Work Text:
The panda on the poster stares back at him. It has a funny look, a remarkable symmetry — black ears, eyes, limbs. Everything that comes in pairs is black, and the rest a woolly, half-worn shade of white. Those button eyes have a way of drawing you in. Cuteness — or better called Kindchenschema — assaults the brain with the cynical precision of pornography. As Mello lets himself be assaulted, he feels a dull-edged, warm flow of oxytocin radiating through his limbs. Near would have commented on this. "The human brain is a machinery, a symphony of neurotransmitters," he could almost hear the silver-haired boy in his head, "Pull the right strings, and a matching sound will follow."
Mello yawns. The oxytocin made him. And he is suddenly hyper-aware of his sleep-deprived body.
Mello is unsure what to do with this awareness.
He looks outside the large glass windows. High winds blow past, bending distant trees, yet the airport at 3AM remains a picture of stasis: pale lights, low ambient hum, sparse footsteps. Somewhere in time, a butterfly must have flapped her wings, a small perturbation amplified by the mystery of meteorology into this violent storm that delayed Mello's flight. The staff is unable to promise an ETA, and he, like many passengers, finds himself trapped inside this still-life painting. It is almost comical, he muses: a leather-clad, half-scarred former mafioso, a man of action, running half-empty, sitting in an upholstered private lounge, watching a giant panda poster. What is next? A meditation on the origin of species? Was there ever an intelligent creator that engineered this funny creature in the photo? And if there was, why did He make Mello?
What a useless thought.
Yet it is the kind of useless thought produced by a useless man at a useless moment of his life: Kira had been dead; Matt had been gone; Near had been drawn with. The slave-gladiator, promised liberty should he prevail, now is jailed by liberty itself; he simply does not know what to do with it.
Mello rises from the seat. Back and forth he paces in his invisible cage. If only something would lunge at him — yet the lounge stays politely still. He has come to resent even the thick, white carpet that he tramples on. It does not fight back; it just absorbs. Its obedience feels like arrogance, like that of his silver-haired rival.
He has to do something about it. He must.
It is but a short walk from the private lounge to the gate kiosk. A short exchange of words and his ticket is cancelled. He does not mind being brutish. He does not even mind being nasty.
Outside, the rainstorm has intensified into a violent thrash. Shreds of cloud hang against the dark, heavy sky, cut through by lightning. Yet Mello finds himself at home with the loudness of it all. The drive to the hotel is a reheating of cold memories: a cinematic car chase, the one they used to be in. Someone is onto him, closing in, threatening a capture. Once they do, they would shoot him, just like they did to —
Mello stops himself mid-thought. It's over, he tells himself. All of it.
The city lights outside the car window are smeared into long, neon wounds. In thirty minutes, he will check in using a pseudo-name. He will throw himself into bed, boots still on, waiting for sleep to take him like a hostage. New things will come his way: bigger targets than Kira, tougher wars against Near. There has to be. No matter what Near does, whatever his future endeavors are, he will find himself haunted. Mello will forever be the ghost in Near's machine, the shadow that never detaches. Near cannot exist in a vacuum, and Mello refuses to exist in a peace he did not ask for.
With a familiar and reassuring sharpness, Mello's brain begins to grind. An action plan rapidly sketches itself in his head: rest, recharge, acquisition of intel, the precise tracking of the silver-haired boy. He counts the steps like a soldier counting bullets in a losing battle.
It is all very actionable. It is all very solvable.
He shuts his eyes upon arriving at the hotel parking lot. The car hums, the wipers slash at the glass with a rhythmic, indifferent violence, and Mello sits perfectly still, bracing for an impact that will never come.
Author's Note: This is a rewrite of the same piece posted 4 months ago in my old account. It's a delight to see the progress one has made through weeks of practice.
