Disclaimer: Yeah I still don't own this stuff.
Note: I'm so very sorry it's been like...almost three months. I'm a horrible horrible person and now I reward you with a nasty little short chapter. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry. But I REALLY wanted to update this and this is all I could get out. I hope you enjoy it anyway and it's not too disappointing an update. I promise to try harder and get a proper, long update up really soon. I'm sorryyyy, but thank you everyone who is still here for sticking with this. You guys rock my world hardcore style.
x
August
I could take you places where you need a new man
August is...
August is dry.
No rain flecks against the windows the day Matt awakens. The leaves have not started to fall quite yet, not on the trees near the hospital, so there is no colour in the air, no auburn on the breeze. There is only a gentle wind, soft and warm, dry grass, dusty soil, the whir of air conditioners and something like panic hanging in the tiny hospital room.
"Matt?" Near asks, slowly, hesitantly, unsticking his lips, his tongue sanding his mouth. "Can you hear me? Can you understand me?" He should get a doctor but no, no, he's having this bit to himself. Just this.
Matt looks at him. And oh but if he isn't even more of a mess now he's woken up. His hair is lank, which looks more fitting on a man in a coma than this boy, this terrified, skin-and-bones boy, who doesn't know where he is and why he's there.
His eyes are wide but he doesn't move. His pupils flicker back and forth, he swallows, the monitors are changing and Near really should call a doctor. Matt sits up, just a little, all aches and uncertainty, and he looks straight at Near.
"Why can't I see?" His voice is not Matt's voice. He sounds scared, he sounds like he wants to run away. He sounds like he's putting on a brave face, and Matt never sounded like that. You couldn't tell when Matt was scared. Not Near, not Mello, not anyone. You only found out afterwards, when you were still shaking, and Matt turned to you and went, "Dude, I was shitting bricks back there".
"Matt," Near says again, a little more confident. Matt is awake, he can speak. This is good.
"Why can't I see half of the stuff? Where am I?"
"In hospital."
"Hospital where?"
"I can't tell you."
"Why can't you tell me?" Matt's voice rises a pitch. "Where am I? Why can't I see?"
"Matt...calm down. Please. I'm going to get a doctor."
Near slips down from the chair, feet soundless against the slick white floor. His hand is on the door handle when Matt's voice stops him.
"Who are you?"
-
Across the world, across seas and miles of cities and streets, in a different place amid a parade of nightmares, there is another hospital bed.
Misa Amane has been awake for sometime now. She sits, propped up in her bed, pale, porcelain skin against pale, china-white sheets, livid scars and strands of blonde splashing colour on the canvas.
Matsuda is outside the door of her room, talking to the doctor. She can see him through the small glass pane in the door, looking serious, nodding, his coat folded over his arm and Misa's discharge papers clutched in his hand. The doctor keeps talking.
Misa tilts her head. The movement – small, uninteresting – seems to strange and surreal. She would swear that she can feel the muscles working, hear the blood in her veins and the buzz of electricity in her nerves. She closes her eyes, eyelashes brushing her cheeks. The sheets are comfortable, and clean, and she doesn't care.
Then Matsuda is helping her up. Then they are at the door of the hospital. Then he is helping her into the passenger seat of his beat up little car, and she hasn't said a thing. This is how Misa's days go. Something happens. After a time she notices something else has happened. She cannot remember whatever has gone between, and she no longer wants to.
Matsuda's voice drifts towards her. She remembers that she likes Matsuda. He seemed very upset when she tried to hang herself. Misa does not feel much, but she feels a little bit of sorrow that she made Matsuda sad.
"...so Aizawa said that it would be best to have you stay with me. I thought maybe you could stay with Sachiko and Sayu but Aizawa says that would be a really bad idea. I don't know why..."
"...I hope they were nice to you in the hospital. I hope I've got everything you want at home. Anything you need just let me know, okay, Misa-Misa? I want you to be okay, okay? I want to look after you..."
"...we're here, Misa, do you want me to help you out?"
Misa blinks in the sunlight, as the car door opens. Air hits her face, temperate and balmy. It's pleasant – warming. Distantly she remembers that she liked this a lot, this kind of weather. She holds her hand out to Matsuda, and he pulls her out of the car, gently, carefully.
"Thank you, Matsu," she murmurs, as he steadies her to her feet. Her voice is cracked and hoarse. She has not used it much lately, but for crying.
Matsuda puts his arm around her waist, high enough that it could never be inappropriate. She steadies herself against him; her legs are too weak to carry her just by themselves. She leans her head against the part of his body that is neither shoulder or flesh.
It's warm. He's wearing a t-shirt, and the cloth somehow feels more soft, more human than all the beautifully laundered bed-sheets at the hospital. Vaguely she thinks she can hear his heartbeat. Unconsciously, she brings a hand to her breast. Her heart is beating, too. After everything, after all of everything, her heart is still beating.
She leans into him properly, slipping her arm around his back and pressing her face into his chest. She probably looks a sight with her hair unwashed and not a scrap of makeup. Matsuda has never minded, not since she has known him, and probably not ever.
He doesn't say anything, not when she hugs him, and not when she starts to cry. He just shifts his arms and wraps them round her tight, holding her against him while she sobs. She feels horrible – she feels empty and devastated and useless – but right now, right here, in Matsuda's arms, with his cheek pressed against her hair, she feels just the smallest bit less unhappy, just the tiniest bit more human.
-
Elsewhere and later beds are used for a different purpose.
It is one evening, as the last of the light slips away, and the heat is high and the air is dry, that Lidner – all pale hair and cool eyes and soft skin and linen – leans against Rester as some movie's hero swings into action. It's as the darkness rushes in completely, seeking out heat and jealously guarding it, swathed in sheets of cold and black, that Rester slips his arm around his shoulders, and kisses her.
Maybe it was the Kira case. Maybe it's because they're living together. Maybe it's a want for companionship or a lust for flesh. Maybe they were just meant to be.
Lidner doesn't care and Rester doesn't mind all that much either, when he presses her into the bed, hands running down her arms, over her body, undressing her. And there are some heats the night cannot claim.
In the morning, Lidner wakes before Rester. When they fell asleep his arm was over her, holding her, but they've moved in the night. Rester is on his bad and Lidner is curled up, small and slender, against him. She unfurls, stretches, feeling how unstrained her limbs are and how calm she is, and noticing how good Rester looks, naked and barely decent, with light creeping through a crack in the curtains and throwing his form into profile.
God, why hasn't this happened before...?
And it all makes sense now, though she's not put any reasons to it or thought it out or wondered if it'll last or what brought it on. There had been nothing special, nothing earth-shaking or world-altering, just the quiet, inevitable shift of her head onto his shoulder, as if it had been made to fit there. It had been something perfectly normal, perfectly usual, perfectly boring...
Halle Lidner makes tea this morning, not coffee, and feels happy.
-
Aizawa's got a lot of faults. He's stern, he's unfriendly, he's old-fashioned. He doesn't like messing about and he blows up far too often, and he sometimes lets his hair grow in silly ways.
But whatever you want to say about the man, Ide thinks, never let it be said that he can't bowl.
Aizawa hits his fifth strike of the evening just as Ide starts his second beer. He turns back to Ide with a smug smile, and takes his seat next to him on the bench.
"Bah," Ide comments, setting down his beer. Aizaw picks it up and takes a swig. "Hey! That's mine! And you're driving!"
"I'm also winning."
"You're just cheating!"
Aizawa frowns. "By...being good?"
"And not telling me, yes!" Ide fumes, getting up and selecting his ball. He casts a filthy look at Aizawa, and throws his ball straight into the gutter. "Oh, God dammit!"
Aizawa laughs as Ide drops into his seat next to him. "I'll tell you my secret if you want."
Ide perks up. "Seriously?"
"Yeah. Seriously. I'll tell you my secret if..." He casts around the room, and his eyes land on a woman with a long sweep of brown hair and a gaggle of friends, "...if you ask her out, in front of them."
Ide looks over. He weighs up the options. "And you'll really tell me how you do it?"
"I'll really tell you how I do it."
Ide hesitates. And then, he's up, striding across the hall, looking resolute. He taps the brunette on the shoulder. She turns to him and oh God, she's pretty, he's going to be humiliated, Aizawa is going to laugh at him for weeks, why did he agree to –
"Hey." Why is she smiling? "Can I help you?"
"Doyouwanttogooutwithme?" he garbles, all at once.
The woman blinks, and he can almost see her picking apart his words. Her friends giggle, amused by this creepy old dude who's heavy-handedly hitting on the brunette.
"Um..." she says, frowning, still trying to work out what he said. "I don't think so...sorry...I'm sure you're nice and all..." She's turning red and her friends are giggling louder and Ide doesn't hang around.
"That was the worst moment of my life," he states, collapsing next to Aizawa and reaching for his beer.
Aizawa quirks an eyebrow. "Worse than Yellowbox?"
"Yes."
And they're making jokes about it now, so they know it'll be okay.
"Well, facing your fears is important," Aizawa tells him sagely.
Ide snorts. "Just tell me your secret, oh great master."
Aizawa shrugs. "Okay." He leans over, and whispers into Ide's ear, "I aim for the pins."
-
"There's nothing physically wrong with his brain." The doctor tacks up the scans they took of Matt's brain earlier that morning. "It's not physical trauma or damage from a bullet or any kind of injury."
"So it's dissociative?" Near asks, studying the scans intently, for any blip, any shadow, any sign of any problem.
"...We think so. We'll have a psychiatrist come up tomorrow and talk to him, to be sure. Can you tell me what he was doing when...?" The doctor trails off, leaving the question hanging.
"Facing men with guns," Near replied dryly.
The doctor clears his throat. "Yes, but –"
"No, I will not tell you what or why or how or when. He simply was. And you can know this; the situation was certainly traumatic enough to warrant a case of dissociative amnesia." Near gets to his feet. "I would like to know when you find out how severe it is. I expect it is probably generalised, as he did not remember who I was, and I have known him for some time. Please act with all haste."
The doctor does not seem pleased at being dictated a diagnosis to by a kid in pyjamas, but he stays quiet because the kid in pyjamas is getting a lot of money from somewhere to pay for the treatment.
"His eye is permanently damaged," the doctor continues, changing the topic.
"I gathered that," Near says, quite coldly, "when he informed me that he could not see 'half the stuff'."
"Yes, well..."
"If a bullet shattered a pair of goggles you were wearing, doctor, and the shards embedded themselves in your eye, would you expect a degree of permanent damage?"
"Well, yes..."
"When he regains his sensibilities," Near says, heading for the door, "I daresay he will be delighted to find that he now has a reason to wear an eyepatch."
