-_-_Was I Ever Mellow_-_-

A/N: An alternative version of Mello's background story. More specifically: what if Mello didn't know what his true name was and only found out when he nearly died in the mafia hideout explosion. 8 Yaaaah: I mixed things up like crazy in this fanfic. Flashbacks galore (sorry). Not overly proud of this one; it was a very jumbled idea. I'm surprised I managed to even put it into words. But I liked it enough for it to seep into my other stories.

P.S. Everything (besides the actual fic and the mixed-up concepts) belongs to Death Note's creators, Ohba and Obata. Credit to them for this masterpiece of an animanga.

_-Chapter I-_

_-The Day I Learnt My Name-_

The day I learnt my name, I nearly died.

The room was made of shadows and static. We faced each other, holding threats over each others' heads. The atmosphere was so tense, I almost died right then. And then, Chief Yagami of the Japanese Police spelled out my doom:

"M-I-H-A-E-L… K-H-E-E-L…"

No, there's no way.

"Mihael Kheel," Chief Yagami enunciated with finality, in broken English. "You're real name is Mihael Kheel."

F**k. How? …No, he's bluffing. It can't be…There's no way in hell that's my true name…is it?

_-_Hours before_-_

"The hell are you staring at, Snyder?"

"Nothing," he mumbled, looking away. He'd been staring at the top of my head again. I'd been catching him doing that ever since he made the deal with the shinigami Shidou for those eyes, those eyes that gave him the ability to read our true names and the date of our death floating above our heads, like an inescapable sentence of doom.

Rod forbade him from telling his and my lifespan, out of our deal of my anonymity. Still, I couldn't help but feel a little edgy about all this.

This was the best thing to do, of course, the best course of action. How could we not take advantage of the fact that we have a God of Death on our side? When we heard about the deal for the eyes, I had a plan in my head in seconds. Snyder got the short side of the stick, so to speak, and he was understandably hesitant to give up half his lifespan.

He was smart enough to agree in the end, because if he didn't, he might not even have that precious half.

Now, when the deal is done and all we have to do is to wait for the right time to strike, I can't help but wonder what he saw when he looked at me with that sideways glance of his. He must know by now that Mello isn't my real name.

Well, heck. It's not like I lied to them. I said that I go by the name Mello. They knew as well as I did that this wasn't my real name. What is my real name, you ask?

Well, your guess is as good as mine.

I don't know what my true name is, what my parents named me, if they did indeed name me and not toss me out nameless and unloved into the streets to live or die alone. No, seriously.

Hold on, wait for a flashback…

Mr Wammy called it repression, or some sort of dissociative fugue. Whatever it was, when I wound up in Wammy's House, I couldn't remember a thing of my past: didn't know where I came from, who my parents were, or even what my name was. Before Wammy's House discovered me I had been living in a foster home for a month with eight other kids, all found abandoned in ditches and alleyways and on doorsteps. I was one of the children who was found half-frozen at the porch steps, starved and half-insane. I was barely seven then. At the time, I was nameless. For the brief length of time I lived under foster care, I was called "you, little boy."

Wammy's House took me from the foster home and under their care when they heard of my being…'different' from the others, and they gave me a choice of alias. They said that in this institution, a name wasn't needed; in fact it was a setback considering what we were training to become. I chose the alias Near. Hearing of the orphanage's goal to raise up the one who would succeed L, the greatest detective in this world and the next, I was determined to win the title. I chose Near because it meant everything I wanted to be. I had a great respect for L, but I wanted to be like him, not him exactly. I wanted to be near, the closest you'll ever get to the original. I was too much my own individual, as Mr Wammy said: I couldn't bear to throw away who I was now to be someone else.

But then things went wrong.

There was this new kid. He got the name Mellow, because, well, that was what he was. He was so mellow, so quiet, and damn near colorless. He hardly talked to anyone unless necessary, and was forever tinkering with puzzles and games and toys meant for kids younger than him. I didn't care about him a whit, until he started to beat me in almost everything with seemingly no effort at all on his part, and I was pushed down to painful second place when I had been the top in nearly half a year running. I hated him then. Hated him for all I was worth.

In case you haven't already guessed, I'm a pretty sore loser.

Things went wrong again, and if the fact that I was being crushed in my own game by a bland stoic brat years younger than I was wasn't bad enough, I got his stupid name in a mix-up.

I blame it on this other kid, Matt. He was one of those smart ones who weren't as enthusiastic about things as the rest of us were, and almost no creativity in choosing an alias. He'd just shrugged and said, "Which name's not taken?" So he got Matt, plain and simple. He was the one who mixed up our names.

One day, just to push the kid off his butt, out of his video games and into the real world, he'd been assigned to register the aliases of all the Wammy House kids in our generation for the official permanent records at the beginning of the new academic year. Why they gave responsibility of such an important job to this bungling gamer is beyond me. By the end of the week, everyone's chosen aliases had either been recorded wrong, got switched with someone else's or, if you were really unlucky, just got a string of numbers and symbols.

I was one of the ones who got our aliases switched with someone else's. And who else did I get switched with but that bigheaded albino twit?

From that day on, while many of us had to learn to live with an alias we didn't want (Matt, on the other hand, spelt his name 'Mat.' Were they sure this kid is a genius?), I had my alias switched to Mellow, and that too wasn't even spelt right: the W was dropped off the end, and I had to be known as Mello from then on. Was I happy? Was I hell. My sworn rival got the name I wanted, the name I deserved: Near. If I'd had any foresight back then, or if I'd just been plain superstitious, I would have taken this to be a bad omen of who would win the race to L in the end. Maybe…I knew all along.

I didn't want to believe it, but Mello I was, and he was Near.

Like he didn't have enough already? He was top of the school, forever beating me in anything and everything. No matter how far I went, it was like he was suspended in front of my view. If I took a step forward, he took two in a heartbeat, and L himself expressed his approval of him. What I hated even more was the fact that he, like almost everyone in Wammy's, knew what his real name was. He had a secret to hide, he had memories of his past before Wammy's. And me? I had Mello and nothing else: a mistake. Maybe that's what my life was, nothing but a mistake.

[To be continued]