I don't usually change the plot of the original story when I write. I'd rather stick to canon as much as I can. But I just happened to be wanting to write something without overthinking it sooo…
(I'm not used to write in English. This is the translation of the original French version, I advise you to read it if you can because it's just… Much better.)
EDIT : I had gotten the punctuation wrong, aha. Damn habits I guess, can't get rid of them! I also corrected some mistakes that had slipped here and there. By the way, I had forgotten to say I don't own Death Note, but that was pretty obvious so. Well.
Lights glimmered upon the crowd. There were always lights in this goddamn country. Vegas had its neon; Tokyo had its fucking screens. Night was banished from the heart of the city, CONTINUOUSLY irrigated by a flood of life, trivial chatter, thundering laughs, arguments, friends and lovers walking arms in arms, loners before the Lord, passionate debates, convictions, whispers. He was overwhelmed by cheerful or stubborn faces no matter where he looked. Some of them were nice, some others of utter ugliness. He didn't really care however. Scraps of disjointed conversations played like music as he walked down the street –it was even better than music. It was a real kaleidoscope of meat. It was full of life.
That was rather reassuring for someone who was going to die. Mello ran a hand through his hair, his teeth clenched. Everything had gone wrong, from the beginning to the end: the decoy, his planes, his bike, the police, Kira, that Takada bitch and her motherfucking bodyguards, Lidner, everything. An acid laugh got him strange looks from passerbies. Here came a dumbass talking to himself again. Here was another weirdo in their cute little world, nothing to worry about. They were assholes. They were stupid assholes. Couldn't have things gone as planned for once? Did some contingency always have to fuck everything up at the LAST MINUTE or something? Was he doomed or did he simply lack any luck? Never had he neglected luck in his calculus. He organized everything, thought of every detail so that nothing could backfire. Fuck that son of a bitch. He took risks, but thoroughly studied ones. He put himself in danger, but just what it took to achieve his goals. Yet he was getting fucked by luck or fate all the same. He'd have to be careful that it didn't become some habit of his. He didn't want that –no way. He was probably going to get it anyway, granted he lived long enough for that.
He crossed his arms and drew his coat closer, his eyes still gazing at the crowd looking for basically anything. Maybe he hoped for a familiar face. Maybe he hoped for anything that would catch his attention. There was no use for it, thank you my-biggest-quality-ever: he couldn't relax. He had always been the one who would remain focused on his goals. Procrastination wasn't for him. He didn't store any bit of motivation in "tomorrow" as many people did. It was always getting lost there. That had been his mantra since forever ago, at the Whammy's, or even before that. He couldn't be completely sure. His memories of back then were blurry and he didn't trust them. They didn't have anything to do with the person he was now anyway, less again with the life he was living. His dream, aim, ambitions, everything was born later on, as he walked past the massive, daunting gates of the orphanage.
And everything would end here, miles away from them. Mello smiled, aware he wouldn't step in its park ever again. It was highly improbable. It was impossible. He wasn't truly nostalgic of those times. He was prepared since he left the place in the middle of the night –he may have had gone rather bluntly, but that was thoroughly-thought bluntness. He hadn't said goodbye to anyone then. He hadn't said much to Matt either today. And there wouldn't have been much left for him there anyway. That Near cockroach buried itself in the safe and nice SPK headquarters, Matt was dead, L was dead, Watari was dead and fuck Roger. The list was as short as it was exhaustive. He'd find good memories at best, bad at worse, and you didn't catch mad criminals like Kira with memories, end of the story.
"Yeah, well keeping doing that won't help either, jackass!"
Mello's heart skipped a beat as he turned around, unable to make out which of those morons uttered those words. Chances were they weren't directed at him anyway; he was letting paranoia get the best of him. The Random Stranger wasn't wrong, still. Wandering the streets wouldn't be of much use either.
"I can't stay idle here doing nothing when that bastard…"
"In case you didn't know it's past midnight now", a woman told a badly shaven guy beside her. "You'll take care of that tomorrow, when things will have settled a bit. Go to sleep. Or you can go get wasted. Did you know that-"
He shook his head and paid her no more attention, then turned right. She wasn't wrong either. There was nothing to be done tonight. Tomorrow perhaps, at the very second the sun would rise, he'd do something and turn his words into acts. But for now he was just going to think something up, something really good this time. Had Matt been with him, he'd have insisted on hanging pointlessly in some pub and said a lot of shit. But Matt wasn't with him and Mello didn't feel like hanging pointlessly in a pub. Not that he intended on taking his walk to the end of night under that pixel-rain in the shallow, dirty lights of the city-streets. More than anything, staying alone frightened him. Being alone and busy was okay. Being lonely and aimless wasn't something he wished to try.
He raised his head and closed his eyes for a second. His scar itched like crazy. No wind blew in the street tonight. It was only him, the bustle and warmth.
"Hey mister!"
"I don't have time for that shit", he grunted, staring at an invisible stitch before him. He walked a quick pace and dared the whole world to give him some more fucking lemons, his lips a crisp and his joints bone-white.
"You're not gonna leave me alone, are you?"
"Leave me alone and go find your mother."
"That's what I keep telling you, I don't know where she's gone!"
Mello gave the boy an icy look. He, on the other hand, looked to be dying out of sheer exasperation.
"Then. Go. Fucking. Look for her", he articulated, a bit too angry in such a situation.
"No."
"Why?"
"I'm scared."
How convenient. They were now both slowly drowning in a pool of irritation, stubbornly standing in the middle of the crowded sidewalk. The kid had light hair that proudly stood in a mess on his head. He had the trademark expression of lads his age on the face, one that hesitated between a gunshot and an imprecation full of hope. He wouldn't get to Mello with that. He ignored it with ease.
Unsurprisingly, he wasn't in the mood to play the goody-two-shoes.
"You'll be even more scared if you stick with me."
"I'll be even more scared if I'm alone."
"Go see someone else."
"They're Japanese."
"… So?"
"They speak Japanese!"
The midget had a point. Mello clenched his teeth and pinched the bridge of his nose, uncomfortable at best. He wasn't good with children, especially since he never took care of hardly saw any at all. He shook his head once again and turned around. Resumed his walk. Ignored him. Tried to get distracted. What was he going to do the next morning? Get the asshole. But how? Takada was dead meat too, and she had been his only clue to Kira. The fact that he now had to work alone only made things worse. He should just go-
"What's your name? I'm called Matthew."
"Mello", he answered automatically, frowning.
"That's a funny name."
He sighed, raised his shoulders, played with the little cross that hanged around his neck –he never parted from it. That was a funny name? Maybe it was. To be honest, he never gave it so far as a thought. It was his and that was it. Mello is how he was called, even though there weren't many people left to call him now. He could have gone for anything, but it had been "Mello". He didn't remember the reason for that.
"It's a nickname."
"What's your real name then?" The little kid asked. His eyes were bright and his curiosity sincere.
"That's a secret."
"So coooool!"
Another smile tore the young man's face –he was almost still a child too. That pseudonyms thing saved their lives, his, Near's, and Matt's. It saved L's too, at least for a while. His heart clenched at the thought and a feeling of emergency ran through his veins. He didn't have much time left. The stakes were high: he didn't want to go meet his maker. He wanted to be number one. He wanted this fucking mascaraed to make sense somehow. He wanted to save what was left to be saved. If all that was true, he had to hurry –which he unconsciously did, slightly aware he had nowhere to go nor any scapegoat for his long burning anger.
The kid was obviously having a hard time recording the information. It was too "so coooool" to sink in, Mello thought. He wanted to look cool and important too:
"I have a nickname too, but it ain't a secret though."
"I'll take a guess at Matt."
"How did you know!"
He stared at him, wide-eyed and more impressed by his fortune-telling ability than the scar that ran on his face.
"I guessed. I have –I've had a friend who was called Matt too."
"Honest? And real life he was called Matthew ? Just like me?"
"I don't know. It was secret too."
"How could you not know something like that? We may have the same name and you don't know!"
Mello stopped at once and bit his lips. That kid was slowly getting on his nerves and annoying the ever living fuck out of him. He couldn't possibly be the only Caucasian person to walk down that street, and certainly not the most nice-looking one. He wore black on his clothes, black in his eyes, with the blackest agenda. He wasn't the kind of person you bugged while waiting for the underground. He wasn't someone you asked for help. He could have been a mourning Mafioso as well as a ghost. And more than anything, he didn't give a fuck about anyone's name, dead men's less again.
"But truly?"
"Everyone calls him Matt."
"But you said he was your frie-"
"I don't give a fucking damn about his fucking name, for fuck's sake!"
"Really?"
"Really", he grumbled with dubious amenity. "Now go to hell or I send you there for real."
"You won't do that."
Mello smiled a crooked smile, one he had from time to time since the incident with the hideout. He barely saved his ass and couldn't say so much for his face. It reeked of serene self-confidence, close to arrogance.
"You think so?"
"God wouldn't be too glad about that", he asserted while pointing at the little silver cross –he never parted from it. Mello bit his tongue. He'd have hit him hadn't he been a child –moreover in a crowded street. That was being sentimental once again. That Near bastard told him so. Matt told him so. Both did it in the plain tone of obvious assertions. Both did it looking like they didn't even bother looking for a damn to give. Mello never "not cared", about anything: he was always concerned, he always picked his side, he never really got to pick his fights. He had a reason for everything he said, an opinion about everything people did, he alone was a living talk-show. They weren't politically correct more often than not, but still.
"God is already not too glad about me", he corrected. "You shouldn't trust anyone for the sole reason they wear that. Some people have to do the dirty work."
"You'll still help me find my mom, huh?"
He didn't answer, resumed his walk –again. He still glanced at some faces. He still didn't know where the hell he was going. The flat and its half-eaten chocolate bars that smelt like cigarette? The smoke stuck to his lungs, thick and disgusting. It made him sick, formed a knot in his stomach that crept its way up to his throat. It left something haunting in his esophagi. Something he hated.
"Just a quick look then."
"Cool! She's like, super tall and super pretty, but she looks like a mad ogre when she's angry. Hey, now that we're accomplices, can you tell me your name?"
"No."
The kid kept his mouth shut for a while. Mello could feel is eyes set on him as he looked in the stream of faces for the one of a woman he didn't know. She was Matt's mother and she lost her son. She was a concerned, sick-worried mother; such a face should have stand out.
What exactly was he trying to accomplish by that? It was stupid.
"You'll have to ask him then."
"Huh?"
"His name, of course! You'll have to ask Matt his name, so I can know if he's got the same as me", exclaimed Matthew, excited to share a name with a super-secret-American-CIA-agent.
Mello pulled himself together. He didn't say anything because there was nothing to be said –there was a stupid moron to be killed, maybe, but no word to throw anywhere. Matt was dead, as dead as the ancient dead.
"He's dead", he repeated bluntly. "He won't tell you anything and you wouldn't want to share anything with him anyway."
"Why? And why? I want an exciting life too, with secret pseudonyms and all!"
He was annoying and pleaded to be terminated with. But you didn't terminate kids, even when you died to send them six feet underground. He thought about that for a second or two –a grave. None of them would have a real one. Nobody would bring any flowers, and he wouldn't either. He was going to die soon anyway –wasn't it no more than an excuse? He knew it deep down. He was no man to bring flowers to a rotting corpse, not even to Matt's. He was no man for sermons and lectures.
"Because he told everyone to go fuck themselves."
He was no man for heart-wrenching eulogies.
"He didn't have any friend."
"Rest in peace", they said? What a fucking joke it was. That bastard couldn't stay put with no gaming for one night, so, eternity? That wasn't even funny.
"He didn't finish Super Mario's last level."
He was no man for smiles and photographs.
"His family died."
He was no man for roses and chrysanthemum.
"The only plant he could manage to keep alive was a cactus. He was supposed to be clever, you'd think he'd remember to water a flower –but no, too hard for him."
And then what? "Matt"? That was ridiculous.
"Nobody knew him."
He'd lay in a beautiful oak coffin?
"He was a bloody mess when he died."
"But he was nice, right?"
Mello couldn't stop talking, and fuck it if the kid wasn't listening, fuck it if his throat was soar. He talked and talked again because he was going to die soon too –he knew it. So he talked. Somebody needed to remember, be it for a little while. He wasn't afraid of what was to come, he hadn't been afraid for Matt either, not even for L. He wasn't concerned about Near. He was aware none of them were going to Heaven and doubted they'd meet ever again –even though, he wasn't sad. He was simply angry, blasé and angry. He was angry because that idiot hadn't finished his Mario Kart game. He was angry because he let their plant die during their biology experiment and they had to ruin Near's too to make things even. He was angry because he sent him to death for basically nothing and because he never told him the reason he didn't send him to hell when he asked for his help. He was angry because he was tired. He couldn't come home because he forgot to open the window this morning before he left and now this foul smell wouldn't go away from the walls, his clothes and his lungs –and that made him angry too.
He was angry because he didn't know his name.
They had it coming, yet it still didn't feel right. He was determined to make it okay.
"Mom!"
"Matthew, thank god you're here! I've been looking for you all over, thank god you're alright! You do that ever again and I swear I tie you up in the hotel!"
"But mommyyyy…"
"Excuse me sir, did he bother you? Are you alright? You're crying, is something wrong? You don't look good, may I…"
"I'm fine", he answered. "I just… Lost something."
"He's a secret agent on a mission."
They had it coming –they got what they deserved, and no flowers or regrets were part of it.
When he died the next morning –it was cold and the sky was clear- he was still thinking of it. Goodbyes had never been his thing. They were just words, words and more words than you could feel. It was useless. It wasn't on purpose. Who gives a damn? Fuck, you made me lose! Oh that bitch. You're like a huge Pikachu. I've got them all in gold bitches! How do you manage not to become a sumo? You were blew expectations here –no pun intended. I won't ask any questions. Who gives a damn, after all?
Happy birthday!
Long time no see.
You're the best.
I swear.
Good luck, Mihail.
"Good luck, Matt".