Near strikes Hoope as the type of person who does things according to plan, you know, even though he's foreign in every sense of the word (padding down the floor of the West Wing in socks, despite the cold) so when he announces in his colorless voice that he'd prefer a government sanctioned skyscraper in New York City, of all places, the President of the United States is surprised (as if killer notebooks weren't enough). Surely he would prefer headquarters in the Pentagon, or at least in D.C., where the convex façade of the White House or the sweeping boulevards over the Potomac still inspire a sense of gridlocked American strength (he hopes).
He politely declines, no thank you, and repeats that he would like his headquarters to be in New York. Please, he adds.
And really, what choice does he have? This little (Hoope goes from 'anomaly' to 'creature' to 'boy' and then grudgingly to 'detective', in case the press gets hold of this, God forbid) is his country's last line—only line—of defense against Kira. He has to keep him quiet and out of sight.
Still a little confused, the President allows it, calling up the governor of the East Coast metropolis, looking down at white threads the boy shed on the carpet from the frayed hems of his pajama bottoms, on the starred-and-striped shield covering the eagle's breast.
Near, though, he has his reasons.
Of course, there are the obvious—doesn't want to be connected to the government, it would be choosing a side, a homeland, an identity, not to mention it would be weak, to seek protection, he was almost L, and L would never hide behind a flag.
And then are the reasonable—most of the Provision has had liaisons there in the past, familiar with the rotten core of the infamous Apple, ribbed with subway tunnels and steam-belching sewers like the tracks of a gigantic worm.
And then there those strange little Near-isms, things only he knows, overripe memories and flights-of-fancy he never could let go of, even though he knows better.
It could be that he used to sit behind Matt and Mello on Saturday mornings and watch Spider-Man swing between the glass Manhattan sentinels, or Batman gliding through Gotham in his mask and cape.
(Although he's since learned better, learned where real heroes belong.)
Or it could be, even, buried somewhere in his mind, the distant picture of crossing the Hudson in a car, under the crosshatched steel arches of the G.W. bridge, close enough to the glass window he could see his reflection, or the sense of looming neon behemoths in Times Square, flashing and colorful and so huge he doesn't even remember the sky.
And so Near builds his fortress from the ground up, glass and concrete and so easy to fit into the horizon, high above the people, instilling his own sense of inverted vertigo and power, not one to be trifled with, as the world will soon find out.
Sometimes, though, at night, he stands by the windows when every one else has gone back home, and sees a flash of red and blue looping through alleyways, or the silhouette of a bat-winged shadow flying over the West Side Highway, and he allows the smallest of smiles to curve across his pale face.
Near has his reasons.
A/N: So, this is the first of three drabbles I wrote for dn(underscore)contest on lj. Theme is New York City. Near's little almost-POV. I like writing Near, it's hard to write his POV because you can never really know what he's thinking, but it's grown on me. That, and I've been shying away from making him a cold heartless bastard. Oddly enough, it was really fun writing that tiny snippet of President Hoope in the beginning. No idea why. xD
Second part is Mello's; beware his guttermouth.
P.S.- Did you know I couldn't find an actual Nick Street in New York City? Closest thing I found was Nick LaPonte Drive and that's in Staten Island. So I google map'd St. Nick's instead and clicked around until I saw skyscrapers that kinda resemble the ones in Vol. 9 (in that they're, ya know, skyscrapers). The place is in New York, NY, close to Battery Park and the World Financial Centers and Mercantile Exchange and so forth. That's where I put the SPK building. Yay.