Mello was like a raging fire, always pushing forward forward forward, destroying everything in his path. It's all Matt can do to keep up and dodge the flames. He's not really sure it's the kind of life he wants. Well, no, he is sure, completely absolutely sure it's not at all close to what he wants. Matt just likes to hang around, stay under the radar. Avoids doing things like, say, blowing up a building while he's still in it. Apparently, that's not the way Mello likes to do things.

If he ever left, he knew Mello wouldn't hesitate to put a bullet between his eyes so he wouldn't spill their secrets. But he was pretty sure that wasn't the only reason he stayed around, because he agreed to come along in the first place.

But he knew Mello would still kill him without a second thought if it would help him catch Kira before Near did, and somewhere (His heart had probably been burned away by cigarette smoke or something equally fucked up, so it couldn't be there), that hurt.

xxx

And maybe Mello's a bit like Alexander the Great, minus the conquering and plus a little more great, Matt thinks. His whole life is beating Near, nabbing Kira, and he can think of nothing else until he reaches his goal. He doesn't have time for silly things like love. (Neither does Matt, but he doesn't have time to sit around playing a PSP either, and that doesn't stop him.)

Matt doesn't even know if that's what it is he feels for Mello, love, but it doesn't really matter, does it? Devotion fits better. Loyalty, maybe. Probably a bit of all three. But he's a Wammy's kid, he knows his history, knows what happened to Alexander. When he finally settled down to have a family, stopped pushing forward, he died.

Somehow he thinks the same thing would happen to Mello, too, and he'd feel bad about that. Hell, he might as well admit it, he'd be crushed. He can't fathom a world without Mello in it anymore, even after he stepped out of his life for four years. Because when he did come back, he took over Matt's life completely, uprooted him from wherever he'd been at the time (Matt didn't care enough to remember), and Matt followed him wherever he went and helped him with whatever he needed and never asked why, or whether any of it really mattered. He never asked, and Mello never told him, probably never realized he might want to know. Treated him more like a dog or a servant or both than a real human being, and Matt found he didn't mind that much. It was how it had always been, and there was no reason to change now, right?

And then Mello ordered him to kidnap some newscaster lady on a pointless mission that would probably end up in them both getting killed, and Matt still didn't mind. He briefly wondered if he was insane, and then decided since he was going to die soon he might as well not dwell on pointless things like that (And in any case, he would always be the least insane of the top three).

He kissed Mello and didn't care when he was pushed away, because they would both be dead in a couple hours anyway, so it didn't really matter in the end.

xxx

When he died, one of his last thoughts was I was right, Mello sent me off to die the bastard, among other things. That was the only thought with Mello in it, because Mello was dead or dying, and so he mattered at the moment just as little as Matt.

Near was the one who mattered, and this is the difference between Mello and Matt: Matt was okay with that, and Mello was not.

And that's why they died. Mello had to matter, to be great like he was meant to, and if he had to die some important way (And force someone else to whether they liked it or not) to do it, so what. He might have loved Matt if he hadn't been so set on beating Near, but if he hadn't wanted to win so badly he wouldn't have been Mello.

So they lived and died and didn't matter. And that is all—

--that matters, except it doesn't because they didn't.

So I guess I should say they lived and died and didn't matter, and that is all there is.

Standard disclaimers.