Disclaimer: Death Note ain't mine.

Note: Aaargh I'm not sure about this one. I could do a better job on it and I PROMISE (hint: remind me, because I want to do this but will forget) I am going to develop this into a much better one shot in December. I just wanted to get my immediate thoughts down so I don't forget them. Last update before the NaNo so silly, hurried, awkward - but enjoy if you can. TOTALLY all down to thebookhobbit who updated a lovely little piece called The Paradox featuring the one and only Linda. Pop on over and check it, she's in my favourites now so you have a handy little link :3 Anyway her writing made me compare Halle and Linda and although THIS is not as good as it could be, the one I put up in December will be better and THAT'll be credited to her too. THANK YOU BOOK.

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Comparisons

Prompt: 41. Paper

Halle Lidner is nothing like Linda.

Linda was always a child, a little girl, with her hair in Misa-esque pigtails and her hands clutching at paper and pencils. She hovered round at the back of the room for a few years, and then grew up and grew pretty, and people started asking her to play. Mello remembers because he noticed her them, with soft eyes and a frown that fluttered onto her face and then fluttered away, like the butterflies she kept trying to sketch before they left the windowsill.

And it wouldn't be fair to say Linda never noticed Mello, either. Linda smiled at him, searched (according to Claire) for quite a long time for a good birthday present for him after he befriended her. But then he ran away before she could give it to him, and because Claire had never told him what it was, he never found out.

So Linda noticed Mello, but she always noticed Near more. She would smile at Mello, fold her fingers in a quick, compact wave as she walked past, stare in dismay at the state of the work he fake-destroyed and asked her to help him with. She didn't believe that the second-in-line to the throne that was the name of L needed her help, but she was too polite to tell him that to his face, and they sat together for three evenings in a row talking through it and fixing it up. On the third evening, he tried to kiss her, and she blushed, and pulled away, mumbling that she liked someone else. Mello huffed that he didn't care anyway, and went to yell at Matt for a while.

Linda always noticed Near more. She would ask Near if he would come out to play, she would ask him how his puzzles were going, she would sit down next to him, when the Playroom was empty and she didn't realise Mello was watching through a crack in the door, and he would let her talk to him, even if he didn't reply much. Near never had anything close to friends, like Mello did, but Linda…Linda was close. Once, he even let her drag him outside, and he stood curling and uncurling his toes in the dirt for a few minutes, staring round with his fingers coiled in his hair. He went back inside after that, but every time he declined her, Mello noticed he was very careful to say 'thank you'.

And now years on, Linda is gone, lost to the curtains of memory and childhood and a world that Kira only brushed against the edges of. Now they don't have rainy mornings inside with picture books, or sunny afternoons outside with footballs, they have computer screens and surveillance tapes and blazing, blazing, always blazing towards the goal, even if that means going down in flames before you reach it.

Now, years on, Near doesn't have Linda, he has Lidner. Lidner is tall, and very much a woman - she is professional, not pleasant; forceful, not passive. She carries a gun and a grimace instead of paper and pencils, and where Linda's features were soft and pretty, hers are harsh, defined and beautiful. She has the kind of body Linda never had too - all grown up, with curves and tautness all bound in together. She doesn't wear her hair in bunches and she never would, never has.

But, Mello thinks, she is like Linda is a few ways. She doesn't believe Mello needs her help either, and never offers it, always needs to be asked. She frowns a lot when Mello is around, and he sees the same startled, upset look in Lidner's eyes that he used to see in Linda's when he deliberately trod on insects to show off.

Lidner prefers Near, too, so maybe she is a little bit like Linda.

In all the ways that count to Mello, anyway.