HelloGoodbye

It started when he was ten, this perpetual game of hide-and-seek: when he was ten and Mello was nine and the largest of their worries were the results of the last test and whether or not Near was in the lead. Before Mello had switched from Snickers to Hersheys, before Matt had learned to hack HTML. It had started before the Kira Case, when L was just the letter that came before M in the alphabet and Shinigami were things parents made up to frighten their children into obedience. Before all of that.

It started when he was ten, and Mello was nine.

(Although maybe, maybe that was a lie, because Mello didn't arrive at Whammy's House until Matt was twelve.)

But the thing was, Matt-

Matt-

-he knew. The game had begun before he had even met Mello. Because even when Mello was just a newly orphaned child, shivering in the debris near the ruins of his house, he was already traveling the path required to be reunited with Matt. Mello had started seeking out Matt from the very day he was orphaned; from the moment his sister threw the lit match onto the kerosene-soaked wood. And since that time, Matt had been waiting for Mello to return to him. Rebirth, and start anew.

It's spring, and there's a new kid at Whammy's House, refuge of orphaned children, and everyone is talking about him. Well, almost everyone, because really, Matt doesn't care about some snotty new kid. He just doesn't see the point in all the excitement. Someone new finally arrived; so what? Matt's been here for as long as he can remember. Whammy's House is nothing to get excited about.

When people ask him if he's talked to the new boy yet, his reasoning for saying no is this: he's happy. He's completely and utterly content with his life, and quite frankly, he doesn't need this new boy. He's already got friends. He's got his Gameboy, and he's got L – okay, so he's never actually seen him face-to-face, but everyone at the orphanage knew that if you studied enough, if you were dedicated, you too would become a famous letter of the alphabet. Matt is already number two, so he's guaranteed to get the title-

But despite all of this, he is so very lonely. Because in the end, no one cares about a little orphan boy, no matter how smart he is. But Matt pretends, oh, he's gotten so good at pretending.

(He's happy, and it's spring-)

Matt looks at the new kid as he passes by in the hall, and sees a savior reflected in his eyes.

The boy seeks him out one day after class – Hello, my name is Mello, and I hear you were the previous number two in this hole. Would you mind giving me your name, your room number, and then get the hell out of my spot so I've got a chance at beating Near? – and at first, Matt is put off. This boy was rude and crass and everything he hates. And yet… Matt can feel it. He's always been a bit of a romantic, and he can see it in the stars – this boy was something special. And Matt knows that he would be the key to finally escaping the orphanage. He doesn't really see how he'd ever become friends with Mello, but still. It was a sign, surely—

Two months later, Mello bursts into Matt's room, brandishing a sheet that listed the grades of each orphan in Whammy's House. Matt looks up from his place in the corner, scrubbing at his eyes with his shirtsleeves, and Mello slowly stops screaming and shouting as he sees the wet spots on Matt's shirt. The boy crouches down and looks Matt straight in the eye, before straightening up and throwing a Snickers bar in his lap.

"Stop crying," he says, imperiously tossing his head. "You're the third-smartest kid at the orphanage. People look up to you, and they don't want to have a sniveling, whining baby when they should be looking at a leader." Something in his eyes soften for a moment, and he awkwardly pats Matt on the head.

"You can keep the chocolate. It always makes me feel better when I'm down, anyways." With that, he walks out of the door with the score sheet, and two days later Matt goes to town with some of the older orphans, a five-pound note clenched tightly in his hand. He returns with a pair of orange-tinted swimmers' goggles, and when Roger asks why, he replies it's to block out the sun.

Later that night when he snaps the goggles on, all he can think of is how he never wants anybody to be able to see him cry again.

In the summer of Matt's fourteenth birthday, he opens the door to Mello's room and sees the blond hunched over his desk, studying in the light of a dimly lit lamp.

"Matt?" Mello twists around, sucking on the corner of a newly opened Hersheys bar.

Matt swallows – don't be nervous, you've been practicing all weekend – and hands Mello an envelope containing a five hundred pound note. He almost chickens out of it, almost hightails it out of the room, but thinks to himself, come on, man, you're smart, you can hack banks, for Christ's sake you call yourself a god damn romantic! He kneels down before Mello and winces – so cliché, so terribly cliché – and, eyes squeezed shut, breathes, "Run away with me. We can have the world; you and I. We're the smartest kids in the orphanage. Who cares about Near? I can give you the world, Mello. We can get some more money – from a bank or something, I don't care. I'm smart enough to hack an ATM, hotwire a car, whatever you want." He knows he sounds crazy, he knows he sounds insane, but he doesn't care, because it's Mello. It's Mello, that eleven-year-old boy he met two years ago with the wild eyes and scraped-up palms, who studied with Matt and played with Matt and was Matt's very best friend in the whole wide world.

Mello looks down at him, eyes narrowed with shock and skepticism. He lowers his eyes for a second – such a terrible look for a boy of only thirteen years – and deadpans, "L's dead, Matt."

Matt feels like somebody knocked the breath out of him. He squeezes his eyes shut behind the goggles. L's death is a horrible, horrible thing, but at the same time, Matt is ecstatic. What ties does Mello have to Whammy's House now? Who else does he have to fall back on, aside from Matt? "W-What?"

"Get out." Mello is mad; Mello is seething. Matt can hear it in his voice. He's done something horribly wrong.

Matt's eyes fly open and he throws himself back into the wall. He knows how Mello acts when he's angry. He knows that Mello's hidden knives in his drawers and under his pillow. "I'm sorry, Mello! I didn't know, I didn't know it was such a bad time, I'm sorry!" he cries, grateful for his goggles at this moment. "I take it back! I just thought- we're best friends, and you're always talking about running away-"

"Get out!" Mello roars, and he lashes out at Matt with his hand. Matt screams as Mello grabs a pocketknife off his desk and throws it wildly, and the blade slices a thin line in Matt's shoulder before burying crookedly in the wall behind him. (Even when he's angry, Mello is such a good shot, Matt is so very proud of him—)

With a final desperate apology, Matt runs back to his room, with the forgotten envelope lying unopened by Mello's bed.

He doesn't see Mello for months after that. Not during meals, not playing outside. Mello just… disappears. So he goes to Roger, who disinterestedly explains to him that the police were out searching for Mello and there was nothing Matt could do. And Matt… for months, Matt is lost. He's missed Mello's fourteenth birthday. The sheets on Mello's bed don't smell like chocolate anymore. Matt doesn't know what to do.

On the night before the start of the ninth month, Matt wakes up to a tap on his window. He readjusts his goggles and pads over to the windowpane, and sees a disgruntled Mello on the other side of the glass.

Mello holds up two small backpacks, biting into a Hersheys chocolate bar.

"Well?" he says. "Are you coming or not?"

Now, years later, Matt stands with his back pressed against a car, hands in the air, surrounded by policemen. He bites down on his cigarette and smiles lazily – well, this is a problem – and laughs. "Today was supposed to be my nineteenth birthday."

One of the policeman spits at his shoes and cocks the gun at his head. "Happy birthday then, son." He flips the safety lock on the gun.

"It's too bad you'll be spending it in hell."

Matt's dead. He's got no chance, he can list the things on his police record by heart: accomplice in murder, hacking into private files, attempted kidnapping, stealing a car, withholding information from the police. He takes a drag of his cigarette, eyes closing lazily from the nicotine rush. He opens them again and looks at the stars, imagines Mello's face in the moon. "You're going to shoot me," he murmurs.

The policeman grins. "Yeah, we are." This child is nothing but a nuisance. This child was trouble for the government since the day he was born.

The four policemen pull their triggers simultaneously as Matt reaches up to adjust his goggles. He knows he should be afraid – but oh, what an adventure it would be, to die – except for the fact that he knows Mello would find him again. That's how the rules of the game were, and Matt was moving ahead, forcing Mello to look for him just as he did when he was orphaned. They would meet again, he was sure of it.

"Come find me again, all right, Mello? I guess this is goodbye, for now-"

(But Matt's never liked goodbyes, so for every goodbye, he screams hello.)