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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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Century drove up the slope towards the old farmhouse.   To his right was the grey-blue northern extremes of Cardigan Bay, crashing into rocks, unseen, several feet below.    His whole head was tingling.   His heart was beating very slow.   He had just driven through Aberdaron, squeezing over the tiny, stone bridges and up between the two pub hotels.    He could hardly bear to look, but hadn't been able to help himself.   The surreal, unreal sensation of coming home.   But he had merely slowed, not stopped his car.   The narrowness of the roads and the cars parked haphazardly, amongst the pedestrians, had forced his pace anyway.   But if he had come so far, then he was going all the way.   Cartref.   Home.

The Mini Cooper crested the cliff-top road and there it was before him.   Much smaller than he recalled.   A huddled collection of slate-black and parched grey buildings, edged through with lichen and wall climbing roses.   Overgrown pink roses, scrawny in their cloistering to the thick stone walls, like that might bolster them from the ravages of the exposed sea air.    More thorns than petals, with thin, winding stems that twisted around each other for stability.    Century stared, unable to shift his gaze from the roses, because then he would have to acknowledge the enormity of the rest of it.    He was home.

A Ford Fiesta beeped its horn behind him.   Century didn't even check his rear-view mirror to see the driver.   He drove on, pulling clumsily into a lay-by.   It was little more than a slight indentation in the grass verge, but it was enough for the other small car to inch past.   A female passenger glared at him, while two more rolled their eyes and sneered from the backseat.   Century turned away, his attention drawn magnetically back to the farmhouse.   He could take in more of it now.    He could see Gary's bedroom.   His eldest brother had taken that little room, with its window to the side, while Century had shared with his other brother, Alex.    He couldn't see his own bedroom window, because that was around the back.   Here, at the front, was Nicola and Morfydd's room and...

Century bowed his head, suddenly overwhelmed.    His hands, on the steering wheel, were shaking.   He cut the engine, lest it get so bad that he accidentally drove over the cliff.    He had been on Penrhyn Llŷn since his childhood, but never all the way west.   Never right up to the coast; never just south of where that final finger of land pointed out towards Ynys Enlli and the Irish Sea. His heart was no longer beating so slowly.   It was pounding, thundering. He realised that, as long as he could isolate and enclose the bloodshed at the end, he had always half imagined them still here.   Nain Gwen out in her garden.   Mam screaming at him, Alex and Morfydd not to wander off, because tea would be on the table soon.   Gary threatening to kill them, if they touched his stuff.   Nicola cursing the ground beneath her feet, for her stiletto heels sinking into it, and kissing Sioni Jones down by the river; then bringing Gwyn Evans home to meet Mam and Dad.   And Mammy yelling up the stairs at her, that Nicola was no better than she ought to be.    Which had always confused Century, because surely that meant that she was getting it right.

They weren't here.   There were pink curtains in Gary's old room and a sign outside, with contact details for hiring the farmhouse for a week.   Holiday cottages.   The garden was gone, underneath a small carpark.   There was a mini adventure playground behind it, covered in tarpaulin for the winter.   Century knew that it had been sold. It had technically belonged to him.   He had the cold, hard cash from its sale in his bank account, as part of the final settlement from Wammy's House, presented on his eighteenth birthday.

Here was the world.   Money and a goodbye, with a promise of assistance if he stayed in the system.   Rejection and hiraeth hit hard, though he'd not wanted much to do with the Institution while he was there.   It came to him, with a resounding clatter of responsibility, that this really was it.   He was eighteen and out in the world with a pile of cash and no real idea about how to buy a home, electricity, water, gas, council tax, food, furniture and all of those little necessities of life.   Right now, buying a toothbrush felt like too much. Though his mind could map the path from need to entering a shop with money through to purchasing it; it still felt too big.   Cooking, cleaning, laundry.   He knew how to use a washing machine.   Salvo and Chrissie had never let him get away with not doing his share of the chores.   But on his own?   The washing powder and softener were always just there, in the cupboard under the sink.

He could go back to them.   He could go to the Lake District, to Salvo and Chrissie, who had been his siblings longer than Gary and Nicola.   He was not alone.   Though that felt like retreat and being a burden.   He was eighteen.   No longer a Looked After Child, but a fully grown adult.    Case closed.

Case.   Century sat up, only vaguely noting that he had been hunched up over the steering wheel.   He had a car full of computers, books and case files.   He had all of the evidence from the situation down in Aberystwyth, stolen out from under Deontic's nose.    He would get a hotel room and hole up, solving it.   There was respect here.   The only language that they all spoke.   Piecing the puzzle together. Solving the case.

He could see the farmhouse again.   This was the road that they had all walked up that night.   His Mam huffing and puffing like she didn't walk up and down it several times a week.   The shop was down the foot of the hill, back down in Aberdaron.   It had been night then.   It was daytime now and Century could still half smell the sulphur scent of fireworks and bonfire smoke.    In three days' time, it would be nine years to the day.   If he drove just a few feet forward, he would be able to look down, over the hedge, to where they'd all been shot dead.

He didn't. He reversed. He did it hurriedly, switching on his engine and trying to move backwards, all in the same movement, like Matt could do at speed.   Century's car stalled.    His vision blurred as he tried to do it again, because he couldn't be there anymore.   He was rolling, so slammed his foot on the brake.   This was not a road to mess about on.   He dared not go backwards now, so he shoved the gear-stick into first and shot forward.   His eyes watched the bonnet of his own car.   With a huge sense of having betrayed the memory of his family and his own history, he kept on driving forward, out onto the coast road to Abersoch.

His mind was reeling.   Part of him wanted to sob like a baby about the injustice of it all.   Not the massacre.   That was an old wound, but the reality of the moment.   The fact that his life was real and that he was out there having to carve his own niche, in which to survive the future.   On his own.   Completely on his own.   How had the others done this?   With a sinking feeling and a growing panic, Century understood fully and empathically that this was precisely what every one of the others had gone through.   They had all taken their settlement and walked out of the Institution's gates on their eighteenth birthdays.   Near and Mello had done it much earlier.

The statistics were there.   The sheer amount of care children who ended up on park benches, drinking their lives away; or in prisons, because they were too lost and institutionalised not to be.    But they were State care children. They left without money.   He had money.   He had genius!   He would work out how to do this.

Century slammed on his brakes.   It finally came to him that he had been driving in floods of tears, on a tight, winding road, with a cliff-face just an arm's reach to the side of his car.   He was having a panic attack.   He could vaguely see a lay-by just ahead, so he practically rolled into it, parking as best he could and turning off the engine.    Had Near cried, being taken to L's headquarters? Had Mello cried, walking out into the streets?    He had to have cried. He'd been much younger and he truly had nowhere to go.    Had Fenian cried, on the plane back to Ireland?    Salvo and Chrissie had left together.   They'd just looked excited.   But what about Luigi?   Century had watched him leave. Like a lamb to the slaughter.   With the great irony being that none of them had to leave.    But it felt too dangerous to stay.

"Tawelwch, Iestyn bach."   Century whispered aloud, trying to get himself to calm down.   This was ridiculous.   He could go south to Aberystwyth, where a chalet, Deontic, Hal and a hospitalised Mello delayed the inevitable even longer.    He could carry on south, down to Wammy's House, and live there for as long as he wanted.    He could go east, then north, to the Lake District, back to Salvo and Chrissie.   Where he really wanted to go.    He could drive back to Caergybi and take the next ferry to Dublin, chasing Fenian for sanctuary.   Or he could just grow up.   "Tawelwch."

He took several deep breaths and unwrapped a lollipop.    His heart was still thumping.   It was a little painfully pinging too.    He had his medication.    The last thing he should do is panic.    Century strove for and, against expectation, found rationality.   With an hitherto clouded clarity, he could see the thread that connected him, back through his history, to this place.   The rug had been pulled from under his feet, when his family had been killed.   It taught him that nothing was stable.    Everything could go wrong at a moment's notice.    It had left him loveless and lonely, caught in an enclosed world of high pressure; but he had been fine.   He had been so laid-back, detached and fine.   They all had their coping mechanisms and he had his own. He had survived well enough, all of those times that he had run away from the Institution.    He could cope now.

This was why Deontic waffled on and on about family, wasn't it?   Because she'd been out there, on her own, in the cold. They were all ultimately on their own, with this intense shared experience, that only another Watari kid could even begin to understand.   It came out of Fenian in anger; from Chrissie in control freak, hyper-activity; from Matt in martyrdom; from Luigi in despair; from Salvo in silence; from Linda in pique and creativity; from Mello in attention whoring; and from Near in who knows what, because he had detached himself completely.    It was all the same feeling really.   That deep down sense that it had all gone wrong and that they were on their own.    Unless he was projecting his own panic, which was possible.

Century had spent the previous night in a hotel room in Conwy.   Until 10pm, he had been with Siân and a whole gaggle of her friends.   It had all increasingly felt so petty and shallow, with conversation topics so banal that he had had no interest in keeping up with them. He'd found himself staring out over Conwy Bay, imagining the fleet of Cunedda Wledig sailing in to push back the invaders.   The great army of combined tribes heading to that central point up in the Clwydian Mountains, where ancient hill-forts dotted every summit.   The handful of teenagers around him had babbled on and on about sling-backs versus stilettos and who was shagging whom, while his mind had been in the Dark Ages.   Siân had asked him what he was thinking about and he'd tried to tell her, but she was bored within seconds.   She'd interrupted his description of what the scene would have looked like, from the height of Moel y Famau, by telling him that red might suit him more than his habitual dark blue.    He'd given up and attempted not to look relieved, when her curfew called her home at 10pm.

Century closed his eyes now.   He didn't want to go to Conwy.   He had no appetite for the challenges of Aberystwyth.   He didn't belong in Aberdaron.   He suspected that he didn't quite belong anywhere.    He scrambled for his 'phone and checked it for a signal.   Such things were hit and miss on the Llŷn Peninsula.    He had one bar and so dialled Salvo, unsure what he was even going to say.   "Hai."   He spoke, as soon as the call was answered, but there were still tears in his tone and he hadn't realised that. He swallowed before speaking again.   "How's...?"   His voice failed.

Salvo hesitated, awaiting the completion of the question.   Then spoke, in his languid, calm tone, "Where are you, Century?"

"Have you heard from the others?" Century coughed, trying to school himself into an equal tranquility.

"I know that you've nicked off with half of Matt's computers.   Is that wise?"

"Matt was arrested.   He shot Mello."

Salvo made a sound of affirmation in the back of his throat.   "Chrissie's gone to London to represent him."

"Right."   Century looked out, over the sheep grass and sea pinks, to the great, grey glimpses of Cardigan Bay beyond.   "Can I come home?"

"I really think that you should."   Salvo replied, levelly.   "How far away are you?"

"Hours."

"Take rests on the way."   Salvo instructed, like he was his parent.   "And if you get tired, pull over.   It's not a race."   He paused. "And maybe you should think about losing those computers?    They might have some kind of tracking device on them."

Century froze.   He hadn't thought of that.   "I won't come back then."    He had been starting to calm down, but now his heart was beating faster again.   He hated it when it did that.   "I want to solve this case.   I have everything here.   Just a case of sifting through it, you know?   I want to be the one to do that."

Salvo uttered a mirthless laugh.   "Then bring it on home.   If Mello and Matt come chasing, we'll just offer them a nice cup of tea and exchange pleasantries about the weather."

"Mello's in hospital and Matt's in prison."

"I know." Salvo's chuckle was genuine this time.   "But Chrissie is Matt's lawyer and I don't think that anyone's even volunteered to be the prosecution yet.   He'll be out by tomorrow, is my guess."

Century felt the tears starting to flow again, "It's been such a mess, Sal."

"I know.   So come on home."   Salvo replied.   "It's going to be alright."    And somehow, because Salvo said so, Century believed him.   "I'll see you later."
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Walls Came Tumbling Down