Poisoned Rationality

"Mail." Mello stood in the doorway. The lights were bright behind him, in contrast to the darkness in the bedroom. Matt had been dosing, but opened his eyes wide and quickly turned his head to view his lover. "What\'s happening to me?"



"Mello?" Matt had heard the wistfulness and fright in the blond\'s voice. "What do you think is happening to you?"



"I don\'t know." His hands covered his mouth and he slid down the doorway to the floor. "It\'s not making sense."



"Right." Matt crept to the edge of the bed at the very length of his right-hand chain. "Mihael, please will you listen to me if I say something you might not like?"



"Just tell me what\'s happening." It was yelled across the room and Matt\'s heart leapt into his throat.



"You\'ve been a bit... overwrought." Matt felt breathless. "It\'s my fault. I should have seen it coming. I shouldn\'t have pushed you over the edge. Mihael, are you back?" There was silence from the doorway, his blond hair and the light behind conspiring to shield Mello\'s face. One hand played with his rosary, counting out the beads; the other rested listlessly beside him. Matt bit his lip. "I love you. Will you let me hold you?"



"Overwrought?" Mello asked gruffly. "Don\'t mess with my mind, Matt. What does overwrought mean?"



Matt closed his eyes. "Remember your Aristotle? \'There is no great genius without a mixture of madness\'?" There was no reaction. Matt squinted trying to see one. "Mello, you are a great genius."



"Huh?" Mello was looking at him. Matt could feel the burning of his eyes in the darkness.



"They asked too much of you." Matt gushed. "You took on your own share, Near\'s share, my share, Lawliet\'s share. You felt it for us all and tried to organise us all. You worked it out! You fathomed it and you did it. We\'re all alive now because of you! But you fly that high and you eventually have to fall. I failed you. I didn\'t catch you. The clues were all there, but I didn\'t see them. I\'m sorry, Mihael, I was too stupid to be trusted with your beautiful mind."



A pause, then Mello rasped, "What is happening right now?"



"You\'re trying to protect me. You have me chained to this bed and you\'re controlling my every movements. That\'s ok. I believe in you. I trust you." The redhead tried to reach further, but his arms were just not long enough. "I know I deserve this. You said that I\'ll be here for the rest of my life and..." He swallowed to keep the catch from his voice. "You won\'t give me my games because you said I\'ve probably got them linked to the internet, but I haven\'t. I promise! You said if I got on the internet, I would try to escape, but I won\'t. Please believe me. I trust you to know. But Mello, who are you protecting me from?"



"Yesterday, when we were with Roger, he gave me a letter. Where is it?"



"That wasn\'t yesterday, Mihael. I don\'t know how long that was." Matt blinked away the prickling in his eyes. "Do you want me to help you look?"



Mello rose from the doorway and approached the bed. For a moment, Matt believed that he was going to be released, but the blond simply lifted him and placed him onto his back in the centre of the bed. He wrapped his body around him, fondling Matt\'s balls and kissing his lips. "No. I want you to stay here, where it\'s safe?"



Matt choked back a sob. He felt his own defensive mind slam shut a door and his body surrender to the domination of his lover. Yet he couldn\'t withhold the whisper that formed on his tongue. "Mihael, I almost saw you. Please come back to me. You promised."



Mello sniggered. "What?"



"You said you\'d always come back for me."



Mello leapt backwards, off the bed and over to the lightswitch. Matt blinked, accidentally staring at the bulb as it burst into illumination. His lover was glaring down at him with wild eyes. "Mail Ricardo Sebastian Jeevas. If your father never spoke to you, how did you know your name?"



"I can\'t remember!" Matt\'s mind jolted with the change of subject and the things it plundered. This kind of interrogation wasn\'t new. Mello had been doing it for days, poking over painful memories like they were his for the taking. "May I have a cigarette please?"



Mello nodded and Matt reached onto the bedside cabinet for the packet. His lover didn\'t even take the lighter to light it for him, which worried Matt. He paused watching to see if it was ok to hold his own cigarette, but Mello remained pacing in the space at the foot of the bed. "Are you lying about him never speaking to you? I know you lie, Matty."



"I know I lie." Matt felt shame slamming down onto his psyche. He should never have tried to withhold information from Mello. It wasn\'t right and Mello was perfectly correct in demanding to know the truth. "He did speak to me. Just not often." Matt held the face of Watari in his mind, a shield against the places where Mello was taking him. He caught himself doing it and inwardly kicked himself. If he could just give up and let Mello take over even the deepest recesses of his mind, then it would all be better. Mello knew what he was doing. Mello was a genius, while he, himself, was flawed. "He must have told me."



"Is this one of your stories, Matt?" Accusing now, the stare. "Don\'t lie to me!"



"I can\'t remember!" The redhead yelped. "I\'m trying to, honestly! I want you to know everything!"



"So you sat there and watched television for three years, then hid in an oil tanker. Wammy fetched you and you came to me. That\'s all I missed?" Mello pinned him to the bed with his gaze. It was not sanity. Matt stared back, his own sensibilities crashing. "I need to know everything, Mail. Tell me!"



Matt flinched, but took a cigarette from his packet and lit it. Mello didn\'t try to take over. That alone was both frightening and liberating. Conflicting instincts raged in the redhead. On the one hand, he had to accept that Mello was in charge. The total power exchange was deserved. Matt knew that he had brought this upon himself. Moreover, it wasn\'t so bad. The loss of his games still weighed heavily upon his mind but it was necessary. He understood that now. If he hid behind Mario, then how could Mello learn enough to save them? Instead, there was this, the surrender of body, mind and emotion to his beloved Slavic genius; and that was erotic. It was further than they had ever gone before. Matt found himself becoming turned on by the thought of what was happening to him, as long as he didn\'t contemplate that it was reality. It was fantasy, that was all. It was reality too, but that was Mello\'s realm. Mello was in charge. Matt didn\'t have to think about it.



Then there were the traitor thoughts. These were the ones which Matt knew were wrong, but the image of Mr Wammy kept returning and doubts struck hard. Mello was insane. Somewhere inside the blond, there was possibly someone watching Matt from a sealed box, screaming at him not to stop thinking. Treacherous thoughts; dangerous thoughts. They told Matt to remember his own name and to never forget that he was a genius too. That Mello was wrong. That that brilliant mind was unable to fire with its usual precision calculations and so was diverted to the incorrect conclusions. They would both be doomed if Matt surrendered completely. But it would be a way out. Matt looked at Mello and he knew that to die with him now might be a relief.



Mello shook his head, as in if answer to Matt\'s unspoken thoughts. He probably did know. They had been friends for a long time and had shared the same classrooms, inside Wammy\'s House and without. Mello always knew everything. But he was leaning now, clutching a corner of the bedstead. "Mail, you stopped talking." He glared and Matt\'s heart pounded. Mello didn\'t need to raise his voice for it to sound like a threat. "Tell me how you knew that your name is Mail Ricardo Sebastian Jeevas!"



Matt sucked deeply upon his cigarette, whole half inches disappearing into ash with each drag. His mind travelled back with eidetic recall, summoning up that dilapidated Spanish home. He smelt the mustiness. He saw his father\'s face again with a pang of longing and fear; and the pictures that formed in rising damp on the wall. He heard the sound of the television in the background, laughter from some sitcom. He smelt sweat and beer. Saw the world in browns and reds. Felt the soreness and wetness from his waist to his knees. Bars. He saw his father leaning over him, a looming face and he spoke, spitting out a series of names. Matt gasped, his senses reeling, his mind breaking under the revelations. "Mello! I\'ve got it! I\'ve got it! It was my father!" Matt described the scene as if watching it on a movie screen. His eyes closed and head shifting, as he saw the inner world in 3D around him. Mello pushed for details and Matt supplied them. No, he wasn\'t being held. He was lying down. The television - no, he didn\'t know the programme. There was a woman in an orange top and black skirt arguing with another woman. The second woman was in a dress with a floral pattern. They were on the television, not in the room. His father was wearing a white shirt and jeans. He had red hair and green eyes. He was drunk and pacing and he had come over to the cot and...



"Mariomatt! Are you there?" The male voice came like a car crash through the walls. Matt opened his eyes wide and gagged, close to vomiting. Mello careered backwards, flattening himself against the wall, his gaze flashing to the door. The thick Texan drawl called again. "Mariomatt! This is your personal Hands-On Imperative service. Are you reading me?" Mello stared like he\'d been slapped, with his lover guilty of the ultimate betrayal. Hurt ripped through his features, astonishment in its wake. Then Mello ran like the hounds of Hell were after him into the front room. The desktop had switched by itself. The monitor showed a messenger screen. A green light flashed on the webcam. "Oh hi there. Are you Mariomatt?"



Mello rushed back into the bedroom. "What the fuck?" He slammed his fist onto the bedside cabinet. "Matty! How did you do that? What have you done! Tell me what you\'ve done!"



Matt scurried to the other side of the bed, so many emotions assaulting him, showing stark on his face. "Mello, don\'t be afraid. You are going to want to release me. It\'s been twenty days."



"What have you done?" Mello screamed into his face.



"Nothing." Matt attempted a terrified smile. "That\'s kind of the point."



From the other room, the Texan called again. "Mariomatt, if that is you, give me the code or else I\'m going in."



Mello started screaming, crashing into the wardrobe and the wall, all self-control gone. Matt pressed himself against the headboard. "Mihael, please. I\'m so sorry." Then Matt yelled at the top of his voice. "Crash! PICNIC! PICNIC!"



There was a short silence, then the Texan called out again. "I think I heard PICNIC, is that affirmative?"



Matt made to shout again, but Mello raced across the room and slammed himself bodily onto his lover, his hand clamped over Matt\'s mouth. Tears dripped, panic stark in those haunted, blue eyes. He hissed. "Be quiet, Matty. Be quiet. Hush. Please hush."



The Texan spoke calmly. "If that is an affirmative, may I please have Mariomatt\'s code?" Crushing Matt into him, Mello was begging silently now, terrified beyond measure. "Mario, may I have your code please?" There was a sigh. "Dang! What is going on over there? If you\'re hearing me, I\'m sorry. I was out at the store. Now I\'m wondering what would have happened if I\'d been around an hour ago." CrashnBurn sucked a breath through his teeth. There was silence for a couple of minutes. Matt peered up at Mello, pleading forgiveness with his green eyes swimming with tears, guilt and hope. "Ok, I am reading a suspected PICNIC, no confirmed presense of Mariomatt. I\'m going into HOI. God bless you, Mario."



The tears fell onto Matt\'s cheeks in a sorrow too deep for sound. He kissed the hand that held him gagged and Mello turned away to stare at the open doorway. Light spilled in from the passageway, but there was no further indication of anything happening in the front room. Mello shook, his own shoulders heaving under the strain of horror and desolation. He mouthed, "What is your hacker friend doing?" Then stared back at Matt, gasping hoarsely, "What did you do?"



Along the hallway, the front door knocked twice. Matt closed his eyes, calculating the time difference between Britain and the American Central Time Zone. It didn\'t matter, he had no idea what the time was now. But it was irrelevant. CrashnBurn had said that his alert came an hour ago! Matt was suddenly so afraid, wishing desperately that he had never set up anything. It was wrong. He had been wrong! All this time, he had known that this would happen and he hadn\'t told Mello. But... Matt could feel himself collapsing inside. His corrupt soul registering hope! Those second thoughts that insidiously plagued him reminding him of predecent situations. Those times on LSD, when strangeness happened and Matt had said to Aimee, \'Ignore it, we\'ll work it out tomorrow when we\'re not tripping our tits off.\' Because he knew that he hadn\'t been in full control of his own mind. Like now?



Matt stared at Mello, trying to find an anchor to judge this situation. The blond was trembling violently, but his hands remained pressed over Matt\'s mouth. He kept shaking his head, as if to dislodge a thought or to kick-start one. "Please be quiet." Mello rasped, crying, though nothing had been said. Matt, his own mind reeling under the conflict of what to think or do for the best, pushed suddenly, but he wasn\'t strong enough. Mello barely budged, though his frightened eyes registered the rebellion. "Why? Matty, why?"



Matt sobbed, the sound stifled beneath Mello\'s palms. The front door knocked again. This time a voice accompanied it. "Mello, are you in there? It\'s Roger." The blond looked up, like a deer catching the scent of the stalking hunter. His head turned to stare again at the open bedroom doorway. "Mello, if you are in there, open up please."



"I can\'t trust you, Matty." Mello whispered. Matt squeezed out his hands, rubbing his lover\'s back gently. "Mother Mary, help me." Matt stilled himself, thinking back to a moment when he had heard the song. He hummed, as loudly as he could, the \'Ave Maria\', but it took a while for Mello to recognise it. Matt tried to convey reassurance in a gaze, though his eyes still wept. He hummed until the pressing of Mello\'s palms slackened and the blond climbed off him. Then lay, too scared to shout a thing. Mello darted to the doorway and swooped down to pick up the semi-automatic stashed there. He reached around the doorjamb into the front room and fired a shot at the desktop. It exploded in a shower of sparks and Matt screamed. "Quiet, Matty, please."



The hammering on the door had intensified. "Mello, please open this door. It is Roger Ruvie and I need to speak with you."



Mello slowly stepped along the passageway, pausing before reaching the end. The door was piled up with furniture, blocking all entrance, but it still loomed. Threatening. Outside, there was a conversation taking place. He recognised his neighbour\'s voice and Roger\'s. His traitor neighbour talking about strange noises and previous gunfire, demanding answers. Roger being the perfect middle-class Englishman, promising that he would find out, but he was sure that it didn\'t require the police at this juncture.



"Mihael." Matt called, his voice low. Mello returned to the bedroom doorway to check on him. His Matty, all curled up in the corner, where the headboard met the bedside cabinet on Mello\'s side of the bed. "I want to see Roger. Please. You said you\'d never deny me anything."



"You don\'t need to see Roger."



"Please Mihael." Tears dripping down his ashen face. His Matty, crying. "Please. I love you."



Roger knocked again. "Mello, I do know that you are in there. I also know that this must be a terribly fraught time for you." He hesitated. "We know that Matt is dead." Mello fell backwards, staring in horror at the hallway. He couldn\'t compute the words. There was a flash of memory. He had seen Lawliet in the front room. He had been seeing Matt for days. Matt was dead? "May I please come in? It is frightfully unseemly to be discussing this through a door."



"I\'m not dead, Mihael. I\'m not dead." Matt whispered, but he could see Mello rocking on the passageway floor. Matt took a deep breath and shouted loud enough to be heard on the outside landing, in Texas and inside his lover\'s tortured psyche. "I\'m not dead!"



Mello scrambled to his feet, stalking with his gun pointed at Matt\'s head. For a loaded minute, with the apology crumbling Mello\'s features, Matt knew he was going to pull the trigger this time. Then probably kill himself. He formed the words of pleading, for his own life and his lover\'s, but another voice cut through from outside the front door. To Matt\'s mind, it was the worst possible thing development; he would rather have heard the shot. "Mello couldn\'t solve the puzzle."



"Near!" Hatred culled the child from Mello\'s face; fury blazed through the despair. He yelled out, "You dare bring Near here! You dare!" He charged down the passageway and into the hallway, hurling pieces from the barricade into the flat behind him. Blocking out the sound of Matt screaming at him from the bedroom to please stop. Matt was shouting out that he loved him. Calling to those outside that it wasn\'t about Kira. Telling them not to hurt Mello. Then there was the door. Mello stood there, staring at it, panting, willing himself into being the Mafioso Consigliere.



Near went on, undaunted, calmly speaking, "I win in the end, because Mello couldn\'t solve the puzzle." The self-loader rose, in Mello\'s hand, pointing at the door. Mello felt himself falling, inside his mind. The projection of power onto his aura was close but it was failing, the world was reverberating. He could shoot through the door. He could kill Near. Mello began the calculations on bullet speed and the thickness of the wood. It might not work. The shot could bounce back and hit himself. Distantly, he could still hear Matty screaming, but it seemed to come from so far away. Mello froze. Something wasn\'t right. Something had gone wrong, but his mind couldn\'t find it. There were flames and a church engulfed. Two churches. The Ave was being sung and he was holding his mother\'s hand. A rosary swung and he was watching the lights dance around a chapel, alighting on Christ Himself. A red light touching his shoulder. He had saved Matty\'s eternal soul, at the price of his own damnation. It had to count for something. He was cornered, trapped, and the only way out was to blow up this building with himself in it. The touch of a hand on his back, kisses, love. A gun in his hand, pointing at the closed front door. Near laughed. It sounded chilling, infuriating. "I\'m sure Mello understands what I mean by that."



Mello saw his own hand yanking off the chain. It felt divorced from himself. Someone else\'s hand, though it had his own crucifix dangling from the wrist. His black nail-polish. Where were his gloves? The door-chain wouldn\'t come off. Near carried on, taunting from the other side, and Mello knew that he was going to kill him. Shoot him dead, fill his head with lead until that mop of impossibly white hair turned as red as... Matty\'s. "Matt!" The chain hung limp from the front door. He didn\'t remember removing it.



"I\'m here, Mello." Came an answering call from the bedroom. "I love you."



But Matty couldn\'t love. Not without the oxytocin. He had a deficiency. Mello\'s eyes darted to the side, contemplating it but forgetting what the question was halfway through. Roger was speaking. "Mello, please open the door. I need to speak urgently with yourself and Matt."



"Mello won\'t open the door." Near jeered. "He\'s way too scared of me."



"Near, for crying out loud!" Roger reprimanded, then stopped as the front door burst open and Mello raged through it. The blond\'s eyes searching with a dangerous, terrifying glare; the gun out straight in front of him. The guardian stood rooted to the spot, from his vantage point just inside the heavy staircase door, suddenly very afraid. Then Mello spotted the laptop and the large \'N\' displayed upon it. His mouth gaped and his shoulders sagged. Roger was supposed to speak up, to signal to Near that Mello was with them, but the truth was, he was too scared to speak and give away his position to the spectre before him.



Cursing his cowardice, Roger resolved to do it, but before he could, another voice called out from around the corner, out of sight. It was Lauren, from Wammy\'s House, "Plašiš svakoga, Mello." Mello blinked. He was scaring everyone? Who was everyone? How many more were out there? Despite the gun and the terrifying visage, the teenager stepped into view. Roger desperately tried to signal her to move back, out of range, but she stood on the other side of the laptop and looked right into Mello\'s face. Her hand rose. "I brought you some chocolate in return for the one you gave me. I passed my German with distinction. Thank you."



Mello tore his gaze from the monitor at his feet and stared at the gift. His vision took in the calm girl behind it and memory supplied details. She had shouted at him and Matt for flirting with each other too loudly in the library. She had said that they all looked up to them. She had reminded him of himself as a Wammy child, with her books and her studying. "Near. Fuck you." Mello bent and pressed the off button, the monitor collapsing into a single dot before going blank. "Lauren." He breathed.



"She drove me." Roger pushed through the door. "I had a stroke last year and can\'t drive. Lauren, get back around by the lift please."



"Roger." Lauren frowned. "Please shut up. Mello, where is Matt?"



Mello\'s hand rose to take the chocolate and he stared at it like it was the Holy Grail. "Roger, I told you we were out of control."



Lauren smiled, cockily, "From what I heard, you pair always were. In here, he is?" She took Mello\'s arm and propelled him back through the front door. "Mello, I think I like you much better when you\'re tearing into chocolate rather than eyeballing it. Get it down your neck." She turned to take up the laptop, as Roger hurried through and into the flat, then closed the door behind them. Mello leaned against the wall, shaking his head. "I read Nietzsche, after you went on about him so much in our little German conversation. I took out the book that you had shown me and thought it a very peculiar thing for a Catholic to seem so passionate about. I found your message a couple of days ago. The bit you had underlined with my name beside it. I didn\'t see you do that. \'Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster; and if you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes into you.\'" She took in the broken furniture littering the hallway and listened to Roger\'s voice somewhere within. "It happened, didn\'t it? I\'m sorry I didn\'t read it in time to help you."



Mello bowed his head and bit into his chocolate. "The truth is, Lauren, I don\'t know what happened or what\'s happening now."



"You look sane enough to me." She shrugged. "And I don\'t think you could ever become a monster."



But when Mello looked up, her smile froze and she understood. The abyss had stared right back.