so hard.

Everything took so much energy, and while he wanted to help his friends and put on a happy face like he had been striving to for so long, he just couldn't help but think about all the work it would take. Logan knew it was selfish. He knew everything. But that didn't make anything any easier. In fact, it made it that much more suffocating to deal with.

It wasn't easy to describe how crushed he was feeling. It was as if every morning when he got out of bed, a little bit of him was left under the sheets each day. He was eroding, crumbling, wasting away. And unfortunately...

Logan didn't care.

"James! Wakey wakey!" Kendall begged, shaking his mattress. Despite the normal cheer he put into those very words usually, Kendall just sounded tired today. He'd been sounding tired for a very long time. "We've got a big day ahead of us! Time to greet it with a smile!" An arm flung out from underneath the comforter and whizzed past his ear. "Haha. Nice shot, buddy, but you missed. Two minutes," Kendall warned, leaving for the shower with a worn out sigh. James sat up in bed and scrubbed at his face. Another day he didn't want to face. He threw a pillow at Carlos's head, successfully waking him up, and went about blindly pulling on clothes.

Eventually, all four boys were seated around the table with bowls of cereal in front of them. Logan's eyes were rimmed with red and staring vacantly at the rim of his cup. It physically hurt James to see Logan like this. He couldn't take the way he would break down into hiccuping sobs. He hated how he couldn't console him no matter how hard he tried. He despised how quickly everything had fallen apart to this extent. He resented Kendall for not being able to fix it. He wanted his Logan back... even if his Logan had been nothing but a lie.

The dark silence of the room was cut when Logan's hands slammed down on the table as he stood up, his chair clattering to the floor. He spoke, his body shaking with each word. "I. Can't. Do this. Anymore," he said through clenched teeth, and his friends were at a loss to say anything back. This was just so... abrupt. It didn't fit in with the scene. Sure, Logan was sad, that was a no-brainer, but what... what even was this? A tantrum, or something more? What were they supposed to say? What was even going on?

"Ah... Logie?" Kendall asked, trying to get a grip on the situation. Logan's head was tilted down, so he couldn't see his expression. It was a bit unnerving, especially as it didn't reveal any tells about how the morning was going to go. He reached out to grab his wrist, but Logan immediately batted it away. His hands tightened into fists at his sides, and his back was rigid.

"Don't touch me. Don't touch me, unless you're willing to end it. You don't care if you won't end it," he practically growled, seething. Carlos and James shared a look, not sure what was going on. They were pretty used to all kinds of outbursts from Logan, but this was different, and they honestly weren't sure what they were dealing with. Carlos cleared his throat.

"End what?" he questioned, his words tiptoeing through the air. For all Carlos's craziness, he knew a delicate situation when he saw it, even when it felt this random. Logan's head whipped up, and the way his eyes bore through Carlos made him wish he had never asked. He subconsciously curled in on himself and a tremor resounded in this voice. "Logan?" Waiting for an answer that, unfortunately, Logan didn't intend on giving him any time soon.

"I'm not me anymore," Logan rambled incoherently, "I'm not all here, I'm gone! I'm gone! Look! Look at me! I'm not here. I'm not HERE! ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS LOOK!" He gripped Carlos's collar from across the collar. Fear flashed through Carlos's eyes and he pulled away as far as he could from Logan.

"I am looking, Logan. I'm looking. I just see you!" he murmured. Kendall pried Logan off of him as the pale boy continued screaming.

"You're a liar. You're LYING, Carlos! All of you just don't get it! LOOK AT ME! END IT!" he shouted. Logan locked eyes with James, giving him a pleading look. "Please... James... Look at me... say you can't see me. Say I'm not here. You just have to look. Just look and see! You have to see and end it!" he begged, his voice comparable to the brokenness that resounded in it when he told them about his parents, "Please." James nodded.

"Loges... I have been looking at you," he said slowly, and, if possible, for a second, Logan's face fell even further. "And you're right," he told him with unease rolling in his stomach, "You're missing your happy half, but what is it you want me to end?" Logan looked at him happily, a sick smile twisting on his face.

"Thank you, thank you! Make it fast," he said, a wild look in his eyes that made James want to run away as fast as he could, but something kept him rooted to his chair.

"Logan, end what?" he asked again, his tone demanding an answer. Logan nodded and wormed out of Kendall's grasp, holding his wrists out to James with a sadistic grin adorned on his face.

"End me." Kendall's face paled as James looked to him for help. As much as he hated to admit it, Kendall knew that James was closer to Logan right now and that he had about as much of a clue of what to say as James did. Logan, meanwhile, looked ecstatic about the turn in the conversation and was bouncing from foot to foot as he waited for James to follow through with what Logan thought he had promised. Now it was Kendall's turn to clear his throat, and he grabbed Logan's shoulders, turning him around and trying to ignore the crazed look in his eyes.

"What do you mean, Logan?" the blonde asked nervously, "What is ending you?" The look Logan gave him was enough to answer the unspoken question. But just because Kendall now knew he wanted to commit suicide, it didn't mean he could wrap his head around it. "Wha- How- Did you just decide now?" he questioned, knowing that this wasn't helping, but not sure what else to do with himself. He ignored the tears streaking down Carlos's face to focus on Logan, even though he knew it was probably a bad idea to let him sit there like that. Logan laughed.

"No. I decided when Mom died. Now just do it, I don't want to wait anymore" he said, turning around and holding his wrists once again to James. "Make sure you cut them deep, or I won't bleed out," he said, and James blanched, and he fell from his seat and onto his knees, nausea sweeping over him. Logan's eyebrows knitted together, and he felt something grip his hand. He turned to see Carlos looking at him with big, shinning eyes.

"Don't ever say that, Logan!" he said, gagging on the snot running down his face like a little kid. "You can't end it! Not when I'm here!" he told him, despair and desperation echoing throughout his voice. Logan frowned and shook him off, grabbing his chin, wet with tears, and making the Latino look him in the eyes. Anger flashed across his face.

"Just look! Everyone can see but you! Why can't you take it?" he yelled in the shorter boy's face.

"Because it's my fault!" he yelped, and, surprisingly, Logan floundered for a second. He let him go and backed away, sanity creeping over his features.

"What? No it's no-"

"Yes it is," Carlos cut him off, taking his turn as the center of attention. All three sets of eyes in the room were fixed on him as he looked down and played with the buttons on his shirt. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Kendall thanked God for his mom having taken Katie out shopping just moments before this whole scene went down. "I had seen, Logan. I had seen, and I didn't do anything... I knew why you didn't go swimming when everyone was asking. I knew why you changed in the bathroom when everyone was laughing at your "modesty". I knew, and I didn't say anything! I could have saved you! I could have saved you, and I could have saved your daddy, and then you wouldn't be sad!" Logan reeled away, grabbing his heart and at a loss for words.

"Carlos..." James whispered, and found his hand leeching onto the shorter boy's. "It's not your fault."

"Yes, it IS!" Carlos repeated, feeling unheard. Tears fell in sheets down his face, and he began apologizing. "I'm so sorry, Logan! I should have... I could have... You could be happy! I want you happy, and you could have been if only I wasn't so stupid!" This, of course, had Logan snapped back into focus, and he grapped the Latino's other hand.

"Hey. We don't call ourselves stupid, remember? We worked on that!" Carlos quirked a smile, but it was quickly replaced with a frown.

"Are you kidding? Like that even matters now... Besides, you were hurting, Logan. I didn't do anything about it, and now I will never stop hating myself for it. I. Could. Have. Saved. You. But I blew my chance, and now you have to live with all," he gestured to the atmosphere of the room, "this. It's all my fault." Logan tried to talk, but Carlos's fingers tightening around his own stopped him. "Don't die, Logan," he said, voice cracking and hope filling his eyes. "You can't die cause if you do, then I'll be as big of a murderer as you are, and I couldn't live with that." Silent tears now flowed down Logan's cheeks and he bit his lower lip.

"Carlos, you wouldn't be a murder-" he stopped in his tracks, and his eyes widened.

Realization.

"But... I killed them," he mumbled to himself. "Dad said... Dad said... it's my fault, I..." he looked up at Carlos, the Latino unsure of what was going on. "He said I did... didn't I? Wasn't it me?" Kendall was the first to catch on, and he put a hand on the shorter boy's shoulder.

"No. It wasn't you, Logan," he answered, and Logan felt the ground slipping out from beneath him. He stumbled backwards into Kendall's awaiting arms. "It was never you." Logan's eyes glazed over with an expression that none of the boys could place.

"But... he said..." James was the next to catch on.

"He was lying, Logan. He was blaming you for something you didn't do, and now you're doing the same thing to yourself. You didn't kill your parents. Accidents happen, and you can't blame yourself for them. I hate watching you tear yourself up for something you didn't do." James told him, his hand running through Logan's hair. The paler boy looked up at him with confused brown doe eyes. He chewed on his bottom lip for a bit, his brain trying to process his thoughts. He looked up at James eventually, something sad and scared burning in his eyes.

"I didn't do it?" he asked. James shook his head.

"No." Logan looked to his toes and then met his eyes again.

"But he said I did," he explained and James just smiled thinly.

"You need to let that go." Logan frowned and trained his eyes on the closest leg of the table.

"I can't live like this any longer," he said quietly, and once again, James's fingers found their way through his hair.

"Well... you only have to hold on a little bit more," he assured him, something sparking in his hazel eyes. "We're halfway there."

Kay. Weird end, but I lost desire to write this story, and I figured this would be a good note to end it on. NEXT STORY: (I plan to start writing this today) A James angst that's actually one from experience. So we'll see how that goes...

BTW, Logan's b-day is coming up. I'm hoping to post my 50th story that day, so we'll se how it happens. Thanks for reading, darlings!