A/N: After nearly a full year of hiatus (has it been so long), I am finally back, with the last chapter of Angel's Lair.

This has been my first multi-chapter fanfic and I'm really grateful for all the feedback, for all your follows and favorites, and for all your clicks. This chapter ends a story that I had great fun writing, and I found myself strangely fond of writing about Matt (so much that he appears in this chapter too). Once again, I want to thank you all for being there despite the long break I took. It means a lot.

Well, that's it then... I hope that you will enjoy this last chapter of my fanfic ~~

Chapter 7 : Heaven's Door

Disease is only for those who can afford it. When your survival is suspended on a thin piece of thread, your organism will focus on that primal instinct, the instinct of survival, and shut down everything you don't need, just to keep going. Sayu's father was gone and her brother had almost stopped visiting altogether. She might have continued counting on her mother, but in this situation, her mother needed some support as well and Sayu simply couldn't afford to be selfish anymore. Her mind and her body must have subconsciously picked that up to bring Sayu back to life. Sometimes, a catastrophe needs to happen to counter another one, as gloomy as it sounds.

Mello kept coming into her dreams though. His figure would be ghastly and a strange aura of light would be surrounding him. Sayu would also hear voices, like echoes, floating in the void.
He will come back again, they'd say.
And kill you yet once again.

When Sayu would wake up from those dreams, she'd feel at peace. Not due to their content, but to the fact that Mello's figure was growing fainter every night and that voices were speaking more quietly every time. One day, they might completely disappear, and that would be the day when life will be perfectly normal once again. If this was a romance, it was a dark and a disturbing one, but inside Sayu's head, things today weren't much different from those of people living normal short romances: she missed him, she dreamt of him, and then she dreamt of him less and less. She wasn't thinking of him all the time anymore, and one day, she will probably end up getting over him altogether. This was like a summer romance in the sense that here too, the change of place induced a deformation of the perception of time, and three days in those circumstances were like three months in the routine. The situation was, of course, completely different than that of a normal romance, but the pattern was the same. And the final step of it was "getting over whatever happened", aka "going back to normality". And that was good.

She was still musing over her father's death, over heaven, over hell, and over the meaning of this all. What was waiting for us on the other side? Was there such a thing as heaven or were we to disappear into nothingness once that our lifetime on this world came to its end? The thought of this world being the only one for us was a depressing one and Sayu wouldn't accept the thought of her father not getting the peace that he deserved, hence she choose to keep believing that he was in a better place now.

When it came to her brother, the love that Sayu once felt for him started turning bitter and stale from his lack of help, and slowly turned into anger. He too had abandoned them. When he would come, it would be only for a short while, barely to give them some money, mere charity for the women who were now just a burden to him. Sayu knew that she was probably wrong, that he was busy at work and that it was selfish to blame him for not visiting more, but somehow, it was easier to change its sadness to anger and to transfer it on someone else than to deal with it alone.

Still from then on, Sayu forced herself to get better, with the aim of recovering a semblance of a normal life, like the one that she used to have before. Nothing worse could happen now anyway.

Only Matt had known and only Matt could understand. When he saw Mello's sullen expression and when Mello explained everything to him, Matt didn't even try to stop him from carrying the deed. His heart was aching, but he wasn't going to go against Mello's decision. As time went by, guilt was welling up inside him. Mello had explicitly asked him not to try and stop him, but doing nothing was hard knowing what will follow. When Mello walked out the door that fastidious night, Matt thought that his heart would break.

He went outside, something that he never does, hoping that the cold wind that was blowing would clear his mind. It was late, but he didn't know the hour. He was walking without paying attention to his surroundings, until he bumped into someone. He looked up. It was Lioness Ally. She was either returning from work or going there, or maybe she was simply having a walk, like him. She wore less make-up than the last time and Matt noticed that she looked much younger. She was probably no more than three years older than him, judging by the looks. Her clothes were still extremely revealing, though, and the way she smiled made Matt immediately lower his head.

"Why are you walking around here this late, sugar? All...alone?" she asked, making the two last words longer, and making Matt face her by raising his chin with her finger.

"I...n...nothing." Matt felt like he was going to cry. "I'm okay."

"You don't seem okay, baby-boy," said Ally, with a singing voice.

"No, it's fine, really..." said Matt. "Or... It isn't, but... Nobody can help me..."

"There's a problem you can't solve?" asked Ally, a bit more serious.

"It's not that I can't solve a problem, it's that... Something's making me...well...I don't feel very..."

Ally put her palm on Matt's cheek.

"I can't make all the things better at once," she said, "but I can always make you forget about your problems..."

She came closer and kissed Matt on the lips. For Matt, it had been the first time a girl kissed him. He was absolutely lost, not knowing what to do or how to react, almost about to faint. When she broke the kiss, Matt started to cry.

"It's okay, sweetheart," Ally whispered, wiping his tears from his face. "I live down the street, not two minutes from here. You can come to my place, you don't look like you'd be good sleeping alone tonight."

Unexpectedly, Matt reached to her for a hug. He was the kind to always steer away from other human beings, but tonight, tonight he felt the need of someone's proximity. He went to Lioness Ally's place that night. When he reached for his pockets, finding them empty, she told him that he had already paid his stay the day he brought them pizzas, but Matt didn't understand the logic she was following. Soon enough though, he had stopped thinking. He let Lioness Ally erase the sadness of his thoughts and let himself, simply let himself to her, allowing her body to extinguish the pain of his own.

Mello was prepared for what was supposed to follow. As for Sayu, she had finally gotten him out of her mind. It took shorter than she expected and she was quite satisfied, not thinking of him anymore.

She got to see him once again, however, shortly before he died. His hair was messier and the left side of his face was burned, but to Sayu, he was still beautiful. He turned his head and their eyes met. He recognized her.

And there was a risk of relapse. There's always a risk of relapse in such stories. This too was part of the pattern.

Upon seeing him, Sayu felt as if someone had punched her. Dark and painful memories mixed with sweet and tender ones resurfaced in her mind. She felt her stomach heavy and almost burst out crying. As for Mello, he merely acknowledged her existence, then turned his head and walked in the opposite direction. Sayu felt like dying. To comfort herself, she started making up stories in her mind, imagining him coming to her and telling her not to worry, that he will protect her, that he will be her angel... He was probably already somewhere else, he recognized her for a moment, but now had other businesses to attend, yet the image of him in the same place as her blurred her mind in a painful mist. She needed to hold on the image of him being the one to protect her, being the one who won't hurt her... She saw stars twinkling in front of her eyes, as the world was spinning round and round and round. The ground was slipping away, and her head was attracted by the harsh and magnificent power of the Earth, by the heartless gravity, while the endless space was dancing in front of her eyes.

When she was sure that she would sink into the soil and let the infinity cover her body, she felt somebody holding her. She opened her eyes and she saw him again. He came back to her again. He held her once again. He buried her eyes in her own again. He was there for her once again. To save her yet once again.

Once again...

As he helped her to her feet, Sayu grabbed his face from both sides and kissed him. A kiss that he returned and that seemed to last forever. It wasn't like the small kiss they had shared in the lair where she was held hostage; this kiss was deeper, hungrier, more passionate, more desperate.

"It's nice to see you again..." Sayu muttered, their foreheads still pressed together, their faces only millimetres away.

"You too, Sayu," he answered.

They parted moments after that. This time, they were parting for good, and they both knew it. Sayu somehow felt it too. This was the final time that she saw him. Strangely enough, she didn't feel sad. The fact that she sensed, that she knew that there was no hope that she will ever see him again after that day made all sadness futile. This was not like the time when she was released from the prison of Hell. This was a final break-up of sorts, a final goodbye.

And hence, since she stopped seeing him, she stopped hoping for him. It was all just a story, only a few days in her life. If he died, she won't mourn him. She had already mourned quite enough during her catatonic state of mind.

When after months on end he didn't show up again, she knew that he was dead. She learned that her brother died as well. The news hurt her, but she didn't shed a single tear. She had grown to accept loss of those she loves. At least, Kira was arrested and executed, or so they told, in the media. His identity was not made known to the general public, to "save the face of his family", they said. What they had made known though, was the weapon with which Kira killed: they called it the Death Note. Sayu remembered Mello naming it that way too, when he had asked her about it, what seemed a lifetime ago. Despite giving the name of the weapon, its functioning was still kept secret, which allowed the wildest fantasies to the general public. Sayu didn't care about it. Whatever it was, it took three people she loved from her. Her father. Her brother. Mello. All of them were after the Death Note and Kira killed them all.

Mello's death was never mentioned in the news, but the certitude that Sayu's angel has left this world was a certainty. She would sometimes find herself wondering about the way in which he died, before slapping herself mentally for thinking about him. Her whole life was in front of her, waiting for her to grab it, and she didn't know what future was made of. Actually, she didn't even know what her past was made of. There were lots of things that she didn't know about her own father, about her own brother, about where the angels come from and where they go once that they're dead. She knew only one single thing about angels, though, from knowing one of them: Angels don't get to live for very long, and hers was gone forever, buried, burned, melted, disappeared in a mist. Death was awaiting him and he couldn't have hidden from it, for there is no such place in this world where angels can roam free.

End

~~ LooneyZampy