AU, in which Matt is dead but Mello isn't. And... yeah
.
He's getting that caged cat feeling again.
Mello couldn't conquer the vengeance. It's conquering him. The nights are black and dark thoughts are gnawing; loneliness starts to freeze his soul. Try as he might, the sorrow turns to leaden woe and drags him down.
It's been two years since Kira's death, and nobody knows he's alive. He shouldn't be, but Takada spelt his name wrong. A slip of the fingers and an e before a, and here Mello stands. Alive. Too alive, but dead in the only way that counts.
He should have died the day the police – and, oh god, Mello doesn't want to remember. Matt's car riddled with round after round and his body, god, crumpled and blood soaked.
With those stupid goggles still on his face, and a fucking barely-there smirk that haunts Mello every day.
He sees the rest of his life for a moment startlingly, stunningly clear: unfurled, a string of endless days of aching coldness. Last chance for a life not shaped and shifted by the worms digging their shadowy holes of revenge. Last chance, but Mello's never been one to do things halfway.
The world owes him. Someone has got to pay for this. He's going to exact that debt if he kills him, and he really hopes it does.
Mello doesn't know who he hopes to find, but whoever they are he will crush them. Mello will crush it all.
He lights a cigarette with shaking fingers, because he'd figured there must've been some reason Matt liked them so much and why not? and now he's hopelessly addicted. The smoke scalds his throat and then it soothes, and Mello swears to this city that he's going to send he and it up in flames.