A/N: I'm planning a little something special after this last chapter, as a treat to all you readers. I've been getting thoughtful responses back, so I've decided that… anyone who wants to ask me one question may do so, and I'll answer it in the special chapter. Please either PM me with said question or leave it in a review. (One means one. You can maybe weasel your way into two if you have a legitimate follow-up question, but not otherwise.) Also, please try to make the question a meaningful one; I'd appreciate it more.

Why am I doing this? Because I love interacting with readers and fellow authors. Not only is it an honor to hear what you guys have to say after spending your precious time reading my work, but also… engaging is a learning experience. An author that can't appreciate what other people have to offer is a naïve one indeed. I learn something new every time I take part in discussion, or answer a question, or fangirl with someone. Plus, I'm a reader as well as a writer, so I know how it is to be curious about the motives or inspirations of an author. There are certain authors with whom I would love to converse! Unfortunately, a lot of them fail to engage. I'm not going to be like that. I can't cater to everyone all the time, but by offering something to as many of you as is sane, I can thank you somehow. You all have made fanfiction great for me. It's a two-way relationship and I want to honor that!

That's the spiel, and I believe in it wholeheartedly. Take advantage of it, those of you who understand what I mean.

Now. Are you ready for this last chapter? I'm still not. I'm really…. Shit.



Swan Song (or Tristan Chord)

Matt smoked outside the convenience store, sucking in fury with every drag.

Violated. Mello's last kiss had violated him — taken his soul and ripped it into unrecognizable shreds. Matt never should have laid lips on Mello in the first place. He'd lost control, so maybe he deserved this. Maybe this was what the blond had meant when he'd said that they weren't meant to go there. But damn it… Matt had wanted to plunder Mello's mouth anyway. He couldn't kid himself — he'd wanted every bit of that wild mélange of lips, teeth, and tongue that he had gotten. Even that last kiss — that violation — had been sweet. It was his own fault if the long-term result was that he wanted to hang himself.

Ha ha, long-term. Oh, the mockery.

Matt was in Japan. He'd taken off without stopping back at their little London flat. While he felt naked without his equipment, he had realized he wouldn't need it. Near could recover the appropriate files without Matt's system, and besides, machines did nothing for a corpse. Matt didn't require his possessions to remind him of the plan, either. He had that drilled into his head. He wouldn't have minded his PSP on the lengthy flight back to Kira's home turf, but such complications were trivial. Matt's life's work on his main laptop, on his other various hard drives and discs… what the hell would he need any of it for after tonight? So he'd left them — flown back on his own and thanked heaven that he and Mello had purposely selected separate flights. He'd slept on the plane. Needed coffee upon arrival. Whiled the remaining hours of the day and evening away, perusing the Japanese streets and waiting for Mello to initiate contact.

Fucking Mello. Matt's cigarette crackled. The bell on the door to the convenience store jingled and a tiny old woman hobbled past with four bags.

Matt hated himself for the mess he was in with Mello, but he knew somehow that it had been right. Damn it, that first kiss had been right, and Mello's insistence that their union could only bring more pain…. That was bullshit. Matt was smarter than that; he wasn't going to fool himself into any righteous lies. If he wanted Mello, and Mello wanted him, that should have been enough. Yes, there would be loss, but… self-pity be damned! It was worth every moment of heartache. They would lose one another — that was inevitable with what they were about to do, because if by some chance they didn't both die, one of them most certainly would — but so what? The time they had was shrinking rapidly, and that dwindling present was all that mattered. Matt swallowed, hard. It was worth it.

Or it should have been, but Mello had refused to see it thus. And Matt hadn't argued, because he knew damn well that Mello had exposed the truth of their somehow preordained, irreversible existence. Mello was right, more right somehow than merely stubborn, more right than Matt's resentment, but Matt didn't have it in himself to work out the hairline details about how. They were stuck with what they'd crafted, and in the end, Matt had accepted it.

So now Matt had a new present to form to.

He dropped his cigarette on the ground — scuffed away its life and smote it like some pagan god. The first step toward an end that rankled. But it was all he had for the next hour or so — the last minutes of his life — and fuck if Matt was going to waste those minutes thinking about what could have been but had failed. Regret wasn't in his repertoire. Matt took what he could get, gave things his best effort, and if shit blew up in his face, he sat back and coped with what grace he could muster. What else could he do, if he lived in a world that was rotten?

Justification for the Inherently World-Weary.

Matt stole a glance at his cell phone clock. It was getting late, but he wasn't about to phone Mello and ask for highlights on what was happening at the other end of the coup. He was content to wait. He switched his focus back to his surroundings.

It was beautiful, the city street he stood on. It had to be — it was the last thing he was going to see, really see before he stepped into that car and hit the gas. He wanted his last vision to be beautiful, wanted something to strike him, and so it did.

The lights were what did it, Matt reflected as he puffed away on another cancer stick. It started with the orange bud of ash at the end of his cigarette and meandered to the flickering streetlight above his head. The beauty was in the sparkle of neon signs, the glow of soft drink machines just inside lit doorways. The signs were missing letters here and there, and the drink machines flashed SOLD OUT in digital alphabets, but that was why it struck him. It wasn't anything ethereal. It was just there, nothing special at all. It was in the taillights of loitering cars; it was in the flash of airplanes as they glided through the sky on overnight schedules. It linked like a chain across the hundreds of LCD screens that connected people through time and space — cell phones, iPods, GPS navigators, handheld video games with online capabilities. Lights shining everywhere, the dim and the glaring in equal coexistence. Lights in the puddles on the slick and pot-holed streets. Stars in the eyes of those who still believed. The lights weren't there to guide, weren't there to illuminate, because these lights weren't beacons — they were commonplace. They just existed.

That was beautiful.

Matt finished his cigarette and contemplated another. He felt no craving for nicotine, but thought he ought to treat himself despite that. He'd picked up the cloves again. He'd grown to like their taste.

Matt started for the car. A wispy ribbon of smoke followed his path; it slithered from the cigarette between his fingers and stretched beyond, trailing an aroma that would soon fade in his wake. A vague memory of something left behind, a reminiscent touch of himself wafting through the atmosphere. The car door groaned when he lifted the handle to climb inside. Matt rolled down the window and settled into the seat, watching his dashboard illuminate when he turned the keys in the ignition. Reds, greens, oranges and blues. Buttons and dials and needles on meters. Digits on a clock that was counting down, all of it spelled out in twinkles.

His cell phone rang.

Almost lazily, Matt clicked the receive button and lifted the device to his ear. He didn't speak a greeting, just exhaled his smoke. Watched it float away in his side mirrors to mingle with the exhaust from his gas pipe.

"Matt. It's me."

Matt didn't know what to say.

"Don't hang up." Mello's voice was stringy through the connection. He didn't sound urgent, but he wanted Matt to pay attention.

Ah. Now Matt knew what to say. "Fuck you."

It didn't seem to be the answer Mello wanted. "Listening to me right now will help you get through this, so get a grip."

Ash drifted down to leave a speck of gray on his jeans. Matt left it there, too mesmerized by its delicate, papery quality to brush it off his lap. "If this is about the strategy, I've already got it taken care of."

There was a long pause from Mello.

"Matt, how could you think I'd call about that now?" There was no way to determine whether Mello's sigh was injured or exasperated.

Matt wasn't sure how to handle that question. In truth, he hadn't been sure that Mello would call him at all. He couldn't even say whether he'd been hoping for it. Matt decided the inquiry didn't merit an answer, unless it was the crackle of his burning cigarette.

But Mello, for once in his life, exhibited the patience of a saint. He waited a long, long time, and when Matt made it clear that he would not, could not respond, Mello filled the silence calmly.

"I want to talk. Rationally this time."

A rational conversation with Mello. What a scream. Matt was watching a streetlight change from green to yellow. The yellow orb looked more like the color of grapefruit pulp through the lenses of his goggles. "Isn't it a little late for that type of thing?" he asked.

"Matt…."

The way Mello murmured his name was all at once infuriating. Matt sat up straight as a ramrod and exploded into the receiver.

"It's been fun, Mello. It really has, don't get me wrong. I even got worked up enough to start us getting intimate, which I never would have expected of myself after everything I finally learned. But other than that amusing discovery to jar my sense of self-establishment, we've had the smoothest sailing that people of our profession can muster and I'm grateful for the safe ride, even if it's about to end bumpy. So shut up and don't ruin that." It was the longest tangle of words Matt had spoken all day. He didn't know where it had stemmed from, but it felt like a floodgate letting loose sarcasm that would have been better off dammed. It wasn't entirely Mello's fault.

Mello's words were quiet when he recovered from the blow. "I didn't expect civil treatment when I dialed your number, but you know better than to work yourself up before our big move, Matt. Why can't—"

Matt cut Mello off. He didn't have to hesitate this time. "Because you're too late. I mean, we fought against ourselves pretty hard as it was, but this is really pushing it." Matt checked the clock on his dashboard. "Thirteen minutes until show time, and you're on the opposite side of the city trying to change this again at the last second. I'm impressed with your audacity." Floodgates still belching cold water.

"Don't lash out at me because you're still fucking bitter," Mello erupted, voice finally cracking and leaping from composed to conflicted. It was a surrender to the desperation echoed in Matt's own sentiments. "You're wrong. I'm not daft enough to hope to change anything, so shut the fuck up and let me say my piece." A ragged breath. "Look. I'm not foolish enough, or… or smart enough to back down. Neither are you, and you know it. The statistics are not in our favor and we're going to die tonight unless there's a miracle. And fuck it all, Matt, but I don't believe in miracles any more. That said, there's something that I know won't make a damn bit of difference now, but still I… if you don't hear it, I…." Mello's voice failed him.

Matt had no sympathy for the pained sounding break. He snorted. The snort turned into a mirthless laugh.

Mello released a muffled string of curse words on the other end of the line. "Fucking balls, Matt, you cunt-faced piece of horse shit, are you refusing to listen when I'm trying to tell you that I—"

"That you love me, Mello?" Matt cut in faster than a gunshot, and when Mello fell frighteningly silent, Matt forgot to exhale. He tried again to get the truth. "Don't be a jackass." But something crept up beneath the bitterness and caused Matt's stomach to lurch. Suddenly his insides were a jumble of longing and uncertainty.

"Mello. What the hell are you really trying to say to me?" Silence.

Did Mello…?

It was growing harder to breathe.

"…Nothing, Matt. I'm not trying to say anything at all." Mello answered him in a hard, clipped murmur.

Matt realized with another nauseated jolt that his haste to lash out had lost something for them both. They'd never had much, and they'd already lost it all, but that had been half a chance at something, sliding by right there practically postmortem. God, how relentlessly the pinpricks of irony jabbed him. Matt had done it again. Kissed his real sentiments goodbye without anybody forcing him into it. Every time, he had done it.

Every time he would do it, until they were both dead. Until they had done what they came there to do. He didn't have what it took to try anything else, did he? So he'd kissed it goodbye.

God, no. Fuck.

Mello….

Matt closed his eyes and bit down on his knuckles. A moment later, he replaced them with his cigarette and stared again at the traffic light.

"If we execute this as planned, we can't fail," Mello went on, sounding like he was adjusting something on his bike as he talked. "Your half of the mission shouldn't take more than—"

Matt exhaled a puff of smoke. "Six or seven minutes — a real quickie. I know. Quit wasting your last breaths, for Chrissake." The part of himself that he just couldn't quell still suffered, deafened by the echo of what had nearly been said but wasn't just seconds before. Matt tried hard not to let his voice betray his heartache.

"I wasn't finished," Mello sighed. "Just listen. We're not going to get any glory for this, but that never stopped you." Matt watched a red Corvette zip by without really seeing it, his throat burning. "You have my gratitude for that, Matt." Then, quieter, "Mail. Mail Jeevas."

A black notebook with killing powers might as well have dropped onto the hood of Matt's car.

For a twisted moment, Mello's declaration of gratitude amused him. A split second later, Matt swallowed, and the swallow lumped thick in his throat like molasses. "Jesus, if you're thanking me for something with my real name, then we really must be dying, huh?"

"I'm not made of stone the way you think, Matt. I'd thank you for more than just that if I thought you would listen."

Matt blinked back the sudden moisture that was trying to drown his eyes. "You never know," he said. "I might hear you out." His stomach was trying to kill him ahead of schedule with its hard knotting. Why Mello? Why did he have to feel this way about Mello, when all of it was about to go to shit in a huge farrago of violence?

It was like Mello had caught the despairing look on his face. But he hadn't, because they were five point three miles apart, strategically placed. He said softly, "Don't kid yourself, Matt. You'd just get angry at the world once you heard me put words to something that could have only ever been a dream."

Even now, even on their deathbeds, it was amazing how well Mello knew him. Matt didn't know what to say.

His car engine idled. A homeless man hollered something from the curb. For a precious moment, he let his thoughts drift. Mello stayed on the line, and the city din clamored on outside of them — outside of their doubts, outside of their regrets, outside of their desires.

"Mello, how did you find out that I was tailing you in Regent's Park?" It came to his mind unbidden. He didn't know why he wanted to know.

Mello let the pause play out longer before he answered. Then, "Swans, Matt."

Matt had to make Mello repeat himself.

"The swans on the bank," Mello said, and he must have put his helmet on at last, because his voice sounded tinny. Matt tried not to interrupt — fought not to ask him to take the helmet off. He wanted to hear Mello, talking to him over the airwaves before they had to go. "I was watching the swans. The male was guarding their territory from the direction of the water, but at one point, the female swan looked up."

"You're telling me that swans gave me away," Matt interrupted. It was almost funny.

"There was nothing over there, Matt. Nothing she could see, but she sensed something. I looked too, and there weren't any other animals. It could only be a person, standing just out of sight."

"But you didn't know it was me?"

"Of course I knew, Matt."

Of course he did.

Because Mello knew him best. Mello, the one who'd tagged along with him to the attic space every night to talk about girls and listen to the opera. Mello, who'd once poked fun at him for always wearing stripes. The person that had made him laugh, made him yell, rendered him ferocious with wrath and senseless with desire all in one day. The one that had come back to find him, after years of separation because he couldn't stay away. Mello — Mihael Keehl — who had caught him in the park because of a stupid pair of swans.

Fuck, he couldn't see the dashboard, but Matt wasn't going to let the tears fall. He'd been a bitch enough already.

"I found a CD with your things," Mello was saying, and Matt inhaled smoke to send a sedative to his shaking hands.

"What CD?"

"The score to Tristan and Isolde."

Matt had to lean forward and clutch the steering wheel to stop his voice from quaking. "Oh yeah — picked that up when I went by the opera house after Wammy's. I guess I couldn't help myself. Tristan und Isolde. It was playing that night." He let a beat pass when Mello didn't offer a reply. There was something Matt wanted to ask, something he didn't dare to, because he was damned shaken up already, but he had to know. When he asked, it came out more a statement than a question, half expectant and half afraid.

"You remember that whole opera thing, don't you."

It seemed forever before Mello responded. Matt listened to the way the blond's breaths merged with the traffic sounds. "I do."

Relief eased some of the tension. "Pretty strange for me to run into it again now, huh?"

"It was my favorite."

Matt knew. He remembered. "Keep the CD then — I don't need it back for a while."

"That's funny, Matt."

"That's what's called Irony."

Suddenly there were sirens raging in the background. Matt checked his rearview mirror, but he saw no flashing lights.

Not on his end, then. Mello's.

"We're out of time, Matt."

The dashboard clock agreed. It was time to make their move. Matt toed the gas, hovered over the shift stick, his body a slave of routine. The number of times he'd gone over this moment in his head…. But he wasn't ready to pull away from the curb yet.

Mello was. Matt heard his motorcycle engine through the cell phone's static speakers.

"Is that the order for me to get going?" Matt inquired.

Mello's dry laugh reached him over the engine sounds. "It was never an order, Matt. You chose to go through with your half just like I chose to go through with mine."

Matt stubbed out his cigarette on the seat cushion beside him, caring nothing for the mark it would leave. Pulled on his gloves. "That's right. I did." The roar of sirens was louder now, the blood that pounded in his ears nothing but an undertone beneath them.

"I guess this is goodbye, Mello."

Real words evacuated Mello's vocabulary. "Matt, shit. D-damn it. Fuck."

"What's wrong?" But Matt shouldn't have asked. He already knew.

Emotion, ringing on Mello's lips like bells. "Shit, in case it counts for anything once we're corpses, you need to know that I never meant to hurt y—"

Matt cut him off, knowing that if Mello said anything more, Matt would lose himself. He'd jerk the car into a three-point turn and run their plan down with treaded tires, no remorse in doing so. And Mello would reverse tactics right beside him. "Don't, Mello. Don't even do that to yourself. It's okay. I forgive you."

"Matt—"

"Just feed that Takada bitch some good old fashioned brimstone for me, all right? Tell her I'll have Hellfire for dessert when she comes down."

"Matt, don't be unnecessarily reckless, because I—"

Matt snapped his phone shut. He gunned the engine.

He could barely think for the thunder in his blood, it all went so damn fast.

Forty miles per hour over the speed limit for four and a half miles; two smoking back tires as he skidded into position from the roundabout direction that he'd come, in front of the crowd of bystanders.

One click that Matt hardly heard, but that deafened him — trigger locking into place as he fired the smoke bomb that shrouded his targets. Six police officers and one of Takada's attendants vanishing into the fog, plus eight civilians. Seven precious seconds to fling his car back into gear, to pull a U-ey and to get the fuck out.

Fifty miles per hour over the speed limit; four weeks of Driver's Ed shot to hell and back on half a tank of gas. Two red lights run without looking and a slam into a guardrail on his third impulsive corner. Three police cars on his tail. A shattering car crash left in his wake when he floored it through a busy intersection….

One major stroke of bad luck, pulling onto a stretch of highway where he thought he might be in the clear. Then again, the predicament was kind of expected.

He still hadn't slowed down.

Too many black vehicles to count, in a semi-circular barricade blocking his escape. A slam on the brakes and a long, long pause as Matt's car skidded and rocked with the swift stop.

Matt squinted at the brightness of the flashers.

Too few cigarettes left for him to want to admit to their number. Five seconds to light his last — two to start the flame and three to inhale. Was this what his life had added up to? Statistics just not in his favor.

He couldn't determine the number of voices screaming at him to step out of his vehicle, but it was okay — Matt's calculator couldn't compute by then anyway.

He climbed out of the car, talking to buy time, but not really concentrating on what it was he said. His last seconds were too precious to waste with stringing words together for the benefit of his killers. Myriad guns were trained on him in a line — guns he didn't think the Japanese were allowed to carry — a long row of protection against his vigilante justice.

L's justice.

Their justice.

He put up his hands like he'd seen in the movies. He wasn't sure that he wanted to die.

An onslaught of bullets flew thick and fatal, rattling him like a jar of marbles he remembered on a shelf in an attic somewhere special.

His back hit the hood of the car and he went down. He couldn't keep track of his fading vitality, but….

One final thought, as his cigarette puttered out in a pool of his own fluids:

What we needed was another chance.

— x —

Mello pulled the helmet from his head inside the delivery truck, hardly seeing the woman in front of him as he told her to strip down and stay quiet. He was supposed to be feeding her brimstone, but he wasn't entirely sure he could do that. He couldn't summon the cruelty.

After all, they had never been ruthless criminals. Mello hadn't meant to come as close as he had, but Matt had never toed the line, at least. Mostly guilty by association. They'd sinned, they'd killed, but they weren't inhuman. They had never wanted to be. They were only people — people driven by justice and a cause.

People who would die for an ignorant, corrupted world that would never know their names or faces. Never smile or tell them thank you.

Matt would call that Irony.

Mello dropped off the package that contained his captive's clothes and slid into the driver's seat of the stolen truck. Tossed Kiyomi Takada a glare through the window. Slipped a familiar CD into the player and began to drive.

He wanted the music to wash him away — to make his mind a blackboard and erase everything chalked on its surface until he had a clean slate. Empty space to fill up with just the opera. With a story that was tragic indeed, but still less painful than his own.

The opening bars of the opera rang out, and as they did, Richard Wagner's written commentary to the prelude flew thick and fast across Mello's blackboard, spidery and unforgiving.

And henceforth no end to the yearning, longing, rapture, and misery of love: world, power, fame, honor, chivalry, loyalty, and friendship, scattered like an insubstantial dream….

Mello's fondness for the opera had always been synonymous with Wagner's explanation of the prelude — nothing else. Not the warbling, tremulous vocals, not the intricate German libretti. It wasn't the soprano. It wasn't the lead violin.

Matt had asked him if he remembered.

Mello remembered it all. Of course he remembered. He'd never forgotten. Not once. He'd recalled it again long before Matt had mentioned his trip to the opera house, long before Matt had deemed it necessary to ask him if he remembered. Mello would never, never forget. The past was all they had, and his past with Matt had been something worth keeping in his memories. To forget would have been to deny it ever happened, and Mello couldn't live with that kind of gap in his existence. Yes… he remembered, and he'd cherished it always.

One thing alone left living: longing, longing unquenchable, desire forever renewing itself, craving and languishing.

The video screen on his monitor flickered, caught his eye with a flash of inevitable red paint. The music was hanging on a rest. There was a bullet-riddled car frame.

A whispered apology, no words fit to make it feel like enough.

And words, the god damned words of Richard Wagner, scrawling across the blackboard of his mind in screeches, raking gorges over his brain tissue and making him ache. Mello wanted to turn it off, but that one chord was coming, that one chord that seemed to capture the pang in his chest and wrench it until it turned torturous. He felt icy with fright, yet afire with everything he wanted and couldn't have and then—

Father in Heaven, the Tristan Chord, right as he pulled into the old ruined church.

Low and slow, it dragged out his conclusion. Wavering, androgynous — it didn't seem to fit the musical pattern. Tense, feverish almost; Mello felt held in suspense, as if suddenly his blackboard had been cleared for good and he'd been left without chalk. Musicians had put a name to those mournful notes, and reproduced the chord again and again for gut-wrenching effect long after Wagner's time.

One sole redemption: death, surcease of being, the sleep that knows no waking!

It was them. The Tristan Chord — a step away from the traditional, a sense of the doomed. It was their essence, their story, and it was indisputable and cataclysmic. Mello's blood ceased to flow as he felt a spasm starting in his chest, his left arm gone limp.

But the truck was parked in Nagano; he had seen this coming.

White-hot embers…. Feed Takada brimstone, and Matt — dead — ringing in his ears — struggle and the shattered glass of the back window — little scrap of paper with his name written down. Confusion — shooting pangs, and Matt? — Almighty Father — he couldn't… everything black, black, black, with no chalk and such pain… the… their opera, it always….

His life expired. Mello slumped across the steering wheel.

Matt, don't be unnecessarily reckless, because I'll find you again and we'll start over.

The Tristan Chord played on into the silence.