warnings:more blood, more gore, more bad writing and screwy timeline mechanics. heh heh remember when i actually planned this story out instead of just writing it willy nilly? no? yeah, me neither.
notes: i did solemnly vow not to stretch my updates too long apart, but clearly you should never listen to anything i say. no, the truth is that i somehow ended up with a job this month, and my writing time was rather snuffed out by that. i'm also just a bit lazy and all over the place at the moment. but i'll try to work faster on the next one, deal?
okay, so here is the promised (threatened?) mello + b (+ wedy, because yes she tags along) chapter! hopefully this doesn't bore you or detract from your enjoyment of this fic that is supposed to be l x light but hahahahah i've been a bit lagging on that front lately, haven't i? anyhow, there's a bit of exploration of the supernatural element in dn this chapter (aka, b's eyes and the abilities and rules therein.) note that i have pulled a lot of this directly out of my ass, and if it's not in line with canon, i take full responsibility for the mistakes, but this fic basically requires the bending of some rules, so alas.
anyway, thank you to everyone who reviewed last time (although there was a rather marked decrease in response so i'm taking that as an indication that last chapter was not that good?)
but, as always, thank you for reading!
chapter eighteen - where the wild things aren't.
"I shall be as dirty as I please: and I like to be dirty, and I will be dirty."
- Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights.
London is loud, even during midday, and as the cab brings her through Piccadilly Circus, Wedy rolls down her window to get a whiff of the salt and smoke and laughter. Everything looks dirtier in daytime and she can't decide if she likes it or not.
Her phone lights up with a text from Aiber in the middle of a traffic jam two streets from her hotel.You coming back, then, princess? it says. She doesn't know whether to laugh or blow hot air in his face, and neither of those things are possible through this medium anyway.
That's not the job, she taps out, pressing send with a jolt of her thumbnail.
She's standing in the open door, directing the men in uniform on what to do with her suitcases - plural, like the type of girl she is, only more of them are filled with surveillance equipment and guns than not - when she gets the reply.
What is the job?
She's in her room by the time she replies, cracking open her laptop deftly and typing out an quick string of code to log into every surrounding network - just to be on the safe side - and scanning the files. When she's sure she's not being watched - at least not through any computerized medium - she drafts a new email to the contact that's listed in her log only as A.
Then she calls him.
"I'm sending you confidential files. Are you sober?"
She can practically see his brow wrinkling comedically, like an overgrown child wearing daddy's hair product and mommy's clothes. "Reasonably," he replies. She can hear the snap and click of keys and is gratified by the assumption that he's logging in. "And not even a hello? I'd be hurt if I didn't already have built-in fully body armor when it comes to you."
"Not full body," she says, going along with it because he'll work better if she plays better. That's just how they are. She arches and eyebrow and lets it seep into her voice and she doesn't even need to be thinking about sex to make him think about sex.
He chuckles on the other end of the line.
"Nothing's ever one hundred percent," he murmurs softly, likely parroting back some inaccurate tidbit that L had dropped some night or another, making like he's got wisdom and making Aiber eat it from the palm of his hand. "But really," he continues, "it's been weeks. Don't tell me you didn't miss me at all, because I won't believe you."
"I didn't have much time to, honestly. I was booked at a spa for two weeks and the men there all have better hands than you."
"Liar," Aiber says. "You hate places like that."
He's right, she does. No privacy.
Wedy doesn't respond, just finishes scanning the document, then presses send.
"You were visiting your mother, I'm guessing? Don't play the cold heart with me, m'lady, we both know that the California sun melts it like the iceca - holy shit." There's a shuffle of the phone, then the concerted sound of typing.
Wedy leans back in the stiff hotel chair and sips her gin. He's definitely not sober. She's definitely not either.
A few moments later, Aiber's back on the line, and it's clear he's gotten the file. "What does Watari have you on?"
She skips answering the question for one of her own. "Ever heard of Beyond Birthday before?"
Aiber gives a laugh but it's stunted and probably a little wide-eyed. "Yeah, just now. Escaped convict who likes carving people up like Christmas dinners? Charming guy. What's this got to do with the Kira case?"
He's playing unmoved but she can hear the unease in his voice and she knows the pictures hurt him. Deeper than they do someone like her because, unlike most everyone in the business, Aiber is one of the few people she knows who lacks that full body armor. He cares about things like this. Wedy, while keeping herself emotionally uninvolved, cares that he cares. It's maybe half the reason she'd called.
"Nothing, evidently," she says, "but it's related to L so I thought you'd be interested. He ever mention a Beyond Birthday to you? Probably wouldn't have, since it sounds like a codename, so maybe just B? He ever talk about the Los Angeles BB murder case? Or Watari, even, in the last few weeks?"
Aiber's quiet for a few moments. "I've never heard of any of it before now," he says softly. She can tell he's reading the file. Never was the quickest study, but he gets the job done.
Wedy huffs, though not particularly discouraged. She'd expected as much. "Then ask. I need more information than what I currently have. The file gives lots of dates and facts and absolutely no motivations. If it's to do with L then it's to do with Watari, too, and he'll know something. Don't let him play if off like he doesn't, or like he doesn't remember, because I've watched the old bastard - with all due respect - and he's got eyes like a hawk and doesn't miss a second. If he's at all involved, he'll know, and you tell him that if he wants me to put in the full effort and work to my greatest ability, he's going to need to give me full information. Got it? Aiber?"
He's been quiet for too long. Usually not a sentence goes by in their conversations without a jovial interjection making light of some facet or the of the situation. He doesn't seem very jovial at the moment.
"Well, I'll tell you one thing right now," he says, speaking with an unusually measured concentration, "this is to do with the Kira case."
Wedy frowns. "How so?"
"Look at the date of escape."
She scans the document even though she's already got it memorized, just to double check. "November 1st. Yeah, so what?"
"So," Aiber says, a hint of the usual unruly cheer dripping back into his voice, "that's the day right after L disappeared. Do you believe in coincidence, Wedy?"
Wedy knows what he's going to say before he says it:
"L doesn't."
Mello sleeps on the pull out sofa in Syd's office - or what Mello supposes must be an office, although there's nothing practical like a desk or chairs or notes, just bean bags and novelty items and photos of Syd shaking hands with a variety of grungy, tattooed patrons who must be local celebrities. He wakes up sweating in his leather, shoes still on, struggling out of a dream that instantly gets lost in the frantic reorganization of his thoughts.
B is on the floor, playing cards with himself. He doesn't look like he's slept. He's either very cautious or very committed to being like L all the way through, in every facet. Most likely both.
"Rise and shine, buttercup," he says aloud, without turning around. Mello stares at the crooked arch of his neck and needs coffee.
More than that, he needs a shower, and when Syd comes in in a bustle with caffeine in cupfuls and even a bag of bagels - thoughtful of him, or maybe just B's orders, although he doesn't eat any - he says he's organized it that Mello can use the shower and bathroom of the Pakistani family that lives on the floor above the shop.
He goes because he can no longer refuse, the dirt having seeped in thoroughly by now, and feels slightly better about having a loud, busy household of polite, if uncomfortable, warm-blooded humans between his naked body and Beyond Birthday. The comfort is lessened a bit, however, by watching Beyond kneel down to talk charmingly to the pair of twin girls with braids in their hair who answer the door, before their mother pulls them away with a thinly-veiled excuse that amounts, more than anything, to instinctual fear.
Smart lady.
Mello washes and closes his eyes and wishes, in some ways, that he were somewhere else, but in others - small, scheming, incomprehensible ones - there is something exhilarating about living the way he is. With a criminal, in a den of thieves, with the world just a touch away. Fake passports, fake names, fake leather, and a very real possibility of sudden death at any moment.
He'd rather be by himself than not, but - personal preference and affection aside - there is probably no one he is more suited to be working with on this than Beyond Birthday, terrifying as that is to realize.
B calls it destiny. Mello calls that stupidity, but can think of no better explanation than the violent, senseless whirring of the world, and - and it had felt senseless at the time, under Watson, then lying on the floor, a heart on his chest - but under the hot spray of the cramped shower with the sounds of sizzling breakfast echoing through the crack under the door, there seems to be an odd sort of intelligence to his situation. It's not good exactly, but it could be multitudes worse.
He could be raped and dead.
He towels off and changes into some spare clothes that Syd had lent him while his own wash. B had said they'd buy more, but he hasn't made good on that particular promise, which makes it fall rather in line with all the others. At this point in time, though, fashion isn't Mello's primary concern, and Syd's a small enough man that his jeans fit alright with a belt.
When Mello comes downstairs, B is still sorting through his cards with a trick of a smile on his face, and Syd's wrapped up in a solid looking leather coat and lacing his boots.
"Where are you going?" Mello asks, having found his voice a bit more by now, if only when it comes to necessary information.
"Need to talk to a contact," Syd says, finishing up on one foot and switching to the other. "They don't make it seem like it in the movies, but this sort of thing's hard work - you need the right material, the right printer, serial numbers and that shiny sort of bit that goes over the top - you know what I mean? There's a technical name, but I don't remember it."
"The Hanged Man," Beyond announces loudly from his place on the floor, holding up one of his cards.
"No, that's not it," Syd says, with a dismissive sort of humor. "Anyway, I used to have it all on hand back when I was in the business, but since the bogeyman and I last swapped stories, I've cleaned up my act quiet a bit." He shoots a nervous glance at B, like he expects him to take offense. "Anything for a friend, though," he says, and it's obvious from his self-deprecating smile he doesn't mean it and doesn't intend for it to be believed.
"The Fool," is all B says, holding up another card.
Syd's eyebrows go up and he looks slightly offended, but turns back to Mello without remark. "So anyhow, I need to get back in contact with a few old suppliers - shouldn't take more than a day, two tops - and both of you will be on your merry way soon enough. Right?" he asks B.
"The Tower."
"Right," Syd nods, unflinching. I'll just be going now. Expect me back in a few hours. Put in a call if you want me to grab lunch."
Once he's out the door, B drops his cards uncaringly, like a child who's grown tired of one toy and plans to move onto another. He looks up at Mello with a clever twitch of a glint of his eye. "Well Lucy," he says jauntily, "it seems I have some 'splaining to do."
"Wait, so you see people's names? What, like you have some sort of telepathic vision and it just comes to you?" Mello asks, struggling to keep up through the rowdy noonday streets. Beyond is marching forward with what may be resolute purpose or else just the desire for some exercise and a lungful of fresh - if smoke-filled - autumn air. It's hard to tell.
"No, no, mister," he says, glancing briefly over his shoulder to make sure Mello's there. "I mean I literally see them, floating above people's heads in little red letters." He points at a man across the street. "Roger Sullivan." Then a woman a little farther a long. "Esme Cavanaugh." Another woman. He squints "Kali Khan, I believe. K-H-A-N, deriving from Central India, probably, but I can't be sure."
Mello stops, stumbling a bit over the sidewalk and knocking shoulders with a man who only spits over his shoulder and moves on. "You could literally be making all of that up on the spot. Just saying things doesn't prove anything."
B doesn't look back. "Why would I be trying to prove something, darling? It's all right here, in front of my eyes, and those are the ones that matter. Now keep up, Mihael, we don't want you to be a lost boy again, do we?"
Mello thinks that they don't want anything, not jointly - except L, maybe, but in very different ways and for very different reasons. Mello's still not sure of B's ways and reasons, really, but he doesn't think he needs to be.
What Mello wants is the truth. He catches up, though grudgingly, and points to the first man he sees approaching, who wears a poorly tailored suit and limps when he walks. It's a fairly easy test.
"His name?" he asks.
"Leroy McDavis," B says, squinting slightly, but it rolls off the tongue with an ease that seems almost practiced. Maybe he's got names stored up in that head of his for times just such as this. He's a planner at heart and maybe this is just another plan, executed with ease for his own amusement.
On the other hand, Mello raises his voice slightly as the man passes them and calls, "Leroy!"
The reaction is instant. The man looks straight at him with small, watery blue eyes and a tight mouth and says, before Mello - running off the fumes of shock and unpreparedness - has time to get away, "Are you addressing me?"
His accent is posh and refined and Mello barely stops to wonder, but does, how the sort of man who speaks like that became the sort of man that limps around this part of town.
He should say no, he thinks, and move on and be done with it because this is one of those awful social situations that he takes pains to avoid, with the eyes on him and time slowing down and speeding up in uneven measures as he tries to come up with just what the hell to say.
"Uh," he stumbles out after a moment, as B claps him on the back, "yes. Sorry." He tries not to look at his shoes but he does anyway.
Leroy McDavis stares at him. "No one's called me that in years."
"Yeah, sorry," Mello says again, trying to draw himself away. Beyond's fingers are digging into the bones of his shoulder. They don't hurt, but it's also not a particularly nice feeling. "I didn't mean - "
In the next moment, before he can properly conceptualize it, Leroy McDavis is rushing at him, grabbing at his collar and slamming him into the nearest brick facade with a wide-eyed, unhinged look flashing across his face. "Who sent you?" he shouts, but it's muffled and uneven so as to be almost inaudible in the din of the streets. "It was them, wasn't it? Wasn't it?"
"What?" Mello gasps, as he's shaken up, head banging against the wall jarringly, blurring his vision. "I don't - get off me!"
People are starting to look now, the crowd shuffling its attention staggeringly over to the commotion, and it might get strange or ugly or else just very embarrassing - and then B steps in. He seems to do that for Mello a lot.
"Now, now, Leroy," he says cheerily, but with a dangerous tilt to his grin that should be audible even to those unused to him, "don't be so paranoid. You've got nothing to worry about. Your end date is a long way off. Believe me, I know, because if it wasn't I would rip out your small intestine and strangle you with it right here on the street."
He's there quite suddenly, ducking his head into the fray with a queer little shrug of his shoulders and an oopsie daisy expression twitching across his face. He arches back into the wall beside Mello, throwing an arm up in a casual gesture that leans almost protective at certain angles.
Mello can feel the man's grip on Syd's borrowed shirt loosening up already, in a quivering, unsure way. He looks almost apologetic, shaking his head. "I can't let them find me," he says, waveringly.
"I don't want them to, either," B agrees, conspiratorially, as if he knows exactly what he's talking about and has been thinking sedately on it for a good long while.
Leroy's hands drops from Mello clothes completely. "What should I do?" he asks, in a small voice.
Beyond's eyes twinkle. "Run," he says. And Leroy McDavis does.
Mello's breath dips a little bit and he slumps back against the wall, uneasy, but also relieved and - grateful, maybe? He has no idea how he would have handled that on his own. Of course, left to his own devices, he wouldn't be in this situation in the first place.
Rape and dead, the throbbing reality in the back of his head tells him, and then he's a little more grateful. Or annoyed. It's hard to tell, when it comes down to it.
"Who's after him?" he asks, because admitting the strangeness and unlikely coincidence of the situation feels like too much work and too much discussion.
"No idea." Beyond shrugs with a chipper jolt of his shoulders, pushing off the wall to walk on through the crowd. He doesn't glance back, as if he expects Mello to chase him down frantically and demand answers. Or maybe he doesn't expect that, maybe Mello expects that. Maybe he should, but -
Okay, Beyond Birthday can see names. He believes it. He believes him. It's impossible, given the established laws of reality and evidence available to the general scientific community - and the less general, given that Wammy's curriculum includes exploration of many kinds of alternative and fringe sciences - but Mello believes it anyway. Reasonably, he doesn't think he should. His mind should rebel and he should have many more questions and objections but it just - comes easy. It seems almost likely that Beyond Birthday has some sort of supernatural power. Almost self-evident.
Of course he's not the same as the rest of humanity. He can pass for such if he puts effort in, but he is not. He does not work in the same ways. Mello's not sure if he finds it terrifying or comforting or if he even finds it anything at all. It just is. It barely changes a thing.
He catches up, pushing through the increasing throngs of people to find his way back to Beyond's side, though he falls short every other step and ends up trailing him more than anything. He almost expects B to lean back and pull him along, like he'd done the day before. Fortunately, there's none of that. B seems distracted even, as if he's got his eye on something up ahead and can't be bothered to attend fully to Mello at the same time.
Normally Mello wouldn't mind that - would find it a blessing, even - but this is not really the ideal time.
"What are you looking for?" he mumbles, following B around a bend.
"Doesn't matter," B breaths out, "it's gone now. I lost the scent, you know? Dear old Leroy did a number on my nose and I got a bit distracted. No matter. The fox will be home soon." He slows back down to a more reasonable pace, adjusting his collar and fading his looks back into those of the typical citizen of the great city of London, becoming quite suddenly mundane, someone your eyes would skip over in a crowd.
"Can you speak plain English for once please?" Mello says, eyes rolling.
B rolls his back, a perfect mirror, as if Mello's inability to follow his mad ramblings is a character flaw that needs correcting. "We were following Syd, but I lost him. That plain enough, Johnny-boy?"
Mello frowns. "What for?"
"Because he's slippery, like a fresh fish at morning market - you know the ones, with the eyes still in that look at you all goggly, all I know you are going to take home and eat me, Sir or Madam - and I can't let him swim away."
"I thought he was a fox," Mello says dully.
"You're cute," B replies, except then he tilts his eyes over his shoulder and hitches his mouth and it's a little bit horrifying how Mello's body reacts with visceral terror. He can feel the hair on his arms standing up. He didn't know that happened in real life. He'd thought it was a figure of speech, something that only happens in books.
All of this is something that only happens in books.
Mello ignores the words, point at a random woman in the crowd. "What's her name?"
"Cassandra Whaley," Beyond says, with nothing but a squint and very short pause. "And she's not got long now, poor dear."
Mello doesn't understand the latter part of the sentence, so his mind filters it out as the usual nonsense - or good sense, wrapped up in riddles and theatrical strangeness - and calls the woman's name into the crowd. It takes a few tries, but then her head jerks up and she glances around confusedly, though lacking the wild fear of Leroy McDavis. Mello and B disappear into the busy streets without letting her spot them, and Mello continues tests of this nature, with Beyond's cue of a name, until he is past satisfied with the reality of B's ability. Even after, he keeps doing it, mostly just for fun.
They only stop when the crowd thickens to almost unreasonable degrees, all seemingly congregating around the same building, with their heads tilted up.
"Shouldn't someone call the police?" asks a disembodied voice that could belong to any of the amassed midday Londoners.
"Hold on, I'm playing Bejelwed," someone replies, tapping away at their phone.
Mello looks up at the building. For a moment he thinks it's performance art, or something of the like - his brain is wired for that assumption, perhaps - but it sets in quite easily when he registers the fear in the woman's face. Girl. Woman. She might be his age, might be up to her early twenties - it's hard to tell. She is afraid, though, and that is not. She's standing on the window-ledge with shaky legs, arms gripping the bricks on either side of her with trembling resolve, and evidently building up to throwing herself down.
Mello frowns. Someone really should call the police. Someone should do something. Not him, but - someone.
Beyond just tilts his had to the side, looking bored. "I like her ankles," he says.
She's barefoot, in what looks like an evening dress, as if she'd dolled herself up or the occasion. Her make-up is smudged, though, running down her face in wet grey lines.
Mello glares at B, though not heatedly. "That's all you get from this?" he asks, not half so disgusted as he simply feels as if he should be. It's not been that long. He should not be used to this.
"Oh, don't worry your pretty little head about it, it's not like she's actually going to die. Not for a a while now, anyway." He pulls up the collar on his jacket, guarding against the thin chill of wind that breathes down the street, sending the rest of them huddling in on themselves in reaction, rather than preparation.
Someone breathes smoke in Mello's face and he coughs it away, then says, "Optimistic way to look at it."
"I'm just looking at what's right before my eyes, sugar, and," - he squints and Mello mirrors him without really meaning to, trying to see whatever it is B sees, as if he even could, "her numbers give a full 4 years before her expiration date. They could change anytime between then and now, of course - all I know is she's not going to die today."
"Numbers," Mello repeats back to him.
Beyond pushes back out of the crowd, dropping a few pounds on a stall and picking up a steaming drink that he hands over to Mello in one smooth, easy movement, barely glancing at the man who takes his money. "I can see death dates, too. Did I not mention that?"
Mello stares blankly, the warm cup scalding his hand a bit. "No."
"Oh," B says, walking on, and it's clear that he did not forget anything at all. He's playing. Fucker. "Drink your cocoa, buttercup. It'll get cold."
Mello doesn't follow. "Prove it."
B glances over his shoulder, cackling. "No, no, no, that's not how it works. You ask and I answer, but that's all. This is variety hour in London and I'm giving you a show because I think it will do more good than harm - assuming that you think harm is good and good is harm - but I don't jump when you tell me how high and your pretty little child brain isn't the thing I'm out to impress." When Mello still doesn't follow, he turns around squarely and walks back. "You're an accessory, Mihael, not the main course."
Mello stares stolidly at him. "That's a very mixed metaphor," he says.
"Don't do it!" someone yells up at the girl on the window ledge. There are sirens in the distance.
"I have to," she yells back, voice shaking. "I have to!" Her face is a mess, eyes a wet crinkle and nose running, and she is not beautiful now and doesn't look as if she particularly would be without the despair coloring her looks. "I asked for a sign today! I asked for a sign not to do it and it didn't - nothing happened. I can't - I have to."
"Does she realize it's barely noon?" someone strolling past asks their companion with guilty amusement. Mello glares after them, then turns back to the woman.
"What's her name?" he asks B.
It's a few empty seconds before he turns a rolling eye back, repeating the question - then stopping halfway through. B isn't there anymore. Mello spins around, panicking for half a moment before he watches the tail end of Watson's coat disappear into the apartment building. He swears, leaving his hot chocolate untouched on the curb, and following. The sirens are coming closer.
The building only has two floors, so it's easy to extrapolate as to which one the girl is on. If he really put his mind to it, Mello could probably even calculate which room she's in - but he doesn't need to. Beyond's tall, uneven figure marks the doorway as he stands black against the off-white of the hallway. Mello's steps slow as they approach.
"Elizabeth Cale," B is saying as he walks into the room. From the open window, the woman's hair whips around in a thin arch. She looks afraid at first, then accusatory.
"How did you get in?" she says, hurriedly, clutching the bricks outside. Her dress looks thin. She's probably freezing cold.
"Ellie, right?" Beyond asks, ignoring her question.
She looks less afraid as the moments pass. "Beth. No one's called me Ellie since I was a child."
"Ellie Cale," B continues, unassuaged, "do you like hot chocolate?"
Mello frowns as he watches B produce another styrofoam cup from fuck knows where, and with an uncanny ease that creeps up his skin. Like a magician, with his sleight of hand and his distracting smile and all the glitz and the glamour of the moment.
"I don't, " - she starts, tripping over her words; the sirens are right below the window now. "I'm trying to kill myself just now. Hot chocolate isn't going to fix it."
"You wanted a sign," Beyond tells her, waving the cup at her as if to tempt her off the ledge, like leading a dog around. There's no way this is going to work.
"You're just a man," Elizabeth Cale counters.
"Am I?"
There is no possible way this is going to work, but Mello likes being in the warmth of the building, so he just stands in the hall, still and tall and tired in his way.
Beyond sets down the cup, taking a few steady steps forward and holding out his hand. "Come here, Ellie Cale, and I will tell you something very secret. I will tell you the secret to existence and you will breathe very easily after it."
"I can't," Ellie Cale says, and she might be crying again. "I can't."
"Ellie, my dear, my darling - it's not that hard." He holds his hand out even farther. And Elizabeth Cale, she frowns and she looks at the ground and she hears the crowd and then looks Beyond Birthday in face - the face that Mello can't see just now and isn't sure that he wants to. It is a lying face.
And Elizabeth Cale, she takes the offered hand and lets B pull her into the room, falling against him like a fragile thing on fragile legs. He lines his lips up with her ear and glances slightly over his shoulder, shooting Mello a smirk, and whispers something very slowly. Ellie's eyes go wide.
He lets her go, stepping back, and in the next moment - she slaps him.
And then the cops storm the hall, pushing in and around Mello, and everything gets very loud and Elizabeth Cale's crying is the last thing that Mello hears as Beyond grabs him around the wrist and pulls him down the hall to the emergency fire-escape.
"What did you say to her?" Mello asks, once they're outside on the street.
B shrugs, looking slightly smug, and turns on his heel. "Something secret."
While Aiber is slow-going with getting any information out of Watari, Wedy works quickly, reestablishing links with her old contacts in London from the burglary circuit, as well as putting in a word for herself with the local information brokers. If Beyond Birthday is still in the city - or ever was - she will know by tonight, or tomorrow at the latest. The last source she goes to, as it's guaranteed to be the most useless, is the police, putting in a call to request any information they have on the sightings. They're very tight-lipped at first, until she flashes her L-associated credentials around, and then it's just a matter of them sorting out their shit well enough to have anything to report.
It takes longer than it might. L's name gives policemen shaky hands, and makes detectives swear under their breath, either in excitement or annoyance or a keen mix of both. Usually she enjoys eliciting the reactions, but now it's an inconvenience more than anything else.
She resolves to go directly to the central London station, to harass them or maybe to just stand around looking bored and disapproving, and puts on something form-fitting enough to be considered classless but expensive enough for that not to matter. She does not look the part of an investigator and she enjoys that far more than she would blending in. That's why L goes for the jeans, doesn't he? Just for the shock and confusion, just to throw them all off.
That, or he just finds them comfortable. No matter. This is how she is comfortable.
The secretary is a small Welshman who trips over most of his words and cannot seem to find any of his files, despite them being organized with inhuman care in the cabinet beside him.
"It's just," he says, small and withering under the metallic glare of her sunglasses, "these things usually take a day or two to process and I don't know if I can - "
"This is a special circumstance. Didn't they tell you?" She plants her hand on one hip, empty briefcase clutched in the other, and rolls her eyes. He can't see them, of course, but the gesture is surely apparent in her manner.
"They don't tell me much, Ma'am," he says, cycling through papers that don't seem to have any particular use or import other than to busy his hands. Wedy's about to give him until the count of however long it takes her to slip into the bathroom and touch up her lipstick, when he looks up, eyes going wide at something past just past her shoulder. "Oh, no, no, not today."
Wedy barely has time to glance around before a short, square, dirty man in a thin cap and scuffed up leather jacket barges past her, banging down on the front desk like this is some sort of low rent hotel and he is demanding room service.
"Excuse me," she says, with crinkling distaste, "but whatever happened to lining up in a calm, orderly fashion?"
The man ignores her. "Edmund," he says, uneven desperation in his voice. "Edmund, don't look at me like that! I know what you're thinking, but it's different this time."
Edmund, behind the desk, quakes uncomfortably, neat fingernails tapping across the desk. "Sir, you need to go. If the inspector sees you around here again, not only will he have me doing overtime in the lower levels for the next two weeks - cold case filing, and that rot - but you'll get brought up on drunk and disorderly again. If I see you around, I'm supposed to send you out." He turns to Wedy. "I'm sorry, Ma'am, if you'll just - "
"No, no, you don't understand, I'm sober, been dry for almost a month now, which is why you haven't been seeing me around lately, but I'm telling you that this is the real thing. No more boy who cried wolf for me, no, I have an actual crime to report, with an actual perpetrator."
Edmund the secretary rolls his nervous eyes. "Oh, and what is it this time? Evil spirits invading your tattoo shop? The family upstairs feeding poison into your water? Come on, out with you. Sleep it off and stay away from the station."
Wedy frowns, the exchange imprinting itself curiously into her mind. She's trained herself to pick up every single detail of her surroundings for years now, but it's quite rare that there's ever anything of interest that's unrelated to the case at hand.
"No, Edmund, sport, listen to me. It's nothing supernatural, none of the usual rot, it's just a man this time, but - he's not - he's not just a man."
"Syd," the secretary snaps, with unconventional familiarity. "Go home."
"He's back. Do you hear me? The man from three years ago. The man that took Sadie away. B is back and he's at my shop. I need to speak with Inspector Rylie. I need someone with a firearm and a lot of bullets to come back with me, alright? Please, Edmund - please."
Edmund is shaking his head, though with a tremble to his lip that is unbefitting of any stern denial, but Wedy finds herself smiling very, very wide. This is not possible. No, this is possible, but very, very unlikely.
She turns to the man called Syd and says, in her smoothest, most commanding operative voice, "You wouldn't happen to be talking about Beyond Birthday, would you?"
"So, he storms in, middle of the morning when I'm trying to get done some sketches - you know how it is, slow days in this kind of weather - "
"She doesn't know how it is, Syd, she's a detective, not a fucking tattoo artist." Edmund winces after he speaking, looking immediately apologetic. "Excuse my language, Ma'am," he tells Wedy, who just lifts her eyebrows behind her sunglasses - still on, even in the dim of the bar - and sips her gin and tonic.
She's buying them a beer, because that's the easiest and most effective way to get information out of anyone, she's found. Syd had abstained, swearing by his current sobriety as the best thing to happen to him in years. Little secretary Edmund, however, who's now off for the day, had taken her up on the offer on account of, as he'd put it, needing a stiff drink to get through any conversation with Syd.
They're second cousins, apparently. Small world. Large coincidence. Strange happenings. The usual for most of L's cases, really. She still can't tell if this is even one of L's cases. Aiber hasn't gotten back with anything of value, had just said that Watari hadn't given an inch.
"Go on," she says to Syd.
Before he can do as much, Edmund cuts in again, getting more boisterous with every sip. "Listen, listen," he says, and he's only on his second beer. It might be amusing if it wasn't so damn inconvenient. "Ma'am, Syd is a good man and reformed from any illicit practices that he may have previously engaged in, but he's not right in the head. We get him down in the station at least every few weeks, demanding that someone come down to his tattoo shop and chase out the ghosts or some sort of similar rot. If he's saying he's got some serial killer bunking up with him, it's likely he saw him on the TV and concocted some wild tale about it."
"Eddie, you're coloring the situation all wrong. I was drunk those times, stone-cold pissed to the eyeballs, and, that aside - "
"Have you ever found any?" Wedy interrupts.
Edmund frowns over the lip of his glass. "Any what?"
She quirks a smile. "Ghosts."
Syd laughs, but it's a nervous chuckle, and his fingers play against the tabletop and she can tell he is antsy. He is afraid. If this all pans out and Beyond Birthday actually is at his shop, he more than likely has reason to be.
Edmund just rolls his eyes, taking a long sip. "We've never found a thing. And don't think we haven't had to send people down every so often, because if someone calls for the police, it's our civic duty to go out, even if their reports err on the side of ridiculous. There was never a thing out of place, except for empty bottles lining the floors and sometimes a bit of sick on the carpet."
"But I'm not drunk now," Syd snaps, stubby nails digging into the counter, "and B is not a ghost or - or - he's real, is what I'm saying, and he's dangerous. He's the man I told you about, Eddie, he's the one - he killed Sadie."
Edmund closes his eyes and appears to compose himself with long breaths. "Sadie died in an accident, Syd. We've been over this."
"He did it. I swear, I - "
"Look," Wedy puts in - not one to be insensitive, but neither one to be particularly sensitive either, and she has a job to do, "I'm sure this Sadie was a lovely girl, but I don't care what Beyond Birthday did or didn't do years ago. I don't even care what he's doing now. I just need to know where he is." She'd considered just looking up Syd's tattoo shop on google maps, as that would take less trouble, but it's less sure of working and, anyway, she wants to keep Syd with her. In case things turn out to be a bust, as Edmund's been saying, she wants someone to give a stern glare and a lecture to.
"Oh, he's there," Syd says, as Edmund rolls his eyes and orders another beer, "and I'll take you, just - haven't you got a team or something like that? You know, beefy guys in bulletproof vests and AK-47s?"
Wedy bites her lip, all dumb blonde and gropes around in her pockets for a moment, as if looking for something. Then she shrugs, her expression growing flat, and says, "Must have left it in my other pants. Can we go now?"
Syd blinks at her, then nods, straightening up. Before he pulls his jacket closed, she can see the edges of cartoon animals peeking up across his skin. From the stool where he's still slumping, Edmund calls after them as they leave, "You're not going to find anything," and then, after a moment, "I'll have those reports for you tomorrow, Ma'am."
Wedy doesn't look back.
They go back to the tattoo shop because there's nowhere else in particular to go. The streets are crowding up and if Syd was ever within tracking distance, he isn't now - B sniffs around the whole area, making sure of as much. The woman from upstairs brings down Tika Masala for lunch, nodding dismissively at Mello's thanks and checking him several times for fever, before heading back upstairs with barely a glance at B.
Then they're simply left with food, and each other. Most days, in Mello's eyes, one would be vastly preferable to the other, and he would use the meal as an excuse to duck down into himself and avoid conversation. Right now, however, he can't quite keep his interest anywhere but on B, and he frowns fixedly across the busted ottoman at which he's eating, not quite sure what to ask or how to ask it.
After several minutes of this, B takes enough notice to jab his fork at him playfully - or murderously, it's hard to tell - and say, "What is it, Mihael?"
Mello chews his food, as if he needs time the think, but the truth of it is that the thought has been forming for the last several minutes, and when the question comes out, it's with almost eloquent ease. "I'm honestly still trying to figure out why you did that," he says, swallowing. "I know I'm supposed to be number two and all, but - "
"You've not got a number any longer, my love. You're a zero, out here with the rest of the world." Beyond draws a big '0' in the air between them, as if tracing a pattern that's already there.
Mello ignores the interruption. "If I didn't know far better, I'd say that was you trying to play the hero."
Mello had been there, and he'd watched the extended hand, listened to B's calming words, and - although he hadn't had a view of his face - he'd seen the reflection of whatever false kindness has been there mirrored back in the eyes of the woman. The woman who had taken B's hand. She hadn't jumped. She'd been given a sign.
Beyond Birthday did a good thing. Mello can't quite make sense of it, but it had happened.
B laughs, but it's less uncaring than usual, and there's a balled-up twitchiness to the sound. He shakes his head in what must be an attempt at lackadaisical. "I'm sure you've realized by now that's just not my role."
"Then why - "
"You asked me to prove myself."
Beyond scoops up some rice and shoves it into his mouth, eating with a sloppiness that is - no surprise - reminiscent of L. Mello rolls his eyes. It's annoying, more than anything, when he takes on L's habits, pulling them over like a disguise and hiding any self-contained emotions going on underneath the surface.
"That didn't prove anything," Mello says, scoffingly, somehow conjuring volume that his voice has lacked for weeks, save for the brief interludes of screaming. "I'm not actually sure I even believe you can see death dates. Or names. You're mad. You're a crazy person. I shouldn't believe anything you say."
"And yet you do," B counters.
He does, doesn't he? If not in an intellectual sense, than at least in his gut. His mind doubts even the possibility, but the rest of him has already accepted it as the reality. Beyond has always been something strange, something else. Separate. The common laws of the universe do not apply to him. Sure. Alright. It makes more sense in his case than anyone else's.
But that's not what really matters right now. "Why did you save her?" he asks, solidly, with more confidence than anyone should reasonably have around a convicted, psycho, psychic murderer. And yet.
"I didn't save anybody," B says, kicking off the sofa and into a stilted pace. He rubs his large white hands together with something that may be agitation and may just be cleanliness.
"I was there," Mello starts -
And then B is in front of him, directly, leaning in and arching his eyebrows with an unseemliness that Mello is still not quite used to. The closeness shivers down his spine as B speaks.
"I didn't save anybody," he repeats. "Just like when I cut open your gang friends, I didn't kill anybody. They were always going to die on that day, at that time. It was set. It was predestined, if you like that word. I was just the conduit. I held the knife and I used the rib spreader but I didn't kill them. The world did. Just like the world saved miss Ellie Cale."
Mello scoffs. That doesn't even makes sense. Does that make sense? He doesn't think that makes sense.
"Well, if it was all going to happen anyway, then why did you do it? Any of it?"
Beyond looks oddly accused by the question, pushing back out of Mello's space and falling into a lazy sprawl on the sofa, laughing unappealingly.
"Because I can. Because that's all I can do. If it's all set out already, then why even exist, right? Why not take a cue from dear Beth and throw ourselves out of windows? You know why. Why do you do anything? Why do you wake up in the morning and finger the tangles out of your hair and put on your shoes and keep going, Mihael? Because that's what there's room for. If the scene is already set, then you can bet your tight, underaged ass that I'm going to snag myself a role. I'm going to play and I'm going to play hard. I will be the killer or the savior, or both at once, if that's what the world calls for. The world is always calling. I'm just the only one who can hear it."
He speaks with barely a breath, jolting from thin whisper to thin whisper without a pause in between. He's smiling but he doesn't look amused. Mello doesn't know how to respond to any of that, so he just latches onto the thing that strikes him most.
"So it was heroics, then." B had used the word savior after all.
"You're assigning too much romanticism," B scoffs, waving a dismissive hand, although without so much excited urgency now. "I'm not L, babydoll, although I make a good show of it. I don't pretend to save anyone. If I'm honest, I was sort of hoping I could get her to jump." He shrugs. "Hence the slap. I didn't know how soon the cops would show, and with every close call there's always that moment. That possibility of changing fate."
"I thought it was already set in stone," Mello says.
"Dates change. Dates change all the time. I see them change. I see people change their own, depending on what they have for lunch that day, and change other people's. It's all cogs and gears and A's to B's to C's. But they don't change for me. I could kill you now, where you stand, but your numbers - the ones that have you dying a fair way off - wouldn't switch. Whereas, if Syd came home and suddenly decided, against all design and reason, to put a bullet in your brain, somewhere before your last breath of life, I would see the switch, see the numbers change to those that - when combined correctly - would come to the solution of that exact moment. That's how it it's different for me. Nothing changes for me." He slumps lower in his seat, the agitation seeming to have passed. "I just wondered, if I caused a death indirectly, whether it would have the same result, but since the London police department is so punctual, we won't ever know. At least not using Miss Cale.
He picks up his plate, apparently ravenous again, because he eats very quickly and even nabs a few pieces of chicken from Mello's dish.
With a full mouth, he tells him, "So as you can see, no heroics."
"She slapped you, though," Mello points out. "She didn't jump. So either you read the situation wrong, or else your heart wasn't in it."
And that's a rather innocuous comment, or would be directed at anyone else, but if Mello's learned anything particularly in his time with B, it's that he has a talent for reading things. People, situations, emotions - he seems to know what exactly to say at exactly the right time to make things happen and people react the way he wants them to. Mello's fairly certain that if he has truly wanted Elizabeth Cale to jump out of her window, she would have.
"It was an issue of timing," B says, flicking his wrist lazily. "Don't get mushy on me."
"No you're right," Mello agrees, if not with the words than with the sentiment behind them. "You're not a good person. You do not have good intentions. But you did a good thing. Who knows if she'd have jumped before the cops got there, if you hand't gone up." He shrugs.
"I know," B tells him, with an uneven bark of laughter. "That's the point. She was never going to die today."
"Maybe. But maybe the reason that she was never going to die today was because you were always going to go up to talk to her."
"It doesn't work like that. I told you. The universe doesn't factor me in."
Mello thinks it's a bit presumptuous of B to be the spokesperson for what the universe does and doesn't do - but then an aggrandized sense of important is the very least of Beyond's character flaws. Accepting the idea that the universe does much of anything at all, except exist, dully and without meaning, is a bit harder for Mello to comprehend.
So he just rolls his eyes and goes with disparaging. "Why not? What makes you so special?"
"I'm not so. Want to hear something very strange and very lovely? When Kira kills, the universe doesn't for factor that in, either. The criminals that drop from heart attacks? Their dates don't change. They just die. As if I had killed them." His posture shifts in a twitchy line, going from slumped over to leaned in conspiratorially. "For a while there I thought maybe I was killing them subliminally with my mind. Don't laugh, Mihael, or I'll rip out your esophagus."
Mello doesn't laugh, thought it's not out of fear. "No, you won't."
"Smart boy," B says.
"So, is that why you want to go to Tokyo?" Mello asks, even though he already more or less knows the answer. "To find out about Kira?"
B gives a lilting little chuckle. "Heavens, no," he says, but then sobers quickly. "I mean, I figure I might have to, since his business is all mixed up in ours, but I'm going to Tokyo for the same reason you are. For the same man."
Of course, that's it, isn't it? That's the point of connection, the common interest. L's the only reason they're even around each other. Matt, Near, Linda, all the other kids at the orphanage, and Watari and Roger themselves - more or less everyone Mello knows, he knows through L, or because of him. The competition and the struggle and the reason that Mello is out here with a madman, trying to get a falsified passport so that he can illegally cross the Japanese border, is because of L.
He better be fucking grateful when they find him. They better find him.
"You don't want to kill him, do you?" he asks B. "L, I mean." There's a pause and not of confirmation but Mello doesn't really need as much. He knows. He can tell. "What do you want?"
B opens his mouth, tossing his palms wide as if preparing for a speech, but then he stops. He frowns, eyes rolling up to look at the ceiling, and then he shoots a mischievous glance at Mello that is either colored with annoyance or excitement or a mix of the two. He folds his hands together, brushing them as if wiping away dirt.
"That, Mihael," he says, standing up, "is a much longer story. And one we don't have time for right now, seeing as we have company."
Mello's got no idea what he's talking about - and then -
And then Beyond is wheeling around and pulling the door open in a flash of creaky movements that happen too fast for Mello to fully process them. He only knows that he ends up standing in the middle of the room with a plate of tika masala in one hand and watching B drag Syd into the room by his shirt collar and throw him to the ground in a heap of creative British expletives. That's not excessively pleasant, but it's not unsurprising and not something that hasn't happened before - but the woman, the woman is new.
She stands at the door in what looks like business casual for dominatrixes and smiles sharply in the grey afternoon light from the small windows. She has a gun in her right hand and it's pointed directly at B's head.
"Hello, Mr. Birthday," she says. She's American and she speaks like someone who'd gone to a good university. She arches her eyebrow like someone who'd fucked her professors.
B eyes her for a moment, features on the edge of expression, and then he laughs. It's a tinkling little giggle, like metal on glass. "No one's ever called me that before," he says. "That's funny. You're very funny, Miss." He points at the gun. "That's funny, too."
"In my experience," the woman says, finger tickling the trigger, "gushing head wounds and splattered brain matter are not all that amusing."
B smirks. "We must have very different experiences."
They should run. She doesn't look like a cop, but they should run anyway. There's a gun pointed at Beyond's head and they need to get out of here. There's a gun pointed at Beyond's head and it's probably very much justified and if she pulled the trigger this woman would probably be doing very good, necessary work, but he can't die. He can't because Mello needs him. Just for a while. Just to get to Tokyo.
He steps backwards, edging towards the back window from which Syd had originally tried to make his escape, and that's probably karma or something. Mello hopes that that doesn't exist. He hopes that god isn't watching him. He hopes that someone, somewhere will forgive him for what he is doing. For what he is.
He stumbles into the doorframe, knocking his shoulder.
"Mihael," B says, without turning around, "stay. Finish your lunch."
"Hey, can I have some of that?" Syd asks from the floor, pointing at the plate. "I've barely eaten all day." He is widely ignored.
The woman's eyes twitch to Mello, although they lock quickly back on B with a casual intensity that insists that she's not letting him out of her sight. When she speaks, though, it's obviously addressed over his shoulder.
"It's you. You're the boy, the runaway." She's not asking a question and Mello's glad because he doesn't know how to answer that. How does she know? How could anyone know him? He's not reported missing. He's not in any police database. There's only one file on him in existence, and that - it belongs to Wammy's.
"Who sent you?" he asks, voice hollow and wavering. "Was it Roger? Or Watari?"
"Shhhh, Mihael," B says, "don't let your food play with you."
The woman looks between them and, after a long pause in which the only sound is Syd crawling across the floor to get to the ottoman with dinner on it, she says, "What if I told you it was L?"
"I," he starts, then stops. Mello doesn't know what.
"Oh, Miss Kenwood," B guffaws, hand to his heart like some sort of scandalized debutante, "you lying little little dandelion, you. God frowns upon the fraudulent the most, did you know? Or Dante does, anyway, and that's just as well. God says what we say he says. God is what we say he is." His conversation has gone off the deep end again, but Mello's gotten to the point where he can tell that most of it is an act. The spiraling thought processes are there, maybe, but - like any functional person - Beyond Birthday is capable of, if he so chooses, filtering himself enough to sound like any Tom, Dick or Harry.
The woman looks shocked, and maybe not proportionately so, because what B's saying now isn't half so crazy as most of his discourse. But then she snaps, "My name is Wedy," and he understands. No one has called him Mello in days now, but Mihael is still a surprise every time he hears it.
B laughs again. "Your pants are on fire, Merrie. You're burning up down there."
"I was sent to kill you," she says loudly, trigger-finger held firm.
"No, you weren't," B counters with barely a wince. "Stop with all the tall tales. You were sent to capture me, maybe. Yes, I'll buy that. But not death. They don't want me dead. Not Q and not R and not L. Especially not L. If you ever head him talk about me, you wouldn't quite believe it." B grins and it's with a peculiar fondness that tugs on Mello's insides. "He gets this snide little book-learning voice and uses all these fancy words and sometimes knocks me out of windows, but he wouldn't be able to live if I was dead. And I know he's still living."
Merrie, Wedy - whatever her name is - clicks her tongue. "He's never mentioned you."
"Oh, he doesn't ever by name. He likes our stories, though. I make a very good antagonist to his tragic hero. Do you like Pakistani food?" He gestures to where Syd's sitting, the subject change stark but not so odd to Mello's ears anymore. "Come in, sit down, have a bite. I have to rip out darling Syd's darling intestines and feed them to the birds, anyway, so if you wouldn't mind waiting before we do the whole dramatic showdown schtick?"
"Hey!" Syd snaps from the floor. "She held me at gun point, what was I supposed to do? You can't blame me, B, I was just looking out - "
Beyond rolls his eyes. "Hush, Sydney. You went to the police. You cried on their front stoop. I know you. I don't know where you found Cat Woman, but it's no hard feelings. She won't be difficult to deal with, anyhow."
"I take offense at that," Merrie Kenwood says, "and at 'Cat Woman.'" She jabs a manicured finger at her dress. "This is Alexander Mcqueen."
"2004 Fall/Winter, ready-to-wear collection," B says. "Yes, yes, I know, I still get print in prison. It suits your figure well."
"Thank you." Merrie tilts her head. "Now, I'm not very hungry, so you can either come quietly and let me cuff you, or I can shoot you in both of the kneecaps and then you can let me cuff you. Think it over, although I am on a bit of a schedule, so don't take too long." She glances at her designer watch for effect.
B hops giddily from foot to foot, like a child at a carnival. "Wowie, that's a hard choice." He puts a finger to his chin. "I think, well, hmmmm," he says, taking a few steps forward, "that I am going to split open your chest cavity and take a peek inside." He looks her up and down, stopping on the hem of her skirt, popping his eyebrows. "And then maybe split open something else, if you catch my - "
Mello jerks, wincing, but it's not from the necrophiliac implications - which might have gone over his head anyway - so much as it is the gunshot. B's sneakers squelch as he stumbles, falling forward as one leg gives out. Right in the kneecap. She's got good aim.
Merrie takes a few steps forward, boots clicking on the tile floors. "I'm sorry, what was that?"
"I said," B grits, pain twisting across his face, as he struggles to stand back up, "that I'm going to kill you and then I'm going to fuck you. Or maybe I'll fuck you first, eh?" His mouth twists viciously. "Give you something nice to remember this world by."
Mouth set and at point blank range, she shoots him in the other knee. "I still can't hear you," she says evenly, but there's an evident satisfaction in her eyes from B's gasp of pain.
He could bleed out, he's going to bleed out and die and Mello will be alone again and no, no, no, he can't die, not now, not yet - later, sure, when they get to L he's free to fuck off and die as much as he likes, but not yet. Mello has to do something. He stumbles forward, foot catching on something, and it takes him a moment to realize that Syd's grabbed his leg.
"I have to - " he starts.
"Cool it, kid," Merrie says to him, holstering her gun as B falls face forward on the ground. "I told your friend I'd look for you, but no one's paying me for that, so if you want to run, it's nothing to me."
He looks at B's body. There's deep dark blood on the tile, spreading from the center of his legs. It looks almost back. From this angle, it could be L on the floor there. He swallows. No, no, no, it's not supposed to happen like this, they can't keep doing this to him. People can't just keep taking him in and then being horrible and dying - somebody, somebody has to live. Somebody has to stay with him. He needs L. L wouldn't die. L wouldn't do this. B shouldn't do this.
"Is - " he starts, throating feeling thick, eyes feeling stingy, " - is he dead?"
Merrie shrugs. "Not likely, probably just passed out from the pain. But he's not running anywhere anytime soon, and he's certainly not going to be able to make good on his promise." She says it with a straight face, but there's a self-satisfied pleasure floating somewhere behind and Mello can see it. He fucking hates it. It's justified, but he still fucking hates it.
From the floor, Syd breathes out a relieved sigh. "I've got some rum in the back," he says. "Who else needs a drink?
"I though you were a month sober?" Merrie says, dispassionately, though not looking as if she means to turn down the offer.
"Semantics," Syd says, with a bit of a giddy grin, and pulling himself to his shaky feet. Mickey Mouse peeks out at Mello from the edge of his muscle shirt, shallow grin stretched and faded over the skin there.
Merrie reaches into her pocket, pulling out a phone. She pops a conspiratorial eyebrow at Mello. "This was far easier than they said it would be." She presses a few buttons, lifting the receiver to her ear.
Mello's trying to figure out if and how he should respond and what to do with his hands and how to swallow down the thickening lump in his throat and what he's going to do now and how he's going to do it, but then -
Then Merrie Kenwood is on the floor. Feet pulled out from under her, cell phone flying from her hand and skidding across the tile, and B is pushing himself up on one knuckle-white palm to flip her over onto her back and grab her gun out of its holster.
"I wouldn't break out the streamers just yet, doll," he gasps into her face, then before she can speak, shoves the barrel of the gun into her mouth.
Mello watches, unable to move, as she thrashes underneath him as he straddles her body to the floor with his far larger limbs. It's brutal and it's sick and it reminds him of Watson, of being right there but he can't move. He can't. He can't stop it. Why does she have to die, though? Why do people always have to die?
The blood from B's knees is squelching sickly across the floor underneath them, seeping into Merrie's dress. He cocks the safety, cocks an eyebrow, and then - reels back his other hand and slams it down into the side of her neck, just below the ear. She jerks, teeth clicking against the metal of the gun, and then her eyes close and her body goes slack slowly.
Carotid Sinus, Mello thinks. They'd learned it in basic defense at Wammy's. A sharp blow to the point can trick the brain into thinking that there's been a spike in blood pressure and slows down the heart, at which point the subject will pass out from perceived lack of blood. He's never seen it done successfully in person. He tried it on Matt once, for practice, but Matt had just laughed the whole time and said that Mello was tickling him. Fucker.
Mello misses him.
He expects B to collapse after that - it must hurt like fuck, balancing on shattered knees - but he doesn't. Instead, he stands. That shouldn't even be possible at this point, his muscles should be torn, his bones fractured. Maybe she missed, maybe she hadn't hit him right.
Still, there's blood everywhere. Beyond should not be able to stand.
He doesn't look at Mello, or at Merrie Kenwood on the ground, just balances his gun hand against the wall, setting the safety back on and, with the other hand, reaches down to examine his knee. He winces, frowning.
Mello swallows. He doesn't feel like crying anymore, but when B rips off the bottom of his pant-leg, revealing one of the wounds, he's hit with waves a nausea that have him stumbling back into the chair. He wants to stand back up, he wants to do something, but then B is digging his fingers down into the wound and tearing the bullet out with his bare hand and Mello can't move, can't shut his eyes, he just watches.
"How - how - " he stutters, as B drops the bullet on the ground, letting it clink on the tile with a series of tinkling clinks and dripping blood from the body. "How is that possible?" he asks finally, framing it as a question rather than the emphatic statement of that's not possible, because Beyond has a tendency to blur those lines so far as to make them unusable.
There are no lines - real, fake; good, bad; right, wrong - they're all on the table and they're all mixed up and B is yanking the second bullet out of his skin, struggling more this time, until he gives one gasp and heave and a whole hunk of flesh comes out with it.
Mello winces, covering his mouth, wants to ask questions but can't quiet make himself form them and - as he watches Beyond walk over on two battered legs - he doesn't think he needs to. The reality is very clear. No, this isn't possible, but it's happening. No, Beyond Birthday shouldn't know everyone's name upon meeting them, but it happens. No, Mello should not be here, but he is.
B looks down at him, eyebrows jittering and more comical than concerned. "Are you going to be sick?" he asks.
"No," Mello says.
Shrugging off his answer, B kicks a small, decorative rubbish bin over to him. It knocks his boots and in the next instant, Mello is doubling over, retching out lunch with uneven jerks of the body. It gets in his hair and on his lips and his mouth tastes awful and he's desperate for a tooth brush before he even finishes.
He feels a hand in his hair, and he only has to glance sideways at bloodied, knobby knees to know that it's B's. Of course it is. Who else would it be? He doesn't have anyone else.
He shrugs the touch off, grateful and uncomfortable in equal measure, and tries not to be ashamed of his weak stomach. Just to prove himself stronger, he doesn't meet B's eyes when he sits up, but stares directly at his wounds, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hands.
"Does it hurt?" he asks.
B snorts. "Of course it hurts. What kind of martyr would I be if it didn't?" He huffs a laugh and Mello can't tell if he's joking or not, because he's always laughing about everything. "But don't worry, sport. It'll heal."
Mello looks up at his face then. "You shouldn't be able to stand," he says, flatly.
"It'll heal," Beyond repeats, pointedly, and Mello thinks he understands. He frowns down at the wounds. The bullet holes already look smaller than they should. He's studied this kind of thing.
So then he only has one more question. He stands for this one.
"Are you even human?" he asks Beyond, listening to Syd bustle around in the back room. He'll be out soon. He'll realize.
Beyond smiles - he smiles that smile that paints the walls in cool, dark blues and makes Mello think of laughter on rainy days and bad poetry on notebook paper, crumbled up and shoved in pockets, and washed into a hunk of dryer lint and forgotten for so, so long until you pull it out one day, you pull it out and look at it and think what's this? And you don't know and you don't remember so you toss it in the bin and you never think about it again - of lonely, un-cared for things, like sunless plants and dusty gowns in dusty closets and voices that crack from disuse - he smiles and he's nothing like Mello has ever seen before, nothing like there has even been before and he says:
"How the hell should I know?" and shrugs his way into the back room to, presumably, go kill Syd.
Mello sits there on the lumpy chair trying not to look at his own vomit and wondering if anyone's numbers have changed.
tbc.
end notes: next week we will return to our regularly scheduled what-fuck-is-going-on-in-tokyo storyline, and our tragic heroes contained therein. i will do my best to update sooner, and mass apologies for the delay! this story is chugging along, i promise, it's just doing so at an exceptionally slow rate.
i love and appreciate all of you, though, and please let me know what you think, if you have the time? either way, thank you again for reading.