Note: I know, me writing from Near's POV... weird since I hate the guy. But I don't know, even if he was a cold and emotionless brat, you can't end safe after having L, Mello and Matt die for the case you 'solved' (Near didn't exactly solve it alone but oh well, you see what I mean) and I wondered what he would be like after the Kira case. He owed this to Matt and Mello, and I wanted to write it.
It's quite canon except for the MattxMello stuff and the events after the Kira case.
I placed it under Near and Mello as characters on FF but it really seems strange to me since I only check Matt and Mello with the search, so I won't see it appear and it disturbs me.
And yeah, I didn't derogate to my usual 'let's make a long rant as an author note' *lol*
I already derogated to writing only MxM so... don't ask me too much! What, you never asked that? READ!

This is strange... I don't understand, I never understood. This is the one thing, the only problem I was unable to solve. I was ranked first, stamped the best, obliterated the smartest, and never have I been able to make light on the mystery that you were, Mello.

The only thing I know is why I wasn't able to comprehend such a complicated being. Feelings. I never had any feelings.
And Mello, you were made of these. So much willpower, so much anger, so much passion... The metaphor with fire was always the one in my mind when it came to compare you. But the problem with all your fire was that it was exponential. Consuming you little by little, fuelling your actions, until you would explode.

And you did. Three times, you did.

The first time.
I had beaten you in the ranking, again. You stormed out of the corridor where the blackboard stating you were second, as usual, resided. You didn't rush outside this time, but into your room.
You were the only one that didn't share your room with another Wammy's student. No one among the children had lasted long enough in your area to escape safe. So Roger finally decided to place you in the smallest room, with one bed, one single bed.
Even I had to share a room with Matt, at that time. The freshly arrived redhead.
And you ran into him, that day. He came from a corner, and you smashed into him. You bruised him, badly, and the gaming device that he had in his hands broke on the floor.
You told him it was an accident. You always said your actions were accidents, when Roger would scold you after you had beaten up a child again in a temper tantrum.
But it was the first time you said it without it being a lie. I didn't understand.
I was walking in the same direction, to my own room, when I saw you and Matt, him with a bleeding lip, sprawled on the floor, and you helping him up. And you were sorry. I didn't understand.
The day after, I saw Matt sat on his bed, playing the same gaming console that I thought was broken, and I'm smart enough to know it couldn't be repaired, in the state it was in, in pieces on the floor the day before. When I asked him how he had managed to repair it (because if I couldn't, then him, second in ranking, couldn't have done it either), he simply replied that he had not, that you had bought him another one. I didn't understand.
And later that week, I remember, it was between your fourteenth birthday and Christmas, and I looked by the window because it was suddenly colder, and saw the snow that had begun to fall on Wammy's courtyard. And there, I saw you, and Matt. You were kissing him. And just when I wondered what trick you were playing and which new idea you just had found to hurt the new child, he smiled at you, and held you in his arms. And you exploded. I saw the fire in your eyes, and the aura around you like a burning halo.

The second time.
You had run from Wammy's after L's death. You left Matt behind.
Two years, he cried himself to sleep. Two years, and he left, too.
And I left as well.
I tracked him, and he tracked you. I found you accidentally. Not that I was more skilled than Matt, no one, not even me, could beat him with electronics. This I had understood, he should have been ranked first, he's just been too lazy and not motivated enough to do so.
I was trying to get one of my SPK men into the Mafia as a spy, and he never brought back the pictures of the Mafia mob I had required by himself, I only found a note on his dead body that someone had deposited in front of the SPK headquarters. It only said 'Near', in that round shaped handwriting I knew was yours, Mello.
I had no doubts it was you. And I wasn't surprised that you killed my henchman.
You were living in a well guarded place that I could never bug, that I couldn't have gotten infiltrated.
All I could do was spy on you when you left this place, every now and then.
I saw you with the Death Note in your hands. You never wrote my name in it, although you could have gotten rid of me, your only rival, your only source of frustration in the battle for victory. I didn't understand.
You blew yourself up, and Matt found you, saved you, healed you, and loved you like you never left, like he was never sad and alone, like he wasn't mad at you for the two years of hell I saw him live. I didn't understand.
After you were back to business with a face like the Phantom of the Paradise, I saw you come to me for a picture of you I had in my possession, and although you wanted to be first in finding Kira, you gave me the informations you had and that I hadn't, about the two false ruled of the Death Note, making us even where you were previously first, the place you had always wanted to be. I didn't understand.
And later, in front of the SPK, from the bug placed next to the front door, I saw Matt in his car, coming to take you, and I clearly heard you whisper, before you completely left the building and hopped in his car, that you hoped I would manage to make my fat head of a twit work to find Kira with these informations, because you felt like you were failing to protect Matt. And you sat in his car, he grabbed you face and kissed you softly. And you exploded. I saw the tears rolling on your cheeks, the pain written on your face and the fear in your eyes.

The third time.
I was knelt in front of your and Matt's grave. We had had a hard time retrieving your remains after you burnt in that church. I made you be buried next to Matt, not that I cared about what you would have wanted, I never knew what you wanted, but it was easier to visit both of you together. I didn't have much time with all the cases I got after the Kira case was solved, and the only reason why I came to visit your graves was because L would have, and I wanted to be as close as what he was as possible. I've been raised to be like him.
I was turning in my head all the informations I had, and the ones you gave me, both by your visit at the SPK headquarters the day you came for your picture, and the ones your death provided. I was wondering if I would have known them even without you.
And you exploded. Right in my mind, in my core, in my soul. You exploded all the feelings of victory against Kira, all the satisfaction of finishing this hard case, all the things I had taken for granted since I had joined Wammy's.
I never understood. Never understood you, never understood Matt, never understood myself.
But right now, reading your real name on your grave, you exploded. Me. The fake me.
You had twenty years of living to the fullest, of loving Matt body and soul, of being loved back heart and mind, of fighting with your own ways and means, of being yourself.
I understood that not only you had won against me, because I could never have known the informations you provided, but you had won against Wammy's.
You had always been Mihael Keehl.
And I was only the new L, after all...