There will nothing anyone can do about it.
Twenty-Three Percent
| and i said hello Satan i believe that it's time to go |
If Matt had a penchant for nostalgia, this scene would remind him of the days of his youth, hazy days spent in an orphanage on the countryside of England, eternal rain and dreary clouds always in the sky.
But he does not – have a penchant for nostalgia that is (the scene does remind him of his childhood, but he merely overlooks it and keeps his attention on the handheld gaming device, a cigarette between pursed lips).
"What the fuck is this?" Mello spits fire and disbelief and anger with his words.
Matt has gotten used to it, to that tone of his and the anger, always the anger and the fire and determination.
Near, crouched on the ground, doesn't even bother looking up from his little toy soldiers. Near is used to it too, that tone of voice, but not the same way Matt is. No, while Matt witnesses it, Near has to brave through it and does so with an ease that can only be attributed to cockiness (he is the smartest out of the two, on paper at least).
"Did you forget how to read?" Near supplies, stabbing his index finger on a miniature plastic gun.
Mello stalks towards him angrily – he's always angry these days – and the stops mere inches from where he's crouched, towers over him with a menacing grin that borders on madness.
Matt doesn't bother looking up quite yet, this is a scene that has been played out many, many times before (except this time it's in a bunker somewhere in America, not an orphanage hidden in the English countryside).
"Death Note?" Mello throws the notebook on the floor, successfully crashing on top of the little toy soldier army. Matt doesn't have to look up to see Near's eyebrow twitch. "Did you lose a few brain cells? I thought you were supposed to be the smart one."
"I can assure you that I'm still the smart one." Near counterattacks with easily, picking up the notebook and moving it farther away from his toys. "And this notebook, this Death Note, is very much real."
"Kira's weapon, the thing that killed L, is a notebook?" Mello is full of disbelief, chokes back a laugh that is more madness than amusement.
"Yes." Near's attention is back on his miniature army (Matt had paused to watch him play once, place them in rows and give them names and ranks and had realized that this army was very much real, too real to be made of toys).
There's a huff from Mello, exasperation and annoyance and plenty of other things that Matt could probably name, but doesn't have the energy to, and suddenly the blonde's attention is on him.
Mello takes a few steps back towards the couch and pauses in front of him, knee forward and gaze expectant. Matt doesn't stop moving his fingers on the buttons of his game, but does look up from it.
"And what do you have to say about all of this?"
Matt thinks – this is Kira's weapon, the one that killed L. He has no trouble believing it, just like he has no trouble believing that only someone smart and with something entirely supernatural could have defeated L.
But Matt also thinks that –
"You shouldn't have given her up." Matt thinks that it was a mistake, that exchange.
Mello cocks his head to the side curiously, clearly not the answer he was expecting. Even Near has raised his eyes, attention now on the redhead instead of his beloved toys.
He's obviously meant to explain, especially with two sets of eyes pinned on him. He sighs and pauses the game, takes out a lighter to revive his cigarette.
"His sister, you shouldn't have given her back to him." If what is written on the notebook is true, if what Kira needs to kill is a name and a face, then he has someone who can give him both in his possession now.
"A deal's a deal." Near tells him, like it's the most obvious thing in the world (but morals for them is just a word thrown around, L had thought them that).
"And what a good fucking riddance." Mello adds, a shiver of fear running up and down his spine that he tries to hide by switching his posture to something that is meant to come out as menacing, but hardly has that effect on the people he's grown up with.
But Matt knows, knows it in the very fiber of his being (L had told him once, that he had it, he had the same thing as him, the best word for it had been intuition, sometimes stronger than facts, but Matt had never wanted to be L, had convinced him there were better people than him, smarter people than him to be his successor).
After L's death, they had found – coded entries, plenty of them, scattered across days and days of observations. Mello hadn't had the patience and had asked Matt to decode them, something easy enough if you knew where to look and Matt does, does know where to look.
It taken a few hours, to make sense of it and Light, Light, Light had come up more than not and yet – Matt knows, he knows where to look and codes, he knows the codes and while it had never been explicit, it had been there, she had been there.
Matt is no poet, but he knows obsession and jealousy when he reads it. In the end, L had trailed off about destiny and purpose and how it had been stolen from him, stolen from him because of her.
And while L had hypothesized that Light Yagami was entirely too wrapped up in his sister, much more than she, Matt knows that it's where L was wrong. He knows, because he knows what blind devotion looks like, knows because isn't that why Wammy's was created in the first place – they'd all been loyal to L when he'd only been loyal to himself.
But this is not blind devotion, no, it's worst. It's a bond that none of them are equipped to understand, that runs so deep that they barely skimmed the surface.
It's inevitable. Matt is not sure when it will happen, no the exact time, but she will give him what he wants. No because she wants revenge, not because she is righteous. It could take years like it could happen in a few minutes.
She'll cave in eventually and when she does…
"God, did you have a crush on her?" Mello snickers to himself and Near shakes his head, a roll of his eyes before his attention is called away again to his plastic army scattered on the ground.
There will nothing anyone can do about it.
Matt inhales and exhales smoke. He stares at Mello until the blonde is uncomfortable and turns his attention back to the white-haired prodigy, throwing questions his way and forgetting all about Matt's disguised warning.
L told him once, in the library very late at night, that Matt had what he had, intuition he'd called it and told him that if he had to choose a successor, it would have to be the redhead because Mello and Near, while smarter on paper, could only ever hope to become L if they worked together.
Failure means death, he'd written as his last entry, but I have recently been informed that maybe death isn't as bad as most people make it out to be. It's madness, but percentages, they don't lie – there's a twenty-three percent chance that she knew, she knew what death was like.
He breathes smoke and stares as Mello kicks one of Near's little soldier with the edge of his boot. It earns him an annoyed glare and a snarky comment about his lack of comprehension for something so basic as words on paper.
It's too bad Matt doesn't have a penchant for nostalgia.
a/n : Matt has always been a favourite of mine, that's why he gets his own chapter. The end is near lovelies. Thanks for reading and your lovely reviews. Hope you enjoyed.