A/N: Most of my words are failing me at present. This multi-chapter is without doubt my masterpiece. Having an incredible beta is a huge part of that. Tobi Tortue, I think you know that you have my gratitude — forever and ever and ever. I tried my hardest to rise to your challenges and correct everything that I could under your tough (but necessary!) lash for this first chapter.

I really hope everyone enjoys this mad ride. I've finished all the writing, but I'll be posting chapters in intervals as they are beta read and tweaked. Intelligent feedback is welcome; I hope this piece inspires you to think. I hope you feel the intensity. I really had demons on my ass making me write this one.

It was worth it.

Cheers,

SlvrSoleAlchmst1

Attic Space

The London flat wasn't the kind of place that made realtors giddy, but it would do for two days.

Matt spread out his computer equipment on the hardwood floor, careful to avoid Mello's boots. The blonde was pacing shakily, like he'd just figured out the nine lives thing was a lie. There was something electric in the air, but it was probably just the tension and the fact that neither of them had spoken for at least thirty minutes. Matt glanced out the window, where smog collected thick like cotton and the sun was a disc of silver.

London. Of all the places he was sure they'd never go back to.

Mello's cell phone rang, but he flipped it off after half a circulation of the ring tone and stuffed it back into his pocket. Matt didn't ask. It was probably Hal, worrying for them both, but the plan wasn't changing and the cards had been laid. Mello likely wanted Hal to clam up so they could get on with their lives. Matt couldn't blame him.

Not that there was much left of their lives.

They'd talked about it beforehand. Matt could hardly remember their first conversation; he'd started throwing insults and Mello had damn near killed him. Matt's head had made friends with the wall, and everything else was hazy after that. When he'd fully regained consciousness, he remembered telling Mello that he could fuck himself and die, because it was a stupid, risky plan.

Mello had laughed.

Matt supposed — after a long bout of reflection — that he wasn't really against it. After all, it wasn't as if he'd ever expected to live much past the age of thirty. It was something he'd grown to accept. It could have been the cigarettes that prepared him. It could have been his recklessness — leaving Wammy's and getting caught up with Mello and generally screwing himself by growing involved in the Kira case. Not to mention L's death, which boded ill for them all. It was proof. What was death but inevitable, no matter how smart you were or when you expected yourself to die?

Matt had learned to live one day at a time.

After Mello had called Hal, he'd hung up the phone and looked at Matt. "We won't have to act for a few days. We can…" He'd glanced sideways at his untouched chocolate bar. "We can go somewhere, if you want."

"What, like a vacation? Now? Are you serious?"

"Matt, I just want to get away from this. Temporarily, before we end up in a position where we're in too deep to climb out." His hands were clenching air.

"I thought we were already at that point."

Mello's eyes had sent a shock through Matt's system. "Damn it, Mail Jeevas – I'm asking you to think about this."

Matt knew then that Mello wasn't joking.

He'd suggested Vegas as a heady last rush. Then he'd asked Mello where he wanted to go, to which Mello had simply replied, "Home." Matt's fingers had hesitated over his game of Tetris. The blocks had piled up at funny angles and clogged his screen, leaving holes like Swiss cheese. Neither of them had ever really had a home. The closest thing was Wammy's House, in England, and both of them had sworn not to go back until L was avenged.

"You want to go home?"

The more Matt had thought about it, the more the idea had infiltrated — crawled up his cerebellum into his brain like a parasite. Home. Matt had decided that maybe it wasn't too bad of an idea. Better than gambling and lights, anyway. So they'd gone, and his first breath of the city upon arrival had been bliss.

Now they were in the flat Mello had arranged for them — from some old contact in his number list — and Matt was hoping that if he gave Mello long enough to calm down, he'd finally agree to pay a visit to Wammy's. Damned if Matt could put a finger on why, but he didn't want to go by himself.

"Mello, will you come with me or not?" he asked, tapping away at his keyboard until the computer went into guarded hibernation mode. Then he stood up to hunt for his PSP. Mello's gamble had cost Matt a game of Tetris the day Matt had found out about it. Maybe he'd make up the points now. "You're the one who wanted to come home."

Mello didn't look up from the gun he was checking for bullets. "I just meant to England, Matt. I didn't mean to Wammy's."

Frustration packed a mean punch, and Matt was hit with brass knuckles on. "Bullshit," he gritted. "We've got two days — probably our last two left on Kira's twisted earth until we're toast — and you're the one who said that we should spend that time doing something useful."

"I'm trying to think."

"Yeah, well, you'll only drive yourself to an earlier grave that way." Matt studied Mello's face, though, and he wasn't so sure. Mello's brow was smooth, and the pacing had ceased. Matt had the distinct feeling that it wasn't Mello who was on edge anymore, and it scared him.

Matt didn't want to think about it. They had two days. He didn't care, but he didn't want to think about it. He played with the cuffs of his gloves. If he concentrated on the feeling in his stomach, he knew he was queasy, but at the same time he knew nothing had really sunken in. Not yet. In a way, he didn't want it to. Maybe it was because he knew he couldn't handle it, but it was probably just his own stubbornness fucking with his perception. He removed his goggles, as if to clear his vision of anything the least bit inhibiting.

Mello had nearly finished combing their equipment. "If you want to go, Matt, then go. Take the afternoon for yourself. Don't sit there fidgeting." He slammed a refilled cartridge into the hollow frame of one gun.

Matt flipped Mello the finger and gave up looking for his PSP. He wasn't sure he wanted to play it — the thing seemed inconsequential now — but he needed something to do with his hands. They shook a little, and his natural urge was to wring them together, but fuck him if that wouldn't just give Mello something else to rag on.

It wasn't that he didn't want to go. A few peculiar, genius children and a tired old stone building didn't scare him. Not on the outside, anyway. And maybe "scare" wasn't the right word. It was more an unease that Matt felt, and that was only when he thought about the years they'd spent there and the reason that they'd left. It was almost like he was being haunted, the way Matt's abdomen would cinch whenever he thought about Roger's face, or the bell tower in the south wing, or L's locked room or the shelf where Mello had kept his chocolate. So many innocent, untainted childhood memories, and Matt wasn't sure that he could face them again. Not when he was something so different from what he'd been in his past.

He tossed his goggles to the floor, gloves falling down soon after to make a little mound of his possessions.

"You aren't taking anything with you?" Mello asked, hand resting at the nape of his neck and looking at Matt from beneath blonde fringe. And damn it, Matt hated it when Mello looked at him that way. It was a probing look, something so far-seeing that Matt felt raped every time Wammy's Number Two Genius graced him with it. It wasn't mocking, exactly, nor was it anything overtly curious, but somehow Matt always felt as if Mello were holding him captive. He'd halt, frozen in those few seconds of the stare when Mello would narrow his eyes just slightly, like he already knew all of Matt's thoughts and wanted to linger in the knowing. It made his skin crawl.

For some reason he always met the look right back.

"I don't need anything else besides these," Matt responded mechanically, waggling his pack of cigarettes in the open air between them. He couldn't let go of Mello's gaze. "No one's going to recognize me around here, except maybe Roger, and that's not a problem, is it?"

Mello was still considering him, but he'd broken the spell to run his eyes slowly over Matt's figure. Matt forced himself not to move. He'd be damned if he let Mello cow him — if that was what Mello was aiming to do. Matt couldn't be sure. He felt as if he were being searched, like this time Mello was combing him for information that couldn't be gleaned by looking into Matt's eyes alone. Matt straightened his back, and he heard it creak. Damn it, Mello, don't look at me that way.

"If you're ready to let me leave now, why don't you do it and go eat some chocolate or something." His voice came tight and quiet, nerves dancing a ballet, but it didn't matter. Mello was the prima ballerina. And Mello knew it.

"I'm not keeping you here, Matt."

Oh, but he was. He was. Those eyes made Matt's heart pump. They rendered him weak with something foreign, and the feeling tied him there. Mello was holding him in place with a force that made Matt feel utterly possessed. That stare said Matt would go through a tempest of withdrawal if he ever let it stop caressing him. If he allowed Mello's sharp, glazed eyes to cease their touch, there would be torture, and there would be torture tenfold if he let it keep going. But Matt could almost swear he wanted those eyes on him longer.

Wait… what?

Matt blinked, and when he looked again, Mello was twisting the beads on his rosary and paying him no attention. Matt resisted the urge to seize the blonde by that same prayer string and, oh — maybe choke him with it. His fingers twitched. He needed to get out of their stifling flat. He needed the London air; he needed nicotine and a backbone and god, he needed Mello to look at him that way again, or he just might lose his sanity.

Now Mello was ignoring him. Matt fought the clash of opposing data on his inner hard drive. He didn't have time to piece together every whim and vague desire that his mind latched on to. They were already living on borrowed time, and fuck if Matt would waste that time on someone as temperamental as Mello.

So the hell with it.

"I'll see you when I get back," Matt said, and he let the door bang on his way out.

— x —

He almost couldn't get himself to step through the gates. They were creaky, made of wrought iron, and painted an unassuming black. Beyond them lay Wammy's House, a stone monolith that at once made Matt think of both sanctuary and exposure. He remembered the days he'd spent inside, snuggled in a blanket by the fire while Roger told them stories. Then his eyes rose to the bell tower, and his blood ran cold. When he'd overheard Roger muttering about the footage before L's time of death… mention of bells had been predominant.

Did he want to be here? Did he really? Matt didn't know. He slipped a cigarette from his pocket — his seventh since he'd left the flat — and scanned the deadened grounds. It was quiet. The children were probably inside, in class or eating lunch in the dining hall. Matt's own stomach rumbled, but he ignored it and sucked harder on the stick that listed between his teeth.

It was odd to see a place so peaceful. Matt supposed that since he'd left, he'd gotten used to a sense of peril. He remained on constant guard, as peace was a commodity he couldn't often afford. But Matt was sure, standing there at the gates, that "on guard" was something no one at Wammy's ever quite was. Lucky bastards. Roger had monitors, but he rarely felt the need to use them. Watari and L had combined their geniuses to tuck the place away where it would never be disturbed. And if anyone came across it — as people often did, Matt assumed — it was of no large consequence. Wammy's House was just an orphanage, after all. Quillsh Wammy had made certain that it would always appear as such from the outside. None would ever dig deep enough into the system to examine which extraordinary orphans were accepted, or what kind of educations they received.

Of course, it had helped that Watari and L were the system.

Matt blinked back floating ash as it teased his lashes. He reached for his goggles, but they weren't there; he'd left them behind. He closed his eyes and breathed deep, the smell of winter mold and dead grass on the grounds mixing with the sweet, bitter smoke of his cigarette. It felt familiar. He leaned on the iron bars and let himself drift.

If nostalgia could manifest itself as something tangible, then Matt tasted it. He could taste it, and he wasn't sure it was a welcome sensation. There he was at present, standing outside the place where he'd grown up, but he was being transported to the past on a wave of vertigo. He'd thought his memories had long lost their sharpness, but they slid into focus as he took another drag.

He remembered the attic, where he used to go to read or play games after everyone else had fallen sleep. The flashlight's electric glow protected him from nocturnal stirrings outside. Creatures that liked dark skittered away from his light. Roger had asked the entire dorm where that flashlight had got to, and Matt remembered pulling his goggles down to hide his eyes.

He remembered stealing Mello's chocolate one day — stowing it up in the rafters next to Near's missing LEGOs — only to go back for it when Mello threw a fit and find that it had melted. He remembered the time he almost burned the place down, lighting matches under the eaves when he tried his first cigarette. He remembered the night he dragged Mello to the attic with him, asked him if he could keep a secret. Mello had said yes, and then used Matt's secret to blackmail him into a multitude of silly things later.

Then one day they'd installed an electric bulb for more light. The place had morphed into a tradition, a special retreat, and soon it became the hideaway where they talked about the group of girls in dorm two. Or the cases that L was working on. Or how best to infuriate Near. Nothing divulged there ever left. Nothing spoken about was ever discussed until they were back under those same eaves once more, listening to the hoots of the owls in the dim glow.

"What's your favorite type of music?" Mello had asked Matt one night, after Matt had finished his turn at interrogation and asked Mello which girls he thought wore thongs.

"Music? Way to waste your turn. Why ask me about that?" Matt snorted and the floorboards creaked their agreement.

"I like the opera."

Matt remembered taking off his goggles to peer at him. Mello was looking back, ready to lash out if Matt dared release a peep of scorn.

"Opera? Yeah, so what's so wrong with that? I don't mind the opera, either. I've got the score of Madame Butterfly somewhere in my closet. I liked it when we covered it in Music Theory." He remembered watching the way Mello's face had relaxed into something vaguely pleasurable.

"My favorite is Tristan and Isolde."

"Tristan und Isolde," Matt had grunted in German. "Why that one? You don't understand German."

"I speak it better than you do. I didn't fail the class."

"But why do you like that one, Mello?" He tossed his hands helplessly into the air as if seeking assistance from the beams above their heads. "Operas are usually in Italian, or some other language. Richard Wagner was a nut, thinking he could pull off good music with those ugly sounds."

"I don't think so."

And after that, they'd carried up a dusty old CD player that they'd swiped from Wammy's basement quarters. Mello brought them all the scores on discs, and Matt's job was to hunt down libretti in Wammy's ancient library. They discussed the story lines and analyzed character development. They closed their eyes and listened, and Matt laughed whenever Mello let out an appreciative sigh, only to be laughed at in return when he was caught doing the same. Somehow, breaking down opera music had made them feel cultured, bonded.

"But why Tristan and Isolde?" Matt had asked after they'd played the opera through for the third time one night.

"I always thought it sounded like something tragic," Mello had tried to clarify, mouth moving slowly round the words like they were precious. "Dying because of how much you love someone."

"I don't get it, Mello. For one thing, why would a reason like that mean you like the story? And for another, that plot happens in a lot of operas. What's so different about this one?"

Mello had licked his lips and looked away. "It just is, okay? I can't explain."

All this Matt remembered as he stood in front of Wammy's House, the wind picking up to leave him shivering. His cigarette had burned to the filter, so he lit another and drew the smoke in like a bellows. He prayed that the habit of something mundane would return him to the present.

Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. Mello's remark had been a gross oversimplification of the opera's plot. Neither of them had really understood back then what it meant. It hadn't made sense, and it didn't make sense now. It was undeveloped speculation. An extraneous exchange between two rebel orphans in the attic of their childhood shelter.

Matt squinted at the tiny window that marked their hideout from the outside. It was high up, directly under the gutter pipes and staring back like a slitted eye. Matt regarded it with a sort of detachment, with inconsequential scrutiny. Wammy's looked smaller in the face of everything they were about to do. It had lost its benevolence and become something faded and grim. Suddenly he understood why Mello hadn't wanted to see it again. In the face of their new reality, the cold stone of Wammy's House took on a different connotation, one that was far from the comforting checkpoint it was in their memories. Mello had known it would be this way, so he hadn't come to visit it.

Mello. Matt's thoughts jumped to their earlier confrontation, where he had felt glued to the floor by Mello's stare. There had been something lurking behind their face-off, something tense between them that Matt had not been able to place. He supposed it was natural, really. He and Mello trusted each other. Matt had essentially agreed to die for him, and if that wasn't a sign of trust, Matt didn't know what was. But that wasn't exactly the problem. It went deeper than that, deep down into something that Matt couldn't grasp. It had to do with the manner in which they'd chosen to go down — the timing of it. Not in terms of their plan's execution, but in terms of their own lives. The plan itself was flawless. Kidnap Takada. Hurl a monkey wrench at Kira's cursed skull. Provide Near with the needed advantage. It wasn't without risk to its participants, but either way, it couldn't fail. So Matt didn't know why something still gnawed at him. It was as if…

It was as if they were on the verge of something. Something that might have changed them both had they given it time to mature, but neither knew what it was. Maybe it had started back at Wammy's, during those nights in the attic. Maybe it hadn't begun until they'd met up again, years later. They were on the verge of greater knowledge, on the verge of discovering some crucial keynote. It wasn't quite that Matt felt resentful, or like he wished he'd had more time to live, but something was… missing. They didn't have time to develop the notion, caught up in the whirlwind of Kira as they were, but Matt couldn't shake the fact that he'd pushed something important aside somewhere. Left it behind, perhaps. He felt… empty.

The wind hissed a warning over the dead grass of the grounds, and Matt shook his head as his last cigarette dropped ash at his feet. He wouldn't go any closer to Wammy's House than where he stood.

It was time he high-tailed it out of there.