Chapter 1: Puppet

Numbers and letters.

They were his rulers, his kings. His gods.

Like a puppet, his strings jerking him along to the master's capricious whims, a deity tittering as his body hung limp from his binds. He was pulled which ever way the higher power wished, never given any insight to his next wringing, never warned that the ground may any moment cave beneath his feet.

And each tug from the strings wrenched his arms from their sockets, pulled at his body like the tortuous rack, made his head feel as if it would burst. He knew he was braking, each day he felt his limbs remain farther from him. And one day, he knew they would never reattach and he would lose them forever. He would become the toy that the child discarded once it had served its purpose, the one that was always quickly replaced with the newer and far more utilitarian model. He would be left in pieces, his strings frayed and weak, ready to snap at the next touch. He would be the tool that was unable to complete the job, the tool that was left to rust once its ability was seen as insufficient.

He knew this all too well. He did everything that he was supposed to do, everything that was expected of him, everything that would have made anyone else the best. But that was never his case. He had never been the master's most prized marionette.

That role had been given to another, more efficient puppet.

And that fact would perpetually reside in the forefront of his mind. Just as the fact that he would only ever be the second, never the first. Just as the fact that the letters marking the tops of the tests he took in red ink were lower than that of the star puppet. And he could do nothing about it. He did everything he was supposed to do… everything and more… yet he could never be the superior.

A whimper escaped his throat into the scratchy linen of his pillow. He balled his hands into fists, clasping the sheets with white knuckles, a growl bubbling up from his chest. The sound hurt, the tension in his muscles causing every breath to become the stab of a fiery knife deep into his heart. It was not fair. He had always felt that way, as if there was something he was missing, some vital piece of the machine that made all the cogs fit together and function as they were meant to, a single piece that would let him transcend his inferiority.

Second best is worst than last. You always have that monster clinging to your back, whispering that you could have done better, that you had the option of victory, that all you would have had to do was take that extra step to reach out and take it.

But that one step was never taken. And the mockery and the mistake would haunt you forever.

A sob slipped into the night air as he curled into a fetal position on the stiff mattress, pulling his pillow more firmly over his head. He knew exactly why A had committed suicide. He could not blame his predecessor at all for making that decision. It had been a wise choice, far more wise than enduring the hell of the living world. But he did not have the choice of ending it for himself. His pride would never allow him to jump from the chair with a noose around his neck. His pride would never allow his nemesis to be given the victory by default.

But all the same, the numbers and letters never lied. He had never, even once, been the superior.

And that was the way it would stay.

I'm running out of time. L is going to choose one of us before long… And If I don't get ahead soon… he's going to choose Near…

He felt his eyes grow hot with welling tears and he pressed the pillow more firmly to his eyes. Damn it! I'm not upset! Why the hell am I crying? Damn you, Near… Damn you!

He had always let his emotions get the better of him. He had been told far too many times by too many psychologists and therapists to deny it anymore. He had been found too many times in the library tearing the books from their shelves and rending the pages from the books, screaming for the world to hear him without any consideration. He had gotten into far too many fights over the smallest comments when the right thing was said at the wrong time.

But it was not the incessant squabbling of the therapists or the constant mediation of the medical staff that made him want to turn the world upside down to let everyone fall into the sky. There was only one thing that made him want to set fire to the earth and let everyone experience the hell he called his own. He could care less about what the psychologists thought of his mental stability.

It was only the blank gaze of the pale gray eyes of his superior that made him want to detonate his life and let the ashes bury all whom he hated. Those indifferent gray eyes peering at him from beneath the shaggy mop of white hair, the eyes that belittled him. And he could always hear, echoing in his head, the part deep within Near that actually did show his feelings, a mocking laughter and cold words murmuring "If you can't win the game, if you can't solve the puzzle, then you lose. End of story."

But Mello knew it was all just within his own head. Near would never say such words to him, let alone bother to care about his minor episodes of insanity. It was just an opportunity for the superior to lengthen the gap between them, a moment where a reprieve could have been taken, but it was used for a far more strategic matter.

And thus the wicked cycle began.

Mello strove the farthest he could, doing everything humanly possible to overcome the one obstacle that he could never seem to surmount, to cross the abyss that no bridge could ever span. And when his mind had stretched and reached as far as it possibly could, it would snap, and he would crumble with it. And he would cascade into the void in millions of different fragments, hitting the ground only to shatter into even finer dust. And while he was pulling himself up from the ground, held together with straightjackets and narcotics, the superior made the gap between them even greater than it had been. And so Mello would rise from the rubble, staring across the ravine, to the finish line of a race he had fallen too far behind in, brushing himself off, and beginning from where he started. And his battle never ended any other way.

And the puppet continued to dance for his master.

Mello shivered in the humid summer air, the rains saturating the world and making his body slick with sweat. He was fraying again and knew he the ground would drop out from beneath his feet sooner than he would prefer. And all he could do was drift off into a fitful slumber, knowing he would be waking in a few hours to face the rising sun. And he would begin his routine again.

Numbers and letters locked the manacles around his wrists and ankles, drawing them tight until the skin grew raw. Numbers and letters held him in a chokehold, refusing to ease their hold. And his pride refused to let him tap out. His only option was to endure with what little he had left. Endure and wait for the day when the numbers and letters would finally let him sleep in peace.

And a much-needed night's rest would not come to him that particular evening. Groaning low in his throat, Mello pushed himself up into a sitting position, staring at the door with distant eyes. He pulled himself from his uncomfortable bed and plodded to the entranceway, his legs leaden and difficult to move. He clasped the doorknob and twisted, giving it a jerk to free the door from the frame, the humidity causing the wood to swell and become tight. Not bothering to close the door behind him, knowing he would return to his room before anyone else in the orphanage would wake, he staggered down the hall, hand on the wall to support himself. He found it difficult to breathe, as if the dense air was thick smog, filled with impurities that would poison his body. He unconsciously counted the doors, his feet producing scuffing sounds as he dragged them across the hardwood floor.

The door labeled with the small brass oval etched with a 340. It was the only room besides Near's whose inhabitant he could be certain of. Mello let his knuckles strike the wood twice before his arm fell limp at his side. He heard the sound of a chair being drawn back and quick footsteps approaching before the door cracked open with difficulty. It too had swelled in its frame and the hinges let out an annoyed whine.

"I had a feeling you'd come crawling over here tonight, Mello. I saw the grade you got on that Marxist analysis we had to do… It was high enough to ensure your rank but… I won't talk about Near right now…

Matt. He was an odd child, the type that preferred a pixilated screen to a human face. He had a tendency to avoid many of the other children he had the option of interacting with, finding no interest in small talk or friendly banter of any kind. With most people. But the walls he build around himself, shielding the world he had created for himself from prying eyes, would be lowered slightly for Mello to climb over the ledges and make himself comfortable. Matt had a good head on his shoulders, Mello always thought when watching the way he walked. He was aloof by choice, uninterested in the troubles of the world around him. Misanthropic? No, that was incorrect. Matt just did not care, opting to separate himself from a world that everyone else had agreed to join. And he never skipped a chance to mock the people who resided outside of his own universe.

Mello said nothing as he pushed the door open enough to slide his thin body into the other boy's room, ignoring the angered squeal of the door hinges. He walked directly to the unmade bed that Matt called his own, and dropped down into the wrinkled mass of bedspread and blankets. He could hear Matt chuckling to himself, hearing the swish of his brown hair as he shook his head.

"Not gonna buy me dinner first before getting into my bed?"

Mello glanced at him from the side of his eye, completely immune to the witty comment from hearing the repertoire on countless past occasions.

"So you here to talk? Or you just want to sleep?"

Mello responded with a grumbled that became lost within the bedclothes that he buried his face into.

"I'll assume the latter." Matt heaved a sigh. "I gotta quick question before you nod off. You finish that essay on genetic engineering, right? I can't find a source for my last argument."

Mello rolled onto his side and locked Matt's gaze, beholding him fully for the first time that night. It was clear Matt had either been preparing to sleep or had become overheated from the lack of clothing he wore. He was the type to sleep in nothing but his boxers, even in the dead of winter, and he was dressed in such presently. His frame was nearly as frail as Mello's, but something about the quirky youth made him appear weaker than he actually was. Whether it was the paleness of his skin from lack of sun exposure as he spent most of his time under roofs and away from windows, or the way he had a slight twitch to his limbs, a side effect from stress he had been diagnosed, he seemed inferior to the blonde that had claimed his bed.

"Yeah, I finished it." Mello barely recognized his own voice. It was raspy, wavering. The dead of the night was when he felt the choke of the master's strings pulling the hardest, at night when there was no other force acting on him to divert his attention. "Why haven't you? You're good with a computer."

"Yeah, I know," Matt muttered with a roll of his eyes. He pointed his thumb over his shoulder to the glow of a monitor that stood on his cluttered desk. Wires and cables covered every available surface in a tangled nest of electronics, notebooks and loose sheets of paper encrypted with scrawled handwriting strewn over the discord. Very few orphans were permitted to possess personal computers, but Matt had been a special case. His interest for anything electronic and the efficiency in which he used it had earned him the uncommon privilege. "I've been trying to finish it for the past three hours, ergo I'm up later than usual. So you feeling generous? Want to help me out?"

Mello regarded him blankly. The quirky lift of one side of his mouth into a half smirk, the glow of the monitor casting sharp shadows across his round face, the ghostly sheen of his skin, the playful glint in his eye. Matt was far different from the other high ranking boys within the orphanage. He was not bound by their world.

"Why don't you just hack into some scientific institution?" Mello rolled over and turned his face away from Matt, feeling nauseous from the carefree aura that emanated throughout the room.

"I had thought to do that… But Roger got pissed at me last time… said I wasn't working to my full potential… that I was taking the easy way out. But, you know, what the hell? I'll go for it. It's what I do best after all. And it's not like I care about what Roger's gotta say. That old geezer doesn't even like a single one of us anyway! He just sticks around because the pay is high and the benefits are good!"

Mello heard Matt plunk down into his chair and his nimble fingers began attacking the keyboard. Breathing a relaxing sigh for the first time in several days, Mello let the immense weight of his body sink him down in to the mattress of Matt's bed. He listened to the clinking of Matt's fingertips over the keys. It was a steady stream, the clunk of the backspace bar never sounding. It was this momentary perfection that soothed the wildest tempests in Mello's mind to calm trade winds. Without interruption, besides the heavy click of the mouse, Matt never made any mistakes in his typing. He was the master of the keys, the piper of the electrical world. And being in the same room with this master, falling asleep in his bed, listening to the stability with which he worked made Mello content.

Because this master was his inferior.

Because, despite the perfection that he exhibited, the ease at which he commanded, he was unable to usurp Mello from his position. And if the boy ranked third had such power, then the boy ranked second must hold even greater abilities. Mello would never discuss it, never allow Matt to know what his true reasons were to crawl beneath his blankets in the dead of night were. He kept that to himself. The one fact that kept him from being lost in the myriad of hardships he defined as his life. Matt kept him alive. Kept him alive by being the loser.

And Mello found himself drifting off with a peace in his mind that so rarely settled onto his shoulders. As Matt struck as the keys, as he strung the letters together to form the words of his work, Mello allowed the tension to leave his body. Because those words, those letters that Matt chose, would never be as great as his own. They would never surpass him. In those moments of the night, listening to the letters being arranged by his inferior, Mello could swear he would hear the puppet master sigh in defeat and the strings would go slack. And in those moments, the numbers and letters held no power over him. If only for those moments, it was enough.

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Author Note: Hey there everyone! I know I've been gone for... a loooooooong time. Sorry about that. Things have been tough for me and time is a luxury I have not had in a while. I slipped this in... I'm sorry to say my mind has wandered from my other stories but I swear I'll get back to them. I swear. So this has been my plot bunny for a while. The thing is, I'm conflicted. I have two ways I want this to go: the practical, most-likely-to-happen-in-the-canon way... or my imagination's way... So I'm debating that. And I'm broadening my horizons in my writing... a lot... Some people might not like where I take this, as it's going to be a lot different than what I've usually done. But, hey, do what you wish and feed back is much loved. I don't have much else to say... other than... of course there's going to be an OC. I'm cagedbird361, after all. Me without an OC in a story is like L without cake: we just have to be together. So she'll be around a bit later, but won't be as drastic a part of the story as my other OCs floating around here... I won't give too much away now. Oh... and as for pairings, you read them right. As for the "branching out" I mentioned earlier... I'm attempting a bit of shounen-ai... I'll see how that goes...So review to me are like apples to Ryuk! Peace out.

-cagedbird361