„You have got everything ahead of you." he says, voice bitter with so many conflicting feelings he doesn't care to count them. Outside, the sky has turned from black to an explosion of colors, splashes and stripes of orange, pink and purple that seem to be pulled from a mad painter's mind or canvas. A light wind sends crumpled paper skittering across the floor like autumn's leaves.
The sudden flare of anger that manifests freezes the breath in his throat and cuts his air off for a few brief seconds. He isn't afraid, he is only ever fleeing and ever anticipating.
„You're wrong, Mello. Everything has got me ahead of them."
Near's voice is as flat as ever, no nuance betraying that his calm has slipped. It infuriates him even more, this calm where there should be desperation.
But Near cannot afford desperation. He exists, yet doesn't know the reason.
„But you'll never die! The moon and the stars will die before you do!"
And even the gods have to answer his call, felled by their own children or weakened to the point of nonexistence by faltering faith. But who would endeavor to not believe in him?
He is Near, the ultimate god without church or chapel. But belief isn't faith, and only those whose souls or bodies are broken beyond mending would ever hail him as their saviour.
He says nothing.
The sound of a car's engine breaks the silence that filled the room. Mello jumps to his feet, all action suddenly, not even sparing a glance for the figure by the window. In a battle, he has to feel invincible, immortal. In a battle, he has to outrun Near, outrun himself, outrun his opponents.
„You plan on bringing him down today."
He has got it written down, in millions of books with pages of cramped print, what has happened and will happen and to whom. But Mello never asked, and Near never offered.
„I only know that by tonight he will have made the decision, and given the order by tomorrow,"
Near closes his eyes, envisions lines of marching men and houses burning, envisions a field of golden wheat swaying in the wind,"and you will have to invest in a combine harvester come next week."
How much one life weighs and how the scales are tipped is not for him to decide. He isn't fate.
Mello has holstered his guns and is running down the stairs, Near at his heel like a very pale shadow.
The car is racing across the streets, and skids along for a few feet with screeching tires as they reach their destination. Mello turns his head to address his other ever-present companion.
„As soon as I'm out of the car, drive like hell."
Matt doesn't say anything. He doesn't even feel anything anymore. Something like a cold wind passes over his face, and Near's voice is at his ear.
„Tracks on your arms again? I don't want to see you so soon."
And then the hotel's door opens, the corrupted General surrounded by his men steps out, and with thoughts running like quicksilver, Mello calculates where the opening is going to be in the next three...two...one! seconds and goes flying out the car door. Near steps out after him, unseen and unheeded, and pulls out a cut-crystal and wrought-iron hourglass. The car takes off.
Mello pulls the trigger on his raised gun a split-second before the guards do, and he and the General collapse to the ground almost simultaneously. With fingers like cold drafts of air, Near picks up the General's soul, and passes it over in the other direction. Then he turns.
From the fact that everything is on fire in his chest and no air is coming through, Mello knows that they got him in the lung. Near is standing over him, and for the first time since they met, he doesn't seem fuzzy around the edges, he seems realer than reality. And crouches down, the black of his eyes lightening to grey and then white, an endless white.
Near's lips on his own don't feel cold like he imagined, but warm and soft, and Mello breathes out while Near breathes in, softly at first and then deeper until he is sucking all the remaining air from Mello's lungs and all the blood from his veins. Mello feels a tingle in his limbs and body and somewhere still deeper, and then he feels nothing at all.
Near stands up. The hourglass is empty. He is still holding his breath as he spares one glance for the picture of broken perfection on the asphalt, and then surveys the city around him, until he sees a house, his sight drawing closer and focusing on one of the walls, and then going through the wall, to see a couple entwined in lovemaking, and then their own private explosion and both of them collapsing on the bed, spent. He exhales.
A miniature snowstorm of blue-white sparks wells up from his lips and is blown towards the woman, passing through the window silently and invisibly, and passing through the sweat-glazed skin of her stomach. The woman half-consciously drapes an arm over her abdomen, and falls asleep.