A/N: Alright so here's the next chapter. I'm pretty sure this is going to be the last part where his biological parents are still in existence. So… that's good. This'll start getting easier, and Mello will start being more Mello-like after this. Ha, I have everything planned out already! There is a reason for everything!

Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note or anything within the series. If I did this series wouldn't even be on the site! It would have been in the original story.

Chapter 4: Number of Choices...

I didn't return home from that church until dawn. I knew at that time my father would have had enough time to either calm down and sleep or leave. But I didn't go back because of him. Hell, I would have been perfectly fine with just staying at the church. I went back for my mother, to see how she was.

I entered the old hotel room that we had decided to stay in, and looked around hesitantly. The entrance room was a mess, another victim to his violence, I was sure.

My eyes finally landed on my father's thick form, asleep on the old, forgotten couch against the far wall.

Hesitantly, I went further into the room, afraid that even the slightest of sounds would wake him up. There was still no sign of my mother anywhere, and with each step I took I was growing even more nervous.

"Mihael." A soft voice came from the other side of the room, where the makeshift kitchen was.

My eyes darted up and found the form of my mother standing in the doorway. Her blonde hair was messed up and she had dark bruises all over the parts of her arms that were exposed.

But that's not what my eyes saw.

My innocent yet observant eyes saw past the exterior, damaged skin and only registered her as my mother and my safety.

I didn't hold back the wave of relief that washed over me at that moment. I ran from the doorway, across the nearly destroyed room, and fell into her awaiting arms.

"I'm sorry for leaving!" I said, my eyes welling with tears as I spoke.

She shushed me quietly while her hands petted over my hair; with every stroke of her hand over my hair, I felt my worry fall away and disappear, replaced only with the sensation of relief.

"It's alright, sweetie."

"Are you okay?" I asked without pulling back.

"Of course I am. Everything will be fine now," she assured me.

"Promise?" I asked quietly.

"Yes." The response came out in a light exhale. I was too drowned in my relief to hear what was behind it.

When you're a kid, the only people you really have is your family. Your family doesn't lie to you, and they make things all better when life's not going so well. That's the false sense that I lived in when I was a child.

Even at that moment, after all that had happened, I still believed that my parents would make everything right. I believed my mother's promise to me without even second guessing it.

I was completely unprepared for the events that would happen next.

Everything was fine for the rest of the day. My mother and I were quiet for a long time after that moment. When we pulled away, things went back to how they normally were during the day.

She left the room to "have a moment alone with a friend" (I suspect now that she probably went back to shoot up on heroin) and I sat at the old table in the kitchen with one of the books that I'd found in the bedroom earlier.

Later on that afternoon, when my father finally woke up, he was silent. He didn't say anything to either of us, and barely even looked at me. There was no sadness in his eyes, or even regret. I couldn't find anything at all in those orbs.

My mother, though, was a different story. Whenever they were in the same room, their gazes would turn serious and intense; their eyes would then meet and it'd look as though they were having a whole conversation with just their eyes.

It was when night came that my father finally spoke to me. "Mihael, get ready now. We have to go." It was said in a stern tone and I didn't bother responding or even giving him a single glance, I just did as I was told.

I didn't have any possessions of my own, so it didn't take but a couple of minutes for me to get the small amount of clothes that I had, pack them away in a small bag, and reappear in the entrance room.

Both of my parents were already there, having one of their silent conversations with each other. I didn't think much of it at the time; I figured they were just getting over what had happened the previous night.

"Alright," my father said with his eyes still trained on my mother, "let's go."

She nodded, but I could just barely pick up on the hesitance in the motion. I let it pass without explanation.

We exited the old hotel and went out into the rest of the world; all of the horrors from the previous night were left behind in the forsaken building.

We walked for a long time in silence, but I barely noticed this. I was always too fascinated with observing the people and the places around us to see how they acted.

I barely even noticed the way my mother and father continued to send looks to one another. Hesitant and nervous looks from my mother and stern, promising ones from my father.

They led me through the German city to the very edge, where I could tell more violence happened by the rate of broken-into buildings and suspicious looking people that walked the streets.

This was the exact type of area we normally stayed in, so I didn't think much about it.

It wasn't until we reached a concrete building, maybe four stories tall, that we stopped outside. I observed the building silently, noting on all the boarded up windows; the ones that weren't lined with wooden boards were broken open. The once white walls were now painted with graffiti of all different things.

"Is this the place?" my mother quietly asked my father without looking down at me.

He nodded "We'll ask for another week."

She nodded in response then looked down at me as my father went over to one of the nearly shattered glass doors. "Mihael," she said quietly, bringing my attention back to her. "Listen to me very closely, alright?"

I nodded, and I don't know why but I began to memorize the way she looked and all of her features that I normally overlooked. I traced each line that came from age and stress with my eyes and noted on the despair lacing her angelic, blue eyes.

"You stay outside this building against the wall. Don't make a sound and don't go exploring. Your father and I will be right back. Okay?" she asked.

I nodded again.

She smiled, trying to offer me a bit of comfort in the expression. "I love you, Mihael."

I was confused but I tried not to let that show, "I love you too, Mom."

She stayed for another moment, then stood up and followed my father into the building.

I'll never have any way of knowing what exactly happened in that building that day. I did as I was told, leaning against the concrete wall and waiting for them to come back. Maybe if I had known what was going to happen next, I would have done something different.

Maybe I would have gone in there and begged them not to do it.

Maybe I would have begged for my mother not to go.

But that doesn't matter, because that's not what happened and I'll never know what exactly would have occurred had I changed one thing or another.

Life is filled with a great number of choices. There are an infinite number of choices that surround us every single day, and what we choose determines what happens next and shapes that next choice we face. I've learned over the years that going back and second guessing the decisions we make is pointless, since it'll never change anything.

But at the time I hadn't realized that.

All of a sudden, the sound of numerous gunshots from inside the building cut through the once silent and peaceful air. My heart began to race as I shot up from where I had previously been.

My eyes locked on the door that my parents had gone through. The only thing holding me back from following my curiosity and seeing what had happened inside was my mother's words telling me not to.

I waited for a painfully long few minutes, mentally begging for them to come out.

When the door finally opened though, it was not my parents that stepped out of the building.

A man, who appeared to be in his late twenties with thick black hair that matched the shade of the clothes he adorned and burning green eyes, stepped out along with three other men behind him.

He didn't notice me at first, but when he did his gaze locked on me and I froze into place. His eyes were what paralyzed me. The way they seemed to burn into my very soul, and the way they seemed to already know everything about me, even though I had never seen this man before.

He stopped in front of me. "Who are you?" he asked. His German didn't sound natural.

"Where are my parents?" I asked. Thankfully even at that age I had enough sense to not just give out exactly who I was.

He smirked at me for a moment before it fell away. "You must be Lucas's son."

I didn't respond.

"How old are you, child?" he asked, quite condescendingly.

"Eight." I tried to harden my gaze and make myself seem stronger than I knew I was. I didn't want him to have any more power over me than he already did with those eyes.

"Listen to me, child," he said, taking another step closer to me and kneeling down until we were at the same height. "You have done no wrong to me and your only mistake was having been born into this family, certainly something you could not control. But I have fixed this mistake. You are no longer bound to this family."

I tried not to think about what he meant by that.

"You must now survive on your own in this brutal and merciless world. You have to be the best and be strong in order to prove your worth, do you understand?"

I shook my head.

"You will someday. If you ever want to reclaim any type of worth to your name, you must follow the words I said, alright? Don't fall into the same fate your parents did."

"And how am I supposed to do that?" I didn't know why I was asking a man I had never met before this type of thing, or why I was even considering the things he was telling me.

"Like I said, be the best and the strongest. No one ever remembers the people who didn't make it to first place. There is no one that can tell you no; there is nothing you cannot take for yourself."

With that, he stood up. "I advise you to not go into that building." And then he began walking away from me, back into the violence-ridden part of the city.

I waited until that man and the people who had been with him were gone before I went over to the door. He had just said it, 'no one can tell me no', so by doing this I was only following what he was saying. I couldn't figure why I was so compelled to listen to him and thus I put it out of my mind.

Slowly, I opened up the shattered glass door, being careful not to cut myself on any of the loose pieces as I did this.

The whole first floor was completely hollowed out and debris from it littered the entirety of the floor as well as glass and remnants in small areas that showed that some people had previously stayed here.

My eyes searched the area as I slowly proceeded into it.

Then suddenly they fell onto the sight that would plague my memories for years to come.

The bloodied bodies of my parents were laying on the cold floor, stopped in their last actions. My mother was away from my father and looked as though she had attempted to run; there were bullet holes all up and down her back and a final one in the back of her head. As for my father, he looked like he had staggered for a moment before falling. From what I could tell, there was one bullet hole close to his heart and another in his head.

Again I was paralyzed in place by the sight of my only family dead in front of me. My heart raced and tears pricked at the corner of my eyes, threatening to fall.

I didn't know what to do. I wanted someone to cling to and to tell me what I was seeing wasn't true. But who would that person be? Who did I have left now that the rest of my family had been taken from me? I did the only logical thing that I could think of at the time.

I ran.

A/N: I contemplated where exactly I wanted to end this a couple times. But I finally decided that this would be the best place and to just combine two things next chapter. Either that or maybe I'll just make the next two chapters a bit shorter. I don't know yet.

Please review all comments!
-Forbiddensoul562