Violence, religion, injustice, and death

[chilichoc]

*The fact that she could smell the rain before she opened the door should've tipped her off that this wasn't really the room with the Wammy's House grounds, but she's already taken the first step in.*

No, no, fuck no.

*She's done this before, more times than she's admitted to anyone, mostly in that awful more-than-a-week when Mail was missing.

She's in the truck; she knows the Nagano street sign by heart. She can't keep herself from feeling desperately lost and alone, can't keep her eyes from flicking to the television screen in the cab, where the car is just a red blur, and she can't make sense of the broadcaster's voice. She could count it down, almost, from the time the wheels leave the pavement. Ten, nine, eight. It's not real, Mihaela, it's just a room. Seven, six, five. You still have your ring, nothing can really break the spell. Four, three, two. The vise about to clamp down on her heart, and the part of her that's in the moment wants it. One. One hand on her rosary, one curled tight around the ring; everything goes black, and she doesn't feel her head hit the steering wheel.*

[[private to curtainwizard]]

Comments

[chilichoc.livejournal.com]

*She remembers her thoughts as she drove. Nothing left to live for, or even to hope for. Just the cold determination: I'll take Kira out with me.*

I did. And. She killed me.

[curtainwizard.livejournal.com]

What did you expect?

[He remembers the shell of the church, and the photographs of the charred bodies, and something about that keeps the ghost of triumph off his face. It might be the memory of Mikami's mistake, or it might be, far, far down, the whisper of conscience around Takada's death.]

[chilichoc.livejournal.com]

I expected exactly that.

*Very, very quietly, but there's a hard edge to it. She caught that he didn't gloat, when it would be so easy to, when she would expect him to, and wonders why not.*

[curtainwizard.livejournal.com]

[He's quiet, for a while, getting used to being again, and breathing again: a wounded child freezing water into Lego blocks and building it into walls around him.

Anyway, he'd already known what Takada did.]

You were the random element. You and him.

[chilichoc.livejournal.com]

*Mel has a slight head start on recovering. By now she can take shallow breaths without feeling the ghosts of knives in her chest.*

We had to be. We shouldn't have had to. *Softly, more thinking out loud than anything else.*

What happened to you?

*She's not going to admit she saw it.*

[curtainwizard.livejournal.com]

[Light had meant Mikami, not his own Mello. But it still works, he thinks.]

You—

[Abruptly, he remembers, and he doesn't forget things like this: You were here when I came in. I saw you, and you saw me.]

You saw. Don't lie to me.

[What he thinks, bubbling like a tar pit to burn him, is That's not like you.]

[chilichoc.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean to.

*Which is not like her either, and she knows it. But she also knows him well enough by now to know he'll blame her, hate her even more, if possible, for having seen it.*

[curtainwizard.livejournal.com]

[It's true - later on, he'll find his hatred for her refined to ash. But at the moment, there's no energy for it: most of it's going outwards to his mental boundaries, the impenetrable bubble around him he needs so badly. The rest is searing him, with memories and flashbacks and heavy, torn pain whenever he moves.]

You did, you did, you did mean to. You saw, and you'll—

[You'll tell them: you'll tell all of them. He's overwhelmed by it again, this thing so private to him that's going to be taken from him forever. His face falls back behind his hands, and words spill out under his breath - not clearly audible, but he's repeating himself: what did I do wrong? what did I do?]

[chilichoc.livejournal.com]

I did not fucking mean to, I couldn't fucking move.

*Not that she won't tell people if it's relevant, or hesitate to use it against him if she needs to. But he's still so pitiable, so obviously broken, that her next words are a few shades closer to gentle than she really intends.*

I'd at least have made it clean.

[curtainwizard.livejournal.com]

[The pity is acid on his skin. Now he breaks down further, sobs and laughs stuttering out on top of each other, frostbitten mental fingers trying to keep the little ice bricks from cracking and crazing and melting to mist.

Usually when something like this happens, there's a tiny, quiet centre that can't be touched: that watches from outside and helps keep him himself. But today it's breached and broken, and can't help him, because it died when he did.]

Don't pretend you pity me! You loved it!

[He's got to hear that she enjoyed it: it would call the hate like a siren. It would protect him. Flipping himself over to face away from you - the pain again, winding him, pulling out a thick sob. Painfully thin hands skating over his face, threading into his hair. This is me. I'm real: I'm still here: I'm not going to die.]

[chilichoc.livejournal.com]

*She huddles again, trying to drown out the noise, ignore everything that makes her forget how she despises him. It's still there, a hard, unbudgeable, and strangely comforting knot. But she shakes her head, then realizes he can't see her.*

You really think I'd pretend that?

[curtainwizard.livejournal.com]

Don't pretend you're stupid, either.

[He's convinced you've got to know enough to realise how much worse it makes it, to have someone you despise turn around and show you kindness. It grates against his pride, shattered into dozens of raw edges as it is.]

[chilichoc.livejournal.com]

*She knows, and she doesn't care.*

Don't ask me to make it easier for you.

[curtainwizard.livejournal.com]

I know you're glad, Mel.

[The accent's still flailing all over the place, as he goes on to speak some of the things that steady him: to try and remake reality to be as he wishes.]

I killed my L, and my you. I promised to hurt Mail and you. I know you're glad about what happened to me.

[chilichoc.livejournal.com]

Of course I'm glad. You'd never stop. You had to die. But if you think I sat here and fucking laughed...

*She looks away.*

Doesn't mean I won't drop you if you so much as look cross-eyed at Mail.

[curtainwizard.livejournal.com]

[The gasping draws to a halt: he's focusing on the wrong thing entirely. It sounds confused, and confusing.]

My eyes don't cross.

[chilichoc.livejournal.com]

They sure as fuck do. *She sits up straighter.* You see everything crooked. Think everyone's as twisted as you.

[curtainwizard.livejournal.com]

No. I see more.

[A ragged whisper of certainty. Everything he knows about himself is in it.]

You might not like what I thought, but at least I did think.

[All his contempt for Mellos is in that little accusation. His hate for them centres around another locus entirely.]

[chilichoc.livejournal.com]

The world, then. Want to make it over in your image. You don't see, you don't, that it wasn't broken 'til you started fucking with it. You made it rotten. Just like you are.

*She can't know that Light once called the world "rotten" too, but the reversed reflection of her own words from the room that still makes her feel dirty--dirtied--is deliberate.*

I think. *Cold, contemptuous.* I don't believe I should get to think for everyone else.

[curtainwizard.livejournal.com]

[At the irony of that accusation - that he made the world rotten - a laugh bubbles from his throat, cracked and babbling. It's such an inversion of what he sees. What he made. Eventually, he spits back condemnation of his own.]

But you did, Mel. You didn't line people up and ask them what they wanted. It was all about you - what I'd done to you, how you had to get me before Near. Admit it. You felt. You acted and reacted. You didn't think.

[chilichoc.livejournal.com]

*She remembers the quality of shock in Halle's silence when Mel said "Then I guess I'm going to have to do it": the only thing left to her to do, the only thing she could care about anymore. He's right, in a sense. She simply wanted to be done.*

I did it to keep you from killing them. To win by saving them, yes, of course. But not just to win. To have it mean something, if I had to die. And it did.

[curtainwizard.livejournal.com]

[Facing away from her, he can rest one hand on his flank without looking like a screaming child. It still feels as if there ought to be pulped, wet terror beneath it: every breath catches on the pain. He knows there's nothing, nothing that was worth giving his life for. Everyone else's, yes - but Light was supposed to be there, to reign over his creation. To perfect it into dust.]

You wanted to shock us into a mistake. In effect, you gave your life for a gamble. It would have—

[He manages to bite that off: It would have come to nothing, if Mikami hadn't failed me so completely.]

[chilichoc.livejournal.com]

It would've what?

Anyway, it worked.

*She sighs. It doesn't hurt as much now, that deep breath in. The sense of hopeless resignation is taking longer to fade.* You're never gonna get it, are you?

[curtainwizard.livejournal.com]

There's nothing to get, Mel.

[Everything he's saying is low and vehement: these are things he'll believe, if not till the day he dies, then for at least a hundred years. Concentrating on these axioms brings him a little closer to himself. You can't stop me. One day I'll be gone, and you'll never know why. He wishes he could spit it at her.]

All that brought me down was an oversight. Meaningless. Nothing to do with right or wrong.

[chilichoc.livejournal.com]

*This is so wrong it's insane, and she stares at him for a moment.*

That's what you don't get. Right and wrong apply to you, Kira. You only think they don't.

*She uncurls, puts her hands on the floor. She thinks she might be able to stand.*

[curtainwizard.livejournal.com]

[That name, that still feels like Light's secret after all this time: the way she spits it at him makes it an insult. It's the same way Near had used it, as if the plosive and the flap taste foul. Except from Mel's mouth, in this place, at this time, the hate gives him the strength to smile. That's me. Kira, the god of the new world. Writhing on the floor in an interdimensional clusterfuck, but it's not forever.

He's nowhere near being able to stand - turning over, in itself, drained him. Curled on the spot, the undertone's almost a promise.]

You're more like me than you'll ever dream. Right and wrong are what you say they are, isn't that so? Only one of us can be right.

[chilichoc.livejournal.com]

I am damn well not like you. *Part of her knows this isn't true, and her denial has a particular vehemence.* No one gets to pick and choose what's right. And no one gets to escape from what they've done. You should know that by now.

[curtainwizard.livejournal.com]

[He can hear the lady protesting too much, telling him the attack's gone home. And with a superlative lack of self-knowledge, he knows what Mel's saying is twisted, irrelevant: the chattering drivel of someone who doesn't know she's defeated.]

True, it's true. He paid for what he did. Still too late for me, though.

[A very slight singsong note creeps into the half-whisper, because Light can't see his own defeat to acknowledge it. He's pulling his cloak of lies back around himself - the ones he tells others, and the ones he tells himself.]

[chilichoc.livejournal.com]

Not him. *She doesn't know who he means: Mello, Mikami, Matsuda? It's not important.* You.

*She gets to her feet, goes and stands over him. She's not going to hurt him; it's enough that they both know she could.*

You'll see someday.

[curtainwizard.livejournal.com]

[It's the other Mello he's thinking of: the one who died back home, and burned, the way Mel just saw. Light flops onto his back again, to look up at her. Pain all through him, sparkles in his vision, and her behind them. No point trying to move: she could shoot him before he ever got to the door. Besides, she isn't going to do it. Why go through all that just to humiliate himself?

They had no right. No understanding. They didn't beat me, they were just ... lucky. It was random.]

Or maybe you will, Mel. One day, perhaps you'll listen, and you'll see it. Wouldn't that be something?

[It's almost, almost mocking: he wants her to go: to give him space to collect himself up and get out. But there's a hint of something else, too: I'd tell you, if you only asked. If you were honest with yourself.]

[chilichoc.livejournal.com]

*She hears that note in his voice: the tone of someone who thinks they hold a trump card. Her curiosity's enough to hold her for a moment longer.*

What is it you think I'll see?

[curtainwizard.livejournal.com]

[Contemptuous and overconfident, he's matching her. As if someone like you could dare speak back to me. As if I could be wrong about any of this. "Someday", indeed. ]

One day, Mel. Not today.

[He can't help it: he wants to convince her. He wants to hear her admit it for herself: that Light was right, that Kira was justice, all of it. What would it take? How would he break her, if she did?]

[chilichoc.livejournal.com]

If what you just went through still hasn't taught you anything, you're farther gone than even I thought.

*She steps around him, delicately, as if contact with him might dirty her boots, and goes out the door.*

[curtainwizard.livejournal.com]

[The door closes behind her. Before pulling himself back into a ball, Light watches her leave. Will she be back? Who will she bring? He needs to pull himself together, gather up the two books from the entrance and get out. It hasn't been twenty minutes since he woke, and every effort to sit - which he tries, now that Mel's gone - knocks him back to the floor with pain like knives.

Slowly, he catches his breath again, and concentrates on Mel, and her accusations, and the things he wants to do to her: words and blood and knives. There's nothing other people's good luck can teach me, except that it's time for my own.]