Just The Wind

Chapter Nine

A/N: And from here in it gets a little dark, be warned.

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Matt

It was Near. Roger didn’t want to talk about Mello and I or a prank we had played. No, he wanted me to go check on Near. 

Fuck.

Roger had apparently heard noises coming from the sheep’s room, and was worried because Near was the perfect, silent student.

Maybe Near was getting beaten up. That would solve a lot of my problems, especially regarding Mello.

I rapped on Near’s door. “You in there?” I called. Silence. Silence was not good. “Near, I’m coming in.” Not a word, but- a whimper? Jesus. Learn how to cope with rejection! I barged in.

I did not expect to see what I did.

Near was crumpled in the centre of the room, toys strewn everywhere. His bed was broken. So was his desk. Papers and books were ripped and thrown like confetti. The window had exploded into shards of glass.

This on its own would have been worrying enough, if not for the blood.

It seemed more like than Near had in his little body. It was everywhere. It soaked from a central point on his chest, and was all over the desk, bed, papers, walls.

The walls.

Written in blood on the walls in blood was just one word.

LOSER.

All this I saw in a second, saw the path he must have taken when the attackers came in through the window they broke - over to his bed, taking the knife in his hand from under his pillow, trying desperately to fend them off. As they came over his bed he would have run to his desk, trying to throw it at the attackers, only to have it broken. Then he was stabbed and left like a broken snowflake on the ground as the attackers took a finger and wrote on his wall in his own blood that one, incriminating word.

The room was as red as he had been white, the colour strikingly strange in the snow-white void that was Near’s domain.

“Near!” I yelled. I ran through the doorway, glass crunching under my boots as the stench of blood made me almost vomit. I pulled his limp body up into my arms. He was much heavier than his lithe frame would have me believe. He was still warm.

His toes dragged along the ground as I raced out into the hall, calling out for Roger, Mello, Linda, anybody. Roger found us, took Near’s body from my arms, took him away, let me collapse to my knees as the warm arms of Mello folded around me.