Watari Pt 2: Wammy's House

"Matty?"



"Yeah?"



"Let\'s test the security." Mello grinned mischeviously from the passenger seat of Matt\'s Camero. Behind him, the back wall of The Wammy House garden rose high into the air.



Matt frowned. "We probably the record for breaking in and out of these premises. What possible advantage would be gained from doing it yet again?"



"Well, it would piss Roger off." Mello beamed. "And he\'s got all those cameras to thwart us."



Matt grinned. "Oh yeah." He reached into the backseat and pulled his bag onto his lap. "You want to try with or without being filmed?" He extracted his laptop and opened it.



Mello turned to glimpse the foliage overtopping the wall from the inside. "With, I think. Only you monitor it, baby. I want to see how much they pick up."



"Kk." Matt was already logging in. "Mell? Don\'t call me Matt in this vicinity. Didn\'t we have this conversation already?"



"Sorry." Mello raised his hands. He glanced at his watch. "Incidentally, I\'m timing you. Let me know when you start the hack."



Matt shook his head. "I\'ve been hacking Roger\'s computer since I was nine as well. It\'s hardly rocket science."



"Yeah, but tell me when..." Mello blinked. Matt\'s screen showed a series of thumbnail video feeds.



Matt looked at him, his lips curled in a self-satisfied smugness. "I\'m starting the hack."



Mello narrowed his eyes. "I refuse to believe that you hacked that in minus time. Tell me!"



Matt minimalised the screen. "I pressed this link here on my desktop, which has the route saved. Then I entered my password and hey presto! I\'m in."



Mello rolled his eyes. "Ok, then so am I." He opened his door, leaving his husband watching from his laptop. The blond glanced up and down the street, then upwards. His knees bent and he propelled himself upwards, grabbing the top of the wall with both hands. Immediately, his knees bent again, the soles of his boots flat against the wall and he leapfrogged up, clearing the spikes, and dropped down the other side. Mello rolled as he landed, using the momentum of inertia to flip back onto his feet. Glancing up, he realised that he could have jumped across onto a tree and scaled down, but that was alright. He was in faster anyway. He took his phone from his jacket pocket and called. "Did I show up?"



"Nope." Matt confirmed. "What the fuck was that?"



"L\'art du deplacement." Mello grinned happily. "Your turn."



There was silence on the other end. Then a sigh, "Mello, I\'m a hacker, not an acrobat."



"Nevertheless, you have six seconds to beat. Good luck, guapo." He heard the car door closing on the other side of the wall.



There was a small laugh. "I already pwned it. I got into the mainframe in about two seconds. You never said physically get in. I was in before you even finished the sentence. Ha!"



Mello affected a yawn, leaning up against the wall to munch on his chocolate. "In your own time, Mail. Just try not to break your neck."



There was a short pause then Matt quietly exclaimed. "Woot." Mello frowned, realising that he could only hear his husband through the telephone now. "I\'m in. Not picked up. Roger has no fucking clue I\'m here."



"I can\'t see you."



"You wouldn\'t. I\'m a master ninja."



Mello sighed. "Where are you?"



"Are we timing from being in position to being in? Because if so that was still only about four seconds, which means I owned you big-time and you should hail my victory." Matt blew a kiss down into the telephone. "Looped the AV feed on the back gate, tripped the security code, walked in and, yes, I can confirm from the stopwatch I had running that it was precisely 4.58 seconds. I are the pwnage. Yes."



Mello scowled, his tone dipping icily. "4.58 is more like five seconds than four and did you actually time me? I guessed at six seconds. It might have been less." He could see Matt now, sauntering down the gap between the wall and the bushes, smoking a cigarette. "Cocky arsehole." Mello frowned. "Not to mention the fact that you tampered with the cameras and I didn\'t need that. You cheated. Plus you were already in the hack, so you have to include the time you spent doing that in the car." Mello licked his chocolate happily. "All in all, I\'m pretty confident that I won that one, guapo. Good try though." He ended the call and turned to greet Matt with a grin. However, his husband had stopped walking. He was peering up the old oak tree, his expression indeterminable at this distance. Glancing back towards Mello, Matt beckoned.



Mello looked at the gap in the foliage that Matt had been about to traverse. He deduced that this was a ruse to ensure that it was Mello who triggered the alarms instead, so shook his head to indicate that there was no way that he was falling for that. Matt took the laptop from under his arm and crouched on the floor to type into it. Then he beckoned again, pointing upwards. The treehouse was up there. Mello raised his eyebrows and lightly stepped to the edge of the cover. Matt pointed at the camera and then drew a finger across his own throat. It was disabled. Mello darted across and reached his side. Now he could hear what had interested Matt. There was a child crying above their heads.



"Why me?" Mello mouthed. Matt shrugged. Mello poked him in the chest and soundlessly said, "Watari."



Matt shook his head. He hooked a finger around the rosary and lifted it. His lips formed the words, "Christian duty."



Mello rolled his eyes and pulled his beads free before leaping onto the makeshift ladder. Hardwood was nailed at intervals directly onto the truck and Mello could remember when they seemed much further apart than they did now. He pulled aside the sack-cloth and immediately saw the boy sitting, with his knees up, in the corner of the treehouse. Tears cascaded down his cheeks, but his expression was a mask of horrified startlement. "Hi there."



The twelve year old stared, "Mello?"



Mello inclined his head slightly, the ceiling being just an inch too low, as he moved across the room. "What\'s up?" He reached out with a view to comforting, but the child flinched back. "Hey, hey! It\'s all good. Ok?"



Terror struck shrilly, "Why did they send for you? I didn\'t do anything! I didn\'t..." His hands rose from around his shins to cover his mouth and nose. "What are you going to do to me?"



"Hey." Mello floundered slightly, but he had already heard the scraping of boots outside and turned now to see the redhead arrive at the door. "Mail, tell him that\'s it\'s all good. We haven\'t been sent for."



"It\'s all good. We haven\'t been sent for."



The child shook his head, eyes wide at the sight of both of the legends standing in his view. "Please don\'t shoot me! Please don\'t. Please."



Mello bit his lip, then opened his jacket, lifting it at the back as he span around. "I\'m unarmed and defenceless. Matty only has his laptop, so he\'s..." He faltered. "Maybe it\'s just better to say that we\'re not about to harm you. It\'s ok, baby." Mello slowly approached, one hand outstretched and his expression schooled to compassion. He crouched down to the boy\'s eye-level. "Want to tell me what it\'s all about? Hire us to sort it out?" A phrase popped into his head from the night before. "We\'re on your side."



The child swiped at his eyes, but accepted the invitation inherent in Mello\'s open arms. His arms clutched around Mello\'s neck, tears falling hot and heavy. "I miss my Mum. I want her to come back. I don\'t want to do it." He crumbled further, as Mello rubbed his back. "I want her to come back and make it alright. I don\'t want to be here."



"Don\'t want to do what?" Mello grasped the one thing with which he could possibly help. Resurrecting presumably deceased parents was not amongst his capabilities.



"I know." The child gasped. "I know I\'m being a Hillyer. I know I\'m the same age as Near was when he had to be L, but..." He heard Matt\'s low cough and cried harder, no longer caring about the danger.



"There, there." Mello patted his small back. "And no, I\'m sure Near was older." He made some quick calculations in his head. "Ok, Near was twelve when L got killed, but he wasn\'t asked to be... oh shit, he was." Mello peered around at Matt. "Excuse language. Guapo, how long after me did Near leave?"



"I don\'t know. Not long after. Days, if that."



Mello frowned. "Ok, getting off the point. What are they asking you to do?"



"I really, really miss my Mum." He was trembling in Mello\'s arms.



"That will get easier. I promise. It won\'t go away ever, but it\'ll get easier as you learn more ways to cope with it." Mello rocked the boy from side to side. "If it makes you feel better, I really miss my Mama too and my Papa. Despite what the other kids say, there\'s not one of them who doesn\'t miss their parents too. I can guarantee that." He sucked in a breath. "The truth you\'re going to have to face though is that your Mum isn\'t here to make it all better anymore. But I am. What are they asking you to do?"



The boy struggled to regain his composure, pushing out of Mello\'s grasp with a studied attempt at being brave. The blond kept his hand against the child\'s back and smiled kindly back at him. "I\'m scared of the pictures. They give me nightmares."



"Pictures?" Mello asked, gently.



"We\'re doing chemical weapons. Depleted uranian. The babies with hydrocephalus and zyklopie. I dreamed they were coming for me and then I got upset and then Holiday laughed at me and called me a Hillyer." His fists clenched. "I told him to shut up and he hit me."



"Yeah, well, Holiday shouldn\'t have hit you." Mello could see Matt\'s smirk out of the corner of his eye. "Guapo, please?"



Matt sat against the wooden wall and opened his laptop. He searched \'depleted uranium + babies\' and peered at the pictures. "Nasty." Mello rose and came to look too. He stared pensively at the screen. "Mell, try to imagine for a second that you can\'t see the benefit in learning about shit like this. I think our little friend would prefer to not know that."



Mello sighed, "Lie, you mean?"



"Well, let\'s imagine that you and I are about to reform the place and therefore he\'s not necessarily destined to become a world class detective." Matt winked behind the goggles. "Or did you forget why we\'re here?"



"I\'m still forming my view on that side of things." Mello replied. He looked across the room again and the boy shrank back. "Wouldn\'t you like to be a detective?"



Tears pricked in the child\'s eyes again, but it was Matt who replied. "I don\'t know. I\'m only twenty. It feels a bit young for me to be deciding what to do for the rest of my life. I have been thinking of being a racing driver though. Maybe rally car."



Mello sighed, his hand pressing into the redhead\'s shoulder. "Guapo, I was asking him."



Matt continued without hesitation, "As his lawyer, I would like to ask, on behalf of my client, what my life prospects are? Only I understand that the first L died very young. Then you get Near living like a category A prisoner, solving cases one after the over, like some kind of battery hen genius, in constant fear of someone taking him out. I\'d also want some kind of guarantee that I\'d manage to look as sexy as you do, if I have a twelfth of my body excruciatingly mutilated as well."



"You\'re really not helping, Matt."



"Matt?"



"Right now, yes. Matt." Mello glared and the child mewed in fright. "You\'re just being clever, It Matters. Empathy was never your strong point."



Matt stood. The top of his hair brushed the ceiling, though he didn\'t have to stoop. Mello was about to comment on it, but Matt gave him a scathing look. "Mello, you couldn\'t champion these child soldiers if your reputation was on the fucking line. You were indoctrinated as one and you cannot talk to me about empathy."



Mello blinked. "Mail." He reached out as the redhead started to make his descent. "Mail, baby." Their eyes met. "Point taken, ok?" Matt nodded, though there were rumblings of distaste behind the set of his mouth. Mello grit his teeth and called back. "Neither of us can replace your mother, but I\'m imagining that walking into that House accompanied by us might do your reputation some good." Behind him the child forced a smile. "Come on then, let\'s tell Holiday that he\'s not allowed to hit you."