Golgotha by Zamiel
Childhood Matt and Mello fic
"Go away."
The words sliced through the seething tension that hovered defiantly in the air. Matt's voice, encumbered in all his fury, barricaded through the silence, hurtling through Mello as if the finely-sharpened side of a switchblade. Matt watched Mello's eyes widen as if the older boy had been slapped; he realized that he had never, through the course of his twelve years, spoken harshly towards Mello. Matt watched Mello retreat with a strange, burning satisfaction in his stomach, hoping that he had caused his friend a few moments' misery. It served Mello right, it served the whole fucking world right. He wanted them to all go fuck themselves for all they were worth; he did not know exactly who he meant specifically by they, nor did he really care. Matt huddled into the kitchen corner, aggressively lodging a poorly-aimed kick at the various mops and buckets that congregated around him like a silent audience. Fuck Roger for making him clean the kitchen as if what had happened earlier today had been his bloody fault. Roger had also promised Matt that he would be given a talk later on for the burns on his arms. But shouldn't Roger know that if he, Matt, didn't find a way to take it all out on himself, every last fucking imbecile under that goddamn roof would be slaughtered?
Matt cursed himself for slipping up and wearing short sleeves earlier; now even Mello was looking at him as if he had transformed into a freak specimen. The burn marks cascaded down his arms, meandering like darkened footprints upon his skin. Each mark was precise and angry, charred with unmistakable precision and menace. Roger had immediately confiscated his lighter and any tool capable of emitting flame. It had been a somber, dirge-like event; Roger and Watari rarely relinquished possessions from the children at the orphanage, since he always harped on exploration and imagination and how over-restriction could lead to the disappearance of such qualities. Matt wished he had a lighter or blade at the moment, he could use a good dose of pain. But fuck it. He trudged to his feet, violently brandishing the mop; the handle snapped in his hand as he swung it recklessly around the kitchen floor. Anyone observing him would think that he was initiating a war with the mop rather than using it to polish the floor.
He cleaned haphazardly, skirting the mop angrily onto the tile and marble; even though he mopped in a full-blown rage, the floor was barely being cleansed in a satisfactory manner. When he finished, he slammed the mop onto the floor where it cracked and splintered; he picked up the bucket of water and marked it with a long, angry dent. He didn't care anymore if he got hell from Watari; he was already grounded anyway for smashing Near's pristine replica of the Taj Mahal (made entirely out of toothpicks stacked meticulously without the usage of glue or tape) and for chucking his Game Boy onto the floor of his bedroom, where it had shattered into several pieces, displaying its intricate computerized innards.
He slung mop and bucket into the kitchen closet, rummaging through the fridge and cabinets for something agreeable. His fingers stumbled over a jar of Roger's wasabi peas. Matt stole a fistful, pushing the whole lot into his mouth, choking at the burn.
(20 min. later)
Matt slipped the sleeves of his shirt over the burn marks waterfalling down his arms before heading to his room. Roger had just inspected the state of the kitchen and, after patting Matt's arm, instructed the red-head to go upstairs. Matt had shrugged away from Roger's touch, sullenly shuffling past the caretaker before rancorously glowering at his feet, determined not to meet the eyes of the curious, shushed crowd of children that stared at him openly and uneasily, pausing their activities to move aside as he passed by.
None of them, he gathered, had seen him in such a state; even Mello, the figurehead of everything caustic and domineering in Wammy's House, had backed off without sliding in a few words edgewise. Matt was famous for his laid-back and complacent attitude; lame-ass cracks were continuously being made about how Matt should've been titled Mello, since Mello was an oxymoron to his own name. But at the moment, every single nerve in his body screamed out against the occupants of Wammy's and their watchful eyes while he silently and slowly climbed the stairs to the second floor. The bedrooms, aligned like a silent row of soldiers, awaited him; he flung himself into one of the smaller singles near the back of the corridor, banging his palm on the wall that separated his room from Lez's to make him turn off his stereo. He was not in the mood to weather through another Numa Numa marathon, dammit.
"Keep it up and Watari'll chuck you into the street," said a familiar voice dryly.
The bastard. Matt wondered if Mello had found a quiet corner to gather his balls before confronting him again. Mello was a paradox he simply left unanswered—the older boy possessed a raucous vocabulary that amused Matt—if anything, Matt thought that Mello tended to sound badass whenever he opened his mouth. But what was with that chocolate-eating? Jesus H. Christ. How could someone string together a series of curse words for emphasis and style while nibbling truffles and dark chocolate Lindt bars? The kind with fucking raspberry filling? It was like looking at a nuclear plant with a Hello Kitty mosaic on it. Or a gangster in a ballerina's tutu.
He had no idea why Mello even bothered coming to mess around with him; they had never been especially close though Matt often tolerated the blonde's companionship. Although he was labeled one of the more laid-back occupants of Wammy's, barely participating in the squabble and fights ensued by the rankings amongst his peers, Matt's apathy kept him emotionally unattached and isolated from everyone else.
Which was why Roger had suggested to Watari that Matt be placed in a public school setting for at least a year. Matt's progress was satisfactory; despite Roger's hankerings that if he'd excel much further if he'd apply himself a little bit harder, Matt achieved a solid hold on third rank. Actually, he didn't give a damn about the rankings and all the politics tangled with it—and his indifference, Roger had patiently explained to him one evening in his study, bothered Watari and Roger, causing them to worry.
"Social skill is a valuable asset in the real world," Roger had lectured in his most teacher-ish "I care" voice. Matt had no idea why Roger had reserved this talk especially for him; he doubted that any of the other kids were better off. He was just as fucked up as any of them, but apparently only to Roger's eyes, he was the freak, the one that needed the most curing and nurturing. His lack of friendship, his innate ability to not give shit greatly concerned Roger. Yeah, yeah, he was touched, dammit. Thanks.
He had, in the end, tonelessly agreed to attend the local junior high school for a year—everywhere was the same, after all and it didn't have to faze him. Until, of course…
"Get the hell out of my room," Matt glowered at Mello, quickly making sure that none of the charred markings on his arm were visible. He loathed the sight of the dark, angry stampede of charcoal even more than the smug-looking boy who had invited himself inside his sanctuary and who was currently making himself comfortable on his bed.
"Don't get your panties in a knot," sniggered Mello, though carefully eyeing Matt's clenched fist with an exaggeratedly calm air as if Matt's anger didn't trouble him in the least. "I dropped by because I wanted to know what's making you PMS." His eyes traveled over the cluttered contents of Matt's electronics, wires, and assorted tools adorning the shelves like the insides of some intricate animal. His desk was strewn with various projects; many broken appliances at Wammy's made their way to Matt, their owners hopeful that the red-head would perform his magic and patch-up their wrecked goods. Wire tidbits, broken chips, ruined screwdrivers lay on the floor, the corpses of many unnamed wars waged in that space; the whole room looked like a shrine to some overwhelming mechanical god. Mello's calculating and shrewd stare at Matt's possessions made him feel uncomfortable, as if he were the one being scrutinized; he rarely had any visitors in his room. He was momentarily grateful that he did not have anything overtly personal that Mello could use to blackmail him. The blonde continued to croon, "Roger told me you got into a fight at that school. Jesus. What the hell is that?" He motioned towards a miniature microwave that Matt was making from scratch—he had abandoned that project a long time ago, it seemed—picking it up and tinkering with it before placing it aside with disinterest. "And you burn yourself."
They didn't allow him a moment of privacy; nothing remained sacred anymore. Matt scowled; Roger had, in the last several months, become most unpopular in Matt's book and confiding his bloody secrets to Mello was the last straw. Matt shuffled towards his bed, grimacing down at the blonde who smirked up at him, deftly rolling a piece of chocolate inside his mouth with his tongue. "Roger's a bloody sod," Matt announced at him.
"He didn't tell me about the burn-marks; I saw them myself. Let me see them again." Mello's wrist shot out and grabbed Matt's own, his fingers nearly raveling twice around Matt's skinny wrist; one calculated jerk from Mello's fingers would probably snap it. Before Matt could react, Mello had pushed up the red-head's sleeve, his eyes glittering coldly as he surveyed the scars his friend had carefully kept hidden for a good seven months now. Mello's fingers felt the gravelly contour of Matt's skin where it burned black, his mouth still smirking but less in his usual trademark smart-ass manner. Matt didn't bother pulling away--Mello's grip was too firm for that--his arm prickling slightly from contact with Mello's cool fingers that greedily invaded his secrets. When Mello met his eyes, he did not look away. "You did this with your lighter?"
"Yeah." Mello relinquished hold of Matt's wrist and Matt had a strong urge to break his nose.
"What the fuck for?"
"I was bored." A series of odd noises were emitted from Mello's mouth at his response; it somehow reminded Matt of a hyperventilating, rabid dog until he realized that Mello was laughing his ass off.
"Bullshit." The words were forced out in-between laughs from the blonde as he fell to his side, wrapping his hands around his knees in a fetal position, except Matt had never heard of a fetus cackling and moving as if it were experiencing an epileptic seizure. He hoped no one was in listening-range; he did not want the other Wammy kids to get the wrong idea. "At Wammy's, when you're bored, you build rockets or fucking Taj Mahals out of toothpicks or solve an epic probability problem and shit."
"I don't."
"Yeah. You're a pyro, so you'd set some huge-ass thing on fire, like a weather-balloon or hack into databases or something. You wouldn't burn yourself if you were bored, for Chrissake's…do you think I'm stupid or something?"
The trouble with most of Wammy's kids, Matt suddenly realized, was that he couldn't hide from them—not with their incredible ESP-like deductive reasoning and superhuman acumen—and yet after all analysis had been done and charted, they really couldn't understand anything because most of them had the emotional range of an atom. "I guess I was really bored, then." He wasn't going to confess anything to Mello, who was currently busy braiding two copper wires together. His wires.
"Roger should be happy," Mello surmised, propping himself up again and tossing the wires aside, "since he sent you to that place to learn not to ignore other people. Like hell you need to learn that as much as Near. Anyways, you'd think the fact that you finally snapped and kicked a few asses would make old Roger happy. Hey—you never told me about that place anyway. How's it like?"
Matt folded his arms over his chest. "I wasn't under the impression that I was supposed to tell you anything about that place," he said flatly. "Stop pissing me off."
A short moment of silence traversed between them; Mello settled back on Matt's pillows with a swaggering air as if he owned the place and Matt, unsure of what to do in the space of silence, shrugged as if to himself. Next door, Lez's stereo was beating out a repetitive, perpetual bass line that caused the wall to groan. Mello reached inside his back pocket, pulling out a small chocolate bar; his muffled curse when he inspected it and found that it had melted was the only word that permeated the room.
"Are you suicidal?"
The question jarred Matt. "Fuck no."
"Don't act so riled up; it's just a question." The smirk coated every purr in Mello's voice as he meticulously opened the wrapper with the air of an expert surgeon performing a complicated maneuver. He brought the wrapper to his mouth and slowly sucked the melted chocolate. "Yeah. I thought you weren't. You'd have to go full-out, like jumping off buildings or slitting your wrists or shooting your brains out." He said it so emotionlessly, as if he were explaining to Matt some methodic procedure or formula he used to solve a physics equation. "I'd say you've probably hated it at that place for some time and you acted your usual dopey way by trying to ignore it or push it out of your head or whatever the hell you do. But the pressure cracked you down and you wanted to feel something to keep it all in. So you burned yourself to keep yourself quiet—if you took it out on yourself, you wouldn't snap and kill everybody. But I guess today it was all too much and you gave some boy a concussion and another a broken arm."
Matt wordlessly watched dark chocolate rivulets eel down Mello's fingers. Faint strains of Numa Numa wafted towards him from Lez's side; he carefully shelved a mental note to find that CD and snap it in half. Mello licked his lips, his teeth slightly chocolatised, depositing the empty wrapper on Matt's table. "Did you get expelled?"
"Suspended. Two weeks." At during which time, Roger had already enrolled him in community service-work to make amends for his wrong-doing. And since Mello had figured out the whole situation anyway—he probably had it all worked out a long time ago—Matt attempted to justify himself. "They were idiots, anyway. The whole lot of them."
"Of course they would be," agreed Mello smugly. "If you expected something else, then you were the one being idiotic." He gestured towards the wall. "Does Lez always play that crap? That song's been on non-stop for a while now."
"They made fun of the freaks at Wammy's."
"Yeah," yawned Mello, toying with yet another of Matt's possessions—this time, with his wire clippers. Mello tossed them to the floor where they landed with a resounding clunk and Matt made another mental note to get back at Mello for chucking his things every which way he damn well pleased. "Heroic of you, really, to beat them senseless for saying such things. Wait. Actually, they're right; half the kids here are freaks." He snickered, no doubt compiling a mental list in his head. At that moment, however, before Mello could rattle off names, the door to Matt's room opened and Roger's elderly, spectacled face peered in.
"Mello," his calm, fluid voice rang. "If you could step outside please, while I have a word with Matt." Mello slowly untangled himself from Matt's bed and walked out the door as if by his own will and not because he had just been commanded to, reminding Matt of some proud, stray cat. The sneering expression on his face was a maddening one; it nearly shrieked "Busted!" at Matt, as if he were enjoying every bit of Matt's doomed crusade.
"Actually, Mello." Roger had closed the door to Matt's room; Mello briefly wondered why both he and Roger ended up on the other side of the room together with Matt still inside until he realized that Roger was speaking to him. "Maybe I should have a brief word with you first."
"Yeah? I didn't mean to hassle him," said Mello nonchalantly, not sounding apologetic in the least.
"No, it's not about that." Roger's kindly face smiled serenely at him; not for the first nor last time, Mello mused upon the size of Roger's patience. Anyone else would've cracked by now. "I don't think Matt revealed to you the reason behind his fight?"
"He wouldn't do that," smirked Mello, unconcerned. "Anyways, I don't care, at least not while he's being all emo."
Roger peered down at the obstinate blonde boy from over the rim of his glasses. "Master Mello, do you remember several days ago you waited at the bus stop with Matt? When the students saw you two together, there were many jokes exchanged of a rather crass nature. That was what caused Matt to explode. He was defending you."
"Sounds like a bad movie cliché," remarked Mello, yet failing to conceal the note of surprise in his voice. Roger left the boy to ponder the thought to himself; the elderly man entered Matt's room, carefully closing the door behind him. What the hell was up with that red-head geek anyway? He had followed Matt to the bus-stop to make cracks about the junior high school he was enrolled in, he had even thought that he himself was being a real jerk at the time. Friendship was oftentimes considered an impossibility at Wammy's, especially between two children of close rank. Mello had thought many times that Matt must be trying to usurp his number two rank (who wouldn't? That sort of story was so commonplace) but in all truth, the red-head pyromaniac was one person at Wammy's he had never particularly minded—Matt never flaunted around his knowledge like a smart-ass or strove to stand out or impress, keeping mostly to himself and out of sight. He was a riddle Mello left unsolved, a riddle he absentmindedly liked to toy with in the corner of his mind because he had no idea what the hell induced him to like the kid, as if Matt's universe were some sort of freakish gravity well sucking Mello inside. But Mello hated losing, he loathed the dirty stench of it…
He trudged by Lez's door, thumping his hand on the door. "Turn that shit off!" he bawled, thinking that in the very least, he could give Matt a few minute's peace as a token of…what? Gratitude? Jesus. He could care less about the drivel those junior high kids spewed about him. But if anyone else other than Matt had defended him, he would've taken it as an insult.
If he was going to do the whole gratitude thing, he might as well do it right. Familiar with Matt's almost-religious fascination with fire, he decided to filch a new lighter for Matt—maybe during his suspension, they'd go on a burning crusade for the sheer hell of it. And, Mello thought wryly to himself, he'd see where they'd go from there; at any rate, Matt had already paid full admission to all possible humiliation by the scar marks on his arms. What kind of freak did that sort of thing anymore, especially in the cut-throat Wammy's House?