Near or Far

SPOILERS: All manga, all anime, L's true name, Another Note, Law and Right, Truth and Justice, Motive and Mayhem, Hell and Healing.

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Near or Far

Chapter 5: Returned

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Three weeks had passed, and after casting a wide net, L had come up empty. Every known associate of Matt that they could track down hadn't seen or heard from him, at least so far as they were aware. They were, of course, dealing with career criminals, but they had enough on most of them to get them talking if they thought it would come with continued immunity.

But no one knew anything, not even among the contacts Mello had dug up from their less legitimate days.

It looked as if they had hit a dead end with contacts, so they began looking into every warehouse and flat that Matt was even remotely associated with, looking for him.

Mello was praying daily, talking with his priest, worrying himself senseless. Near was gone, missing, and Matt had taken him. He didn't know why, or if Near was still alive, or Matt, for that matter. But he knew why L and Light were keeping him so close -- because he was next.

Once Near was permanently out of the picture, it only made sense that Matt would come after Mello. Still, he wasn't afraid. He was waiting, really, and left himself wide open whenever he had the opportunity. He had given up.

Mello walked slowly in the cold, hands stuffed into his pockets, head lowered as he kept his gaze on the toes of his boots. He was unarmed, silent, alone. Exposed.

The nudge in the small of his back didn't surprise Mello, but the voice certainly did.

"You're coming with me now, Mello," the voice was low and soft, almost a purr. It was also vaguely feminine -- and most definitely not Matt's.

Mello froze for a moment, turning his head and looking over his shoulder, into dark green eyes. "Yeah," he replied quietly. "I s'pose I am."

A lazy smile spread across pale lips. "Let's make a quick stop in the next building."

Mello nodded, and started walking again, heading into the indicated building, where he was stripped down and forced to change into clothes that were already waiting. Mello didn't argue, not even when all his jewelry was taken.

The only complaint he offered through the whole thing was a soft hiss of pain when his assailant used a pocket knife to make a cut on the back of his neck, then used a pair of tweezers to remove a small tracking device Mello had allowed to be implanted the last time he was at the orphanage.

All of his things were stuffed into a bag and hooked to the underside of a car that was parked nearby. Then Mello was led away, down the street and around a corner. There, he was put in the back of a black sedan and summarily handcuffed to the door.

The assailant settled behind the wheel and pulled away from the curb.

Mello looked down at his wrist quietly, at the way the handcuff settled around his wrist and reached out, tightening it a click. They were uncomfortable when they weren't snug, and he wasn't really inclined to bother trying to escape.

"Do you have M and N, too?" Mello asked softly.

"I do," the driver replied quietly. "But you won't be held with them."

Mello looked up, giving a soft sigh. "Well. It's not a bad decision."

The driver gave a soft hum. "You may call me Far."

"Far?" Mello asked, settling into the seat with a soft sigh. "What are you going to do with me, Far?"

That brought a smile to those pale lips. "I'm going to torture you," she replied lazily. "And I'm going to make them watch."

There was hardly any response at all on Mello's features. "I suspected as much. You understand that I've been through this all before."

"I'm not looking for information, and you're not the one I want to suffer. Your pain is merely a means to an end," she replied smoothly. "I've got no interest in trying to hurt you for the sake of hurting you."

"Can you tell me why you want to hurt them?" Mello asked, gazing into the rearview mirror. His eyes met with his captor's for a moment.

"Because they need to understand how it felt," she replied softly, returning her gaze to the road, making a turn. "My suffering was their responsibility. I'm going to make sure they understand that," she frowned.

Mello turned his gaze to his hand again, touching the scar tissue gently. "Will you allow me to have a rosary?"

There was a long silence before Far replied. "When the video feed is off," she agreed. "I'll get you one the next time I visit. I'm just dropping you off."

"All right," Mello replied, and a few moments later he shifted, falling asleep in the car. He wasn't sure how long they drove, but when he was shaken awake, he felt quite a bit refreshed.

"Come on, time to go in."

Mello rubbed his eyes with his free hand, giving a quiet sigh as the other was released. He got up and, with a gun to his back, he was led into a warehouse, through a steel hatch and down three flights of stairs. Once there, he was shown into a room, concrete on all walls, with a camera in the top corner. There were cans of food with an old-fashioned can opener, a case of water bottles, and three rolls of toilet paper. The only thing that resembled a toilet was a steel bucket.

The door slid closed behind Mello and was locked into place. He turned, gazing up at the camera for a long moment before going to the bed and lying down. He gave a heavy sigh and went back to sleep.

He wasn't entirely sure if he'd survive the captivity, but Mello was relaxed, and spent the next week resting, fairly resigned to his fate.

When Far returned, Mello was ready. Quietly, he obeyed the orders, letting her chain him to the wall. He was stripped to just underwear, and once he was restrained, Far pulled on a dark robe, pulled the hood over her head, and turned on the camera.

The burlap bag Far had brought into the room was lifted then, and Mello caught a glimpse of rusty brown stains on it. Frowning, Mello turned his gaze to her once more, steeling himself for the pain that was about to come. "You've been using that on someone else. Who?" he demanded.

His answer was the first strike, against his abdomen. It was strong enough to make him heave, and the pace quickly became frantic. The burlap hit him everywhere. Legs, arms, chest, sides, even his face was subject to the bruising, scraping burlap. Worse, the fabric was wet, left streaks of soap in its wake, soap that would dry onto his body, leave him itching.

Again and again, the burlap slammed into his body, until he finally did throw up, until a particularly low blow emptied his bladder. Until the humiliation and pain were so great, the sobs began rising from his lips. The pain was numbing, all-encompassing, and Mello was sure that his entire body would be bruised if Far left him alive long enough for them to bloom.

When the trembling began, that was when the change happened, when the anger rose up within him. "What do you want?!" he screamed, leaning away from the wall, twisting his arms behind him, making his shoulders ache. "What do you want?" he demanded, bearing his teeth and glaring at her. "You don't know what pain is, if you think this is going to destroy me! You don't know what I've done, what I've been through!"

The burlap dropped to the ground with a sick thud and Far stepped forward, pressing her lips to one of Mello's ears. "I know, Mihael Keehl, what you are." She chuckled then, drawing a letter opener from a pocket in the robe. She brought it forward, let the point tickle in the hollow of Mello's throat where Matt’s letter, then Near’s, had rested. "Slave," she hissed, and drove the blade into his throat, just a centimeter or so.

Mello jerked back, gasping as he hit the wall, his eyes wide -- and this time, truly filled with terror.

Far reached forward, yanking the letter opener free and dropped it into her pocket again. Only then did she release him, letting him collapse to the ground. She dropped his rosary onto his back and turned, striding from the room without another word. The door slammed behind her and the light on the camera went from green to red.

Mello was weak, gasping for breath, but he grabbed the rosary and pulled himself to the bed, collapsing onto his side. Blood was leaking from the wound in his neck, both down his flesh and into his windpipe, making every breath taste like death.

He closed his eyes and began to pray again.

Near lay naked on a bloodstained mattress. His gaze was blank as it remained on the ceiling. He was waiting, silently, for whatever would come. There was no concept of time with no windows, no noise from outside. Even the visits were irregular. All to disorient him, he knew, but he was unable to hold out against it.

Never before had he quite understood the pain of confinement, the suffering that it could put a person through, despite his time in prison both in L's headquarters and in Japanese prison. He understood now, with dozens of cuts littered across the most sensitive places on his body.

The door slid open and Near closed his eyes tightly, a shiver running through him. He moved, though it was little more than another tremble as Far approached. Her hands were soft as they slid over his face, down his shoulders.

The needle that she scraped across his chest with her hands was sharp, leaving a fiery burn in its wake. He let out a weak whimper, trying to pull away, instinct driving him to do so despite being resigned to the pain.

"Don't worry. It'll be over soon," she assured softly.

"How long has it been?" Near asked weakly, whimpering a little. He squirmed when she went towards his feet, though it didn't do him any good -- they were restrained in stocks, and so swollen he could barely move them anyway.

"Long enough. Very nearly long enough," Far promised. She stabbed the needle into the sole of Near's foot, smirking at the scream the boy let out, and left the needle in his flesh. "Behave yourself and you might not have your leg amputated," she said lazily.

"I've been good," Near insisted weakly, pulling at the handcuffs that bound his wrists to the headboard. "I've been good, please don't hurt me anymore."

"That," Far replied as she took out a syringe, "is not up to me, now is it?" she purred. "We'll see how clever your mentor really is." She jabbed the syringe into Near's thigh and pushed down the plunger.

The injection burned, and very quickly was accompanied with the sensation of a flame settled too close to his side. Near wasn't sure what was happening to him, but when unconsciousness came for him, he surrendered without question.

Later that afternoon, with Near still unconscious, Far removed the restraints from his body, removed the needle from the sole of his foot and lifted him up, placing him in a pure white comforter and wrapping him up in it. His breathing was shallow, his body temperature had dropped dramatically, and he was hovering on the knife's edge of death.

Far wrapped him, careful to keep the exterior of the comforter clean, and used a pair of black belts to bind the comforter closed. She picked him up then, and carried him off. He was small and light, after all, and she put him in the back of her car with the tinted windows, to drive away from his hiding place.

By the time she reached her destination, it was well past midnight, and Near looked very much like a corpse, though the poison she had given him would take a little while longer to kill him. She pulled him from the back of the car and settled him next to a dumpster. Once it was done, she drove away, off to see Matt.

The cold wasn't reaching Near. The comforter was warm, and the poison had him unconscious, never mind that his body was already so damaged that he could barely feel anything anyway.

The torture he'd been through had been a progressive thing. First, beatings with a burlap sack that had been filled with a few bars of soap. The same soap he was forced to wash with until the scent was ingrained into his consciousness.

That had been followed with a rattan stick, beating his back and chest, thighs and buttocks, and finally the soles of his feet. Then, a metal pipe had come across his soles until he was begging for mercy. He wouldn't be surprised if all the bones in his feet had been broken.

Blades came after that, with the burn of rubbing alcohol after them, cuts over the most sensitive flesh. The last thing he'd been forced to accept were the scrapes -- much less painful than everything else in the short term, but they contained histamine, the same thing that was used as the control sample in an allergy test. His scratches had become large welts, itching and burning, though he couldn't reach them.

And now he was laying unconscious in a comforter, waiting to be discovered.

Far had helped with that, at least, using a laptop to hack the security system and temporarily she programmed a camera to replay a few minutes of footage while she settled Near next to the dumpster. Once he was delivered, she turned off the external cameras on that side of the building.

Just seconds after Far drove away in her rental car, Aiber rounded the corner, gun drawn as he looked around the alley. Using his goggles, he took a slow look with night vision, infrared, and finally thermal. When it was clear that there was no threat in the immediate vicinity, he flicked the safety on and went to check out the heat source in the comforter.

Cool air slid across Near's face like a comforting old friend as it was exposed. His lips were already blue, his pale hair a muddy grey from all the dirt and his eyes were closed.

"I've found Near," Aiber sighed into the comm and gently lifted the bundle. "Come down to the medical wing. He... requires an examination."

The tone of Aiber's voice had Light reaching out to take L's hand gently, giving it a squeeze.

"We will meet you there," L replied weakly, getting up and tugging Light behind him, down to the medical wing.

When Aiber arrived and gently removed the comforter from Near's body, L turned away, pressing his face into Light's shoulder. It was only having L hiding against him that kept Light from turning away as well. Instead, he pulled L into a firm hug, swallowing heavily. "Is he?"

Aiber pressed his fingers to Near's neck, held them there for several long seconds before sighing sadly. "He's gone," he replied softly.

Light closed his eyes for a long moment, gently squeezing L. "I'll help you clean him up. Would you call doctor Kujo? I'd rather his autopsy be private, and we'll need to collect evidence," he sighed, pressing his face into L's hair as he opened his eyes.

"All right," Aiber agreed, giving a heavy sigh, retreating to the next room to make the call.

"I... will be upstairs," L said weakly. "I can't... watch this."

"I know," Light assured, kissing his hair again. "Go upstairs, have some hot cocoa, turn off all the monitors and let yourself cry for a while, all right? I'll need you to be strong for me when I'm ready to mourn him," he admitted.

L smiled sadly. "You're strong enough on your own, but I'll be there," he promised.

"When he's been cleaned up and autopsied, we'll say goodbye to him together," Light suggested, and kissed L's lips tenderly.

"Okay," L agreed, and pulled away. He looked one last time at Near's face -- the only place that was uninjured -- before turning away and heading upstairs.

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A/N: Please review? D= Also, very sorry for getting this chapter up a day late. I forgot my flash drive on campus and wasn't able to upload the chapter until I got back from classes today.