-group hugs-

Hello, all! After perhaps the ugliest stretch of writer's block ever, I present you chapter twelve, which ironically enough has turned into my favourite chapter to write thus far.

And, uh…oh noooo. It seems as though I've created a fandom all in its own. And that fandom is MattxBea, and what's even worse is that…I kind of love it. Well, to be correct, I love MelloxBeaxMatt, because writing twisted love triangles are so fun, but my god…this chapter is for those currently swooning over Matt, because it's pretty much all about him.

Don't get me wrong, though. MelloxBea IS the pairing of this particular fic. I know, I know. Some might say it's toxic and wrong and that she should obviously love Matt more because he's the nicer guy, and I actually agree wholeheartedly, but…here's the thing. Bea's character depends on her being with Mello in this fic. To be quite honest, Bea is a stupid girl. A stupid, naïve girl that's been caged her entire life and wants to do something that she knows is toxic and wrong; aka, Mello. Yes, they have a love-hate relationship, sometimes leaning more towards hate, but…really, that's what the whole idea is about. Bea being blind, Mello being Mello, and Matt being smitten. And there we are.

That being said, an announcement to completely counter everything I just said. There's going to be an alternate-ending sequel to Trails of Fire involving Matt and Bea. It's going to be awhile down the road, of course, but I figured that I should get that out there seeing as I've inadvertently caused an army of MattxBea fans. Oops.

OH GOD ANYWAY. Here's the chapter. Lime content ahead, as well as the Sayu arc (if you can even call it that…). Beware. -vanishes in puff of smoke-

Mello leaves Bea relatively unscathed. Her lips are sore and her hair is in knots, but she's still in one piece (relatively) when Mello breaks away from her with an agonized groan, shaking his head at nothing and everything, angry and golden and beautiful. He mutters something resembling a prayer beneath his choked breath before the door shuts behind him. The shard of light is severed and darkness hangs high, like dark rain, like something suspended above the ground by a necktie, swinging with dwindling momentum.

Much like Takimura.

The director hangs dead for five hours before word reaches Mello. All is chaotic and fast-paced and squabbling around him, but from his seat on the couch, all is still. There are excuses and pleas fired off at the gargantuan man to Mello's right and to Mello himself, useless things that do not change the fact that Takimura is cold and swinging below, but Mello's not phased.

He's got a plan. Mello's always got a plan, and this one's ugly.

"Wait," he says, his eyes fixed straight ahead of him, "this is good. This is what we want."

"What we want?" one of the men asks from the couch. "What's he mean by that?"

Mello, however, barely hears him. His head is a spinning carousel of dizzy, dark sound and that scalding, bright reminder that Soichiro Yagami is the head of the Japanese taskforce Soichiro Yagami has the notebook Soichiro Yagami -

- has a daughter.

And as he lays out the next plan of action, Mello can't help but think, Oh, you're gonna hate me for this one, aren't you, Beatrice.

Matt's walking. He doesn't know how long he's been walking, but he reckons it's been a good half hour since he started and he really doesn't feel like stopping now. His legs are twitchy and restless, and Bea's too much of a distant thing to be close to right now, and Mello's off doing his usual bad-guy shit in a cold room with leather couches and the rancid smell of foreign substances and dirty women.

Thing is, Mello's not really a bad guy, and Bea's not a dirty woman, and this is the fuel to fire as Matt walks, and walks, and walks.

He doesn't like this hallway. Hell, he doesn't like this entire place, let alone a single smoky corridor lined with cement-asylum walls, but he's been playing make-believe that he gives a shit about Mello's rules on leaving too often for far too long to put forth the effort for another argument. He's mentally exhausted and his feet are sore from the hard soles of his boots, but he'll be damned if he stops walking for even a second longer than it takes for a flame to erupt on the end of a cigarette.

But when Matt turns right and sees a wired-eyed Bea wandering down the tributary of cold floors and grey walls, he does just that.

The first thing he notices, besides the soft dip of her waist and the slender bulb of her shoulder, is that she doesn't look…here. She's losing too much weight, he thinks, and there are bags under her eyes that shouldn't, shouldn't be there. Her hands are clasped together behind her back, a childlike gesture that appeals to her childlike, pointless meandering in a place that she doesn't belong in. The waistband of her sweatpants hangs loosely around hips that once gently bloomed and pressed against the silk of a skirt (he always pictures her in a skirt whenever he gets bored, namely one of white silk; pretty fucked up of him, but whatever), and when she turns to look at him, he sees that the dark amber of her eyes is a shade more dull and blunt than it's supposed to be.

And he doesn't like that. Shit, he doesn't like that one little bit.

There's a moment's pause between them before Bea speaks, her voice quiet and ethereal. "I'm tired."

Matt feels something deep in his stomach flip over and fizzle at the eerie air her voice has taken on. Shit. "Then go to sleep," he says, and then, just for the hell of it, he adds, "princess."

A phantom of a smile breathes over the corner of Bea's mouth. Shit. "I could do that," she murmurs, "but I don't think it would be a good idea."

Matt swallows, blinks, tries to breathe normally. He's really not liking her voice right about now. It's sounding like some sort of broken music box, a mewling lullaby from out-of-order lips. "What, you scared or something? Scared of the dark?"

Bea's eyes stay rooted to his face for a second before she looks down at her bare feet, and Matt's gaze fixes itself on the top of her head. Look up, Bea. Look up at me, princess.

Bea inhales deeply, her chest rattling as she does so. Clearing her throat, she gives a lost little chuckle and says, "I'm not scared. Just sick."

"Sick?" Matt repeats, leaning down to her face. He taps her lightly on the chin, a once-endearing signal that's now something slightly panicked as Bea sways on her feet before him. "Hey, come on, look at me. What's wrong?"

Bea seems to only half-listen to him, because when she looks up at him, her eyes are blank and glassy like some sort of fucked up mirror. Shit shit shit. "I don't know," she says softly. "I really don't know."

Matt doesn't know either, but that doesn't stop him from smiling weakly and tousling his hair with his hand; quick, do something casual, Matt, his instinct tells him. And since he trusts his instinct more than he trusts the fog in Bea's eyes, he lets out a little breath of a laugh and nods. It's something painfully casual, so outwardly effortless that he could shit. "Well, uh, not sure how I could help you out there, miss," he says. "Ha, I sleep whenever I want, tired or not. It's good for the soul." He pats his chest once for added effect.

Bea, however, doesn't smile as Matt expects her to. Instead, she stares at him with those mirror eyes and says, "Do you think you could help me?"

Oh, hell. Any way you want. Any way you can possibly dream of. Matt squirms and glances down at her lips for a second before asking, "I'm good at helping, I guess."

Bea takes a step back, tilting her head so that she looks like a little chestnut-haired bird with lost eyes. Matt quails inside and thinks of white silk skirts billowing over white hips, of white legs and white thighs opening for him, for him -

And then, she speaks. "Could you teach me French? Until I fall asleep?"

Through the heavy weight of half-formed arousal and twisted judgment and the sight of this girl swaying unsteadily before him, Matt somehow manages a nod and a smile. "Yeah, if you want," he says, all casual things and effortless bullshit that does its best at overriding the thought, Oh, god, Bea, I could teach you everything you'd ever want to know before you fall asleep.

So they return to the corner of Bea's dim room with a goal and a vision that's both unimaginable and silly: to get a delirious Bea to learn French from a feverish Matt.

She's not very good at the language. Her tongue can't curl around the syllables the way that Matt's can, but she's also not very lucid, so it's understandable that she would struggle and sigh. Her memory is also on a short leash; it seems like the second Matt feeds her the translation for a certain phrase, it gets tossed to the wayside to be forgotten. Comment ca va? turns into How old are you? so shamelessly that when Matt goes to correct her for the third time, he decides that translations are to be discarded in that exact fashion. She's scarcely paying attention anyway.

Besides, as he sits against the cool stone wall, he can make out the soft moon of her face, and he knows he's paying enough attention for the both of them. He slowly exhales through the slit of his mouth and tilts his head to the side. "Alright, what about this," he says, his voice flighty with thought. He goes out on a limb and breathes out, "Beatrice est tres jolie."

Bea makes a sleepy little sound in the back of her throat and rolls her head. The delicate bones of her neck crack and readjust. "Well," she mumbles, "I heard my name in it."

Matt nods. "It was about you."

"Was it something good?" Bea says through a tired breath of a laugh.

Matt mulls that comment over for a moment before clearing his throat and replying with, "Oui."

"Oh, I know that one," Bea says, sounding as if she's onto something grand and wonderful. Her excitement with something so small settles heavily in Matt's stomach, and he squirms. "That means 'yes'."

"Oui, bon. Merveilleux."

She tries that phrase out through her own lips, and the clumsy sounds that form are both embarrassing and endearing. She's shit at French, and he's shit at breathing anymore. He sees a flash of a smile, her sad, careful smile, and something begins falling from somewhere high and dangerous. He looks away and centers his fixation on the rubber toes of his boots. "Uh, anything in particular you want me to teach you?" He scratches the back of his head and longs for the orange shields of his goggles over his eyes, but then he'd be seeing her through hazy plastic, and that just won't do like it used to. He wants to see her in her own colours, not in his, and her colours are all amber and pastels and, god, white…

Bea gives a light shrug. The thin material of her long-sleeved shirt is beginning to fall down one shoulder, and he can see her collarbone bidding him a shy hello. "Anything you want, really," she says.

It's with this phrase that pushes Matt to nearly leaving the room, because there's something hot and sharp rising in his own depravity and it's starting to make him dizzy. He busies himself with his fringe instead of with thoughts of her all spread out and mewling. Shit. A laugh forces itself out from his chest. "Uh, let's see…"

As he pretends to think about French, Bea hugs her knees and rests her chin atop them. Looks at him. Beatrice est tres jolie. "Just, I don't know, say whatever comes to your head. In French. I just want to listen to it."

Such a weird girl. He's feeding on it. Freezing in tousling his fringe, he looks back at her with wide eyes and repeats, "Whatever comes to my head?"

"Yeah. You don't even have to translate it." Bea's lips curl upwards for a heated second before they die down again. (Later, this will disturb Matt, because he's seen that curl on another pair of lips, and they belong to someone made entirely of black and gold and blue, not amber and pastels and white.) "That'll take the fun out of it," she says.

And, being Matt, he abides. His eyes lock onto her face, his head starts spinning, and his lips start sinning with just as much dizzying vigor.

"Bea est dans une jupe blanche. Elle…elle rougit. Elle rougit et…elle se touche."

Oh, man. He's spinning, and Bea's watching cluelessly, and this is all royally fucked up, but he keeps going.

"'Matt,' elle dit, 'je veux votre aide. Touchez-moi. Touchez-moi, Matt.'" His voice cracks. His hands start to shake. But he keeps going, because the story's screaming in his head and it needs out. "Et…et il ecoute. Il embrasse Bea. Sur les levres, sur le cou, chaud et ouvert et…"

Matt's voice tapers off, hoarse and weak, and he raises his fist to his mouth in an effort to try and control something primal bubbling in his chest. Bea doesn't appear the slightest bit phased by his sudden shift in behaviour; she wouldn't, he would hope, seeing as she can't speak a scrap of French, let alone the deprived phrases he's spewing out heatedly at her now. He needs air. He needs the girl. He needs a breath of air and he needs to press against the girl and feel her in every language known to fucking man-

"Hey," he says tightly, "I'll be right back."

Bea furrows her brow, tilts her head. "You alright?"

He waves her off and stands up, shuffling quickly to the door. His basic logic switches on, a morbid lantern. Keep your hips away from that girl, Matt. You've gone to bad places and now you're paying for it. That's how it works. That's how you work, Matt, you big dumbass. "I'm fine, yeah, fine, fine. Be back in a minute. You won't even have to blink and I'll be back."

Mello's walking. He knows exactly where he's going and what he'll find when he gets there, but he's tired and just faintly burning off of a warm glow of complacency. He's saved this operation's ass and he knows it. He's saved this entire process with a flick of his wrist and he caters to it, but in spite of that, his legs are weary and the smug lift of his lips is growing heavy and bored as he walks, and walks, and walks.

He stops for a moment to reflect on nothing. His bright, leonine eyes attach themselves to a grey point in space. His breath hangs and his head lowers. Something doesn't feel right. Something's missing, or maybe out of place, or not set down correctly in the framework of a giant puzzle. An infuriating image of Near is conjured at the thought and Mello clenches his fists until his knuckles sting.

And then, as if coming out of a trance, he resumes down the corridor. This news can't wait. His conscience can.

It's never that big of a deal when Matt comes. He doesn't fight for it, but he doesn't cling onto it too much when it gets there either, so times like these normally aren't anything special. A shiver, a groan, a jerk, and then a brief blink of recollection before it's back to the dull roar of boredom again; that's how the circuit runs for a guy that smokes away these basic longings on the off chance they do pop up.

But this time, it's different. Hunched up and trembling against the shower wall, he's losing it, man, losing it. Soft eyes and white skirts overrule horrifying images of a childhood veiled in drugged-up mothers and revved-up fathers, an adolescence revolving around death and a single aspiring letter. The only sounds to be heard are the faucet running and his own gasping breaths as he manipulates himself into a bucking, trembling tantrum.

Bea est dans une jupe blanche.

His jaw drops open, his eyelids flutter shut.

Je veux votre aide.

Oh, no. The walls are caving in. Harder, harder. Shudder, shudder.

Touchez-moi. Touchez-moi, Matt.

And things have their ways of turning to white so, so nicely.

"Are you asleep?"

It's less of an accusation that Bea expects. Mello's voice is absent of the usual all-business edge that can both slice and scald, and has been replaced with a dull drone that tells her the other Mello is back. She lets her head loll to the side to catch sight of him in the doorway, and she's right.

He looks tired, that's one thing for sure. His eyes are flat, his jaw is slack, and the rough tension always bottled up in his shoulders and chest has been drained out through an invisible spout, causing his body to slouch slightly and curl into itself. One shoulder of his vest is on the precipice of sliding off, and she can see the pale skin of his chest and sharp collarbone. After taking in this vaguely disturbing sight, she gives him a small shake of her head and begins to stand up, only to be stopped with, "Don't."

Bea stares at him, confused. "What?"

An odd look passes over Mello's face, one without a proper name, and Bea doesn't like it. "Don't stand up," he says quietly. "Just keep sitting."

"Do you think I'm going to attack you or something?" Bea asks incredulously. "I'm going to jump up and claw your eyes out?"

To her surprise, Mello huffs out a low, chilling laugh and turns away for a moment. Looking off somewhere dark, he says, "You just might, actually."

Bea immediately goes cold at that. Any remark from Mello involving something she just might do is never a good thing. She ignores his warning and stands up. "Then what's the difference?" she asks. "I'll just get a head start."

Mello eyes her up and gives a heavy sigh. "Whatever," he mutters. "Do what you want. Either way, I need to let you know something."

Both are silent for a second before Mello looks her over again, that odd expression still in his eyes. Bea feels her face grow warm and leans against the wall for support. She feels one notch above feverish, not because of Mello's gaze, but because of something else brewing inside of her, something that's making her vision cloudy and her head ache. "Then say it," she mumbles.

"Stop looking like you're on the verge of passing out, and I will."

Bea closes her eyes. "I'm fine."

"You look like the walking dead," Mello says. "You're not eating again, are you."

A shot of fire bursts through Bea's chest (so angry again, so fast) and she opens her eyes to glare at Mello head on. The filter of her brain works just quick enough to keep her from spitting out, Well, Mello, it's kind of hard to get around to eating when you're the only thing I can taste in my mouth.

"Anyway," Mello sighs out, "I figured I should let you know that someone's gonna be arriving here soon. Someone new."

Bea gives him a wary glance. "From where?"

"Japan."

"Who is it?"

Mello pauses, and Bea watches nauseously as his eyes drift down to the floor. She half expects them to burn two little blue holes into the cement. "It's a girl," he says. "A girl that might make this entire thing work out in my favour."

For a good long stretch of time, Bea waits for something to say to make its debut in her brain. She leans against the cool wall, her palms flat behind her, and counts down the seconds until something will surely arrive, but when nothing does, she eventually settles for a small, high-pitched laugh. "A girl," she repeats. "That'll make this…thing work out for you."

Mello's eyes lift. They're on her now, and they're dangerously bright, but Bea truly, honestly, deeply has never felt less threatened by shades of blue in her life. In a fierce motion, she flings her arms out, questioning air and time and space and Mello's stupid, empty words. "What thing?" she screams. "What fucking thing are you trying to win over, Mello? Because whatever it is, it's the reason I'm here, and it's the reason some other girl is going to be here, right?" She kicks the wall behind her and is standing before Mello in four steps. He doesn't move. "So, what's her story?" she asks, her voice unhinged and hysterical. "Does she come from a nice family? Does she do well in school? Does she have a bunch of friends?"

Mello's lips crease into a hard line, a pale tightrope, but he seems to be more occupied with studying Bea's face than wasting time with a response. Bea leans closer to his face, shivering with hot rage. "What's her name, Mello? Does she have one of those stupid things?" She takes a step forward, their lips almost touching, and whispers, "One of those things I used to have?"

She watches, breathing heavily, as Mello lifts his face defiantly and narrows his eyes. Even with Bea puffing herself up to be something tall and potential, his cold eyes tower over her. "Sayu," he says softly. "Sayu Yagami. The director of the Japanese task force's daughter."

Neither speak. Neither breathe. Neither shift their eyes. Had this been just weeks ago, back when she was pretty and soft and wore skirts and didn't know shit, Bea would have been cowering, crying, her resolve crushing like rock candy beneath a shoe.

But now, things are different.

She's not afraid.

And this time on her own volition, she raises her fist and punches Mello in the mouth.

Mello's starting to think this girl is a saint, some sort of fucked up angel, because the way Bea's fist connects with his face is so perfect, so divine, that from the gruff recesses of his throat, a heated groan escapes that's mingled with both pain and a most monstrous ecstasy. His head whips to the side, a fresh gash from Bea's knuckles already dripping red onto the floor, and through a curtain of hair, Mello just stares at her.

Bea, breathing heavily the way she is, looks nothing short of an animal. "You're unbelievable," she breathes out. "You're disgusting and soulless and fucking unbelievable."

Mello wipes his bleeding mouth with the back of his hand, still gazing fixedly at her. A dizzy, breathless smile plays about the corner of his mouth. "You're holding back, Beatrice."

"Stop calling me that!" Bea screeches.

"Oh?" Mello spits out copper, feels the pain start to rush in. Beautiful. "Then what the fuck should I call you, hmm?"

"Don't call me anything." Bea's face crumples up in revulsion and she throws her hands out, as if trying to shake off something sticky and overwhelming. "God, Mello, just don't call me anything…"

Mello laughs, the sound loud and booming in the dense acoustics of the room. "Fine. I can do that. I can treat you like just another product of a girl thrown in here by an assembly line, if that's what you want." Mello takes four long strides that carry him directly in front of Bea, her sinking face mere centimeters away from his. His mouth, still oozing, brushes against her ear, staining her crimson. He murmurs, "Go ahead. Tell me what you want."

When he steps back, he's met with a glare so hateful, so alive, that he has to bite back the urge to take her wrists, pin them to the wall, and make her his own, right here in her musky holding room, hell, with the door still open for all he cares. Let there be an audience, let there be lights, let there be fire and loathing and his busted lip, but god, let there be Bea's animal glare during the whole thing.

This time, it's Bea's turn to laugh, and it's a high, bell-like sound that completely counters Mello's, and roughly. "Oh, are you gonna talk like that to the new product coming in, Mello? Is that how you're gonna get her to tell you what you want, to make this 'whole thing work out in your favour'?"

The grin falls off Mello's face so fast that he can't separate the moment when he dominated and when he was knocked down. Staring at this girl, this product, this Bea, Mello swears he sees a forest fire in her smile, her cryptic, wicked smile, and something in his brain snaps at the sight.

This girl gets it. Beatrice Magill, made of doe eyes and pastels and the new addition of a depraved grin, she really, really gets it, and Mello's blood has never been this scorching before.

"No" he says quietly, his eyes fixed on her. Blood bubbles up around the corner of his mouth, blood from Bea's perfect fist. "You're wrong again. Again and again and again."

The white-hot pride in Bea's eyes burns out. Mello turns on his heel. A lock of hair clings to his cut at the smooth movement. He makes his way to the door, pausing only long enough to spit out, "And you haven't told me shit, Beatrice Magill, so it's time to think of a better excuse than that."

Matt doesn't return to Bea's holding room for another hour. So much for being back in a minute, but he figures a minute wouldn't have been nearly long enough to pull himself together, not after that level of self-debauchery.

He opens the door and lets his eyes adjust to the dark. They could really use a fucking lamp in this place. "Bea?" he says. "Sorry, had to take care of something-"

He collides with something soft and warm. The impact is gentle, almost like a hug, and he sucks in a breath and holds it for all it's worth. "Hey."

Bea says nothing. Matt can barely make out her face; his eyes are still floundering in the lack of solid light. All he knows is that she's close, she's warm, and she's making Matt's stomach turn over. And she's shaking.

Without thinking, Matt reaches for her and softly grips her shoulder. "Alright, alright, come on," he murmurs.

"What?" Bea asks, quiet and unsteady. Angry? No way. What for?

"I don't know about you, but I'm sick of this goddamn room. We're not owls."

He leads her out of the room, holding her by the shoulder, and meets the gracious swell of light in the hallway. He can see her eyes now. Good.

Wait, no. Bad.

Matt takes Bea by both shoulders now and looks hard in her eye. Bea's eyes, however, are off somewhere far away and dangerous, and he's seen that look before in someone else, someone vicious and brilliant and Mello-

"Okay," Matt says, voice low and shaking, "okay, Bea, you don't have to look at me, but you're gonna tell me what's going through your head right now."

"Nothing." Through gritted teeth. "There's nothing in my head."

"Bullshit. Come on."

"Matt-"

He cuts her off with a harsh sigh and releases her. "Guess you think I'm stupid, then?"

"I don't think anything."

Matt shakes his head, runs his fingers through his hair. God, he needs a shower. He needs out. "No, see, you're thinking about Mello, and you're thinking about beating his fucking face in. I know that look."

Bea lifts her head, her hair greasy and hanging in dank strands over her forehead. She looks ill; her face is washed out and the colour of candle wax, her eyes are sunken in and glassy, and her mouth is…

No. No, there's nothing wrong with her mouth. Matt serves it a lingering glance, hoping to find some sort of flaw, but it's pouted and pale and half-open, unmarked.

And not letting out any words. That, Matt knows, is what's the most frightening and most confirming of all.

"Look," Matt whispers, "we're gonna go for a walk. Me and you. Outside. No one will see us in the dark, so we can go anywhere you want. But I'm gonna get you out of this place for awhile so you can lose that look in your eyes."

Bea sways on her feet a little, her gaze glued wearily somewhere behind Matt. He ruffles his hair again in an attempt to give his hands something to do. It's better, he supposes, than reaching out and ruffling hers. "Now go put a jacket on. You'll freeze out there."

"I'm fine," Bea murmurs, still staring off into space.

Matt's face goes slack. "You're skin and bones, Bea. I bet I could see your ribs if I pulled your shirt up-"

And he stops right there.

He is not getting into this again.

"We can't even leave this place," Bea presses. "I've probably been reported by now, there will be posters and missing signs all over the city with my face on them."

Matt gives a soundless laugh, shoulders bobbing. "Then I guess we've got some covering up to do."

"What?"

"Follow me." Matt takes her hand again, not giving her a choice, and leads her down the maze of cement hallways until they reach the lonely room with the crooked door that Matt calls home. He nudges the door open with his boot and lets go of Bea's hand, waiting for her reaction.

Matt's "room" is a sorry sight and he knows it. The cold grey floor is littered with empty Chinese food boxes, cigarette butts, stripped wires, and scraps of paper with his own scrawled handwriting; sometimes he gets these thoughts that need writing down, that need recording with the blunt point of a pencil, only to be crumpled up and discarded on the floor with the rest of his personal trash. Sweaters and T-shirts lay like flat, deformed bodies, here-and-there things of black and white, dark green, threadbare brown. Amidst the wreckage of a scattered mind are shoelaces, pliers, game cartridges, the innards of a computer.

"Don't mind the mess," Matt says in his best Lucille Ball voice. "Never quite got around to that spring cleaning shit." He tackles a pile of dirty clothes in search of something that won't swallow Bea whole.

Meanwhile, Bea reverts to eight years old and explores the disaster area at her feet. "No bed?"

"Don't sleep."

"Liar. You told me you sleep all the time, whenever you want to."

Matt grins at her over his shoulder. It goes unnoticed due to her being busy rooting her little nose through his things. As long as she doesn't touch the scraps of thoughts on the floor. "Alright, let me correct myself, princess. I don't sleep here." He picks up a royal blue long-sleeved shirt and shakes it out of its knot. Oh, far too big for Bea's bones. "Too much energy. It's impossible to sleep in a room with too much energy."

"What do you mean?"

Another sweater, this one a dark grey thing with skinny black stripes. A visual of Bea wearing it comes to Matt's mind. Nah. "You don't feel it? You don't get that sense that there's just…just way too much stuff in here?" He whistles, shakes a lock of auburn hair out of his eyes. "I don't know how you don't feel that…"

Bea drags her fingertips across a computer blueprint tacked to the wall. "Could just be your imagination."

Matt raises his eyebrows in the middle of analyzing a ratty green sweatshirt. "Yeah," he mumbles, "a fucking gigantic one."

"Hmm?"

"Nothing."

The two are silent for awhile, Matt rummaging through laundry and Bea shuffling dreamily along the floor. At the bottom of the laundry pile, he pulls out a sweater the colour of fresh ashes flicked from a cigarette, thumbholes ripped in the wrists; he tosses it to Bea, who has occupied herself with shuffling through a pile of compact discs atop a tower of pizza boxes. It sails through the air and lands on her head. "Here you go," he says. "It's not your pretty skirts, hope you don't mind."

Bea gives him a look that he can't decide is either angry or indignant. Knowing this whirlwind of a girl, probably both. "I'm not a paper doll," she says softly, looking down at the sweater now. Her eyes go round and fizzy, like soda water in a highball glass. "I'm not a product in a pretty skirt."

Stunned into silence, Matt watches this odd display, frozen in the middle of ducking down to grab a pair of jeans. He clears his throat and is brought back to life. "Which is why you're gonna wear these," he finishes before tossing the jeans to her. Bea seems to snap out of her puzzlement and catches them at the last moment. "Paper dolls don't wear clothes like those, do they?"

Bea gives a small, wary shake of her head and turns around. "No. No, they don't."

"Oui." Matt follows suit in turning around and stares at the ceiling, back arched and hands behind his head. Beatrice est tres jolie.

"Wow," Bea says breathily after a few seconds. "I'm like a flea in this. An amoeba."

Matt cracks his back and groans in relief. "Yeah, not to mention I'm less of a human and more of a beanstalk."

He hears Bea laugh a little at that, and it's a quiet sound this time, much softer around the edges. He turns around to look at her, and sees her swimming in his sweater, his jeans, in his room, and something about this is suddenly too bizarre for him to look straight at her anymore. Clearing his throat, he gives her a nod. "Looks good, though." Oh, I need a cigarette.

Bea plucks curiously at the sweater, pulling it away from her chest and letting it sink back down. It falls flat against the shrinking swell of her chest. Matt clears his throat again. "Come on," he says, walking to the door. "We should go before Mello sees us."

"He'll know we're not here," Bea protests, not moving from her spot on the floor.

Matt shrugs. "Then let him. I don't care. It's better than you staying here thinking about how to kill him, right?"

Bea's eyes flare for a moment, but it's the fact that she says nothing that tells Matt the most.

"The first thing we're gonna do," Matt says the second they're away from the warehouse, "is get you something to eat."

Bea immediately tries to protest, her stomach having resorted to being nothing more than a cranky pit, but Matt stops her before she can speak. "Really," he says. He glances sideways at Bea as he lights a cigarette, cupping his hands around the flame. "I'm gonna get you the most obscenely fat-drenched burger this side of L.A. Hell, I'll ask for extra fat, just for you, baby."

"Trying to kill me, huh?" Bea wraps her arms around herself, feeling the chill of the late night even through Matt's sweater. There's that campfire smell again, the smell of youth and tobacco all threaded and stitched in with the thin wool. "Trying to give me a heart attack?"

Matt's eyes widen a fraction, his hand freezing in the middle of pulling his lighter away, but the moment passes and he shakes his head. "No, I'm trying to get some meat on those bones of yours. You're not looking so great lately."

"Huh, thanks."

Matt shakes his dark head, waving the comment off with the back of his hand. "Nah, I meant…ah, shit. Came out wrong."

Bea gives a tired laugh. She's so very, very tired. "I know what you meant."

"Really, though. You still look, you know, good and all, really good, but…" He takes a long, sweeping drag of his cigarette, scuffing his boots on the ground as he walks. He holds the smoke a little too long in his throat and gives a small cough, not looking at her. "But you're not eating, Bea. And it's showing."

Bea stares at her shoes. Left, right, left, right. Keep walking.

Matt sighs out smoke. The wind carries it into her open mouth and she breathes in the sharp taste of nicotine. "Mello agrees with me."

Stop walking. Look up. "Mello?"

Matt furrows his brow, puzzled by her repetition. "Wow, have you blocked him out of your head that much, Bea?"

Tried it, she doesn't say.

"But yeah," Matt goes on, looking back down at his boots. Scuff, scuff. "He's actually the one that brought it up."

"When?"

"Today." He shrugs. "Sometime around this morning."

You look like the walking dead. You're not eating again, are you.

Bea closes her eyes and walks in slow, measured steps. Mello's face. Mello's voice. Quick, unsteady steps. Clenching fists.

"Hey, hey," Matt eases, catching up to her in half a second with his mile-long legs. "Don't go buying yourself a gun or anything. That's one place I won't take you to."

Bea sucks in a breath through her nose, holds it like Matt would with smoke. Her eyes meet his cigarette, his glowing, grinning cigarette, and she thinks, relief. Without pausing, she says, "Let me see that."

Matt's brow furrows in confusion, then concern, then recognition. Eyes on Bea, he pinches the cigarette free from his lips and holds it a couple inches from her face. "This?" he says softly.

Smoke breathes out from the orange mouth. It irrigates into her nostrils, heavy and pungent and lovely. "Yeah," she murmurs, "let me see it."

Matt's expression doesn't change; it's quiet, firm, probing for something in Bea's face that she can't name. Or perhaps doesn't want to name, because she's too absorbed in the cross-eyed view of the cigarette between his long fingers. "You're looking at it," he drawls, slow and syrupy.

Bea says nothing. Only stares at the ginger tip currently burning away before her.

Matt leans in closer to her, his face lit vaguely by the cigarette. On either side of it, there are bottle-green eyes driving into her own amber ones. "If you think this is going to make you feel better," he says, "you're only half-right."

And just like that, Matt pulls away from her, straightens up, and puts the cigarette back between his lips. He continues walking with a cool gaze set straight ahead of him as Bea, appalled, stands behind and stares helplessly at his back. "Half-right?" she asks, throwing her arms up. She jogs up to his side. "What's being 'half-right'?"

Matt breathes out through his nose. With an elegant flick of his finger, he taps smoldering ashes onto the ground. "I started smoking when I was thirteen."

"Yeah?"

Matt gives her a look. "Doesn't that tell you anything on its own?"

She's too tired for this. "No."

A car's headlights come into view around the corner, and they fan over Matt's entire frame as they pass, lighting up the lean shape of him. In this brief flash of perfect light, Bea sees his eyes, and they're everywhere but on her. "Well, I've been smoking a lot lately. Probably more than I ever have, because smoking's always, you know, made things come together a little bit. It slows things down." At this, he meets her eye and holds it. "But I've got a lot of problems, Bea."

Bea feels her throat go dry. She breaks the gaze and focuses on walking, step by step, left, right, left, down the dark interstate of a shadowed Los Angeles.

Upon entering a run-down fast food joint tucked between an auto shop and a rusty gas station, Matt leans in to Bea's ear and says, "Go get a seat in the back corner. Keep your eyes down."

When she turns her head, her hair brushes Matt's lips, and he has to count a slow ascent to ten beneath his breath before approaching the cashier to order. Number six for him, and, let's see, what's the best option for a girl that needs to get some colour back to her face? Some meat on her bones? A number eight looks promising, or perhaps the-

And then he sees it.

Behind the greasy ponytail of the cashier, Bea's face is tacked to the wall, smiling the most paper-doll smile he's ever seen. HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MISSING GIRL?

"Can I help you, sir?" the cashier asks.

Matt stares at the poster a second longer, his heart stalling like a dead engine, before he shakes his head and gives an absentminded wave to the man behind the register. He spots Bea sitting in the back, looking out the window with her chin in her hand. She looks up just in time for Matt to nod to the exit and mouth, "Out."

Mello is toweling off from a shower when he receives a call from Matt. Before the guy can get any sort of word out, Mello asks, "Where'd you take her?"

Through the phone, Mello hears the sounds of cars passing, wind blowing. "Wow, you catch on quick."

Mello rubs the towel along his neck boredly. "It's not that hard to figure out when the girl isn't in her holding room and you've gone M.I.A., Matt."

"If you'd seen the state this girl was in-"

"Don't bother explaining it," Mello cuts in. "I'm well aware of that girl's 'states' by now."

"Then I'll get to the point. Missing posters."

Mello freezes in the middle of drying his face. Shit. "How many?"

"Only one so far, but it was in a food joint, so hundreds of people could see it in a single day."

Leaning against the shower wall, Mello stares up at the water stains on the ceiling and says, "Did Bea see it?"

"I got her out of there without telling her about it, made up some excuse for leaving, but for all I know…"

"Where is she now?"

"Bathroom at Denny's. I checked and didn't see any posters inside, so it should be clear here. I told her I had to go outside for a smoke to buy some time to call you." Matt sighs. "Shit, man, I know we were expecting it to get out eventually, but what do we tell her…?"

Mello covers his eyes with his cool palm, pressing gently against his eyelids. Quiet. Black. He exhales slowly through his mouth, inhales sharply through his nose. I don't know, he doesn't say.

His rosary slides off the sink, nearly hits the floor, but he jerks into action and catches it just in time. He slips it over his head, the phone still against his ear. The cold cross touching his chest now, things find their center and slow down, and he knows what to do. With his foot, he opens the cabinet beneath the sink and sees the small plastic bag; inside, there are a pair of scissors and a bottle of dark brown hair dye.

"Mel? You there?"

"We've gotta do it," Mello mutters.

"Huh? Do what?"

Matt gets it in about four seconds without Mello having to explain anything.

"Dammit. God dammit, Mello, she's gonna kill you twice over if you even try to-"

"Get back here," Mello says. "Make sure she eats something first, and get back here." He pauses. Another car passes through the earpiece. "And leave the telling part to me."

Allowing no room for argument, he closes his cell phone, closes his eyes, and shuts off his mind. His fingers stroke the red beads lying passive and cold against his chest.

When Bea looks away from the window, she sees Matt mouthing, "Out."

No questions asked, no brows raised, Bea stands up from the booth and keeps her eyes down, down on her dirty shoes that had been white just a few months ago. Now, they're a ratty, unsightly grey-brown, and she couldn't give less of a shit anymore. It's hard to give a shit about anything when you're wearing Matt's clothes, thick with that smell of campfire and sleep.

She walks down the aisle, passing tables and booths and chairs people had neglected to push in, and keeps her eyes on the back of Matt's boots. Down. Keep looking down.

Wait.

Look up. Just for a second. Is that-

And as Matt leads her out of the building, shoulders tense through his shirt, Bea sees her own face smiling back at her, held up to the wall with a strip of electrical tape.

Mmm, by the way, forgive me for my shitty French. If anyone would like to know what Matt was saying to Bea, it's, um…rather embarrassing, to be honest. -blush-

You guys are great. Let me just put that out there. Really, really super mongo great.