Chapter Seven: Power of a Dead Man
A/N: This one's short, sorry guys (I find it hard to understand how I can easily spew out 2300 words for an FFN chapter but struggle for five hours on a 1200-word midterm paper o_o).
Don't own Death Note; do you?
Breathe
Matt: 8:11 a.m., January 26th, 2010
It's time. The lights are still dim, casting everything in a sickly orange pallor. We stand in the underground garage next to my car and Mello's newly acquired bike. Number 334 will have a nice present in the form of an empty parking spot whenever he or she wakes up this morning.
It's cold down here. I'm shaking, and we can't have that now, can we? Out of long-buried habit (only a month, really), I reach into my pocket and find a pack…
…but I thought Mello got rid of them all?
Oh right. These are the jeans Mello tore off me that first night. They ended up so far under the bed that I only fished them out this morning.
Well, I promised, I think dully, and I make to put them away. Mello's hand is suddenly around mine, reaching for the pack, taking one out, placing it between his lips…
…which I may never touch again…
Bemused, I withdraw my lighter from the same pocket and give him a light. He breathes once and hands it to me.
I breathe once, and I understand that this is a cigarette to remember him by.
"Matt, you'll have to stop again after this," he says.
We both know I won't need to.
"Mello…"
"Don't say it," he says, and to his credit, his voice shakes only slightly. "Don't make this any harder for us."
So I kiss him instead, to say all the things we don't know how to say and really, to just hold him once more before we go our separate ways forever.
Overture: I
Matt: 8:40 a.m., January 26th, 2010
It's a few minutes to nine…Takada will be arriving shortly. She'll be wearing some classy outfit that toes the line between audacious and elegant. Her posse will be with her, Halle with her eternally long legs and the other three bodybuilding broads who probably don't know a thing about bodyguarding. The whole adoring host of lesser news coverers will be thronged alongside the red carpet into NHN, snapping pictures and fawning and crooning her name like this doesn't fucking happen every day.
Well, today will be a day that doesn't happen every fucking day. Her car is pulling up in front of the building. Time to go; don't want to be late for an important date, haha. With death and all his friends; how much more poetic can I get?
Breathe, I tell myself, and I inhale from Mello's cigarette. Reverse, mirror, drive, accelerate.
Brake.
Everyone stares around in amazement as I pull up, then ducks to the ground as I fire off the smoke gun. The haze descends, and I'm off.
I have maybe half a minute's lead before I start hearing sirens wailing after me. I smile grimly and think of the Sirens of Greek mythology, those ones who sang sailors to their deaths on jagged rocks.
Master Morgue, here I come.
Overture: II
Mello: 8:40 a.m., January 26th, 2010
Any moment now, I tell myself. There'll be no turning back.
I'm idling on my stolen bike a block away from NHN. The squeal of tires and general uproar alert me, and as I start up, I watch a red car tearing away from the scene like all hell's after it.
It is, isn't it?
I make for the indistinct figures coughing in the cloud by Takada's car. Halle's supporting Takada, and she plays the part so well. Among the faces she puts on for Near, myself, and Takada, I wonder which one is the real her? Have I ever actually seen it? Can I trust her?
I'll have to, as I screech to a halt in front of them. "Takada-sama, it's not safe for you here. You need to get away from here. Please get on."
Halle stifles a gasp, which Takada doesn't notice. She seems to be awaiting the advice of her guard.
"Please hurry, Takada-sama," I insist, the honorific bitter on my tongue.
Doubt is transparent in Halle's eyes, but after a long moment's decision, she gives Takada a gentle push in my direction.
"Please go with him, Takada-sama. You'll be safer this way," she says.
Of all the lies you've ever told, Halle, this at least was a good one.
Takada settles behind me, and I set off in the direction opposite the one Matt took. I'm dismayed at how many squad cars seem to have already gone that way.
God, keep him safe, I pray, keeping just ahead of the other guard cars following me. Someday, not today, we'll go for a ride in the open air, with his arms around my waist instead of this woman's. We'll be carefree and happy for once.
Fuck, what am I thinking?
We're dead.
I swerve into a side alley and smoothly withdraw the handcuff chain from inside my jacket.
"Where'd you get that?" I ask half-interestedly, as he wraps the chain around his neck.
"Online," he smirks. "They came when you were out that time, before your birthday."
"You were plotting my bloody bondage demise even then?"
"What? Well, back then they weren't for you; I just figured we might need them if a hostage situation were to come up. Say we kidnapped Amane, for whatever reason. But now I think they can be put to better uses…"
"Which do not include strangling yourself," I say and proceed to untangle him.
"Hm, yeah," he agrees cheerfully, going on to yank me against him in a full frontal body slam and wrap the chain around both our waists. It goes around snugly twice, and he links the cuffs together behind my back with a satisfied click.
"Before you ask, the key is in my boxers, so if you don't want to stay attached at the hip, you'll have to get to work."
"That's gross, Matt."
"That's where you like to put your mouth, Mello."
"Not like this, I can't reach."
"Maybe you'd like to stay this way for a bit?" he teases; I groan as he not-so-subtly arches his hips into mine.
(The key was in his vest pocket the whole time.)
Dear Matt. So unintentionally prescient. I work the cuffs onto my wrist and Takada's. She gives a horrified gasp, but she must be figuring it out by now. It's only in love that her mind power is somewhat deficient. Love makes us all a little stupid.
I drive on.
XXX
I drive up the truck's loading ramp, hop off, and pull the door closed behind us. The chain trails from my left wrist, linking me to Takada, who is immobile with fright. I unlock the cuffs, and she huddles back against a wall.
I don't have to take off my helmet, do I? Yes, I do. Stupid, she has to see my face and know who it is she's about to kill. She'll be the last person to see me alive.
Such sentiments. I mentally shake my head and doff my helmet with a flourish.
"Please take off everything you're wearing and place it in a box," I state in a rehearsed monotone that suggests I've been ordering women to get naked at gunpoint all my life.
In another place and time, her outrage would have amused me. I'm gay, Takada-san, I would tell her. Or at least the only people I've ever been interested in happened to be male. I notice you've never broadcasted Kira's opinion on homosexuals. Care to comment now before you kill me?
Oh, the power of suggestion.
The power of a dead man.
I shrug and toss her the thin blanket that's also folded within my jacket (hadn't counted on it being so voluminous when I got it; a lucky strike for me). For the record, this is not a blanket Matt and I ever used; I found it in a cupboard, presumably left by the previous tenant. "Hurry up."
She hurries, and I pretend to look away, but I know she can get her clothes off much faster than that when she's alone with Yagami. She fumbles with the secret things hidden wherever on her person.
I wink at death.
Death: I
Matt: 9:02 a.m., January 26th, 2010
Flooring the accelerator is only a turn of phrase - you can never actually get it to touch the floor. Besides, pushing the speedometer to its limit doesn't help much when I'm trying to turn sharp corners ahead of several police cars.
Normally, this would be the zenith of my dreary life: racing toward my imminent death, seeing how many cops I can leave with burned out tires by the roadside. Normally, I would welcome life's 'game over' sign flashing in bold letters across my vision as I leave this world untethered.
But I don't.
But I do. There's no reason for me to shy away from the end, with Mello gone. He, the sacrificial lamb, the proverbial black sheep, is gone. What sacrilege.
Mello's gone, so why should I linger? Twenty-four shiny barrels will do the job for me as the ring of cars draws close around me, and the men in black step out menacingly.
I get out and survey them impassively. "So are you going to shoot or what?" I demand with more bravado than I feel.
Their only response is to shift a little and tighten their grips on their firearms. Then one starts belting out what I presume is the Japanese version of the 'surrender, on your knees, hands in the air' sentence used in every shitty movie shootout scene.
I see they need a hint, so I casually reach down as if to close the door behind me and stray towards my gun. In that moment, several things happen. First, another car drives up. Second, the men in black, oblivious to all else, open fire. Third, I hit the ground with my cigarette still in my mouth, what a boss.
Fourth, I see Mello. Not like, actually, but in my mind. He looks just as he did when I left him, all zipped up in his implausible jacket, shining with that tired brilliance of an angel of death.
If this is dying, I can handle it.
I love you, Mello. Wait for me.
Death: II
Mello: 10:10 a.m., January 26th, 2010
I switch the dashboard TV on, and no surprises, NHN is broadcasting Takada's kidnapping. Then I see the shot-up Camaro on the screen, the driver's door half open, glass from the broken windshield littering the ground. I see the squad cars, two dozen in merciless black, officers securing the intersection with yellow tape, and…
You're gone.
Matt.
I can't hear anything the reporter's saying; it's like I'm in a bubble, with everything in the world turned to liquid, my grip lax on the wheel, my gaze fixed and unseeing. It's a wonder I'm still driving at all.
I switch it off, unable to bear looking at the patch of ground next to the car where they killed you. I sent you to your death. I as good as killed you.
I wanted to save you. Who was I trying to kid? You couldn't have survived in this half-assed excuse for a plan.
You're gone.
At least, says the voice in the back of my mind that sounds like you, at least there's nothing holding you back now.
You're right. I can die now, at peace. Takada can kill me and think that she's saved Kira's kingdom. Near can struggle along, decipher my funeral pyre and maybe defeat Kira. I don't care anymore.
I drive for what must be hours, but they're all one long stretch of blankness. The world around me doesn't exist anymore. I might already be dead for all I know. I take the exit mechanically, and part of my detached consciousness wonders if it was God's last-ditch effort to save my soul that brought me to this church to die. Is He taunting me now, taking away all I had and commanding me to my knees? Am I a modern day Job, bereft of all and still repenting in sackcloth and ashes?
I have everything to repent for except my love. The tears begin to fall, and with something like mingled relief and despair, I pick up my gun.
(Matt's gun, all I've got of him now.
He holds it out to me, just as I'm about to get on someone else's motorcycle. "For you."
"I've already got one."
"Yes, but you haven't got one from me. This is the one I was designing."
The shadow of a ghost of a smile crosses my lips. "The Christmas present that never happened?"
"Only because a much more explosive present happened instead."
I sigh and take it. It doesn't look any different from the kind I normally use. "I suppose it can do tricks and everything? Record video from hidden places, sprout machetes for hand to hand combat, possess its own sentient intelligence?"
"That, and more," he half-jokes. "Though I suppose at this point, none of that makes a difference."
No, it doesn't. But at least it's something to remember you by.
Matt.)
The gun begins to rise.
I'm sorry, Matt.
Elegy (Once Dead…)
1:45 p.m., January 26th, 2010
Takada shivers in the back of the truck, trying to hold the pencil steady. She glances fearfully through the tiny window in the compartment, ready to shrink back into her corner if they make eye contact in the mirror.
But his head is bowed, and his shoulders are shaking, and his hair hides the scarred, cold face she saw—makes him younger than he is, more frightened, more alone, like she is now. The pencil hesitates over paper, and she hates herself briefly for pitying him.
Then a gun comes up, this time not pointed at her, and she doesn't have time to even think about writing a name.
He crumples, and there's no need for her to write anything anymore, but she does anyways, just to be sure.
Once dead, they can never come back to life. Light will be so pleased.
A/N: Hang in there, friends...tough times ahead. Anyways, my reviews page is open for you to pour out your wrath or tears or general MM love upon me :)
