My Own Way

Hi all,



Yay! Another unacceptably long author\'s note! Before you get bored halfway through and leave, I\'d like to send a shout out and big thank you to Nine Lives (aka Spoiled-Kitten, aka Xizarx), Miyamashi (aka Morgie) and Monkeybird25. The first two are an endless source of constructive feedback and are never scared to tell me that Mello wouldn\'t do whatever I\'ve just had him doing. Monkeybird25 walked into my Deviant Art homepage and held a gun at my head, whilst eating chocolate, threatening life and limb if I didn\'t put my DS down and upload this story into DA. It was actually a good call, as I got a lot more feedback there which resulted in typos being corrected and storylines fine-tuned. Stay beautiful everyone.



It\'s been a little while since I last published anything, but I didn\'t stop writing. There are two and a half (alternative universe) sequels to \'All The Way Here\', but the first of these contains spoilers for the unpublished chapter(s) of Miyamashi\'s \'Twisted Religion\'. Once that\'s out, I\'ll leave it a week or so to give everyone chance to read it, then publish all of mine in one daunting landslide of MelloxMatt fan-fiction. There\'s something to look forward to. *snort*



\'My Own Way\' happened largely because I was bored. I hadn\'t wanted to cover this ground, because some parts (especially Mello blowing up a building with himself in it) has been done hundreds of times by much better writers than me. I couldn\'t think of anything new to say, so I started \'It Matters\' after that time. Then someone asked me how Matt and Mello were reunited in Matilda!Canon (as opposed to official...). I usually deflect pre-\'It Matters\' questions onto the storyline of \'Twisted Religion\', until Miyamashi pointed out that we divert just enough times for it not to be a sequential reading experience and besides, she\'s now writing about the same timeline that I\'ve already covered... differently. In other words, stop being a lazy git and write your own, biatch. :p



The majority of this story was written as an enjoyable, no-brainer romp through the narrative. I started with \'how did they meet back up\' and knew that I had to finish where \'It Matters\' began, so off I toddled, recording what I saw on the way. All good fun. It did wind up being probably the most violent of the series thus far, but Mello\'s in the Mafia. They aren\'t known for their philanthropic, goodwill to all activities. Also, there are several incidents in this story which I personally think constitutes unacceptable behaviour by Mello towards Matt. Later on in the series, I have Mello beating himself up over, well everything, and commenting to Matt that the first time they had sex, it was \'practically rape\'. I didn\'t know then that I\'d one day be having to write that scene. Matt does emerge as a masochist, who actually gets off on all of this, but that\'s beside the point. He actively does not give his consent on just about every early occasion and only does so in the \'Matty was a Friend of Mine\' chapter when, from his point of view, it must have seemed inevitable that Mello was going to have sex with him regardless of his wishes. I am not here, or anywhere, advocating rape and sexual harassment. No always mean no. I was close to deleting that chapter, but Nine Lives calmed me down in the DA Mattgasm chat-room. Miyamashi later supported Nine Lives\'s view and so that was me over-ruled.



I hate to say this next bit, because I am (obviously) a huge fan of Death Note. However where this story touches the canon, close analysis of the Ohba/Obata official version reveals a few challenges... Mello\'s scar might render him the sexiest Slav ever to squeeze into leather, but it makes no sense on two levels. Firstly, it\'s a bad burn and it covers a large area of his body. Secondly, it makes no sense in terms of what he was wearing when he pressed that button. Exposed areas remained unblemished, while the blast ripped through leather and gas mask like they weren\'t there. That boy needed to be in a hospital and that\'s not just for a bit of peace of mind. As a First Aider, I already knew that in a general sense, but then I started researching burns... In the canon version, Mello blows up the building, then turns up at Hal\'s house three days later. He stays with her for a week, then there\'s the whole shower scene. This would be fair enough with first degree burns. It\'s pushing it, but still tenuously feasible with second degree burns, as long as they weren\'t at the severe end of that classification. None of this explains his seemingly indestructible hair, but we can ignore that on the basis that he looks really cute when Hal is telling him that she\'s on no-one\'s side. (I love the subtext there that perhaps only exists in my mind: \'Just because I\'m your friend, it doesn\'t mean I can\'t be Near\'s friend as well. How old are you, Mello? Five?\')



I turned to the manga and my first surprise was that the scars aren\'t actually consistent. Sometimes Obata draws them just on his face, other times its down his neck and shoulder. The greater the area, the more dangerous these injuries are. In the end, I settled for the picture where Mello is staring up in that outfit with all the zips, half-covering his face with his hand. I then camped out in burns survivors\' forums, reading stories, comparing photographs with the drawing of Mello, and eventually concluding that by now we\'re looking at mostly severe second degree burns, with a touch of third degree on his shoulder. In short, if no-one had got a drip into him, he\'d have died before he ever made it to NYC and Hal\'s tender care. There\'s no way he\'d have had the strength or mental faculties to go shopping for a new red coat, let alone make it onto a plane, past all the security looking for him. All alone, I would expect him to be slowly dying of dehydration, lying down somewhere in LA. Burns like that leak fluids to a lethal level and just drinking water is not going to cover it.



In short, the official timeline doesn\'t work on a medical level. Someone had to have helped Mello or else he would have died. I joined a trillion other people in it being Matt, which was lucky for Mello, because it would take a genius to work out how to rehydrate him in those circumstances. There\'s a very valid argument that it\'s actually less feasible (and a bit Mary-Sue-ish) for Mello to be smuggled out to Britain than it was for him to be taken to New York. This is true, but I messed up in \'It Matters\', \'kay? They end up in England because that\'s where Wammy\'s House is and I needed them to be there for the next story to work. -.- Sorry. I didn\'t actually do any research for \'It Matters\' at the time.



In order to give Mello time to heal, my own timeline is now messed up. This story takes us up to Christmas (official storyline, Mello and Matt should be in Japan by now); then the epilogue covers an unspecified time in the spring or summer of the following year (they should be dead by then). It would have taken that long for the skin buds to spread and the dressings finally removed for good. \'It Matters\' covers about six weeks in the autumn (long dead by then), before delivering us back into the official timeline as is faithfully followed by \'All the Way Here\'. As readers then, your choices are thus: 1, Near and Raito do sod all for a year, just sit around watching the soaps and putting their feet up, waiting for Mello to heal enough to reappear with a sexy scar; 2, half of this story and all of \'It Matters\' actually take place in a parallel universe, where severe second degree and third degree burns take months/years to heal (in which case, please skip straight from Matt coming up with the hydrating solution in this story to the beginning of \'All the Way Here\' and you\'re all good for the official timeline); or 3, call me every name under the sun and refuse to read my fan-fiction ever again.



Despite the warping of the timeline, I hope I did come up with feasible solutions to the other puzzling aspects of this episode (I\'m personally quite proud of explaining away the unsinged hair) and you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it.



Apologies for the length of this note, but I\'m avoiding doing housework. *smirks* Thank you for reading and, if you\'ve made it this far, you deserve a present: http://www.mrsjeevas.joharrington.co.uk/mxmstories/ (zip file with the music I was listening to as I wrote this). Enjoy.



yours

Matilda

xxxxx