A/N: Hi... uh... I'm revamping this story, so even though it was uploaded and all that before, I've removed it and I'm going to start semi-working on it among other things. I hate leaving things unfinished when I enjoyed doing them, so this story is on my list of things to complete. Please enjoy the high amounts of stress and anxiety to come! And thank you for reading!

Because you're my incentive.

And if you go, I go too.

Sleepless nights came equipped with the displaced guilt. The two acted as a pair - a mischievous duo beget from irreparable mistakes. Right and left. East and west. Up and down. No matter what angle he looked at it from, the two pieces of his despondent misfortune went hand-in-hand ever since that momentous day in June.

He blamed himself. He had to suffer. He had to die.

In his diluted mind, this was the cruel way of a sick, twisted world - a world which, in all fairness, had done nothing but wrong him from the very commencement of his life. Every right had a wrong. All wrongs would be avenged. Punished.

His agony was meant to consume him; to eat him alive by slowly nibbling at his soul with bites that burned through him like acid. Venomous fangs burrowed into his golden flesh, slowly sucking the life from his being like a leech.

With millions shaken, he seemed to be the only one losing his strong grip to his even stronger travail.

Doctors, parents, family, friends could do nothing to change his mind; nothing to make him see that accidents happen - people make mistakes - and that he did not need to torture himself for something he could not have prevented. He could not have known.

For his heartbreaking disease, there was no cure.

Alas, the stars are not our own. Are they? Human beings can only do so much to control the fates, to twist and contort the road laid out before them, as far as their hearts will allow them to see. Shortcuts can only take us so far.

And then…

I suppose when human is nothing more than a monster's disguise, that's all it is. A costume. A mask which is not packaged with the perks of leading life by one's own unabashed rules.

Oh, sweet sovereignty is a double-standard.

So when he showed up at my door and dropped to his knees, begging me to take his life, I wouldn't do it. I couldn't. For years, I had looked forward to reveling in his death, placing traps while playing games to see if he would be caught in order to finally be put down. Celebrating the end of an enemy as the new possibilities for my life awaited me was the ultimate fantasy, you might say. My one obstacle would have been knocked out of the way. I would have been invincible. Unstoppable. Immortal. It would have been a checkmate. The king I had been patiently waiting to move for so long - gone.

On that icy evening in December, nearly six months after his greatest mistake, Heiwajima Shizuo came to me, begging me to kill him. With nothing left but his own misery to rule him, he wanted to take the easy way out. And I don't blame him.

Ikebukuro had changed. Tokyo had changed. Shit, all of the fucking Orient had changed. Blanketed by melancholy and an eerie quietness - a deafening silence. So I can't say I was surprised. Nor was I giddy, excited, or taken aback when he showed up at my door. Dare I say I had even been expecting it?

My life turned into a waiting game, providing me with plenty of time to determine what I would do when he finally made his morbid request, a request planted by the mere seed of an idea. The simplest of thoughts which would grow, spreading like vines across every surface it could reach. The uncomfortable pea to the princess, buried beneath layers upon layers of comforting words and solace given by loved ones, when all the poor brute really wanted was love from the one creature he was breaking for.

Thus, it was decided.

It was what he wanted, and I could never be so kind to my beloved adversary as to simply oblige him. I am a master of my art. I do not grant wishes. I manipulate them in my favor.

"Please?" he pleaded with me, desperately sinking his saffron eyes into my own.

His long, thin form trembled from head to toe. His hatred for me was near palpable, and I walked a thin line between sweet intoxication and being disgusted by his anxious presence.

My response was a short sneer. Nothing more than a sound effect. I didn't owe that monster a thing. To go out of my way to do him a favor? Tch. He couldn't pay me enough. Money is not a translator between a livid monster and a serpentine god; nor is it a mediator.

Forgive me for my redundancy, but I wouldn't. I couldn't.

Tears streamed down Shizuo's face, gently tracing over his unusually pale skin; leaving glimmering streaks as they caught in the light of my building's seventh-floor hallway. Where had that golden glow gone? Chocolate roots put a two-toned shadow in shaggy, bleached hair. I wondered how long it had been since he had seen the inside of a shower, or when he had finally given up on dye jobs and haircuts. By the way his body quivered, I could tell he hadn't eaten in days. His emotional weaknesses were taking over the unstoppable strength that dwelled in within every centimeter of muscle.

"Isn't it what you want?" the blond wept with his quivering hand held meekly over his heart. "Damn it. Do it for the both of us."

Rolling my eyes, I folded my arms and took a revolted step back. I would have been perfectly prepared to slam the door in his pathetic face had it not been barely hanging off the hinges from the remainder of his stupid, brute force insistent on breaking it in. "Get up, moron," I hissed, "I'm not going to kill you."

"Why not?" he choked.

"Don't be stupid, Shizu-chan," I leered. "Get up."

"P-please… Izaya…"

"Get. Up. Now."

Clenching his jaw, he grimaced before making a feeble attempt to stand. Impatient by the way he wasted my time, I nudged him with my foot, rushing him to find his strength so that he could get the hell out of my doorway. He received the message, quickly doing as told.

Behind a straw colored curtain, a swollen redness surfaced around his goldenrod eyes, already weighed down by deep, dark bags of exhaustion. In my presence, Shizuo was knowingly losing his impenetrable strength to a gaping hole in his heart. To let me see it with my own eyes meant he had given up the fight.

"If you keep letting this eat away at you like a festering wound, you're looking at a Hell worse than death, Shizu-chan," I told him, scanning his trembling form with narrowed eyes.