All The Way Here

The roar of an approaching car was the first sign that Matt was back. Mello glared up from the armchair, listening to the shutter rising, and raised the laptop to place it back on the table. Matt had not had permission to go out alone. The blond pushed down the irritating notion that his annoyance was due more to the fact that he\'d slept through Matt\'s leaving than the absenteeism itself. They had already argued over the telephone about it.



The car edged inside and the engine was cut off. Mello\'s fist clenched, but he forced himself not to rush down there and have it out on the concrete. He could intimidate the redhead more by playing it calmly. Running feet on the wooden stairs and the first thing that Mello saw was a foot high statue of Mother Mary being clutched in both of Matt\'s hands. It was practically dropped on the floor, though Matt crouched to do it, then his lover was on his knees, his head in Mello\'s lap.



"What the fuck...?" Mello roared, all notion of ice swept away under the fire that flared up inside. "What gave you the fucking right to...?"



Matt\'s head rose and the look he wore was so shocked and lost that Mello stopped shouting. "I\'ve just seen someone kicked to death."



"What?" Mello stared at him.



"In the middle of the city. Someone making an anti-Kira speech and he was just mobbed." Matt rubbed his face, helplessly. "There was nothing I could do."



"You didn\'t try to save him?" Mello gasped, hand involuntarily reaching to touch Matt\'s back. "Tell me you didn\'t try to get in there."



"I couldn\'t!" Matt wailed, scrambling to his feet again and pacing. "I just stood there like some... fucking... shit." He punched the cabinet with a resounding clang, then leapt back from it, horror stark. "For crying out loud!"



Mello\'s gaze took in the Virgin, watching him with such serenity that it seemed almost obscene that She was here. "I know it\'s difficult, but you did the right thing." He pointed to the statue, but Matt was already stalking away into the kitchen. The kettle was going on. Mello sighed and followed him. He narrowly missed being struck by the orange goggles, as they were thrown out of the door and clattered on the landing. Mello grabbed them before they sailed over the edge to the concrete below. Leaning on the door-jamb, he watched Matt paused before the kettle, tears running freely down his cheeks. "There was really nothing you could have done without being killed yourself."



Matt swiped angrily at his eyes and reached to swill out their mugs. "You had better have a good plan to sort this shit out, Mello, because I\'ve had it."



"I have four of them that I\'m going over for feasibility." Mello\'s tone had a warning edge. "I\'m working on it."



"What can I do to help you?" The mug slipped from Matt\'s hand and hit the bottom of the sink. It didn\'t break, but Matt looked at it as if it was the sole reason for their circumstances. He was fighting a losing battle against openly weeping. Mello stepped forward and laid a hand against his back. "I\'m going mad."



"You\'re not." Mello took the mugs and moved them out of reach. "You\'re just human, same as you were saying to me. I know that the pressure is on. You never used to cry. Your past was never so close to the surface."



"Yes." Matt pushed past him and threw a teabag into his mug. "And you never used to say \'I love you\'." Matt jabbed a teaspoon towards the door. "So if we\'re feeling the pressure like this, with each other to fall back on, what the fuck is happening to Near? And don\'t tell me you don\'t care, because that\'s not the issue. You and Near\'s minds are the only thing standing between us and..."



"I know." Mello\'s voice cut through, razor-sharp. "I know."



"And he was fucking losing it in New York." The lid of the sugar tin flew across the worksurface, but Matt caught the tin itself before it shed sugar. "I should have helped him."



"What?" Mello screamed.



"Not Near!" Matt panicked, turning. "The man! In the city!" He slid down the cupboard, hands over his ears, sobbing. "Not Near."



There was a loaded silence, then Mello crouched to cuddle him. "Ok, let\'s all calm down. We\'re on edge. It\'s understandable." He kissed the top of the red head in his arms. "Trust me, Matty, I will win here." Above their heads, the kettle boiled and clicked off. "I love you."



Mello stood to finish making their drinks. As he stirred the chocolate in, Matt rose beside him, calmer now, blowing his nose on a piece of kitchen roll. "I\'m sorry. I just got scared."



"I can\'t imagine many people not getting overwhelmed by all of this." Mello replied evenly. "Why do you think that the majority of people are just running like sheep? They\'re accepting Kira because it\'s too big for them not to."



Matt nodded, "I know." He gratefully took his tea. "I couldn\'t find a Catholic church. I asked in tourist information. I did find the statue though, in a shop. I thought... Christmas. You know?" Matt bowed his head. "But now I\'m thinking we\'re not going to get out of here alive for real. Might be something you can confess to. Or stuff."



"You looked for me?" Mello\'s stirring slowed. "That was really nice of you, thank you."



"I considered it, you know?" Matt took out a cigarette and lit it. "I mean converting to Catholicism just to stop that panic I see in your eyes whenever we mention death."



Mello\'s head shot up, his mouth a perfect \'O\'. "You did?" Then he frowned. "No, you couldn\'t."



"No." Matt shrugged apologetically. "I couldn\'t. Though Roger did agree with me that, with my background, there is a high likelihood that I was Christened and it probably would have been Catholic. Spain is a Catholic nation." He took another drag. "I can\'t say for certain. I don\'t remember going to church. But it\'s something."



"Thank you for the Mother, Matt." Mello took his hot chocolate into the living area. Setting it down on the table, he picked up the Lady and looked around for somewhere to set up a shrine. For Christmas Eve, their room was dismally lacking decorations. There was a handful of presents, wrapped and waiting, beside the television bought in an earlier shopping trip, and a turkey waiting in the fridge. They had already drunk most of the alcohol. "Is She the reason you went out, Matt?"



"Partly." Matt put down his tea. "I found us a tree too." He sloped off to the stairs and descended with a clatter. He returned with a box in his hands, another teetering in balance on top of it. Mello was muttering in Croatian before the statue of the Virgin, so Matt didn\'t speak until the blond had crossed himself and turned around again. "It\'s not much, but if we\'re having Christmas, we might as well look the part."



The television blared constant pro-Kira discussion, eminent professors arguing academically that Kira was right. His philosophy was the greatest thing since Socrates, Descartes, Confusius. Against the backdrop of the dialogue, Mello and Matt moved about their living space, draping tinsel and hanging streamers. The little tree was plastic and only two foot high, ready strewn with baubles and glitter. It all harked back to a childhood which neither of them had really lived and rang hollow as a kind of desperation to celebrate in the midst of utter darkness. Nevertheless, when they were done, the living area did seem a little more cheerful. It reinstated hope as shiny, coloured foil, but that was better than nothing.



"I\'d better defrost the turkey." Matt mumbled, his laptop displaying an image of a cooked Christmas lunch and text about creating it. Mello nodded and munched on chocolate, drifting back to the statue of Mother Mary and standing there. Matt returned a while later with two glasses of wine. "That\'s going to be a big job."



Mello snapped from his reverie and noted Matt\'s red-rimmed eyes. He must have been quietly crying in the kitchen again, but his manner now was of forced cheer. He took the glass and sat on the settee. "Near is calm as ever. He\'s made little puppets of us all and he\'s moving them around a lot." A flash of annoyance. "He keeps mine right next to the puppet of himself all the time."



"That can be interpreted in a couple of ways." Matt sat beside him. "You\'re seeing it as he\'s trying to manipulate you; it could be he\'s trying to work with you."



"That\'s what Near always wanted."



"Besides it\'s wrong. You aren\'t at Near\'s side." His fingers drummed on his leg. "I\'m willing to bet that every other puppet is right in place, doing precisely what they are doing in reality. Is there a puppet of me?"



"No."



"Figures. He\'d just have to glue it to your puppet anyway." Matt took a gulp of wine. "Is there a Christmas tree?"



"I didn\'t ask."



"That\'s an oversight." Matt reached for his Gameboy and switched it on. Mello glared darkly at the television and silence descended around them.



They fell into what was essentially, for them, an ordinary afternoon. Matt was occasionally animated by a action in his game; Mello occasionally changed the channel. Cigarettes, chocolate, wine and hot drinks almost constantly being consumed, while expletives were frequently hurled at the television or monitor. The only hint that the day had passed into darkness was when the high windows of the warehouse stopped casting sunbeams to show up the dust.



"Do I need to make myself scarce later?" Matt asked, still concentrating on the game in front of him.



Mello looked up in surprise. "What?"



"Don\'t you do a midnight mass thing?"



Before Mello could respond, his mobile \'phone rang and he moved to one of the smaller storage rooms to answer it. A few minutes later, he returned, muting the television and holding the \'phone so Matt could hear Hal too. "Sorry, carry on."



On the other end of the telephone, Hal continued. "It\'s a full sized tree and he\'s decorated it himself. I haven\'t seen it personally, but my colleague told me all about it. He\'s got some really weird things hanging off it."



"What like?" Mello asked gruffly, as if this conversation sullied him.



"A lot of toys."



Matt pulled the pad towards him and hunted for a pen. Mello supplied it and the redhead wrote, "Layers? Clusters of things?"



"Hal, are there themes to these toys? Like clumps of them together?"



"Yes. He\'s separated them with streamers." She paused to recall what she had been told. "There\'s a mechanical section; a religious section..."



"Sorry, what?"



"Only one bit of the tree has crosses and an angel, then there\'s another part with a Gameboy and a Pokemon, another bit with normal decorations." Matt wrote, \'He knows I\'m here. What\'s the proximity of normal decorations to the Gameboy and crosses?\' Mello repeated the question aloud and Hal made a frustrated noise. "I don\'t know. I haven\'t seen it." Matt wrote, \'which is higher on the tree, Gameboy or crosses?\' Scrowling, Mello asked the question. "The Gameboy." Matt nodded and reached again for his own game. With a look that fired daggers in his direction, Mello retreated again to the storage area.



"Well?" The blond demanded when he returned. "Oh! You\'re higher up the tree than me, whoopee."



"You have such a blind spot where Near\'s concerned." Matt moved his controls and bit his lip. Then his concentration relaxed and he smiled up at his lover. "The crosses are nearer to the ground because Near is. When he\'s sitting there, he\'s going to be looking directly at them. Anything higher up than that is significant but not worthy of consideration. I had the epic fail there." Matt shrugged. "And Near is scared."



"What?"



"The Christmas tree is a toy." Matt\'s fingers sped up on the controls again. "He\'s got it up because it\'s Christmas and that\'s what you do; and also because other people around him are going to be thinking about the season. He needs to keep up to speed with what they are thinking. The tree reminds him that Hal or his other team might be thinking of home and may not be as attentive as normal." Matt peered closer to the console. "Near never got Christmas. It scared him a bit." He jabbed a button and smiled. "Actually, he might not know that I\'m here. The tree relates back to The Wammy House. It would be interesting to know what else he has on it. If there\'s just normal decorations, random toys, crosses and games, then he knows I\'m here. If there are things like paint-brushes, sweets, marbles and, I don\'t know, add obsession as found, then he\'s trying to comfort himself by harking back to the last time he felt secure. The Wammy House." His fingers sped up again. "Either way, I guarantee that there will be a bell somewhere near the bottom. That\'s home base."



"A bell?"



"Don\'t you think about bells when you think of home?" Matt reached for a cigarette, but didn\'t light it, his focus intensifying on the game. "There will be something next to the bell that is specifically Near. Some kind of toy or puzzle. Just far enough away from the bell to be distinct, but nearly touching, because he wants to go home so much." A little smirk. "Though he\'s probably not showing it."



"When did you become an expert on Near\'s psychology?" Mello demanded.



"Everyone was. It doesn\'t take a genius to work out the patterns of Near\'s toys, but there was a roomful of geniuses working it out anyway." Matt peered more closely to the game again. "Linda\'s number is in my \'phone, call her and tell her what we know about the tree and she\'ll tell you exactly the same as I just did. You were the only one not looking." He didn\'t look up, as Mello snorted and sat down. "Where this is important is that Near\'s scared; he sees you as much as a threat as Kira; but at the same time, he wants you close. He\'s spending as much of his life trying to guess what you\'re doing as he is working out how to pin this on Light Yagami."



"Did you all watch me as well?"



Matt laughed, "That\'s probably the most predictable thing you\'ve ever said in your life." A final jab at the game and Matt sat back with a look of pure satisfaction. "Pwned." He put the game down. "Two things, then I need to check on the turkey. You were always more difficult, because the only clues to you came from Near and he couldn\'t get you at all. If he was close, you would over-react though. So your reaction to him told us what was a bullseye. You were stubbornly unpredictable, but you had," he paused and winked, "a massive inferiority complex where Near is involved. That\'s why you hate him. You feel superior to everyone else."



Mello stared at the table, "That\'s what everyone thought or just you?"



"The second thing I wanted to say was about what I said earlier." Matt rose and loitered halfway to the kitchen. "I couldn\'t be a Catholic... it\'s not because of the deities and stuff, because I can see how they\'d work. It might even be nice to... believe that they are around keeping an eye on things. If I was you, then I\'d have to look up above for a higher power as well." Mello looked sharply up at him, but Matt just smiled. It was jarring to be met with that unshielded green gaze and Mello remembered that he\'d put the goggles on the fridge. He wondered if Matt had seen them. "I couldn\'t be Catholic because there\'s too much fear of tomorrow. I can\'t be scared of the future. It would do my head in too much."



Mello stared across at the shrine to the Virgin and nodded. He understood.