Chapter Nine: Beautiful and Broken

A/N: Please note rating has gone up to M, and it's not for yaoiliciousness. This chapter contains explicit violence and a…nonconsensual situation. Probably the best way to describe it…I'm not here to quibble about 'legitimate rape'; that's Todd Akin's job :P Anyways, it's not as graphic as it could be, but it's not exactly vanilla either. Maybe I'm just freaking out because I've never written anything like this before. So here's to first times.

But if I know my fellow FFN-ers at all, the notorious *M* will never deter them - my views might even go up, ha. Read on, then.


Shadows

Mello: 5:40 p.m., January 26th, 2010

The police haven't been by yet, thank God. I give the shadows a sweeping glance and close the door behind me quickly. I can't stay long. They'll be picking up the tip about the stolen motorcycle soon.

It's hard, though, not to linger, remembering these rooms as they were just this morning, the laptop he used for a last minute review of minutiae, the gaming console he threw aside after a moment's reflection, the bed we woke up in, the alarm clock that tolled our deaths…

I shake my head and force myself to think. I'm back on the streets, running and hiding like I did in Los Angeles before the Mafia picked me up. I'm not that out of practice. I know what to do.

I grab everything I'll absolutely need: chocolate, a laptop, sunglasses, all the cash we've got left (some two hundred thousand yen), Matt's clothes (for us to wear, not for memories, and sure as hell not for the smell. I'm not some fucking sentimental girl, and I'm going to see him again). My main asset right now is my mind. That, and the four days' experience I have of wandering Tokyo from a very conspicuous hobo's point of view. I've got to find a place that blends into the shadows and lay low.

Not for long, though.


Scream

Matt: 9:00 p.m., January 26th, 2010

Time has no meaning here; they could have been gone for hours or mere minutes. They don't waste it, though, getting straight to the point.

"What is your name?" the same silky-voiced woman asks.

I see no point in hiding information that has no value to me anymore. "Matt," I tell them hoarsely.

"Surname?"

"Keehl."

I belong to him, don't I? He's dead, but I'm still his…I'll carry his name until I die, may the day be upon me already.

"We have not posted your photograph in public for Kira's judgment yet, but rest assured that our lord shall know your true name regardless of what you have told us."

Don't I know it. In fact, X-Kira already knows it. He just doesn't know he does.

"Very well: answer me now. What was your motive in assisting Takada-sama's abduction?"

Thinking about it, the story is just too complex to tell: the Death Note, Mikami, fakes, dark handsome stalkers; they'd dismiss it as mindless raving. I say nothing and wince as an open palm connects with my cheekbone. Human flesh really makes great acoustics. My eardrums pound. I don't feel the pain so much. I'm almost disconnected.

"We will not hesitate to use as much force as necessary for you to cooperate," she says. "Answer the question if you wish for a merciful death."

At least they're making no pretenses about my eventual fate. I find myself far less interested in my death than I normally would be. In life, I really cared about nothing besides Kira and Mello.

Both are beyond my reach now. I can't bring myself to care about anything.

She repeats the question three times, and each is punctuated with a blow to the face. I still haven't seen either of my interrogators.

She tries another question. "How much do you know about Kira?"

A lot, I could tell her. But the prospect of them beating me to death seems marginally more inviting.

"Do you know Kira-sama's identity?"

Yep.

"Were you hoping to use Takada-sama's life as a bargaining chip?"

Well…in a sense.

"Your motive was perhaps to force Kira to kill Takada-sama. Is this what you had planned?"

Well…

"Did you think that you could deceive the public into thinking Kira had killed Takada-sama? That people would become disillusioned with Kira?"

Stop putting words in my mouth; I wasn't thinking anything of the sort.

"We lied to you concerning your partner," she says abruptly.

What.

"We caught him before he even made it out of Tokyo with Takada-sama. She was wearing a locator, so we traced them to a trucking agency. Takada-sama managed to avoid harm in the resulting firefight, but your partner was shot dead. Your abduction attempt came to nothing; Takada-sama is alive and well, if a little shaken."

No. It can't be. We…failed? Mello, dead, and Takada alive, this is all wrong.

The only thing worse than both of us dying is both of us dying and failing to expose Kira.

How?

"So again, there is no point in remaining silent. Tell us everything."

"I'll tell you something," I hiss, my own voice surprising me. "You can go to hell."

The last bit comes out a little strained as the man's huge hand starts crushing my larynx again.

"What a shame," the woman says indifferently. "Maybe we should try a little harder." She sighs and says something inaudible in Japanese. The man seems to respond; his hand leaves my throat, and his footsteps move away and return, followed by a telltale buzzing sound.

Uh-oh, I think vaguely, still spluttering for breath.

"So tell me," she begins, but she's cut off by an inhuman shriek. It takes me a moment to realize it is mine. The taser fizzles gleefully as a few thousand volts snap and crackle through my abdomen. The man taps his foot meaningfully.

"So tell me," the woman starts again with a very smug smile in her voice, "are you a part of a larger anti-Kira organization?"

I think of Wammy's and the SPK.

"We need to root out every last weed of evil in this world, beginning with the stalk from which you sprang," she says poetically. "Answer me."

Another spark, another prod, this time to the base of my neck. I suck a breath in and screw my eyes shut beneath the blindfold, trying to hold the pain in. Her voice is malicious as she asks again.

By the fourth touch, I figure it's not worth it. They're probably just as interested in hearing me scream as they are in actually getting answers.

"What other anti-Kira dissenters are you affiliated with?"

A scream, a strangled sob.

"How did your partner convince Halle Lidner to let Takada-sama go with him?"

Another scream, incessant trembling.

"Kawahara-san, please remove him from the chair but leave his arms restrained."

The hard floor greets me unceremoniously, but I hardly feel it for the pain and the tears. I convulse violently, completely defenseless and miserable.

"We suspect Lidner of being part of the SPK, which was officially disbanded by the United States; however, she has disappeared from the public eye. Any idea where she might be now?"

Immeasurable pain. A blackness behind my eyelids.

"Anything you say can help us. Even the name of your partner could help dig up information."

The voltage stabbing at my skin is nothing; the flood of emotion surrounding Mello washes me away. The pain heightens to a crescendo, and then there is Mello-less, painless, lightless numbness.


Plan C

Mello: 10:00 p.m., January 26th, 2010

Contrary to popular belief, I do know my way around computers reasonably well thanks to Matt's rudimentary training, and the programs written onto his laptop do the rest. The connection at the seedy motel where I've hunkered down is slow and not exactly encrypted either, but I'm sure Matt's laptop takes care of security. Remember, no expert knowledge or top priority at the moment. Within an hour, I have the complete blueprints, background, and prison log on the facility where Matt is.

That's only what's been documented, though. I review the layout and compare it with the most zoomed-in image I can get from satellite images. I can't be one hundred percent sure, but the results seem to confirm what I thought: most of the obvious infiltration routes (air conditioning vents, windows, possible tunnels) don't actually exist.

So the blueprints were a decoy, meant to mislead amateurs. I thought they were a bit too easy to get my hands on. Now it's a matter of where the real ones are.

Matt won't like this; he was always griping about the hacking he had to do for me and the security breaches that could be traced. But he'll be glad I learned as much as I did from him. It'll save his life.

I'll need to access the entire prison system mainframe. With my current means, that'll take probably two hours, and right now, time is my enemy.

What must be done, must be done. I hit 'run' and wait.

XXX

Looking over the real maps now, I see a couple ways to get in and from there, to get to the section where they most likely have Matt. Getting out with him is a little trickier, but not impossible. The hard part will be getting him. As in actually neutralizing the personnel surrounding him. There are only so many guns I can hide inside my jacket before moving becomes difficult. A firefight in confined prison quarters isn't ideal if we want to get out alive, but sniper fire will be difficult to pull off with all the cameras everywhere. I could run a loop, but I'd still have no guarantee that they wouldn't notice before I made it in.

Never any guarantees when it comes to him. He caught me off guard the moment he threw me my gun back when we first met.

I examine the one he gave me today and snort softly as I find my name engraved on the stock, just as it was on the old one. If this is just a replica of my own gun, it should have the hidden compartment. Wouldn't it be just like Matt to send me a deathbed message?

My fingers trace the familiar contours hiding the slit in the weapon, wondering. The worst that can happen is that there's nothing there. No last words.

It's not like I'll never see him again.

I slide the catch open and shake out a folded sheet of paper.

Dear Mello,

I'm waiting for the right occasion to give this to you, since Christmas, New Year's, and your birthday have passed, and Valentine's Day is too far away. Whenever you read this, I want you to know that...I love you.

There, I said it. I love you, and I'm giving you a gun to show it. Fun fact: Quillsh Wammy created the initial theory; I hammered out the final design. The idea behind it may be distasteful to you, but you should understand the psychology it takes advantage of. I don't even know why this popped out at me in particular when I was hacking Wammy's files a few weeks ago. It just struck me as this bizarre connection between you, Wammy's, me, and my dying thing - not that that's relevant anymore. I'm guessing you probably want to bash my head in now for withholding information from you, so I won't hold off any longer. Read on.

I imagine my eyes must be blurring as I read through the last page in mere seconds, then rereading just to absorb what I can do with the information.

It's like he predicted this would happen.

I close my eyes and think. Everything has to be perfect. This is my second plan in two days, but unlike the first, this one is going to work.

It has to work.


Nightmare: I

Matt: 7:00 a.m., January 27th, 2010

Mello leans down towards me, his eyes holding mine, bright with desire, his lips enticing me. He teases me, letting his fingers brush the seam in my jeans as he climbs over my supine form to hover above me. He touches his forehead to mine, his lips are so agonizingly close, and he breathes, "What do you want me to do, Matt?"

"Kiss…kiss me, Mello," I plead.

"Ask politely."

"Please, Mello!"

"Tsk, so eager." But he bends and allows his lips to descend on mine, I press back, and for a moment, it's bliss…

…but the touch is all wrong. His lips are rougher than this, his hands in my hair aren't supposed to be so smooth, his taste should be chocolate, not lipstick. I open my eyes to see nothing; I feel a cold floor beneath me, cuffs around my wrists, something holding my legs down, and a light weight resting on my stomach.

Hands slip under my shirt; their touch is foreign and cold. This isn't right.

I twist my head away from the kiss and try to raise my arms to let myself see, but they're trapped under my back. Then, her voice assaults me.

"Who are you thinking of?"

Who are you?

Not Mello, my mind registers desperately, and as she pulls me back into a kiss, I struggle against her. There's no trying to kick her off; the man is stepping on my legs with enough force to break them. She's light, but positioned just so I can't arch my back and throw her off.

This is not supposed to be happening.

Her fingers crawl up my ribs, pushing my shirt up to my neck, and she pulls away from my lips. She's staring at my tattoos. The ones I told Mello I got just to experience the pleasure of pain.

There's no pleasure now as she starts tracing the shapes across my skin. They're not for her to touch, they're Mello's, they're not hers. I twist and struggle fruitlessly, and she laughs at my discomfit.

"I thought you would have this response," she whispers, her breath falling on my neck. "You were most distressed when we asked about your partner. You wept when you heard he was dead. You cried his name. You loved him, didn't you?"

I shudder at her words; she continues her caresses, pressing harder against me as I struggle.

Mello, I'm sorry.

I hate this.

I need you.

"Stop," I whisper.

She ignores me. Her lips come down onto my chest, her hands pushing my shoulders back into the ground. She kisses and sucks and licks in the vilest manner, and I can't help it, I beg.

"Stop," I whisper, and she hears me as she drags her teeth against my neck. My breath catches.

"Stop, please, please don't do this anymore," I plead. I'm breaking, I can feel it, she's sick and she knows I'm responding to it, but I don't want this. Only Mello can touch me like this.

"Please, stop, I can't take this, stop, please—I'm begging you, stop this PLEASE—" My voice rises, reaches a scream, and she lifts her lips from my body with the air of a sated hyena looking up from a carcass.

"He's cracking," she announces to the man still holding my lower half down. "But you liked it, didn't you?" she says to me.

I can't speak; I'm choking back sobs.

"Don't pretend; I can feel it."

No, oh god, please—

A muffled scream escapes me as she drags her nails across the thin fabric covering my shame. She giggles and stands.

"I'll tell you the truth this time. We only found Takada-sama's body at the site of the burned church. Her kidnapper is presumed to be on the run."

No…it can't be…

Why would they lie to give me hope?

He's alive?

"No…" I say faintly.

"Yes," she contradicts me. "You really thought he was dead? And yet you remained so loyal to him, not saying a word to answer our questions, and even resisting my loving touches so violently."

"You…sick bastards…he's dead…you said he died…"

"How could you doubt his ability?" she taunts. "How could you not have faith in your true love, Mello?"

Don't say his name. Don't you defile it with your lips, you harpy.

Mello.

No. I can't let myself hope. I don't know if they're lying.

"We'll catch him soon, though. He shall die, do not doubt that. The least you can do is give us information on him."

"Fuck you," I manage. "I'll never…betray…him."

And she just laughs as I choke the words out between the man's almost idle kicks to my gut.

"If you tell us even the slightest detail to help catch him, we may let you see each other once before you die."

Fucking…

"You'd like that, wouldn't you? Of course, you wouldn't be allowed any contact," she purrs. "Just a last goodbye."

That's already been said and done. I'll never see him again.

"Put him back in the chair, won't you, Kawahara-san?" she instructs the man. "I don't want him touching himself, or hurting himself; he's such a little martyr."

He steps off my legs, hauls me over a span of the floor, and secures my arms to the back of the chair again. With a parting blow to the jaw, he departs, and she with him.

Slumped here in despair, I still cannot see, and my blindness forces me to see inside my head. Mello's face floats before me, so beautiful and so far away.

Mello, I'm sorry. I don't know what to believe. But I know I'll never see you again, so it doesn't matter, does it? They can violate me all they want, and eventually I'll expire, well, not happily, but at least willingly.

I'm sorry, Mello. For breaking my promise to you.

Mello.


Nightmare: II

Mello: 8:00 a.m., January 27th, 2010

I stay awake into the night and the morning, planning, revising, checking and rechecking, not letting a single detail escape me. I won't let Matt down.

I've had worse stints than this; there were times in the Mafia when I didn't dare sleep a wink or even turn my back for fear of a bullet in my head. Even in Wammy's, we did fatigue-resistance training. The nights have been long with Matt recently, thanks to the Kira case and...point being, I'm no stranger to exhaustion. I should be able to go well over twenty-four hours without sleep. So when I open my eyes and realize I'm not in that peeled-paint motel room anymore, I'm at a loss as to what's going on until I see him. Matt.

He's kneeling on the floor, hands cuffed behind his back, and the sight would be a definite turn-on if he weren't shaking and bleeding from almost every visible patch of skin. A man in uniform stands over him, his back to me. He's thin, about my own size, which surprises me; most mercenaries in the mob were great hulks of men (beasts). More importantly, he's holding a knife to Matt's neck.

Don't you dare touch him, I seethe, my mind commanding my muscles to open fire on the man, but I'm dreaming, and this isn't one of those choose-your-own-adventure stories. I can't move; I can only watch with increasing trepidation as the man yanks Matt's head up by his hair and lightly traces his exposed throat with the tip of the knife.

No, NO, I mouth silently as Matt flops lifelessly in his grip, too worn out to even resist. You can't kill him!

Can't I? The unspoken challenge taunts me as he draws the knife agonizingly slowly through skin and flesh. Blood sprays as Matt falls face down, soundlessly, and the man turns to face me—

It's not a man.

It's Takada.

I blink and gasp, sitting up in a panic. The darkened screen of Matt's laptop and the off-white walls and faded curtains of the room greet me, Takada's face imprinted on them briefly, mocking me. My heart is racing, and my hands are cold and sweaty. I reflexively reach for a bar of chocolate on the nightstand but stop short. Fuck, what can chocolate do for me? I need him.

Matt.

It was a nightmare; it wasn't real, I tell myself. I don't have a family history of premonitory visions, do I? I do have an overactive imagination. But then…how much of that could be reality? His shattered body flashes through my mind, and I struggle to suppress the bile rising in my throat. I recall the anguish in Halle's expression when she told me they'd seized him for questioning; she knew their methods would violate every code of humanity in existence. All the things they could be doing to him right now, and what am I doing? Nodding off over work, that's right.

Mihael, wake up. Someone—no, the one that you love is hurting right now. Get the fuck on over there. No amount of touching up will improve your plan now. What you need to do is act.

These past two months with him have been atypical, to say the least. It's not every day that your future other half pulls you from a burning building and sews your body and heart back together.

I felt the imbalance from day one, but it wasn't an unwelcome change. I've always had to look out for myself, never let my guard down; that's how I got where I did in Wammy's and the Mafia. Then Matt came into my life, and some switch got flipped, because then I became the damsel in distress with her knight in striped shirts, and Matt was the one watching over me, holding me up, risking his life for me.

What's to stop me from doing the same? I can't go wrong, not with Matt's life at stake.

I'm almost there, Matt. Hold on.


Dead is the New Alive

Matt: 9:00 a.m., January 27th, 2010

"Won't you tell us what we need to know?" she wheedles as her accomplice crushes the life out of me via my windpipe.

I remain silent but for my reflexive struggling against the unseen hands. I have to wonder, why am I still alive?

Am I still alive, or am I dead and in hell?

I'm as good as dead without him. Is that my hell - to be forever separated from Mello, dead or alive?

Am I alive am I alive am I dead am I dead dead or alive dead or alive or alive dead or alive or alive dead or alive dead.

Dead.

As the blackness seals my eyes shut, a very small voice tells me, you are not dead because your will to live is still alive.

Fuck you.

Dead is the new alive.

XXX

"You've let him pass out again, Kawahara-san," she observes. "He can't exactly talk if he's not conscious."

"He won't talk even if he is conscious," he says. "We're wasting our time here. The investigation team needs to step up their search for the kidnapper. Don't you agree, Rin-chan?"

I would normally register at least two important pieces of information from their conversation, but with my brain as oxygen-starved as it is, I can only stare at nothing and wait to resume full consciousness.

"Rin-chan thinks we need to be on guard for the very one you are talking about," she says deliberately.

The next moment happens instantly for me, who cannot see it; a shot rings out, a door clangs open and shut, and a voice that I remember speaks.

"Found you."


Tableau

Mello: 9:45 a.m., January 27th, 2010

For all its reputation as one of Japan's highest security facilities, the Tokyo detention house wasn't exactly impossible to get into. All I had to do was take down one civilian janitor and one guard watching the main camera feeds, screw with the system just enough to keep them from knowing I was there, and put on another hideous uniform. Then, it was a matter of shooting the lock out and going in with guns blazing.

Then, it's a matter of not choking on my own tongue when I see Matt.

They've got him chained to a chair, blindfolded and still wearing the clothes they shot him down in, still as bloodied as the pavement that he bled onto, that I saw on the news.

Still alive.

"Found you."

Only then do I look up at the two people standing behind him, though I automatically raised my gun to a point equidistant between the two of them. One is a large man, nothing on the scale of Rod or any of the mafia, but clearly chosen for his bulk. The other is a slight woman, his opposite in every way, and part of me wonders if they're supposed to be a good cop-bad cop setup.

Considering how much damage Matt's sustained, I think they're both bad cops.

Both have their guns leveled at me, and the woman backhands Matt across the face without looking away from me.

"Your lover's arrived," she says mockingly. "How lucky that we didn't even have to go find him."

Matt stirs and questions in a raspy voice, "Mello?"

I barely trust my own voice to respond without breaking. "Matt. Don't worry, we're getting out of here."

"Perhaps," the woman says. "But not for a while, and certainly not alive."

"Good," I smile. "That's what I was planning on."

Slowly, dramatically, their eyes track my gun as it turns to face me. Matt, who doesn't see any of this, shivers in the silence, and the sound is like needles under my skin. Soon, he'll know.

Cool metal kisses me between the eyes; they think I'm bluffing? Well, I am. They just don't know that for sure.

"You can't get to what's inside my head if it's blown to pieces," I remark morbidly. "Too bad, huh?"

Matt gasps; the man stares dumbfounded; the woman holds her gun a little higher.

"You won't kill yourself," she snaps. "Put the gun down, or we'll kill him."

"You will anyways, won't you? At least we'll die together."

"Mello," he says, panicked. "You…what do you think you're doing?"

"They want to interrogate me, Matt, but I won't let them," I explain. "I know you haven't told them anything, but I'm not that strong. I'm ending it here, so they won't be able to use me against Near."

I saw to it that the surveillance of this room was tampered with, so nothing I say will come back to slit my throat. We won't leave any witnesses for that. It physically hurts me to say these words to Matt, but soon nothing will hurt anymore.

"We know you won't do it," the woman blurts out again. "If you were going to kill yourself, why would you go to the trouble of breaking into this place?"

Very sharp, woman. I hate to sound misogynistic, but you're a little too quick for your own good.

"Mello, don't fucking do it."

…Matt?

But you as good as handed it to me with this gun.

This is how it works, and keep in mind I'm dumbing it down significantly for you, because I doubt they taught Gunmanship 101 at Wammy's. Not really a safe topic to cover in a house full of unstable geniuses. Basically, when you pull the trigger, you need to bring it up and away from you, assuming you're pointing it at yourself. This reverses the firing mechanism so that instead of exiting the barrel, the bullet gets propelled down the barrel, stopped short by a barrier activated by the trigger, and fired in the opposite direction, coming out from the other end, that isn't apparent from the outside. The one inconvenience is that you have to load the magazine backwards so the bullet faces the right way. It fits well, but then you'd have to use all the bullets in the same way, or else alternate mechanisms and memorize the order of your bullets. Think about it. I swear I tried, but there's only so much I can do. I also included a silencer and front and rear sights in the final design; hope that helps if you should ever come to need this. If you really want to know the physics of it all, read the back page. That's the just the condensed version.

In his notes, Wammy called this the Suicidal One-Hit Wonder in an unusual display of black humor. I know, it's not funny to you, but think about it: the one thing you can do to make your enemy let his guard down is give up. If you throw your hands up, they'll put their guns down. Okay, maybe not literally, but a decrease, however marginal, in the opposite party's alertness can save your life. There are two possibilities: they'll panic and let their good guy side come through ("We can't let this guy kill himself! It's against heavenly and earthly law!") or they'll do a victory dance ("Excellent, he wants to do our job for us"). Either way, the distraction can only have positive consequences for you. It's all in the timing and the numbers you're dealing with. I don't think I need to explain anymore.

(Wammy wrote another footnote about possible situations in which using this mechanism would lead to your own capture, specifically citing the capture of Kyosuke Higuchi on October 28th, 2004 and his own role in shooting the gun out of the man's hand. Mean anything to you?)

Love,

Matt

From Matt, with love. He fucking knew I would need this. And yet he says, don't do it.

It's time to detonate. With a triumphant grin, I face my enemies fully and pull the trigger. Twice.

You only need one bullet to kill yourself.


A/N: I…don't really know how I feel about this chapter. So I'll let you tell me.