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Walls Came Tumbling Down	By : DeathNoteFangirl Category: Death Note > Yaoi-Male/Male > Mello/Matt Views: 2727 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note and I do not make any money from these writings.

Chapter List
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"Matt?"   Ann stood outside the door of his cell, looking nervously through the bars at him.   Her erstwhile charge lay silent on the bed, his feet closest to her.   All she could see of him was his back.   His head was buried in the pillow.    Ann glanced down the corridor to where Lauren had just joined Chrissie.   The Finn had been beckoned away, as Ann had arrived.   There was no guarantee that Lauren would fully leave the vicinity, but she didn't appear to be coming back.   The two young women watched her expectantly.   "Matty?"

The redhead stirred.   He lifted his head and half-turned, leaning on his elbow.   He squinted in her direction, then frowned in bewilderment.   He was very still, watchful, like a deer surprised in a glen.   Ann's lips parted to reassure him, but he smiled.   A short laugh, entirely without mirth, punctuated the air and Matt turned his attention to his pillow.   He was trying to work something out.   It emerged a few seconds later as a quietly spoken, "Oops."

"Well, this is a tidy pickle."    She sighed in response.    Ann had long since given up trying to guess the thoughts of any of the Institution's children.   They were probably well over her head anyway, as she'd never been academically minded.   Nevertheless, even the cleverest kids had human needs, be it shelter, sustenance or emotional support.   Ann got by with instinct steered around those subjects.    "Are you alright, Matt?   I mean, as much as you can be in the circumstances."    She winced apologetically.    Enormous green eyes fixed upon her and blinked.   His expression gave nothing away.    Ann's brows knitted together.   "Where are your goggles?"

"I'm fine."   Matt replied quickly, with a tiny shake of his head.    Ann understood that the goggles weren't to be mentioned.   It had been like that back when Matt lived at Wammy's House.   He had never wanted anyone to know that he was short-sighted.   He twisted around, in the bed, to sit on the edge. He stared at the floor, contemplating something.    His left hand was bandaged up, with two fingers strapped together.   He used his right hand to take out and light a cigarette.   There was another humourless snort from him, while Ann tried to think of things to say.   It wasn't that she was short of questions. Chrissie, Madeleine and Valerie had all given her a list.   It was just how to approach them.   Matt stood and sauntered over to the bars.

Ann smiled in greeting. "You look so tired."

Matt glanced back at the bed and shrugged.   "Yeah."

"Mello is going to be alright, you know?   He's a very lucky boy.   He'll be out of the hospital before you know it, right as rain.   You don't want to worry about him."   Ann looked behind her for the chair that she'd spotted as she walked up.    Her feet were killing her. It was laundry day, so she'd been standing doing that for hours, before they'd flown her here in a helicopter.    She wasn't looking forward to the return journey.    It had felt like sitting in a very noisy bubble, too fast and too high for her liking.   The helicopter didn't seem sturdy enough.   It was hard to imagine how it stayed in the air.   "Tough as old boots is our Mello."

"Yeah."   Matt smoked his cigarette, staring at his feet. But he had come over.   Any acknowledgement, that he wasn't alone, had to be viewed as a major triumph when dealing with Matt.   "Will you be having him at Wammy's House, while he convalesces?"

Ann grimaced, covering her unease by fetching the chair and placing it right at the gate.   "Mind if I sit down?   My feet are throbbing."   She waited, just a beat, to see if he would reply.   He didn't. She sat and moaned in relief.   "Oh! That's better.   First time I've sat down all day.   Other than the blasted helicopter, but that doesn't count.   I was too rigid with fear and hanging on for dear life."    His eyes flickered towards her, then away.   He was still waiting on the answer to his question.   "It's all up in the air with Mello.   Who knows what's going on there?   I'm usually the last to know.   They're in the house and needing something urgently, before I even find out they're coming."   She watched Matt. He gave nothing away.   "Mello's always welcome, of course. If he comes, I'll get him sorted out.   Ship shape and Bristol fashion."

"This isn't a social visit."   Matt told her.

Ann had been about to say that she hoped that Mello did end up in her care.   If he needed looking after, then she would be more than happy to do it.   Instead, she hesitated, with a quick look down the corridor for pointers. Chrissie and Lauren had gone.   They would be watching in the room with all of the computer screens.   Chrissie had said that the conversation would be monitored, which just felt wrong to Ann.    She sighed and faced the bars again.   Matt wore a faint smile and he was peering sidewards at her, from under his fringe.   It startled her.   "What?"

"It's ok.   I suggested you."   Matt inhaled smoke.   "Never thought that they'd actually do it."

"Soon as I heard you'd asked for me, I said yes."   Ann straightened in her seat.   Her lower back protested, aching from all of the bending that she'd done today.    "I don't care how big you get, you're still one of mine."

"Even though I shot Mello?"

Ann stiffened.   Chrissie and Valerie both wanted to hear about this.   This was a perfect opening.    In truth, Ann also wanted to know for her own peace of mind.    Something just didn't sit right here, to her mind.   "Oh, Matty!   What happened up....?"   She stopped as he breathed another grim laugh. "Funny?"

Matt shook his head. "About as far from funny as it's possible to get."   He pushed away from the bars and sat down on the end of the bed, facing her.   His head was still bowed though and he'd just finished his cigarette.    He whispered, "Good fucking fight, Chrissie."

Ann blushed.   He knew that she'd been coached.    She hated this.   It undermined all of those years spent slowly building up his trust.   "I'm sorry."   Ann reached down for her handbag, intent on going and leaving the deviousness to those trained to deal in it.   "This is..."

"Let's do it."   Matt told the floor.    "I set you up.   I'll honour the fall out."    He lit another cigarette.    Ann stared, not quite comprehending what he was telling her.   He knew.   "I already said that I suggested you.   It's only natural that they'd use that opportunity to get information out of me.   Sorry I said the 'f' word."

Ann was still clutching her handbag.   She wasn't sure what to make of this, so she bought herself time with unzipping it.    "I wasn't sure what you had, so I brought you a pack of toiletries, a book about computer games, a DS with some Mario games and a packet of Werther's Original.    I remember that you used to like Werther's Original."

Matt shook his head, "Only when I was dying for a cigarette and couldn't think of an excuse to sneak out of the Institution."   He peered up at her horrified face.    "But thank you."    It occurred to her that Matt had been smoking for far longer than she had known. Ann wondered how many more of the children were doing that and how?    She made to ask, but Matt hurried on.   "What's the book?"

"Oh!"   Ann felt wrong-footed.   She had practically raised this young man since he was three years old and this was the most forthcoming that he had ever been in a conversation.   She read the spine.   "'Idlewild' by Nick Sagan.    I asked Holiday. He's another one like you, always more worried about whether he's going to get the next big game, than his studies.     Not as good at keeping up with his schoolwork, as you were though.   I've had to take that XBox off him more than once."   She shook her head.   "I'm sick of hearing about that fish game. Driving me mad to go out to the shops at midnight for an expansion."

"CoD's not about fish."   Matt replied, wryly.

"CoD! That's it!"   Ann shook her head.   "Why they can't sell their expansions at reasonable times, I don't know.   It's ridiculous, when there are children playing."

Matt left his cigarette between his lips, so he could rub his face.   He seemed to reach a decision and, when he removed the cigarette, the exhaling sounded more like a sigh.   "Ok, hit me with their questions. But Wammy's rules.   Information for information."

Ann blinked.   She had been in the process of hiding the stuff that she'd brought for Neuron under a pocket-sized packet of tissues and a plastic rain-hat. She wasn't sure if Matt would welcome the thought that she had planned two visits while here.   She wasn't even sure that Matt knew Neuron was in the building, though she supposed that he did.   Most of her children knew everything, or deduced it, before Ann had even considered the possibilities.   Matt certainly did.   In a system full of bright know-it-alls, he had positively shone.    She responded cagily, "But I honestly don't know anything about Mello.   I'd tell you if I did. All I know is that he's doing ok.   He's had surgery and he's recovering well from it; and he's driving Hal crazy.   He's going to be alright.   I swear it."    She surveyed his bowed head.    "If I knew anything else, I'd tell you.   It must be horrible to be kept in the dark."

It took Matt a while to answer.   She didn't think that he was going to.   It felt awkward, uncomfortable, speaking to him like this, when she didn't know any of the things that he was desperate to know.    She wished she could hug him close, but even if the bars hadn't been there, Matt would run a mile from that.   Almost subconsciously, her hand left her handbag strap to reach out for him.   It didn't get far, just a tiny gesture ending with her hand on her knee, with the index finger out towards him.    But Matt shook his head and didn't appear to have noticed.   Ann had to remind herself that they were geniuses, not mind-readers, and perhaps it hadn't been so apparent from the outside.    Matt sucked on his cigarette and spoke through the smoke, "Not about that. You will have been tactically kept out of the decision-making conversations.   It's obvious that you'd crack and tell me; and news about Mello is their only real information for barter. It would be awfully silly to just hand it to me on a plate."

"What?"

"'Idlewild' is a really good book.   Thank you for bringing it."

Ann had the feeling that she was several paces behind in this conversation. "You're welcome.   And I can keep a secret, thank you very much!   I'm not that much of a pushover!"    She stared sternly at him, then realised something.   "Oh!" Disappointment edged her tone, "You've already read the story."

"I know what I'd ask me, but what have they asked?"   His smile said that he had already guessed every question on the list.

Ann fidgeted, uncomfortably, in her seat.   "You lot always had your little war games.   Fighting each other. Trying to get one over on each other.   It was such a shame to watch, because you're all lovely kids.   Always keeping up a front with each other, then crying in my office.   I do wish you wouldn't do it.   I always tried to keep out of it.   That was easy when it was childhood squabbles over maths tests, but not this."   She gestured helplessly.   "I'm out of my league here.   Am I going to make things worse, asking you these things?"

Matt smoked and didn't look up.   After an age, he replied, "Define worse."    It was so quietly said that she had to strain to hear it.   Then he shook his head and indicated that she should go on.

"Will you tell me exactly what happened up there?"

Matt nodded, then didn't speak.    He appeared intently interested in the burning cigarette between his fingers.   The air was very smoky up here, already reeking of stale cigarettes.    She wondered how many he smoked and if he always lit one straight after another.   She waited and, eventually, he answered her.   "I already told Chrissie that I can't remember exactly.   I have flashes, none of which make sense.    That is the question that she gave you, but not the one that she was thinking.   She wants the full story, so that she can pick out how I was feeling and what I was experiencing.   Her angle is Seroxat induced psychosis and she needs data to prove that."

"I don't know about that."   Ann winced.   "Matty, what about this Seroxat?    Are you taking lots of it?"

"Hold on.   That's her next question."    Matt frowned, drawing heavily on the cigarette.   "I don't actually know when I started hallucinating.   I know that I was.   I saw so many things, before, afterwards, and some I know weren't real.    Is that because of my pills?    I don't know.    I doubt it.   I don't usually hallucinate on them. But that would make sense, because little else does."    He took a final drag of his cigarette and crushed it underfoot on the tiles.   The butt sat there, with several others, which had Ann itching to pick them up; along with a lecture on him dropping them in the first place.   "I can quite believe that I went mad.   I just don't know when."

"Did you want Mello dead?"

"No."   Matt looked so woe-begotten there, that Ann had to fight the urge to demand that he was let out, or she was let in.    His voice cracked, "I love him."

Ann's hand fluttered to her mouth.   "Oh, Matty."

"He'd been losing it.   Putting on a front, like Mello does, but I knew.   He was going under and I knew.   I just wanted to finish the case and get him out of there.     Why would I shoot him?   He's my..."   Matt's hand rose beneath his over-hanging fringe.   He was shielding his eyes, though Ann couldn't see them anyway.    He had stopped speaking.

"Shall I get you something?"   Ann asked, adding brightly, "A cup of tea?"

"I didn't want him dead, Ann.   I swear. I'd take a bullet for that man; I wouldn't put one in him!"   There were tears in Matt's voice.   It broke Ann's heart to hear him.   "I'd defend him with the last breath in my body."   His fingers swiped at his eyes.   "I just can't believe it.   I can't get my head around," he paused, bent over, so she couldn't see his face, with his hand now grasping a fistful of fringe and his palm pressing into the bridge of his nose.   Belatedly, he added, "it."

Ann fished a couple of tissues from her hand-bag.    The first she used herself, while the second was waved through the bars.   "Matt." She prompted, when he didn't take it.   He noticed the tissue and leaned forward to take it, then stood and turned his back on her.   Ann dabbed at her eyes and knew that he was doing the same.   "Don't get upset."   She said, feeling hypocritical, because that's precisely what she was doing.   "I'm sure that this is going to get cleared up and sorted out.   Mello is going to be fine. One day this will just be a bad dream and..."

"You are Mrs Leaman. Was there a Mr Leaman?" Matt sniffed. "Maybe it's a honorific.   What happened to Mr Leaman?"

Ann stared, with swimming vision, at Matt's back. "What?"   Her favourite memory popped into her mind.   The backdoor opening and that charming, smiling face, 'what's for sup, Annie?'; the dust falling from his sideburns. Dark, like a gypsy, and he'd looked so smart in his suit, when they'd been courting.   "Brian.   There was an accident at work.   He was killed."   Remarkably, this was stemming her tears.    Brian had been dead thirty-eight years.   She had cried her tears for him long ago.    Matt hadn't replied.   He just stood there, with his back to her.   Ann filled the silence.   "He worked in the foundry.   Some water got into the pot." She realised how that sounded, so waved it away.   "It wasn't him. Someone else. But the explosion killed four of them."

"I'm sorry."   Matt whispered.

"Mello isn't going to die. Too bloody stubborn to die, that one."

"Where did you meet him?"

"Brian?"   Ann frowned, staring at Matt's hunched shoulders.   She understood that he wanted the distraction.   "It was a New Year's Eve party.   1958. It wasn't long before my fifteenth birthday and he was a hulking eighteen year old.   So handsome though.   He was such a show-off!   Proper teddy-boy, quiff and everything.   Thought he was Elvis." Ann laughed.   "I was dancing with our Maureen and he cut in.   I thought my Dad was going to kill him!"    She smiled, shaking her head fondly at the memory.   "Good job he didn't.   I married Bri three years later.   You wouldn't believe it now, but I had a figure like Marilyn Monroe then.   That's what they all said, 'you look like Marilyn Monroe, Annie.'"    She watched Matt.   He seemed to be calming down, insofar as it was possible to tell with him.   "We made my wedding dress.   Me, Mo, Peggy, my cousin Dot and our Mum.   Dab hand on the sewing machine, my old Mum."

Matt rotated on the spot.   His face was blotchy with red and white.   He looked shattered.   He resumed his seat.   "Was your Mum there for you when you lost Brian?"

"Of course she was. They all were."   Ann smiled. "But you haven't lost Mello."

"What did she do?" Matt asked, struggling against the rasp in his voice.   "Your Mum."

Ann looked puzzled. "Women didn't tend to work in those days."   She smiled at him.   "She did some time in a munitions factory, during the war."

Matt shook his head.   "When Brian died.   What did your Mum do to make you feel better?"

"Oh."   Ann surveyed him.    She knew that Matt didn't mean to be cruel.   He barely had a concept of what a mother was.   "What could she do?   The usual.   Let me cry my heart up on her shoulder.   Made endless cups of tea.    Told me that it wasn't fair and he was a good man." She gave a half-shrug. "She was there."

A tear slid down Matt's cheek.   It shocked Ann.   He croaked out, "I got into the helicopter because I knew that," he paused to gulp, "without Mello, I'd not want to live.   So fucking emo, I know. But..."   He shook his head and let the sentence hang.

"Oh God, no." The words burst out of Ann before she could stop them.   "Matty, you have so much to live for!   You ever feel like that, ever, you come and see me. You hear me?    You have so much."

"I do remember shooting him." Matt's composure was hanging by a thread. He was desperately trying to control it.   "But it's like a dream.    I remember being in that doorway, looking out and," His arms rose. Ann had never seen him so animated.   Shock was stark on his features. "I saw the outline of a man and it came right towards me.   I was trying to work out what it was, but," Horror rode his face, "I never believed in true evil until that moment, but it was evil.   It was fucking evil!   I think I shouted out. I wanted to shout out.   I half remember raising my gun!   It felt real.   It was right in my face.   Then all I have is that flash of Mello falling; and nothing again until I was in the house.   Maybe I did it. Maybe I went insane. I feel like I went insane."

Ann stared.   She didn't mean to, but it was the longest speech that she'd ever heard Matt speak; and the details were so vivid, she could picture it all.   "I don't think it's in you to kill Mello.    Do you think the pills...?"

"I don't know."   Matt gave her a look of such hopelessness, that she wanted to tear down those bars with her bare hands.   "But I wish I did.   I'd take any explanation they want to come up with. Ghosts, drugs, insanity, whatever, I'd take it!   But I want to be with him. I'd wait on him hand and foot, until he's better.   I can't have him dead.   I'd die!   I want to be there, so I can fight for my marriage."   His head bowed again.   Ann felt so helpless.   Matt's voice become barely audible, heavy with tears.   "He's my Mihael."

"Right."   Ann's fists were clenched.   Her nails were digging into her palms and she'd only just noticed.   "Once it's safe to move him, if we get him into Wammy's House and arrange for you to be there too."   She faltered, as her brain caught up with her mouth.   She had no authority to promise anything of the sort.   But Matt's head rose and his expression steeled the reckless resolve again. "Do you promise to get off the Seroxat, and anything else that you're on, and do everything that the others ask to get this situation cleared up?"

Matt nodded, unable to speak on the first three attempts.   "Yes." He managed finally.

"Promise?"   Ann repeated, firmly.   Cold dread was telling her to shut up.   Chrissie and Hal were going to have her guts for garters.   She could lose her job.   She bit her lip, wondering if it was too late to backtrack.

"I won't let you down, Ann."   Matt spoke, plaintively. "I promise."
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Walls Came Tumbling Down