Disclaimer: I own no Death Note characters, only my original characters in my stories.

I haven't updated this in forever, but I got inspired again.

So, here goes.


Christie did indeed decide to head downstairs for lunch that day. She dealt with Mello's taunting over her random cowboy boots for a bit. It wasn't that bad, really. He had no idea what she had in store for him. She had the perfect idea. It was so perfect that it even amazed her. It was an ingredient she had been planning on using in some brownies if she found anyone she particularly disliked, but Mello's completely ditzy nature meant that brownies didn't even have to be involved. Mello might have made better scores on tests, but his common sense was zero when it came to chocolate. He wouldn't even look at the wrapper before eating it.

"Well," Christie interrupted his ranting about her boots after about five minutes, "I was going to make a peace offering, but after all that, I'm not sure."

Mello looked at her uncertainly. "'Peace offering'? What kind of… 'peace offering?'"

"What's with the air quotes?"

"What peace offering?" he repeated.

She held up three bars of chocolate. His eyes widened.

"Chocolate…?"

"Obviously, dipshit."

"Language!" she heard an old voice behind her.

"Sorry, Roger," she said in her sweet-innocent voice. "I won't say it again, I promise." She continued quietly. "I'm not even going to try to get back at you."

Mello, who was already hypnotized by the chocolate bars, nodded dumbly.

"So you'll stop picking on me if I give you the chocolate?"

Mello was so hypnotized that he didn't even hear the sniggering from his goggled friend next to him. He nodded dumbly again.

"Okay," she said, holding out the bars. She almost had her hand forcefully removed as he snatched them away, tore one open, and took a bite. He looked at it curiously. "It tastes… different."

"I didn't know what brand to get, I haven't been here for that long."

He shrugged, and continued eating the chocolate. She had to suppress an evil grin as he finished the first chocolate bar. She managed to, but she hoped Mello wouldn't look at Matt. In his attempt to suppress his laughter, he had apparently decided to hold his breath, and his face was almost as red – if not as red as – his hair as he attempted to focus on whatever game was in his PSP.

About seven minutes later, Mello had to excuse himself from the table, holding his stomach with a look of pain and discomfort on his face that was also etched quite clearly into his voice. Matt moved over to Mello's seat across from Christie.

"Laxatives?"

"Hell yeah," she said, laughing. "I'm probably going to go lock myself in my room in a minute. I wouldn't put it past him to hit me for something as serious as tainted chocolate."

"Where in the world did you get it?"

"I've been swiping random things since I got here," she said, "mostly just in case someone like Mello started bothering me. This should be the last thing I do for a while, unless he decides to wage war now. If that happens, it won't end until one of us gets transferred somewhere else. He called up a truce this morning, but I wouldn't put it past him to break it."

"You just did."

"No," she said. "My conditions were that the third phase of my three-phase revenge for… the thing he said, had to be completed. Phase one was planning, which was when I played guitar loud enough to keep him awake. I can't plan without music. Phase two was amusement, which was tossing rotten eggs at him. Phase three was embarrassment, which came in the chocolaty form of laxatives this time. I didn't tell him what I was going to do, but I told him it would happen."

It was about five minutes later that everyone in the orphanage heard a furious yell from the top of the stairs.

"I'M GOING TO KILL THAT BITCH!!"

This yell apparently indicated that Mello had switched from his default "Bitchy-Mello" setting to his "Crazy-Homicidal-Mello" setting. As Matt told Christie, this setting was only activated when Mello either hadn't had chocolate for more than forty-eight hours, or when someone or something pissed him off severely. The last time it had happened, it was around because Near had scored higher than him on the fiftieth test in a row. Near didn't leave his room for two weeks after that.

"Wow," Christie said, now a little nervous as she heard hard footsteps coming down the stairs at a running pace. She stood up. "Better be prepared."

"You don't want to attempt to fight him when he's like this," Matt warned.

"I'm aware," she said, "but I bet I'm faster than him in my scared-for-my-life setting."

Mello got to the bottom of the stairs and whipped his head around in every direction until he spotted her. He pointed.

"You," he said in a murderous tone.

He started to walk towards her. When he was almost close enough to take a swing, she took off quickly past him, pushing him as she ran past. She ran three steps at a time as she ran up the stairs and made it to her room with enough time to lock her door before Mello got there. She sat down on her bed just as something collided with her door with a very forceful thump! She then heard the yelling again, the yelling of a very demonic blond girly-boy. It was indeed quite a scary thing to hear in the middle of the day, or any time of day, for that matter.

"Bitch gave me fucking laxatives! Peace offering my ass! Stupid fucking – ARGH!!" There was another pound on the door. She was sure she heard the wood splintering.

"Mello!" she heard the voice of a decrepit old man say in a furious tone.

Mello was so angry that she could almost hear him seething. That was just strange.

"What?" he shot at Roger.

"Don't you take that tone with me!" Whack! "What in the world do you think you're doing??"

"She– tainted chocolate– I'm going to kill her!!"

"Mello, go down to my office."

"But she–"

"'She' will be there in a moment as well."

"Good! She better get a good punishment!"

Christie heard Mello stomp away from the door. It wasn't until then that she heard the sounds of excited whispering from probably around the staircase. Of course everyone else would have taken interest in Mello's sudden outburst, as well as her narrow escape. That was probably the closest thing to murder that had ever happened at the orphanage. Christie now heard a sharp rapping at her door, as though a cane was hitting it.

"Christie!" Roger yelled, sounding quite perturbed by the sudden disturbance of peace. "You are to come to my office at once!"

"Will Mello be shackled to a chair when I get there?" she called back, sarcastic fear in her voice.

"Don't get smart with me! Get out here!"

Christy stood up and walked cautiously over to her door. She opened it, only to be faced with an old, wrinkled, short, and very angry looking man: Roger, one of the people who looked after the orphanage. She had heard that he wasn't the owner, but he took charge in the absence of the owner. He didn't particularly scare her. His cane, however, did, especially when it hit her sharply in both knees.

"Office, now," he said angrily.

She clicked her heals together and put her hand to her forehead in an army-like salute.

"Sir, yes, sir!" she yelled. Another sharp whack across her knees ensued.

"GO!"

She hurried around him and through the crowd that had gathered around the stairs. She elbowed Matt sharply in the side on her way down to stop his sniggering, but it didn't work. She decided to keep going anyway, not wanting to get any more bruises on her knees. She stopped at the door to Roger's office and waited for the old man.

"I'm not going in first," she said, crossing her arms. "I'm a scardy-cat, I admit it, but I like my face in the condition it is in, thanks."

Roger opened the door. Mello, who had been standing and facing the desk, turned his head sharply. He seemed to look straight through Roger, his eyes wide and wild with anger.

"YOU!" he yelled, pointing at her.

"Mello," Roger said warningly, "be calm."

Grumbling, Mello turned his head back around. Christie walked cautiously into the office after Roger and stood a good ways away from Mello in front of Roger's desk as he sat down. Mello gave her a glare that would have made anyone else run to the hills and never come back. She, however, was frozen to the spot with fear now. She really didn't want to die, and she was afraid she would be killed the moment she moved.

"Now," Roger said, "one at a time – what is going on?"

"She– she– she–" Mello stammered, pointing at Christie.

"I gave him chocolate bars that were actually laxatives, but he was too thick to look at the labels."

"OI!" he yelled. She cowered where she stood.

"Mello," Roger said, "calm. Why?" he asked Christie.

"Because she's a bitch!" Mello yelled.

"It was stage three of my revenge, which I warned him about earlier this morning," Christie said, trying to keep her voice calm. Unfortunately, like most dogs, it seemed that Mello could smell fear.

"Revenge?"

"I said something that pissed her off and she felt the need to taint chocolate to get back at me!" Mello said, seething. "Before that, she woke me up at six o' clock in the morning – six o' clock! – with her damned guitar playing –"

"Language, Mell–"

"NO!" he yelled. "Then, when I was going past her room and I was going to be nice, she threw rotten eggs at me and they got in my hair and I had to take a shower, and then we called a truce. She said she was going to finish her revenge, I didn't think she'd go as far as to taint chocolate!"

"I didn't do the tainting, the laxatives company did." He glared at her.

"What is it he said that made you resort to doing something so childish?" Roger asked.

"He…" she looked at Mello, who now also looked scared. If she said what he'd said, seeing as Roger knew what happened to her parents, Mello would be in severe trouble. She looked at her feet. "It was nothing, really," she said. "It wasn't anything overly bad. He just called me a bitch. I don't like being called a bitch."

"Language."

"Sorry," she said quickly.

"You aren't lying, are you?"

"No," she said, just as quickly, looking up with wide eyes. "Why would I lie? I'm getting into trouble no matter what it was that he said. But he did say that, I'm not lying."

This surprised Mello entirely. Anyone normal would have told the truth to get him off of their back, but she had lied for him…? That just didn't make any sense. Maybe she thought she would get it worse if she had told the truth. Which she would have, no denying that. He would have been on clean-up duty of everything for weeks if she had told the truth, considering it had to had been something really bad that happened for her to end up there, if it got to her as much as it seemed to. Maybe she had just lied because she didn't want him to get into any worse trouble than her. Of course, considering what he knew about her now, this seemed unlikely. Then again, she hadn't really taken any sort of action against him when she first got there, even though he had.

"Mello," Roger said, snapping him out of his thoughts. "Is this what happened?"

"Yes."

"Fine," he said. "You will both be washing all of the dishes for the next two weeks for all meals, including all cooking utensils. And stop with the moaning and groaning about it before you even start, or it'll be three weeks."

They both left in a hurry before Roger could hit them with his cane again. Mello stopped outside the door, but Christie kept walking, still afraid her life was close to being over.

"H… hey!" Mello said, confused. He ran after her and managed to catch up with her before she could shut the door to her room.

"What?" she said when he put his foot in the door to stop her from closing it.

"What was that about?" Mello asked. "That wasn't what I said that pissed you off, it was… the other thing."

Christie gave him an are-you-really-that-stupid sort of look, and then opened the door the rest of the way. She crossed her arms.

"Roger knows what happened to my parents," she said slowly, trying to keep some emotion out of her voice. As he couldn't tell what emotion that was, she was doing a good job of it. "Because he knows, he knows that I would have been at least somewhat justified for my reaction, and I wouldn't have gotten quite as bad of a punishment, and yours would have been much worse than it was."

Mello tilted his head a little, taking in what she had said. It didn't make any sense. The only way anyone at The Wammy's House knew anything about anyone else's past was if they themselves told anyone. The only person who knew about why Mello was there was Matt, because they had been roommates since Matt had gotten there. If Mello didn't know anything, he couldn't have gotten into any more trouble. That would have been unfair.

"But if I didn't know anything about it, then how could I have gotten worse?"

She bit her bottom lip. "You knowing how would involve me telling you. Which…" She spoke slowly, still having trouble fighting an emotion that sounded something like devastation, but gave off a feeling of anger. "I'm not going to do. I'll just tell you that you wouldn't understand unless you knew."

"But –"

Her door was already shut, and he heard the lock click a moment later. As he walked into his room, he heard muffled sounds of a guitar amplifier turned down low through the wall. Matt was lying on the floor in his usual spot, playing some random game on one of his many game systems. Mello was starting to loose track of them, and he wasn't going to bother asking. He flopped down on his bed. He felt a strange, unfamiliar feeling in his stomach as he lay down on his back. Guilt? No, it had to be that "chocolate." If it wasn't done yet, he was in for it….

"You look off," Matt said. It was amazing he could say such a thing without even looking up from the television screen. "Trouble?"

"We were both sentenced to washing dishes for the next two weeks. Every meal."

"Cooking utensils or no?"

"Yeah."

"Damn, that's rough," Matt said, shaking his head. "Does Roger know what started the whole thing?"

"No," Mello said. "That's the strange thing. She lied about it."

"Wha'?" He paused his videogame at that, a bit more interested than before. He sat up on the rug in the middle of the floor that he'd been lying on and turned to face Mello. "What'd she say?"

"She said she had just gotten angry because I called her a bitch. I just asked her, and she said something about how if she had told the truth, I would have gotten it really bad, and that elaborating would have involved her telling me why she was here, which she wasn't going to do."

"Huh," Matt said. "What d'you think?"

"What?"

"What d'you think happened?"

"I dunno," he said, looking over at a bare patch of wall next to his bed uninterestedly. "Seems bad."

"You can't possibly not be interested at least a little."

Mello looked over. "You can go ask her if you want to. I'm not going to have anything to do with it. She might go psycho on me and punch me again."

Mello regretted opening his mouth the second he did. He his head and looked at the wall again, still feeling that strange feeling in his stomach as he listened to Matt's taunting about how he'd been hit by a girl and it actually hurt him. Granted, but she had punched hard, and he hadn't been expecting it, even though he should have been expecting it. It was just too strange that she was suddenly being nice now. He still wasn't sure if he should be kind to her. Messing with chocolate was just out of the question. Everyone at Wammy's House knew that, and she was going to have to find it out eventually, too.

But then… he was… it had to be guilt he was feeling. It didn't burn as badly as the after effects of the "chocolate" he'd eaten had, it was just a nauseating weightless feeling in the very core of his being. He shouldn't have felt bad, since that was probably what she was trying to make him feel. Guilty. It sucked that she was so good at it. But then, she was a girl. Most girls did seem to have a natural born talent at making guys feel bad. She was just really good at it because of what had happened to have her put there. It was obvious that it wasn't just that her parents had gotten tired of her smart-alecky ways and put her their so they wouldn't have to deal with it anymore. It was something worse than that, something a lot bigger. She didn't seem to be very willing to talk about it. Then, Mello never talked about why he was there to anyone but Matt. Christie didn't really have any friends there yet, which meant that she didn't have anyone to talk to about it, but she didn't seem to want anyone to talk to about it either. So, he shouldn't worry about it. It would just make him feel guiltier. So far, guilt definitely wasn't a feeling he liked.


I know I haven't updated this in forever. For those who do actually read it, I should be updating it more often while I'm taking a break from working on Sketch. I might end up also working on it and just working on four stories at the same time. Meh. Who knows? Reviews are greatly appreciated :)