The Mello Code

Hal looked up at the monitors, as the buzzer sounded from the main gate. She saw the redhead standing there and her gaze automatically travelled beyond him to see the blond who was always at his side. Mello did not appear. She wondered at Matt not just hacking the security box, like he normally did, but he just waited there. Hal stepped out of her office, waving to Ann, who was en route to answer the call. "I\'ve got it." Hurrying down the stone steps, Hal crossed the driveway and approached the railings. "Matt?"



His head had been bowed, but he raised it now. It was the first time that Hal had seen the young man without his goggles on. His face was swollen and his right eye almost closed under the bruising. Otherwise, he was almost alabaster. "I\'ve come to claim sanctuary, as an alumni. You were right, he does beat me up and I\'ve got to the point where I\'m afraid of him."



Hal\'s eyes widened and the breath caught in her throat. Her gaze took in the road and the red car parked there, like she imagined Mello to appear at any second, roaring up on his motorcycle. She suspected that she would be seeing that sooner or later. She rubbed her face. "Ok, come on in." She opened the gate and Matt, hoisting a bag further over his shoulder, limped in. "Why the fuck didn\'t you tell us this while we had him arrested?"



Matt cast an incredulous glance at her. "He was still in the same building. You think that was safe?" He shook his head. "If I hadn\'t reacted like I did and he had got off, he\'d have fucking killed me."



Hal\'s heart was sinking. She had been told in the same breath, in which she had first heard Mello\'s name, that he was a violent man. She knew it herself. She had witnessed it with the deaths of her colleagues back in NYC and she knew Mello\'s tendency to pull out a gun at the barest provocation. She had not wanted to believe that he was capable of something so pettily brutal as domestic violence. "Do you want to talk first or go to the infirmary?"



"Both?" Matt whispered.



Hal reached across and brushed the hair away from his forehead. The bruising covered half of it. "Mello did all of this?" The small man nodded. "Ok. You are safe here." She reassured him, but Matt snorted in derision, his gaze trained on the steps in front of them. "Matt, I was once bodyguard for the president of the United States, I think I can protect you from Mello." She reached out to take his bag, but Matt held onto it. His whole stance screamed defensiveness and so she let him have his space. "Come on, let\'s get you checked out and settled. You are safe now, Matt."



She walked with him to the infirmary and would have left him in the care of Madeleine, but Matt spoke again, in that same soft, defeated tone. "Please stay. I want you to see what kind of man he is."



Under the watchful gazes of both women, Matt unzipped his jacket and peeled off his shirt. They both cringed at the injuries he uncovered. Scratches, bites, bruises and welts criss-crossed every inch of his body. It was much worse than last time he had been here and it was much more difficult to align this with their plea of \'violent sex\'. Madeleine fought for professional composure. "Oh, Mail."



Matt bit his lip. "He doesn\'t let me out. Hal, feel here." He held up his jacket and she took it. There was a hard bump inside the lining. "It\'s a tracking device. There\'s another in my phone and in my car. He\'ll know I\'m here. He went out shopping and I got free of my..." He raised a trembling hand to his mouth. "I picked the lock and got out." They could both see the mess of his wrists, where repeated applications of handcuffs had worn the skin into a shiny hue. "He tells me over and over again that I\'m stupid and I\'m nothing without him. What you said about emotional cruelty last time? Yes, he does it. He does control my finances as well. I have to be so careful with the housekeeping money that he allots me. He\'s gone really unpredictable as well."



Hal had moved instinctively to lay a hand on him, but Madeleine touched her arm. "Don\'t touch him. He dislikes being touched."



"I held out, because I thought someone would get me out of there. You washed your hands of me, Hal. You told him on the phone that I was neurotically dependent and, God, did he have fun with that one. I thought you\'d given up on me, like Roger did. Then I saw it." His green eyes peered up beneath the shortest fringe that Hal had ever seen on him. "You know that he needs to be put away, don\'t you, Hal? I saw what you were doing to him and I realised that you might just choose me over him."



"What I was doing?" Hal frowned.



Matt looked startled. "Please tell me I\'m right. We both thought it, me and Mello. The case you gave him, it\'s a set up."



Hal felt her heart skip a beat. She glanced at Madeleine, but the medic was staring at Matt\'s torso like she didn\'t know where to begin. "You came here, to me, because you thought I was trying to set Mello up? Set him up for what?"



"Imprisonment. Actually, to get killed, given who would be pissed off with him for solving that one." Matt winced as he shifted position. "I\'m assuming that Near was behind it."



Hal stared. Every encounter she had ever had with Mello\'s partner had taught her that he could be highly duplicitous. He was certainly resourceful and perfectly capable of fighting his corner. Yet she had also seen him with Mello and there the rules always changed. She had watched him sink into Mello\'s shadow as if he was barely there. She found that every conclusion that she reached about him could be disproved with his behaviour in another incident. He was aloof and unreachable, yet he was here reaching out for her. He was quiet and reserved, yet she had witnessed him shouting out in the Wammy\'s House corridor, acting the fool for the amusement of his peers. He was self-absorbed and self-seeking, yet he had twice defended Near to the point of endangering himself. He had nearly martyred himself in the fight to defeat Kira. He was as unemotional and detached as Near could be, yet he had broken down on at least two occasions to her knowledge. She found that there was little that she could say with any certainty about him, except that Mello could and did agressively overwhelm him. That was the key. "Ok, Matt, we\'ll talk about this in a moment. I\'m going to assume that Mello\'s heading right here, so I\'m going to go and see him off. Will you be alright here with Madeleine?"



Matt deflated and looked away. "I\'m endangering the children being here. I\'ll go. I shouldn\'t have brought this to you."



"Matt, no." Hal straightened. "You will be safe as long as you are here. I can guarantee you that Mello cannot break into my home without ending up flat on his back on the floor. Trust me on this one." She watched the little redhead stiffen, his head twitching as he put two and two together and realised that it was no joke when Mello said, \'Hal could take me out\'. Matt looked sharply up at her and Hal smiled her reassurance. "You\'re safe here."



She returned to her office, glancing out of the windows as she passed any which overlooked the grounds. In truth, she half expected Mello to already be waiting for her, raging or trying to charm his way back into Matt\'s presense. Her office remained as empty as she had left it. She paced for a few minutes, rewinding the tapes on each monitor to show her the situation throughout Wammy\'s House during the time in which she had been in the infirmary. Anxiety pricked at the edges of her steely resolve. Roger had told her how Mello used to bully the other children. She had seen first-hand how he had distressed Near in a hotel room in Camden. The state of Matt\'s body could not be ignored. Mello had been in the Mafia. He might be charming, dangerously good-looking and stunningly intelligent, but he was also a vicious thug. She could wait for him to come to her or she could take the battle straight to him.



Hal picked up her telephone and jabbed the speed-dial for their house. It rang out unanswered. She tried again, this time targetting Mello\'s mobile phone. He answered on the first ring sounding more furious than she had ever known him. "Is Matt there?" He demanded. "Hal?"



Hal took inhaled through her nose. "Yes, he is, as well you know. Mello, I can\'t tell you how disappointed I am in you. You want to know the truth? I really did think you were better than this."



"Tell him," Mello gnarled down the receiver, "that he had better get his fucking ass home again, or I\'ll be down there to drag him home by the fucking hair!"



"So you\'re not outside then." Hal countered. "Good. Mello, you come within a sniff of this institution and I will have your ass myself. Are we clear?"



There was a loaded silence on the other end. Mello chuckled without mirth. It sounded distinctly like a threat. "And what if I come to claim sanctuary? I\'m alumni as well. You\'d have to take me in."



"In that case, I would trust you to obey the rules that you set up and I would see to it that you were both placed in safe houses well away from each other." Hal grit her teeth. "You have made a right mess of him. He\'s taken his top off, I\'ve seen what you did. Mello, you bit him! I have seen your teethmarks! What the fuck are you? A dog?"



A sharp intake of breath, then Mello snapped. "I\'m not unreasonable. He\'s got until teatime to get home. If he\'s not in this door by half past five, I\'ll be down there." She could hear him breaking chocolate off. He hissed around the chunk presumably now in his mouth. "You\'d better then hope that the Secret Service trained you well enough to take on me, because you haven\'t seen the half of what I\'m capable of. But I will get him back. Mail Jeevas is mine and I am not prepared to have him out of this house."



Hal forced a veneer of calm of her own rising annoyance. "Mello, can you actually hear yourself? Do you actually know how you sound right now?" She gasped out an exasperated sigh. "Come here and I will take you out. Understand me?"



"Good luck with that, Hal."



"Matt won\'t be coming home. Live with it." Hal nearly hung up on him, but she still had things to say. "What did he do to deserve that, in your eyes? What happened for you to think that it was alright to punch him repeatedly in the face? Because I\'ve seen that bruising and that wasn\'t just one slug. What made it alright, in your head, for you to leave a bruise the size of the one over his ribs? Incidentally, Madeleine is x-raying him for broken bones." She could hear her own tone becoming more shrill. With anyone else she had ever engaged with, however enfuriating, Hal prided herself on her professionalism in the face of provocation, but Mello appeared to be the sole person alive who could make her want to scream like a banshee. "And his back! You\'re going to pass that off as violent sex? You\'re going to tell me that Matt asked for it? There\'s barely a square inch of flesh that isn\'t purple! Have you got no self-respect? No compassion? Mello, he did not deserve that."



Hal realised that she was ranting at a dialling tone. He had hung up on her. She angrily pressed down the connection button but held onto the receiver, debating calling for back-up. Near was in Germany right now, but he could easily send armed officers to surround the building. She glanced at the monitors. The majority of the children were in class right now, with just a couple of the older ones studying in the library. Matt was sitting on a bed in the infirmary, his head bowed so low that his hair covered his face, as Madeleine dabbed something onto his shoulder. Hal sighed and replaced the receiver. If, or when, Mello came, she would deal with him herself.



It took nearly three quarters of an hour before a soft knock on the door signalled Matt\'s return from the infirmary. Hal had watched his progress on the monitors, so was expecting him. She had the kettle on ready. "Mail, I\'m not going to insult your intelligence. You tell me what you want to happen next."



"Is my old room free?" He whispered. Though dressed, she could still see, in her mind\'s eye, the damage concealed under that striped top. "I could sleep in there or I could go. I\'ve caused enough trouble."



Hal shook her head. "This is your home. You are welcome, no, you are encouraged to stay here. Don\'t be afraid of Mello, he will not make it through that door. You have my word on that." She watched his gaze slide away. "Matt, I know that this is killing you, but you have done the right thing. We are going to close ranks around you and we are going to protect you."



Matt shivered, but seemed to find some inner determination. "I\'ve left him now and I can\'t go back. He willl kill me." He blinked painfully around his swollen eye. "Hal, I was right, wasn\'t I? About the case."



She took a deep breath. "Matt, I apologise about shutting you up so abruptly about it in there. I didn\'t want to discuss anything about the case in front of Madeleine." She gestured for him to sit down. "At the end of the day, I should not have been passing cases to Mello that ought to have gone to Near. Near has first refusal on anything that comes via the Watari Network. You know that."



Matt sat down heavily, his hands over his mouth. "Hal, tell me that that case was a set up." He looked so scared. "Tell me that you are trying to put Mello away, because that\'s the only reason I\'m trusting you to watch my back now."



Even now, trembling and looking so frightened that he could bolt at any moment, there was something about Matt that made Hal keep her distance. She hadn\'t been about to hug him. She wasn\'t a hugging kind of woman. But she did want to sit beside him and hold his hand. She even moved to do it, but he stood up and sat on the armchair opposite. Hal crossed her legs, her hand on the arm of the settee. "You look shattered, Matt. What do you think he\'s going to do?"



"What I know he\'s going to do is come in here and not take no for an answer in seeing me. Then he\'s going to drag me across the floor by my hair. He\'s done that before, several times. He\'s going to break every fucking bone in my body, if I refuse to come. You shouldn\'t underestimate how paranoid he is right now. He\'s going to hurt me, bad." Matt rose again, walking around the office, in sheer agitation. His words, though spat out like bullets, were spoken so softly that she had to strain to hear. "You let him get hold of me and I doubt you\'ll see me again. Hal, I know I said I liked it rough. I do. I do like it rough, but." He shook his head, his arms wrapped around his chest, clutching his shoulders. "Not like that."



"Ok." Hal kept her eye on the monitors, awaiting the inevitable appearance of Mello. "He certainly appears to have overstepped his boundaries."



"I don\'t feel safe." Matt had stopped by the window. His brow rested against the pane. "Is Near in London? His headquarters might be more secure. He\'s in this, isn\'t he? He gave you the case." He turned suddenly, fixing her with unnervingly intelligent green eyes. "We know. We worked it out. You didn\'t pass that case under the radar. It was given to you by Near. He saw Mafia written all over it and saw a way to hit Mello right in the blind spot and get him out of the race."



Hal wondered why intelligence in Matt always took her by surprise. He was a genius. The fact of him being raised here was testimony to that and she had seen his academic report. She supposed that it was the knowledge that he allowed Mello to order him around like he did that threw her imagination off course. That and the way he had always defended Mello, even when the blond hit him so badly. She fixed her gaze right back, unsure how to deal with the more enigmatic of the top three. She decided that the truth was the best policy. "Yes, it was given to him because of the Mafia involvement." She traced her itching eyebrow with a fingertip. "But Matt, I swear that Near knows nothing about it. I\'m so jumpy because he knows nothing about it."



"What?" Matt gasped. "So where the fuck did it come from then?"



"An old colleague, Bernard Comben. He\'s working with the DEA back in the States. He told me off the record."



"He knows that you\'re Watari?" Matt shrieked. "Hal, you\'ve signed the Official Secrets..."



"No, he does not." Hal didn\'t disguise her annoyance at the slight to her discretion. "He\'s also an old friend, whose wife is currently dying of cancer. He and I had a long chat on the telephone and, in the course of it, he told me about his work. His department has been working on this case for a long time. I mentioned that, through my contacts, I could get a message to L, as a personal favour, to have a look at it. He waited a few days, then approached me about doing just that. I received the initial documentation, then got cold feet. Near is a very busy man. I shouldn\'t be throwing things under his nose that aren\'t at his calibre of detection. I sat on it for about three days, before mentioning it to Mello." Her lips pursed. In retrospect, she should have known that he would take the case. The instant she had voiced her dilemma, he had badgered her for sight of the outline. "He was supposed to just be looking at it to determine whether it was a case worthy of Near. He fucking nicked it and placed me in a very precarious situation!"



Matt looked ill. "So Near still knows nothing about it? You told this Bernard that Mello had it though?"



"He knows now. Mello met with Jason Bradfield, that\'s Bernard\'s British contact." She saw Matt\'s confusion. "Illegal drugs might be a national problem, but their trafficker is an international concern. Bernard briefed Jason and Jason briefed Mello."



"Oh fuck!" Matt sat down at Hal\'s desk, his head in his hands. "Tell me that this Bernard had heard Mello\'s name before he gave you the case. Tell me that Mello\'s Mafia connections were mentioned before you were given the case to give to him."



Hal swallowed. "Matt, I\'m sorry. It just didn\'t happen like that." She felt like she was betraying him, though this entire story was his conjecture. She felt a little disappointed at finally witnessing a Wammy\'s House genius get it wrong. "I admit that, when I read it, I deduced the Mafia involvement and thought that maybe Mello was the better person for taking it on, but Bernard thought it was going to L. Quite frankly, I\'m shitting myself about the fact that it\'s on Mello\'s desk!"



Matt stayed there for a long time, before finally raising his head. His eyes appeared listlessly dull. "In that case, I\'m completely and utterly fucked."