Adult-FanFiction.org : Anime

Annals of Fear II	By : DeathNoteFangirl Category: Death Note > Yaoi-Male/Male > Mello/Matt Views: 5803 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note and I do not make any money from these writings

Chapter List
- 37
- 38
- 39
"There we go."   Hal placed the lit candle in the centre of the kitchen table.    It illuminated, with a soft glow, the middle of the room, but left its extremities in shadow.    "There are another two, in the cupboard under the sink.    I'm going to take one upstairs. I want to see out of the window there.   I've got the feeling it's the whole area.   I'm certain I could see the lights of the town from this window before."     Mello lifted his head from Matt's shoulder and looked at her.    She nodded, briskly, "More height."

The couple watched her go and listened to her quick footsteps on the stairs.    Mello blinked.   "I fear that Ms Lidner is a little flustered."    He met his husband's gaze.   "She's forgotten that we're not to be left alone."

"Where's your head, Mello?"   Matt asked, flatly.

"In a dozen places at once."   Mello tapped the communicator, but the life had gone from it.   It had died on them along with the lights.   "You think I've gone mad, Mail.    You may not be wrong, but you're certainly not right."    He placed the communicator down on the table and double-checked his 'phone.   There was no signal.    "Just trust me, ok?"

Matt gave him a long, evaluating look.   "You sided with Hal over me."

"Yes." Mello gave a half smile.   "Isn't that peculiar?"

Hal raced back down the stairs.   She bustled into the room, pacing with an anxious restlessness.   "There are no lights anywhere. I know that I could see Aberystwyth in the distance and I'm fairly sure that I could see another town too, on the other side of the valley.   It's just darkness now."

Mello nodded, bowing his head.   "They are L's successors too."

"What?" Hal paused long enough to cast him a piercing stare.

"Those little cherubs, whom you're worrying so much about.    If Near and I had been killed.   If Mail had been killed.   Then it would have been Deontic in charge of the Kira case.    Eventually it may have been Fenian and little Century too."   He caressed Matt's face.   "We all had the same education.   The same values and training.    I learned to think in the same room as all three of them.   Lauren's out there too.   A lady who had the benefit of all the same things, but with the added bonus of teachers learning from their mistakes with us.   More experience."

Hal sighed.   "I know."

"Yet you and Deontic both want me to act."

"No, Mello, I don't."   Hal moved to the window again, staring out.   "Because you and Fenian are so clouded in testosterone that it's affecting everything."

Mello shrugged.   "I've surrendered.   I don't think you quite understand where I went out there.   I saw Hell.   I saw eternal damnation.   I saw what's waiting for us."    He moulded his upper body around Matt's again and cuddled him in the chair.   In a tiny voice, he continued.   "I want to be safe now.   I gave up everything for Watari.   I lost my childhood. My innocence.   My place in Heaven.   I spent years doing things that would make you..."   Mello left the sentence hanging, his face buried into Matt's shoulder.

Matt didn't hold him.   He merely sat there, watching Hal in the candlelight.    Hal waited, until impatience got the better of her. "You pair are the geniuses.   What do you suggest that we do?"

Mello sniffed, tears in free-fall again.   "I'm so sorry.   For all that I did.   I'm really sorry." A gloved hand snaked up to wipe his face.   "I want to give my Confession and take Communion.   I want to go down on my knees, in a house of God, and give up my sins.   I don't want to die with this on my soul."

Matt looked away.   He took up his cigarette packet from the table and tapped its edge on the tabletop a couple of times.   Then he took one out and lit it.   The smoke curled above the candle-flame and disappeared into the darkness.   Hal stopped and looked uncertainly back.   "You want to go to church."    She grew pensive.   "Like all of those people who heard the song. They went to their holy places.   You want that, Mello?"

"I haven't felt safe since I was four years old.   I want to take Mail and I want to get as far away from here as possible."   Mello's voice cracked under the strain of his emotion. "But that's not going to happen, is it?   Because you all want me dead."

Hal gave an exasperated noise.   "No, Mello, we don't."

"But you do want to take Mail away from me."

Hal paused.   "I think you're being very paranoid, Mello."    He was silent.   The atmosphere felt dense with it.    Matt smoked, seemingly in a world of his own.    Hal waited. The silence went on for long minutes.    In the end, Hal took a deep breath.   "I'm really worried about what's going on out there.   I'm feeling pretty useless sitting up here.   What do you suggest that we do?"

Mello lifted his head from Matt's shoulder, with a great effort.    He wiped his eyes. Rasping, he asked, "Is the only thing keeping us from the chalets the presence of Valerie there?   And the probability of Fenian's return?"

Hal nodded, "Yes."

"If Valerie is injured, then she should be at the hospital.    Remove her and that problem no longer exists.   Trust in Fenian's intellect to notice that our car is back there.   Let him be the judge of turning away.    You're not his mother."

Hal bit her lip. "What do you make of Century's last communication?   About a crack and the ropes going slack?"

"I mostly deduce that Deontic's probably shitting herself worrying about it, all on her own at the chalets."

Hal leaned on the sink unit and bowed her head.   "Why are you so anxious to get back to the chalets?"

"Because Mail won't let me look at his injuries while you're in the room.   And I just want to curl up in bed with him and resist the urge to find the nearest church and crucify myself in it."

Matt stiffened and turned to look at him.   "Do you really feel like this, Mello?"

"I'm sick of having to be the brave, strong one. Yes."

Hal looked across at them, concern etching her features.   "Matt?"   She waited, but he didn't even look at her.   "Shit."   She checked her 'phone for the umpteenth time.   It was still without a signal.    "Matt's again attacked a member of my staff.   She has a right to be protected from him."

Mello looked pained.   "She was in the way and she shouldn't have been there.   I sent her away.   You allowed her to be in the room.   Mail wasn't in his right mind.   He was desperate and did something that he wouldn't ordinarily have done.   You have no idea what it's like when that thing is unleashed on you.   It's panic, but true panic. Panic like you never thought it could be felt. There's no reason.   No morality.   It's fight or flight in overdrive.   It's wanting to die, just to stop feeling like you're feeling or being where you are right now.   It's like nothing on Earth.   It's a terror that can literally stop your heart.   She shouldn't have been hurt, but if negligence was going to mean that she was in a position to be hurt, then thank God that it was only two stitches."

"You're putting this onto me?" Hal snapped.

Mello glanced at her, then closed his eyes.   "This is a phenomenon that can make people kill themselves horrifically.   This is something that can cause people an ocean away to flee for their lives.   Does that sound like sanity to you?    It's like putting a baby down in the way of a stampeding bull, then blaming the bull when the baby is trampled to death."

Matt turned his gaze onto Hal.   "I didn't know what I was doing.   I just wanted to get to Mello."

"Matt, it looked calculated.   It looked like you knew what you were doing."

Mello growled, his voice raising, "He didn't know!   He couldn't know!   You can't think under that."    He took several deep breaths.   His tone emerged slightly more controlled, but still husky.   "Why are we arguing over this lesser thing, when all Hell is probably breaking out?"

Hal exhaled.   "Ok.   Ok."   She stepped away from the sink.   "I'll agree to us going back to the chalets, but on one condition.   I want Mello to travel with me, in my car."    There was a heavy silence.   "Agreed?"

It was Matt who replied, in a blank monotone, "Yes."

Mello kissed him. "Thank you, baby."   He turned to look at Hal.   "Please bring your car up here.   I don't want him to be out of my sight for a second."     They watched Hal hesitate, then nod and hurry out of the room.   Neither moved or spoke until the front door opened and shut, then Mello slipped off Matt's lap and peered down the hallway.   "Sorry."

"For bruising my thigh, tapping Morse Code into it with your finger?"   Matt narrowed his eyes.   "Like a fucking woodpecker."

"Our situation is infinitely better than it was, when you were driving like a lunatic around a farmyard."   Mello countered. "What we need is at the chalets.   Let's assume that whatever has happened isn't good.   That Deontic has the emergency services up there.   That Fenian and Century probably aren't even at the manor house anymore.   We need to know where they are.   We need to know what they found."

Matt shrugged. "Major flaw in your plan, Mello."

Mello froze. "What?"

"I'll let Hal tell you.   In roughly two minutes time."   Matt stared coldly at him.   "In the meantime, you tell me where your head is. You might have been tapping away telling me that it's all an act to con the soft-hearted lady, but it sounded awfully real from where I was sitting."

Mello was pensive, picking over his strategy in his head.    He replied absently, "The best act is 99% truth.    As are the best lies. I'm shaken but sane.   Don't fuck with my head now, Mail."    He unzipped his jacket pocket and took out half a chocolate bar.   Then just held it, without taking a single bite.   "They're going to scatter.    If they know something and they can get away, they will scatter.   Time is of the essence.   Otherwise it's via Watari or tracking them down wherever they're going to.   What can...?" His head shot up, his eyes widening.   "Oh fuck."

"You found the flaw."

There was a hammering on the front door.   Mello sighed.   "Have you already got the solution too?"

"Not yet."   Matt smoked, looking unperturbed.

Mello wasn't fooled.   "Work on it."   He hurried to the door and opened it.    "Hi."

Hal charged inside.   "Have you got any jump-leads?   My car is completely dead."    She shivered, loudly expressing how cold she was from just that short trip outside.   "And there's a horrible smell of burning in the air."

"Burning?" Mello asked. There was a snap as the chocolate finally connected with his mouth. "Oh?"

Matt rose from his seat and hurried to the window.   His tinted vision scanned the horizon, then looked up at the sky.   In the hallway, Hal calmly stated, "It's not the farm. I did a quick visual check up all four lanes of the quad.    Could we use your car?"

Mello walked back into the kitchen.   "Our car will be dead too."   He joined Matt by the window and peered out.   "Are the bastards burning the manor down to conceal their evidence?"

"Wouldn't we have heard more sirens?"

"Not if no-one called the fire brigade."   Mello bit down suddenly on the chocolate in his mouth.   "Where did you put my motorbike helmet?"    Neither of them replied.   "When you took it off me in the back of Fenian's Land Rover, where did you put it?"

Matt sucked on his cigarette, "Next to you.   I didn't pick it back up again."    He peeped sidewards at his husband.   "Your bike is still at the manor?"

Mello took another large chunk of chocolate and chomped it noisily.   Hal had joined them at the window.   She watched both of their blank expressions, then said, firmly, "I'm going to run up to the top of that slope and see what I can see."   She waited for any dissent to that plan.   Mello ate chocolate. Matt smoked.   Neither said a word, until she was at the back door.

"Hal. Wait."   Mello commanded.   "It's a bad idea to split up.   Let us see if there's a coat for Mail in this house, then we'll all go."

Matt frowned, but he said nothing at all.

Author's Note: This story is being discussed here: http://mrsjeevas.joharrington.co.uk/forum/viewforum.php?f=11
- 37
- 38
- 39
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Annals of Fear II