Author's Notes: I do not own Death Note, Near, or anything associated with said properties.
I started this awhile ago and have been compulsively editing it up until now. It's a oneshot dealing with Near's past and explores his perceptions under the assumption that he is an autistic character. Trying to get inside the boy's head a bit and show people what I see there, because Near is often a very unloved character and I feel he deserves a bit more understanding.
I also hope that it will help bring more understanding to autism.
Spoilers for Near's real name.
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They found the boy in the basement. A blotch of pale white, huddled against the darkness. He sat on the cold cement flooring, holding a small wooden train, watching intently as the wheels spun, around, around, around.
There were a few scattered toys around him in the filth, a half-empty glass of water, smeared with dirty fingerprints, and a plate so clean in contrast to its surroundings it could only have been licked of all crumbs. These items left there, as if these simple offerings were enough to sustain the child.
The boy, dressed in white, untouched by the filth of the environment around him, seemed an angel to the men's eyes. An angel fallen, forgotten by the god who had created him.
He took no notice of the officers approaching him, their hunched forms lumbering awkwardly beneath the low ceiling, their urgent, surprised shouts. No one had expected to find a child here.
….
Nate watched without comprehension, as the office around him bustled with activity. His pale, wide eyes struggled to track the patterns of quick movement as people rushed past him. Tall men in uniform, they all seemed the same to him, many a form of one, one concept.
He sat hunched in the chair one of the officers had placed him in; one leg pulled defensively to his chest as his other leg hung down, the space between his stark white sock and the polished office floor immense.
This new world seemed to fill his mind, the boundaries between himself and the outside falling away as his senses were invaded by the quick, gruff voices, the ringing of phones, the swift movements, and the overwhelming sense of an alien reality, beneath the low flicker and hum of the florescent lighting.
He buried tiny fingers in his pale hair. Nervously, he twirled the hair around his fingers, needing to keep his hands busy, his body in motion, to keep himself grounded in this too-bright, too noisy, too busy world. He focused on the sensation of soft hair against his sensitive skin, the repetitive motion as it twirled in and out of his small grasp.
Words and phrases like "abandoned" "no known relatives," and "autistic," were thrown around above Nate's head. They meant little to him, yet still, they could not be filtered, and entered his mind, neatly catalogued in his memory.
An officer leaned down, crouching to face the boy at his level. Nate glanced at the large form before him briefly but could not bear to look the man in the eyes and averted his gaze. The man frowned, mumbling something Nate did not understand, and held out a wooden train, the one Nate had been playing with when they had found him alone in basement. The boy reached out tentatively, carefully flicked the wheel and watched it as it spun. Calculating. Slowly, a sense of calm swept through his body as he became absorbed in the familiar motion of the toy's wheel. Something he could recognize, this circular motion was cold, clear, and easily comprehended.
The voices around him grew distant as he watched the toy, and after some time he realized it was no longer being held out to him, but that it had been placed in his hand.
Slowly, Nate drew his gaze away from the train, looking past it to observe his surroundings.
The office had grown dark, and there were fewer men there, now.
One, a rotund officer whom Nate distinguished from the others due to his spherical shape and white hair (hair much like his own), smiled to the boy, noticing the boy's intense, inscrutable gaze had fallen on his form. The man spoke, more slowly and carefully than the others,
"Finally decided to join us again, I see."
The pale-haired boy stared, uncomprehending. He had not left, had he?
"You aren't deaf, are you son?"
This, Nate could understand. It was a question. Questions were supposed to be answered. Hesitating only a moment, he shook his head "no."
"Well, listen, then. We didn't expect to find any kids down in the River house, and we're in a bit of a loss as to what to do with you at the moment, son. In fact, seems no one really knew the Rivers had you down there in that house of yours. If we had, well, I reckon we would've found you a good bit sooner."
He paused, studying the boy's frail, hunched form.
"For that, I'm sorry, Nate. I truly am."
Nate watched as the officer's mouth pulled itself down at the corners, and his eyes seemed to grow a bit watery. Quickly, Nate looked away.
"I didn't mean to scare ya. Poor kid. How long were you down there in that crawlspace of a basement, anyhow?"
The questions were too much for Nate, the officer's voice filled his mind and echoed deep within his thoughts, reverberating. He buried his face in the knee of his pajamas, vigorously rubbing snowy locks of hair between his fingers. He rolled his wooden train across his bony knee, eyes focused on the wheels as they moved back and forth over the folds of white pajama cloth. He watched the motion carefully, transfixed as the folds were overtaken by the wheels of the train, light playing off of the white cloth in an elaborate dance… a give and take similar to that of the rising and falling of waves in the ocean.
The rotund officer was saying something more to him, but the words drifted past his ears.
A moment later, or, so it seemed to Nate, he was jolted out of his white-fabric world when the officer brought his hand down to Nate's head and ruffled the boy's mop of pale curls. The touch was harsh and jarring and unexpected, and the boy shrank back quickly. He looked up only to find a large box was taking up his field of vision. He blinked a few times as his brain registered this new information, pale eyes drifting carefully across the details on the box. An image of a train. In the corner, text, and a number.
"1,000!" the box seemed to exclaim.
"….figure you'd like somethin' else to do, other than just sittin there, while we sort things out for you. It's a hard one, 1,000 pieces. We don't really have any other toys around the precinct. But you can play with it any way that you like. Don't worry about getting it all put together, a little tyke like you."
The officer's words slowly made their way into Nate's consciousness, and he watched carefully as the man opened the box and spread the pieces out on the floor before him. Carefully, a bit clumsily, Nate climbed down from the chair and settled into a sitting position on the floor, knee drawn up to his chest protectively.
He looked to the pieces for several long moments, the image on the box already permanently imprinted on his mind. The boy ran his fingers across the edges of several of the pieces, the tactile sense encouraging the visual. Swiftly, the pieces were arranged in his mind's eye so that each interlocked perfectly with the next to form the tiny details of the image. He focused on the lines they formed, the shapes, the edges as they came together to form abstract pieces of a whole picture, a picture just beyond his grasp.
The officer watched as the boy in front of him stared at the puzzle before him. Nate showed no expression, no sign of thought or emotion. He looked almost... dead, the officer thought. Suppressing a sigh, the older man reached out a pudgy hand, to show the boy what to do, but before he was able to get a piece in his clumsy grasp, the boy's deft hand reached out and began arranging the pieces.
Nate completed each row, seeking a piece from the pile to set it against its predecessor, as though he saw the puzzle completed on the floor in front of him and he simply had to find the piece which corresponded with the spectral image. The process was a slow one, but the boy was steady, almost robotic, in his actions.
The white haired officer watched, almost disbelieving, as the young child worked. He stood swiftly, and moved over to his phone, dialing an extension. "Yes… it's about the kid we picked up. I think I know a place that'll take him. I've got a buddy over in England who works security at this orphanage…"
The words did not quite reach Nate's ears, however. His focus intensely turned to the puzzle before him, he solemnly fit the last piece into place. Studying the tiny rivulets and crevices where the pieces joined, his gaze traversed the surface of the puzzle taking in each tiny detail, fit perfectly into its place to come to one, full image. Captivated both by the logic of its complexity and the simplicity that was the sum of its parts, this was a world he could truly understand.