Saving Mello is easier said than done. First he has to extract Mello and lift him into his rented car. Once Matt has to lurch to the side and vomit, the sickening smell of seared flesh hot in his nostrils. Every time he shifts Mello's body he imagines that more skin is being peeled away, more damage being done.

His mind is still stuck in molasses, caught between the urge to see Mello suffer and the need to see Mello live.

Finally he shifts him into the car, and the long, careful drive begins. But he can't bring a dying teen into any respectable hotel, Vegas or not, so Matt chews his lip and heads to Mello's own apartment.

Seeing the familiar building makes him shudder; the last time he was here, his life was teetering precariously in Mello's hands. Matt leaves Mello unconscious in the car and lets himself in with his old key and old passcode. More proof of Mello's arrogance, or did he just not care that Matt still had access to his space?

Matt boots up one of Mello's computers, heads to Google, and brings up burn care information before moving to search out some old sheets. Getting him upstairs and into the apartment is going to be a painful and probably ill-advised task, but it's not like he has any alternative.

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Mello never does anything halfway. Waking up falls under that category, too. Precisely five hours after Matt stops dosing him with sedatives, Mello starts screaming. Matt walks into the bedroom and pulls up a chair. The screaming stops.

They look at each other. It still takes all of Matt's willpower not to flinch at the ugly, ruined mess that is Mello's new face. Mello is strapped to his bed with restraints that Matt found in the closet; he knows the restraints probably used to serve other purposes, but he needed something to keep the blonde boy from hurting himself. He'd stripped Mello bare of most of his clothes, cleaned his skin, bandaged him and applied ointments and salves as best as he could. Pumped him full of antibiotics like a factory-raised chicken. The end result is this: Mello is alive, barely, even if the smell emanating from his skin tells a different story.

"Matt," he croaks at last. His voice is rough. Mello flexes his hands, which are still tied to cuffs at the edge of the bed.

"Yeah." Matt gets up, pours a glass of water from the pitcher by the bed, and holds it to Mello's lips. The boy gasps and drinks it greedily, staring at Matt the entire time. When he finishes, he tries to speak again. "You're still here."

"Don't ask me why," Matt warns. But he knows why. It's there, the panic in his gut, the queasy relief at hearing his longtime companion finally, finally return to the land of the living. Instead, though, he says: "Tell me."

Mello tells him.

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At the end of it, Matt releases the cuffs on Mello's wrists and ankles. He leaves the room and shuts himself inside of the computer closet. It's still here, still intact. The machines boot up with a quiet hum, and he runs his fingers reverently over the metal cases. It's as though he never left.

Instead of digging in and checking on his networks, though, he switches on a radio news feed, leans against the wall and closes his eyes. The buzz of panicking news anchors provides a nice white-noise background to his thoughts.

Death Notes, death gods, crazy dangerous shit on a level he'd never even imagined. This is like ending up in some crap fantasy novel. The President is dead, the SPK members are dead, so so many of Mello's pawns in the Mafia are dead. The ability to kill from a face alone. Shit. And Mello had come so close.

He doesn't know whether or not he should be relieved that it was Mello who blew up the headquarters. Something about arson sends Matt's skin crawling. But in many ways it doesn't matter, because Kira and the Japanese NPA both want Mello dead, and the American government has given up. Matt replays everything that Mello told him in his mind, unraveling the story and sifting his fingers through the threads. It's all so very, very strange.

His phone buzzes. Matt clicks open the text message instinctively; it's from Halle. I heard the news, it reads. We'll take you you both if you need cover.

He doesn't reply.

Instead Matt leans back and lets his head thunk against the wall. His mind is buzzing, coiling with angry energy and restless nerves. He thinks about the wounded boy in the room next door, about his fire and rage and helplessness, about washing burn wounds with careful panic for hours and hours.

Before he can change his mind, Matt lurches to his feet and strides into the next room. Mello looks up as he enters, brows arched questioningly. "I have some rules," Matt announces. "We share information—all of it. No more threats. And you can't try to kill Near, directly or indirectly."

Mello's brows arch further upwards. "Feeling fond of him?"

Matt snorts. "I'm offended by Kira," he tells Mello. "Your priority is to win; mine is to make Kira lose."

Mello shifts in his bed. Matt tries not to look at him, or the burns. "What if I don't agree?"

That jerks Matt's head up. "Do you know how badly you were, when I found you?" he asks. "You were buried under that rubble. Nobody had bothered to look for you." He holds up his hands. They're still wrapped in gauze and ointment. His fingers are bruised and his nails broken from digging through concrete and glass. "I could have left you."

"I still don't get why you didn't."

Matt steps forward until he's leaning over the bed. Mello stares back at him, affecting a lazy, defiant look even now. Except, Matt knows it's all a façade. He can see the slight quiver in the blue eyes, hear the nervous, pained inhale and exhale of Mello's breath. "I thought you were dead," Matt says. When his voice catches in his throat, shame surges in his stomach, but he forces himself to keep talking. "I found out then that I'm a fool. I'm willing to accept that." He smiles crookedly. "I'm used to you making a fool of me."

"Matt," Mello breathes. He reaches out with his hand, and Matt clasps it loosely. Mello squeezes, hard, even though his entire body must be on fire right now. "I am sorry."

"We're all kinds of fucked up, you know," Matt says.

Mello chuckles. "If you just noticed that, you haven't been paying attention." He leans back and narrows his eyes, frowning. "I tried," he says. "I gambled. Seems like I lost. I was so close, Matt. I had a Note."

"Lost," Matt repeats. "You make it sound like it's over."

The way Mello stares at him makes him feel mighty uncomfortable. Mello's eyes are narrowed, thinly focused laser beams scouring Matt's face with the intensity of a solar flare. "You're serious," Mello says.

Matt swallows, hard. "I think I am," he says.

"You can't flake again," Mello says. "I'm not talking about me this time, I'm talking about Kira. This is for keeps."

"I know."

"Jesus, Matt." Mello closes his eyes and leans back against the pillow. "You would've saved us both a lot of trouble if you'd decided this a while ago."

Matt considers that. Maybe Mello's touched on a grain of truth, maybe he hasn't, but all the same the thought of it burns. He gazes at Mello, at the boy's scarred face and his too-pale skin. "We'd both be dead, if I had."

"Maybe."

It makes him a terrible person, it really does. But Matt thinks—even if he'd stayed on with Mello, from the beginning, it wouldn't be the same. He wouldn't know what a fool he is, for this ridiculous star-bright, manic boy. Knowing he's a fool gives him an inner sense of clarity, a ringing certainty in his own motivations.

"We'll catch him," Matt tells Mello, and Mello bares his teeth in that feral snarl that Matt loves so much.

"Yes," the blonde hisses, and when he squeezes Matt's hand, Matt feels better than he can remember feeling in years.

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That's all it takes.

On the plane ride back to New York, Matt stares out the window at the clear sky. He hates flying. Next to him, Mello dozes, knocked out by a cocktail of painkillers and sedatives. Matt is still surprised that the blonde is able to walk, but that's Mello for you. Indomitable.

Matt's chest feels painfully tight, as it has since he first rediscovered Mello. He can't shake the feeling that he's signed a contract to bring about his own doom. At the same time, maybe his stomach is churning from excitement, too. It's been years since he let himself sink his teeth into a problem like this. Back at the flat, as Mello laid out his plan, his theories, his suspicions, Matt felt his blood soar. He's like a recovered junkie, shooting up again for the first time in years; the taste is sweet, so sweet, and he can't help the craving that sings in his veins.

It's like his brain remembers what it was to be M, the impressive one, the class star. Matt doesn't miss being best; his ego has long since healed, and he thinks for the better. But his brain remembers the feeling of striving, trying to please a distant god, a terrible and awesome mentor. That feeling electrifies him again as he hashes out the plans with Mello. Except Mello is no computer-synthesized projection. He's real, flesh and blood and pain and fire. Mello's regard for him lights a warmth in his stomach that justifies this, over and over again. Oh, he's still rude, still curt and vulgar and volatile. But the real venom is gone, and in its place is some strange blend of wonder and respect.

Matt thinks he likes it.

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He's only a little exasperated when Mello holds Halle hostage at gunpoint. "Normal people can just ask for things, you know," he tells him. "That was unnecessary. I already told you where headquarters was."

"They might have moved. The NPA could have been watching. All sorts of things." Mello has his boots kicked over the edge of the couch. He's got the old picture of him in his fingers, toying with it. His brow is furrowed. At this point, he's mostly healed, but the scar is there to stay. It exaggerates the blonde's look of frustration. "I didn't expect Near to cooperate."

"You underestimate him."

"Like hell I do." Mello spits the words. "I've heard enough about little boy genius, thank you very much—"

"I meant emotionally," Matt says. He keeps puffing on his cigarette, keeps his fingers busy with his DS. It really isn't good to pay attention to Mello when he's angry; the boy feeds off attention for his tantrums. "He doesn't hate you."

Mello ignores this. "The game is on," he says. "For real, now. We know so much more. Tomorrow. We start surveillance tomorrow."

Matt hums in agreement and finishes another level in his game.

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When he hears Mello's final plan, Matt nods, slowly. "All right," he says. Then he goes outside to have a smoke.

It's harder to indulge his habit here, in modern-day health-conscious New York, than in Vegas. Matt leans over the railing of the fire escape and lights up, looking down at the crowded streets below their midtown hotel room. It's a hazy afternoon, the heat simmering on the sidewalks, New Yorkers moving quickly below like jerky automatons.

Mello joins him at the railing, gripping the iron tightly with gloved fingers. Even in the heat, Mello insists on covering himself in black leather. "Hey. You've been out here a while."

Matt doesn't reply to that. Finally, Mello sighs and speaks up again. "Matt, if you don't want to go along with this plan, you don't have to."

"About the last time," Matt says abruptly. He stares out at the Manhattan landscape, at the orange-tinted smog, glad once again that his goggles give him a sense of separation from his surroundings. "When you said you'd write my name in the Note. Did you mean it?"

Mello exhales slowly. Matt turns and lets himself look at Mello's face: the deep blue eyes, calm for the moment; the tense line of his mouth; the jagged scar; the defiant set of his chin.

"I'm sorry about that," Mello says at last. "I…gambled that you would consider the threat to be real. That you didn't have any faith in me. So I threatened you. Both times, that was my strategy."

"And if I'd called your bluff?"

Mello chews his lip. "I don't know," he says at last.

Matt believes him. It doesn't hurt, anymore, not compared with the actual acts themselves. In some ways, the answer doesn't matter. He's always known Mello as a violently destructive, unpredictable fireball of raw energy and rawer anger. Him and Mello both know that however Mello feels now doesn't necessarily correlate to what he might have done before.

Matt has yielded himself to the whims of a fickle beast, a mercurial demon. It's the answer he expected. You wouldn't believe him if he told you otherwise, he snaps to himself.

"I mean it, this time, though," Mello says quietly. "I could find someone else to do it."

That's a bluff, and Matt knows that plenty well. Mello's contacts are either dead, or have no reason to trust him. If the Family wasn't in tatters thanks to Kira, there would be a hit on his head.

Matt lights another cigarette and focuses on the feeling of the sun on his face, the smoke in his lungs. He thinks back to his life outside Wammy, before he'd stumbled across Hannon while bug-sweeping for Travis. Days spent idling away his time at blackjack tables, half-heartedly taking the odd contracting job, spending nights alone in his flat with nothing but his machines and his games. These past few weeks have been different, electric; painful, yes, but so much more real.

For a moment he considers life after walking away. Watching the outcome of the battle on the TV, so many steps removed, guessing at whether or not Mello or Near or Kira are dead yet. Finding more contracts, setting up a new non-identity, playing video games alone in his room while his onetime classmates gamble with the god of death. There's something depressing about the idea.

"Remember?" he asks Mello, holding up his cigarette. "You used to be so concerned about these."

Mello swallows. "Yeah."

Matt knows he's being cruel. The blonde is still in shock, somewhat, that Matt bothered to save him after the fire. It's not nice to toy with him. "I'll do it," he says.

"I'll get you out," Mello tells him. "You'll be fine."

Matt forces a smile, knowing that Mello will see the plasticity of it but not being able to help himself. "Yeah."

He doesn't believe Mello, not for an instant, but the look of relief in the blonde's blue eyes is enough.

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When the cars circle him and the guns appear, Matt steps outside to meet them. Mello has escaped. That's what matters. That's what's always mattered.

With a cigarette and a smile on his lips, Matt meets his decision head-on.

AN: Wow. I neglected this for a really long time. I apologize to anyone who I abandoned along the way...

I went back and read this last night and thought, this needs an ending. This might not be the best ending that I could have hoped for, but I felt like it needed some sort of closure. I hope you all don't hate me for it.