A/N: Born out of weird, angsty shit late at night. I suppose the next SDS chapter will be along soon, for those of you who care.
I don't really know. I've been stressed and so tired and so depressed lately, but FF.N is not my feelings journal, so just enjoy the product of... I don't even know what it is.
Yes, more Death Note. CONTINUE CHOKING ON MY ONESHOTS.
Excuse my. Sentence. Fragments, they are. For. Emphasis.
Into the White
"Snow boots..."
Roger ran a pen along the edge of his lips, paused, then leaned down to his pad of paper, jotting something down. Snow was falling steadily on the orphanage, creating an eerie, silent atmosphere- just waiting to be disturbed by noises and children.
"Roger, Roger," gasped Matt, running into his office as he slammed the door open. His hair was disturbed, his clothes damp, his skin pale. He was wearing only a tattered T-shirt and sweatpants, and in this weather?
"What are you doing." Roger's question came out as a bored, apathetic statement. "Where's your coat?" (it still only had half a question mark in it, really.)
"Near, sir. Come on, please!" Matt dragged on the elderly man's sleeve until he finally got up and walked over to the door.
"This better not be a prank!" he warned sternly.
"It's not!" Matt's wild eyes reflected the truth, so Roger reluctantly followed him into the hall, then out into a courtyard rarely used by the children.
Near was standing in the snowdrift, clad in his usual pajamas and bare feet.
"He's been standing there for hours," Matt confided. "I heard him open the door this morning, early."
"I bet Mello's the one who put him up to this!" The man's tone quavered, disapproval entering it.
"No, sir, he just woke up and walked out. Mello's still asleep."
Near was motionlessly gazing up at the sky, little white specks covering his hair and making it whiter. He seemed an angel or a martyr, reflected by the early sun with a halo of light, and his expression was, as usual, nondescript. Melted water trickled down his arms and legs and his feet could be visibly seen turning frostbitten colors.
"Near, stop this foolishness and come here immediately!" It was a direct order, given in the gravelly half-concealed rage of a man who is low on patience.
"If I were to die," Near spoke unexpectedly, not moving, "who would care? I'm just a backup, after all, a spare part for a flawless machine. I do not believe in God, but maybe the whiteness here and there are similar, maybe when you die you stand in the quiet snow for a long time."
"Near! This is ridiculous- we need you- get over to me NOW!" Roger sounded more furious by the second, then the trump card: "I'm calling Watari."
"He won't care," Near shrugged his shoulders.
"Just make him wait. He'll cut out this childishness eventually," Roger muttered to Matt.
Matt looked incredulous. "But what if he does die?"
"He won't."
A half an hour later, Near was still standing in the drift, the whiteness piling on his stone shoulders, which he admantly and wordlessly refused to move.
An hour later, Roger was getting concerned and was about to walk to the telephone, when he overheard that relentless and kind soul, Matt, persuasively offering Near toys, food, even encouragement, and he figured it would work. So he waited another hour, in his office grading essays the children had written.
He jumped at the shouts suddenly erupting outside.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing!? What the hell, committing, attempting whatever, suicide? Why? Near, why the fuck?"
When he arrived at the scene, he found something bizarre.
Mello was holding Near in his arms on a bench inside. The door to the courtyard was now shut, and his jacket was wrapped tightly around the small pale-haired boy's shoulders. Near's lips were faded white in color, and he was clinging to Mello, defiantly keeping his expression unemotional.
"Near, Near, Near." Tears ran freely down Mello's face as he looked down at his arch-rival, his nemesis, and he screeched at Roger, "WHAT ARE YOU GAWKING AT? GO CALL A FUCKING AMBULANCE!"
Shocked to the core by this, Roger stood up straighter, instinctively angry. "Well, I...!"
"GO!"
The defeated old man went to do as Mello had ordered, very shaken.
"Have you ever thought that some of us would be lonely if you left us 'into the whiteness?'"
Mello's angry statement followed Near all the way to the hospital as the angry blonde handed him to a paramedic. They fed him warm things and delicious potions and the only thing he remembered was Mello's hand on his for some reason and his urgings to drink the yummy hot chocolate, because it would be crazy, logically and derangedly crazy, not to take an opportunity to have something involving chocolate. Soon, everything faded except Mello's phrase about missing him...
Have you ever thought that some of us would be lonely if you left us "into the whiteness?"
...it was the last thing he thought of before he drifted into unconsciousness under thousands of soft layers.
It occurred to him today, fifteen years later, as he stood at a different window and watched the same snow fall, that he missed Mello.
Something had crept up on him, and his feet were already numb. He should have listened.
The emotion took him such by surprise that he had to go outside and stand in the cold with no shoes on to realize he was actually feeling this devastatingly human-like thing.
As the flakes began to dust his pajamas, he thought about what Mello had said again, and he thought about standing out here forever, until it blended with Whatever Was After Death.
But he dismissed the idea; his heart was already stuttering from the cold, and there was surely hot chocolate inside.
La Fin