Title: Nevermore

Author: Hitachiin Hikaru

Fandom: Death Note

Rating: "T" for language and death

Genre: Tragedy/Romance

Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Death Note, including characters, cities, towns, scenarios, titles, or anything else about it you can think of. I just want to express my creative intent with this fic.

Summary: I never really understood what I saw in a guy like that… except when I realized that he was stronger then I would ever be.Living in the past doesn't let you make way for your future. But… I really didn't want a future if he wasn't included in itMattxOC, MelloxOC R&R Please

A/N: This story might get slightly confusing, because each chapter switches back and forth between each OC pairing here. The first chapter is Matt and Byzantine, the second is Mello and Aero, etc. However, Mello, Matt, Near, and L will make a couple appearances in opposing chapters to help move the story along.

Chapter 1: French Maid

I have always had a fear of planes, always afraid that they will fail and that I will die on it. My fear only grew more when my parents' plane crashed on a trip from France to Germany, leaving me orphan. However, for some reason on this plane, on my flight from my hometown of Marseilles, France to a place called Winchester, England, I felt completely safe. Perhaps it was because it was a nice big plane, with sofas and easy chairs, obviously very expensive. Maybe it was the two other children riding along with me, a male with blond hair from Germany that kept watching out the windows and munching on a chocolate bar and a female from America with midnight black hair that was reading quietly in the corner.

But I suspected the reason to be the black haired man sitting so strangely beside me, talking quietly with an elderly man I knew as Roger. I didn't know who he was, but every time the jet jarred and I cried out, he allowed me to squeeze his hand until I am sure it hurt and bury my head in his side in fright. I was only about nine-years-old, a small child and very knowing in the ways of the world. My mother and father had given me a very intricate education, wanting me to be a well-rounded, intelligent woman when I grew up. Education and money was all I received from my parents after they died when I turned six, the plane crash the very epitome of my worst nightmares. Their love had all but ceased the moment they left this world, and despite the money I had I was much too young at my age to be able to actually use it. So off I was sent to an orphanage to live until I turned eighteen and was allowed to have my money.

The years spent in the French orphanage were not pleasant, as I wish I could say. The conditions in lower Marseilles was less than what I was used to, and the other girls were uncultured and uneducated. However, I was determined to get out of Laura Fry's Orphanage for Girls, because I knew that I was destined for bigger and better places. My caregivers were kind at first, giving me the education I hankered for, however they grew cold when I tended to correct them. I was smart, and I knew it, and I was egotistical enough at my young age to want everyone else to know it too. I had to read in the dead of night the textbooks I snagged from the tiny library, reading them until my eyes hurt. Eventually, however, my grades soon became astonishing, perfect four-point-ohs in every single subject I put my mind to. I could play the flute with the best of the teachers, thanks to the lessons Mother gave me before she died, and I had a reading class where I taught some of the less fortunate girls to read.

My English was sloppy, but I was learning to the best of my ability. There are a lot of strange words in that language, and it is very difficult, but I could do it if I tried, I knew. One day, however, my world was flipped upside down before my very eyes when those two men came to take me away from the orphanage. One of them was the old man who introduced himself to me as Roger, and the other was the younger man who didn't introduce himself to me. I chuckled at the strange foreign name and asked the nameless man in my broken English, "You adopt me, Monsieur?"

He smiled, a strange smile underneath those wide panda-bear eyes, "We are taking you to a place for intelligent children, Bethany." I blinked for a moment, deciphering the sentence with my limited knowledge of the language. I nodded slowly after I was done and returned the favor. That was my very first contact with the world famous detective known as L, however, I did not know it was L otherwise I might have died. I have read so many of his cases in the newspapers, and he was someone I have always, in my wildest dreams of course, wanted to meet. He seemed like such a genius, the way he pulled off so many of these cases, and I made him my hero.

As I rode on the plane, it would be the turning point in my life, where I stopped being Bethany DuMont, and became Byzantine. Bethany, the little girl who grew up in France with Mother and Father… was no more.

The plane landed in Winchester swiftly and almost unerringly, and I stood up with my backpack as my only luggage. The rest of my things were in my home in France, I only brought things that I needed badly, like some of my clothes and a toothbrush, some hairbrushes and books, and a doll that I have had since I was born. Her name was Isabelle, and I loved her very much. The black haired man left me and the other two children with Roger and he walked to show us to our rooms. Glancing to the blond, I asked him, "You like chocolate lots, huh?"

He cocked an eyebrow at me, the chocolate bar hanging from his mouth as his hands rested in his pockets for a moment. "A little," he replied sarcastically, and I winced, looking away. The onyx haired girl gave him an angry look and patted my back kindly. We smiled at each other and Roger stopped by the first room, motioning to the blond.

"Mello, this is your room," he told him, and he walked in. There was another young boy inside, wearing white pajamas and had white hair, sitting on his bed and doing a puzzle. Myself and the other little girl glanced in for a moment before Roger shut the door, leaving Mello and the other boy inside. He led us across the grounds to a completely different dormitory, which was obviously a girl's dorm. We stopped before the very first room and the black haired girl entered. "Aero, this is your room. Linda will be your roommate." She nodded and waved goodbye to me, and the door shut. I clutched Isabelle to my chest tightly, worried about who my roommate would be, hoping she would be very nice to me, and that we would get along very well.

I saw a couple of the younger boys running towards us, a crimson haired one with a bag full of cookies in his hands, a two other boys that were laughing, as if they had just performed a great feat. The red-haired boy wasn't watching where he was going, and ran headlong into me, making Isabelle fly from my hands and knocking me on my back with him sprawled out next to me. "Matt!" Roger scolded him, but he was too fast on his way in a minute with his friends close behind.

I sat up and rubbed my head, reaching behind me for my doll. I blinked when I didn't feel it, and glanced back only to see it wasn't there anymore. "Where are you, Isabelle?" I cried in French, dropping my bag and running after the boys. That Matt probably took it, I though furiously, he obviously took those cookies, too! I turned the corner and saw him and his friends standing there, eating the spoils of their crime, Isabelle sitting next to Matt's feet. Angrily, I strode up to him and punched him in the back of his head, picking up my doll furious. "You are a foul, rude, and completely uneducated individual," I spat in my native tongue, stalking away angrily.

He didn't reply as I turned the corner, walking back to Roger with tears in my eyes. I always cried when I got angry, and now was no different. He opened the door to the room I was in, and I saw that I didn't have a roommate at all, and turned to the man. The room was enormous, though, with two beds, however the side of the room where my roommate would have been had nothing there. "This is your room Byzantine." I walked in, confused, and put my things down. It didn't look like anyone had been there for quite awhile, and I sighed. I would have to do some cleaning when my things were put away. It was rather dusty in here. When Roger left I did not close the door so my asthma would not act up when the dust began to fly around the room. Taking a handkerchief out of my pocket and began to wipe at different things until a voice caught my attention.

"Hey." I glanced behind me and saw that Matt child again, scratching the back of his head as he stood in my doorway, a game system in his hands. I put my cloth down and gave him a very sour look, not wanting him for one moment to think that I was not angry. "Sorry about your doll. I didn't know you'd get so mad about it…" He looked kind of strange, like I might not understand what he was saying. However, I basically got the gist of his statement, giving him a small smile. After all I did yell at him in French, so he would most likely think that I didn't know any English.

I replied, trying very hard to get this right, "It okay, Matt. No harm." He looked relieved, and that is how I met him. I did not become very good friends with him, however I talked to him a lot because he seemed like a very nice person to know. He was not all that bad…

…:oOo:…

Four years passed since that day, and I became very good friends with a Linda and Aero, and acquaintanced myself with two very smart boys named Near and Mello, and Matt was kind of a friend. However, Linda and Aero were the ones I always sat with at lunch, leaving Mello to sit with Matt and Near to sit alone, which I did not understand why he did. My experiences with Matt were usually short, however one situation stands out in my mind particularly, because that's when I vowed that I would never be his friend in a million years.

One day, I realized that my room was getting rather dusty, like I had when I first came here, and decided to dust once more. I propped the door open to keep my asthma from acting up, and began to dust again. I suppose Matt saw my door open again, like he had when we were small, and then saw I was cleaning, and came in. I thought perhaps he was going to help, however he took the cloth away from me and shook his head.

Puberty had affected him, certainly. His voice was slightly deeper and squeaked when he got excited, and he was very tall for a thirteen-year-old boy. I found myself rather physically attracted to him, because I could not deny that he was very good looking. I blushed a lot when I saw him, Mello, and Near perhaps because I was growing up too, and I found myself giggling with Linda about how cute the three of them were, and some others in Wammy's House as well. "What's up Matt?" I asked, my English leagues better than what it used to be.

"If you're French, you need to wear the right uniform," he told me, and I missed mischief in his eyes, feeling confused. I suppose I didn't understand English culture very well, and there was a type of uniform French girls were supposed to wear when they cleaned in England? I allowed him to pull me outside to his room where he had a black and white uniform with my name on it in his closet. I carried it back into my room, putting it on in confusion when he left. It was very skimpy, with a tiny, lacy skirt and tall black tight-like socks complete with a black and white hat and white apron.

I questioned of him, "Are you sure this is the correct uniform?" He nodded and I shrugged turning back to clean. I heard a light click every few moments, but when I turned around it was just Matt playing his video game. Soon my room was done and I closed the door as I changed back into my normal clothes, hanging the outfit up in my own closet. But now I was curious, and I turned the computer on in my bedroom and hopped onto Google. Typing French Maid in the search bar, I was met with horrific photos of slutty women in the same outfit I had been wearing, and flushed red. That stupid Matt had done something bad to me again! I pulled the outfit out of my closet and stormed to where I saw a large group of boys huddled, knowing that the gamer had something to do with this.

"Matt!" I growled, and the boys saw me, hooting and jeering at me rudely. I pushed and shoved my way into the center of the circle where I saw Matt and Mello handing out pictures and obtaining money. I took all of the photos from their hands and pushed them in my bag, knocking through all of the boys until I was sure I had gotten every single one of them. "I can't believe you," I told him, tears dripping down my face as I zipped up my bag angrily. "I thought you were my friend…"

I turned on heel after I threw the disgusting costume at the jerk, wiping my face off angrily as I headed back to my room to sulk for a while. At least it was Saturday, and I wouldn't have to worry about classes or anything…

That was the last time I talked with Matt for quite a long time, almost three months, because I just could not stand being around him anymore. In fact, I devoted every moment of my attention to eating, breathing, and studying to be just like L, whom was my hero and I wanted to be like anyway. Linda and Aero stopped trying to talk with me, and I ate alone like Near, but not for the same reasons I felt he didn't eat with everyone. He didn't eat with anyone because he didn't like interacting with people, but I didn't eat with anyone because they wouldn't stop teasing me about the whole incident. It turned out I didn't get all of the photos, and some of them had leaked. It was embarrassing, and sometimes I didn't even leave my room except to go to classes so they wouldn't make fun of me anymore.

I prayed that something bad would happen to Matt because of all the torment he put me through. He would deserve everything he got.