oh, man, oh man, here we go - the death note fix-it fic i've been dying to write since i was like, thirteen. i love mello, and i'm in love with matt, and i'm finally confident in my OC-writing skills, so let's sprinkle in a pinch of deus ex machina, make the bad guys slip up just a touch more than they originally did, and we'll see if we can get the wammy boys out whole and hale, yeah? yeah!
cassidy and hiroshi are mine! death note isn't! gosh, i missed doing disclaimers.
Of all the screw-ups to come out of Wammy's – the future, the saviors, the superintelligent knife's edge of the progress of humanity – Matt has to have been one of the least qualified. From his debut on the scene, he lacked the stark blankness, the stuck-up ambition and paper-thin skins of the other children. Even at eight years old, Mail had looked out onto the dining hall of the best and brightest and known that he was never going to try as hard as they did. It almost explained why he got stuck with such a plain alias. Maybe they reserved those for the subpar.
The funny thing there, though – and he could almost laugh that this is what he's thinking about, here and now with the world on fire – is that Matt ended up being not only subpar, but so much more than that. The spirit of competition was sacred at Wammy's, and so (because irony) in came this bedraggled and irreverent redhead, flying through the tests, shattering the algorithms and taking his place in the top three without so much as a bead of sweat. And it was only second place he managed to score – less than perfect, subpar, but usable, which was what he was destined to be – but even so, he could almost be proud.
Almost.
Mello came blazing in like a spitfire soon after that, and Matt learned that third place suited him better anyway.
He still got to laugh at the humor in the situation, though – that despite the orphanage's collective slaving for greatness, they were left no choice but to yield to the real winners. The blank, the bitter, and the out-of-place – what a team they three made.
Why was he thinking about this, though? What great symbolic connection could possibly link his orphanage days and this moment, here and now? Ha. It was like comprehensive literature all over again, his favorite. "I want an extra five pages from you, Matt – don't think I didn't see you playing games under the table. Twenty pages, front and back, properly cited. Create a well-formulated synthesis on the symbolic similarities between your formative years at Wammy's House and the way you are dying, riddled with bullets, surrounded by a dozen Japanese bodyguards, forgotten by all."
Lying on the pavement, Matt could almost laugh. He would, if he wasn't stuck in the limbo between life and death, still hanging on for god knew what. He was always good at half-assing philosophically rich postulations, though, and he could do the same here, caught between asphalt and the indifferent sky.
This is game over, he thought, and I'm thinking about philosophical comparisons. Mello would roll his eyes so hard. And then, that thought, the concern for the blond boy tugged sharp and painful at his hazy mind – but it drifted and he let it, because he had to trust that Mello would be okay. Mello always ended up okay. He always… Sirens. Sirens? What for?
He wished he had his DS on him.
No, let's focus on what's important here. You're waxing poetic, remember? It's the same. It's all the same, some grand metaphor waiting to be made on the powers that be, something ironic and bitter and not worth a single damn.
Because it was the same.
Both worlds – the orphanage, Kira's playground – were a study in pretense. It was about looking the other way, seeking refuge in the familiar. Everyone went about their routines and schedules, followed their orders.
And under the surface, frenzied and scared, roiled complete and perfect bedlam.
Cassidy Leopold, firm and devout believer in sleep, was seriously weighing the pros and cons of her career choices. You see, on the one hand, helping people? Bandaging their wounds, saving their lives? Incredible. On the other hand…
Oh, man. I just got home from a full shift, too – and it's what, two in the morning? Pausing in the middle of tossing her hair into humanity's messiest bun, she leaned over and squinted at the clock on her nightstand. Two-eighteen. Wonderful.
Normally, she made it a point to stay in her lane and only step out of it when absolutely necessary; when someone's kid was about to run into the street, for example, or when a particularly hungry person on the street met her eye. Or, as tonight's test of patience would have it, when her employer called her at stupid o'clock in the morning, asking her to come in and assist in an emergency procedure.
"It's a special case, my dear," renowned medical wizard Hiroshi Yuu had told her over the phone. His voice – warm as always… did he even need to sleep? – was light on the surface, and yet she could detect the slightest strain beneath. He was worried. It was enough to get her out of bed, at least. "Special enough that the general surgeons over at the main hospital had to come crawling to me for assistance. Ha!" His laughter fell short; she heard the snap of latex against skin. "Imagine!"
All but stumbling out of her apartment in scrubs she hoped matched and keying her own dashboard in an attempt to start her car, Cassidy jammed her phone between her cheek and shoulder so she could keep talking. Anything to get a read on the situation, or to maybe absorb some of Doctor Hiroshi's calm in the middle of what was quickly shaping up to be a bizarre night.
"Doctor, are you with the patient right now?" She had many, many questions, but knew enough to know that most were best answered in person. She didn't ask the questions she knew the answer to – namely, the ones like, aren't any of the other aides on the clock right now? Where are the other assistants? Everyone in the medical community knew that trauma surgeon Hiroshi had a complicated situation, a small, private facility, and a mentorship style so intense that few lasted on his employee roster for long. This was a job for the masochistic. She shook her head, pulling into the clinic. "Actually, should you… even be on the phone with me?"
"Speakerphone is a miracle, Cassie-san, I know. I have him on my table. The other specialists kept him alive long enough to reach me, but it's going to be a fight. Are you here yet?"
Slip on shoes almost slipping right from underneath her, Cassidy burst into the clinic. She considered taking the time to switch her shoes and disregarded the custom. Not like they did that back home, and anyway, it was an emergency. Right? Right.
Aloud, her phone shut and in her pocket, she called out, "I'm here! Give me half a minute!"
Hands carefully but quickly sterilized; gloves on, mask on, supply cart packed with the essentials and wheeling towards the operation theatre. Cassidy had barely a moment to steel herself before pushing through the doors, and the sight that lay before her almost stopped her dead in her tracks. Oh. Now, I see.
The young man on the table was barely alive. Stripped completely, aside from a single, thin sheet covering the waist down for some silly modesty preservation, he lay completely unconscious, near-entirely bloodless, and – as she pushed forward, already moving into action the way she'd been trained – lanced through with countless bullet holes.
The two of us alone are supposed to fix that? He's practically dead already!
But Cassidy hadn't worked this hard, secured this surgical assistant job, devoted her life to the study of medicine just to give up when things looked impossible. She knew better. This young man was a person, a soul. Red hair, freckles, dark circles under his eyes. He's barely an adult. She owed him better.
She'd vowed to protect life and she would not fail here. Cassidy set her jaw.
"Prognosis, Doctor?"
Doctor Hiroshi looked almost mad. "It won't be easy… but I believe we can save him. Now. First we need to take care of the remaining hemorrhaging - as well as the hemothorax in the pleural cavity. Prepare a fibrin sealant; I'll get that chest intubated."
"Yes, Doctor."
They would not fail here.