Watari Pt 1: L\'s Heirs

Matt drove, skirting the city, with its brightly coloured suburban houses to keep to the lesser roads to the North. They were heading towards the Zadar region, with its airport offering commercial flights, just to minimalise the reliance on Watari for as much of this mission as possible. Despite having memorised maps of the route, they kept encountering confusing junctions and it rankled with the redhead that he had to ask Mello to translate road-signs. It was also irritating that Mello was concentrating more on the laptop than on the scenery. This was his homeland, the country of his birth, and Matt had expected more interest in the places they passed by.

"Mell." Matt touched his lover's thigh. Mello lifted the headphones away from his ear. "Where now?"

"Left, I think." Eyes flashed in darting glances across the signs and houses. "We're heading east, so just take whatever takes us in the right direction."

"There's still time to go north." Matt replied, keeping his tone neutral. In truth, he wanted to see the precise area that had spawned Mihael Keehl, but that was many miles away to the north-west, practically at the Slovenia border. Mello just nodded, replaced his headphones and stared again at the monitor. Matt grit his teeth, then lit a cigarette. What did a nod mean? Yes, I know that there's time? Yes, go north? His mind-reading capacity was failing him. In fact, Mello was being difficult to read generally, mixed messages defying all precedents in his behaviour. Normally, after a successful venture, especially one as dramatic as they had just pulled off in rescuing the child genius, Luka Martinovic, and despatching him to the dubious safety of The Wammy House, Mello should be smug and all fire. Animated with residual nervous energy, all of that suppressed emotion, which had been housed under icy calculation, should now be erupting over both of them. Often, Matt would be being grabbed and pawed, violently entered. Right now, Mello was acting like they were still knee deep in the shit.

Before them, the landscape was changing. Mountains rising out of a distant twinkling of the Adriatic Sea. Mist floating down to engulf the civilisation on their lower slopes. The roads were becoming narrower, lined with twisted trees and lush grass. Matt glanced wistfully into his rearview mirror at the city bypassed. It had, at least, looked vibrant. Mello finally spoke. "They think we went in the opposite direction. There's border controls in Bosnia and Herzegovina, though one branch was checking out Gruda. So let's not go west."

"Any word about Zadar?"

"Not a dickie bird." He held the headphones in his hands, staring down at them.

"'kay." They could no longer see the ocean, the roads opening up slightly but only so that they wouldn't have to navigate around on-coming traffic. Matt had to go down a gear to persuade their car to climb the increasingly steep gradient. "Any word about the Krapina-Zagorje region?"

Mello placed the laptop on the floor beneath his feet, draping the headphones over the still erect monitor. He bit into his chocolate, staring out of the window. "I want to go home." Then he stopped. Finally now there was evidence of the war which had raged through this country. A building stood shattered, its walls splattered with bullet-holes and its roof caved in. Nature was in the process of reclaiming it, tall grasses spilled into the lower rooms, weeds cascading from the windows and ledges. Graves lined the roadside, oval pictures of the slain gazing back accusingly. None of them looked any older than Mello and Matt. Goosebumps pricked their skin because, despite the afternoon sunlight and the cloudless blue skies, the area felt haunted.

"You'd better get that map out then, because I don't know how to get to the north from here. I remember mountains."

"I meant Hampshire." For the first time in months, Mello sounded close to tears. His breakdown, last year, had succeeded in smoothing some of the edges of the wild, resentful creature that Matt had watched disintegrating; however, the aftermath had seen a reassertion of his persona. Mello was still wild, still combustible, still passionate in all of his emotions, still unpredictable, still seeming to live life on the extremities of mental, physical and emotional endurance; but softer too. The uninitiated might have to search in vain to see it, but Matt knew. It was like a fracture point on his lover's mind, which occasionally broke, not into madness, but despair. It had always been there, only now Mello let him see it. It was more rare these days to glimpse it, but it happened.

"You ok, Mihael?"

"Yes." They passed a house stripped to its brickwork. The sockets, where the windows had been, no longer even held the panes. It was eerie. "Sorry."

Matt blinked. Apologies crept from Mello's mouth only when he was really upset or was being persuasively conciliatory. It was not that he was ill-mannered, but that most of the time, he didn't consider himself to be in the wrong. Another row of roadside graves weren't helping the mood. "Ok, we don't have to go to there. We're still heading for Zadar."

"Thank you." The scenery was filling out with mature trees. They meant that the ravaged buildings appeared more suddenly in their view. "I need to do a lot more revision for my exams."

Matt bit down a rush of resentment, then decided to let it ride out. He swerved and brought the car to a stop at the side of the road. There were no graves in view, just trees and the steeply climbing road ahead. Now he'd parked, and switched off the engine, Matt had no idea what to say or do. Mello was watching him, slowly blinking, but not saying a word. He looked neither submissive or dominant there; neither fire or ice; he was just waiting. Matt had subconsciously touched a gloved hand to the collar around his neck and it remained there. After what seemed like hour-long seconds of uncomfortable silence, Matt had to speak, just for something to be said. "You're confusing the crap out of me, man. Am I missing something fundamental?"

"Did you think I'd get down on my knees and kiss the ground?" Mello asked quietly. "Yugolsavia didn't want me, Matty, and I think I just repaid my debt to Watari back there along the coast. Don't you?"

"What?" Matt's conjecture hadn't even been close. This was a whole new layer to Mello that hadn't even bleeped on the radar. "You weren't thrown out. You were taken out."

"My whole family were blown up. My church was blown up. My country was blown up." Now a hardness slammed down onto Mello's expression. "What precisely do you expect me to find up there?"

Matt felt cold. Mello was looking at him with hatred. It felt like betrayal. He was caught between wanting to lean across, strip the leather from Mello and kiss him everywhere, and wanting to just sit back, locked inside himself, and drive them to the airport. "Redemption."

The word hung in the air between them. Mello didn't move an inch and a stranger glared back at Matt from behind those icy, blue eyes. They told him that there were depths here that he would never touch and was never going to be worthy to even know about. Matt sank in his seat. He would have preferred to have been punched physically. Without a verbal response to guide him, Matt turned the key in the ignition and took them away towards the airport. They drove through the hours in near silence, speaking only for road directions. When they passed a bombed out church, Matt made a conciliatory movement, placing his hand on Mello's knee. It was angrily thrown off again.

It wasn't until they eventually reached the airport, that more than the odd word was spoken, but until the tickets were procured and they were close to boarding, even these words were clipped and sharp. In the corridor, approaching their boarding gate, Mello snapped, "In here." Then disappeared into the toilets. Matt followed and found the blond standing by the urinals. Lips pursed, Mello reached across and undid the collar. It was a necessary thing to get them through the security gate without the metal sounding alarms, but in the context of their afternoon and evening, it felt much more loaded. Matt's gaze slid away. "Hey." Mello was close now, his arms encircling Matt's neck only because he had to unhinge the back of the torque. Matt's eyes flickered back to meet his and Mello winked. "You'll get it back." It was like the thawing of an Ice Age, but Mello just smiled and stepped away again, the collar swinging in his hand.

"I upset you and I'm sorry." Matt said, now he felt it was safe to say such things again.

"Come on, let's get out of this Godforsaken country." Mello hoisted his bag higher onto his shoulder and strode past to the door.

"Mell." Matt stared down at the white tiles. Then changed his mind. Mello was being too volatile right now to risk another second of the silent treatment. "I'm going outside for another cigarette."

Mello frowned. "They are calling our flight as it is!"

Matt shrugged, suddenly more annoyed than dejected. "Then we'll just miss the flight." He made to push past, but Mello caught his arm. It actually amounted to the first time, since they had entered the country in the early hours, that Mello had touched him.

"Come on, Matt. I'm tired as well." Mello softened his tone, but there wasn't a word about holding him at arms length for hours or being cold as ice for half of the day. "The sooner we get out of here, the sooner it's over."

The door opened behind them and a man walked in, looking suspiciously at them. "Zdravo." He said, gruffly.

"Zdravo." Mello greeted politely, equally gruffly. He caught the door as it closed and frog-marched Matt into the boarding queue.

"Is this about fucking Catholicism?" Matt snapped suddenly, pieces slotting together. "Oh! I get it! Finally I fucking get it." He shook his arm to try and dislodge Mello's death grip on his elbow. People were turning to look at them. "You ban me from learning the language because you're scared I'll tell you to..."

"Matt, please shut up." Mello flashed a smile at the mother in the queue in front of them, then another at her child.

"No, because we're only allowed to use the language when it's all fucking Zdravo Marijo." Matt crossed himself in parody of the 'Hail Mary'. "Here we are, in a country where everyone's speaking it and you..."

"Shut the fuck up."

"Make me." Matt brought the edge of his hand down on Mello's wrist. The blond released his grasp just long enough for the redhead to step away. "I'm going for a cigarette."

Mello muttered words in Croatian to the other people the queue, then hurried after him. "Stop!" Matt slowed, but didn't stop. "Please stop." Matt closed his eyes and stopped. Mello was only a couple of paces behind him, so Matt soon felt himself grabbed and pushed up the wall. Mello's hands were heavy against his biceps, as the blond leaned in with all his weight. "Is this just airport angst? I know you hate them."

"Fuck off."

"You've got NiQuitin in your hand luggage. I've got emergency NiQuitin in mine. You're going to have nicotine." Mello spoke in his reasonable-in-the-face-of-the-idiot voice. "Please get on this plane with me."

Matt glared back. "Kiss me and I'll get on that plane with you. Don't and I'll go for a cigarette and might make it back later."

Mello stared in incredulity. "Do you actually know how irrational you sound right now?" His voice dropped to a hiss. "We are supposed to be keeping a low profile, remember? You had a cigarette about twenty minutes ago, even by your standards you can't be going into cold turkey yet. You're just over-tired and panicking. Now, please just get back in that bloody queue."

Matt could feel the anger welling up like a balloon inside him. He glowered at the cold, white tiles of the floor and he just wanted to run, or punch, or something. He hated the thought that Mello, with his supercilious words and I'm-about-to-snap expression, was probably right. Worse was the notion that Matt was actually endangering their escape right at the home stretch. He couldn't meet Mello's eyes, yet the thought persisted that he wasn't being irrational. Well over twenty-four hours ago, he had driven the couple of hours from their home to the airport. Since then, he'd flown across Europe, driven for miles on the opposite side of the road, killed a man, hacked a system, watched Mello through security cameras risking life and limb, then driven halfway across Croatia with Mello being an arsehole in the seat next to him. A cigarette did not seem unreasonable and he opened his mouth to say so.

Mello kissed him. It was fairly chaste by their standards, but it was public recognition that they were lovers. Mello didn't seem very pleased about it but, to his credit, he didn't glance away to see who was watching. Matt felt the tension drain away and Mello must have sensed it too, because he dropped his arms and unzipped the side pocket of his bag. After a bit of rustling, a lozenge appeared in his hand. "Open your mouth." He instructed, then popped the nicotine replacement tablet under Matt's tongue. "Alright now? Come on, we need to go now." A hand on Matt's back propelled him towards the dwindling cue. "Let's go home."