God's Dice
Disclaimer: Please see Chapter 1 for full disclaimer.
Chapter 8: Could This Be A Lesson In Drowning?
Have you ever sat upon the Earth's surface and just watched life exist around you; the energy exuded in its own way seemingly the single proponent keeping the planet spinning beneath us all? Have you ever watched people's lives unfold before them, all the while you just don't entirely feel a part of what they're experiencing?
The few days after the incident in the classroom between Mello and myself held that feeling. The world around me began to feel different after the confrontation, and after we had had our first meaningful conversation together regarding the bond.
I felt like an amateur actor pulled from the streets and thrown onto a Broadway stage while still expecting me to perform to the high expectations. The students were our audience; their eyes maintained a vigilant watch for any sign that Mello might snap again. Said blonde, on the other hand, appeared to not even notice the stares and the whispers going on between the groups of people.
How strange it was for someone like him to possess the ability to just pass all their judgments off. Mello is at his center nothing short of a contradiction. He seemed to constantly strive to be the center of attention, yet the moment he attained such a level he always seemed to crumble beneath the accumulating sense of concern and expectations that came along with it. Though, perhaps he was merely better at hiding it than I'd originally believed.
Without me realizing when, somewhere between the time that Mello left my room and the following days everything between us had shifted back into a contrived state of perfect order. He stayed on his own with Matt for the most part, leaving the hours that we were in class as the only time our bond actually crossed with one another for an extended amount of time.
In my room he had promised to be more open with the lines of communications between us, yet as I sat bored in my desk I found myself almost reluctant to test out his willingness to speak with him under these circumstances. Almost.
'Mello.' I thought over, breaking the trail of quietly hummed processes and thoughts he'd unknowingly sent storming through my mind from the other side of the room.
"What?" There was a slight air of annoyance in his tone as I interrupted his focus on the lecture.
'I have a question I'd like to ask you,' I explained, 'I'm curious to know why exactly you are still faithful.'
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the pencil that he'd been scratching across the paper stop suddenly. "Faithful? What are you talking about?"
'It's obvious that you still hold some reverence of faith, shown clearly by how often you've spoken of God and angels and betrayal in light of recent events. I'm interested in understanding why that is, and also how your thoughts may have changed or shifted after everything that's happened.' I explained, eyeing the prattling teacher to give the impression that I was still paying attention.
"Are you really asking me this right now? You have no sense of appropriateness, do you?"
I exhaled slowly, if he was really so concerned with paying attention to the class then it would make more sense to more blatantly answer my questions instead of pandering around the point. "Why don't you just find your own answers?" Came his response.
'One of the conditions of us working together was that I wouldn't experiment any more. I felt that directness was the next best option that respected your wishes.' I chanced a look over to the opposite side of the room, finding Mello leaning back in his chair, his absent gaze stuck onto the board.
"Why do you want to know, anyway?" He asked, his tone lower and more solemn than before. The few words he muttered were thick with the underlying history that I couldn't quite bring myself to mentally push further into.
'I told you, pure curiosity.' It didn't surprise me that Mello held faith. What surprised me was this emerging revelation of just how deeply he held it into his sense of being as a whole. Where did that come from; what made his sense of faith so persistent throughout all of the hell he'd been raked through?
"When faith has been a deep part of someone's life, it's not a quality that is just lost, Near."
'That doesn't exactly answer the question.'
I watched the way Mello leaned forward, picking up his pencil again and beginning to half-heartedly take notes as his own way of making sure the teacher believed he was working. "You wouldn't understand unless you lived it. When everything is taken from you, you only have two options: you blame God and lose faith, or you let it make you stronger from the hardships, and thus it becomes stronger as well."
'Then what makes the soul marks so different?'
"This is a new level of betrayal. You're not…" He paused momentarily just as I felt my heart constrict in my chest in time with Mello's own. Mello had told me all of this before; it wasn't any new information, so where were these reactions in him stemming from? The desire to try to pry into Mello's every thought was becoming overwhelming the more pressure I felt in my chest. "I'm not talking about this with you." He threw at me. Everything I'd been previously feeling at once covered up by a thinly veiled mask and a new itch running up through my finger tips that screamed only one word: run.
My eyes flicked back over to Mello, and it was through these new sensations alone which made it feasible to read just how tense he was becoming as a result of my possibly prying question. But why? What I had asked was such a simple question and had only yielded answers I'd already known. Furthermore, why was this Mello's overall vague response to me if we were supposed to work on communication?
'Don't run.' I advised before his impulses had a chance to take over. 'You'll only make another scene, and right now that is the last thing we need.'
"We?" He retorted, "You say it as though we're a collective unit."
'No, that's not quite what I-.'
"Shut up, Near. Just because we have this bond doesn't change anything about what we are, or how we are towards each other. Everything is still the same as it always has been."
Listening to the carefully chosen words he sent to me made something click in my mind; suddenly it was as if all the shrouded mysteries dwelling within Mello's actions now had a beam of light cast upon them and in that moment all of his conflicted thoughts and actions made sense to me.
'Ah, I see.' I said, a glimmer of a smirk crossing my lips, 'you're bothered by how to go about reconciling how your relationship with me has always been, to the relationship that you've always thought should come about upon being bonded to your supposed soul mate.' Perhaps he was even internally battling against himself to keep whatever existed between us the same.
"I told you I'm done!" He practically shouted through our channel, a fiery need to get out of this room travelling up through my hands to my very center, my heart rate beginning to pick up with each passing second that the feeling loomed within me. I took a deep breath, consciously reminding myself of the partnership agreement I had so recently made with Mello; that this was a delicate bridge which I could not afford to burn.
'Alright, I understand.' I responded, breaking off my conscious observance of all his subtle changes and thoughts that he sent pumping through my veins till they slipped smoothly into the background. However, despite his returned silence, I couldn't ignore the seething stream of frustration I'd built up within him that was looking for some form of an outlet.
But it didn't change the revelation that he'd led me to stumble upon through this conversation. The knowledge that at least part of Mello's inner conflict with himself lay within his inability to assuage between the two competing ideas inside him, one being the mixture of defenses and adoration he felt should appear when one bonds, the other being his stubborn desire for normalcy between us and for no growth to come about purely because it was me.
It was an incredibly immature mindset for him to dwell in. Though, in its own way it also intrigued me to want to find out more.
-:-
I continued to wonder about the thoughts that plagued Mello's mind that I couldn't readily read, and the question of what lay beyond his turmoil that he wasn't telling me left me absorbed into the mystery long after our classes ended and our connection became greatly weakened as Mello separated away from me again.
Naturally I could no longer hear him, but for some obscure reason I could still feel his presence and his whirling emotions much better than I had been able to before, when I had conducted my experiments upon our connection. The experiments themselves had had no observable effect upon on our connection, but the moment we made the agreement to partner together the limit had been extended. To what degree I couldn't say, but that wasn't what mattered, what really mattered was figuring out where each of really stood in all of this.
However, that night as I sat on the floor of my bedroom constructing a house of cards before me I couldn't seem to focus on the problem at hand. A dull ache resounded through the back of my head that released a painful wave that somehow resonated, unquestionably from whatever Mello was doing.
The more attention I gave to the feeling the louder the ache seemed to echo painfully through my skull. 'Why can't you just go to bed and let me work?'
I sighed heavily, the hand holding the next card destined for the house now reaching out and knocking it down to the ground, then bringing myself to stand up, heading out to find a reason for this distraction. Once in the hallway, each step I took made my head feel more and more as though it was swimming within a fog. I could think clearly, and my processes were still all under my control, but the further I went the more I felt as though I needed to keep a more conscious hold over that sense of control I had on myself, lest I become lost within the mist of whatever Mello was doing to his own mind.
I didn't need this right now. Rather, I didn't need to be dealing with him so personally when our interactions in class had already irked him so much. Yet something continued to drive me on through the dark halls of the institution, following only the strengthening of our connection to lead me to his location. Something I didn't understand, something intrinsic deep at the core of my being told me that I needed to find him right now. No, that wasn't quite right. He needed me to find him.
I was finally led to the orphanage's kitchen.
Our bond finally connected together just as I stepped through the doorway, and instantly like the rushing waters pouring out from behind an opening dam Mello's screaming, chaotic thoughts and emotions assaulted my mental stream. A wave of nausea ripped through my being to accompany the sudden charge, and immediately I could put the pieces together to recognize what exactly he was doing.
"You're drinking?"
Mello leaned back against a counter across the space from me, his dulled blue eyes slowly rose up to meet my stare as a thick silence permeated the air, seemingly the result of him needing a moment to register my existence. "Of course you show up."
The smirk he had on then grew by just a fraction as he reached over for a lone glass bottle from the center. "Wasn't my idea. Who knew Roger even kept this stuff down here?" He said before taking a hard swig from the clear liquid inside, sending a disorienting wave surging through my body till I had to grab a counter beside me to assure that I kept my balance. "But damn does it do the job." Mello finished, lifting the bottle again.
"Stop."
He paused, glaring at me. "Why should I?" He asked, his words beginning to slur together. "Because you say so? Because you're so smart? Because you're number one and I'm not?"
"Because the extent of your drinking is making me sick, as well." If this is what I was feeling from him as a third party then I could only begin to imagine exactly what he would be feeling if the alcohol wasn't dulling all of his senses.
Mello's stare on me hardened, "Good! You always make me sick. It's about time you felt the same way."
I resisted the urge to just roll my eyes at his childish logic and leave him to his stupor. But I'd be lying if I said seeing him in such a state didn't spike my curiosity. At the same time my legs felt as though they were made of stone, locked into one single place so I wouldn't be able to leave him to his own inevitable self demise.
"Why are you doing this?" I had to ask. A part of wondered just how far reaching his brutal honesty would go in such a state.
"I don't owe you an answer." He replied instead as more of his weight was shifted onto the counter. I knew I could find the answer in him if it was the answer that I wanted the most, as more and more the corridors that made up the labyrinth of Mello's mind were becoming easier to navigate through as the days that passed by us. But it wasn't just the answer I wanted. I wanted to hear what he would tell me when liquor nullified his inhibitions and rendered his defenses practically nonexistent. "Why should I tell you, anyway? All you do is use things against people. Why don't you just find your own damn answers if you're so curious?"
"I hardly think that'd be polite, Mello." I said carefully, watching his every move for warning signs of change in his attitude. Though at this stage of his intoxication I knew looking for either external or an internal sign was more or less a lost cause. I took a deep breath, but before I could start trying to talk sense into him, he started again.
"I can't do this." He breathed out, his somber eyes moving slowly down to the floor, "I don't know what I'm supposed to do!" I watched and felt the way every muscle in his body grew taut. "I should get a choice. I should get a say for once." His tense form shifted a bit in place, but after a moment he slid from where he'd been leaning with his back against the counter down to the floor.
But even in that second as I watched him my body felt rooted under the sense of confliction. On one hand, I hated having to deal with this same inner turmoil of his when he seemed to be at such an impasse to wanting to find a solution to move forward, but on the other hand through our connected minds, in the back of my head I could feel his gnawing sense of pain, like a burning stake being driven through my heart.
I wanted to actually help him, not just quell down the affliction. I wanted to make him at least accept what fate had done to us, but what was I supposed to say that would ever be convincing? What possible words could I ever even dream of stringing together to help pull Mello's head up from beneath the waters of the tradition he'd been comfortably submerged within that were now drowning him?
I swallowed hard knowing that all I could do was try and see what happened, "There's no reason to say you still don't have a choice." I told him, forcing the stones that were my legs to take a step closer to him.
"That's not how it works," He said with a shake of his head.
"Who says?"
"The entire world!" He looked up at me again, his clouded eyes meeting mine in a way that sent a icy chill down my spine. I hated the murky look in his gaze that substituted its regular confident sharpness. This wasn't Mello… Or rather, what I was seeing before me was a side of him dominated by the self-doubts he otherwise so expertly kept hidden from me and the rest of the world. "You're an idiot, Near, you don't understand how the world works." He told me.
I took another few steps closer to him till I was directly in front of him then knelt to the floor with him. "No, what I don't understand is how you work, Mello." Perhaps it was something in the fog Mello was unconsciously transmitting into my mind which was beginning to have its own affects on my sense of self-control, but as I spoke it seemed that I could only watch as my hand rose and carefully threaded its way through his blonde locks that haloed Mello's flushed face.
"You care so much about these imbued notions of how you think everything in the world should be," I explained as his face turned away from my hand with the slightest of cringes. "What I don't understand is why it's so hard for you to be willing to just carve your own way instead of following what you see as this predestined fate. Or why you find it such an abhorrent idea to follow the ways of the world that you put so much credibility into." I finally voiced the thoughts that'd been plaguing my mind that I hadn't felt able to tell him.
He scoffed at me as I threaded another lock of the fine golden silk around my index finger, "You don't understand."
"How can I understand when you never tell me anything?" The spinning motion of his of hair came to a stop, the lock loosening around my finger as I looked at our current positioning; at how very close we were to each other in this one moment. A single strand of thought threaded its way through my mind. 'Maybe there is a way that I could understand.'
His look moved over to me, "Don't."
'Do you want me to understand or not? You can't expect me to be able to find a solution to your problem if I don't first understand what you're feeling.'
He shook his head, "That's not what I mean. This is a bad idea. Don't…"
As I watched him, I had to quickly weigh the current options set before me, or rather before us. Was the greater good of finally attaining a true understanding of Mello's mind worth the potential risk of how he would react to such a deep-seated violation to his space and privacy? Was the greater good really worth the destruction of the few if it was the few that actually mattered? Of course it was. Everything in my body screamed that the investigation was always the most important thing at the end of the day. Even when my partner so was so earnestly, so frightfully begging me not to cross that single line.
The end was suddenly not justifying the means, and I couldn't even begin to consider how to handle such a phenomena.
Was this what it felt like to truly be human feel the turmoil of emotional confliction that came along with the human experience? If so I didn't like it. I didn't like this. But what else could I do?
'Listen to me, Mello,' I began to reason with him, 'this isn't you. The Mello I know doesn't answer to the rules or standards anyone puts down. I'm the one who follows rules, you're the one who sets out to break them because you make the world work for you, not the other way around. The way I know you, you should be taking what you call this divine betrayal and using it to find a way to best me. Am I wrong?'
"That's not what I-."
'Am I wrong?'
His endless azure eyes moved to meet the gray of my own, somehow through his drunken haze he seemed to stare straight through me to my core that lay beyond the heavily fortified walls around me. We watched each other through a silence that didn't require the use of words or justifications; through the thick air there existed only a fundamental understanding.
His stare finally hardened on me, a weak semblance of an attempt at defensive walls being raised once more. "Do it." He said solidly without room to question or think on it. I didn't need to hear anything else.
Our actions moved like the well-timed Broadway act we had been expected to perform through the moment the sense of mutual understanding slipped like warm water through both of our consciousnesses. This was perhaps the only way I could ever hope to begin trying to actually understand Mello and I was not about to let anything at all botch this precious opportunity between us.
My fingers that had been locked within his hair, slipped down and both my hands came to rest upon his warmed, flush cheeks. Mello's deep pools of blue closed as he moved in perfect time with me; as though all his energy had been expended in that one moment, his head lowered down till his forehead rested against mine.
Watching him, all I could do was stare in shock. Never in my wildest imaginations did I think that I would ever be permitted to being this close to Mello; to the point of practically sharing the same air.
My eyes finally slipped closed as a single thought from Mello ran through my mind in a hushed murmur, "I'm trusting you."
'I wouldn't break that. You worry far too much.'
As my world went black it felt as though an entirely new channel had been opened between Mello and myself through just the mere physical contact of us together. I felt the heavy fog of impaired judgment covering his mind just as I had before from the other side of the room, but it was intensified now and for the briefest of moments I couldn't be sure if there was necessarily any difference between Mello and my psyche anymore. Or perhaps even at the most fundamental of our very being…
There was no doubt that the air being pulled slowly into my lungs was shared between the two of us and as I mentally pushed my way through the wall of mist clouding Mello's rational mind, it felt more as though I was pushing into thoughts, feelings and memories that were suddenly my own as well.
Like a jolt of electricity to my system it all hit me the moment I oriented myself beyond Mello's inebriation to all which he had been trying to hush down for but a single night.
At once I was consumed by a myriad of swirling emotions I couldn't completely grasp at once. Unspeakable levels of pain, sorrow, love, hopelessness, all buried down within the recesses of his mind where not an ounce of light could disturb its delicate vortex. I saw flashes memories. Glimpses of long, golden locks of hair before my eyes that shown with the brilliance of the sun and carried the sweet, unforgettable fragrance of lavender and vanilla. I felt the comforting sensation of being wrapped up within seemingly wise words that spoke of love and promises of protection and limitless security.
Yet at the same time the words came hinged with a dark, spiteful undertone that even I couldn't quite understand when connected this close to Mello. Something was wrong with the image before me, the promises and the love had all been for naught, but the memory whispered from within its subtle shadows that the feelings weren't because of me. This was something else. Something big. Something so painful that it had broken Mello.
But what was it? What happened?
I tried to push further on, feeling the frigid sensation of total isolation rush down my spine and bite at my extremities. He didn't want to show me what lay beyond this point, but I persisted. There was no protection here, there was no fulfillment of the promises made what seemed like so long ago, and so long ago broken. But what stood now in its place instead was the promise that'd arisen out of a childish sense of fear; one which swore to never let the same thing ever happen again.
And yet here we were. This wasn't what Mello wanted. This wasn't at all what he had promised himself that he would make happen. This isn't what we expected. How does one reconcile the two opposing sides of one's own soul that are so fundamental to their very being?
I pulled out of Mello's mind, hardly able to handle the mental and emotional onslaught he was throwing upon me. His eyes slipped open as he pulled back from me again, my hands falling away instantly as we both took a moment to watch each other and to process just how the other was handling what we had just experienced.
I couldn't say for sure how I was handling what I had just seen within him. But what I did know was that I certainly didn't have the answers he was searching for.
But as I looked back at him, staring into those brilliant eyes that were wondering what I thought now that I had seen so far into him, something deep in the pit of my being felt different… as though we were separated, the deep connection gone, yet the longing for that bond to remain in place had left its own resonance.
It was as if something crucial was changing that I didn't have the proper word to define. Or perhaps Mello's sense of self-doubt was leaking into my mind and was holding me back from taking hold of the word that was churning within me. I didn't have the confidence to say it, and Mello didn't have the stability needed to hear it.
He leaned back, his head hitting the counter with a light thud, "I still hate you."
"I know, Mello."
But did he? All the evidence was beginning to say otherwise.
A/N: I don't even know if I want to talk about this chapter. I played around with the idea of an inebriated Mello in my mind on a long bus ride, and somehow it just ended up on the page. Though, to be fair what you received here was a very toned down version of what I originally had planned on putting out. So perhaps it's not as out of character as I keep telling myself it is... Anyway, thanks for all the support on the last chapter! Also, I'd like to draw your attention to a poll on my profile at the moment which is looking to hear whether or not you, the reader, would be interested in reading a version of this story told from Mello's point of view. So please go vote in that, or leave me your thoughts on such a scenario in a review! I keep planning this story out from both sides of the point of view, so I would like to know if I should actually be planning on writing any of that down for later. Anyway, as I said, I'm really concerned/sickened by the characterizations in this installment so I'd appreciate your thoughts on this chapter. Next installment soon!
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-Forbiddensoul562
