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Mello raised the gun, pointed it at Near, and swore he wouldn't be his tool. He did this despite knowing that he was a tool, all of them were. All the Wammy House kids were tools, weapons, and knowing that was the case, why did it matter whose finger was on his trigger?
But it did, Mello insisted it did, insisted with all his being. He pointed a gun at Near in a never-ending quest for identity, freedom, things he knew the words for but couldn't quite grasp the meanings of. He heard Hal's voice, calmly explaining why he shouldn't shoot, as if from a long way away. But he heard all the things she didn't say, that she loved him and wanted to defend him, to protect him from the anger and bullets of her fellow agents, but she couldn't. This was her duty and she'd blow Mello's brains out if she had to, even knowing she loved him and that she'd cry herself to sleep for months over the loss and what she'd done in the name of duty. But she wouldn't hesitate when she shot.
For a moment, knowing this, he felt they were kindred souls, that maybe he could have loved her back, had things been different. But he knew better, knew that it wasn't true, that he could never, ever have really loved her. She lacked a certain craziness, that intense focus, was above all else, too easy, and Mello could never love someone easily conquered. For him it had to be someone who made him fight for everything he wanted, someone who only gave ground grudgingly. Someone like the small teenage boy sitting on the floor with Mello's gun pointed at his head.
He stared at Near and wondered what he was thinking. He could pull the trigger and kill him, get rid of his rival in an instant, even though it would leave his own life empty, with an echoing void at the center of his being. And then he'd die in a rain of bullets, some of them Hal's, and that death might even be preferable to what his life would be without Near in it.
Mello thought this, watched Near sitting there without flinching; this bizarre tableau of the boy who was a weapon with his hand on another, threatening to destroy the one most like himself, like shooting a mirror and dying as it shattered and the bullet ricocheted, and his finger tightened on the trigger... And then he lowered the gun, suddenly remembering to breathe as reality hardened around him, around all of them. His choice was made now; he couldn't go back.
Reverse
All his life, Near had loved patterns, loved fitting things together, building walls out of logic as he built them out of any objects around him. He loved all the kids' songs and poems about interconnections, the one about the branch on the tree and the twig on the branch, the poem about the kingdom lost for want of a nail, and he assembled his own life into like patterns, fitting people into their roles and watching with satisfaction as they fulfilled them and proved him right.
Mello, though, never cooperated. Not only did he refuse to stay in the boxes Near tried to put him in, but he changed things, destroyed patterns, smashed the walls Near built, both literal and merely mental, strode through them as though he didn't see them. But Near knew he saw them, that he was the only other person who did, and the destruction was intentional. Why, he didn't know; he thought it was just the way things were. The way they were. Near built; Mello destroyed, the cycle continued and the world was complete.
And now, as Mello pointed a gun at his back, Near thought that he had come to fulfill his role once again. Near had built unhindered for almost five years and it was long past time for destruction, before the walls took over and became a prison. And this time the wall Mello aimed at was the final one, the shell of Near's body, the one that would destroy all the others in one blow. He felt an inner thrill and realized he was afraid, afraid as not even Kira had managed to make him feel.
He heard Hal's voice, behind him, the tremor in it barely audible, and for Near it was as if she had shouted her feelings aloud. He wondered if she knew who Mello was, what he did, that loving him was like loving Shiva as he began his dance of destruction. He hadn't realized she had this self-destructive streak and his usual self made a mental note of this unanticipated tendency. So Mello had already made this breach in his defenses, the walls around him formed by his agents, a breach he would no doubt widen until the wall could no longer stand and it all tumbled to dust around them. Would it be enough? Trembling, he almost hoped it wouldn't.
They stayed like that for a long moment, patterns shifting around them almost visibly, and Near counted his heartbeats, wondering if each would be his last. Then Mello lowered the gun, slowly but irrevocably, and Near wondered what this feeling inside was. Surely he wasn't disappointed, hadn't truly wanted to die together with him in the final move of the dance they'd been performing almost all their lives. No, of course not, not quite.
As Near sat there, slowly catching his breath, registering this move of his rival and its implications, the way the board between them had changed, he knew, in a sudden burst of insight, the way Mello knew things instead of his usual slow accumulation of facts and logic, that things between them had changed; a shot had been fired and a bullet entered him that was no less real for its lack of physicality and invisibility to normal modes of detection.