Originally written for the Death Note Fanfiction Contest community at lj.
Disclaimer:I claim no ownership of Death Note or any of its characters.
Theme: week #16 - historical AU
Pairings/Characters: Mello (called Michael here, to fit the setting), Matt, Near
Summary: Mello, Matt, and Near, pitted against poverty, drought, and the most devastating dust storm of the Great Depression, struggle to survive in the barren wasteland of the Dust Bowl.
Warnings: Spoilers for Near's real first name, and a modified version of Mello's.
A/N: Mello, Matt, and Near are brothers in this historical au. I'm sorry for that. And yes, I'm aware that it's physically impossible for Mello and Matt to have the same mother, as they're birthdays are less than 3 months apart. But for the sake of my idiotic ventures in fiction, please attempt to sustain your disbelief and/or suppress your gag reflex.
.
The morning of April 14th, 1935 didn't differ much from the five years of desolation and drought that'd come before it. I stepped out of our rickety wooden shack of a home into a dull, colorless land of dust and death. Everything in sight was some monochrome shade of tan or beige. The borders of things seemed to run together; it was hard to make out where one filthy object ended and another began.
I adjusted my worn leather cap over my matted blond locks, heaved a resigned sigh, and set about my daily routine. I'd gotten over my bitter feelings for my two younger brothers by now. …Well, mostly, anyway. They were too lazy to even lift a finger to help out around the farm, but that didn't mean I'd be content to sit around the house, whittling sticks or wasting our cloth to make useless things, like Matt, or worse, playing with toys like Nate.
They'd stopped working when our folks died. Pa had gone first. His lungs filled up with dirt. Crazy as it sounds, lots of farmers around died from it those days. They called it "dust pneumonia", but no one really knew what exactly happened. He'd kept working outside, though, even when he was gasping for breath between coughing fits. But once Ma had put him to bed for his fever, there was no coming back. She'd gone next. Ma, that is. I'm still not sure, but from seeing how hard she worked and how little she ate, I'd say it was probably from exhaustion and malnutrition. We tried to get her to eat, but she would always give most of her share to us kids.
I don't blame them for leaving us alone. Even if they had loved Nate more than me. And they had, too. They loved him more than any of us, and it was all because he was smart. Out of the three of us, Nate had somehow gotten the brains. It wasn't that me and Matt weren't bright. Truth be told, we would make the rest of the kids in Kenton, Oklahoma look like dim-witted rednecks. But Nate was something really special. And he was always showing me up. I was good at physical labor, and Matt was good with his hands—two traits that would actually be useful on a farm. Still, Ma and Pa fawned over Nate like he was God's greatest gift, spoiling him and giving him the easiest chores they could think of. No matter how hard I tried to earn our parents' affection with hard work and determination, Nate always came first. But none of that mattered now. I'd been forced out of my selfishness to sustain our lives. Our parents were gone, and I was the only one left willing to hold on and push forward. I was the only one who could keep our family—or what was left of it—alive.
The work wasn't really so bad. To be honest, so much of our livelihood had been wiped out that there wasn't all that much left to do, anyway. The crops had dried up and blown away so long ago that I'd forgotten what a fertile field looked like. The cows were far gone, too. We'd once had a respectable amount—near fifty head of cattle all told—but they'd all died within the first year. The grass had withered away, and we barely had enough food to appease the bottomless bellies of three growing boys, let alone those of the livestock. As things were, we were literally surviving off of the eggs of three scrawny chickens and the dwindling remains of stockpiled grains from years past. I spent a great deal of my time trying not to think about what would happen when we ran out of reserves. This was the only thing that made me grateful for the labor. If nothing else, it made for a good distraction.
It was early afternoon when I finished with chores, heading into the house for a well-deserved break. Matt was sitting on an old wicker chair in the main room, hunched over, mop of red hair falling over his face. He was working busily with a scrap of cloth and some straw.
I plodded over to him. "What're you makin'?"
"A doll," he answered simply, not looking up.
I scowled. "Somethin' new for Nate, no doubt." He still didn't meet my eyes. "Why can't you make anything useful?"
"It's useful for Nate," he quipped with that damn sarcastic tone he was so fond of.
"Well why don't you ever help me?" I growled, snatching the half-finished plaything out of his hands and tossing it behind me.
"Because you work outside." He said, as if it were plain to see. He unhurriedly got up, walking across the room and stooping in the open doorway, where the doll had landed.
"What makes you so special that you can't work outside?"
Matt stood up straight, staring out into the arid, sun-parched wasteland. "It's so boring watchin' somethin' that never changes, Michael," he muttered, before suddenly being seized with a violent hacking fit. When it passed, he shuffled back to the chair, returning to his work.
"Things aren't gonna change 'til we do somethin' about the way things are."
Matt stopped, coughed once. His gaze stayed focused on the doll. "Nothin' we do now will change anything. The soil here's done. Everyone's tore it up and dried it out, and without rain, nothin' will grow. All that's left is the bare bones of our failures and hopeless tries to ply the dead earth of what she don't have. Don't you ever wonder why me an' Nate don't even make an effort around here? Y'see Michael… The only difference between us an' you is that we aren't so blind as to ignore what's starin' us straight in the face."
"You-- I'm not--" I started, fumbling for words in my frustration. "Shut up, Matt! You talk a lot, but you don't do much to back it up. If you believe that crap, then why don't you just leave?" I spat.
"Hm," he grunted, and looked up. A ghost of a smile played on his cracked, split lips. "Are you kiddin'? I can't leave. You're both still here, aren't you? What right do I have to run off?" He absently fingered a frayed edge of the doll's clothing. "Besides, who would take care of Nate?"
"There you go again, worryin' about him all the time," I grumbled. My rage had subsided and eased into mild irritation. I sat on the wood plank floor next to my brother. "What happened to the days when you'd always take my side, huh?"
"Same thing that happened to the days when we knew what a full stomach felt like," he said. "Ha. That was a joke, by the way."
"You never did have a knack for humor, Matt."
"An' you never learnt how to close a door, apparently," he said, gesturing at the front door, which was swinging loosely on its rusted hinges.
But I hadn't left it open. I knew I hadn't. An uneasy feeling filled my gut. I sprang to the doorway, peering out at the sandy horizon. A hot, powerful wind was tearing through the scorched plains. Sharp grains of sand came with it, stinging my bare skin like glass shards. Sure enough, my worst fears were confirmed. A giant, billowing wall of dust and dirt was barreling towards us at an unbelievable speed, shielding the earth from the sun and enveloping it in a darkness as deep as a moonless midnight.
I stepped back inside, slamming the door and bolting it shut. I knew the pathetic latch would most likely be of no use, but locked it all the same.
Matt's head jerked up. "Dust storm?"
"Where's Nate?" I asked, moving past him.
"In the bedroom, like always." He had jumped up from his seat, and though his voice sounded calm as ever, his expression was tense.
I was there before he'd finished, throwing open the door to Nate's room. The dumb kid was crouched on the floor, tightly grasping all of the beloved toys that his tiny arms could hold. He looked like he'd been waiting for someone to come get him, and I wasn't surprised. "Come on!" I ordered, and wrapped an arm around his skinny waist, hoisting his entire body off the ground and hauling him out of the room.
Matt was already in the larder when we got there, rough coughs racking his bony frame. I dumped Nate on the dirt floor and grabbed the fullest bag of grain I could find, propping it against the door. "So, Matt. You been bummin' smokes offa ranch hands again?" I muttered breathlessly, leaning against the door. "Those things'll kill you y'know."
"I haven't." He saw my skeptical look. "No! Honest, I haven't."
I smirked at the absurdity of our conversation in such an ominous situation. "Suppose there's no way you could, seein' as you never leave the house."
Matt smiled and opened his mouth to answer, but the sound was drowned out as the walls began to shake, and the roaring of wind and dirt and destruction outside filled our fearful ears.
Hours later, when we emerged from the store room, we found our house half-collapsed and filled with several feet of soil. Outside, our world had been buried. The tractor, our farm's only piece of heavy equipment, was submerged up to the steering wheel. The chicken coop was all but invisible, with only a small corner of roof peeking out above the drifts of dirt.
We three orphaned boys stood on what was once our front porch, waist-deep in earth and gazing out at a transformed land. No one wanted to say what we all were thinking: What the hell will we do now?
"We'll leave," I said, replying to the unspoken question. "We'll leave this place, and we'll move on. It's all we can do." Looks like you get to run off, after all, Matt, I thought, but my pride wouldn't let me say it.
"…Where will we go?" Nate quietly asked.
"People say California's good for work," Matt coughed. "And all the oranges you can eat. How's that sit with you?"
I laughed; a coarse, bitter sound. "Sounds like paradise." In that god-forsaken desert, shaken by dust storms, droughts, famine, and death, anywhere else was.