Author's Note: Ever notice when I have homework due, I get chapters up faster? That's basically how it works, if you guys ever get two or more chapters up really quickly, it's usually because I'm avoiding my work ha-ha... ha... I am so screwed for my finals V.V ...Someone teach me French and Statistical Data Analysis! QUICK!
Why! Why do Etre, and Avoir, two of the most commonly used verbs have to be conjugated so irregularly? I miss taking Russian. Russian was a piece of cake compared to this... Please know that I'm not dissing French, I'm just having a hell of a time trying to learn it... And I'm Canadian, who would have figured I'd have trouble with French.
And oh, oh! If you feel like it, and don't hate Nickelback more than anything, be sure and listen to 'Don't Ever Let It End' by them during the 'Star Scene' ;D
Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note, or anything remotely associated with it.
August 13, 2024. 2:24 AM... 11 Days Left...
"So, tell me again what happened."
"Car, no brakes, pulled over, cut line."
"Yeahhh..."
"Thanks for coming to pick me up," I mused after a silent pause.
"Heh, yeah. Next time I'm just going to leave you stranded on the side of the street."
"I was a block away from my apartment, I wasn't really stranded."
"Not in a literal sense I imagine."
He really had me pegged.
Mello and I had been driving around the back roads of the city for a couple hours now. I wasn't in the mood to go home and spend the rest of the night alone. I had my knees up on the dashboard and the window down. I had let my hair down and my silky silver locks were whipping around my face in the wind. The night air was soft and cool and the sky was clear.
"Mello?"
"Yeah?"
"Will you drive somewhere? Somewhere that we can see the stars?" The city lights were far too bright to be able to make out any of the shimmering diamonds that lit up the night sky.
Without another word Mello took a handful of quick turns and had us on our way out of the city. Once again I found myself worrying about where the two of us were going to end up after this bomb case finally came to a close. Right now it was the only thing keeping us together. This one common objective had started it all. When the bomb was found and we could all just go back to our regular lives, would we?
"We're here," Mello said suddenly.
I had been so lost in thought that I hadn't noticed the city lights and tall skyscrapers had given way to trees and meadows.
"Shall we?" Mello asked, staring at me from across the driver's side. I smiled at him and swung the car door open.
Mello walked around the front of his car and took my hand. Together we walked up a small knoll and laid down under a tall maple tree. I settled in along the ground and let the tall tangle of grass tickle the side of my face and the light breeze twist and turn and blend my hair with the flowers. Way above us in the sky twinkling balls of white fire blinked and fluttered in their ebony canvas.
"It's so beautiful."
"Yeah, you are."
I felt my heart flutter with the stars and my breath rush out with the wind. Mello's words never ceased to make me feel like I could fly. I snuggled into his side and matched my breathing with his.
"How many do you think there are?"
"How's that?"
"Stars. How many stars do you think there are? They're like, diamonds. They're like precious jewels the way they sparkle like that."
"You're the only precious jewel I know of."
I couldn't stop the warm blush from spreading over the crests of my cheeks.
I wanted to ask him. I wanted to know what his plans were, I wanted to know what he was going to do when this whole crazy situation was over with. I wanted to know if he wanted to marry me. He had back then, back when our lives had been drawn together by the twisted web of Kira, but what about now? Obviously something had changed.
I had promised him though. I had promised Mello that until the wedding, until the 24th, there would be no more talk about our relationship. It was an interesting compromise I had come up with for myself though. We weren't talking about it, not really, but we were right smack dab in the middle of it anyway.
An involuntary shiver passed though my body.
"Cold?"
With my free hand I reached up and felt the tip of my nose. "Looks like it," I smiled, pulling my finger away from my miniature iceberg of a nose.
Beside me I felt Mello shuffling around and a moment later I felt his leather coat land on top of me.
So warm.
It was like when you take fresh laundry out of the dryer and just lay in it, it was like when you're sitting around a campfire on a cool autumn night. It was like lying on warm beach sand with a cool breeze in your hair, it was like a warm cup of cocoa on a cold winter night... It was perfect.
I looked up and met Mello's eyes. I was absolutely lost in them until I happened to notice Mello's exposed arms. I bit my lip and traced a line down Mello's cream coloured skin. I bit my lip harder when I reached Mello's hand.
Mello threaded his fingers in and around mine but then stopped suddenly when his hand brushed against a small, golden object on the fourth finger of my left hand.
Not again.
Mello sighed dejectedly, and paused for a moment before saying, "I guess we should get going. It's getting late."
The joke was on him. It was 'late' over an hour ago, now it was getting 'early.'
I echoed Mello's dejected sigh and let him help me up off the grass. I knit my brows together and pursed my lips as Mello walked me to his car. We got in and drove off wordlessly.
Not cool.
I still wasn't ready to go home though. Besides, who knows what other mindless booby-trap could be waiting for me. Cut brake lines might have only been the beginning. Next time it might be another bomb, it might be another horde of behemoths with Uzis, it might be...
"Oh my- pull over!"
"What?"
"Pull over!" I demanded.
Before Mello could even stop his car I had the door thrown open and my seatbelt off. I was half in the car, half falling out of it, but one hundred percent of me was expelling the contents of my stomach a half a second later on the ground in front of my face.
"Jewel, are you alright?" Mello shouted out the passenger side door that I hadn't bothered to close. Without waiting for a reply he pulled up ahead of me and pulled off the road. He was by my side in an instant and holding my hair and shoulders back as I heaved and dry heaved.
"Jewel...?"
"Mello," I moaned as I grasped my stomach. There was a sharp, shooting pain spreading from my waist throughout my body. Up to my chest, down my legs, around my arms and up to my neck and head, giving me such a bad headache it felt like my head was going to explode.
"You're coughing up blood! I'm taking you to a hospital!" Mello took me in his arms around my back and knees and put me carefully back into his car.
I tossed and moaned and curled myself into the fetal position in a futile attempt to quell the stabbing pain as the world turned sideways and upside down inside my head. I latched my hands, white knuckled, onto the seat in a vain effort to stop the world from spinning as a scorching red, burning sensation worked its way up my throat and into my mouth. I felt a warm, crimson liquid pool in the side of my mouth. My hands, and feet, arms and legs were the next parts of my body to be set on fire, and the rest of my body went numb.
"Jewel," Mello asked sternly, "what happened?" But I couldn't answer him. I could barely make myself keep breathing let alone find enough air to talk. "Hold on!"
Somewhere along the line I must have passed out because of the pain, because when I opened my eyes next, a glaring white light was searing its way into my eyes and an infernal bleeping was assaulting my ears. I was also vaguely aware of being in motion. More of a motion than was responsible for the spinning earth inside my brain.
"Is she going to be okay? What's going on?" I heard above the bleeps.
"She's been poisoned as near as we can tell. She's got all the telltale signs of arsenic poisoning."
"ARSENIC POISONING!"
"Has she eaten anything recently?"
"She had take-out a couple hours ago."
"A couple hours ago? Then it's too late to stomach pump, we'll have to get a chelating agent into her system."
"Hey wait a minute!"
"I'm sorry sir, but you can't come through here. We'll let you know if there are any developments. I'm sure there's some paper work you can fill out at the front desk."
"But-"
I was out of it again before Mello got the rest of his sentence out.
When I came to again my pain had stopped, but the incessant bleeping hadn't. "What's going on?" I asked scratchily, my throat was so dry.
"Hey she's awake!" a mop of shaggy red hair filled my field of view. "We were afraid we were really gonna lose you this time kid."
"Jewel? Jewel are you okay?"
"Mello?"
"No, it's Kurt Cobain, of course it's me."
"What-what happened?"
"Apparently you were poisoned kid."
"I think I got that much. How?"
"I'm betting that Chinese you had earlier."
"But, why would someone try to poison me? Where's Near? We should tell him about this."
"Uhm actually," Mello and Matt shared a look. "We were talking; we don't think it's such a good idea to tell anyone what happened."
"What? Why not?"
"Jewel, the car, the food, it all came from inside of your team's headquarters. It's someone on the inside working to take you down."
"But, but that doesn't make sense. Who would do such a thing?"
"I dunno kid," Matt chimed in, "but doesn't it make sense? And what about the explosion? The one that only you were caught in."
"Yeah but, but they wanted to get someone else on that one. They weren't after me, it was someone else they were after."
"OR they were just expecting a fourth person to be there and they really were after you."
It was starting to make sense, but I didn't want it to. There was still one nagging, obvious question though. "But, but why me?"
"Think Jewel, is there anyone out there who would have a personal vendetta against you? Someone you've dealt with in the past? Or are you working on any side cases right now? Were you a witness to something and someone is trying to take you down so that you can't testify?"
"What? That's all so ridiculous. And there aren't any side cases. We've been focusing all our man power on this one case for the past, forever."
"Well maybe that's it! Maybe there's someone on the inside who's personally invested in this case and doesn't want to see it completed."
"But who would do that? Everyone on our team is handpicked. They're all loyal," I insisted, growing more and more unsure of myself by the moment.
"That doesn't change the facts Jewel. I don't think I can allow you to go back there until we solve all this."
"That's ridiculous. If it IS someone on the inside, the only way we CAN solve all of this is by going back there. We'll tell Near and Gevanni at least and have them run a check of all the people we employ."
"I don't think so! Those two are the ones that I don't trust the most."
"You only don't trust them because..."
"Don't finish that sentence," Mello warned, a cold and serious expression suddenly dawning on his face.
"What is all the ruckus going on in here?" a lady sporting scrubs said out of the blue, waltzing into the room.
"You're awake dear, how are you feeling?"
I hadn't really thought about it until now. "Super tired I guess, maybe a little sore around the edges."
"We gave you a super dose of morphine to help with the pain. We calculated from the time you ingested the poison to the time it took you to start coming down with the symptoms of the poison that you couldn't have ingested too much of it. And lucky for you. Arsenic isn't something to mess with you know. We were going to call the police to make a full report of it, but your blond friend here assured us that your organization would take care of it. I'm not too pleased with that, but I won't argue. Anyway listen, because you didn't ingest a terribly fatal amount, and because your friend got you here so quickly, your recovery should run smoothly. You might have some lasting nerve damage, but otherwise you should be okay. We'd like to keep you here for observation for another couple of hours before we release you. And then please understand that if you have any reoccurring symptoms to come in immediately."
"Yes ma'am," I replied, almost feeling the need to salute.
"Good. Now then, the two of you!" the nurse said gesturing to Mello and Matt, "Out, out, out! This poor girl needs her rest!"
"Yes ma'am," Matt echoed and followed with the salute. Mello just grunted and the two of them were ushered out by my own personal supervisor. Mello shot one more glance over his shoulder at me before he was lost from view.
When I was finally released from my prison... I mean hospital room, Mello, (against his better judgement,) drove me straight back to our organization's headquarters.
I marched, less forcefully as I might have been able to if I was running at a hundred percent, over to the elevator, with Matt and Mello at my side and hit the button for Near's floor. The elevator pinged all the way up and finally the doors slid open with a groan and I continued my march into Near's office.
He was perched at his desk the same way he had been when I had left the night before. Seeing him like that made me curious enough for the first time that day to check my watch. It was already nine in the evening. The number of days I was missing to sleep was getting absolutely insane. If I had had a normal job I would have been fired for sure by now for missing so much work these past two weeks ...Granted if I had had a normal job, I probably wouldn't have had so many, work related mishaps and wouldn't have had to miss so much work these past two weeks. But of course this was MY life we were talking about, and something told me I would be missing work due to general mayhem whether I was sales clerk at a retail store or a mathematician at NASA. I smiled sardonically at the thought.
Near and Gevanni, (who had probably had the chance to go home and sleep, and then still have time to report early in the morning for work,) shot me an awkward glance as I marched into the office.
"Alright, we're going to get to the bottom of this, and we are going to get to the bottom of this right now! Never, have I ever, had so many attempts on my life before! What's going on around here? Why is everyone trying to kill me? The explosion, the food poisoning, the car! Why is everyone after me? I don't get it!"
I felt Mello and Matt take up positions of support behind me. All of a sudden, an out of breath co-worker of ours burst into the main room behind us, almost bumping into Matt and Mello, and almost threatening a domino effect as we all rocked on our heels to keep our balance in the whirlwind. All heads turned to him as he struggled to get enough air to make his words into sentences.
"We-we found it!" he shouted.
Silence around the room.
Author's Note: LOL, Jewel's sure been spending a lot of time in the hospital eh? I didn't even plan for that to happen, it just keeps... happening ha-ha. Also, something that's been bothering me. Anyone notice that for, a top level Jounin and an ex ANBU Black Ops member, Kakashi Hatake ALSO spends an unwarranted amount of time in the hospitals under the care of medical ninja? Ha-ha ^_^
WOW Mello really went OOC on that star scene eh? I'm sorry I just couldn't help it ha-ha. but I think I'd like to justify it by saying that Jewel really brings out the best in him... When they aren't fighting ;P
BUT OMG THEY FOUND THE BOMB SAY WHAT!
So tell me guys, how are all your days going?