Whoop whoop!

Thanks for the comments! There's not many, but I still thank you.

Disclaimer: Me no own.
Warning! Profanity. And that's basically it for this chappy.

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Damn that son of a bitch for putting everything into a percentage.

That's all I can say for now. A midget followed me into my room.

I'll explain later.
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"Did you eat breakfast already?" Mello asked curiously as Alpha slipped her journal under her pillow. She smiled and held up her half eaten Eggo.

"Part of it," she said. "I got tired of a certain llama that speaks in percentages all the time badgering me about random things, so I came up here. Now," she said, sitting with her legs hanging over the side of the bed. She patted a spot on the mattress next to her. "You come over here. I've got to ask you something."

Mello scrambled over energetically (she wasn't sure how anyone could be hyper that early…) and climbed up onto the bed, kicking his feet into the side of the mattress since they didn't at all touch the floor.

"What?" he asked curiously.

"You remember your dream?" He nodded. "And you said you've had it before?"

"Lots of times," he said, nodding again.

"How long have you been having it for?"

"I dunno," he said, his eyes swiveling up to the ceiling in wonderment. "A long time."

"And did you ever tell L that you stopped having them?"

He looked at her, his eyes wide in surprise. After a moment, he sighed and looked at his knees, then nodded.

"I didn't want Roger to find out 'coz I was scared he'd try an' put me in therapy or something."

"W why…. Wait, was he going to tell Roger?"

Mello looked up. "You're not going to, are you?"

"N-no," she said. "Definitely not. I know you don't need therapy. I've just got to straighten a few things out with a certain llama now…"

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Well, L now knows that if he says a word to Roger about Mello's bad dreams that he will be killed. He says he wasn't going to, but I think he's lying. And apparently, according to him, my protectiveness of Mello means that there is a three percent chance that I was directly involved or witnessed the murder of Mello's parents. I hate that stupid llama and his stupid psychoanalysis abilities. Who the hell does he think he is, telling me what I have and haven't seen? Granted he's right about all of this and everything, but…

I'm waiting for my therapist to get here now. She's already read you, you know. Now she's just analyzing. I hope she fucking enjoys the shitload of swearing that I do.

Ah. Here she is.
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"Good evening, Alpha," she said kindly.

"Oi. 'Ow's it goin', Karen?"

As the therapist had introduced her self in the first place as Misses Karen Langston, Alpha had immediately took to calling her by her first name, mostly because she found it amusing that the therapist always wrote something down on her pad of paper every time Alpha did this. The therapist sat down in the chair across from the couch Alpha was seated on with her legs crossed.

"I noticed you were writing in your journal when I came in?"

"Obviously."

She sighed and scribbled something else down onto her notepad. Alpha grinned.

"Now," Karen said, "let's talk about some of the things that you wrote about. One of the first things was about your dislike towards the orphanage you've been staying in."

"Yes."

"What are some things you dislike about it?"

Alpha sighed, rolling her eyes, mostly only to see if Karen would write anything on the little pad she had with her. When she didn't, Alpha decided to answer the question.

"Well, first off, the caretaker Roger. I detest him to the very core of his being."

"For any particular reason?"

"Well, for one thing, he co-runs an orphanage, but he hates children."

"Why would you believe he hates children?"

"Well, aside from the fact that he glares at us all the time and gives extremely harsh punishments to us for everything, he walks around mumbling, 'I hate these bloody kids' all the time."

"Mm-hmm… and you said he co-runs the orphanage?"

"Yes," she said. "The other caretaker is Watari, I believe I heard someone mention he was either the owner or the founder of the place. I don't have any issues with him at all. He's quite nice. So you can rule out that I have issues with authority, because I could tell that's what you were thinking."

Karen smiled. "You're quite a smart girl."

"I ought to be, I've got an IQ of two hundred something. I live in an orphanage for genius kids. It all fits in quite well with that theory."

"Do you mind letting me see your journal, Alpha?"

Karen scribbled something onto her pad of paper. Alpha grinned at this action. She wasn't sure why she found disturbing this woman so amusing, but she did. Alpha held out her notebook across the coffee table situated between the two of them. She watched as Karen flipped through it, skimmed over the most recent entry from a few minutes ago, and then flipped back to the front.

"You mentioned another child at the orphanage called 'L,'" she said, "who it seems you have some problems with?"

"Many problems…" she grumbled. "The kid speaks in percentages and confuses the ever-loving crap out of me. I tried to befriend him, but he's just… strange. I honestly don't know what it is about him. He just plain weirds me out. He's too smart for one thing. There is a borderline between genius and insanity, and he's about two inches from stepping over that border."

"Mm-hmmm…" Karen wrote something on her paper again. "Now… you also mentioned that there is a young child at the orphanage who seems to have taken to you rather well?"

Alpha couldn't help but smile a little. "Yeah. I kind of feel bad about it, since it's my fault for giving him chocolate. I'm not the best person for someone to look up to as a role model. You read my journal, you should know."

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That stupid bitch!! She told me that I only had to do the journal thing one more time!! NOoooooOooOoOoo… journal ish me frennnnndddd…. Apparently, she wants me to do this journal thing once every year for her. That's depressing. And they wonder why I need a therapist. Well, there it fucking is! It's because therapy depresses me. When depressed, people think "oh, somebody needs therapy." Then I get stuck in the thing that depressed me in the first place! ARGH!!

Anyway. She seems to think I'm 'disturbed.' Despite telling her not to tell Roger, she told him. Everything. Yep. Now Roger's discussing whether or not poor little Mello needs therapy. I hate that stupid bitch. Meaning my therapist. And I can't wait until she reads this. I fucking hate her and her journal taking-back tattle-telling ways. I hope Watari doesn't agree that Mello needs therapy. That would just confuse him. All he needs is someone to look after him, and I'm there for that. I adore that kid. It's like having a little brother. I always wondered how my brother might have viewed me with how I looked up to him. I guess it would be as an annoying chocoholic little tyke that he couldn't help but love.

Come to think of it, I think he gave me my first chocolate bar. Our dad was a dentist. It effing sucked. We had to hide chocolate like it was illegal drugs. I picked up calling my large amount of chocolate bars as my "chocolate stash" from my brother. I know Mello's birthday is in December -holyshit a month away-. I think I'll kidnap one of the older kids so I can go out and buy him loads of chocolate so he can start his own stash.

You know what's a kick in the teeth? My therapist about has me talked into telling Llama about how I witnessed Mello's parents' deaths. I'm glad that she didn't tell Roger about that little bit. But since L has about guessed it anyway, this ought to confirm his suspicion. Considering I think he might think that I was the one who did the slaughtering, I probably should let him know I didn't. I'm not a murderer… er… scratch that. I'm not a murderer of innocent people. I can't believe that son of a bitch would think that I am.

That's one thing that I never liked about being in a gang. The assumptions. If you're in a gang, people automatically assume that it was your choice. They never consider you might have gotten shanghaied into it. If you're in a gang, people automatically assume that you'll shoot someone if they looked at you funny. I only ever shot in self defense. People think you're bad, that you don't have a conscience. Even though the only person a shot fired from my gun ever killed was in a rival gang, I cried my fucking ass off. People do some things for different reasons.

Look at me, getting all sentimental and shit. I think I'm going to cut this short and go find L. He's usually up around now eating cake all by himself in the main sitting room. If I can manage to befriend him, he's allowed to leave this place on his own, so I could kidnap him and drag him off so I can buy Mello a birthday present.

I still have to write in you for a few more days, so hang in there. We're not going to be separated quite yet. I won't be able to tell you about Mello's response to his present when I get it though. I'm sorry.
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Alpha shut her journal, hooking her pen to its spirally spine as she had grown accustomed to doing. She then set off out her door and downstairs to find a certain cake-eating, insomniac llama. As she had expected, she found him sitting alone in the main sitting room. Absolutely pitiful. He had been at the orphanage for God only knew how long and he was always alone. Always. There was the occasional four year old that took to following him around, but that was about it. She herself hadn't made any friends yet, really, but that was because she had been purposely hostile to almost everyone. Now – though the thought made her cringe – she was going to attempt to befriend the weirdest person there.

As Alpha sat down on the couch, she received a rather reproachful, precautious look. This was to be expected. She had been fairly mean to him since that morning. If fact, she had been so uncivil with him that she felt a little bad about it, especially considering he was slightly frightened about being alone in the same room with her now. So it seemed he was, at the least.

"Look," she said with a sigh, "I'm sorry about treating you like scum for the entire day, but I don't like being accused of things. I get really hostile about it." He continued giver her that reproachful look. She sighed. "I'm really sorry. Honestly."

He raised his eyebrows. "Is that all you wanted to say?"

"No…" she said. "In advance, I don't like being told 'I told you so' either, so don't even start that. Okay?"

"Okay…"

"I'm going to start by saying I've never even thought of killing an innocent person."

"But you have thought of killing someone who isn't?"

"I have killed someone who isn't, but they shot at me first, in my defense." His expression became even more suspicious at this. "I was in a street gang before I got here. Okay? It wasn't my choice. I was given the option of either join or die."

He nodded. "So this is about Mello's parents?"

"Yes," she said through gritted teeth, beginning to get annoyed with his tone… or lack of thereof. "It was about a year after I was forced to join on fear of death. I would have been killed if it weren't for my brother, since he was second in command in that gang. What happened to Mello's parents happened a year after I joined. I don't remember why, but my brother, another member of the gang, and I were all hanging out in an alley one night. There was a fairly young couple that had just parked along the side and got out of the car, probably because they lived in the apartment building that they had parked next to. They were walking past us and the man said to his wife that we looked like gang members, really quietly. The guy we were with heard them. Being notorious for his temper, he shot the man and slit the woman's throat. I had made an attempt to talk some sense into him while he was threatening the woman, and he swung his arm back and –" Alpha ran a finger across the scar on her cheek. "– I got that as a reward for my efforts. Had to get stitches. My brother beat the shit out of the guy who did it. He got dentures and an arm cast. Whereas, Mello's parents got the worst end of it and they were the least deserving."

"That's why in his dream, Mello heard someone yelling at someone who he called 'the bad man' for hurting his sister," L said. She nodded. "I figured if there were three people in that dream besides Mello's parents and you were indeed one of them, you would have obviously been the sister."

"That would make sense…."

He looked seriously at her for a moment, that scanning look that disturbed her more than anything in the world. She was beginning to think that he actually could see into her mind.

"Your parents…" he said slowly. "Something related to that gang happened with them, I'm assuming?"

"Wh… how do you come to that conclusion?"

"Well, when you spoke of your brother, you mentioned he was in second command of that gang, with a particular emphasis on the word 'that'. That means you had been in another, or you would have simply referred to it as 'the gang.' Considering how highly you speak of your brother when you do talk about him, I doubt you would leave to join another if he wasn't in it, or if you didn't have a good reason to."

"Y…" She looked at his eyes, trying to look for some sign of a scanning laser within the black circles. She saw none. "How do you do that?"

"Analyzation."

"But how?"

"You're avoiding the subject matter at hand," L said. "That means there is over a fifty percent chance that I'm correct."

"There's a one hundred percent chance you're correct, but that's not the bloody point!"

"Yes it is, actually," he said. "You changed the subject a moment ago."

She sighed. "I don't want to argue…" she said despairingly. "Fine. My parents found out about me and my brother being in a street gang, the gang found out and decided to kill them. My brother got in the way and got his ass killed as well, and I ran off and joined another gang to help bring the one who killed my parents, which we did, and then we got caught shortly after, which is why I'm fucking sitting here!"

She didn't like talking about those things. Her head was pounding and her eyes were stinging, and she felt a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. Alpha doubled over, putting her forehead on her palms and resting her elbows on her knees. She snapped her eyes shut in an attempt to ease the burning feeling on them. Talking to him had been a bad idea. She should have known he'd do this to her. He had a future career in either psychology or investigation if he was this good at getting people to admit things. She couldn't think of a job that would pay a person to make others cry – he seemed to be awfully good at that…

"Are you–"

"Yes I f-fucking am and if you even th-think about f-finishing that question I'm going to t-tear your hea-head off!"

She felt a tear drop onto her leg through one of the holes in her jeans. This really was not her week. Alpha had refrained from this whole emotional breakdown thing for years, and now everything that she had been attempting to hide from was coming back to bite her in the ass one last time. Or, at least she hoped that this would be the last time. First, she met the child of the couple she could have saved from being murdered. Now, genius-boy was assuming things about her past that were somehow, miraculously, spot-on right. She wasn't sure what was going on or why it had to be going on like this, but it was, and it was deathly annoying and even more depressing.

She felt the couch cushions rise and then sink again, and she felt those eyes upon her again, staring into her brain for what had to be the hundredth time since she got there. There was an uncomfortable silence for a minute that seemed to last for hours.

"You don't need a therapist."

Alpha looked over at him. Her eyes even felt puffy to her, and she was sure her eyeliner was smudged terribly. She felt like she looked like she had been crying. If that were true, then people would know if they saw her…. That in itself was actually far more annoying than the absolute monotonousness of his stare.

"Oh really?" she said, narrowing into a glare. She wasn't sure if he was taunting her or not, but she had a feeling he might have been. But then… his stare wasn't quite as blank as usual. There was something else in it. It wasn't malice or amusement or anything of the sort that would have indicated he was picking on her. It was… worry?

"Yes," he said. "Did you ever tell her about your parents?"

"She read it in the stupid book she made me write in, but I wasn't going to tell her anything else about it. She's a stupid lying bitch…"

"Then you don't need therapy," he said. "That should be obvious to anyone. You do need to talk about it, but considering you don't trust the therapist you were given and you probably wouldn't trust any other therapists, it isn't therapy you need. You just need someone to talk to."

Alpha gave a sigh and stared intently at her knees. "A friend," she said through gritted teeth. "I bloody know that's what I need. No one likes me because I'm a little bit aggressive…"

"Aggressive?"

"Oh, don't fucking rub it in!" she said. "That's just rude…"

"You seem more paranoid than aggressive. Or scared."

"Stop analyzing me, it's annoying."

"Paranoid, definitely," he said. "You seem to be paranoid that I'm going to find out more by analyzing you. You're being aggressive about trying to stop me from doing so, but you aren't aggressive just for the sake of being tormenting, it's simply an involuntary reaction that expresses your paranoia of others."

"I just told you to stop analyzing me. Why don't you listen?"

"Because I'm trying to figure something out."

"Oh? And what would that be?"

"Why you don't seem to believe that you would be a good person for Mello to look up to." She looked at him, her head tilted to the side. "Most people would have considered someone like your brother a bad role model, correct?"

"Y… yes… but he really wasn't."

"Then how is your situation now any different?"

Her eyes narrowed into a glare. "Stop doing that."

"Wh… what?"

"Being right about every damn thing…" Her eyes widened back to their normal state. "But… thank you. I did need a friend." He blinked a few times, seeming to not comprehend. She sighed. The geniuses were always total social recluses. "Meaning you?"

His eyes widened in surprise. "Oh," was all he said.

She rolled her eyes. "Have you never had a friend before?" He shook his head no. "Ah. Finally. Something I'll be better than you at."

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Sheh-SHAH! I'm better than Llama at something. That's awesome.

I told him virtually everything. Even the stuff my therapist couldn't get me to talk about. And I cried like a baby. The asshole made me cry. Yes. Then I declared him my friend and confused the shit out of him. He's apparently never had a friend before.

Alright. I admit he did actually help me. I don't feel so bad about Mello looking up to me anymore. And -notfuckingadmittingittohim- getting all of that off of my chest actually does make me feel a lot better. I'm still better than him at being a friend though.

Zing!

I think this'll be the last time I write in you, paperfriend/psychodiary. Until next year, I mean. I just don't think I'll feel the need to between now and my next session with my therapy person.

Farewell!
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Alpha clipped her pen back to the spiral on the notebook after closing it. She lay back on her bed, still wearing her clothes from that day, boots and gloves included. It was late now. Nearly midnight. A few hours since she had spoken with L. She didn't feel like changing into pajamas that night, much less removing her boots. She could sleep like that. As long as she didn't wake up in the middle of the night with sore feet, she would be absolutely fine. She was in a genuinely good mood for the first time in almost five years and nothing could take that from her.

Before anyone asks, this isn't the end of the story.

I'm going to do this in sets. About 3-4 chapters per year at The Wammy's House until the end of the story.

I actually already wrote an epilogue :)