A/N: Hola. Welcome to the third story in this set of four. This is a companion to Anomaly (Near) and Fallen (Mello) and it will follow Matt. Now all I have left is to start on L's, which will probably be the one to give me the most problems. On a slightly different - but still relevant - note, I think I'm finally rid of my writer's block! Anyway, a little about this. Yes, Matt swears. A lot. Actually, I love writing Matt like this because he's kind of in your face and he's got this screw the world attitude that just makes him a lot of fun. He's pretty uninhibited beyond all his issues because he just doesn't care. He's very world-weary. And yes, he is very young right now, but he's still that kind of rough, street-wise kid. I think this is actually going to be my favourite out of these because with Matt I can just make the story raw and I like doing that. Ok, enough rambling. Shutting up now. On with the chapter.

Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note.

Lost - (adj.) Having gone astray or missed the way. Destroyed or ruined. Distracted; distraught; desperate; hopeless.

Matt sat in the middle of his bed, hugging his knees to his chest and resting his chin atop them as he stared blankly at the wall. He hadn't unpacked yet because surely there was no need. He was certain they would just ship him off to some freak family or another orphanage within the next month. In silence he brought one hand up to trace the bruise around his eye. It had faded some, but it wasn't gone yet by any means. Quietly he let his gaze trail over to the mirror on the back of the door. He didn't feel like wondering right now. It was all he could do, most of the time, but he just didn't feel like it at the moment. Actually, he didn't feel like doing much of anything at the moment.

He still wasn't quite sure what had happened. Four days ago the orphanage he'd been in told him he was going to be adopted by someone named Quillsh Wammy from a small town just outside of London, England. The first thing that confused Matt was that he was being adopted by someone from England. But that became the least of his worries when he arrived at this place. Quillsh Wammy was the name he'd been given as that of his new adoptive father, and now here he sat in a high-risk wing of another orphanage. Wammy's House for Gifted Orphans. Matt was convinced there had been some sort of mistake. He wasn't gifted in any sense of the word. In fact, he considered himself to be below average. Far below.

But his confusion didn't end there. After he got past the name of the place there was the whole alias business. He had been assigned the name Matt. He didn't understand it in the least, but quite frankly he didn't care. They could call him whatever the hell they wanted to as long as they fed him, put a roof over his head, and didn't hurt him. One other thing that confused him was that he had yet to meet anyone named Quillsh Wammy. He had been sceptical and a bit scared when he was told he was to be adopted by someone from England. With his track record he had been, and was still, sure that this was going to be a disaster. But if things went bad here, he wasn't sure what he'd do. It was different in America. He'd grown up there. He knew the culture and he knew how things worked. About all he had going for him here was that he spoke the language and even then British English was strange to him. He'd been abandoned plenty of times back in the U.S. and he'd made it ok because he knew the way things worked in that country. He didn't know what he would do if he was dumped here. Or if he had to run again, he reminded himself, passing his fingers once more over the remainders of a black eye.

His last family had been the worst so far, and that was saying something. It had been the only time he had run. Before he had always stayed put even if they hurt him, because being part of a family, even a dysfunctional one, was better than living in an orphanage. Quietly he gazed at the mirror, taking in his auburn hair, his shocking green eyes, his light freckles, his long-limbed, lanky build, and wondering. Did he have his mother's eyes, or her mouth, or her freckles? Did he have his father's hair, his build, his nose? He didn't know. Chances were he would never know. Sometimes he wondered why his parents had done what they had done. Or perhaps it had been solely his mother's decision. She had been young, and that was all he had besides her name and the name of the place she had left him. As far as anyone could guess he had been born in Reno-Sparks, Nevada.

"'City of Promise' my ass," he muttered under his breath.

All he knew of his mother was her name, that she had been sixteen when he was born, and that she had left him at a police station. He had no pictures of either parent, no letter left for him to explain why he had been abandoned, no birth certificate even. Actually, he didn't know anything about his father. No name, no age, nothing. He wasn't even sure if his mother had used her real name when she turned him over. And from there things had only gotten worse. He supposed he should be thankful his mother hadn't killed him out of fear like teen mothers sometimes did, but he often found himself thinking it would have been better for all involved if she had. He knew he shouldn't think that way, but he couldn't help it. It wasn't healthy, but he didn't care. He just wanted the chaos to stop and death would do that. He had come close after he had run from his last family. He'd been sick at the time and it had been cold. It had taken the better part of a week for them to find him and in that time he had only eaten anything close to a decent meal twice and had barely managed to keep from freezing. Street smarts were a poor match for late December temperatures. From what they had told him, Wammy had contacted the next to last orphanage he had been in just days after he had been taken in by his last family and had contacted that last orphanage as soon as he was found, but it had taken them two weeks to get him healthy enough that travel was a possibility. He was still sick now, but not like he had been. At least now he wasn't convinced he was going to die, though perhaps it would have been better that way. He still didn't see how he'd been let into the country with the condition he was in. He was pretty sure they usually tried to keep out people who had the potential to start a plague. Really he wasn't that sick, but after the seemingly endless flight over here he certainly felt like it.

And finally, after the whirlwind rush of cities and transits and airports and oceans and planes and subways and taxi cabs and busses and luggage and escorts and customs and emigration and immigration and undergrounds and foreign places and foreign people and being foreign and insanity that had that been the last two days, here he sat in some strange orphanage in a little town called Thurrock just down the Thames from London freaking England. He felt like hell at the moment, which was just so revoltingly fitting since he looked it too, all pale and covered in bruises as he was. He could feel the worry gnawing at the edges of his mind, making his stomach turn so that he felt nauseous. He had tried so hard on the way here to tell himself that things were going to get better, and for a short while he had even almost believed it, but now that he was here he wasn't so sure. But he was still ill and injured, so the best thing to do would be just sit tight. He would take the next few days to calmly assess the situation and then he would act accordingly. With that decision made he flopped over on his side and curled up, content to sleep. After all, the last couple of days had been the very definition of chaos.