Author's Note: I PASSED FRENCH! ;D YESSS! But there is a downside :S I needed 80% in my psychology class, I got 75% V.V I'm going to need to take it again. But at least this time because I know most of the material already, it'll be easier :) AND because I know it all already, I can do super well on the tests and whatever, and totally use it as a GPA booster ;)

...LOL, now just my driving test to worry about ha-ha ;P

Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note, or anything remotely associated with it.

August 24, 2024. 2:00 PM...

"Jewel, we have to go NOW!" Mello whispered harshly.

"Gevanni! Let's go!" I pleaded.

"Jewel!"

Mello's cry was the last thing I heard before an earth shattering explosion knocked me off my feet.

When I came to, the room, what was left of it, was in ruins and engulfed in flames. My body tensed and locked up in horror as I watched the demonic orange and yellow flames dance around me. "Noo," I whimpered as I shook with fear. This wasn't happening! Not again! This had to be a nightmare! It just had to be.

But my nightmare was only beginning.

In front of me Mello was knocked unconscious and trapped under a pile of debris. Across the room Gevanni was trapped against the wall under a flaming desk. The sight of someone important to me in mortal peril had me lunging to help him, but to add to my horror, when I moved a searing pain shot up my right leg and I found that I too was pinned under a fallen section of ceiling.

The temperature in the room was rising by the second and the flames surrounding us grew in intensity and a thick, cloud of black smoke rose and pooled above our heads.

C'mon, just no. I couldn't be stuck here! I wasn't going to just accept this! I had to get out! I had to get us all out.

I tried crawling again, slower this time. I inched deliberately along the floor, careful not to jar my leg or already wounded arm. I managed to slip out from under the wreckage and worm my way across the floor.

I stopped midway into the room though, when out of the corner of my eyes I saw the awfulness. The man, the one who had been holding the bomb. He wasn't much of a man anymore. Barely recognizable as a human shape, he was a grotesque mass of blood, bones and flesh.

I shuddered inwardly and fought my gag reflex as I forced myself forward over to Gevanni; knocking the burning rubble off of him with my shoulder.

"Gevanni! Gevanni!" I shook him and he stirred and groaned under the motion but wouldn't come around.

I crawled back to Mello and shook him. When I didn't get any response from him I leaned down to make sure he was still breathing. He was; but just barely.

Now I had a choice to make.

I darted back over to Gevanni in the flaming box of a room and lifted him onto my back. I wasn't sure if I just never realised how heavy he was, or if the smoke in the room was already getting to me; but damn this was going to be one hell of a workout.

I glanced once last time at Mello's unconscious form lying in the middle of the room. "I'm not going to leave you. I'll be back," I promised, and struggled under Gevanni to get the both of us out of the blazing courthouse.

It took longer than I hoped it would to get Gevanni through the building. At one point on the stairs I started to trip and had to put my hand out to steady myself. The wall gave way under the weight and my hand crunched through the blazing drywall, burning and slicing my arm up to my elbow. I didn't feel it though. I wasn't feeling anything but blunt determination and electric adrenaline in my veins... and the tightness of my own lungs which were taking in all of the airborne toxins.

I was coughing and choking by the time the two of us made it out and I could almost swear my body temperature was reaching a critical level.

I dropped Gevanni to the scorched grass and fell to my knees beside him, gasping and heaving.

Across the street I saw Matt, Marsh, Linda and Near staring wide-eyed at the hellfire. At least I wouldn't have to go back in for them. I looked back and watched as an angry crimson and gold firestorm worked its way up, down, and through the building.

"C'mon Jewel, Mello's in there! Mello. He didn't give up on you, he came back for you, and you're going to go back in after him!"

I thought back to my textbooks and recalled how it was normally men who preformed great acts of courage and heroism in situations like this. I remembered reading that the reasoning behind it was because woman had a greater internal drive for survival because they were needed to take care of their offspring; it was an evolutionary adaptation. I stole one more quick glance at Marsh and wondered for a second if both of HER parents were now going to die in a fire.

Before I had a chance to talk myself out of it I raced back into the building.

"Hey you! Stop! You can't go in there" I heard a voice call after me as I crossed the flaming threshold of the courthouse, but there was no way I was stopping.

I found the building even more unstable and dangerous than I had when I was getting out; the fire had spread and was now licking at my legs and arms. I couldn't think about that though, I couldn't stop. I ran, choking and coughing all the way, back up to the blown out room. I raced up the stairs but on the fourth step the splintered and burning wood gave way under my weight and I crashed through the beams. I held onto the step in front for dear life as I kicked and fought my way back up; my shot and torn up arm all the while feeling like it was being ripped off.

My lungs constricted and my muscles tensed with panic as I finally pulled myself up and lay panting on the stairs for a moment to catch my breath. I wasted only a moment before I started back on my mission. I made it up the stairs and down the hall and through the crumbling doorframe into the smouldering tomb.

"C'mon Mello, time to go," I coughed as I tried to push and pull the collection of plaster and wooden beams that were lying across him. I fought and clawed at the debris but it was no good. I couldn't get enough force behind my struggles to move the broken pieces of building. My breathing becoming more and more laboured.

I felt my burst of adrenaline wearing thin as laid down on my back and used the support and leverage of the floor and my legs to finally push the debris off of Mello. I wheezed and panted as my lungs worked overtime in the dense, molecular cloud of poison and carbon monoxide to keep me alive.

"Mello! Mello wake up! You're going to have to help me here," I rasped as I grabbed onto his arm and proceeded to drag him through the room. "WAKE UP!" I shouted as I lost my grasp on Mello's arm and crashed roughly to the floor, the wound on my arm spilling more and more blood.

My brain was shrieking and thrashing with pain inside my head. It felt like someone had taken an ax and was using the sharp end to chisel into my brain. I knew it was because of all the smoke, heat and carbon monoxide I had inhaled and the increasing deficit of blood in my system. Mello and I were both going to be goners if I didn't get us out of here.

In one last ditch effort I grabbed Mello by the front of his shirt and lifted him onto my back. The momentum from my hoist, coupled with his dead weight and my inability to stand straight almost had the both of us back on the floor but an internal drive refused to let me give up. It was like my body was running on auto pilot; all backup systems were engaged, my brain was no longer in control. My body was acting of its own accord.

I stumbled and fell through the building, half the time I was unable to breathe and the other half I wasn't taking in enough unpolluted air anyway. Finally I saw it, the light that wasn't caused by the fire; the light caused by the afternoon sun.

So close.

I felt my muscles give and my body shake as I drew the last ounce of energy and adrenaline from my body and crashed through the door.

I landed with Mello, in a gasping, wheezing, scorched, heap outside the inferno. Before I could even draw in my first untainted breath paramedics and emergency medical technicians were pulling me away from the blaze and strapping an oxygen mask to my face.

I inhaled greedily on the clean, compressed air that was being fed to me through the plastic tubes; letting out a violent shriek of pain and suppressed panic when I finally had enough accessible air in my burnt out lungs. As I writhed in pain from my headache, cuts and burns, I was guided into the back a waiting ambulance with an unconscious Mello. The EMT fought to hook me up to a blood bag for a transfusion as I finally let my body fold under its own weight and exhaustion.

I must have blacked out after that because when I opened my eyes again I was in an ever familiar hospital bed with the ever familiar bleeping of heart machines and the smell of bleach and other assorted chemicals. My arm was bandaged at the site of the gunshot wound and the site of the gashes and cuts from when I had cracked through the wall. I had another handful of assorted bandages around my body in places I figured to represent burns from the fire. I was still wearing an oxygen mask but apart from that, I appeared to be alright.

I tried to sit up in my bed and although I felt no pain, my head began to spin and I couldn't seem to make my muscles work. I noted an IV running into my unwounded arm and figured that a saline solution wasn't the only thing they were pumping into me. A generous dose of morphine or any of its derivatives was making a nice additive to the liquid concoction being poured into my veins.

"Hey kid," I heard suddenly and turned to face the voice.

"Heyy Matt," I smiled at the recognizable redhead.

"How're ya feeling Gem?"

"Drugged," I chuckled.

"Heh, yeah. You were squirming a couple hours ago so they upped your dosage. They're not too worried about you though. Just your typical smoke inhalation and a couple of first and second degree burns. You're going to be alright."

"What about everyone else? How's Mello and Gevanni? Where's Marsh and Near? Are you alright? How did everyone get out? Where's Linda? And oh my gosh, what happened with this bomb thing and where were you these past ten days?"

"Whoa, whoa, slow down kid. Uh, let's see... Mello's still unconscious. They figure the blast really threw him for a loop. Literally..." I thought for a moment about how Mello had weaseled his way in front of me and taken the full force of the blast in my place. "Uhm, Gevanni came to almost immediately. He's fine. A couple burns. Minor smoke inhalation. He's already back to being his annoying and bossy self. He and Near are discussing something. Neither of them looked too happy. Gevanni's still around here somewhere. I think Near left to go clean up some paper work or whatever he does. Marsh is running around here somewhere too. I think she was correcting the health care system the way she was going on." Matt took a breath and a second to think about my other questions. "I'm fine. Bullet just grazed me. They had me patched up in a jiffy," he tapped his shoulder. "Linda sprained her ankle of all things, but she's fine. She's looking after Marsh."

"How did everyone get out? Before I left the doors were being chained."

"A bunch of the security guys your brothers brought broke out the windows. Once that happened the back-up team your brother had standing by..." Of course he had a back-up team standing by. How silly of me to assume he was unprepared. "...came in right after that and cut the chains with the Jaws of Life or whatever those huge clippers are called. Any of those guys who weren't shot were arrested."

"And now-"

"Yeah yeah I'm getting to it, hold on. 'Kay, so what happened was, and pay attention, I went with those bomb techs to help them dismantle the thing right. I mean, I built it, the least I could do is help them take it apart properly right?"

"Right."

"So I go with them, and this one guy doesn't seem too happy at first right, but he doesn't say anything. So as we're taking it apart I start to notice things. Little things that are different from when I made the damn thing. So I figure whoever grabbed it tried to make little adjustments or whatever. But then deeper into it I realise that this isn't the bomb I made to begin with. It's a duplicate. Someone took the original and made a copy. So I tried to tell them that there was another bomb out there and that this was a fake, so what did they do? They locked me up in that prison cell thing you guys have under your headquarters."

"You were there this whole time?"

"Yeah, but that's not the half of it. They took my cell when they locked me up right, so when I finally got out of there I couldn't even call you guys. I just had to get down to the courthouse to warn you."

"Man, this whole thing was just so crazy."

"Yeah you're telling me."

"I just have one more question."

"Yeah? What's that?"

"That guy that locked you up. He was a brunette, wasn't he?"

"Yeah. Why?"

I just nodded. "You know, I'm really and truly happy you're alright Matt." I extended my arms out for a hug. Matt didn't hesitate. He was beside me in an instant, holding my small, charcoal smelling frame in his long arms. "Alright, now help me out of here. I've got stuff to do."

"Jewel, you just woke up, you're still not well enough to be moving around."

"I'm fine, it's like you said. Just a couple burns and things." I threw the covers back and slid my legs off the side of the bed.

On cue a nurse showed up in the doorway. "Oi, miss. You're not supposed to be up and around yet," she whined in a nasally voice.

"This is getting redundant. It's what, the second, third time, I've been blown up this month? I'm fine," I assured her, reaching down and removing my own IV.

"Hey, you can't do tha-"

I shot the woman a death glare, cutting her off. Matt came up behind her, laid his hands on her shoulders and said quietly, "She's fine. I'll look after her. I'd get her papers ready so she can be discharged."

"I can't allow this," the nurse said again, but the tone of her voice told me her resolve was weakening.

"You can't keep me here," I answered back. "By law you have to let me go," I smiled and steadied my shaky frame against a wall.

"I'll look after her," Matt promised again and winked. "You want to get us a wheelchair?"

The nurse pursed her lips and shot us each one last disapproving glance but left the room anyway to fulfill Matt's request. She returned a moment later and I sat myself down.

"Where to Gem?"

"Oh Matt, you're always there to take care of me eh?"

"Always hun. And oh hey, speaking of which," Matt dug in his pocket for a second and came out with a package of bubblegum and tossed it in my lap.

"You're the best Matt," I reached up over my head for another hug.

Matt took me through the halls until we found him.

"Gevanni," I called quietly, and he turned to face me.

"I guess I'll give you two a minute," Matt said behind me and left me to wheel myself over to him.

Gevanni hung his head for a moment and then, without looking at me, said, "Hey Jewel. How're you feeling?"

"I'm alright," I said quietly. "And you?"

"I'm fine. Just have to take it easy for a couple days."

"Uh huh. And what's going on at the organization now?"

"Near's doing a cleanup of all the traitors. We're pretty sure we got them all."

"What about that guy? That brunette, the one who was always giving me a hard time and the one who organized the raid on that warehouse."

"Him? Oh yes, Near had him arrested a while ago. Right after we got out of that courthouse."

"Of course he did. And what about you?"

"I'm allowed to stay, but I've been put on probation for the rest of my life."

This small talk was killing me.

"Look, Gevanni-"

"So, you've made your choice then?" he interrupted me.

I paused for a moment, finding the right words. "I have. I am truly sorry Gevanni and I am so grateful for everything you've ever done for me. Maybe in another time and place it would have worked out. But not here, not now." I stood up and leaned in and gave him one last hug; I let my head rest on his chest one last time.

Gevanni turned and left quietly. I wondered how awkward work would be now. But then I figured that it was always a gone show in that building, and neither of us would probably even notice a difference. I shook my head with resignation and sat back down in the wheel chair.

"Mello next?" Matt asked, coming up behind me.

"Mello next."

Matt dropped me off in his room and then claimed he needed a drink of water and something to eat, leaving the two of us alone.

"I guess I know what I do to you now, every time I end up in the hospital eh?" I asked, staring across at his sleeping form under the blankets.

"What are you talking about?" Mello answered unexpectedly.

"Hey, I thought you were out of it?"

"Naw, I came out of it a couple hours ago," Mello said, opening his eyes and glaring up at me.

"Why didn't you tell anybody?"

"I didn't want to be fussed over," he said frankly and used his arms to pull himself so that he was sitting in an upright position.

"How are you feeling?"

"My head's spinning, and it feels like I've been smoking for as long as Matt has, but hey."

I narrowed my eyes with concern; Mello was acting more than a little curt this afternoon. "Mello, is, is something wrong?"

"It's nothing Jewel," he said throwing his covers off and sitting up on the edge of the bed.

"Mello?"

"Look, its fine. I heard what happened. You got that double agent out of the fire first. I suppose I should just be grateful that you came back for me at all. I mean, we all know how much you hate fires. And besides, traitor or not it was him who got you out of the other fire. It wasn't me."

"Excuse me!" I asked, stunned.

"No, like I said. It's fine. We all know who you care about more."

"You. Have GOT, to be kidding me!" I cried. "Do you know why Mello!" I charged angrily; the both of us standing up to face each other. "Do you know why I got him out first and then went back in for you!" I willed hot, angry tears that were building in the corners of my eyes to hold off for just a few more moments. Mello's face remained blank, so I continued, "I went in for him first because I KNEW I was going to go back for you. I knew I wasn't going to let you die," I cried out. "If I had gotten you out there was no way in hell that I was going to go back into that fire for anyone else. You might've died, he WOULD have died. I'm sorry if you take my concern for his life to mean that I care about him more than I care about you." My voice and the dam that was holding my tears back broke on my last words.

I was unable to stop the cascade; I was unable to stop my cries from shaking my body. I was so hurt; I was entirely cut down at the most fundamental level of my being. How could Mello still believe that there was anybody on this planet... in this universe that I could love more than him?

"That's it both of you!" a small, but commanding voice asserted beside us. A tiny, blonde pixie, not yet taller than five feet was strolling into the room with her hands on her hips and a stern look on her face. "YOU!" my little angel jabbed a slender finger up at Mello, "Why don't you just admit that you were jealous. You should admit that now that you know why mommy got Gevanni out first you feel guilty for jumping to conclusions." Mello's eyes grew wide and his jaw fell in surprise. "And you!" She jabbed the finger in my direction next, "You know how sensitive daddy's ego is. And you don't have to turn on the waterworks all the time." It was my turn to have my jaw drop. "Now both of you!" she slammed her hands back down on her waist. "Stop being so proud and hug each other already!"

I just stared down at her in shock as a stunned silence filled the room.

"She gets that from you, you know," Mello said suddenly and pulled me into a tight, suffocating hug.

Author's Note: Alright, due to the amount of feedback on the last challenge I posed to you guys, I've decided to pose another one :D

'Why is my nickname Snooze?'

The reader that can guess the reason most closely, or the reader who can come up with the most creative reason before I upload the epilogue, will win the challenge :D

Also, I've noticed something after rereading my story here. It was glaringly obvious to me, (probably only because I wrote the thing and picked up on it,) but since nobody's called me out on it yet I suppose I won't go back and edit it; it's kind of a pain and I would have to change quite a large portion. So then I guess this little note is a moot point, but putting it in here makes me feel better about it. So thank you :)