Chapter Text
Two years held the shape of a bruise. Swollen, slow to fade, familiar enough that I stopped noticing it until someone nudged me and it flared again. If you asked a sane person to describe where I lived they’d say “shithole” and mean it with pity. If you asked me, I’d call it home- because chaos here was honest. It didn’t pretend. It didn’t try to paste a smile over rot. That made a difference.
Peace, the way I’d found it, wasn’t quiet. It was raw. It smelled like cheap soap, frying oil, and the cigarette smoke that stuck to Mello’s coat pockets. It tasted like instant coffee and the bite of things we said to keep the grief from settling. It was as close to normal as someone who’d written names in a notebook could get.
I still missed Japan. I still missed the wrong things about it- the easy rhythms, the excuses for being a child. But I’d chosen an ugly life for soft reasons: loyalty, survival, the small, stupid pleasures of being someone’s person. Dove was still in Japan, farther away than felt human. Her messages had thinned until they were threads. That bothered me more than it should have. The public worshipping Kira bothered me more. With L gone, Light had room to breathe and it made my stomach turn. I knew, dangerously well, how much of that rot started because of me.
Matt and I were on the fire-escape, passing a cigarette back and forth like we were still teenagers arguing over multiplayer scores. His voice was easy- who on VC had the worst temper, what new ridiculous combo he’d unlocked. It was the kind of talking that kept everything at the surface, which was exactly what I wanted.
Then the doors burst open.
Mello crashed onto the metal with the kind of chaotic, dangerous energy I’d learned to love. His boots hit the step and the sound was an announcement. He smelled like burnt sugar and engine oil and a hundred cigarettes. He didn’t smile so much as curve his mouth into something that promised trouble.
“Aria. Matt.” He waved a hand like he’d wandered in from a different world. “Pass me one.”
Matt and I shared a brief glance before Matt shrugged and tossed him one.
He took the cigarette without waiting and, for a second, I could see him- not the bright war-mad killer the world whispered about, but the man who’d learned to laugh in the middle of ruin. Then his eyes sharpened, like someone had flipped on a light inside his skull. He dragged smoke into his lungs and blew it out slowly.
“You two are gonna lose your minds when you hear this.”
There was a wildness to him tonight- the kind that meant he’d either uncovered something massive or was seconds away from putting a bullet through a wall out of frustration.
Matt barely looked up from where he lounged against the banister. “Oh, yeah?”
“You say that every time,” I said, folding my arms. “And half the time it’s just you discovering a new way to commit tax fraud.”
Matt barked a laugh.
Mello shot us both a glare, though the corner of his mouth twitched upward anyway. “Right. Hilarious. Glad you two are enjoying yourselves.”
He took another drag hard enough to make the cigarette flare orange in the dim light. For a second he just stood there, jittering with contained energy, like if he didn’t say this immediately he’d combust.
Then his eyes sharpened.
“You remember the informant I shoved into the SPK last year?”
That got my attention.
I remembered it vaguely. After KG collapsed, Mello should’ve slowed down- should’ve slept for a week straight, maybe stopped chain-smoking long enough to remember what his chocolate even tasted like. Instead he’d latched onto something new with terrifying speed.
The SPK.
America’s Special Provision for Kira.
Near’s organization.
Just hearing the name still did something ugly to him. You could see it every time: the tension in his jaw, the way his shoulders locked up, the obsession curling under his skin like rot beneath paint. Near lived in Mello’s head rent-free to such an extreme degree it was practically a haunting.
So no, hearing him bring up the SPK again wasn’t unusual.
“Yeah…” I frowned, trying to remember. “The informant. Ratt, right?”
Matt snorted loudly into his sleeve.
“Yeah, that moron.” Mello waved the comment away impatiently. “Well apparently the idiot finally managed to make himself useful.”
His grin spread slowly this time- not amused, not warm. Triumphant.
Dangerous.
“He got us leverage.”
Mello stepped closer, voice dropping lower.
“The kind that’ll wipe those smug looks right off your faces.”
My eyes narrowed- not because I didn’t believe him, but because I was trying to figure out where this newest obsession was headed.
Beside me, Matt gave a lazy smile full of pure disbelief.
“Well?” he drawled. “Go on, then. I’m waiting for my brain to explode all over the ground.”
Mello ignored the sarcasm completely.
That was the first bad sign.
Normally he would've snapped back instantly, but now he was too wound up to care. He paced the length of the fire escape instead, boots crashing against the metal grating hard enough to make the entire staircase tremble beneath us. The sound rang down into the alley below in sharp metallic echoes.
“We know how Kira kills,” he said quickly.
Too quickly.
Like he physically couldn’t force the words out fast enough.
“A notebook. They call it the Death Note.”
My heartbeat stopped.
Not metaphorically. Not poetically.
It genuinely fucking stopped for a second.
Mello turned abruptly, blonde hair whipping across his face with the force of it.
“And guess who has it?”
Matt lifted a brow. “Us?”
My stomach dropped so violently it almost hurt.
No.
Not dropped.
Collapsed.
Like something inside me had suddenly given out all at once.
For two years I’d lived with the constant hum of paranoia buried beneath my skin- low enough to ignore most days, manageable enough to function around. But hearing those words dragged it violently back to the surface. Every memory came rushing up at once: Ryuk’s grin. The weight of the notebook in my hands. Light standing over me. Dove crying. L staring too closely.
Death Note.
I felt cold so suddenly it made me dizzy.
Mello folded his arms tightly across his chest. “Not yet,” he said. “But we will.”
Then he looked at me.
Not casually.
Directly.
His eyes locked onto mine with enough intensity to make my pulse slam unevenly against my ribs.
“Your little friends at the NPA.”
For one horrifying second, I genuinely thought I was going to throw up.
Heat crawled up my throat. My lungs locked. Every instinct in my body screamed at me to run, or panic, or do something other than stand there staring at him like an idiot.
But I couldn’t.
I couldn’t afford to.
Not here.
Not with Mello.
So I forced my face still the same way I used to around L. Around Light. Around the Task Force. I shoved the panic down so hard it physically hurt and prayed to God neither of them could hear how violently my heart was beating.
Lie.
That was survivable.
Lying was easy.
I let out a short laugh that sounded wrong even to me.
“So…” I shoved my hands into my pockets before they could shake. “This… Ratt guy told you Kira kills people with a notebook?”
I snorted softly. “And you actually bought that?”
Mello’s brow twitched immediately.
There it was.
That tiny tell he had whenever someone made him feel mocked.
“Hell if I know,” he snapped. “But we’re gonna find out.”
Something uneasy started curling tighter and tighter in my chest.
“What do you mean?”
That familiar smirk spread slowly across his face again.
Sharp.
Certain.
Terrifying.
“We’re taking it.”
He tilted his head slightly.
“Both of ‘em.”
Matt, ever unreadable, took another drag from his cigarette. But for him, the slight tilt of interest in his posture was practically the equivalent of jumping up and down.
“Both?” he repeated.
“The one Kira has,” Mello said, holding up one finger.
Then a second.
“And the one the NPA has.”
The grin on his face widened into something feverish.
“Trust me. I’ve already figured the whole thing out.”
My stomach twisted so sharply I thought I might actually fold in half.
He said it with such certainty.
That was the problem with Mello. When he became obsessed with something, he didn’t stop. Didn’t sleep. Didn’t let go until he’d ripped the entire thing apart with his bare hands just to prove he could. And once he convinced himself he was right, the rest of the world became collateral damage.
I could already feel the disaster forming around me.
Like standing in the center of a tornado and realizing too late that the wind had already started moving.
Before either of us could answer, Mello spun on his heel and disappeared back into the safehouse, boots slamming violently against the metal stairs as he went. The door banged shut behind him hard enough to rattle the railing.
Silence rushed in afterward.
Heavy.
Wrong.
The alley below buzzed faintly with distant traffic and neon signs humming somewhere down the street, but up on the fire escape everything suddenly felt suffocatingly still.
I swallowed hard against the nausea climbing my throat.
God.
I was absolutely going to throw up later.
Matt flicked ash lazily off the edge of the cigarette.
At first glance he looked completely indifferent, but Matt had tells just like everybody else. Tiny ones. Easy to miss unless you knew him well.
The way he’d gone quieter.
The way he stared blankly at the wall ahead of him like he was trying to solve a puzzle inside his own head.
Finally, he shifted slightly toward me.
“You know about this?”
The question hit me so fast my chest tightened.
I answered too quickly.
“No.”
I forced myself to slow down after that, praying he hadn’t noticed.
“It sounds completely insane.”
Matt studied me for a second longer.
Not suspicious.
Just thinking.
Then some invisible tension in his shoulders loosened slightly, and he looked away again.
“Shit’s been insane since Kira showed up,” he muttered. “At this point I’d believe pretty much anything.”
I didn’t answer.
Couldn’t.
Because all I could think about was the door Mello had disappeared through.