The knock sounded throughout the nearly empty room, drawing all eyes towards the heavy wooden door. It was cold and nearly everybody was in bed sleeping, but not L. Large, dark eyes glanced up from the novel he was reading from where he crouched on the sofa, a tan blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

The knock sounded again, more incessantly now, causing the two small bundles nearby to shift. The younger of the two opened a sorrowful green eye and looked at L.

"Ssh. Go to sleep, Matt," L consoled automatically. It had been hell getting the one-year-old to sleep; he had been fussing, very agitatedly, for almost an hour before he had slept, crying because of an ear infection. Matt sighed, clutching his ear and, obeying his friend, nestled once again beside his warm, sleeping, blonde companion.

Roger shuffled as quickly as he could move in his slippers, tucking a dressing gown securely over his flannel pajamas. L felt, rather than saw, the giant door open, heard the creak, felt the rush of chilly air. Almost automatically, he removed his blanket and settled it over the children on the bed, padding, barefoot across the icy floor to Roger's side.

A woman stood on stoop in front of Wammy's house, shivering. She had a thick hoodie over her thin frame, but that didn't conceal the bruises. A gust of wind blew her hood down, revealing fair hair, a round face. L was only twelve years old and already he stood taller than her—though, if what he gathered from her fearful face, she was not much older than he was.

In her arms was a bundle of blankets.

"Sir…" she spoke to Roger, not even looking at L. "Sir, this is my baby. Please… I don't know what else to do…" her eyes were tearless, but an emotion L could not read resided within them as she looked into the baby's face. Roger made no move to accept the child.

"Madam," Roger spoke rather formally, "I'm afraid we've never taken in a child that young. This is a school for the gifted, and we have no way of telling…"

The woman didn't even wait for Roger to finish speaking, instead turning to look at L. "You'll take care of him, won't you?" she asked. There was something unsettling about her, perhaps the way her dark, intelligent eyes contrasted so sharply from her pale skin and almost white hair. Or perhaps it was the fist-shaped bruise that graced her cheek. Without speaking, L held out his arms. Roger made a little noise in his throat, of protest, but L sent him a look. Roger knew better than to openly defy L; L was, after all, the most gifted student in a school of gifted students. L had privileges other students didn't.

A warm weight, heavier than it looked, pressed into his arms. L looked at the child; it resembled bread dough, or something equally shapeless and pale. It moved in his arms, barely stirring, and L looked back at the woman. She turned to leave, then hesitated, glancing back at L.

"His name is Nate River." Her voice was regretful as she stepped through the entrance of the building, before climbing into the passenger side of a car, idling at the sidewalk curb. The car backed from the driveway, and L and Roger watched until the pinpricks of the car lights faded away.

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A chubby thumb and an index finger pried open a heavy-lidded black eye.

"I think he's dead," four-year-old Mello declared mournfully to a silent Matt, who sat behind him, watching his proceedings with his head cocked. "Did L indicate any desire to be cremated, or does he wish to be buried?"

The eye blinked under his grip, and despite his cool demeanor, the child gave out an embarrassing squawk and fell back onto his backside.

"Mello." The voice was craggy and groggy with sleep.

"Y—yes, L?" young Mello tried to regain a small amount of dignity by heaving forward onto his knees, the soft fabric of his bed wrinkling under his slight weight.

"I was sleeping. In fact, I was quite happy sleeping, considering I haven't slept in three days. That is, I was happy sleeping, until your sticky fingers woke me up."

"Sorry." The apology came quickly, too quickly, for sincerity, before Mello's small hands were grabbing at one of L's larger ones. "Now get up! C'mon, c'mon!"

When L refused to budge from his frog-like crouch on the sofa, Mello turned to glare over his shoulder.

"Matt!" he barked. "Help me!"

Wordlessly, Mello's friend toddled up to L, taking his other hand and pulling it in the direction they wanted him to go. L struggled without real heat, before speaking.

"Stop!" the word didn't come out as L had intended. Snatching his hand from Mello's grip, a wide-eyed L covered his mouth. Both children stopped in their tracks, Matt's mouth hanging open slightly.

"Woah, L!" Mello reached forward, poking at L's lips with his fingers. "How'd you make your voice sound so squeaky?" L shook his head away from Mello's grip.

"Your fingers taste like chocolate," he admonished, giving Mello a stern look. "We're you getting into Roger's stash again?" His attempt at distraction ultimately failed with his voice cracking at the last bit of his sentence. Matt joined Mello as he began once again to prod at L's chapped lips.

"Stoppit," he growled, his voice now alarmingly low. This stopped Matt and Mello cold in their tracks; they looked at each other fearfully.

"What's going on, L?" Mello finally asked. "You're not possessed, like the girl in The Exorcist was, are you? Because if you are, we'd better put on our rain jackets; the green vomit isn't something I want to get on my clothing."

This caught L's attention. "Mello. You know you're not allowed to watch such movies until you are at least ten years old." He felt relief that his voice remained steady during the sentence.

Now Mello resumed, with doubled effort, on L's hand.

"Well, we were going to the nurse anyway," Mello told Matt, "So it's good that he got possessed now; maybe she can perform an exorcism."

The two small children managed to drag an unwilling L to his feet, forcing him to follow along behind them to the stairway, where he spotted a two-year-old Near seated on the largest step, a toy airplane in his hands. L managed to wriggle his hands free from the children's' sticky grasp, bending to scoop the child into his grasp, accidentally causing him to drop the airplane in the process. Mello kicked the plane down the stairs, watching it clatter out of sight, before turning to smile darkly at Near, who gazed steadily back at him.

"That was uncalled for, Mello," L gave the child a glare, as he felt his hand grasped by Matt, who threw a smug face over his shoulder at Mello. Friends they may be, but the chance to one-up each other in the eyes of L was too good a chance to pass up. Mello frowned. It was only Near's stupid toy; why should it matter? To redeem himself, he scampered down the steps and fetched it, waiting for the others to meet him at the bottom before trying to hand it to L.

"Don't give it to me," L admonished. "Give it to Near." Mello had to swallow his pride to do so, and made a sour face at Near before thrusting the toy at the little albino brat. I really hate him… was the only thing Mello could think as he watched the expressionless child accept the toy. Clinging onto L like that… I was here first… For want of something to do with his hands, he gripped Matt's free hand, and the four of them made their way to the nurse's office.

As her door swung open with a creak, the nurse's voice echoed out to them. "Hello!" she called, friendly as always. "You're just in time—if you had been any earlier, you would have had to wait while I treated Beyond's bloody nose. It's time for your monthly checkup, right?"

"Yes," Mello nodded importantly, smiling at the middle-aged woman in the white dress. "Also, L is possessed. We would appreciate it if you would do something about that." Matt nodded, too, shuffling forward to sit in one of the smaller chairs in the room and picking up a 1992 TV Boy and flicking the small gray screen to the game section, instantly tuned in with the small beeps and squeaks coming from the speakers of the television in the front of the room. Games came naturally to him.

A girl to the left of him cocked her head, intrigued, white-blonde hair covering her eye. "Wow," she marveled. "You're good, for a baby." He didn't even have to look up to respond. "I'm not a baby. I'm three years old." She shrugged, and then took the second game controller. "Wanna play me?"

"Nope; I already started the one-player." He didn't have to look to know that she rolled her eyes. "Hmph. Fine." She stood, ambling towards the nurse.

"Hey mom." She peeked shyly through her bangs at L. "Hi," she greeted him. He gave an awkward smile, not wanting to talk and treat her to an earache of his voice cracking. Mello gazed at her, for once speechless. She had to be about thirteen years old, with hair that almost reached her elbows and nearly clear blue eyes. She was skinny as a stick, with a bit of an acne problem, but Mello didn't notice any of this. To his four-year-old brain, she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

"Hi, Halle." The nurse absently reached a hand back, putting an arm around her daughter's shoulder. "L, this is my daughter." Mello couldn't help but step forward, and then shook his head irritably. Why am I being so shy? Bothered by his own different behavior, he grabbed a fold on her pants, tugging sharply. When she looked down at him, he grinned.

"I'm Mello." He searched for something to say, feeling her pale eyes heating into him. "I… uh… pushed Near into the pool yesterday."

"Did you?" she asked, smiling in an 'oh-what-a-cute-little-kid' way.

"Yes," Mello responded matter-of-factly, warming to his story. "He would've drowned if Franz hadn't seen him and dived after him. Franz is the best swimmer at this school. He isn't all that smart, but we kept him 'cuz he's so "gifted" at swimming. You can only live here if you don't have parents, and are gifted. Are you gifted?"

"Yes," was all she responded with, without elaborating, and then looked at the child in L's arms. "Is this Near?"

"Yeah," Mello began, immediately disliking the fact that she was paying attention to Near, and not to him. "But he's not interesting. He never does anything but sits and does puzzles."

"Puzzles!" she remarked, surprised. "But he can only be…"

"Yeah, he's two," Mello quipped, thoroughly irritated now. "But I can do a lot more than him. I can swim, and I'm top in my age at capoeira. And…" he was about to ramble on about his list of achievements, when a hand covered his mouth.

"We have an appointment, Mello; we can't waste Nurse Bullook's time." L quickly ushered Mello into the check-up room, climbing onto the scale and calling for Matt over his shoulder.

Nurse Bulook entered the room. "It's a good thing you make an appointment for the four of you all at once," she chattered aimlessly, absently sticking a thermometer in Mello's ear, snapping a blood pressure cuff on Near, pushing Matt against the height measurement wall, and sliding the weights of the scale to determine the weight of the fourteen-year-old L. Nurse Bulook was very talented when it came to multitasking.

"It makes it easier this way," L responded as she scribbled his weight down on her clipboard. "Then I don't have to take them down individually for appointments every month." She smiled at him, and he was struck by how she resembled her daughter somewhat. He was studying genetics in his spare time, and this always intrigued him.

"So what is this about 'being possessed', L?" she teased. He sighed, raising an eyebrow at Mello who was still rubbing at his ear from the tickling sensation of the thermometer.

"Please don't mistake the first signs of puberty for something else." Was his only response.

Waiting outside the closed door of the examining room, Halle giggled.

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