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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
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The Dublin sky was grim and grainy, threatening rain at any moment, but that had not stopped the tourists.   It was too cold to be hanging around Temple Bar, so it seemed that they had hit the shops and bars in droves.   English stag and hen parties, already rowdy, despite it only being late afternoon.   They appeared to have no concept of walking on the pavement, hordes of them swarming out into the road, stopping traffic in their assumption of a right of way.   Not that the vehicles were going anywhere fast.   The encroaching rush hour and roadworks all along the north of the Liffey, right up to O'Connell Bridge, were seeing to that.

Kiana glanced across as Fenian groaned.   He was shifting, uncomfortably, again in the passenger seat.    She sighed, "It's going to be a fucking arse to park anywhere near.   Why did you not have it sent to Galway?"

Fenian's palms were pressed against his forehead, as he leaned forward, pain etched upon his features. He hissed, "Because all they know of Ireland is Dublin and I'd like it to fucking stay like that."

"Are you not getting ready to throw up?   You've turned green."

"So's the fucking traffic lights. Go!"   Fenian snapped.   Kiana drove them forward and signalled to turn, finally, into Lower O'Connell Street. Fenian remembered, just in time, to look up at the Monument.   His eyes sought, with practiced direction, the bullet-holed breast of the angel.   It was a personal tradition.   The first time he had ever stepped foot on Irish soil, after a long sojourn in Wammy's House, he had stood at the foot of that monument.   Then, as now, he wasn't really thinking of anything much about the Troubles that had put that bullet-hole there.   He didn't even know why he looked.    He turned back in time to see two women, one of them towing a small girl by the hand, stepping out into the dual carriageway.   Kiana sucked in a breath, as she slammed on the brakes.   Fenian held the dashboard, sharp shards of pain stabbing through the general ache of his lower back.   "Fucking cunts!" He yelled, through the windscreen, at the older of the two women.   "Watch your fucking...!" He stopped, staring in disbelief, as several more members of their party, including several children and a pensioner, took the opportunity of stalled traffic to cross to the central partition.    One of the women had the gall to flash him the birdie.   Fenian opened the window and bellowed, "Fuck off back to England, bitch! Hope you and your fucking spawn break your fucking legs!"

The road cleared and the driver of the white van behind them honked his horn angrily.   Kiana eased them forward.   "Lee, you're in no condition for another long drive.   I'm not even happy about letting you jump out up there." She saw him about to shout her down, so hurried on.   "We'll get a hotel room here.   Let you rest your back.   Tomorrow, we'll go home.   It's getting fucking dark and you've already been sitting there for fucking hours through Wales."

"Here!" Fenian roared, but the white van was tail-gating them and it simply wasn't safe to stop.   Kiana drove right on into Upper O'Connell.   Fenian glared.   "What the fuck, woman?"

"Here's the craic.   It's not happening. We're parking up.   I'm not having you try to get across the road, when you can hardly fucking walk."   Her tone and expression brooked no dissent.    Fenian protested angrily, especially when both Parnell Street car-parks were full and they had to swing around the block. They eventually found a space in the Jervis Street multi-storey, almost back at the River Liffey again.   Kiana turned the key in the ignition to cut the engine.   Her whole body sank in relief. It had taken nearly as long to get from the ferry to here, as it had to cross the Irish Sea.    "Liam, this is the situation. If you don't fucking shut up, your back is going to be the least of your worries.   Are we fucking clear about this?"

Fenian wanted to storm out and slam the Land Rover's door behind him.   All he could actually manage was an agonisingly slow slipping out onto the concrete, then an unsteady wobble, with his back resisting his attempt to straighten.   Kiana had long since shoved the parking ticket into her handbag, locked up and walked around the vehicle to meet him.   She gave him an appraising look.   Fenian grit his teeth.   "Ok.   Hotel room.   But deal with that later.   The post office is going to be shut."   He gratefully took her arm, taking it slowly, until his muscles relinquished their siege and allowed him slightly more movement.   By the time they reached Abbey Street Middle, he was wanting to run.

"Lee, for fuck's sake! We've got quarter of an hour before it shuts!"   Kiana held him fast. "It's like having a fucking toddler with me."

"And what if there's a fucking queue?"

"We come back tomorrow." Kiana tutted. "We're staying overnight."

There was group of around thirty tourists outside the General Post Office.   A guide stood by, while a middle-aged man in a vintage suit postured with a microphone, on the second lowest step leading up to the main entrance doors.   He was mid-speech, "... to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it..."   Fenian and Kiana were through the doors and into the vast interior of the post office.   Fenian jogged, and regretted it, to the end of the snaking queue for the tellers.

Kiana raised her eyebrows, as she caught up.   Fenian wrinkled up his nose, unwilling to show how much he was hurt.   "Who the fuck was he supposed to be?" Fenian asked, gesturing towards the showman outside.   "It couldn't have been fucking Pádraig Pearse, because he did that speech in fucking uniform."

Kiana smiled. "He was dressed like Pearse the scholar."

"But Pearse was in uniform at the..."

"Queue's moved up."

Fenian shifted along, his gaze sweeping along the available booths.   He was gratified to note that there were several tellers on duty, thus the queue was going down fast.   "Get something to eat after this."    Behind him, Kiana nodded. Fenian opened his mouth to say more, but a teller became ready and six teenagers moved simultaneously towards her.   It appeared that only one wanted the service.   The rest were just keeping her company, while she waited.   Fenian sighed in relief and Kiana rubbed his back.   "Sorry I'm stressing."

"What's so important about this package?" Kiana asked, gently.

"I'm not sure until I've seen it." Fenian replied, though his expression betrayed that he already strongly suspected that it was very important indeed.

Kiana watched him. "And that's why we've broken our fucking necks getting here in time to collect it?"

A light flashed above a booth and Fenian thankfully limped across to smile at the teller.   "I have a package to pick up.   Code number: 2150119.   Code name: Fenian."

The teller gave him a strange look.   "Fenian?" She repeated and he flushed slightly.   A name which had sounded so defiant, as a child in Winchester, now felt a touch embarrassing, despite its proud heritage.   Kiana placed her hand on his back again.   Fenian could practically feel her channelling calming, warm energy into him.    The teller was checking her computer.   She wore a fixed, faint smile of concentration, though the boredom was showing around her eyes. "Yes, we have it.   I'll get it brought up, if you'll just wait by the hatch over there." She pushed a form through a slat in the reinforced perspex, that shielded her from the public.   "Sign that please."

"Thanks a million." Fenian responded, taking it, while wondering if he was supposed to be signing anything.   He wrote 'F' on the dotted line and handed it back.   She took it without question and signalled to where he should wait for his package.

Kiana frowned. "Should you not have been signing after you got your package?"

Fenian blinked.   "I don't fucking know."   He looked pensively around the ornate, cavern-like room.   This place had always reminded him more of the reception to some grand hotel, than a post office.   It was a long way from Mrs Healey's corner of her counter, in the general store-cum-bakery-cum-post office, in the village back home.   There was a scuffling behind the perspex and he turned around again.   The clerk unlocked the carousel and swung it around to open before them.   The package was thicker than Fenian had been expecting.   It was quite hefty and heavy enough that Kiana immediately took it off him.   "What the fuck has he sent?"

"Open it and see?" Kiana suggested.

Fenian shook his head and staggered towards a quieter corner.   There was a broad shelf there, with paying in slips and pigeon-holes filled with various forms.    Graffiti covered the woodwork and half of the little chains hung devoid of their pens.   Outside, they could just about make out the closing words of the besuited Pearse, grown very theatrical in his delivery, "... the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called...."

"No fucking way." Fenian had his package open and his hands shook, as he saw the documents inside.    "Is Luigi in on this as well?"   Fenian turned from crimson to ashen, then his cheeks coloured again.   Kiana waited, pensively staring at him.   "No. This is a fucking accident.   They left Luigi in charge of the institution on the day that the constitution was signed.   The fucking absent-minded professor.   Unless they're all fucking setting me up."

"Lee, you're making no sense."

Fenian shoved the documents back into the wrapper, taking out just the one that he had known would be there.    Outside, the illustrious signatories of the 1916 Easter Rebellion were being read out, but Fenian was looking at a different Resolution and another list of names and scrawls.   His own was amongst them.    "They can't all know. It wouldn't have to be this fucking complicated, if they'd all known."   His gaze skim-read the articles that he practically knew by heart.   The Watari committee had sat for over a year writing them, arguing pedantically over the wording of them, scrapping contentious issues, watering down others.   He sought out and found the article that had been there from the beginning.   It hadn't seemed very important.   It had been rewritten, because frankly some people would rewrite anything just to make it seem like they'd had input, but the essence was the same as it had been in Matt's initial proposal.   Fenian swayed, seeing stars; it was growing hard to breathe.   He folded the Resolution and slipped it into his inner pocket, closing the zip over it, lest it fall out.    "Let's go."

"Liam?"   Kiana's voice sounded so distant.   "You don't look at all well.   Let's find a..."

Fenian didn't wait.   He pushed past her, towards the double entrance doors.   There he paused, but only long enough to ensure that Kiana was following with the rest of his documents.   Outside, the tour guide had taken over again.   He was pointing across the street, to where the department store, Clergy's, stood in elegant illumination.    "It was completely destroyed in the Rising.    Along with..."

Fenian was already on the pavement, glaring up at Kiana, with frightened eyes.   "Come on!" He hissed, causing a couple of the tourists to turn and look at them.   Kiana slipped down beside him and he took off, as fast as he could walk, back down O'Connell Street.

"Liam, there's a hotel here."   Kiana called after him. But Fenian shook his head and carried on walking.   She easily caught him up, before he was too far ahead.   "What are you after doing?"

"Car-park. Airport.   Go."

Kiana couldn't keep the shock from her face, "What?"

"Out of Ireland."

"Where?" She gasped.   "Lee, you..."

"Anywhere."   Fenian kept moving.   "Ireland's the first place that they're going to look for me."   He was close to tears now, but pushed himself ever faster.   "I've been set up, Ki.   Sooner or later, they're going to get this in their hands too and they're going to realise the mistake.   But I was the first. I was always going to be the first."   He was trembling, as they turned the corner, into Abbey Street Middle.   "And maybe it was a freaking accident that Luigi was in charge, when it happened, but they're going to realise what I've got."

"Stop." Kiana tucked the package under one arm and held onto him with the other.   Fenian pulled away.   "Let's grab us a cup of tea and talk this through. You're in no state to travel."   He carried on walking.   "Liam! You're probably being paranoid!"

Fenian turned at that. "No."   His gaze grazed the kerbside and he spotted a chipped piece of paving stone.   Painfully, he stooped to pick it up and held it in his fist. "I'm coming home again.   I am."   He strode on, towards Jervis Street, trailing a worried Kiana behind him.   "You don't understand," He informed her, as the multi-storey car-park came into view, "I'm Matt's patsy.   He's set me up and we need to be somewhere safe to work out what to do about that."

Kiana stared.   Eventually, with a dry mouth, she asked, "Do you really believe this?"

He nodded. "I know this."

She bowed her head, in mute surrender, then handed him his package.   "Wait here. I'll bring the Land Rover down." She turned and hurried away.

Fenian stood on the pavement, peering down to where shoppers passed in a constant stream in and out of the huge shopping centre.    He couldn't quite see the river from here, but he could smell it.   It carried with it the salt of the sea.   Gulls circled overhead.   He found himself staring, over the crossroads, at the National Leprechaun Museum and wondered what the Hell was in there.   Then wanted to cry at the thought of it.   The rumbling of a tram, passing down Upper Abbey Street, snapped him from his listless reverie.   He stared at the Irish flags flying from TP Smiths, the pub on the corner, instead.   He was blinking, tired, and he turned to survey the buildings over the road.   He knew that he was trying to commit them all to memory. He might not be able to come back.    He leaned back against the wall, trying not to worry, as he went over everything in his mind.   He could well be paranoid, but he knew that he was not.   Matt had smiled at him, in that chalet, back when the contents of that package had first occurred to Fenian.   Matt had known and Matt had smiled.

Fenian's eyes defocused from his inner panicking and he realised what was on the sign, on the building over the road.   It was not a prepossessing structure, for all the pretensions of a name like Jervis House.   It was nestled between an alley and a tattooist's; and its ground floor appeared to be an embroidery shop, with a sideline in mobility scooters.   But Fenian couldn't take his vision from what the sign said was on the fourth floor.   He looked up, ignoring the screaming protestation of his back.   Just rows of windows, with nothing much to see.

Beside him, the barrier went up and Kiana drove the Land Rover out of the multi-storey car-park.   Fenian's heart pounded in his chest.   This was his moment of split second decision.   He already knew what he wanted to do.   Kiana pulled up, at the kerbside, in front of him and Fenian pushed away from the wall and nodded in the direction of the building.   Kiana frowned slightly and looked.   She was evidently focusing on the embroidery shop, because her frown was deeper when she looked back. Fenian waited and she unwound the window.   "What?"

"Fourth floor." Fenian replied, his mouth sandpaper dry.   "Irish Human Rights Commission. 'Promoting and protecting human rights in Ireland'."   He saw Kiana blink and stare. "An omen?"

"I think you're forgetting that I don't know half of the story yet." Kiana reached out for the pack of documents. "Would I be any wiser reading these?"

A traffic officer, from the multi-storey, startled them by walking alongside. "It's double yellow lines that you're sitting on there, love. Let's move along."

Fenian swallowed. "Fuck it."   He ducked in front of the Land Rover and limped, as fast as he could move, across the road. Then he entered Jervis House and was lost from sight.

Author's Note:   This story is being discussed here: http://mrsjeevas.joharrington.co.uk/forum/viewforum.php?f=11
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Annals of Fear II