Pathogens.
Last day of freedom, and I'm sick. Lovely.
I've been keeping my spirits up with doujinshi I can finally download and put on my flash drive and transfer to my laptop.
Preview of my other project. I figured since I'm showing Black Cat, why not?
Title: Icarus
Rating: T/PG-13
Warnings: Adult themes. Character death. Saying if it's canon or not will spoil the whole story, so I'd rather not say.
Icarus
The sun dies quietly, slipping from its zenith with as much violent grace as an angel, plummeting in a fiery embryo from a citadel all silver gold, to have its feathers burn up in ozone and its mouth clogged full of rich, dark loam. It seems to halt, no matter what the clock hands gesticulate, somewhere between horizons, lipped by careless arcs of cirrus clouds, making all the world broad brass fingers and tapered shadows inked in cursive.
Near does not notice this directly. He stays in his room, the heavy damask curtains keeping out that killing light, blessing him with watery shadows like eyes closed in peaceful slumber. But Roger insists that he must have the door open during the daytime; if he insists on “shutting [himself] away in [his] room all the time” than Roger should at least be able to keep an eye on him. Near knows what Roger thinks of him. He thinks his seclusion, his isolation, is self-imposed. Why else would a child so young so completely reject the fundamentals of whimsicality and youth that made childhood worthwhile? It must be psychological.
Near clicks the bottom left corner of his puzzle piece into place. Psychological, he thinks, scoffing. Everything at Wammy’s House is, of course, rooted in the psychological. They make no allowances for the physical, for the instinctual. Even an ordinary village simpleton can tell, just by using their common sense, that Near has a physical condition-his albinism makes his skin extremely sensitive to light. But no, at Wammy’s they call it “an excuse” and try to find the “real” reason buried deep within his complex synapses.
Idiots. All of them.
Near kneels in the centre of his room, surrounded on all sides by amorphous white puzzle pieces. The stripes of the sun, suddenly immobile in her death throes, as if posing for a portrait painted beauty grotesque, hit the floor and opposite wall of his room, marching in with her shadows in tow. Near’s room is specifically designated: east windows with heavy shades to keep out sunrise, where the sunset makes the building shadowed and not orange-gold. But of course, that blasted open door ruins it all. The hall windows practically beckon the light towards Near’s darkened room, and the sun invades. Thankfully, the light is not potent enough to cause any hurt or discomfort. Near simply finds it annoying.
Near is never unaware of anything. That’s how he always knows when Mello is trying to sneak up on him, or when Matt’s waiting outside, steeling himself to enter. His sensory observations are unmatched. Mr. Wammy was quick to call them ‘gifts’, kind-hearted man he was. Matt thinks they’re some sort of genetic mutation, as if albinism wasn’t already enough. He likens it to sonar, or a supernatural ability, and jokingly calls Near’s room “The Batcave”. Mello, in all his characteristic ignorance and asperity when it comes to Near, calls him a “freak” and dismisses any further queries on principle.
Near runs his fingertip over the straight edge of one his puzzle pieces. Even in his limited social circle, Near has never met an eight year old with as much conviction in anything like the “principles” Mello adheres to. It would be admirable, if the sentiment weren’t so misplaced as to be downright moronic.
Whatever it may be, blessing or curse or genetic anomaly, it is this, undoubtedly, that senses something is wrong.
Not just the fact that the bars of gold and black, splayed like limbs across Near’s carpet, have hardly seemed to move. Or the silence, the deafening silence over the orphanage, which normally was a syrupy, after-dinner tranquility, was now the sound of something anticipatory, a buzz, a cacophony of pure silence.
It is the sound of something waiting.
A phantom darts across Near’s open doorway.
The shadow runs-Near can hear its breathing, its footfalls-and then is gone, in a jarring spasm of chiaroscuro, the blink of some inward eye.
The sound of something waiting builds. The moving shadow-it’s herald? It’s cause? Or itself, even?
To judge from the heavy thuds of the footfalls, the person was male, and too quick to be anyone old, ruling out Roger and the other caretakers. An older child, then, from the generation that preceded Near’s own.
Near is inquisitive, within reason. Not as inquisitive as a normal six year old child should be, asking why is the sky blue and why is that man so old and so on and so forth. However, as the future elite detective L, he must to learn to be inquisitive about certain things, about the right things. Without questions, there can be no answers, and L’s job was to always find the answer.
He pads out of the room, staying in the shadows momentarily to let his sensitive eyes adjust. He wears contacts, normally, to shade his sensitive scarlet irises in a cool swathe of gray, but he had predicted he would spend today in his room yet again and deemed putting them on a waste of time. All traces of the shadowy figure, whoever he was, are gone, even the echoes of his footsteps as he ran, the rattle of his ragged breath.
Near crosses the hall to peer out the wide windows, abhorring the sunlight striking the windows like hammer throws or piano keys. They face the courtyard, a plain, ordinary rectangle of grass and paved walks, all in deep aquamarine and Prussian blue shadows. Near looks past his reflection, fingers in his hair by reflex and turning one of his white curls over and over pensively.
Nothing is out of the ordinary.
But Near is sure that this atmosphere, augmented by the shadow like some strange harbinger, could not possibly be contrived. Something is wrong. Something must be wrong, Near would not-
A scarf falls from the sky.
Not right in front of Near, more off to the left of him. Perhaps because of the fabric, or a wind blowing, Near doesn’t know, Near can’t quite tell, but it seems to fall in slow motion, as if it isn’t subject to the ordinary laws of physics that governed the rest of the world, and instead generated its own field of gravity, a bubble of inertia, ruled by its own laws of motion. It spirals and curls in midair like a snake, a merino banner of polychrome, a fabric punctuation mark, one fringed edge nodding back and forth, the way a person waves goodbye. There is something serene about the single helix, bright and cheerful, its twisting silhouette of abandon mysterious, billowing like a dancer’s skirt.
Near is so focused on watching its elegant convolutions that he almost gets distracted.
Almost is the key word. Near never gets distracted. Near is always aware.
And somehow, he is still surprised when he sees the boy.
Perhaps because it happens so fast, so much faster than the weightless fluctuations of the scarf. There is no graceful waltz, no sophisticated pauses, no poised ripples of any kind. It-he-is simply falling, and then…he is simply…not falling.
(A starfish palm, thrown upward, the white flash of a sneaker, a face-)
(He gasps, Near gasps-)
And then the scarf vanishes from sight.
From the high window, Near can’t see the shadowed courtyard well. But there is no mistake-he can identify the smudged shadow, small and crumpled and very pathetic looking, for the body it really is. He, the boy, the dead boy, he landed on his back, shattering his spine at the very instant of impact. Dead. Not dying, dead. Near knows.
In the elaborate circuitry of his mind a message flickers throughout the wiring like an alarm. Tell Roger. Go tell Roger. Someone. Find someone.
But Near keeps looking. He tells himself he is waiting to see if the boy will get up, but he knows that is a lie.
He is unable to move.
There is a violent, crunching bang of wood, and Near flinches away from the window before he can stop himself. But he still watches-he can’t look away.
One of the doors to the courtyard had been opened.
Near waits for the inevitable finger of light to spill out from the opened door like a soul, pointing towards the body (there, there)-so small, bent all the wrong ways, seeming to disappear into the darkness as the shadows deepened, swallowed up like a piece of candy-
But there is nothing. No telltale arch of yellow to illuminate the dark scene. There are only the shadows, briefly becoming indigo before the telltale obliterating gesso of black.
Near’s eyes struggle to see, his already poor eyesight greatly hindered by the contrast of the orange diagonal slashes of sunset with the parade of deep azure dusk. He presses his palm to the window, leaning closer to the glass to try and see more clearly. Someone must be out there, but who could it be, and what were they doing? Was it that frantic ghost from before-no, not ghost, Near didn’t believe in ghosts, what he meant was it that older child-
Something steps out of the shadows, wraithlike, into Near’s line of sight.
Even from this vantage, Near can clearly tell who it is. There’s no mistake-the unkempt black hair like a snarl of nettles, the heavily stooped posture, like a question mark, the complexion so pale it seems to glow in the tangerine light. Near knows. It’s B.
From this height, he can’t see the older child’s expression, or correctly read his body language. But he can faintly see his stomach flutter in and out, in and out. Breathing hard. He must have been the person who ran, fast and flighty as an apparition, past Near’s open door.
The thought crosses Near’s mind that B must have seen him, before, when he had been hidden in the courtyard. After all, the dying light perfectly illuminates him as he stands so close to the window, all in white.
It’s…unsettling…to think that someone was watching him, and that he could not reciprocate the action, due to circumstances beyond his control.
Especially if the watcher…was B.
He studies the older child, perspective making him small, almost insignificant. It’s frustrating-the twilight is angled the wrong way, he can hardly see B at all, and his expression is equally arcane-the only thing he knows is that B is looking up at him.
He can feel it, the strange tingle of nerves that occurs whenever B looks at him directly, those marbled crimson eyes lashing out unexpectedly with hot barbed wire, sending whistles like demon screams through Near’s curved eyelashes and into his skull, involuntary warning signals firing through his neurons.
Near tightens his grip on a solitary curl of hair and halts the motion, mouth thinning.
B slowly turns the point of his chin up and out, visage turning clockwise in a decisively inhuman motion. He’s inherently flexible, and often uses his…Near is reluctant to call it “skill” and simply settles for “quality”-to unnerve anyone and everyone. Perhaps not L, but Near’s only heard rumors, although B’s appearance more or less speaks for itself.
His mouth thins further.
B holds up a hand, still with his head cocked at a bizarre diagonal, the motion almost a pantomime, until he wiggles his long, pale fingers in a blatantly mocking wave.
Near quells his righteous anger, but the inappropriateness of the gesture is inexcusable.
He turns from the window and hastens into shadow, eager to escape the sunlight and that disquieting, scarlet gaze.
Find Roger. His mind clicks and taps as if all his thought processes happened in Morse code. Find him quickly.
He opens the door to Roger’s office with a struggle; the wood is heavy and the knob high for a six year old, especially of Near’s small stature. Roger is in front of his desk, hands on his hips, in the middle of admonishing Mello and Matt for their usual antics. Near doesn’t have time to explain or apologize for his interruption; it’s unlikely an event like this will stay quiet for long, especially in Wammy’s House, with its constant eyes and ears.
“Roger, there’s a dead boy in the courtyard.”
By the time they get there, a small crowd has already formed by the body. Mello and Matt, having followed Roger as Near lead them to the spot, suddenly ceased bombarding him with questions and went silent.
“Stay here,” Roger commands, relinquishing his iron grip on Near’s wrist, and starts waving his arms and calling for people to back away. He enters the heart of the small knot of people; Near can’t see him anymore, correctly presuming he’s kneeling down by the body. Mello is trying to stand on Matt’s shoulders, straining to see over everyone’s heads.
There’s light now, from electric lanterns and the open doorway, and a steady beam of white from the flashlight in Roger’s hand. They are the only things that illuminate the courtyard, now almost completely bound in black velvet.
As Near expected, there is no sign of B at all.
Roger begins to take charge, hollering that anyone not out of the courtyard in two minutes will be immediately dropped from the list of competitors vying for the title of ‘L’.
Everyone except Near, Mello and Matt.
Near starts at the last two, wondering how they possibly could have been involved.
The rest of the orphans, startled, began herding towards the open door, clogging the doorway and choking off the flow of yellow light. Near looks at their faces: some girls are crying, and some boys look badly shaken. One of them seems to be immersed in counting a sequence of numbers under his breath-values of pi. Another girl glares at her hand, willing it to stop shaking. The rest are stone-faced. The orphans that appear the most disturbed are among the older generations-nearly adults, soon to be turned out of the orphanage.
The victim-because there was clearly a crime here, Near knows, Near can tell, Near is never wrong-must have been an older child then.
And judging from the sudden presence of B, then it must be-
“Who is it, Roger?” Mello asks unfailingly, as Roger extricates a portable handheld device from inside his jacket with shaking hands, the flashlight underneath his arm. He turns toward the other child, and Near sees that Roger somehow looks much older than before, worn like a sheaf of creased parchment.
“It’s A,” Near says, and Roger’s expression silently confirms it. “A is dead.”
Mello starts opening his mouth to retort, but Roger cuts him off. “It’s true.”
“Truth and fact are both completely different things, Roger,” says a voice from the darkness. Roger, caught off guard, fumbles for his flashlight, the beam tossing itself about the black fitfully. It steadies upon a pair of wide, sanguine eyes, shaded partially by a long-fingered hand.
“B…?” Matt asks, his voice broken and strange, as if he hasn’t spoken aloud for years.
Roger sighs. “You had better come with us, young man.”
“Of course.” He says the statement evenly, agreeably, with no hint of the scathing insult he previously showed Near.
Roger leads the way back inside, followed by Mello and Matt, conversing feverishly with each other in hushed tones.
Near looks at B.
“Go on,” the older boy urges, emphasizing his command with an urging push at his shoulder. Near narrows his red eyes, begrudgingly joining the procession and B tags after him with ease.
Near sees. Near always sees.
The scarf, A’s scarf, the dead boy’s scarf, wound carelessly around B’s curved white neck.
~
You'll pardon my lack of stylizations. I did have itaclics, and the lack of them makes Near seem even more distant than I want him to.
Distant, though, not inhuman. I know he's a bit OOC, but you have to remember he's six. And don't be affronted by the abundance of typical-cold-bastard moments. They're intentional, and will change.
I've been keeping my spirits up with doujinshi I can finally download and put on my flash drive and transfer to my laptop.
Preview of my other project. I figured since I'm showing Black Cat, why not?
Title: Icarus
Rating: T/PG-13
Warnings: Adult themes. Character death. Saying if it's canon or not will spoil the whole story, so I'd rather not say.
Icarus
The sun dies quietly, slipping from its zenith with as much violent grace as an angel, plummeting in a fiery embryo from a citadel all silver gold, to have its feathers burn up in ozone and its mouth clogged full of rich, dark loam. It seems to halt, no matter what the clock hands gesticulate, somewhere between horizons, lipped by careless arcs of cirrus clouds, making all the world broad brass fingers and tapered shadows inked in cursive.
Near does not notice this directly. He stays in his room, the heavy damask curtains keeping out that killing light, blessing him with watery shadows like eyes closed in peaceful slumber. But Roger insists that he must have the door open during the daytime; if he insists on “shutting [himself] away in [his] room all the time” than Roger should at least be able to keep an eye on him. Near knows what Roger thinks of him. He thinks his seclusion, his isolation, is self-imposed. Why else would a child so young so completely reject the fundamentals of whimsicality and youth that made childhood worthwhile? It must be psychological.
Near clicks the bottom left corner of his puzzle piece into place. Psychological, he thinks, scoffing. Everything at Wammy’s House is, of course, rooted in the psychological. They make no allowances for the physical, for the instinctual. Even an ordinary village simpleton can tell, just by using their common sense, that Near has a physical condition-his albinism makes his skin extremely sensitive to light. But no, at Wammy’s they call it “an excuse” and try to find the “real” reason buried deep within his complex synapses.
Idiots. All of them.
Near kneels in the centre of his room, surrounded on all sides by amorphous white puzzle pieces. The stripes of the sun, suddenly immobile in her death throes, as if posing for a portrait painted beauty grotesque, hit the floor and opposite wall of his room, marching in with her shadows in tow. Near’s room is specifically designated: east windows with heavy shades to keep out sunrise, where the sunset makes the building shadowed and not orange-gold. But of course, that blasted open door ruins it all. The hall windows practically beckon the light towards Near’s darkened room, and the sun invades. Thankfully, the light is not potent enough to cause any hurt or discomfort. Near simply finds it annoying.
Near is never unaware of anything. That’s how he always knows when Mello is trying to sneak up on him, or when Matt’s waiting outside, steeling himself to enter. His sensory observations are unmatched. Mr. Wammy was quick to call them ‘gifts’, kind-hearted man he was. Matt thinks they’re some sort of genetic mutation, as if albinism wasn’t already enough. He likens it to sonar, or a supernatural ability, and jokingly calls Near’s room “The Batcave”. Mello, in all his characteristic ignorance and asperity when it comes to Near, calls him a “freak” and dismisses any further queries on principle.
Near runs his fingertip over the straight edge of one his puzzle pieces. Even in his limited social circle, Near has never met an eight year old with as much conviction in anything like the “principles” Mello adheres to. It would be admirable, if the sentiment weren’t so misplaced as to be downright moronic.
Whatever it may be, blessing or curse or genetic anomaly, it is this, undoubtedly, that senses something is wrong.
Not just the fact that the bars of gold and black, splayed like limbs across Near’s carpet, have hardly seemed to move. Or the silence, the deafening silence over the orphanage, which normally was a syrupy, after-dinner tranquility, was now the sound of something anticipatory, a buzz, a cacophony of pure silence.
It is the sound of something waiting.
A phantom darts across Near’s open doorway.
The shadow runs-Near can hear its breathing, its footfalls-and then is gone, in a jarring spasm of chiaroscuro, the blink of some inward eye.
The sound of something waiting builds. The moving shadow-it’s herald? It’s cause? Or itself, even?
To judge from the heavy thuds of the footfalls, the person was male, and too quick to be anyone old, ruling out Roger and the other caretakers. An older child, then, from the generation that preceded Near’s own.
Near is inquisitive, within reason. Not as inquisitive as a normal six year old child should be, asking why is the sky blue and why is that man so old and so on and so forth. However, as the future elite detective L, he must to learn to be inquisitive about certain things, about the right things. Without questions, there can be no answers, and L’s job was to always find the answer.
He pads out of the room, staying in the shadows momentarily to let his sensitive eyes adjust. He wears contacts, normally, to shade his sensitive scarlet irises in a cool swathe of gray, but he had predicted he would spend today in his room yet again and deemed putting them on a waste of time. All traces of the shadowy figure, whoever he was, are gone, even the echoes of his footsteps as he ran, the rattle of his ragged breath.
Near crosses the hall to peer out the wide windows, abhorring the sunlight striking the windows like hammer throws or piano keys. They face the courtyard, a plain, ordinary rectangle of grass and paved walks, all in deep aquamarine and Prussian blue shadows. Near looks past his reflection, fingers in his hair by reflex and turning one of his white curls over and over pensively.
Nothing is out of the ordinary.
But Near is sure that this atmosphere, augmented by the shadow like some strange harbinger, could not possibly be contrived. Something is wrong. Something must be wrong, Near would not-
A scarf falls from the sky.
Not right in front of Near, more off to the left of him. Perhaps because of the fabric, or a wind blowing, Near doesn’t know, Near can’t quite tell, but it seems to fall in slow motion, as if it isn’t subject to the ordinary laws of physics that governed the rest of the world, and instead generated its own field of gravity, a bubble of inertia, ruled by its own laws of motion. It spirals and curls in midair like a snake, a merino banner of polychrome, a fabric punctuation mark, one fringed edge nodding back and forth, the way a person waves goodbye. There is something serene about the single helix, bright and cheerful, its twisting silhouette of abandon mysterious, billowing like a dancer’s skirt.
Near is so focused on watching its elegant convolutions that he almost gets distracted.
Almost is the key word. Near never gets distracted. Near is always aware.
And somehow, he is still surprised when he sees the boy.
Perhaps because it happens so fast, so much faster than the weightless fluctuations of the scarf. There is no graceful waltz, no sophisticated pauses, no poised ripples of any kind. It-he-is simply falling, and then…he is simply…not falling.
(A starfish palm, thrown upward, the white flash of a sneaker, a face-)
(He gasps, Near gasps-)
And then the scarf vanishes from sight.
From the high window, Near can’t see the shadowed courtyard well. But there is no mistake-he can identify the smudged shadow, small and crumpled and very pathetic looking, for the body it really is. He, the boy, the dead boy, he landed on his back, shattering his spine at the very instant of impact. Dead. Not dying, dead. Near knows.
In the elaborate circuitry of his mind a message flickers throughout the wiring like an alarm. Tell Roger. Go tell Roger. Someone. Find someone.
But Near keeps looking. He tells himself he is waiting to see if the boy will get up, but he knows that is a lie.
He is unable to move.
There is a violent, crunching bang of wood, and Near flinches away from the window before he can stop himself. But he still watches-he can’t look away.
One of the doors to the courtyard had been opened.
Near waits for the inevitable finger of light to spill out from the opened door like a soul, pointing towards the body (there, there)-so small, bent all the wrong ways, seeming to disappear into the darkness as the shadows deepened, swallowed up like a piece of candy-
But there is nothing. No telltale arch of yellow to illuminate the dark scene. There are only the shadows, briefly becoming indigo before the telltale obliterating gesso of black.
Near’s eyes struggle to see, his already poor eyesight greatly hindered by the contrast of the orange diagonal slashes of sunset with the parade of deep azure dusk. He presses his palm to the window, leaning closer to the glass to try and see more clearly. Someone must be out there, but who could it be, and what were they doing? Was it that frantic ghost from before-no, not ghost, Near didn’t believe in ghosts, what he meant was it that older child-
Something steps out of the shadows, wraithlike, into Near’s line of sight.
Even from this vantage, Near can clearly tell who it is. There’s no mistake-the unkempt black hair like a snarl of nettles, the heavily stooped posture, like a question mark, the complexion so pale it seems to glow in the tangerine light. Near knows. It’s B.
From this height, he can’t see the older child’s expression, or correctly read his body language. But he can faintly see his stomach flutter in and out, in and out. Breathing hard. He must have been the person who ran, fast and flighty as an apparition, past Near’s open door.
The thought crosses Near’s mind that B must have seen him, before, when he had been hidden in the courtyard. After all, the dying light perfectly illuminates him as he stands so close to the window, all in white.
It’s…unsettling…to think that someone was watching him, and that he could not reciprocate the action, due to circumstances beyond his control.
Especially if the watcher…was B.
He studies the older child, perspective making him small, almost insignificant. It’s frustrating-the twilight is angled the wrong way, he can hardly see B at all, and his expression is equally arcane-the only thing he knows is that B is looking up at him.
He can feel it, the strange tingle of nerves that occurs whenever B looks at him directly, those marbled crimson eyes lashing out unexpectedly with hot barbed wire, sending whistles like demon screams through Near’s curved eyelashes and into his skull, involuntary warning signals firing through his neurons.
Near tightens his grip on a solitary curl of hair and halts the motion, mouth thinning.
B slowly turns the point of his chin up and out, visage turning clockwise in a decisively inhuman motion. He’s inherently flexible, and often uses his…Near is reluctant to call it “skill” and simply settles for “quality”-to unnerve anyone and everyone. Perhaps not L, but Near’s only heard rumors, although B’s appearance more or less speaks for itself.
His mouth thins further.
B holds up a hand, still with his head cocked at a bizarre diagonal, the motion almost a pantomime, until he wiggles his long, pale fingers in a blatantly mocking wave.
Near quells his righteous anger, but the inappropriateness of the gesture is inexcusable.
He turns from the window and hastens into shadow, eager to escape the sunlight and that disquieting, scarlet gaze.
Find Roger. His mind clicks and taps as if all his thought processes happened in Morse code. Find him quickly.
He opens the door to Roger’s office with a struggle; the wood is heavy and the knob high for a six year old, especially of Near’s small stature. Roger is in front of his desk, hands on his hips, in the middle of admonishing Mello and Matt for their usual antics. Near doesn’t have time to explain or apologize for his interruption; it’s unlikely an event like this will stay quiet for long, especially in Wammy’s House, with its constant eyes and ears.
“Roger, there’s a dead boy in the courtyard.”
By the time they get there, a small crowd has already formed by the body. Mello and Matt, having followed Roger as Near lead them to the spot, suddenly ceased bombarding him with questions and went silent.
“Stay here,” Roger commands, relinquishing his iron grip on Near’s wrist, and starts waving his arms and calling for people to back away. He enters the heart of the small knot of people; Near can’t see him anymore, correctly presuming he’s kneeling down by the body. Mello is trying to stand on Matt’s shoulders, straining to see over everyone’s heads.
There’s light now, from electric lanterns and the open doorway, and a steady beam of white from the flashlight in Roger’s hand. They are the only things that illuminate the courtyard, now almost completely bound in black velvet.
As Near expected, there is no sign of B at all.
Roger begins to take charge, hollering that anyone not out of the courtyard in two minutes will be immediately dropped from the list of competitors vying for the title of ‘L’.
Everyone except Near, Mello and Matt.
Near starts at the last two, wondering how they possibly could have been involved.
The rest of the orphans, startled, began herding towards the open door, clogging the doorway and choking off the flow of yellow light. Near looks at their faces: some girls are crying, and some boys look badly shaken. One of them seems to be immersed in counting a sequence of numbers under his breath-values of pi. Another girl glares at her hand, willing it to stop shaking. The rest are stone-faced. The orphans that appear the most disturbed are among the older generations-nearly adults, soon to be turned out of the orphanage.
The victim-because there was clearly a crime here, Near knows, Near can tell, Near is never wrong-must have been an older child then.
And judging from the sudden presence of B, then it must be-
“Who is it, Roger?” Mello asks unfailingly, as Roger extricates a portable handheld device from inside his jacket with shaking hands, the flashlight underneath his arm. He turns toward the other child, and Near sees that Roger somehow looks much older than before, worn like a sheaf of creased parchment.
“It’s A,” Near says, and Roger’s expression silently confirms it. “A is dead.”
Mello starts opening his mouth to retort, but Roger cuts him off. “It’s true.”
“Truth and fact are both completely different things, Roger,” says a voice from the darkness. Roger, caught off guard, fumbles for his flashlight, the beam tossing itself about the black fitfully. It steadies upon a pair of wide, sanguine eyes, shaded partially by a long-fingered hand.
“B…?” Matt asks, his voice broken and strange, as if he hasn’t spoken aloud for years.
Roger sighs. “You had better come with us, young man.”
“Of course.” He says the statement evenly, agreeably, with no hint of the scathing insult he previously showed Near.
Roger leads the way back inside, followed by Mello and Matt, conversing feverishly with each other in hushed tones.
Near looks at B.
“Go on,” the older boy urges, emphasizing his command with an urging push at his shoulder. Near narrows his red eyes, begrudgingly joining the procession and B tags after him with ease.
Near sees. Near always sees.
The scarf, A’s scarf, the dead boy’s scarf, wound carelessly around B’s curved white neck.
~
You'll pardon my lack of stylizations. I did have itaclics, and the lack of them makes Near seem even more distant than I want him to.
Distant, though, not inhuman. I know he's a bit OOC, but you have to remember he's six. And don't be affronted by the abundance of typical-cold-bastard moments. They're intentional, and will change.