written for dncontest's prompt "CHILDREN". the breaks are taken from Homer's Illiad. I seriously don't know what gun Mello carries, so I took liberties in choosing one.
There is nothing but the clink of metal and the rustling of silver foil. Mello's hair is, for once, swept back and his eyes are concentrated on one thing: cleaning his gun.
Mello is seventeen, and his SIG P228 is in pieces, his hands dirty with grease and gunpowder. The apartment is dim, save for the evening light filtering through the dusty windows; Mello's eyes are focused on the glinting metal.
And suddenly, his mind wonders what it would feel like to have the breeze in his face and through his hair- but Mello quickly banishes the thought, until he actually sets his gun down. When Matt comes home, there is one thing that Mello tells him.
Strapping the gun to his waist, Mello leaves the apartment, saying- "Let's go to the playground."
We everlasting gods...Ah what chilling blows we suffer--thanks to our own conflicting wills--whenever we show these mortal men some kindness.
"Playground?"
Matt was not stupid. He was a lot of things- smart, tall, sexy in stripes- but he was not stupid. But when Mello breezed out of the apartment, Matt acknowledged that Mello had finally cracked.
But he still followed. And witnessed Mello's face rife with decisions again, between (unbelievably) the swings, and telling Matt what the hell was going on.
Matt landed ass-first in the grass, with his arms full of Mello- and he understood. Mello kissed like he was a kid again, like he was back at Whammy's- all enthusaism and barely any talent.
And he kissed back.
Quick, better to live or die, once and for all, than die by inches, slowly crushed to death--helpless against the hulls in the bloody press--by far inferior men!
Light is cold.
He passes by children bundled in scarves and jackets, and briefly remembers the sensation of cozy fleece and wool, his fingers encased in thick gloves. And remembers Sayu yelling to 'slow down', while he ran ahead of everybody else.
Ahead of everybody else- and Light can remember a time when Soichiro's eyes didn't darken in the streets. A time when Sachiko's eyes didnt have those worry lines, nor when Sayu needed to tell their parents where she was going past eight o'clock.
But now, Light just finds a familiar pen in hand as he turns on the TV.
We must steel our hearts. Bury our dead, with tears for the day they die, not one day more.
There is nothing that Near enjoys more than sleep. Despite L's infamous insomnia or Mello's burning determination that feeds his adrenaline, there is a comfort in sleep that Near finds- a comfort that nothing else in the world can give.
Because in sleep- in dreams, Near can be anything. He can be as big as his robots would be in real life (if calculated correctly, they would stand at six meters and fifty-seven centimeters), or as innocent of the world as he never was. Innocent of crimes that the mind was capable of committing, innocent of the burden that the world's greatest first, second, and third detectives always had to bear.
Innocent of ennui, of sins and Death Notes and genius.