AN: DN not mine, no profit being made.
The idea for this came from a pic I painted quite a while ago for YoyoIlluser, who asked for a Matt/Linda. Being apparently incapable of producing anything warm and fuzzy, lol, this is what I came up with. Pic can be found in my dA gallery (link on my profile) under the same title.
Concrit appreciated, as usual.
The days are getting shorter and dimmer, and though there are still brown leaves clinging to the trees around the House everything already feels dead, and has for a long time.
Looking through the paintings she has been doing lately, Linda realizes they, too, have been getting darker and grimmer, telling stories of lost children and rusted wastelands, and she thinks it's about time she gets out of here before she goes crazy—not just House crazy, but really crazy.
Of course Roger never really told them anything, nothing useful. No one ever tells them what's actually going on; direct, freely given explanations are never trustworthy. As L's potential successors it's expected that they should be able to figure things out on their own. That expectation is not unwarranted, and the top ten or so at least have varying degrees of certainty of the facts: the only rationale that makes any sense at all for M to have gone storming off, and N locking himself up in his room for months and months then quietly vanishing, is that the original L is dead or incapacitated.
When those Japanese policemen came to pry—that really sent a wildfire through the House, confirming some rumors and confusing others and spawning a whole host of new ones. They asked for her assistance, and before knowing what they wanted, she stupidly agreed. In retrospect it seem idiotic and far, far too trusting, but she wanted to know what the policemen wanted with the House, and it seemed like a good opportunity to observe them and do some prying of her own. In the end Linda gave away far more than she gained.
Well, at any rate, it's too late now and they have her pictures, and she hopes rather viciously that Mello and Near will make an example of both Kira and whatever nosy prat sent those men, because despite the competition among them all and the fact that she never particularly got along with either of the top two (Mello was not only vindictive, which was not atypical of House kids, but would instigate trouble just to see people's reactions; and Near made it plain that he had very little use for anyone but Mello) she still feels a hell of a lot more loyalty to them than she does to anyone Outside.
On the other hand, Linda supposes Outside people must have some redeeming qualities. She sure hopes so, because knowing that Mello and Near are out there fighting a murderer and that L is gone takes away a lot of the glamor of the House, makes all the "special" programs and training feel prosaic and pointless. Really, they all knew all along that M and N would come after L and that the rest of them were just there but now instead of a lurking undercurrent of knowing it's out in the open and naked and ugly and a little embarrassing. Going Outside is the only bearable option.
The only bearable option, perhaps, but not that easy.
Outside is…Outside. It's so big, so full of people and things. Things she's read about but never done. Renting an apartment. Getting a cab. Buying groceries. Outside is huge, and the House, though it's big to them, is really so very small. She feels very small. Linda thinks this is what it would be like to stand on one of the moons of Jupiter and watch that bloated giant swell up and devour the horizons. It would make a good painting, but so far as plans for the future go it leaves a lot to be desired.
The sun will set soon and it's overcast, so the air is grimy and dull and the walls around the House grounds seem to loom in the deepening dim. The lighting is perfect for how she feels. Linda is sitting under a tree with her pad and charcoals, sketching the House.
She thinks maybe this last picture of the place where, technically, she grew up, will help her be able to finally leave it behind. She also thinks that in some ways they all grew up in the first day they came, and in other ways (maybe the most important ways) they never will. The House seems to leave certain marks on people. Linda lets her mind wander to M and N, and further back to A and B, and wonders if the qualities that brought them to this place are really gifts at all.
She's examining the House intently, glancing between it and the sketchpad as she works, so Linda sees Matt as he's coming out the door, absently follows his shambling path across the yard, then takes a keener note of the young man as he apparently notices her and adjusts his trajectory. For a moment she is irritated, because for this experience, which has become rather symbolic in her mind, she wants solitude and silence for reflection; but her practical side takes over when she notices the full pack of cigarettes he's pulling from his pocket. Like many of the House kids, Linda's willing to forgive a lot in terms of social impropriety for the sake of nicotine.
Too, though she doesn't know him terribly well (no one does, not anymore, because really, he left when Mello did), she knows he's been locked up just like Near, probably burrowing and surfing and creeping through rivers of data, waiting and watching and waiting. Matt never comes outside anymore, yet here he is. Linda knows she's not smart in the same ways that Matt is, but she sees things that other people don't, and what she sees in Matt's sloping walk and the tilt of his shoulders as he lets his gaze wander around the grounds is the same thing she feels in herself.
Even though she looks engrossed in her drawing, Matt is of course aware that she has noticed him, and she knows he knows; they know an awful lot, the House kids, and Linda wonders if it's different Outside, if the small understandings that occur between the lot of them every day are something special or just a natural part of being human.
In any case, she takes the proffered cigarette, and that means it's ok for him to join her even though no one has said anything. The sketchbook is set aside, open, and the pair sit on the dying grass, smoking and staring up at the House.
"Yeah. Looks about right," Matt says after a while, voice raspy from disuse and too many cigarettes.
His eyes are on her sketchbook. It's really a depressing picture. The building, despite being technically accurate in its depiction, resembles a drowning victim more than anything, empty-eyed and sunken, a gross shadow of what it once was.
"A gallery in Prague wants to display my watercolors." The words fall from her mouth. She knows Matt doesn't give a damn about Prague or galleries or watercolors. She knows he knows that's not the point when he replies,
"I know where they went."
Linda nods slowly. She doesn't ask; Matt wouldn't tell her. She's already unintentionally given away too much information about M and N. Doesn't matter. She doesn't want to know. Life under L is over for her. If Matt wants to keep chasing L's successors, that's his business. Linda knows what she wants her business to be about. Galleries in Prague, Milan, Paris. Outside.
"You gonna finish that first?" He gestures at the charcoal sketch of the House with his cigarette.
"It's done."
They leave after midnight that night, slipping the locks without difficulty. They don't tell Roger—or anyone else, for that matter. Linda is mildly surprised that Matt doesn't bring more electronic equipment than fits in a single streamlined shoulder bag, and he huh's quizzically when he sees her barely half-full backpack.
Most of what they value is in their heads anyway, she supposes.
It's damp and chilly, the grounds lost in dark-morning fog. Linda presses a palm flat against the brick of the outer wall as Matt is jimmying the gate lock. She doesn't know what she expects to feel—some warmth or life inherent in the rhythm of the House itself, a pulse. Strength, security. The promise of safety.
All that meets her hand is damp, chilly brick.
"Coming?" Matt offers a gloved hand. She takes it. It's just as damp and chilly as the wall, but his fingers clutch hers as tightly as she clutches his. Here in the House, they are as different and indifferent from and to each other as it is possible to be. Two steps away, beyond those gates, they're two of a kind, set aside from the rest of the world, brother and sister landing on an alien planet where no one will ever be able to know them or be allowed to know them.
Linda doesn't think she'd be able to make those first two steps without someone to cling to. But there is someone, and they do. Ghostlike, they vanish into the fog, and into that other world.