Letters
9
----M----
June 18, 2007
"Mihael Keehl.
Alias: Mello
Date of Birth: 13 December 1989
Nationality: Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Slovenia (1989-1991); Republic of Slovenia (1991); Austria (1991-1998); Great Britain (1998-present)
Last city of residence before acceptance: Klagenfurt
Entered: 1 June 1998
Known family:
Damijan Keehl, father, deceased as of 30 June 1991. Ten Day War civilian casualty.
Isidor Keehl, mother, deceased as of 13 April 1996. Infection from an injury sustained in Ten Day War resulted in illness. Exact disease/virus unknown.
Annaliese Magstanik, aunt, deceased as of 18 May 1998. Car accident.
Cai Magstanik, uncle, deceased as of 18 May 1998. Car accident.
Work experience: Unpaid child labor for Cai Magstanik. Mostly menial tasks. (1991?-1998)
Criminal record:
18 April 1996: Crime against another person's wealth. Attempted to steal a scooter, caught by a bystander. Police arrived and returned him home. Keehl had been listed as missing since 16 April 1996.
30 April 1996: Crime against another person's wealth. Jewelry store.
17 May 1996: Crime against another person's wealth. Apartment.
3 July 1997: Crime against another person's wealth. Residence.
Suspected, but culpability remains unproven, in 13 other counts of robbery and theft between 1996 and 1998."
Matt sighed, and his anger at Mello diminished slowly, achingly as he read his way through. Mello had a total of seventeen suspected felonies between the ages of six and eight. It appeared that Mello had always been a delinquent, and Matt could see it in his mind's eye. Mello as Matt had first seen the frightening blond, perhaps only a little younger running around the streets of a small Austrian town—Klagenfurt, apparently—speaking a mixture of Slovene and German while trying to hotwire motor scooters and then sell them. At first, the image made Matt chuckle, but the sound caught in his throat and pity clutched at his stomach, nearly making him cry instead. Matt had thought his own life was a horror to live through... and here was Mello's childhood stretched out like some grisly tale of death, deceit, and delinquency. His stomach churned unpleasantly. They weren't at the end of this story yet, either.
Matt suddenly felt like he was poking into something he shouldn't. This was Mello's private life, what he had kept secret from the prying eyes and minds of the world for years. The child Mello had been. His name. His family.
That family was all dead, of course. Like Matt's.
Matt's chest felt heavy and he hoped he was wrong. Everyone deserved to have at least one person he could always trust... right?
----M----
"I don't want to say it,
The news is not so good
We'll never get away,
And even if we could
We'd just play the tambourine
Around an open flame,
Oversleep and burn
To be back in the game."
----M----
November 26, 1998
Matt didn't stop running until he was back in his room, panting and gasping, the adrenaline still rushing through his system. It took him a minute before he realized he was still holding the apple that he had taken from the refectory, and another before he stopped visibly shaking. He tried to will the residual tremors out of his fingers as he sat on his bed, taking his goggles from around his neck and placing them on the bedside cabinet.
The apple lay cradled against his skin, a cool dark shape, slightly heavy in the palm of his hand.
Slowly, Matt collected himself enough to take a bite, and tried to think. Crick's high laughter echoed around the insides of his skull, but Matt squeezed his eyes shut and pushed past his fear. The echoes quieted and all he could hear was the sound of his own breath, resuming an even and calming tempo. He opened his eyes.
Matt knew what they had been talking about. The overt and subconscious clues the three had given off had left him with no other answer. Grant, Crick, and Dan had been talking about Matt and the other students who lived on the fourth floor. And betting on how long they'd survive.
Matt suppressed a shiver and a sick feeling began welling up into his stomach. The cripple would be Near, the girl was Orphan, and since Mello was certainly the strongest, that meant Matt was supposed to be the smartest. A bit of pride washed through him before receding into the overwhelming fear he still felt. There were too many questions batting around his brain at once, like hornet's nest after it was poked with a stick. Matt closed his eyes to focus, replaying the conversation.
"No way am I betting against that."
"I'd say the girl goes first. They always do."
"…Naw, it'll be the cripple."
"No… it'll be that one."
Matt's stomach dropped and landed where the rug had been pulled out from under his feet. He felt sick and tried to swallow as tears pricked at his eyes. They hadn't been betting on who would win the contest. They had been betting on who would lose. On the child who would... die first, his wild mind supplied with the worst case scenario. No, that couldn't be right. Expelled first? He gulped down air.
The callousness of the three teenagers ate at him, gnawing into his heart. Had they been there to bet on Kiss? On Ivan? Jiwon? Matt wiped his eyes quickly, fiercely, and gritted his teeth. Did this mean these stupid regs all thought Mello would win? The notion burned like a highly corrosive acid. No wonder they were regs, because Matt knew he wouldn't back down. He needed to be the best detective so he could find the man with the hat and avenge the deaths of his family. And Mello? Matt's teeth ground harder into each other. Mello was nothing to worry about. He was an arrogant maniac, with no chance of gaining the number one slot that was given to the best student of the previous quarter. Ever. Orphan was number one this quarter, but Matt was nearly even with Mello's second place, even though both of them had gotten head starts. He had already surpassed Near.
Let them bet, he decided, feeling somewhat reckless with his anger. He'd only shock them more when they found out how wrong they were. He rotated his apple a little in his hands before raising it to his lips, looking for a place to take another bite.
Crick and his stupid laughing. He took a bite almost viciously, pulling a bit of the peel off with his teeth.
Dan and his dark, lying eyes. Matt crunched the crisp fruit between his molars, wiping a little juice from the corner of his mouth.
Grant and his muscled restraint. He swallowed, the morsel slipping easily down his throat.
"I'd say the girl goes first. They always do," Grant had said.
"That's only because you were surrounded by them."
A gasp escaped Matt's lips. The apple found a place near his goggles as he tore open his bag and yanked out a notebook, flipping to the last page. He threw open the top drawer to his bedside stand, his fingers closing around the first pen they touched. Back to the empty page before him, the horizontal lines of the college-ruled sheet jumped out at him, daring him to spell out his theory. Pen poised above the paper, Matt held his breath for a second.
He wrote the first 15 letters of the alphabet vertically, before adding another M at the very end. He paused before giving that final letter the rest of his name. The Letters with Matt there at the very end, not quite fitting in.
He filled it in as best he could: the names he knew, the current rankings, other information he felt important. He felt oddly calm and yet on the verge of tears at the same time. It was nearly too difficult to keep his hand from shaking.
A
B
Crick
Dan
E
F – girl?
Grant
H – girl?
Ivan
Jiwon - graduated
Kiss – dead
Lawrence – BEST
Mello – 2
Near – 4
Orphan – 1
Matt – 3
Matt stared at the piece of paper, the strange force of his thoughts drained.
Was this really what was going on? But then wouldn't Crick, Dan, and Grant live on the fourth floor too? Now that his rush of energy had faded, Matt was left confused. The strange, suffocating feeling he had when he had been writing was gone, and he could hardly imagine having it. What was the point of alphabetically naming people? Even if there was some kind of weird alphabet of people, Matt didn't fit into it. He screwed it up. With two Ms and no A, B, E, F or H, it certainly looked like Matt was making up patterns where there weren't any. What proof did he have?
He closed the notebook. There was still too much he didn't know. Even if there was some kind of list, chances were that Linda belonged on it just as much as the three teenagers did. He only wanted something exciting to happen, wanted the words the older boys said to mean something profound. Something that made sense. That didn't mean it would.
Matt dropped his notebook back into his bag, and the pen into the open drawer. Closing it, Matt picked up his apple again, rubbing the part that had rested on the tabletop against his striped shirt. So there was a lot he didn't know. He took a deep breath. It was okay; he would figure it out.
He looked at the apple, and took another bite.
----M----
December 1, 1998
He didn't understand the material. It was DNA science, but for the life of him, he didn't understand it. What the bloody hell was wrong with him?
Matt stared at his homework problems for another long minute, no longer noticing the orange tint the page held. The math wasn't the hard part, as long as he could figure out which formula he needed to use. But he'd been staring at the problem for nearly ten minutes, trying to think his way into, through, out of, and around it with no success.
"Graaaah!" Matt shouted, letting out a wordless cry to vent his frustration. He stared at the book again, the same words running all over the page and slinking across his eyes in patterns that taunted him with his own confusion. Suddenly Matt couldn't take it anymore. He hurled the textbook across the room.
It landed with a satisfying thud in the corner, the crisp pages wrinkling and bending. He'd even heard the unquestionable sound of paper tearing.
Part of Matt said he was being childish, but the majority of him wasn't satisfied yet. The book wasn't enough. On an impulse, he pulled all the blankets off his bed and threw them around the room as well, then grabbed his pillow and hollered into it as loud as he could. His fists tightened around fabric as he yelled before the pillow too was sent on its way, thudding into a wall. His whole body seemed to shake, feeling as though it were about to explode with hot energy that he couldn't contain any longer.
Fuck his homework. He didn't need to know all that shit to extract his revenge. Fuck his teachers. They were idiots, the whole lot of them. Fuck his classes. They were only taught by the stupid teachers. Fuck Mello. Fuck Near. Fuck Orphan. They weren't really smarter than him, just arrogant bastards. Fuck DNA science. Who cared about it really? And fuck that fucking problem. The profanity he shouted in his mind bounced back savagely, the inflection of forbidden words giving him a bit of a thrill.
His bag nicked his wardrobe before striking the wall and slumping to the floor, his unfinished homework spilling out. Matt was panting in the middle of his room, his small chest heaving with the effort of his anger.
Without warning, tears began to fall and Matt crumpled to the floor. He didn't know why he was crying, but the tears just came harder until he was sobbing in a way he hadn't since Wammy had found him on Blair's last birthday.
Except Wammy was currently on some business trip, and Matt didn't know where. There was no one to comfort Matt now, even if he felt like he wanted it. Then again, it wasn't like he'd go running off to find Wammy... if anyone else saw him, word was sure to reach the other Letters and he'd look like a git. It was stupid really, these tears. He didn't need them. He waited a few minutes, taking deep breaths and closing his eyes to get it out of his system.
Hiccupping a little, Matt made his way slowly to his desk and his laptop. Some games would do him good, take his mind off the DNA problem and perhaps when he looked at it again with a fresh mind, it'd be a piece of cake.
He liked that thought. A piece of cake.
----M----
December 14, 1998
No one sang at Mello's 9th birthday party.
The four all felt like they were required to show up at each other's birthdays, knowing that Wammy expected them to be nice to one another. They weren't, but that wasn't the point; they kept up appearances and felt that Wammy never had to know they were only that. If Wammy ever found out how antagonistic they were towards each other, Matt was sure he'd feel incredibly ashamed, and yet there was no way he could imagine being nice to Mello. Or holding a long conversation with Near. Or not sneezing at Orphan. So their charade at friendliness was well done to prevent the one they all held dear from discovering the truth. Because despite their differences, they all jealously loved Wammy.
The cake was chocolate, with eight black candles sticking up around the edges and a single one protruding from the center.
"I think the candles should have spelled out your name, you know? They make candles in the shape of letters," Orphan was saying, even though Mello obviously wasn't paying attention. Like usual, it was Near who occupied most of his interest.
Orphan smirked, her browned childish face pushing out dimples. "Five candles would be closer to how you act, anyway."
Matt swore he caught Near's eyes blink in a way that normally signaled amusement, but he couldn't be sure. It was true that Mello's behavior was often immature and childish enough to resemble a five-year-old's, but at other times, Mello seemed to be the reason why Near was alive. The blond took care to make sure Near got food and to his classes on time. Matt was doubtful whether or not Near would leave his room without Mello there to lead him out of it. Even if it was only so Mello could bully the fragile pale boy.
Mello and Near's exclusive relationship was terribly strange, Matt realized for the first time. He blinked, watching Mello argue with Orphan. Mello's stance was rigid, but somehow that protective circle of defense included Near sitting at his feet. The true violence extended out towards the rest of the world. Near bore the obvious demonstrations of Mello's force, but he was also oddly protected and helped by the strength of the older boy. How had Matt become so accustomed to such a strange pair so quickly?
Or was this just another part of growing up? None of the adults commented or tried to change the relationship between Mello and Near and Matt didn't think he had enough experience with relationships to make judgments. He had never had a best friend himself, and only the scripted interactions of his video game characters as models.
He brushed it out of his mind. He couldn't do anything to change it and it wasn't worth much thinking about. His usual problem surfaced in its place: Kiss. And the Letters.
He glanced over at Near. Was he in communication with Linda? The more Matt looked at the white-clad boy behind Mello's legs, the less likely he thought it was. How would Near escape Mello to talk to Linda if the idea of speaking to anyone even crossed his mind?
Near looked back, a dark eye peering through his lamb-like tufts of hair. The eye was flat, unquestioning, and simplistic. Matt ignored it and continued evaluating. Had that eye also seen Kiss?
There was really only one way to find out. But of course he couldn't speak to Near straight out; Mello never allowed that, except in class when professors were present.
Orphan had begun dishing out the cake, passing Matt the last piece. He took a bite and began casually. "Hey, have any of you heard of Kiss?"
Orphan turned to him first, giving him a flat look. "Please tell me you don't mean the band, Matt. They're bloody awful."
Matt smiled inwardly, checking her off his mental list as she turned away to attack her cake. She didn't have a clue. So much for her being the current number one.
He turned to the contrasting pair. Mello was scrutinizing him carefully, trying not to give away whether he knew what Matt was talking about or not. Mello wouldn't talk until he was sure he knew more than Matt. Matt couldn't cross him off the list. He looked down, and met Near's eyes.
Matt blinked in shock. The dark eyes that were always so dull and lifeless had suddenly become wide and full of liquid depth. Yes, he mouthed clearly, silently.
Mello hadn't seen. Near hadn't wanted Mello to see him answer. Matt blinked again, his heart picking up speed. Mello didn't know. But Near would tell Matt. Triumph flooded through his body as his eyes remain locked with Near's. The moment crashed over him like a tidal wave, forceful and unrelenting, a strange white noise blocking out everything that wasn't Near's gaze. In that instant, Matt knew instinctively that Near understood him completely. The world outside them shook with the force of their shared gaze and Matt forgot to breath. The overwhelming feeling that he'd always been underestimating the other fragile-seeming boy clawed up from the pit of his stomach and seized ahold of Matt's mind. With eyes like that... Matt's thoughts stopped, his body frozen, and nothing existed besides those impossibly deep and black eyes. He had the strange urge to remove his goggles, feeling that even his orange lenses were hindering the full force of the smallest boy.
The eyes were suddenly jerked out of his vision and the invisible line connecting the two of them snapped. Mello was dragging the white boy forcibly from the room. Matt blinked, and then Near hit the wall across from the door. Mello's figure was a line of finely wrought tension, barely contained in his wiry body as his hand shot out and dragged Near to his feet. The angry child held up Near, their faces inches apart, and whispered something, malice and condemnation threaded through his caustic tones. Near looked bored, his flat eyes peering down the hallway, but he doubled over in pain as Mello socked him in the gut. The vision disappeared as Mello hauled the pale boy off down the hallway.
The scene was deathly still in the aftermath. It was several deafening seconds of silence later that Matt hesitantly set his plate of cake down. Orphan turned to him, her face wide with shock.
"Wha-what just happened?"
Matt didn't move. He was still trying to figure it out for himself.
"Matt!" Orphan's voice was persistent, and a little angry to mask her fear, either for him or for herself, he wasn't sure. She stepped between him and the door, directly into his vision, so that he had to look at her. She grabbed his shoulders and shook. "Matt! Answer me! What the hell is going on?"
He focused on her face. He almost started to say that it didn't concern her, but... something about the way her expression looked scared and hurt stopped him. In some ways, they were all like Linda. She was just a girl too. "I can't tell you everything, Orphan, because I want to figure it out on my own. But... there's some kind of..." He rejected the word 'conspiracy' before he got close to saying it aloud, "...something going on at Wammy's. Something that happened a long time before we all got here."
Orphan watched his eyes carefully, probably for any hints that he was lying. She took a deep breath, her hands still on his shoulder. "Okay, Matt. I believe you. But... that doesn't mean I'm not going to beat you at finding out what it is!"
Matt smiled in relief before rolling his eyes. "Yeah, sure." This was the Orphan he knew and the return of her competitive and slightly annoying streak was reassuring.
She grinned back smugly, released him a little self-consciously and hurried back to her cake. "Looks like we get to enjoy the rest of the party ourselves, eh?"
"I think we'd have to redefine 'enjoy' and probably 'party,' too," Matt retorted, looking at his own cake. He picked it up and poked at it, not exactly hungry anymore. "But I think it's definitely improved now that Mello isn't here."
"It'll take more than that to make me leave, Matt."
Matt jumped, the unmistakable icy voice that addressed him emanating from the doorway. Mello was leaning against the door, looking like a sleek panther, muscles coiled for the spring. Matt tried to find his voice and resist the urge to run for his life. There was a hint of the deadly in Mello's quiet and calm movements, as if everything he did had a beautiful and carefully calculated plan. He swallowed, feeling the effects of fear and adrenaline kick into his system.
Matt didn't know that anyone of Mello's size could move so fast. Matt's body had been screaming for his flight instinct to take over, but abruptly it was too late. Mello was suddenly in his space and swinging. It was all Matt could do to throw up an arm to keep his face from being broken.
"Stop it!" Orphan screamed at the two of them as Matt became bold and angry enough to sneak another punch back while Mello's guard was up, his mouth twisting into a snarl of its own. Mello took the glancing blow on his side. "I-I'm going to get Roger!"
"Yeah, run, you coward," Mello sneered, his face twisting with rage as it never left Matt's. Orphan's footfalls pattered wildly out of the room and down the hall.
"What the hell were you talking to him about?!" Mello questioned angrily, trying to grapple with Matt, who kept dancing away out of reach. His life depended on avoiding those punches; his arm already throbbed from the block he had managed.
"Near doesn't talk, you git!" Matt replied, dodging and running to the other side of the room. Mello followed in scorching pursuit.
"You're a bloody liar, Matt, and if you don't answer me, I'm going to beat the fucking shit out of you until you wish you'd never heard of Wammy's." Mello's calm was lost completely, his temper fully discharged and senseless with fury. He advanced on Matt, a panther stalking its prey, determined and purposeful.
"They'll expel you if you do," Matt answered, hoping logic might make the other boy pause. His eyes found the exit, but he didn't think he could reach it before Mello reached him. "Then you'll be the one who's never heard of Wammy's."
Mello narrowed his eyes and smiled. Matt's stomach turned inside out and froze. People didn't smile like that... not so grimly wicked and happy about it. Mello closed in, his smile that of a monster. His voice was low, whispered, and mockingly sweet. "Oh, no, Matt. They wouldn't expel me... and especially not if you're already gone. You see, they wouldn't dare try to replace me again."
Matt couldn't breath and his chest locked up. His mind could only slowly process the words. Mello was close enough for the fight to continue and yet Matt couldn't move. Already gone? Replacement? All the Letters... they were beginning to make sense. Horror filled his eyes from the inside, and they no longer revealed just the reflected image of Mello's frightening face. Mello and Matt. Two Ms. Replacement.
Matt was the backup? He wasn't... worth....
An echo from the month before flittered through his mind. Dark chocolate eyes and a darker voice. "No, it'll be that one." Dan had known... he knew why Mello resented the younger, smarter boy with red hair. The teenager had already calculated Mello's violence into the equation, had predicted, bet on the belief that Mello... would kill Matt. That Matt would go first. The floor was shaking beneath Matt's feet, the physical world too small to contain all that he had discovered. If he were to trust Dan's assessment, the monster would not only try to kill him, but succeed.
A fist slammed into his jaw and Matt saw stars. Disconcertingly, the wall slid against his side, and he scrabbled at it for some kind of support, but it was too smooth. He leaned heavily, and staggered, barely managing to keep his feet. He blinked, and threw his arms up to cover his head and neck. He saved himself from another blow to a vital area, but his arm throbbed in painful protest. A foot found his shin however, and he yelped in pain and tried to stand on one foot. It was a mistake as he easily lost his balance with the next few blows. Matt crumpled to the floor, keeping his back to the wall and curling into the fetal position. Bruising hands ripped his goggles off his eyes, dangling somewhere around his neck, twisted around so that he lost even their protection. He squeezed his eyes shut, numbly hoping that he wouldn't cry. Pain washed over Matt, like water soaking into his skin during a rainstorm. Once he was completely wet though, the following drops weren't as obvious. The blows dulled. A sharp crack signified a goggle lens had broken and suddenly Matt's mind rebooted.
"I am going to replace you, Mello," he gasped, his body aching, his mind reeling but focusing on what made him better than the boy above him. "You're the one who isn't fit for a detective's work. Acting like this... you're... a criminal."
The frenzy above him stopped. Matt didn't dare open his eyes or move a muscle, unsure when and where the next blow would fall. Would it be his last moment in the world? Had he pushed Mello too far? Or brought him back just enough?
"Mello!" Roger's shocked yet authoritative voice brought Matt out of his head and he opened his eyes, squinting towards the doorway. Other staff ran into the room, surrounding Mello and rushing to help Matt off the floor. He saw Orphan's thin form near Roger, looking a mix between pleased at her handiwork and concerned that she had been late. Roger came over to Matt himself, crouching down to where Matt was sitting up.
"Matt, are you okay?" The old man's eyes took in Matt's face, stopping at a bruise slowly forming on the boy's temple. He sighed. "No, you're not okay. Can you walk?"
Matt nodded silently and Roger held out a hand to pull the boy to his feet. The caretaker turned to the other staff members who seemed unsure of what to do with Mello. "Lock him into his room. I'll talk with him when I bring him dinner."
A second thought occurred to Matt and he blurted it out without thinking. "Make sure Near's alright, too."
Roger turned to look back at Matt, a question in his eyes, but he simply nodded once and glanced back to the other adults. "Go check on Near while you're there. Come on, Matt."
Roger took Matt back to the administration building and tried to patch him up as best he could. Matt wasn't bleeding much beyond a friction burn from Mello's kicks against his jeans, but bruises were beginning to show all over his arms and legs. He winced every time he moved, and sitting still in Roger's cool office while the man checked him out had only intensified the problem. He was starting to get stiff.
The man finished his checkup and looked closely at Matt. His voice was the epitome of an adult sweetly demanding an answer from a child. "Will you tell me what happened, Matt?"
It wasn't how Matt was used to being spoken to anymore. It caught Matt off guard and he nearly mimicked the question back to the older man. Instead, he paused, wondering why Roger was treating him as a normal child.
The man seemed to catch Matt's hesitation and then his quiet, passive look. He sighed, closing his eyes and looking away. "You won't tell me." He leaned back into his leather chair, the springs creaking. "You'll only talk to Quillsh about everything, won't you."
He looked back at the silent child. Matt waited, not sure whether he was supposed to answer. It seemed that Roger didn't expect him to talk to anyone but Wammy. Judging from the spoken clues Roger had just given him, Matt figured he wasn't supposed to talk to anyone but Wammy about things that concerned the Letters. It was certainly true that he would never lie to Wammy, even if the kind man asked about a fight between him and Mello. Wammy was the only one Matt knew he could trust with everything... even though he didn't tell him. He only didn't volunteer information because he didn't want to hurt his caretaker.
"I... I hope he knows what he's doing with you children. You can leave, Matt." Roger continued to stare away, his gaze caught on the dreary sky outside the window. He looked old, the winter light harsh in its cast of his features.
"Yes, sir." Matt stood, his joints protesting silently. He wobbled a little, but hid it well as he walked from the office. He had a lot to think about.
----M----
So... by now, you're all probably used to my incredibly slow updates. But reviews encourage me to write more and that's always good for you and for me. And don't hesitate to send me angry messages to get my butt in gear and continue writing. There's nothing like weekly harassment that keeps me writing. *grin* As always, I hope you all enjoyed reading... your reviews will be proof of whether you did or didn't.
Special thanks to: Living in a fantasy, SlvrSoleAlchmst1 (for a review and a beta), and BlackRoseMuffin for review of the last chapter. I think that may be an all-time low for reviews for a chapter. BUT THANK YOU!
One more thing... I have a short story about I, J, and K mostly written. Due to major spoilers, I'm not posting it yet, but if people are interested, let me know and I'll make sure I have it ready when it won't be spoilertastic. Or I might be able to leave off the planned ending with the spoilers. Anyway, sound interesting??
~anja-chan