Chapter 1: love is insanity, my dear
Chapter Text
B had made a stage, if you will, a stage with L and himself the players. A game involving flesh and blood, with every scene carefully arranged, every corpse a message to his invisible rival. For L to feel the sickness, to taste it, to notice him.
His fixation wasn't admiration; it was obsession. Madness. Some say it was sparked by A's death. Or maybe that of his parents. But B knew he was never normal, for he was cursed with the eyes that were red like jam, and death followed him, until he chased it back.
Each victim was selected meticulously in his dreams of surpassing, or even destroying, L. These dreams he fed with every breath, every second he continued to exist.
L was the reason A was gone. L was the reason he was in that wretched place he ran from, Wammy's. The place that drove A mad with pressure and made her kill herself, and drove him mad as well. Maybe his obsession was hate. And while the recipient of the hate is unaffected, the one who wore the self-imposed thorns of envy and resentment, hurt the most. But B wore them proudly.
B knew L was too smart to come play, so he settled for Naomi Misora, L's chosen pawn. The thread connecting them, the scalpel in his chest. And when she found him, he didn't scream, didn't beg. Yes. Gasoline. A spark. A flame.
A funeral pyre with a heartbeat. He burned alive like a martyr, his flesh blackened, bubbled, peeled. But Naomi put him out. Maybe out of pity. Maybe instinct. His body was ruined, hardly recognizable. But alive, just barely.
The world wanted him gone. A padded cell. A lifetime of sedation and straightjackets.
"If L is a freak, then B is an extreme freak,” he repeated to himself like a mantra as he sat in the hospital.
But the world didn't count on A. Because A wasn't just anyone. Another ghost from Wammy’s House. Another name buried beneath L’s long shadow. But to B…? She was salvation.
A slipped into his room. A cheap wig, a forged ID, a stolen uniform. She looked the same as the last time B saw her. A wide grin split his face, and he choked out a maniacal laugh. This was it— his escape plan!
With her dead-eyed glare, she played the part of a nurse. Dressed his wounds, cleaned the blood. And he couldn't help but stare. A was real. Not a tombstone in the cemetery outside of Wammy's in Winchester. A was here. His grin turned into a painful scowl as he was wrapped like a broken doll.
He was half-dead, but at the sight of her, there was a flicker of something human in his eyes. A crack in the mask. By the time the police came to retrieve him, B was gone, without a sign or trace. Some say he escaped, others say he died.
And like that, B vanished into the same fog he came from—another headache for L to cover up.
The following weeks were brutal. B found himself in an abandoned building, which he had no recollection of limping into. He relieved himself over a drain, as there was no working plumbing. He scratched himself until he bled. The fried skin under his bandages only got itchier by the day. He talked to the walls, and occasionally to A. She had to tie his wrists to keep his skin from peeling off like paper. Was he self-harming? Was it boredom? Was he doing it on purpose because he knew it would keep A close…?
"My angel has soft hands," B said while staring at the ceiling. His gaze was blank, lips curled in a sort of smile between a convulsion and an attack. "A is for angel…"
"And B is for bastard," she says as she changes his bandages. She seemed exhausted, after all, she had a mentally fragmented genius to care for.
He tried to bite her hand as it worked at his wounds, but she pulled back. She didn't seem afraid of him. Maybe some monsters don't scare you when you know their name.
Even with his left eye bandaged, his unkempt black hair sticking out like burnt wire, and his skin wrapped in gauze like a half-finished mummy, B still wore those faded jeans and the same black long-sleeved shirt. She had given him a mild sedative to help him rest. Without it, he might start scribbling in notebooks with red ink, planning 'murders' like a deranged architect.
He did make attempts to rub his bandages against her as some strange way of saying "thank you," or to lick against her wrist. But she never let him touch her, which confused him. B pouted, a child with an excess of years, too old to be called one. And in this moment, he looked vulnerable, fragile. Maybe it was the drug or the bandages, but he did not appear as a threat right now.
"Stay here?" he said, falling asleep. She mumbled something in reply, and he didn't quite hear before he was already out.
Chapter Text
The next morning he sits up, his half-naked body still covered in gauze and scars. He grabs the jam jar, dips the tips of his fingers, and sucks it off as he stares at A. He looked like an animal, his gaze sharp and mouth stained red.
"Want some?" he asks, gathering up more jam on his fingers.
She turns up her nose at the sight. "Absolutely not."
He just shrugs and continues eating. "I wonder if the jam tastes sweeter than you, Angel."
A seems annoyed by his flirting. "Again, my name is Adeline, not angel. You know this."
He slurps up the jam, a bit dripping down his chin like blood. "Of course I know. You were my best friend, remember? I knew everything about you."
He scoots over, trying to playfully bite at her again. "But you're also the angel who saved me."
B craves to seal his mouth over hers, to suck on her lip, to do all the things he had imagined doing to her. But he was practically an invalid at present, unable to crawl over without wincing and reopening a wound.
"My nurse…" he says, as blood drips onto the sheets.
"I swear you are doing this on purpose," she says, huffing before forcing him back to a lying position, reapplying his bandages.
B groans and goes limp with his theatrics. "So you'll abandon me over a bit of blood? Why won't you let me touch you?"
A stands up now, serious. "When will you realize, B…"
He pauses, no longer playful. He searches her face, sensing he change in her mood. "Realize what…?" he says.
B knows it is not something he wants to hear. His fingers clench slightly on his sides, bracing himself.
"I'm not real."
He falters, his mouth open as if he wanted to protest, saying 'Of course you are! Don't lie!,' but he does nothing to dispel the words she just said. He knew, deep down, that A was not here. That she was buried years ago.
B shut his eyes tightly. "Don't say that. You can't. You're… with me. I can hear you, I can feel you… here. Where you're supposed to be."
She stares silently. B struggles against the reality trying to creep in, his mind refusing to accept it, still clinging to his one shred of hope, that her presence-
"Beyond."
He opens his eyes, and she was nowhere to be seen.
"A…?" he croaks, his voice cracking with emotion.
B was alone again.
He realizes it suddenly, that he had been speaking to an illusion of his dearest friend, one he created to cope with the pain and loneliness. The silence in the room becomes oppressive, the only sound coming from his ragged breathing and the distant cars in the street below.
He's not a genius or serial killer in this moment. He's just a wounded, pitiful kid losing his only friend all over again.
He stares at the empty space where A was just moments ago, fingers still clenched around nothing. The only light in his dark world, his Angel, was nothing more than a figment of his deluded mind.
The memories suddenly rush back. They felt like they weren't even his, or as though they were from a dream. B had escaped the hospital on his own, and stole a uniform, gauze, and sedatives. Somehow he stumbled through the alleys to the dark room he now resides in.
He slumps forward, burying his head in his hands. He's shaking slightly, the reality of his situation too much to bear. All the years of pain, loneliness, and obsession catch up to him, and he lets out a strangled cry, a mix of a sob and a shout, the sound echoing through the now eerily silent apartment.
B curls into a ball on the bed, left with nothing but his shattered mind and a heart longing for someone who is nothing more than a ghost of his memories. The illusion was sweet bliss, and without it, agony.
He didn't want to believe it, he wants to tell himself she'll come back. But he knows it's not true. He cannot fool himself anymore.
A was gone.
Notes:
apologies for how this ended i cried writing this :')
Luna (Guest) on Chapter 2 Sun 07 Sep 2025 04:18AM UTC
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unabashedlystanning on Chapter 2 Sun 07 Sep 2025 05:50PM UTC
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