All The Way Here

It took a moment for Matt to react. Shock and adrenaline hit in tsunami waves, calming the heart and sharpening the mind. Perversely, he was almost laughing inside, his mind throwing up the ridiculous observation that if anyone had rehearsed being shouted at with guns pointing threateningly, it was him. He tried to think of the words to say to defuse this. To remember what he was going to say, but there was a confusion of lights and then darkness.



From a million miles away came the sounds of traffic and voices. Someone screamed. Matt held a ragged breath and suddenly understood that something very bad had happened. Someone was seriously hurt and for unfathomable reasons, he couldn\'t move to help them. Silently, he thought a prayer to whoever for that person to be reached. For himself, he was just aware of the cigarette in his mouth. While there was breath, there were cigarettes and he would be ok. His reason hurried to catch up with the urgent messages of his body and he worked it out. Adrenaline, such a beautiful, wonderful thing, surely anaethesizing him from what short-term memory was trying to insist just happened. He took a drag on his cigarette and the stimulant of the nicotine boosted his mental faculties enough to realize. He had been shot.



The knowledge brought with it a falling sensation and a sudden true clarity. He was not going to get out of this one alive. So why no pain and why no fear? And what the fuck was Mello going to do without him? Matt\'s eyes snapped open and he found himself staring into wide, black, beloved eyes. It was going to be alright! L was here to make it alright again! Then, as he watched those familiar, safe features lighten with a little smile, the redhead understood. "I got pwned."



L was crouched like some angel crow on the ground beside him. He lifted up the fallen cigarette and handed it back to the pale gamer. Matt couldn\'t help but notice that, though it felt solid in his sight and between his fingers and on the back of his throat and in his lungs, the cigarette remained lying on the tarmac, still smoldering. He looked up and saw the overkill of black suited men still standing at their cars, staring back at him. Matt reached for his gun, furious, wanting to fight back now. It was in his hand, he was pointing, but he couldn\'t shoot. Memories of Johan the Scandanavian\'s exploding head filled his mind and he couldn\'t shoot. "What did they go and do that for?"



A sob rose unbidden in his throat and Matt screamed, loud and terrified, never so unrestrained in life. He clutched at his sleeveless jacket and at the ground, scrambling for something, anything that made sense now. If he\'d been shot, why was there no blood? He looked down and finally saw the blood. A lake of it. There are eight pints of blood in the human body, his intellect fed into his blistering mind, and if you ever dropped a bottle of milk, you would know how that would look. Matt fell forward onto his knees and retched until he was sure he should have thrown up. What was this? What...?



His cigarette was being held in front of his orange-tinted goggles again. Matt took it and turned to the person who had handed it to him. L, with that fixed, oh so compassionate smile on his face, as white as he\'d been in life, but for the jet black hair and the jeans. "L, I\'m so scared."



The older boy finally spoke, "I was waiting for you to work it out on your own, Mail."



Matt jolted at the name. It wasn\'t safe. No-one could call him Mail anymore. He could be killed. "Oh." A great trembling started and his mind was overwhelmed with a panicky desperation just to find Mello. Just to get to him.



Like a dream, a whooshing sensation and an overview. He was seeing a lorry and a scene being played out inside its carriage. His Mello, large as life, demanding that the Queen of Japanese Television strip naked. Matt took a step forward, "They killed me, Mello. They fucking killed me." But there was no reaction. Mello intent on the task at hand. Matt knew how much it cost him to do this. To disrespect a lady like that. That was not how they\'d been raised. But the lady was stripping, asking for a blanket. Matt fell to his knees, sobbing and trembling, aware again that L crouched beside him. "What am I going to do? What\'s he going to do?"



L popped a bon-bon into his own mouth and stared at the blond man walking out of the back of the lorry. "I predict a 98% likelihood that he will give Near a fighting chance to beat Kira." That beatific smile again. "You both have. Raito-kun was very good, but after this, I wonder..." He opened his arms and Matt dived into his embrace, crying until it seemed that there were no tears left in his body. "All this fighting over who was the new me. No-one could be. We are all unique." L soothed back Matt\'s hair, watching him with those big, expressionate eyes. "I played my part and passed on the baton. You took it and you ran. You were so good, Mail. So very, very good. Mihael is playing his part now, as he\'s had parts to play in the past. Let him."



Matt felt an alarm, sudden and urgent, tugging at him. It seemed to originate in his head, or around his body. It felt like Mello, external. There was no time to analyse, he had to react. Another disorientating shift of reality. Too much like a dream. He thought and he was was there. In the cabin with Mello, that unbelievable soul with a heart the size of a continent, so much more like an angel now, living and breathing, than he ever appeared when Matt stood beside him. A small television reported the news of Matt\'s death. He saw his body, lying there, but with more detachment than he\'d hitherto experienced. He understood, "That\'s not me!" But Mello couldn\'t hear him. He could feel Mello\'s heart shattering. "Don\'t give up, Mihael. Just a bit longer now." Matt\'s hand flew to his mouth. "Oh God! Near! Roger! Look after him! Someone look after him!"



His vision was filled with L\'s reappearance, in the seat between himself and Mello. Their mentor had a bowl of ice-cream and was scooping it into his mouth with a delicately held spoon. "Mail, this is all very confusing for you right now. But you need to know something."



"What?" Matt couldn\'t conceptualize a single thing that was going to make it alright.



L produced from nowhere a lit cigarette and popped it between Matt\'s lips. "The lady in the back has the Shinigami eyes and a Death Note." Matt screamed until he thought that his lungs would burst. Time dislocated and fractalled. He saw the ghosts before he saw the church. "I can stop her."



"You can\'t." L replied levelly. "It\'s a conundrum, how one with the Shinigami eyes cannot see us."



Mello parked the lorry and sat still. His eyes fixed on the mirror, watching Takada in the cabin in the back. He glared but didn\'t move. Slender fingers around his rosary and his lips muttering, Mello counted the beads, but didn\'t take it from his neck. Words emerging in Croatian, his eyes fixed on the television. L twisted in his seat and reached across unfelt, unheard, covering Mello\'s head with his hands. In perfect Croatian, L said the words with the blond man, only their focus was different and Matt understood that he was hearing the last rites. Mello speaking them for Matt; unknowing that someone else was there too, someone who could commend Mello\'s soul, when this inevitable, unstoppable scene played itself out. Mello was about to die! Matt could only watch, cursing his own lack of knowledge. Why had he never learned this? This prayer which was so important to the man who was his life. How did L know this? In Croatian at that.



There should have been a cracking sound that opened Heaven itself, but the only sign that something had happened was Mello\'s eyes opening wide and a mask of pure terror fastening over his features. L shuffled back. "To you, Mail. It\'ll be you he\'ll want to see first." In the seat behind him, Mello\'s face turned a deep purple. His lips were a thin, moving streak of the grayest blue and agony wracked his eyes.



Matt shot across the wide seat, arms encasing his lover, as Mello clutched the rosary and spoke in Croatian until his breath failed and he died, slumped over the steering wheel. Even then, he seemed not to notice, the prayer going on, stronger now that he didn\'t have to rely on breath to speak it. "Mihael, you dropped your Godsword." Matt smiled. "But it\'s ok. It turns out that we respawn after all."