Fanfic
Title: Alphabet
Rating: M
Word Count: 10,133 and growing
Summary: V for Vendetta/Death Note Crossover. L isn't in England to take on V. He's technically gathering evidence against Sutler. But when Matt gets caught up (quite literally) in the action at the BTN, he may have to broaden his focus. The question becomes, what is justice, anyways?
Warnings: Language, violence, drug use, not nearly ENOUGH smut (but some) and more idealists than at an NDP rally. And that's just SO FAR. Gratuitous use of Allen Ginsberg, who may be officially called the inspiration for this story. Features Matt/Mello, a kidnapped and heavily drugged Matt, a rather irritated Near and a still-immature-as-ever-despite-being-almost-thirty L.
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I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
This is what it feels like to be poised on the brink. His mask is ready and waiting by the door. He has sharpened each and every one of his knives. His clothes are neatly pressed, jacket on a wooden hanger in his closet.
For the moment, he stands in Valerie’s alcove, as he thinks of it, and dutifully tends to his roses, that until now have been her roses. As he gently tips the watering can, he wonders which of the blossoms he will pick first.
This is what it feels like to be poised on the brink. V expected that there would be more worry than this, he expected to be pacing and duelling imaginary foes.
Instead, everything is still. This is what it feels like to be poised on the brink.
Chapter One
October 31st
Apartment of L Lawliet
Japan
The world has become a darker place. This is one of those undeniable truths. Everyone pretends not to realize, expects no one to acknowledge, and just generally don’t like to think about. It’s not just the war; that’s over, and America is what one might call a ruined country, now. It’s not just England, with the fascists and Nazi-esque policies. It’s not just that the crime rates in Japan spiked dramatically since Kira’s justice vanished so suddenly.
There’s something else wrong.
L chalks it up to the rolling waves of refugees. It’s the men and women coming in from ruined America, and anyone of colour, or of a different creed, running away from England and her concentration camps.
Part of it, of course, is the orphanages that have sprung up, practically on every street corner. Asia has reached out her arms, and caught the drowning people, and is struggling now to keep above the flood. Everyone knows it, and tries not to resent the food they give to the starving, but luxury is becoming sparse and very few people are happy.
That is what is different. No one smiles in the streets any more. L thinks back to sitting in a coffee shop with his enemy-friend, his feet curled up. He cannot remember if he was eating or not, but he knows that he enjoyed being able to sit leisurely and verbally tangle. To do that all afternoon, and have no one around them notice or care.
It’s not the changes to more modest means that has been bothering Lawliet. New buildings have become a luxury of the past; now he works out of an apartment in Tokyo. But he can do what he does with just a few computers and his very well placed net of informants. It’s not even Watari’s death, though he will miss his friend terribly. Most surprisingly it’s not that nothing he does any more can nearly measure up to catching Kira. He had thought that that would bother him, having reached his peak at twenty five.
What it is, he can say almost certainly, is how little good he feels like he’s doing. Discovering who is committing the murders in such and so a county, when he knows which politicians are withholding grain shipments to the United States has him feeling, well, nearly completely useless.
This, above all else, is why he says ‘yes.’ He doesn’t even need to cut the transmission from the secretary general to read the faxes he’s been sent. He simply bends down, speaks into the device he still uses to scramble what he sounds like, and says he’ll do it.
Funny, how much less grief he gets for his secrecy, ever since it was discovered that you could murder a man just by knowing a man and seeing his face. If that’s all it takes to use a Death Note, then people have started figuring, what else is out there?
Half an hour later, he has the three best and brightest people he knows, sitting on the couches Watari chose for him before they found out the cancer had spread. Mello is scratching at the place where the threads are growing ragged on the arm rest. Near is sitting up straight; somewhere, he grew out of a lot of his nervous habits. But L knows he carries a plastic toy superman in his pocket, where so ever he should go.
“This isn’t what we do normally,” says Matt, curiously, stretching out on L’s and extinguishing his cigarette in the ashtray. His long fingers flip through the pages L has provided them. Near is reading closely. Mello is glancing between the first sentence of each paragraph and Matt, like he’s trying to read his expression more attentively than the words. Matt speaks again, “And it’s nothing like what you do on your own. You’ve asked for our help before, L, but this is fucking huge.”
L nods, and stirs his tea. He doesn’t usually let them get away with these kinds of questions. Usually, the case is they want to help, or they don’t. But Matt, you see, showed up on his doorstep, unannounced, the day of Watari’s funeral. L hadn’t even known he didn’t want to be alone, but somehow Matt had. So Matt had pushed in, with four full grocery bags, and had dragged him into the kitchen and spent a whole week with him cooking cheesecake, until L could do it exactly right and just the way he liked. Since then, Matt has been able to get away with a lot of things, as L is extremely fond of him.
“That is why I am asking for the help of the three of you. It might be overambitious to pursue this alone.” L is aware that this is a massive, disastrously huge understatement.
Mello glares at him, calling him on it. But surprisingly, he’s not the first one to voice his objections. Near has set the papers down on the coffee table, and reached for his own cup of tea. He drinks it with milk, but not sugar, which L considers to be absolutely disgusting.
Aside from that, L is also very fond of Near, whose voice is level as ever;
“This is very dangerous. I assume you have already agreed to become involved, regardless of which of us join with you?” When L nods, once, and makes a small affirmative noise, this seems to be good enough for Near. “Well, then perhaps we should go over what information we have. Adam Sutler came to power in...”
“Wait a fucking second,” Mello snaps, and drops a hand onto Matt’s shoulder. L has noticed that Mello always needs to be touching Matt when he wants to stand up to something L is doing. Matt seems not to mind, and they rest of the people L works with have learned not to assume that it means Matt thinks the same has he does.
He also knows that this is not the case when Mello and Near argue, which is worrisome because it either suggests that he does not completely respect Near’s opinion, still, or that he is following L’s requests not because they are the logical thing but out of some misplaced sense of duty. Mello, though twenty now, is still sometimes a child. If he complains that L treats him patronizingly, then that is why.
“I don’t want to rush into this, L. I don’t want you to rush into this. You owe it to us to explain what the hell you’re thinking, taking this case. Especially since you’ve always preached positivist theory every second word. What happens happens, it only matters that it is in due process of law.” He is not quite imitating L, but he is certainly feeding him his own words back.
“Adam Sutler is a war criminal.” L is surprised to hear the steel in his own voice. He didn’t really mean for it to be there, didn’t mean for Mello and Matt to both flinch. Near, at least, is still and silent, but Near usually is. “We would be employed under the authority of the Hague, Mello, who are an authority that I trust. And more than that.” Mello is already nodding, but he continues, “I do not hesitate to admit that personally, I want to do this. If we succeed in gathering enough evidence of the mass murders, well, I think that this is justice. What do you think?”
“If we get killed,” Mello replies, “you are not fucking blaming yourself. Promise me that and Matt and me are both in.”
And this is why he likes Mello. For knowing him better than he knows himself sometimes, and for being blunt and caring in his own awkward, all-elbows sort of way. He smiles at him, and of course he doesn’t promise, because they all know it would be empty.
Of course L would blame himself. Maybe, when he was twenty five, and before Yagami Light was dragged off, bleeding and screaming, he might have rationalized it. That was when he had Watari with him constantly. Maybe, back before Wammy’s House was evacuated, and the children smuggled across the border and then across the world, all the way to L’s frivolous investigation building, monument to the Kira case, before losing their doctor, and Roger along the way, and four children to soldier’s fire.
There is nothing like witnessing death to make you realize what a dark thing it really is. It only takes once to drive home that a friend is never a statistic or a casualty, they are always a friend. So, he’ll just have to do this without getting any of them killed. But he isn’t going to make that promise.
“There are more serious questions being asked as to the nature of the first viral outbreak in the old United Kingdom. Rumours are circling in international circles that this might have been a scare tactic initially employed by someone very close to the political party. On this matter, our instructions are to gather as much information as we can.”
He curls his toes, feeling the soft fabric of the sofa cushion underneath his feet. Threadbare and tattered though it might be in places, he hasn’t had the heart to get rid of this chair. Watari knew him, exactly what he wanted and needed before he himself did, and he has tried a few and never found one as comfortable as it.
“Although it is not top priority, genuine evidence of the link will prove to be instrumental in breaking the ties of loyalty the chancellor has established with his people.” The implication being, of course, that if they find nothing, the political minds in charge of the ‘re-stabilization’ of England will invent something. This is not something for L to judge. He doesn’t play politics, he digs up the truth. They can do with it what they want.
Matt sighs, and nods anyways, and so does Near, and Mello will too. Even if he’s remaining stubbornly silent right now, watching L. L judiciously ignores him and adds another sugar cube to his tea.
“We leave the day after tomorrow. Meet here at nine am, and discreetly, please. Bring only what you can carry easily, that you would need for a long journey. We will be smuggled independently into the country, so as not to attract notice. It is likely that you will not see me for some time. My ethnicity will make things more complicated.” Still stirring the sugar into his tea, he climbs to his feet. They rise, because they know that this is their cue, and he shows them to his door.
“Matt, please bring any equipment you think you will need to gain access to heavily encrypted files. In short, the best you have that is still portable. We will divide it among the three of us, to take what we can. I am very happy you agreed to help.” He allows a smile.
“I think you will be instrumental in finding us what we need to know.”
Matt reaches into his pocket for another cigarette, with an awkward, bashful sort of shrug. The pads of Mello’s fingers make small patterns on the skin just above his collar, and L wonders, not for the first time, if the two don’t communicate like this somehow. If this is morse code or letters, Braille, or some language they have invented between them.
Near hangs back, which is unusual, but it is not unusual for Near to be the one to break the little rituals the three of them have established, for when they work together.
Despite L’s unconcerned slouch, he is short enough that he has to go up on his tiptoes to press a kiss to L’s cheek. This is an unusually affectionate gesture, for any of them, and especially for Near. Except between Matt and Mello, but of course that’s a different scenario entirely.
“Happy birthday, L.”
L is annoyed that he knows, it’s confidential, and charmed that he remembers, and settles for smiling at him as he hurries out the door, pulling his coat on, and his gloves out of his pockets.
Once they are safely out the door, he turns back to his work. But, because it is his birthday, he decides that maybe just this once he will make a different kind cake, and read while he cooks. He is very much in the mood for something chocolate.
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who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war
He puts exquisite detail into the explosives, twisting a wire here and there, and placing the chemicals at the base of the support pillars, so that there will be nothing left standing when he is through.
The fireworks are the finishing touch, around the feet of Madam Justice, who stands proud, as though she were not some ruined woman. She was his first true love, you might say. In his mind, he can almost see a blush painting her stony cheeks. She is white, he thinks, with fear, for he has found out what she really is.
V smiles at her with his mask, but not with his mouth, and sweeps a bow before leaving the roof.
He has a new mistress now, and her name is Anarchy.
Chapter Two
November 3rd
The White Cliffs of Dover
England
The tops of the cliffs are lined with barbed wire, and Near can see sniper towers from between the shoulders of the other people who are crammed onto this boat with him. If anyone was foolish enough to try to approach the island by unauthorized boat, they would be shot before they could touch ground. He hopes L knows better than to have one of the others try to make it in that way. Even in the dim morning light, the people above them watching, if they have to right equipment, can probably see the expression on his face.
It’s only the knowledge that Matt is somewhere on this boat with him that keeps him from panicking. Near never really travels alone, and L decided, only after seeing his mildly panicked expression, that it might be alright for two of them to cross on the same boat, provided they did not speak to each other.
At customs, Near is searched, and searched again, and grilled on his story, and asked all manner of questions. L gave him the answers to all of them: Near’s name is Nathan Fairlie, his parents were Londoners who were vacationing when the trouble started, and didn’t want to even risk exposing him to the virus, since he suffered leukemia as a child and was easily prone to infections. His father was killed in one of the bombings in the Ukraine when he was five, and his mother and he lived in France. Until recently, that is, she died in an automobile accent. Now he wants to return to his glorious heritage and all that, because England is where he belongs.
The only thing that’s surprising is how easily the guards buy it. Matt will be coming out now, with an equally sob-patriotic story, calculated just right to be sad enough to get them in, bitter enough to seem realistic, and backed up with just enough evidence that no one asks question. When he finds Matt, he’s in line at a nearby chip shop, buying breakfast for two, like he said he would be. He’s humming ‘oranges and lemons’ under his breath, and Near has to not laugh, because big brother might really be watching.
They eat as quickly as they can, without being suspicious, and then set out. They have a long way to go, after all, and if they want to be there before nightfall and curfew, then there’s no time to waste.
If either of them had any doubts as to whether or not they were doing the right thing, they do not now. The primary mode of transportation these days, from the countryside and in, is a skytrain. Matt looks out the windows and snaps pictures of buildings that are abandoned and the sloughed around barbed wire, with the camera he has hidden in his shirt collar. Everywhere, there are fences, keeping people in and keeping people out. Warning signs for chemical leaks, radiation, possible biohazards, and forbidden areas all litter the ground.
It changes like night and day, once they get into London. Near figures this is where the rich people must live, because the soldier presence also increases dramatically from one mile to the next. He can see police officers in plainclothes, pretending like they’re civilians on nearly every block. ‘Fingermen,’ is what L’s reports called them, and Near knows he has to be very careful of them.
By the time they’re off the skytrain, it’s mid afternoon and the crowds of people that had been flocking the trendy little restaurants have dispersed back into their offices, lunch over with. They walk, and then cab through the streets, and watch as they begin to fill up again with people, in smart shoes and three piece suits.
There are posters nearly every block, each of them preaching something that Near doesn’t really want to read right now. He has to wonder, faintly, if someone in the new administration has read 1984. It’s not as though such a revolutionary book is actually available to the average English citizen, but they have to be at least partially aware of the irony of all the similarities, don’t they? Perhaps it was someone’s idea of a joke. Albeit, a morbid one.
He already hates this new country, and he grew up here. This is nothing like what everything was back at the orphanage. These are the same people, tea time is at the same time in the afternoon, you still drink it with lemon instead of cream and sugar (Near thinks L will probably die) but things are so very, not the same.
For one thing, the minute the sun begins to set, everyone starts rushing, and vanishing. You do not go out after dark, Matt and Near learn in this baptism by fire, and suddenly every man on every street corner seems ominous, and they are walking so fast that they’re nearly running. It’s just three blocks now, to the apartment where they’re going to stay holed up.
“I’d wave for a taxi,” Matt murmurs to him, low and out of breath from the pace they’ve been setting for what feels like an hour, now, “but somehow I think we might be out of luck.” The streets are deserted from cars for as far as the eye can see. “Which is actually really funny, because I used to go clubbing about eight blocks from here, and you would never find a livelier place, not as far as the eye could see.”
Near knew this used to be an urban center, but thinking of it that way, with people like Mello and Matt dancing and drinking and smoking their drugs here makes it seem even sadder. That this all used to be alive like those two were, and now it’s nothing but a skeleton of a city. Polished, certainly, to a gleaming bone-white, and essentially crime free in a way Kira didn’t even manage, but lying dead in it’s casket rather than sleeping. Near bets Matt wishes it were Mello he was running with, because they could look at each other in their secret language and be alright.
“When this is over, hey,” Matt says, ignoring the fact that Near hasn’t replied to anything he’s said for a good half hour, “can I convince you to come to a club with me?” Near practically trips over a curb, losing track of his feet in his surprise. Matt grabs him by the backpack and drags him upright, and they’re a block and a half away now. Near starts looking at street numbers, and is busily counting them down as the two of them walk, so he has something to do other than strain to listen. He thinks he can hear footsteps somewhere, that aren’t just the echo of their own. There’s no way to know without looking, and there’s nothing more suspicious than staring over your shoulder in a dark street. Keep moving, he knows, and do not look, and he will make it out of this. He answers Matt, in a whisper, “maybe a bar, but nowhere if I have to dance,” and is surprisingly gratified by the short laugh he gets in return. Also, he panics a little at the way it reverberates in the hollow street.
He can see the door. He can definitely hear someone coming up behind them. He glances over his shoulder, gasps, and Matt bolts like a jackrabbit. He has his hand around Near’s arm, so Near is dragged physically up the steps to their door. Matt, bless him, already had the keys out, in his pocket, so they can stumble through the threshold in a matter of seconds, and slam the door shut on whoever might have been behind them.
If indeed it was more than a shadow. Near is forced to admit he can’t quite be sure. Fear makes the mind play tricks on a person, he is not invulnerable to it. Whether there was anyone there or not, there is no noise now except the pounding of his heart. Matt, who’s holding his wrist tight, can obviously feel it too. The older man lets out a shaky sigh, and closes the latch, before sagging against the wall.
“Close call?”
They both jump about a foot, unintentionally answering Mello’s question with crystal clarity as he comes down the stairs. He’s obviously been here, their new home, for a while. He’s wearing his usual clothes, and he’d never have been stupid enough to try to sneak across the gap between this place and the rest of the world in something as obvious as that. Near can tell, by the way Matt’s looking at him, that he thinks his cockiness is reassuring. Like being almost arrested eight hours in to the venture that was going to take months, possibly years, was a minor inconvenience, not an unpardonable sign of incompetence on Matt and Near’s part.
“We should have stopped somewhere,” Matt says, knowing that Near’s thinking it, and probably that Mello is too, given the way he grabs Matt’s bag and swings it over his shoulder. Mello only carries people’s bags when he feels like he needs to do something to help them, which usually means he was worried. “Or moved faster. But God, I hate it out there.”
“Yeah,” whispers Mello, and drags Matt in by his jacket to give him a kiss. They stagger back against the wall, neither one of them able to keep their balance properly, with their feet twined around bags and shoes, and backpacks throwing them all a-kilter. Near suddenly feels like he’s intruding, so ventures up the stairs to see if L is there and if he’s set everything up or not.
L, as it turns out, is present, but most everything else is scattered around him in a ring. He is sitting, curled up in his customary position on their one chair, sipping tea. An electronic coffee pot is burbling on the floor, where it’s plugged into the socket. It has a cardboard box of sugar cubes on top of it, lots of which already seem to have been stolen. Near looks at the clutter around, and at the detective, who seems to be in something like a trance, and decides if any cleaning is going to be done tonight it’ll probably be by him. Especially from the sound of the door to Mello’s and Matt’s bedroom (he assumes) slamming. If it wasn’t their bedroom, it will be now, after what they’re probably about to do.
The furnishings are sparse, but they have what is necessary. Walking into the closet sized kitchen, Near finds their fridge. It’s empty, except for Mello’s chocolate. Chocolate is too sweet for Near. He makes up his mind to make Matt and Mello go out with a grocery list tomorrow, if only to keep L from going into sugar withdrawal. He fiddles with the toy in his pocket, and goes to find himself paper and a pen, somewhere in the detritus scattered around L.
The detective starts violently when Near appears in front of him, as though he hadn’t seen him come in. Near would not have put this past him, not at all.
“Are Mello and Matt having intercourse?” L asks, sounding incredibly startled, and Near pauses for a moment, to listen to the silence from their room. It’s not that they’re making any noise, it’s that Mello isn’t yelling. Or even talking, or anything; you can tell, because he has a voice that is usually raised in some sort of emotional response, and that always carries. Near smiles.
“Odds indicate, yes.” He bends for a pad of paper, and picks up a pencil too, and makes his way over to the old looking sofa. It’s rather alarming, to sit and then continue sinking, until he worries he might just be swallowed up whole, and L, who is chewing on his thumb and looking at nothing, will have to waste valuable time investigating how Near disappeared out of a locked house with all the windows bolted shut. However, he eventually manages to catch hold of the arm rest and haul himself back upwards towards daylight, and to something approaching a sitting position.
“Be careful,” warns L, quiet and belated, and Near wonders if they brought a dartboard with them or if there’s anywhere he could get one, because he hasn’t gotten any better over the years, but he really wants to be able to throw something sharp and pointy right now.
That’s the trouble with being eighteen, playing with toys, and generally the most mature person in the room.
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who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in
Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their
torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares
As he stands on the roof with the girl, Evey, rescued from the street beneath, V can’t help but smile behind the mask he’s wearing and survey his artwork. For it is art.
The sky is full of smoke and light, the air is full of sound, and the street is empty of police officers and fingermen. They aren’t as quick to respond as they like to pretend, are they? He can see people in windows, and in doorways, looking out and trying to see through the veil that’s been pulled over their eyes. He imagines he can hear the sound of the knots Sutler has tied beginning to fray.
One man is standing in the middle of the street. His hair is a mess, his posture is hunched, he’s tapping a foot along with the music, and V can tell that he isn’t afraid, and while it doesn’t entirely make sense, it fills him with a burning sort of hope. There are still people in this country who do not flinch and cower.
His music is not falling on deaf ears.
Chapter Three
November 5th
Jordan Towers
England
“I could have totally done it, you know,” Mello mutters to Matt, mutinously, adjusting the tie his boyfriend forced him into, because ‘the raving pimp look is out these days, Mello,’ as the hacker so kindly put it, and they’re trying to be subtle about getting into the newscast center.
Mello doesn’t really fit in at all, and Matt is only a little better off. They’d be more careful if they were trying to accomplish anything serious, or if their ID’s were made by anyone other than L, or if there was any chance that something could go wrong. But really, it’s a standard setup; Mello gets them in, with L’s help, Matt does his funky computer shit while Mello waits at the door and makes sure no one bugs him, they learn everything they can and they get out.
It’s actually made easier, not more complicated, by the terrorist bombings the night before. If it were a parliamentary building this might not be the case, but because it was an ‘emergency demolition’ so what could they possibly have to protect themselves again? There’s a slew of people around that normally wouldn’t be; experts are here to testify, and working crews to take responsibility for the fireworks and every other sprinkle and garnish and cherry that the government could find to put on top of the cowgirl.
“I don’t know why you’re laughing,” Matt says, as he rearranges wires to feed into his little devices, and coaxes images up onto the computer screen with tentative keystrokes, “but if you’re planning anything, Mello, for fuck’s sake, don’t.”
“I’m not,” complains Mello, “and for once that’s true. I’m just cackling because we are mad, talented evil geniuses.”
“You’re a fucking freak,” Matt complains, doing something with a portable hard drive hat Mello doesn’t recognize, “and I can’t smoke in here because it’d set the fire alarm off, and I’ll apologize later but for the love of God, this is finicky and I can’t smoke.” His voice is level and steady and not strained at all, because Matt scarcely ever sounds unnerved, but Mello knows him well enough to know it’s time to go check the hallway for, um, anything. So long as he’s not in Matt’s hair for the next thirteen and a half seconds. It’s not like he’s short of things to think about.
For one thing, there’s L’s reaction to the destruction of the Old Bailey. Despite his initial protestations that he was perfectly alright, (having returned to the apartment covered in a great deal of soot,) it didn’t take a genius to tell that the detective was shaken. For one thing, he might have nearly been caught in the explosion. None of them asked him how close he came.
For another, when L devoted his entire life to the pursuit of justice, without regard to political pressure or tensions, and having for the first time slightly bent this rule, which had previously been held inviolate? Well, Mello doubted very much that L was a superstitious man, but given the light hearted comments about pathetic fallacy, humour betrayed by a slightly shocky look to the man’s expressive eyes, Mello doubted that he was entirely immune, in this instance.
Who wouldn’t be? And no matter how much he liked to pretend, the detective was only human. Perhaps one of the very best of them all, but still, only that. And how was Mello to know that Near would be repeating the same phrase to him, in just under an hour?
Near had to stitch one of the cuts on the bottom of L’s feet, where he’d stepped on a bit of glass from a broken window, when fleeing the scene in his customary, barefoot hurry. L watched him do it, not complaining, but chewing on his thumb a little bit nervously. Matt sat in the computer chair, pulling up footage from the security cameras he already had access to, of the man standing on the roof with the girl, conducting his invisible orchestra. Mello paced and closed his eyes, and imagined he could feel the heat of the flames on his face, only to open them to the disappointment of a water incandescent bulb.
That’s why he leapt on the idea of going to the BTN in the midst of all the chaos, because his head was just screaming ‘now now now’ and he wanted to do something, anything. Which led to Matt, doing his wacky computer shit, and Mello at the other end of the hall, and the following fiasco.
Here’s how it happened:
Mello’s train of thought was abruptly interrupted as he reached the end of the hallway. He had peered around the corner just in time to hear a piercing alarm split the air. Naturally assuming that Matt had accidentally tripped a wire, he spun around to make his way back to the room.
Only to have two doorways between him and it open, and a flood of people pour into the hallway, all making their way towards him. There is very little that is more conspicuous than making your way the wrong way through a crowd of people who are being told to evacuate a building, and since the whole thing was naturally going to be captured on surveillance cameras, there was very little to do but stand by the corner and hope for a glimpse of red hair coming out of the room.
Mello saw Matt come out. He knows he did. Matt even gave him a perplexed little quirk of a smile, as if to say ‘fucked if I know what happened,’ and started towards him. Mello turned and started making his way slowly down the hall, confident that Matt knew to catch up with him slowly and naturally, and if he couldn’t manage it, that they’d meet on the street outside, and get the fuck out of there.
Twenty minutes later, Mello was still standing in the street, by himself and panicking. Any second now, Matt, any second now.
Nineteen minutes earlier, back inside, Matt was following Mello out. He had his equipment with him, he had the information slipped into his boot. He was even fairly sure that it hadn’t been him that had tripped whatever alarm was set off. For one thing, he’d probably have noticed it, and for another, the data had continued downloading even after the klaxon sounded. That didn’t strike him as an ‘oh no, we are being hacked’ sort of reaction.
The policemen convinced him of it even further. Not only did one not usually get armed officers running to the rescue for information leaks in news towers, (you generally got the pudgy, security officer type, like the piece of work at the front desk) but they arrived way too fast, and they weren’t even looking for him. Obviously, he wasn’t sure of this at first, but the woman racing past him through the hallway with the man chasing her was a pretty big hint. Best of luck to her, and all, but this was causing him a fair amount of relief.
His first mistake was stopping. Even with the strange message being broadcast on the override, he should have kept going, in retrospect. Instead, he stood in the hallway, watching the screen suspended in the corner with a combination of admiration and disdain; V, congratulations on exploiting it, government, never make anything that can be used against you. Basic, basic rule of technological thumb.
His second mistake was listening. Not that V’s words stirred some great chord of passion in his heart; he wasn’t in this with L’s conviction, or Mello’s passion, or Near’s single-mindedness. He was just sort of here, for the ride and the game and the being constantly around and having sex with Mello and the adrenaline and the good, clean fun of the hack. But he really shouldn’t have stopped to listen, because even if he’s the calm one, the ambivalent one, the one who just wants a pack of smokes and a game or two, this V character is a hell of a public speaker.
Matt chews absently on his thumbnail while he listens, a habit he picked up from L. He thinks, knows, really, that this development is probably going to make what they’re doing a whole lot trickier, and also a whole lot more interesting. Neither of these are particularly bad things.
So, cockiness is his third mistake. He isn’t paying attention to where he’s going, either, and so he crashes head on into a woman coming his direction. She takes off around the corner and he heads the opposite way. This isn’t the last of Evey Hammond’s involvement in the story, but for now, it’s time for her to depart from the course she could have taken.
Back to Matt. He isn’t paying attention to where he’s going, and isn’t looking around the corners before he takes them, which is a stupid fucking rookie mistake, (his fourth) and then there he is. In the hallway, with a caped terrorist in a mask, and a police officer pointing a gun at him.
Matt thinks absently that the stupid terrorist is laughing at him, and then he realizes that right, that’s just the Guy Fawkes mask, and this means that the man is probably manic depressive with delusions of grandeur and that Matt is crazy for even doing this. But what the hell, he’s never liked police officers anyways. If L asks he’ll just say it’s a bi-product of time spent in the foster care system and he’s staying true to his roots, or something. L isn’t likely to ask, and neither is Near, but Mello is probably going to want to know what the fuck he was thinking.
Truthfully, he was thinking of rash, irrepressible Mello, who always hit first and asked questions later and who he was clearly going to spend the rest of his natural life with, even if it killed him. Because if Mello was here and it was his new favourite terrorist who had a gun pointed at him, there wouldn’t have been any hesitation. This seemed like a bit of a double standard, from Matt’s point of view, so he decided it was kind of his turn to just get into a little bit of trouble.
‘Little.’ Right.
He grabs the policeman by the shoulder with his left hand, and turns him enough to get him off balance and put him at what’s a very, very convenient angle to cold cock him one to the jaw. Matt has been told he can deliver a hell of a punch. Most often by Mello, who tends to get punched an awful lot, so would probably know, the amount of bar fights he starts. It certainly sends this man staggering backwards, head thrown back. He glances up to see what V’s doing, if the man is smart he’ll be running, but he’s just standing there, with the fake grin painted on, watching events like some damnable Julius Caesar.
He’s very much prepared to predict that V didn’t see this one coming, for all that he must have prepared and planned. The emergency broadcast system wasn’t something you could come at unprepared, the message had to be pre-recorded. And that’s not even mentioning the effort it would take to destroy the Old Bailey, and to get in here without the benefit of a nice fake identity and a press pass, like Matt and Mello just did. Mello’s probably outside waiting for him.
Matt is still thinking of Mello when the gun goes off. Mostly, he’s just aware of the sense of impact. The police officer has obviously recovered at least some, while Matt stood staring at V. Not enough to aim properly, or he’s just really bad at it, one of the two. His shoulder rolls back, and there’s a moment of nothing, and then searing pain radiating outwards in vicious, lava-stabs.
“Well fuck me,” says Matt, as V moves in a swirl of black cloth. The policeman is unconscious on the floor in seconds. Maybe it’s shorter, or longer, Matt’s sense of time is going funny. He’s suddenly aware that he’s on the ground, and that there’s blood running between his fingers. That must be why the time is an issue. It’s blood loss, or shock, or whatever it is you get first when someone shoots you. This sure as hell isn’t the first time Matt’s been shot, but it never gets any more pleasant, does it? At least it’s his shoulder, it’s probably missed most vital stuff.
His last impressions are of a laughing face, swimming into his vision. He manages to mumble, “What the fuck do you think you’re laughing at?” and he doesn’t usually let himself get this upset over the little things, but the whole bullet in the shoulder is kind of hurting, and the bastard is laughing at him. That’s all he has, before he loses consciousness entirely, unaware of the fingers
Later, two police officers review the tapes of V bending over the fallen man in the hallway, and quickly putting pressure on his shoulder, doing some very rudimentary work at making sure he doesn’t bleed out, and then eventually picking him up. It looked, for a moment, like he might be left behind, but then the two disappear out of sight, the young man’s head rolling back at what looks like a rather uncomfortable angle.
Mello stands outside the BTN, frozen, holding on to a lamp post with white knuckles, watching the building’s exits with blind panic, until Near finally comes and leads him away.
Rating: M
Word Count: 10,133 and growing
Summary: V for Vendetta/Death Note Crossover. L isn't in England to take on V. He's technically gathering evidence against Sutler. But when Matt gets caught up (quite literally) in the action at the BTN, he may have to broaden his focus. The question becomes, what is justice, anyways?
Warnings: Language, violence, drug use, not nearly ENOUGH smut (but some) and more idealists than at an NDP rally. And that's just SO FAR. Gratuitous use of Allen Ginsberg, who may be officially called the inspiration for this story. Features Matt/Mello, a kidnapped and heavily drugged Matt, a rather irritated Near and a still-immature-as-ever-despite-being-almost-thirty L.
---------------------------------
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
This is what it feels like to be poised on the brink. His mask is ready and waiting by the door. He has sharpened each and every one of his knives. His clothes are neatly pressed, jacket on a wooden hanger in his closet.
For the moment, he stands in Valerie’s alcove, as he thinks of it, and dutifully tends to his roses, that until now have been her roses. As he gently tips the watering can, he wonders which of the blossoms he will pick first.
This is what it feels like to be poised on the brink. V expected that there would be more worry than this, he expected to be pacing and duelling imaginary foes.
Instead, everything is still. This is what it feels like to be poised on the brink.
Chapter One
October 31st
Apartment of L Lawliet
Japan
The world has become a darker place. This is one of those undeniable truths. Everyone pretends not to realize, expects no one to acknowledge, and just generally don’t like to think about. It’s not just the war; that’s over, and America is what one might call a ruined country, now. It’s not just England, with the fascists and Nazi-esque policies. It’s not just that the crime rates in Japan spiked dramatically since Kira’s justice vanished so suddenly.
There’s something else wrong.
L chalks it up to the rolling waves of refugees. It’s the men and women coming in from ruined America, and anyone of colour, or of a different creed, running away from England and her concentration camps.
Part of it, of course, is the orphanages that have sprung up, practically on every street corner. Asia has reached out her arms, and caught the drowning people, and is struggling now to keep above the flood. Everyone knows it, and tries not to resent the food they give to the starving, but luxury is becoming sparse and very few people are happy.
That is what is different. No one smiles in the streets any more. L thinks back to sitting in a coffee shop with his enemy-friend, his feet curled up. He cannot remember if he was eating or not, but he knows that he enjoyed being able to sit leisurely and verbally tangle. To do that all afternoon, and have no one around them notice or care.
It’s not the changes to more modest means that has been bothering Lawliet. New buildings have become a luxury of the past; now he works out of an apartment in Tokyo. But he can do what he does with just a few computers and his very well placed net of informants. It’s not even Watari’s death, though he will miss his friend terribly. Most surprisingly it’s not that nothing he does any more can nearly measure up to catching Kira. He had thought that that would bother him, having reached his peak at twenty five.
What it is, he can say almost certainly, is how little good he feels like he’s doing. Discovering who is committing the murders in such and so a county, when he knows which politicians are withholding grain shipments to the United States has him feeling, well, nearly completely useless.
This, above all else, is why he says ‘yes.’ He doesn’t even need to cut the transmission from the secretary general to read the faxes he’s been sent. He simply bends down, speaks into the device he still uses to scramble what he sounds like, and says he’ll do it.
Funny, how much less grief he gets for his secrecy, ever since it was discovered that you could murder a man just by knowing a man and seeing his face. If that’s all it takes to use a Death Note, then people have started figuring, what else is out there?
Half an hour later, he has the three best and brightest people he knows, sitting on the couches Watari chose for him before they found out the cancer had spread. Mello is scratching at the place where the threads are growing ragged on the arm rest. Near is sitting up straight; somewhere, he grew out of a lot of his nervous habits. But L knows he carries a plastic toy superman in his pocket, where so ever he should go.
“This isn’t what we do normally,” says Matt, curiously, stretching out on L’s and extinguishing his cigarette in the ashtray. His long fingers flip through the pages L has provided them. Near is reading closely. Mello is glancing between the first sentence of each paragraph and Matt, like he’s trying to read his expression more attentively than the words. Matt speaks again, “And it’s nothing like what you do on your own. You’ve asked for our help before, L, but this is fucking huge.”
L nods, and stirs his tea. He doesn’t usually let them get away with these kinds of questions. Usually, the case is they want to help, or they don’t. But Matt, you see, showed up on his doorstep, unannounced, the day of Watari’s funeral. L hadn’t even known he didn’t want to be alone, but somehow Matt had. So Matt had pushed in, with four full grocery bags, and had dragged him into the kitchen and spent a whole week with him cooking cheesecake, until L could do it exactly right and just the way he liked. Since then, Matt has been able to get away with a lot of things, as L is extremely fond of him.
“That is why I am asking for the help of the three of you. It might be overambitious to pursue this alone.” L is aware that this is a massive, disastrously huge understatement.
Mello glares at him, calling him on it. But surprisingly, he’s not the first one to voice his objections. Near has set the papers down on the coffee table, and reached for his own cup of tea. He drinks it with milk, but not sugar, which L considers to be absolutely disgusting.
Aside from that, L is also very fond of Near, whose voice is level as ever;
“This is very dangerous. I assume you have already agreed to become involved, regardless of which of us join with you?” When L nods, once, and makes a small affirmative noise, this seems to be good enough for Near. “Well, then perhaps we should go over what information we have. Adam Sutler came to power in...”
“Wait a fucking second,” Mello snaps, and drops a hand onto Matt’s shoulder. L has noticed that Mello always needs to be touching Matt when he wants to stand up to something L is doing. Matt seems not to mind, and they rest of the people L works with have learned not to assume that it means Matt thinks the same has he does.
He also knows that this is not the case when Mello and Near argue, which is worrisome because it either suggests that he does not completely respect Near’s opinion, still, or that he is following L’s requests not because they are the logical thing but out of some misplaced sense of duty. Mello, though twenty now, is still sometimes a child. If he complains that L treats him patronizingly, then that is why.
“I don’t want to rush into this, L. I don’t want you to rush into this. You owe it to us to explain what the hell you’re thinking, taking this case. Especially since you’ve always preached positivist theory every second word. What happens happens, it only matters that it is in due process of law.” He is not quite imitating L, but he is certainly feeding him his own words back.
“Adam Sutler is a war criminal.” L is surprised to hear the steel in his own voice. He didn’t really mean for it to be there, didn’t mean for Mello and Matt to both flinch. Near, at least, is still and silent, but Near usually is. “We would be employed under the authority of the Hague, Mello, who are an authority that I trust. And more than that.” Mello is already nodding, but he continues, “I do not hesitate to admit that personally, I want to do this. If we succeed in gathering enough evidence of the mass murders, well, I think that this is justice. What do you think?”
“If we get killed,” Mello replies, “you are not fucking blaming yourself. Promise me that and Matt and me are both in.”
And this is why he likes Mello. For knowing him better than he knows himself sometimes, and for being blunt and caring in his own awkward, all-elbows sort of way. He smiles at him, and of course he doesn’t promise, because they all know it would be empty.
Of course L would blame himself. Maybe, when he was twenty five, and before Yagami Light was dragged off, bleeding and screaming, he might have rationalized it. That was when he had Watari with him constantly. Maybe, back before Wammy’s House was evacuated, and the children smuggled across the border and then across the world, all the way to L’s frivolous investigation building, monument to the Kira case, before losing their doctor, and Roger along the way, and four children to soldier’s fire.
There is nothing like witnessing death to make you realize what a dark thing it really is. It only takes once to drive home that a friend is never a statistic or a casualty, they are always a friend. So, he’ll just have to do this without getting any of them killed. But he isn’t going to make that promise.
“There are more serious questions being asked as to the nature of the first viral outbreak in the old United Kingdom. Rumours are circling in international circles that this might have been a scare tactic initially employed by someone very close to the political party. On this matter, our instructions are to gather as much information as we can.”
He curls his toes, feeling the soft fabric of the sofa cushion underneath his feet. Threadbare and tattered though it might be in places, he hasn’t had the heart to get rid of this chair. Watari knew him, exactly what he wanted and needed before he himself did, and he has tried a few and never found one as comfortable as it.
“Although it is not top priority, genuine evidence of the link will prove to be instrumental in breaking the ties of loyalty the chancellor has established with his people.” The implication being, of course, that if they find nothing, the political minds in charge of the ‘re-stabilization’ of England will invent something. This is not something for L to judge. He doesn’t play politics, he digs up the truth. They can do with it what they want.
Matt sighs, and nods anyways, and so does Near, and Mello will too. Even if he’s remaining stubbornly silent right now, watching L. L judiciously ignores him and adds another sugar cube to his tea.
“We leave the day after tomorrow. Meet here at nine am, and discreetly, please. Bring only what you can carry easily, that you would need for a long journey. We will be smuggled independently into the country, so as not to attract notice. It is likely that you will not see me for some time. My ethnicity will make things more complicated.” Still stirring the sugar into his tea, he climbs to his feet. They rise, because they know that this is their cue, and he shows them to his door.
“Matt, please bring any equipment you think you will need to gain access to heavily encrypted files. In short, the best you have that is still portable. We will divide it among the three of us, to take what we can. I am very happy you agreed to help.” He allows a smile.
“I think you will be instrumental in finding us what we need to know.”
Matt reaches into his pocket for another cigarette, with an awkward, bashful sort of shrug. The pads of Mello’s fingers make small patterns on the skin just above his collar, and L wonders, not for the first time, if the two don’t communicate like this somehow. If this is morse code or letters, Braille, or some language they have invented between them.
Near hangs back, which is unusual, but it is not unusual for Near to be the one to break the little rituals the three of them have established, for when they work together.
Despite L’s unconcerned slouch, he is short enough that he has to go up on his tiptoes to press a kiss to L’s cheek. This is an unusually affectionate gesture, for any of them, and especially for Near. Except between Matt and Mello, but of course that’s a different scenario entirely.
“Happy birthday, L.”
L is annoyed that he knows, it’s confidential, and charmed that he remembers, and settles for smiling at him as he hurries out the door, pulling his coat on, and his gloves out of his pockets.
Once they are safely out the door, he turns back to his work. But, because it is his birthday, he decides that maybe just this once he will make a different kind cake, and read while he cooks. He is very much in the mood for something chocolate.
-----------------
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war
He puts exquisite detail into the explosives, twisting a wire here and there, and placing the chemicals at the base of the support pillars, so that there will be nothing left standing when he is through.
The fireworks are the finishing touch, around the feet of Madam Justice, who stands proud, as though she were not some ruined woman. She was his first true love, you might say. In his mind, he can almost see a blush painting her stony cheeks. She is white, he thinks, with fear, for he has found out what she really is.
V smiles at her with his mask, but not with his mouth, and sweeps a bow before leaving the roof.
He has a new mistress now, and her name is Anarchy.
Chapter Two
November 3rd
The White Cliffs of Dover
England
The tops of the cliffs are lined with barbed wire, and Near can see sniper towers from between the shoulders of the other people who are crammed onto this boat with him. If anyone was foolish enough to try to approach the island by unauthorized boat, they would be shot before they could touch ground. He hopes L knows better than to have one of the others try to make it in that way. Even in the dim morning light, the people above them watching, if they have to right equipment, can probably see the expression on his face.
It’s only the knowledge that Matt is somewhere on this boat with him that keeps him from panicking. Near never really travels alone, and L decided, only after seeing his mildly panicked expression, that it might be alright for two of them to cross on the same boat, provided they did not speak to each other.
At customs, Near is searched, and searched again, and grilled on his story, and asked all manner of questions. L gave him the answers to all of them: Near’s name is Nathan Fairlie, his parents were Londoners who were vacationing when the trouble started, and didn’t want to even risk exposing him to the virus, since he suffered leukemia as a child and was easily prone to infections. His father was killed in one of the bombings in the Ukraine when he was five, and his mother and he lived in France. Until recently, that is, she died in an automobile accent. Now he wants to return to his glorious heritage and all that, because England is where he belongs.
The only thing that’s surprising is how easily the guards buy it. Matt will be coming out now, with an equally sob-patriotic story, calculated just right to be sad enough to get them in, bitter enough to seem realistic, and backed up with just enough evidence that no one asks question. When he finds Matt, he’s in line at a nearby chip shop, buying breakfast for two, like he said he would be. He’s humming ‘oranges and lemons’ under his breath, and Near has to not laugh, because big brother might really be watching.
They eat as quickly as they can, without being suspicious, and then set out. They have a long way to go, after all, and if they want to be there before nightfall and curfew, then there’s no time to waste.
If either of them had any doubts as to whether or not they were doing the right thing, they do not now. The primary mode of transportation these days, from the countryside and in, is a skytrain. Matt looks out the windows and snaps pictures of buildings that are abandoned and the sloughed around barbed wire, with the camera he has hidden in his shirt collar. Everywhere, there are fences, keeping people in and keeping people out. Warning signs for chemical leaks, radiation, possible biohazards, and forbidden areas all litter the ground.
It changes like night and day, once they get into London. Near figures this is where the rich people must live, because the soldier presence also increases dramatically from one mile to the next. He can see police officers in plainclothes, pretending like they’re civilians on nearly every block. ‘Fingermen,’ is what L’s reports called them, and Near knows he has to be very careful of them.
By the time they’re off the skytrain, it’s mid afternoon and the crowds of people that had been flocking the trendy little restaurants have dispersed back into their offices, lunch over with. They walk, and then cab through the streets, and watch as they begin to fill up again with people, in smart shoes and three piece suits.
There are posters nearly every block, each of them preaching something that Near doesn’t really want to read right now. He has to wonder, faintly, if someone in the new administration has read 1984. It’s not as though such a revolutionary book is actually available to the average English citizen, but they have to be at least partially aware of the irony of all the similarities, don’t they? Perhaps it was someone’s idea of a joke. Albeit, a morbid one.
He already hates this new country, and he grew up here. This is nothing like what everything was back at the orphanage. These are the same people, tea time is at the same time in the afternoon, you still drink it with lemon instead of cream and sugar (Near thinks L will probably die) but things are so very, not the same.
For one thing, the minute the sun begins to set, everyone starts rushing, and vanishing. You do not go out after dark, Matt and Near learn in this baptism by fire, and suddenly every man on every street corner seems ominous, and they are walking so fast that they’re nearly running. It’s just three blocks now, to the apartment where they’re going to stay holed up.
“I’d wave for a taxi,” Matt murmurs to him, low and out of breath from the pace they’ve been setting for what feels like an hour, now, “but somehow I think we might be out of luck.” The streets are deserted from cars for as far as the eye can see. “Which is actually really funny, because I used to go clubbing about eight blocks from here, and you would never find a livelier place, not as far as the eye could see.”
Near knew this used to be an urban center, but thinking of it that way, with people like Mello and Matt dancing and drinking and smoking their drugs here makes it seem even sadder. That this all used to be alive like those two were, and now it’s nothing but a skeleton of a city. Polished, certainly, to a gleaming bone-white, and essentially crime free in a way Kira didn’t even manage, but lying dead in it’s casket rather than sleeping. Near bets Matt wishes it were Mello he was running with, because they could look at each other in their secret language and be alright.
“When this is over, hey,” Matt says, ignoring the fact that Near hasn’t replied to anything he’s said for a good half hour, “can I convince you to come to a club with me?” Near practically trips over a curb, losing track of his feet in his surprise. Matt grabs him by the backpack and drags him upright, and they’re a block and a half away now. Near starts looking at street numbers, and is busily counting them down as the two of them walk, so he has something to do other than strain to listen. He thinks he can hear footsteps somewhere, that aren’t just the echo of their own. There’s no way to know without looking, and there’s nothing more suspicious than staring over your shoulder in a dark street. Keep moving, he knows, and do not look, and he will make it out of this. He answers Matt, in a whisper, “maybe a bar, but nowhere if I have to dance,” and is surprisingly gratified by the short laugh he gets in return. Also, he panics a little at the way it reverberates in the hollow street.
He can see the door. He can definitely hear someone coming up behind them. He glances over his shoulder, gasps, and Matt bolts like a jackrabbit. He has his hand around Near’s arm, so Near is dragged physically up the steps to their door. Matt, bless him, already had the keys out, in his pocket, so they can stumble through the threshold in a matter of seconds, and slam the door shut on whoever might have been behind them.
If indeed it was more than a shadow. Near is forced to admit he can’t quite be sure. Fear makes the mind play tricks on a person, he is not invulnerable to it. Whether there was anyone there or not, there is no noise now except the pounding of his heart. Matt, who’s holding his wrist tight, can obviously feel it too. The older man lets out a shaky sigh, and closes the latch, before sagging against the wall.
“Close call?”
They both jump about a foot, unintentionally answering Mello’s question with crystal clarity as he comes down the stairs. He’s obviously been here, their new home, for a while. He’s wearing his usual clothes, and he’d never have been stupid enough to try to sneak across the gap between this place and the rest of the world in something as obvious as that. Near can tell, by the way Matt’s looking at him, that he thinks his cockiness is reassuring. Like being almost arrested eight hours in to the venture that was going to take months, possibly years, was a minor inconvenience, not an unpardonable sign of incompetence on Matt and Near’s part.
“We should have stopped somewhere,” Matt says, knowing that Near’s thinking it, and probably that Mello is too, given the way he grabs Matt’s bag and swings it over his shoulder. Mello only carries people’s bags when he feels like he needs to do something to help them, which usually means he was worried. “Or moved faster. But God, I hate it out there.”
“Yeah,” whispers Mello, and drags Matt in by his jacket to give him a kiss. They stagger back against the wall, neither one of them able to keep their balance properly, with their feet twined around bags and shoes, and backpacks throwing them all a-kilter. Near suddenly feels like he’s intruding, so ventures up the stairs to see if L is there and if he’s set everything up or not.
L, as it turns out, is present, but most everything else is scattered around him in a ring. He is sitting, curled up in his customary position on their one chair, sipping tea. An electronic coffee pot is burbling on the floor, where it’s plugged into the socket. It has a cardboard box of sugar cubes on top of it, lots of which already seem to have been stolen. Near looks at the clutter around, and at the detective, who seems to be in something like a trance, and decides if any cleaning is going to be done tonight it’ll probably be by him. Especially from the sound of the door to Mello’s and Matt’s bedroom (he assumes) slamming. If it wasn’t their bedroom, it will be now, after what they’re probably about to do.
The furnishings are sparse, but they have what is necessary. Walking into the closet sized kitchen, Near finds their fridge. It’s empty, except for Mello’s chocolate. Chocolate is too sweet for Near. He makes up his mind to make Matt and Mello go out with a grocery list tomorrow, if only to keep L from going into sugar withdrawal. He fiddles with the toy in his pocket, and goes to find himself paper and a pen, somewhere in the detritus scattered around L.
The detective starts violently when Near appears in front of him, as though he hadn’t seen him come in. Near would not have put this past him, not at all.
“Are Mello and Matt having intercourse?” L asks, sounding incredibly startled, and Near pauses for a moment, to listen to the silence from their room. It’s not that they’re making any noise, it’s that Mello isn’t yelling. Or even talking, or anything; you can tell, because he has a voice that is usually raised in some sort of emotional response, and that always carries. Near smiles.
“Odds indicate, yes.” He bends for a pad of paper, and picks up a pencil too, and makes his way over to the old looking sofa. It’s rather alarming, to sit and then continue sinking, until he worries he might just be swallowed up whole, and L, who is chewing on his thumb and looking at nothing, will have to waste valuable time investigating how Near disappeared out of a locked house with all the windows bolted shut. However, he eventually manages to catch hold of the arm rest and haul himself back upwards towards daylight, and to something approaching a sitting position.
“Be careful,” warns L, quiet and belated, and Near wonders if they brought a dartboard with them or if there’s anywhere he could get one, because he hasn’t gotten any better over the years, but he really wants to be able to throw something sharp and pointy right now.
That’s the trouble with being eighteen, playing with toys, and generally the most mature person in the room.
------------------
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in
Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their
torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares
As he stands on the roof with the girl, Evey, rescued from the street beneath, V can’t help but smile behind the mask he’s wearing and survey his artwork. For it is art.
The sky is full of smoke and light, the air is full of sound, and the street is empty of police officers and fingermen. They aren’t as quick to respond as they like to pretend, are they? He can see people in windows, and in doorways, looking out and trying to see through the veil that’s been pulled over their eyes. He imagines he can hear the sound of the knots Sutler has tied beginning to fray.
One man is standing in the middle of the street. His hair is a mess, his posture is hunched, he’s tapping a foot along with the music, and V can tell that he isn’t afraid, and while it doesn’t entirely make sense, it fills him with a burning sort of hope. There are still people in this country who do not flinch and cower.
His music is not falling on deaf ears.
Chapter Three
November 5th
Jordan Towers
England
“I could have totally done it, you know,” Mello mutters to Matt, mutinously, adjusting the tie his boyfriend forced him into, because ‘the raving pimp look is out these days, Mello,’ as the hacker so kindly put it, and they’re trying to be subtle about getting into the newscast center.
Mello doesn’t really fit in at all, and Matt is only a little better off. They’d be more careful if they were trying to accomplish anything serious, or if their ID’s were made by anyone other than L, or if there was any chance that something could go wrong. But really, it’s a standard setup; Mello gets them in, with L’s help, Matt does his funky computer shit while Mello waits at the door and makes sure no one bugs him, they learn everything they can and they get out.
It’s actually made easier, not more complicated, by the terrorist bombings the night before. If it were a parliamentary building this might not be the case, but because it was an ‘emergency demolition’ so what could they possibly have to protect themselves again? There’s a slew of people around that normally wouldn’t be; experts are here to testify, and working crews to take responsibility for the fireworks and every other sprinkle and garnish and cherry that the government could find to put on top of the cowgirl.
“I don’t know why you’re laughing,” Matt says, as he rearranges wires to feed into his little devices, and coaxes images up onto the computer screen with tentative keystrokes, “but if you’re planning anything, Mello, for fuck’s sake, don’t.”
“I’m not,” complains Mello, “and for once that’s true. I’m just cackling because we are mad, talented evil geniuses.”
“You’re a fucking freak,” Matt complains, doing something with a portable hard drive hat Mello doesn’t recognize, “and I can’t smoke in here because it’d set the fire alarm off, and I’ll apologize later but for the love of God, this is finicky and I can’t smoke.” His voice is level and steady and not strained at all, because Matt scarcely ever sounds unnerved, but Mello knows him well enough to know it’s time to go check the hallway for, um, anything. So long as he’s not in Matt’s hair for the next thirteen and a half seconds. It’s not like he’s short of things to think about.
For one thing, there’s L’s reaction to the destruction of the Old Bailey. Despite his initial protestations that he was perfectly alright, (having returned to the apartment covered in a great deal of soot,) it didn’t take a genius to tell that the detective was shaken. For one thing, he might have nearly been caught in the explosion. None of them asked him how close he came.
For another, when L devoted his entire life to the pursuit of justice, without regard to political pressure or tensions, and having for the first time slightly bent this rule, which had previously been held inviolate? Well, Mello doubted very much that L was a superstitious man, but given the light hearted comments about pathetic fallacy, humour betrayed by a slightly shocky look to the man’s expressive eyes, Mello doubted that he was entirely immune, in this instance.
Who wouldn’t be? And no matter how much he liked to pretend, the detective was only human. Perhaps one of the very best of them all, but still, only that. And how was Mello to know that Near would be repeating the same phrase to him, in just under an hour?
Near had to stitch one of the cuts on the bottom of L’s feet, where he’d stepped on a bit of glass from a broken window, when fleeing the scene in his customary, barefoot hurry. L watched him do it, not complaining, but chewing on his thumb a little bit nervously. Matt sat in the computer chair, pulling up footage from the security cameras he already had access to, of the man standing on the roof with the girl, conducting his invisible orchestra. Mello paced and closed his eyes, and imagined he could feel the heat of the flames on his face, only to open them to the disappointment of a water incandescent bulb.
That’s why he leapt on the idea of going to the BTN in the midst of all the chaos, because his head was just screaming ‘now now now’ and he wanted to do something, anything. Which led to Matt, doing his wacky computer shit, and Mello at the other end of the hall, and the following fiasco.
Here’s how it happened:
Mello’s train of thought was abruptly interrupted as he reached the end of the hallway. He had peered around the corner just in time to hear a piercing alarm split the air. Naturally assuming that Matt had accidentally tripped a wire, he spun around to make his way back to the room.
Only to have two doorways between him and it open, and a flood of people pour into the hallway, all making their way towards him. There is very little that is more conspicuous than making your way the wrong way through a crowd of people who are being told to evacuate a building, and since the whole thing was naturally going to be captured on surveillance cameras, there was very little to do but stand by the corner and hope for a glimpse of red hair coming out of the room.
Mello saw Matt come out. He knows he did. Matt even gave him a perplexed little quirk of a smile, as if to say ‘fucked if I know what happened,’ and started towards him. Mello turned and started making his way slowly down the hall, confident that Matt knew to catch up with him slowly and naturally, and if he couldn’t manage it, that they’d meet on the street outside, and get the fuck out of there.
Twenty minutes later, Mello was still standing in the street, by himself and panicking. Any second now, Matt, any second now.
Nineteen minutes earlier, back inside, Matt was following Mello out. He had his equipment with him, he had the information slipped into his boot. He was even fairly sure that it hadn’t been him that had tripped whatever alarm was set off. For one thing, he’d probably have noticed it, and for another, the data had continued downloading even after the klaxon sounded. That didn’t strike him as an ‘oh no, we are being hacked’ sort of reaction.
The policemen convinced him of it even further. Not only did one not usually get armed officers running to the rescue for information leaks in news towers, (you generally got the pudgy, security officer type, like the piece of work at the front desk) but they arrived way too fast, and they weren’t even looking for him. Obviously, he wasn’t sure of this at first, but the woman racing past him through the hallway with the man chasing her was a pretty big hint. Best of luck to her, and all, but this was causing him a fair amount of relief.
His first mistake was stopping. Even with the strange message being broadcast on the override, he should have kept going, in retrospect. Instead, he stood in the hallway, watching the screen suspended in the corner with a combination of admiration and disdain; V, congratulations on exploiting it, government, never make anything that can be used against you. Basic, basic rule of technological thumb.
His second mistake was listening. Not that V’s words stirred some great chord of passion in his heart; he wasn’t in this with L’s conviction, or Mello’s passion, or Near’s single-mindedness. He was just sort of here, for the ride and the game and the being constantly around and having sex with Mello and the adrenaline and the good, clean fun of the hack. But he really shouldn’t have stopped to listen, because even if he’s the calm one, the ambivalent one, the one who just wants a pack of smokes and a game or two, this V character is a hell of a public speaker.
Matt chews absently on his thumbnail while he listens, a habit he picked up from L. He thinks, knows, really, that this development is probably going to make what they’re doing a whole lot trickier, and also a whole lot more interesting. Neither of these are particularly bad things.
So, cockiness is his third mistake. He isn’t paying attention to where he’s going, either, and so he crashes head on into a woman coming his direction. She takes off around the corner and he heads the opposite way. This isn’t the last of Evey Hammond’s involvement in the story, but for now, it’s time for her to depart from the course she could have taken.
Back to Matt. He isn’t paying attention to where he’s going, and isn’t looking around the corners before he takes them, which is a stupid fucking rookie mistake, (his fourth) and then there he is. In the hallway, with a caped terrorist in a mask, and a police officer pointing a gun at him.
Matt thinks absently that the stupid terrorist is laughing at him, and then he realizes that right, that’s just the Guy Fawkes mask, and this means that the man is probably manic depressive with delusions of grandeur and that Matt is crazy for even doing this. But what the hell, he’s never liked police officers anyways. If L asks he’ll just say it’s a bi-product of time spent in the foster care system and he’s staying true to his roots, or something. L isn’t likely to ask, and neither is Near, but Mello is probably going to want to know what the fuck he was thinking.
Truthfully, he was thinking of rash, irrepressible Mello, who always hit first and asked questions later and who he was clearly going to spend the rest of his natural life with, even if it killed him. Because if Mello was here and it was his new favourite terrorist who had a gun pointed at him, there wouldn’t have been any hesitation. This seemed like a bit of a double standard, from Matt’s point of view, so he decided it was kind of his turn to just get into a little bit of trouble.
‘Little.’ Right.
He grabs the policeman by the shoulder with his left hand, and turns him enough to get him off balance and put him at what’s a very, very convenient angle to cold cock him one to the jaw. Matt has been told he can deliver a hell of a punch. Most often by Mello, who tends to get punched an awful lot, so would probably know, the amount of bar fights he starts. It certainly sends this man staggering backwards, head thrown back. He glances up to see what V’s doing, if the man is smart he’ll be running, but he’s just standing there, with the fake grin painted on, watching events like some damnable Julius Caesar.
He’s very much prepared to predict that V didn’t see this one coming, for all that he must have prepared and planned. The emergency broadcast system wasn’t something you could come at unprepared, the message had to be pre-recorded. And that’s not even mentioning the effort it would take to destroy the Old Bailey, and to get in here without the benefit of a nice fake identity and a press pass, like Matt and Mello just did. Mello’s probably outside waiting for him.
Matt is still thinking of Mello when the gun goes off. Mostly, he’s just aware of the sense of impact. The police officer has obviously recovered at least some, while Matt stood staring at V. Not enough to aim properly, or he’s just really bad at it, one of the two. His shoulder rolls back, and there’s a moment of nothing, and then searing pain radiating outwards in vicious, lava-stabs.
“Well fuck me,” says Matt, as V moves in a swirl of black cloth. The policeman is unconscious on the floor in seconds. Maybe it’s shorter, or longer, Matt’s sense of time is going funny. He’s suddenly aware that he’s on the ground, and that there’s blood running between his fingers. That must be why the time is an issue. It’s blood loss, or shock, or whatever it is you get first when someone shoots you. This sure as hell isn’t the first time Matt’s been shot, but it never gets any more pleasant, does it? At least it’s his shoulder, it’s probably missed most vital stuff.
His last impressions are of a laughing face, swimming into his vision. He manages to mumble, “What the fuck do you think you’re laughing at?” and he doesn’t usually let himself get this upset over the little things, but the whole bullet in the shoulder is kind of hurting, and the bastard is laughing at him. That’s all he has, before he loses consciousness entirely, unaware of the fingers
Later, two police officers review the tapes of V bending over the fallen man in the hallway, and quickly putting pressure on his shoulder, doing some very rudimentary work at making sure he doesn’t bleed out, and then eventually picking him up. It looked, for a moment, like he might be left behind, but then the two disappear out of sight, the young man’s head rolling back at what looks like a rather uncomfortable angle.
Mello stands outside the BTN, frozen, holding on to a lamp post with white knuckles, watching the building’s exits with blind panic, until Near finally comes and leads him away.