"Eden"
Fandom: Death Note
Characters: Matt (Mello)
Prompt: #022: Mother Nature
Word Count: 1, 072
Rating: K+
Summary: The stars were too far away to matter.
Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: I own these characters about as much as I own the stars. I just wanted to write the dialogue. Grins.
"Let me lie close to the earth,
Battened against the broad breast
Which brings all things to being
And gives rest to all things."
- Katharine Susannah Prichard, 'The Earth Lover'
Mello was never one to stop and look at the stars. He didn't see the reason in stopping at all.
Matt begged to differ. Despite the rash, extreme and vaguely stupid activities he usually participated in – assisted Mello in – he felt it necessary to slow down, every now and then, and just watch. When the life started to drag, and trip, he had to let it go.
Mello disagreed. If life gets tough, you get tougher. When the world gets heavier, you get stronger. If complications trip you, you're useless, and you're not jumping high enough. The stars were too far away to matter. Looking at them made him a bit dizzy, anyway. He was slightly agoraphobic. It didn't matter.
One Thursday night, Matt climbed to the (off-limits) roof of the barely-inhabitable apartment building he rented. He lay on his back on top of the rusted tin roof that housed the staircase, his goggles about this throat and wrists tucked beneath his head. It was cool, on the edge of being biting, but Matt sorta liked it like that. It made sense to feel cold when you were looking at the stars, as pale and bright and distant as they were.
A soft breeze shifted his hair, and goose-bumps chafed against the soft cotton of his shirt.
The door beneath him creaked, and Matt drew his knees up a little, placing the flats of his socked feet on the corrugated metal – a protective instinct.
Light from the open doorway cast hard yellow lines across the cement of the roof beneath him. Mello's narrow shadow was framed in the centre for a moment, and then he stepped forward, breaking the image for the sound of creaking leather and clicking boot-heels.
Matt was quiet, and invisible.
The other man stepped in a straight line to the end of the roof. He sat there, dropping his legs over the edge. He was statically mute, and the shape of light from the doorway reflected harshly off the quadrilateral seams in his vest.
Silently, Matt debated whether or not the roof would creak if he moved his hands to sit up a bit. Holding his breath, he wondered if he could leave without disturbing Mello.
"You're allowed to breathe, Matt." Mello's voice was soft and low.
Matt obeyed, and slid off the roof, simultaneously slipping his goggles over his eyes. He stepped toward the open door, his socked feet hushed against the cement.
"No. You don't have to go."
Matt looked over his shoulder. Mello hadn't moved. His shoulders were angled slightly upward, his bare palms pressed to the ground and his blond head bowed slightly. Matt turned and padded over to him, following the line of his own shadow.
Slipping to the ground beside him, Matt feigned relaxation, glancing up at the sky, although he could barely see the stars through the thick orange of his goggles. He followed Mello's gaze and looked down, kicking his heels against the uneven brick of the wall beneath him.
Matt's apartment was on the fourth floor of an eight-story building, on the outskirts of New York. The land beneath them was a silent mess of broken streetlights and smog-stained flats.
"When I die, they're going to bury me underneath all this," Mello said.
Matt didn't look at him. He just nodded and leant forward, pressing his elbows into his knees. "That's bad, yeah?"
"Yeah," Mello said, because he already was beneath all this.
Matt said nothing.
"This isn't what the world was supposed to look like." Matt resisted the urge to glance sharply at the other man. "They – man – wasn't supposed to do this. He wasn't meant to touch that."
Matt did look at Mello, this time, turning away from a burnt car, it's tires melted into the asphalt. "You've stopped," he said. "Why've you stopped?"
Mello ignored his question. "What month is it, Matt?" he asked.
"March," Matt answered, wondering whether he should.
"Spring," Mello said, looking up at him. "Is this what spring looks like?"
Matt said nothing, and pulled his goggles up, looking carefully at his friend.
"It's not natural," Mello continued, looking back to the ground, so very far away. "It's not justified."
Matt didn't think it mattered, what the rest of the world did, but he didn't see the point in expressing that.
"The people down there – they're not thinking. And the few that do, they've got no morals. It's wrong." Matt noticed that one slender finger was stroking the scarlet rosary that hung about his neck.
"It's nothing like Wammy's," Matt said, speaking at last.
"It's nothing like Eden," Mello said. Matt was unsure whether he was being contradicted or not. Wammy House was no Eden to him – the priorities in that place were seriously messed up.
He didn't doubt that Mello would disagree with that. The ideal of Wammy House was to teach, create the next L – a position that Matt was not attracted to. He doubted that Mello wanted it, but Matt doubted that it was for the cause Wammy taught them to value. Mello was more interested in the respect, the power that being L – L – would grant him, Matt knew.
"Why did you stop?" Matt asked again, after a minute's silence.
Mello didn't answer, and continued to look down at the broken world between his leather-clad knees. Mello; so angry, so harsh, so unnatural –
"Look up," Matt said. It wasn't a demand by any stretch of the imagination, because Matt simply didn't demand things. It was more of a suggestion.
Mello heeded his suggestion, stretching his neck up. "They're stars," he said dully.
"Yeah," Matt agreed. "Nobody's ever going to touch them," he said.
Mello turned, slightly, glancing at Matt between strands of his hair. Matt knew that he was agoraphobic, and probably just wanted to look at something a little closer.
"All that – the stars, Justice… whatever – it's bigger than this. It's bigger than that," he kicked his leg, indicating the chaotic silence beneath them. "And it'll win, yeah? In the end, when it matters, it'll win by sheer numbers."
Mello was silent. "There's not many people like you," he said finally.
Matt didn't know what to think of that.
Then Mello said, "Nobody'll ever touch you."
Author's Note:
16th March, 2008