A/N: LooneyZampy's back! And so, the new chapter's up! :) and all those who are reading this are awesome! There, it's said.

Now another thing that needs to be said is, this chapter is rather dark in tone and I want you to be prepared for what might follow. The rating T stays though, and it won't be changing.

Chapter 5 : The Purgatory

He hadn't thought about his family for a long time. He tried to forget them from that moment when Wammy found him and brought him to the orphanage. His struggle to beat Near there helped him push the horrors that he's seen, or rather heard, done to his parents deep down in his subconscious. But one day or another, they were bound to resurface again...

He could hear the knock on the door again. His father giving that one look to his mother, the look that made his mother grab him and run upstairs. He remembered how his mother always used to hold him carefully, how he thought her unbreakable, able to protect even the most vulnerable entity... But that one time, he felt her panicked. She was running too fast, her hands hurting his skin where she was holding him. Before they even reached the door of the room above, they heard a shot.

"Check upstairs, they say he has a woman," a voice said, coming from the floor just beneath.

Mello's mother tossed him in a closet. She kissed him on the forehead one last time and gave him a rosary that she always wore around her neck.

"You're young." she told him, her voice shaking. "God will protect you. I know He will. But as for me... No matter what happens, promise me that you won't go out."

"But mom..."

"Promise me."

"I... I promise."

They heard footsteps on the stairs. Mello's mother buried him beneath all the clothes that she could find. When she closed the door of the closet, it was as if she had disappeared forever. A couple moments later, Mello heard the door of the room opening.

"Wow, wow, wow! Not only he had a woman, the filthy bastard, but a damn fine one at that!" a raspy voice said.

"Must've been a good wife," said another man, who sounded as if he was chewing something.

"Yup... But she's his wife no more!" said the first one again.

"Let's see how good she'll be to us then!"

Mello heard struggle, he heard furniture moving and his mother protesting. She seemed so close to ask them to stop, to beg for mercy, but she didn't. He heard the two men laughing and then the sound of a body falling on a hard surface. He heard more laughter, then the sound of a zipper being undone, a couple of gasps and his mother... He heard her scream. Once. Twice. Three times. Four times... Then once more. Then once again. Again and again. He heard her gasp and moan and cry. He heard the two men laugh. He heard one of them uttering a satisfying sigh, and then the other one almost immediately saying "Okay, my turn now!" and then, the nightmare began once again. His mother was screaming, and Mello felt the urge to get out of the closet and hurt those men, hurt them so badly that they would never get up. But he was forbidden to do that. His mother made him promise. The only thing that he could do then was to pray. He clutched his rosary into his hands and held it so tightly that his palm started to bleed. He probably fainted shortly after.

"They had a child." he heard an undefined voice when he woke up.

"Dear God! What sort of monster would do this to a family?"

"Well, the husband did hold quite a risky position..."

"Shut up! Give me the bag in which I can put this..."

"We need to find their son."

"Have you looked in the other room?"

"Yup!"

"And in this one? Is he hiding in a..."

The closet door opened and Mello fell along with the clothes. He saw blurry shapes of what must have been people looking down on him. He felt two arms passing under his body and a hand touching his forehead.

"Are medical services downstairs?" one voice asked.

"How long since he's last eaten?"

"We seem to be having a case of a severely traumatized child here..."

"I wonder what will become of him later..."

Mello felt himself travel from hands to hands before fainting once again. When he woke up, he was in a hospital. The first days, Mello ate very little, talking to nobody, barely even sleeping. Various doctors tried to speak to him, but it was unsuccessful. Until one of them, a woman who would have looked very much like his mother if only her hair was blonde, found a way to make him react. The fact that Mello liked her might have helped, but her method was flawless by itself: she would be giving him mathematical and logical exercise. Stimulating his brain in other ways, keeping his mind focused on something else, helped him forget the things that he heard done to his family. Soon enough, Mello ended up in a nearby orphanage, where he quickly became the most brilliant child that the place has ever had. Not even a month later, Wammy came to collect him.

Quillsh Wammy held an orphanage for particularly gifted children in Winchester. And he had taken the plane from England to come for Mello. Apparently, he thought that Mello had "what it took" to be accepted in Wammy's house... Quite frankly, that entire story seemed odd to Mello and he couldn't help eyeing suspiciously the old man who had come for him.

The man looked as if he had always been old. He had white hair and a white mustache and quite a dapper look to himself. He seemed different from everything that Mello had known up till then, but yet, despite having found him suspicious at first, his presence made Mello feel comfortable. The man smiled and didn't force Mello to speak when he didn't feel like it. Yet he made it clear that children in his orphanage were all little geniuses, and that Mello would have to work very hard if he wanted to remain there. Mello drank every single one of his words, promising to himself that he will do whatever it takes to be the best one. It was then that the young Mihael Keehl would take the name Mello. As for the rest, Mello didn't mind leaving his old orphanage. He hadn't made any real bonds with other children anyway. Wammy's was a new chance for him, a new place to start from. It was in an entirely different country, far, far away from the place where Mello's parents were murdered. As the plane was moving away from Mello's home country and closer to England, Mello felt his pain diminish. It was as if he was leaving behind all the suffering and all the horrors that he has witnessed at such a young age.

The memories stayed buried deep inside of his head. He never forgot his mother language, but he forgot his mother. He forgot his father. He forgot his entire family. Letting go of the personal memories was the only way to heal the agony in his soul. Yet, with or without the memories, he was still shaped by what he had survived.

Once, when he was walking down the corridor of the Wammy's house, he heard a girl scream. What was happening is that some boys were having fun with her hair clips, taking them from her, pinching her arms with it, and sometimes, hiding them from her when she wouldn't be watching. Mello didn't know what happened prior to the scream, but hearing that high-pitched noise sent shivers through his body and he intervened. He wrecked the place, hurt the two boys and if Mister Roger didn't come as fast, who knows what else would have Mello done to them.

He remembered that it took a while to Roger to calm him down after that.

Socializing with other children wasn't that hard. Finding a place for himself to fit in wasn't hard either... He had excellent grades and was the second best child in the orphanage. Second... Second to a little twit they all called Near. That kid frustrated him to no end. He was the perfect opposite of Mello, silent as a ghost when Mello was loud, calm when Mello was wild, peaceful when Mello would be violent... That was another flaw that Roger and Wammy — and at one moment even L! — would incessantly point out about Mello. They would say that he was destructive and violent, never one for controlling his emotions. And yet, Mello would never hurt girls.

Girls always appreciated him. He was always good to them and would even play the white knight when he would see somebody mistreating a girl in the orphanage. That habit followed him later on, when he left the orphanage and found himself in the mafia.

All of the girls in this very crew were on his side. He had helped many of them himself, at one moment or another. The simple thought of a girl being abused in any way would awake something terrifying in his mind, something that threatened to bring back the memories he has buried long ago and that his subconscious decided to keep hidden forever. Those memories were not supposed to resurface. And his actions assured them to remain hidden.

Even his looks could be seen as one of the manners in which his mind sought to protect itself. His clothes, that were supposed to make him look tough, still had such an unmistakably feminine touch. He purposefully let his hair grow long and his figure was slender... And looking the way that he did, he felt better at the idea of being able to protect himself than he would have had he looked manlier. He did not want to remember, he did not remember, but the frustration and the guilt of not having been able to protect the one who gave him life would manifest themselves in various and odd manners.

His hair was softer than Sayu could ever imagine that hair could be. Most people she knew had thick and dark hair that seemed indestructible. Mello's hair was much thinner, and that somehow made it more beautiful to Sayu's eyes. And she had never seen a natural blonde in real life before. His brother's girlfriend dyed her hair, and despite the dye, Misa's hair retained its thickness and sharpness. Mello's hair was soft. And when she removed it from his face, Sayu noticed that Mello's cheeks were streaked with tears.

"What happened to my angel?" she asked, wiping one tear from Mello's face.

Suddenly, she was struck with the impression that she had broken some sort of spell. Mello gave a start, got up hastily, and seemed mortified upon realizing that they were still handcuffed. When he raised his gaze towards Sayu, he looked as if it was the first time he had seen her. There was an expression of shock on his face, mingled with a strange sort of sadness that Sayu could feel emanating from his eyes.

"Mello..." she started, and only when the word had passed her mouth, she realized that she didn't call him "angel" this time.

And yet he smiled.

"Mello," he said, still smiling, and a hand of his caressed her face. "To you, I'm Mello."

He took a key from the cupboard and opened their handcuffs. The chains fell heavily on the floor.

"I will miss you when you leave," said Mello, and Sayu thought that she could see a shade of a single tear in his left eye. He turned away and walked towards the door.

"Come to me again, angel!" said Sayu, as if under a state of trance.

"You can call me Mello. We are close now. Hell, I cried on your lap!" he said and walked out of the room.

"You're still an angel to me..." muttered Sayu so softly, that she wondered if he had even heard her before the door closed.

How long had it been since he walked out and closed the door behind him? Five minutes? An hour? Half a day? Time had become irrelevant. Sayu sat there where Mello had left her, singing softly to herself and imagining his figure crossing the door and walking up to her.

When the door opened, however, the one standing in its frame was not Mello, but Cat.

"Why hello, sweet one!" she said with her sharp nasal voice. "Feelin' lonely? Your man has come down all shaken and right now he's indulging in sweet, sweet chocolate. What you done to him?"

"I... N...nothing" muttered Sayu before she started to cry out of nowhere.

"Aw come on, sweet one!" said Cat sitting next to her and taking her in her arms. She wore a strong perfume that made Sayu's head dizzy, but the hug helped her feel better. "So... You wanna tell Cat what happened here? Don't you worry, sweet one, you can trust us girls!"

"News for Sayu!...right?" said a happy high-pitched voice.

"Aw, Candy, we were having a moment here!" answered Cat.

Sayu got her head up and saw Candy and Strawberry standing by the entrance of the room. When they walked in, Strawberry closed the door behind them.

"I'm gonna break this out to her," said Strawberry and as soon as she said that, Candy's face darkened and Cat got up from the place next to Sayu, nervously chewing her lip. Sayu was confused for a moment before Strawberry sat at the spot that was previously occupied by Cat.

"Honey, there's big news for you," Strawberry said with a motherly tone. "The deal's been concluded. Your life's gonna go well for you. Tomorrow, your dad comes to fetch you."

The prostitutes seemed genuinely happy for Sayu. Yet, when she heard the news, she felt her insides break like glass. She felt as if she was going to choke. She saw the prostitutes' faces go from happy to worried as she was suffocating, before she finally managed to let out a long cry.

"Honey... Are you all right? Sweet one? Sweet one!"

Which one was talking? It didn't even matter. Sayu was crying through screams, trying to mutter some words through her sobs.

"He will... Take me away... Angel!... I will never see my angel... Oh God, what have I done to deserve this? Why... Why?"

"Hey, what's wrong sweety? Aren't you happy?" asked Candy.

"You don't understand..." sobbed Sayu, "I... I want to stay with my angel... My... Angel... He... He saved me, I... I can't leave him!"

"Honey, what you talkin' about?" asked Strawberry. "You oughta be elated!"

"No... No! No I don't want to!" Sayu was still sobbing, getting more irrational with every word. "I don't want to go! I want to stay! Stay forever! My angel... He's good to me! He needs me like I need him! My angel... We can't part like this! We can't part yet... Not like this... Not like this... I don't want to go..."

"Sweet one... Your place is not here. Now Mello's maybe good to you, but this life ain't." said Cat, rolling her eyes.

"She's right," said Candy. "You're not like us. You have a family and friends and all and your dreams aren't all broken up and sunken yet, or just a little... You can still go to school and go to the university and even and work like you fair people do. You ain't made to be a whore." She finished with a smile.

Sayu was shocked "I never meant to be a...a..."

"And what else do you think you could become here? A perpetual prisoner?" asked Strawberry. It was the first time that Strawberry's tone was not sugary. Sayu suddenly found that woman so impressive that she would gladly obey her every word. Strawberry smiled once again, albeit with more determination, and finally said — "If you can't pull a gun, you can open your legs, that's how things go in our world. Are you willing to do either?"

"N...no."

"Then be happy you gonna go back to your family."

"And if you want your separation different than now, might as well try and seduce him. I don't know if he's interested by us girls, but you're more innocent, he might want you, for a change." said Cat sending Sayu a little wink.

She had barely finished the sentence when they heard the doorknob turning. The one who entered this time was Rod Ross. Rod Ross hadn't really do anything to Sayu personally, but being the boss, he was most certainly the one giving orders. He had a cold and emotionless stare that sent chills through Sayu's spine and made the tears froze in her eyes. After scrutinizing her for several endless seconds, he turned his attention to the prostitutes.

"So there you are, you three! Did you need to go here all together? Who's to entertain me if you're all up there? Now leave this miserable creature and come down with me right now!"

After saying that, Rod Ross just turned around and walked out of the room without as much as a second glance to Sayu. The prostitutes followed, but each one of them turned around to give Sayu one last smile or one last wink.

Mello came into the room shortly after. Sayu's face was still red from crying and her attempts to cover it in front of Mello failed miserably.

"You have been crying? Has... Has someone else come to this room? Ross? Was Rod Ross here?" he started to sound panicked.

"Yes. He came for Strawberry, Cat and Candy. They left..." Sayu tried to sound calm, but tears threatened to come back.

Mello sighed with relief. "So nobody hurt you?" he asked.

"No..." she said.

"Good... You know that you return home tomorrow?" Mello put a hand on Sayu's shoulder.

And so it all overwhelmed her once again. She started crying hysterically, clutching at Mello's clothes.

"Sayu..."

At first, Sayu's emotional outburst lost Mello for a couple of moments. But soon enough he took her into his arms and allowed her to cry for as long as she wanted. Sayu was tempted to scream that she didn't want to leave, that she couldn't go away without her angel, but she remembered the voice of the three prostitutes and what they told her. Besides, she was drugged, kidnapped and dragged into this place. It had all been a great shock for her mind and her organism, and having someone being kind to her in this sort of hell, the prostitutes, the angel, made her feel dependent on them, and lost without. In this moment, she was desperately clutching to Mello because he was to her a ray of light in this place of fear and darkness. Losing him, even if it was to return to a place where no such darkness as this one even exists, still seemed as a loss of a ray of light to her. But she struggled not to speak any of those feelings up. So she simply whispered "I'm going to miss you."

"I'm going to miss you too, Sayu," he said.

"I will remember you as my angel... Always... Always..." she got in closer to his hug, closer to his face.

"And you will be mine," he said before taking her face in his hands and deposing a small kiss on her lips.

After that, Mello hugged Sayu tighter and she buried her head into his neck, continuing to weep silently. They stayed like that for a part of the night, in embrace, Sayu's fingers in Mello's hair, Mello's arms around her body, barely moving. They wanted to keep this moment in their memory forever. They would have wanted to hold on to the feel of each other for as long as they could, yet that one brief kiss was the only intimacy they had shared.

When they woke up the next day, they got ready in silence and descended in the hall. They parted with a brief glance and a final "Goodbye, Sayu Yagami" by Mello. After that, he went away and let her in the hands of some of the brutes from the mafia, to accompany her to the exit. She thought that she had heard him threaten somebody, saying that he doesn't want her to lack a hair from her head, but in all honesty, Sayu didn't even care anymore. She was no longer intimidated by the huge men around her. She was no longer afraid. She was at best indifferent to them. She was already becoming indifferent to everything else in the world. For the first time in her life, Sayu had been truly in love and her romance ended before it even started. Maybe it was better this way. Everything in this place was disturbing and there was no room for sincere feelings to grow when suffocated with the ambient fear and violence.

When she was shown the exit and when she was told how to get out, she followed the directions without flinching. Hearing her father's voice made her feel relieved, but yet, she noticed the lack of enthusiasm within herself. Something had broken inside her. Her mind was to be tarnished from the moment she was thrown into the nest where the monsters breed and she left the better part of her heart to one that she met here. The one who had saved her from the cellar of hell and brought her up to heaven, up to his place, up to the angel's lair.

A/N: We aren't told much about Mello's backstory, but in my head, I always imagined it to be quite dark and tragic. His behavior makes it seem as if he was hiding some deep trauma and even the way in which he dresses seems to be a form of protection...

As for Sayu, the poor girl has completely snapped xD

Until the next time, I hope that you had fun reading this and as usual, don't forget to drop me a review with your opinions! :)