The Mello Code

Problem is diet\'s not a big enough word

I want to be so skinny that I rot from view

I want to walk in the snow and not leave a footprint

I want to walk in the snow and not soil its purity

\'4st 7lbs\' by the Manic Street Preachers





I



Lamond slowly ate. Her tongue recoiled at the unfamiliar texture and her throat gagged, but she fed the tissue in. It might just soak up some of her stomach juices and wipe residue from her bowels as it passed through. It had been days since she had last excreted. There might be a blockage causing the latest stagnation in her weight. That last piece of tissue was just not going down. Lamond chewed and suddenly there were bits in the substance matting her gums. She froze and investigated with a finger. It was just another segment of tooth crumbling. It was at the back. It didn\'t matter. No-one would see.



"Lamond." Deontic banged on the bathroom door. "You alright?"



"Yes." Lamond called back and stood. The world swam. She held onto the edge of the sink for dear life, but it was no good. Blurriness quickly became stars, then blackness.





II



"I\'m calling taking her to Wammy\'s." Linda stated sharply, the second Deontic returned to her kitchen. "Enough is enough. She\'s starting up again."



"No." Deontic sat down heavily, her fingers immediately moving to a pile of origami paper in the centre of the table.



"She was out for eight minutes!"



Deontic nodded. "And I made her a promise." Her eyes peered, darkened by her glasses, at her friend. "So did you."



Linda bit her lip. There were doodles on the pad in front of her which would sell for hundreds of pounds, if she was to place them for auction. Her pen moved nervously over them, scribbling them out in a frenzy of lines. Deontic watched her do it, but said nothing. The atmosphere in the room was dense with nerves and tension. "Maybe," Linda muttered eventually, "it was a stupid promise to make."



"Anorexia is about control, Linda." Deontic replied mildly enough, but it was taking her a couple of attempts to push the fold into place to create a wing. "We\'re giving her control. If she goes to Wammy\'s on her own, then we\'ll all breathe a sigh of relief. If we force her into it, we\'re feeding into the condition. No pun intended."



Linda flashed her a withering look. "How many minutes?"



"For what?"



"Your promise! How many minutes can she be out before you get help?"



"Ten."



"She\'d die."



"Yes."



Linda nodded and rose abruptly. "Can I put the kettle on?"



"Yes."



"D, you\'re losing weight too. I know you said that it makes you self-conscious to eat around her, but making yourself ill isn\'t going to help." Linda moved around the kitchen, grasping at cups and a teaspoon like they were lifelines. "I\'m not prepared." She paused. Deontic waited, then looked up, about to ask about what Linda was not prepared, but the blond woman went on. "I\'m not prepared to lose more. Too many have gone. I miss Jonny like a hole in my life. I miss Nathalie. It hurts! I keep turning around and expecting to find her standing there, ranting about shit and threatening to find Mello and wring his neck. I keep wanting Jonny to tell me that she\'s not going to go over the edge. I keep trying to think what they\'d do. It always falls to you, D, I can\'t..." Whatever she couldn\'t do was lost in deep sobs over the worktop.



Deontic silently stood, but the hand that she placed onto Linda\'s shoulder was quickly shrugged away. "Lin..."



"No. No, fuck it." Linda jabbed a finger at the doorway. "Lamond\'s lying down. You\'re drained. I\'m turning into a nervous wreck. Enough." She bustled across to the desktop set up in the corner. "I\'m doing what Nathalie never had the guts to do."



"Which is?"



The Watari Network showed on the screen. Linda was dialling \'M\' before Deontic could stop her. "I\'m calling Mello on his shit."





III



The sketchpad, on the table, in front of Linda had a picture of an angel, rising from the flames of Hell, disfigured. A piercing blue eye glared back, trapped within its melted visage. It seemed to look into the eyes of the viewer, right down to the very soul, and to say, \'I can have you\'. Linda turned the page to cover it up, as a series of short, sharp raps sounded on the front door. Deontic dashed away, practically running to answer it. Her voice emerged almost as a whisper. "Mello, I didn\'t expect you to come all the way here."



"How could I not?" Came his subdued response.



Deontic contrived somehow to be walking behind Mello, even as she led him towards her own kitchen. "What no Matt?"



"Sort of. He\'s waiting in the car."



Linda rose with a suddenness that scraped the chair legs on the tiles. She rushed past the couple, causing Mello to twist to the side and Deontic to step back, in order to avoid collision. Linda continued out the front door and they heard her, halfway down the pathway, bellowed, "Get your fucking arse into this house, you anti-social piece of fucking shit!"



"That\'s helpful." Mello sighed. More distantly, they could hear Linda presumably pounding on the window, still screaming at Matt through it. "Deontic, excuse me. I\'m going to..." He gestured towards the door, but outside they heard a car door slam and Linda stopped shouting. "Probably going to rescue Linda, thinking about it." He was only halfway across the long hallway when Linda reappeared. She held onto the heavy front door, glaring through it, until Matt sauntered through, not looking up once from his game. "Linda, he\'s probably better in..."



"He\'s as bloody culpable as you are. He deserves to face the music too!"



"That\'s not actually true." Mello growled. "But while Lamond thinks it\'s true, then it has to be dealt with." In response, Linda just pointed towards the kitchen and kept behind Matt, like a sheepdog herding in a wayward member of its flock. "You have a nice home, D."



"Thank you." Deontic sat at the table, a pile of origami figures stacked haphazardly before her. It was a far cry from the strategically placed ones which used to decorate her room at Wammy\'s House. "Did you have a good journey?"



Mello stared at her, until she nervously took another piece of paper and rapidly started folding it. Beside him, Linda reclaimed her chair and Matt sat too, but Mello remained standing. "Lamond blames me for her anorexia nervosa. The anorexia is killing her. You think that a conversation with me might reverse this latest relapse. Am I right?" He looked towards Deontic and she nodded, schooling her features to hide the nerves beneath. "What is she waiting to hear from me that might make this alright again?"



"You," Linda rumbled, "are fucking unbelievable! Can you not even remember how much you used to tear into that girl?"



"Yes." Mello turned his gaze onto her, his expression grim. "I treated most of you abdominably. On one hand, I regret that, because I\'m older and I understand that better in its context. We were all children. On the other hand, I learned a lot about the application and uses of fear, which ultimately led to the capture of Kira. I can\'t regret that. I wish it had been another way."



"You absolute, fucking impossible bastard!" Linda shrieked, rising from her chair and advancing on him. Deontic\'s hand fluttered to her mouth, as she stared in horror, and even Matt looked up from his game. "You are a small man! A small man with small man syndrome! You evil, little..." She didn\'t finish verbally. Her hand rose and she slapped Mello hard across the face. He made no move to stop her. Linda stood, marooned in front of him, her temper dissipated with the strike. She took a sharp intake of breath and stared at him.



"Do you feel better for that?" Mello asked, softly. His only movement was a vague gesture towards Matt and both women looked at the redhead. He hadn\'t moved. He was just watching Mello with his fingers still on the buttons of his game. Mello brought their attention back to himself. "Do you feel better for hitting me?"



Linda shrugged. "It\'s a start."



"Good." Mello smiled faintly. Her handprint was starkly red against his left cheek, fading where it touched his scar. "What is Lamond waiting to hear from my lips?"



"How about \'sorry\'?" Linda hissed, moving to make drinks, just to put some distance between herself and Mello. "How about, \'Lamond, you were no threat to me, being so far below me in the rankings, but I made your life Hell anyway because I have this streak of pure evil in me.\'"



Mello nodded. "And that would do it?"



"Mello." Deontic coughed and her voice returned more strongly. "Linda\'s angry. Lamond\'s a genius. She\'s not going to believe things like that coming from your mouth. Go in with the truth. At least, what I think was the truth. It wasn\'t just you. It was the system. It was depressingly easy to dehumanise all of us in there. We were all fighting isolationist wars. You were just better at it than most." She watched Mello warily, nervously, and beside her Matt resumed his rapid clicking on the device in his hands. "What do you know about anorexia?"



"I researched it on the way here, though, of necessity, it had to be via the internet. I know enough to realise that it\'s not about dieting. Not in the ordinary sense. It\'s a self-destructive rebellion against entrapment."



Deontic shook her head. "You\'re over-reaching. It\'s about control, pure and simple. She lost all expression of control in Wammy\'s House. She was taken to this strange environment and placed into a war that she couldn\'t win. She went from the most brilliant mind, in her previous orphanage, to being in the bottom tier here, yet was subject to the same pressures that we all were. She could see that she was a pawn in the system and that she\'d never make to be the queen."



Mello flashed a smile. "An analogy which would have worked even more amusingly if it hadn\'t been Near who won."



"I doubt any of us actually won, Mello."



"True."



Linda placed a mug of tea down in front of Deontic and glared at Matt. "Do you want a cup of tea, Matt?"



Mello replied. "Yes, he\'ll have one. Two sugars. If you haven\'t got hot chocolate, I\'ll have coffee and whatever Lamond drinks."



"Water." Deontic supplied. "Lamond drinks water. Mello, have you grasped the condition? She couldn\'t control anything, but she could control what entered her body. Look at the media, look at what we\'ve given as the pinacles of beauty. Size zero models." She spat out the last as if it was the most heinous concept that her mind could conceive. Emotion was so rare in Deontic\'s expressions that even Matt looked up. "She wins a victory with every pound shed from her body. It\'s a victory that she can control. She can knock herself out and not get any higher in the ranks. A position that I know we can all identify with, but at least we all had a substantial number of people beneath us." She glanced at Linda. "You were, what, tenth? Linda was beating Salvo and Chrissie!"



"And Century, Lamond and Mairoo." Linda added quickly. "In fact, half the time I was beating Fenian as well, but the bastard just pipped me on the day that it mattered."



"But the point here is that Lamond was only beating Mairoo and sometimes not even him. And God! Lamond tried hard. She really tried hard! Her position was not through want of trying. The woman has an IQ somewhere in the 180s, if not the 190s, she won\'t tell us, but a few things have us deducing that. She is that intelligent and yet was made to feel stupid. Stupid, in a system where losing was incomprehensible." Deontic\'s fists were clenched on the table. Her paper frozen between them halfway through its transformation into something else. "She stopped seeing that she had a brilliant mind. Something inside her snapped and she started paying attention to the other thing that was said about her. She\'s beautiful. She could be a model. Those were victories she could control. She didn\'t need to diet, but every pound shed was a victory. Yes, I am quoting her. Every pound shed was a victory. People complimented her. People told her that she was looking well. A teenage girl starved of praise, grasping for control of her life, got told by us lot that her unnecessary diet resulted in her looking well." Deontic shook her head and suddenly thrust the paper away from her. The outburst was over and they were all staring at her.



"Then you," Linda spat into the loaded silence, "told her that she was ugly."



Mello bowed his head. "I\'ll take that water up to her now. May I just go up?"





IV



Lamond was sitting up on the bed when Mello entered. She had been warned by Deontic and so had her make-up on. She sat with as much poise as she could muster amongst the cushions. She smiled at him. "What have us lesser mortals done to deserve a visitation from the gods?"



"Hello." Mello leaned in to kiss her. "Claire."



Lamond\'s eyes widened. "Why would you call me that?"



"Because it\'s your name." Mello sat on the edge of the bed. "For the record, I\'m Mihael Keehl-Jeevas. I was born plain, old Mihael Ezra Keehl, in Gorskica, which is a small village in Krapina-Zagorje. That was in Yugoslavia, but now it\'s in Croatia. My whole family were massacred during the Domovinski Rat. I still feel guilty about surviving. My birthday is December 13th, 1989. I married the love of my life on August 14th, 2010, in a private chapel without even a priest present, because neither of us seriously believed that anyone would bless our union." He met Lamond\'s eyes and smiled. "You\'ve actually got a detail in there that even Matt doesn\'t know. I never told him the name of the village in which I was born."



"Why are you telling me all of this?" Lamond stared. "Why would you even trust me with this?"



Mello nodded. "Fair question. I\'m telling you because, well, several reasons. The first is that I want you to see that I\'m a human being. I was born and I\'m somehow still living. Plus there\'s power in your hands. We spent a lot of our childhood trying to deduce details about each other, because we were taught how dangerous those details were. Each nugget was like a weapon in our hands. It could be used to destroy any competitors to our high and mighty thrones. They were right. I\'d have been fucked if Linda had known all of that, when Kira\'s officers came knocking."



Lamond sighed. "Linda thought that she was helping you. You were a missing child. She had no way of knowing that the police officers were working for Kira. She thought she was throwing a lifeline out of Wammy\'s House to you."



"Yes." Mello smiled. "That is her story."



"Which I believe." Lamond countered. "She\'s bitter now, but then, she cared."



"About me?"



Lamond waivered. "Maybe even you."



There was a short silence, then Mello leaned forward and picked up the mobile \'phone from the bedside cabinet. "Is this yours?"

Lamond made a grab for it, but her reflexes were very slow and dizziness struck her fast to the bed. "It\'s ok, I\'m not going through your messages." Mello strode to the window, then used it to take a photograph of himself. He checked it, deleted and repeated the process another three times before he captured one that satisfied him. He returned to the bed and handed the \'phone to Lamond. "There you go. You have my picture and my real name. That\'s enough to have had me killed under Kira. It\'s probably enough to make my life extremely problematic now."



Lamond\'s breathing was laboured. She sat very still against the cushions, clutching her \'phone to her. It was a while before she could reply. "You have no reason to trust me on this."



"True." Mello conceded. "But then again, maybe I never had any reason to see you as my enemy. Claire, you were a threat. You were that important. I was fourteen, I saw you as a threat for reasons that I couldn\'t rationalise at the time, but I can now. You were the most beautiful girl I ever saw. You know what? If I\'d been straight, I\'d have asked you out. You fascinated me. I watched you and thought I fancied you, but it was all very confusing. Matt had already stated categorically that he was gay, but I refused to believe that I could be too. It was in trying to work out if I fancied you that I realised I was comparing you to Matt. For a terrifying moment in time, the thought passed through my head that I was gay. I blamed you, because I wanted to fancy you and I couldn\'t. Truth is, I wanted to be you."



Lamond laughed. "You only just worked that out, Mello?"



"You knew?"



"Not at the time." Lamond smiled, her whole face creasing with the effort. "But I\'ve studied beauty."



"So did I. I studied how you put your make-up on. I studied how you shaped your eyebrows. I saw you once showing Nathalie how to apply nail varnish so that it went on smoothly and didn\'t chip. I might have looked like I was reading a book, but I was secretly learning too. When you, Linda and Chrissie disappeared once from the common room, then came back with lipstick on, outlined and perfect, I spent ages trying to see how you\'d done it differently. All the time trying to tell myself that I was doing it as an academic study. All knowledge is knowledge. It might come up in a case one day." Mello gave a half-shrug. "You wouldn\'t believe my capacity to lie to myself."



Lamond laughed, but it was without mirth. "You\'re a trannsexual, Mello?"



"No." Mello laughed properly. "And I don\'t even think I\'m lying to myself anymore. I\'m definitely not a trannsexual. Shockingly, I\'m all man under these clothes. But inside? I don\'t think I always am. Let\'s just say that I\'m in touch with my anima."



Lamond reached up with an emaciated arm. Her bones were clearly discernable beneath sagging skin, as she stroked Mello\'s arm. "Does your male body disgust you sometimes?"



"No." Mello smiled at her. "I\'m quite partial to a male body and I like my own."



"So some days it feels like the right body and some days it doesn\'t?"



Mello blinked. "You\'re perceptive."



"Look into bigender. It might have some revelations for you." Lamond\'s hand rose to Mello\'s shoulder before falling weakly back to her stomach. "You always did look like a girl." She smiled, staring at him through lidded, heavily lined eyes. "Do you still want me to teach you about make-up?"



"When you\'re stronger. Yes. I would like that very much."



"Ok."





V



"You did it to her too, Matt." Linda raged around the kitchen, tidying and wiping down surfaces to try and dissipate some nervous energy. "You\'re doing it now. Sometimes I think you\'re the only person still carrying on the old war. People can be standing right next to you and they don\'t exist. You don\'t just ignore them. You deny their whole existence." She turned to glare at him, but Matt was still wordlessly playing his game and Deontic was folding paper. Deontic shook, but Matt could have been alone in the room. "Matt, you sobbed in my arms. You broke down so badly. It\'s like I see glimpses of what you must be like. That meeting. I saw a real person being nervous. The infirmary. I saw hints of humour. It\'s like seeing someone fading in and out of view. The stripes. My eyes want to slide off you." Linda breathed her exasperation. "You\'re doing it now! You\'re making me feel insignificant. I\'m talking to you. You make me feel stupid and worthless. Why don\'t I exist for you? After everything? This is what you did to Lamond too. You made her feel this big." Her forefinger and thumb measured out no distance at all. "We might as well be invisible. We might as well all be ghosts."



Matt paused his game. The movements were slow and the sounds minute, but they sounded like thunder in that room. He raised his head and fixed his gaze on Linda. "Why is my opinion so important?"



Linda gasped. Suddenly in the spotlight, she shrank. "It\'s not. But..."



"It is. Acknowledgement by me dictates your very existence." Matt wore a faint smile. Around the table, Deontic bowed right over her origami. Her fingers speeding up as if desperate to create another paper lily.



"No, it doesn\'t!" Linda swallowed. "You\'re just an inconsiderate, cold bastard. Your acknowledgement means nothing in the wider context." She watched Matt\'s smile briefly grow before he moved to start his game again. "But!" Linda spat. "You are another human being. Just one person denying your existence takes on a meaning greater than the sum of that person\'s individuality. It\'s not that you personally matter, it\'s bigger than that. It raises questions. It makes you ask how could someone ignore you. How could someone deny that I\'m real? It eats inside. It makes you question your own reality. It destroys your self-esteem."



"And makes you want to leave me alone."



"Yes!" Linda snapped. "Then what happens when you get into trouble and have no-one watching your back? You had a drug addiction and went through cold turkey in Wammy\'s House, Matt. One of us could have helped you." Matt just watched her, not saying a word. "But this is going so far off the point. The point being that even now you perpetuate this behaviour, even seeing what it did to Lamond. It must seem so funny to you, hiding away under your goggles. Very funny, ha ha. But you have no idea what it\'s like to be ignored to that extent. To you, it\'s just a weapon that you can wield and fuck everyone else."



Matt gave no reaction at all. He sat watching her, that faint smile still on his lips. "And you were 10th."



Deontic nodded. "That confirms it. Linda, he knows. He knows very well. How do you think he learned to do it?"



Now Matt shifted. His head turned to sharply look at his one time rival, the girl who had tried time and again for the third place in the institution\'s rankings. He said nothing, but took a cigarette out of the packet in his pocket and slid it between his lips. Linda spoke harshly, "Do not smoke that in here." She followed Matt\'s glance towards the ashtray, filled with Lamond\'s disgarded cigarette butts. "Go outside."



Matt shrugged, took his game and left through the front door.





VI



Lamond\'s hands were black. The rest of her skin had a yellowish hue, as if she was jaundiced or her cigarettes had stained more than her fingers. Her top of her chest, with its mounds and shadowed valleys of prominent bones beneath, was covered in a soft, downy layer of hair. Her arms too had this hair, while her chin and upper lip were peppered with minute scabs, consistent with where hair might grow. Mello noticed all of this as Lamond sat in the daylight to talk him through the contents of her cosmetic case. The black below her eyes was not eye-liner. It was bruised and slightly pitted, as if she hadn\'t slept in an age. A real bruise engulfed most of her thin bicep, a variety of colours encapsulated in its spread, but most of the centre was a sickly yellowish-gray. He didn\'t want to tell her that her breath stunk.



She peered at him with an expert\'s evaluation. "What have you done to your eyebrows?"



"I got carried away." Mello grinned. "But they were really fine and blond to start with."



"May I?" She raised a trembling hand to push back his fringe. "Ah, I see. You\'ve damaged the hair foicles over on the left side."



"Yes."



"You might have done the best thing then. You don\'t look strange with no eyebrows, though we could draw some on." Lamond smiled encouragement. "With enough concealer, the face is a blank canvas. We can be whoever we want to be. We just draw on a mask." She stared long and hard at his scar. "What effect were you going for?"



Mello shrugged. "Understated?"



"That\'s surprising." Lamond replied. "There\'s never been anything understated about you."



"Maybe emphasise my eyes? I have nice eyes."



"You have a nice face full stop. Beautiful bone structure. Quite delicate in fact. I can certainly reduce the sight of your burn. I could make it disappear, but the make-up would be so thick that it would look very obvious in a different way." Her hand fell again. She wasn\'t strong enough to do her magic today. "But another time."



Mello nodded. "Yes." This close, he held her gaze. "When was the last time you ate anything, Claire?"



Lamond shook her head. "Didn\'t Deontic prime you? Wrong question, honey."



"Deontic is looking after you." Mello commented, mildly. "Did you know that 87% of the people who look after anorexics end up having issues themselves? Because the anorexic views anyone who is eating normally as being a fat slob, then the carers become self-conscious about eating. It\'s not anorexia, but it is bordering on malnutrition. That causes health problems, as you well know. Lack of energy. Decreased efficiency of mental faculties. Plus the fact that all of your instinct says to feed the person in your care. You are fighting against the current of all that seems sensible and right, because you cannot pass that line which takes control from the anorexic."



Lamond nodded, turning her gaze to the window. "I feel faint."



Mello picked her up in his arms. She was so light that he initially over-compensated and had to grip her tightly to stop her falling. He laid her on the bed again and, as his fingers released her, saw the bruises from their tips already forming. He hadn\'t held her that tightly. Guilt pricked, but Lamond didn\'t even acknowledge the pain. "If I force-fed you now, what would happen?"



Lamond\'s eyes opened wide. "What?"



"I\'m interested." He watched the fear becoming suppressed under that iron Wammy\'s House calm that had been driven into them all. "Ok. I\'m not going to. You\'d eat it, if you had no choice in the matter, then throw it up later. The stomach acids forced through your mouth would erode your teeth. Your stomach would become torn even further. The upshot would be more damage than not having eaten in the first place." He reached into his pocket and took out a chocolate bar. "Plus you wouldn\'t trust me again." He held up the chocolate. "I know about food, by the way. It just came out differently in me. I\'ve comfort eaten chocolate for years."



"You must have a high metabolism."



"Yeah." Mello stared at the chocolate. "It\'s amazing how contagious it is, that notion about not eating. The blarb I read was right. It does feel awkward eating in front of an anorexic. It\'s not even the sense of cruelty. It\'s wondering what you\'re thinking. Your eyes send my eyes inward. I\'ve just wondered if I look fat."



Lamond laughed. "Eat your chocolate, Mello." Though her breath was laboured, she reached for her cigarettes and lit one. "Sorry, do you mind me smoking around you? I know it\'s killing me." Mello started to stare at her with incredulity, but saw her smirk. "Eat your chocolate, Mello."



"Only if you call me Mihael."



"We all have our addictions." Lamond nodded. "Mihael." She stared blankly at him. "It is an addiction, you know. I know it is. The first thing I do when I wake in the morning is get on the scales to see if I\'ve lost weight in my sleep. Then I have a bath, in the hope that all that dead flesh and crap, that accumulates on your skin overnight, might somehow weigh a pound. Laxatives."



Mello leaned in suddenly and kissed her lips. "Lamond, you\'re dying."



"I know."



Mello blinked. "You\'re very calm about it."



"Not inside. But I find it so hard to get emotional these days. Emotions take a lot of energy. It\'s possibly how you\'re burning off all that chocolate." Lamond smiled. "How could you have been jealous of me, silly boy?"



Mello shook his head. "You don\'t know how beautiful you were. Your hair..." He stopped, looking at it now. Her hair had lost its shine. It looked lank and thin. "You were so beautiful, Claire. I targetted you because you were beautiful. What do you see in the mirror these days?"



"Ugliness."



"Fat."



"Yes." Lamond closed her eyes, her energy levels plummeting. "Don\'t say it. I know. But we are looking with different eyes."



"Are you suicidal?"



"I don\'t want to die." Lamond replied, matter-of-factly. Her cigarette rose briefly to her mouth, before floating down dangerously close to the quilt cover, trapped between two fingers that seemed too weak to hold it. "Living would be nice."



Mello broke chocolate between his fingers, letting it collect in shards and little squares on the cushion between himself and Lamond. "From what Deontic was telling me, it\'s reached that point. There\'s no leeway anymore. You either have to eat something or you are going to die. You can put it off for an hour, but that will turn into a day. It\'s gone beyond that. In fact, it\'s gone beyond eating. It\'s the infirmary or it\'s death." He watched Lamond flinch and he took the cigarette from her, holding it to her lips so that she could take a drag. "It\'s that stark, Claire."



"Why are you trying to humanise us?"



"Because we are human." Mello met her eyes as she opened them. "I\'m Mihael and you\'re Claire. We got fucked up badly by things outside our control and now we have to deal with the consequences. You\'re not alone. I doubt that any of us are unscathed. But your situation is at crisis point. Though my actions as a child, I contributed to that. Let me make amends now by reaching into your abyss and helping you get back onto your feet."



Lamond laughed humourlessly. "You think it\'s that easy."



"Have a piece of chocolate."



"What?" She stared at him.



Mello spoke calmly, precisely, "Have a piece of chocolate to get the strength to go downstairs. Use that energy to tell Deontic, no, to tell Pek Wan that you are ready to go to the infirmary now. Use the chocolate to take control of your life." He took the smouldering remains of the cigarette and crushed it into the ashtray. He rose from the bed. "I\'ll not watch you. Whether you do or not is your choice. I\'ll never know if you\'ve just hidden it under a cushion to throw away when I\'ve gone." He moved to the window and stared out of it. There was a serene world out there. He wondered if he would ever be part of it. He noticed Matt sitting back in the car, smoke rising from the slightly opened window. He was too much in the shade for Mello to see what he was doing, but Mello knew anyway that he\'d be playing on his Nintendo DS. There was a slight shuffling sound on the bed behind him. Mello did not look around.



"Claire Kouropoulos." Lamond commented suddenly. "I\'ll be twenty-one this year."



"Soon?"



"End of September."



Mello nodded. That was several months away. He still didn\'t turn around, as he replied. "If you\'d have me, I\'d like to take you out somewhere on or around your birthday. Mark it in some way."



"You\'re asking me out?"



Mello laughed. "Not quite. Not in that way. But let\'s call it homage to a parallel universe, where I wasn\'t gay and I did ask you out."



"You\'re assuming that I\'d have said yes."



"Lamond, I was fourteen. It would have been more hope than expectation." Mello watched his husband throw a cigarette butt out of the window and mentally resolved to pick it up on the way out. "Mind you, that hasn\'t changed. It\'s more hope now. Will you let me take you out for your twenty-first?"



She sniffed. "That would be nice. Yes." More shuffling on the bed. "Until you said at the meeting, I didn\'t know you\'re a Slav. I know the Balkans well. I\'m Greek."



Mello nodded. "That figures. They produced Helen too." He smiled at the window. "It seems that Greece has a long history of sending beautiful women into the world."



"Much good it did her too." Lamond shifted on the bed. Her feet hitting the carpet caused Mello to finally turn around. She was clutching the quilt with both hand, trying to steady herself as she sat without support. The chocolate was gone. "Mihael, thank you."



"You\'re welcome." Mello frowned, wondering where this was leading. "I\'m sorry. For when we were children and I treated you so appallingly. I\'m sorry."



Lamond flashed a wan smile. "You have absolution."



"That\'s not why I came, but thank you for it."



"You got it anyway." She rose slowly to her feet, hands grasping for the bedside cabinet. It was painful to watch, her movements gradual, excruciatingly so. She lifted her handbag onto the bed and knocked her \'phone and cigarettes into it. She sat down again to apply lipstick with a trembling hand. It fell once from her fingers, but Mello let her do it. Only as she stood again did he dash forward to offer a crooked arm. Lamond linked her arm through it. "Thank you." She leaned heavily on him for support, as they made their way downstairs.





VII



Deontic knocked on the car\'s window, though she was certain that Matt had seen her coming. She would have been highly surprised if he hadn\'t. Once she\'d knocked, Matt paused his game and opened the window. He didn\'t look at her. Deontic took a deep breath, looking across the fields, where the snow lay picked over by birds. "She meant you to come back."



"I\'m good out here."



"Mail." Deontic began, but Linda rushed out of the opened door behind her and called her name. Deontic looked back. "What?"



"Get your car, Lamond\'s going in!" Linda grinned in excitement and relief, disappearing back into the house.



Deontic, however, felt a pang of resentment. There was relief too, but a dark undercurrent of disappointment ran through it. All those hours of conversations, playing the game, and all it took was for the golden boy to work his charm. She nodded and ran her hand over her mouth. Only then did she realise that Matt was watching her. He flashed a little smile and she could have slapped him. "Good news." She muttered, retracing her steps back into the house. Deontic had plastered on a smile by the time she saw them. Mello leaning against the table, smiling at her over the top of Lamond\'s head. Linda helping their friend put on her coat. "You\'re going in?"



"Yes."



"Lamond, I\'m so proud of you." Deontic rushed to grab her coat too. "Mello, Matt\'s outside in the car."



Mello nodded. "I saw." He pushed himself off the edge of the table and lightly patted Lamond\'s shoulder. "We\'ve done it again. All come together, when one of us needs it to happen. Turns out we might all be human in the end. Human and nice people."



"Nice." Linda began.



Lamond interupted. "Yes, Mihael. Maybe it\'s true." Both of her friends stared at her, their gaze drawn in morbid fascination towards Mello. "Oh, Mihael and I have put the words to rights up there. Pek Wan, don\'t be angry." Lamond raised a frail arm towards Deontic. She rushed to hold her hand, then to raise Lamond from the chair to her feet. "I always had a weakness for cute men."



Deontic\'s lips tightened into pale strips. It was Linda who replied. "So we\'re all using our real names now? How sweet."



Mello grinned. "We\'ve been exploring how dehumanisation contributes to the ability of us all not to look past the behaviour to the wounded inner child. Have you got a wounded inner child, Sharon?"



"How the fuck do you know my real name?"



Mello just grinned. Lamond waved a hand. "Don\'t fight, children." She was helped out into the hallway by Deontic, with Linda rushing to collect their bags. Mello followed, switching off lights and closing the door. "Are you following on, Mihael?"



"No, babe, I\'m going home. But I\'ll be in touch." Mello leaned in to give her a quick kiss, before darting towards Matt\'s car. He swooped down to pick up five cigarette butts, before waving and leaping into the passenger seat. A moment later, the car purred into life and Matt waved, almost as an afterthought, out of the window.



Lamond smiled. "That was nice of him to come."





VIII



Claire Kouropoulos, also known as Lamond, died at 20 past 3 the following morning, in the infirmary of Wammy\'s House. The cause of death was heart and organ failure. She was twenty years old.