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Matty	By : flagfish Category: Death Note > Yaoi-Male/Male Views: 2314 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note, nor do I make any money from writing this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Prologue
- 2-2
- 3-3
- 4-4
- 5-5
- 6-6
- 2
- 3
- 4
Near was different, too.
This went without saying – the mere fact that a boy so young showed capacity so advanced for his age was curious enough, but there was more than this, there was an eerie silence to him, severity and focus far beyond his years.
He would study and think for hours, silent as his small fingers laced and knotted together endless chains of straw, in repeating, maddening designs, sheets and layers on layers of complex, intricate patterns he would bind in endless stacks before him.
Matt and Mello had found them in his room when they came in to torment him, they found them on his dresser and writing desk and floor, immaculate, perfect stacks of complex and accurately-woven knots almost too precise to be made by human hands.
“What a freak,”
Mello would whisper to Matt, “maybe he does this with the sorcery they taught him.”
But they both had seen him at work making and stacking the knots, and neither of them thought that even such a prodigious student as Near had gotten so far in his training after only a year or two.
They had hoped to make him ill by collecting powder and pollen from plants in the nearby woods, by bringing it in at night and forcing it up his airways, they’ve seen what pollen did to him before.
But it didn’t work, they watched him deliberately during the course of the following day, but, exasperatingly, he seemed completely fine. And, to add insult to injury, they also were discovered, and the little bastard must have been awake the entire time and reported them in the morning.
It was Master Lawliet who confronted them that day, gently pulling them aside before supper and sitting them down in his chamber. He stared at them fidgeting for a few moments, expression unreadable as his large eyes darted from Matt to Mello and back.
He wasn’t training for the priesthood, but dangling between his hands was a manuscript of the Old Testament, delicately, between his thumbs and forefingers, a curious habit. Seeing L with such an item was odd, out of sorts, somehow unfitting, and, without a word, he slowly placed the tome in his lap, carefully turning the gold-lined pages almost to the beginning of the book, until he reached the part of interest.
He didn’t read to them, though, but merely looked up through his long, dark hair, and murmured,
“Matt and Mello know this story.”
Matt liked to read.
Curious, he leaned over from his seat across the way, slowly standing up as to join at L’s side.
It was the story about how Cain killed Abel, his younger brother, because of jealousy.
Matt smirked, restraining himself as best he could from offering his gratitude to L for the brilliant suggestion.
L made note of his laughter, large eyes darting in Matt's direction, but he made no comment. Instead, he went on to say,
“There are two theories about this.”
He had their interest now.
“One interpretation is that Cain lured his brother with deliberate intention to slay him. The other is that he meant merely to confront him, but a quarrel ensued, and, in the heat of the moment, there came murder.”
Mello and Matt looked up slowly.
Perhaps L had conveyed to Matt early on an intent to report him to the arrow smith merely to intimidate him. Despite it all, neither he nor anyone else in the house ever gave him away. There was severe, bloody penalty for theft, and, taking pity on the boy, the lords of the house kept their silence, and the dragon’s slaughter went unclaimed. It was accepted reluctantly under the premise that, before at last it died, the beast managed perhaps to devour the ill-fated hero—but when officials came the next day to slice the dragon open and find out, it was gone, curiously, as though it never had been there at all.
“I think with you the case is not deliberate intent,” L said quietly, “but the result is nevertheless the same.”
He said no more; the point was made.
The story of Cain and Abel was extra taboo because they were brothers. He killed his own family, he killed his own kind.
Near didn’t seem at all like Matt and Mello’s kind, but the point was made: they were to regard him as family. If Matt really could kill a dragon, then one would think he also could kill a little boy.
The pages of the manuscript were pretty, the gold-laced leaves reflected the candlelight from the nearby lantern with flickering brilliance, and the vivid colors dazzled all around the carefully inked words.
Matt thought he might become a scribe, but doing something so meticulous for hours on end every day could get very dull, more likely than not.
The boys were dismissed, and on their descent down the hard stone stairwell, Matt interlaced his fingers in Mello’s, whispering,
“But he doesn’t know the reason we meant to make him ill.”
This was true; no one had any way of knowing about stage two of their ploy—gaining access to the spell books.
They would have to think of a new plan, and they put some thought into this, but they soon became tasked with the labor of lessons, the hard work of their studies, and, for a long time, their mission went forgotten, an absent familiar in the back of their minds until they no longer thought much of it at all.
It was not until the following winter that an incident had occurred.
There was a holiday dinner, organized and arranged days before, with preparation of all manner of food in generous, hearty servings that would leave everyone in the house lethargic and fatigued for the full day that followed.
Everyone who stayed throughout, that is.
It was during the feast, partway at the toasting at the second course that there came from outside the gate the familiar trotting of horses, increasingly louder, before soon there was a knock at the front door.
They got him.
Who knows how, or who told, or why the investigation took so very long, but they got him, they arrested Matt at the front door and took him away.
There must be some mistake, Master Wammy had said, the boy is under our supervision, he has no reason to steal, he’s only just a little boy.
Mello protested, too, slender arms slung all around Matt’s neck as he pressed him possessively to himself, glaring at the guards with rage so unbecoming to a training priest.
But it was no use.
Kicking and crying horrific profanities so near the refectory where everyone could hear, Mello was peeled away from Matt, and, writhing from within Roger’s grasp, he watched his friend taken away.
***
It wasn’t just theft. It was the dragon, too.
They knew, somehow, about both.
For theft, they cut off your hands, you could bleed to death, you could die from disease that came thereafter.
What transpired that night, the prospects for Matt were not good.
For the brewing of poison, they made you blind.
Matt was ingenious. He could get himself out of this. How much, he wondered to himself when they tied him down with ropes to the board, how much do they know, what have they for proof—
Negotiations, they knew somehow that he had slain the dragon, as well, he reminded them of that, a heroic deed, that was worth something, wasn’t that right.
Blades of iron, stained already with old blood, ropes and coal and rods and instruments of torture, axes, knives, and fire.
Killing people, this also was killing your own kind.
They wouldn’t kill him, no, just penalize—just—just.
Was it Master Lawliet who gave him away?
The man pacing alongside the board walked slowly, browsing, was he, turning over in his mind what instrument, what manner of torment to use, and Matt’s eyes followed the motion of his hand, knife to blade to axe to—
His hand came to rest on one of the items, and he picked it up, bringing it to the board, holding it in clear view.
A dart, the needle tip emerging through a hardened scale of skin. A dragon scale.
Matt recognized the dart—sure enough, it was his—inasmuch as something he stole was really his.
Which, he was now so keenly aware, it wasn’t.
But there was something more.
The dart wasn’t lodged in the scale so deeply. It was secured in place by small ropes.
Small, intricately woven, knotted ropes, with precise and complex patterns repeating in meticulous sequences, layer by layer.

To be continued...
- 2
- 3
- 4
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