Letting Go

Genre: deathfic

Pairing: M&M implied

Warnings: Spoilers for end of series; language; altered circumstances, twice.

Disclaimer: so not mine.

Notes: Both of these pieces are based on Within Temptation's Swan Song. I was mostly working with the feel, although the lyrics do have some connection to what ended up getting written - the sections are named from lyric fragments, for example. The song is gorgeous, and all but demanded death/end-of-life fic, with lots of angst and pain and pretty imagery, just the way I like it.

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1. .Chains of Life.

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"There's someone to see you."

He rode the elevator down in silence, alone, Optimus Prime clasped loosely in his arms. His fingers were almost still, spasmodically clutching at his pajama shirt and releasing, but not occupied with anything in particular. This meeting would be hard, harder than anything, and he did not want Lester or Gevanni to see this, especially didn't want Halle to see.

He was standing just inside the first set of glass doors, somehow diminished. The jacket was all style, as usual, threatening and badass and in-your-face, but he was wearing jeans, a little bit loose on his narrow hips, a crumpled long-sleeved shirt, faded and striped. The chocolate bar hung loose in fingers that didn't quite seem to know what to do with themselves. Near didn't think he was even carrying a gun this time.

Near let him in, said, "I'm glad you're still alive, Mello."

"I don't want to be here," Mello said. All the old spite and attitude was still layered in his voice, but it rang hollow in Near's ears.

"You don't know where else to be," Near said, quietly.

"Everyone thinks I'm dead," Mello said, choosing to ignore that even as his face twisted at those words. "Or that I should be dead. I meant to die. In that church." He bit savagely into his chocolate bar. "Takada had part of the real Death Note," he said. "You and I both knew that. What happened?"

"Halle was there, just before the gas tank exploded," Near said. "She couldn't find your body. The fragment of note was already burning, but she and I think, from what she could glimpse, that Takada had spelled your name wrong, four times. The rules of the note make you immune to its effects after that. So I knew you were still alive, and would show yourself again, eventually."

"That's it," Mello said. "That was all." His short bark of a laugh was as hollow as his words. "Just a stupid mistake, unplanned for. Just..."

"Mello," said Near, and dared take one step closer. "Are you all right?"

"I've checked every morgue in the city," Mello snapped abruptly, fists clenching. "What did you do with Matt's body?"

"Why would you think I had Matt's body, Mello?" Near asked.

"You always liked him," Mello said, and there was raw fury and hatred in his voice now, no hollowness left. "I knew you always respected his abilities more than you respected mine, I can't find him anywhere, the police don't know jack shit about what happened after Takada's guards shot him down like a fucking dog at that intersection, so where the fuck is he?"

Near wanted to say something, about old half-friendships that never really died, just lingered on, tenuous and occasionally painful, throughout the years. How he had always admired Mello even when he hadn't respected him or his methods, that passion that never flickered out, that willingness to take action where few others would dare. How no one else would have dared the sacrifice that Mello had flung himself headlong into. How he was actually, truly sorry that it had come to this.

He didn't, because Mello would never believe him. "Come with me," he said quietly, and padded off down the hallway, Mello striding after him. He thought he could feel the heat of Mello's glare burning into his back.

There was a room downstairs that was normally empty, that Near had never gone into before. He took Mello there now, into the sterile coldness of that place, where every puff of breath was visible against the chill air.

"I haven't actually verified that it's him," Near said. It was a lie - he'd known who it was when he'd asked Lester to quietly retrieve the dead man from the street, from the moment he'd seen that face - but it was something that might give Mello the excuse he was looking for, to go in. "Would you?"

Something in Mello's face was working hard - at what, Near didn't think he could say. "Show me," he said, coldly, and Near heard in his tone, as he'd expected: I don't want to see this, but I need to. He didn't understand why. Of course, Matt had always been with Mello, back at Wammy's, but Near had always judged it to be a working relationship, give and take, no emotion there.

Except he'd come now, and Mello didn't ever come back for someone he didn't give a shit about.

Matt's was the only body this room had ever seen, though it had been build for that purpose, just in case it got to the point where no hospital morgue would accept the body of someone who had been outwardly hostile to Kira in life.

His red hair still burned against the stark yellow-white of the pillow under the surgical bulbs as Near delicately turned back the sheet covering him, lowering it only enough that Mello could see his face, and not the ugly wounds on his body. The bullets - seventeen of them, carefully removed during the autopsy - had shattered Matt's life with no chance of gluing it back together.

There was a strange sound from beside him, and Near turned to see Mello's face twist as his breathing increased in speed, looking at the corpse of the person he'd gotten killed.

"Are you all right?" Near asked, but Mello ignored him, stepped closer, pushed the sheet down to Matt's waist before Near could stop him, eyes running over his once-living skin. He was shaking, fingers flinching back involuntarily as his hands hovered over Matt as though unsure of whether he wanted to touch or not. The bullet wounds were so very ugly in the harsh light.

Once, back when Near had been still small enough to merit a position as Mello's almost-friend, the three of them had been playing near a pond out in the fields behind Wammy's, seen a hunter kill a swan they'd been watching tend to her nest. The blood on those ivory-white feathers, the stillness of that fragile body, the way Mello had aborted an angry leap forward to fall back, shaking and white at seeing death first-hand for the very first time - all that came back to mind now, watching Mello standing like this over Matt, unavoidable wounds marring ivory-white skin. He wondered if Mello was remembering that now, too, or if only he could see the connection to that long-ago moment.

Mello spoke, hands dropping to grip the edge of the table as he swayed a little. His voice was an empty room, even more sterile and cold than this one. "It should have been me, Matt," he said. "I didn't think that they would kill you. I wanted you to -"

And then he was going down, still gripping the edge of that table as fiercely as if he were still standing, knees buckling. Near watched as Mello's forehead dropped against the side cupboard of the autopsy table, watched the sweat gathering and sliding down his face, wondered how someone could physically be sweating when the air was so close to freezing. "Matt," Mello whispered, "Matt, I'm sorry -"

"You really were always close," Near said at last, uncomfortable, not knowing what to do with someone like Mello so close to the breaking point. "There were times when I wasn't sure." He wanted to say something more, didn't know what would work. He had the feeling that what he'd just said hadn't done anything to help. Mello's hunched posture radiated poison back at him.

"I'm sorry, too, if it helps," Near added, finally, because it was true whether Mello wanted to believe it or not. "That you ended up sacrificing something - someone - you hadn't wanted touched."

"Sorry doesn't help," Mello said, and the poison was gone, leaving only the empty room once more. "Sorry doesn't change the past."

"I know," said Near. "Come on, let's go."

"I'm not going anywhere with you," Mello said, voice a little muffled. "I'm not working with you. Even now. Get out of here. I'll let myself out."

"You need to say good-bye," Near said. "I understand."

Mello spat another hateful, "Get out," at him, but Near knew he was right.

He stepped out of the room, closed the door behind him nearly to. Turning for one last look, he saw Mello getting to his feet again, one hand brushing the hair away from Matt's pale face. Saw Mello bend, breaking across the forbidden line between the dead and the living to press his lips to Matt's cold ones, a move that Near would never have credited to Mello if he hadn't just witnessed it. Glimpsed, maybe, a little bit of what Matt must have been to him, for him to come back to say such a good-bye. Saw the sweat-that-could-not-be-sweat on his face still glistening just below his eyes as he rose back up. Knew this was the last time he would see either of them.

Near walked away on feet not exactly steady, still cradling Optimus Prime, and wondered if there had ever been a chance that this could have turned out another way.

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2. .Winter.

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He woke up to white walls and the emotionless beeping of the heart monitor, the sting of an IV needle in his wrist, and it took him a long moment to place what he was seeing.

Bare and sterile room.

Machinery pressed in close, measuring the seconds and pulses of his life.

Hospital.

"But I was dead," he said. His voice wasn't much more than a croak.

"No," said a voice from beside him, and he turned his aching head to see. For a second he thought no one was there; the boy in white, curled up on the chair, practically melted into the wallpaper. Only his dark, dark eyes indicated that there was anyone really there.

"...Near," Matt said. Why was he here? How had he even known to come? Matt was the invisible one, the one no one ever saw. Why would Near come for him? Where was Mello? "What...?"

"I saw you on the news," Near said, quietly. "The unidentified man shot down in the street and in critical condition. I remembered you, from Wammy's House, when we were little. You were working with Mello, weren't you?" Something flickered across his face. "I brought you in because I owed you, for helping me to win. It was the least I could do."

"We won?" Matt whispered, and shivered. Somehow the victory didn't seem that great, in this place of lonely, terrible arctic white light.

"We won," Near said. "Kira is dead. His judge has been jailed. It's over, Matt."

"Tell me how." His head hurt. Where was Mello? Was he hospitalized as well? "... No, wait."

He watched Near's face tighten into an almost forbidding mask as he forced himself upright. Near looked... older, not like a little kid any more. Something about him had changed. The circles under his eyes were deeper. He looked haggard - when had he last slept? He was different, not the boy who had taken quiet and unseen pleasure in winning, in beating Mello every time. Like this time it really was justice that had mattered most.

Like L. Something bigger than himself.

"Mello," he said. "Do you know where Mel is? Is he OK?"

Near blinked, very slowly, and then glanced away.

Matt felt ice plunge into him, impaling his heart, turning his words into puffs of frost as realization crystallized in his veins. "No. That can't be true."

"I truly am sorry, Matt," Near said, curling his hair around one finger. His face was emotionless, but Matt had the queer, hysterical feeling that it was only because he didn't know how to show what he was feeling that nothing had broken through yet. "You were always close, weren't you?"

"Mello is not dead," Matt snapped, and something in him snapped too, and he buried his face in his shaking hands. "That's a lie, a goddamn lie."

"My assistant," Near said finally, while Matt's face was still hidden. "Halle Lidner. She reached the church where Mello had taken Takada. It was already on fire; the delivery truck that we know Mello used to transport Takada was in the middle of the blaze. She did her best, to determine whether either Takada or Mello were able to be saved. Takada was already being consumed by the flames - Kira, I think, forced her to suicide. Mello was still in the driver's seat - long gone. She saw his face, Matt."

"Lies," Matt whispered, face and hands hot and damp and slippery under the knife-keen touch of disbelief. "Lies, Near, if I didn't die, Mello shouldn't have, I was shot, I was shot so many times all at once that I lost count, and I survived. Mello can't be dead. The Death Note couldn't have killed Mello, not Mello -"

He lifted his head as he felt something small thud against the sheet covering his leg, saw the soot-blackened rosary, smudged clean in places where someone's fingers had been to show the blood red beads underneath.

Mello's.

The cross he'd worn without belief, but to remind himself and the world that there were other gods than Kira, kinder gods. That it was for the sake of a cult of forgiveness and mercy that he should be fighting, to keep himself human no matter how far into darkness he had to walk. To remind himself that it shouldn't be all about revenge, and winning, because he knew better even if that wasn't why he was actually fighting. He'd told that to Matt, once, when he'd thought to ask, and it had been the first time since they were kids that Matt had caught a glimpse of someone human under the spiky shell of Mello's exterior.

He had wanted to hold him then, heart aching for the person that Mello could no longer be, but Mello had been across town at the time, the link their cell-phones made between each other the only sort of contact he could hope for, tenuous and strange. Not enough. Never enough.

"He was obviously holding this tight when he died," Near said, looking at it solemnly and jolting Matt out of his memories. "Halle found it in the ashes, after. She thought I might want it, to remember his sacrifice." Twirl, twirl. "I don't need it in order to remember. It's only a silly and sentimental little thing to me. Useless. But I thought that you might need it."

Slowly, Matt reached out, felt the cold of the beads against the warmth of his numbing fingertips. Fit his fingers over the smudged spots of red, wrapped the cross and the loose end around and around his wrist. Then unwound, around and around. Then back around.

"You were always so close," Near said again, watching Matt's fingers spasmodically, lovingly, caress the dead beads that had once steeped in all the memories of his partner's life, sucking up his heart's blood and pain, hanging there over his heart, close even when Matt hadn't been able to be. How could this be all that was left? "I envied you that."

Unwind.

Rewind.

Unwind.

Rewind -!

The beads clacked and slithered against his dead pale skin, the white sheets, the white room, glowing like dying embers, the last remnant of the fire that had been Mello's heart. "I wish I were dead," Matt said numbly.

"You'll have to wait," Near said, sliding out of the chair and to his feet. One hand closed over his, the one with the rosary, for a brief second. "With the rest of us. It won't be so bad. When you're well, Matt, call. I might have something for you to help pass that time."

"Yeah," Matt said, and didn't really hear what he was saying. "Yeah, sure, whatever." Mello was dead. How could Near say it wouldn't be so bad?

Near left, and Matt slid back down, sinking into the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. "Mello," he murmured, clutching the beads tight, but if he was expecting a reply, he never got one.

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