The screaming sirens and people were fading into silence. The taste of cigarette smoke was vanishing from lips gone numb, and the scent of blood and gunpowder had all but evaporated. The world was turning gray. All that remained was searing agony.

His heart gave one final labored thud and then gave out.

He fell.

No life flashed before his eyes. No tunnel to a bright light opened up in front of him. There was only darkness. Death was exactly as Matt had imagined it: lonely, painful and terrifying.

Then he landed.

Time passed while Matt blinked numbly, unable to comprehend what was happening. Here he was. He was dead, and yet here he was.

Could he have misunderstood? Was he just in a coma, his mind trapped in limbo? But he knew immediately that that wasn't right. He was dead, and there was still a him to know it.

He laughed, a shrill, nervous sound. "Mello's going to be so insufferably smug about this—" Matt hadn't thought it was possible. He had believed that death was the final end for as long as he could remember. Learning otherwise was too much to handle. His mind didn't even try to process it. It skipped past denial and rationalization and went straight to mute acceptance. There was no point in questioning the evidence of his own experience.

Why had he been so convinced that the afterlife didn't exist, anyway? He knew about the death notebooks. He had heard Mello's stories of shinigami. If Kira could kill through supernatural methods, it meant that other supernatural phenomena might also exist. Logically speaking, it meant that the afterlife was at least a possibility. But he had never been able to bring himself to acknowledge it.

Matt shook his head. "I'm just a skeptic to the end, I guess," he muttered. He got shakily to his hands and knees, and dared to lift his head and look around for the first time.

What he saw was gray stretching from horizon to horizon, with no discernable break between ground and sky. It was illuminated with a uniform, directionless light. It put Matt in mind of the inside of a cloud, but his movements didn't create eddies like they would in fog. He reached downwards and immediately jerked his hand back when it passed below the level of his knees without encountering any resistance.

He had established that he was here. Now he began to wonder where herewas, exactly, and what he was supposed to do next. He couldn't see anything. Was this some kind of test? He stood up and put one foot in front of the other, probing the ground carefully to see if it would hold his weight. It did, and after a few steps he accepted that it would continue to do so. He started walking.

Actually, it wasn't just that he was a skeptic. He had an anti-belief. He had believed so firmly that there was no such thing as a "soul" that he had been completely closed-minded towards any alternative.

The insight popped into his head with such suddenness and clarity that it startled him into stillness. He turned it around in his mind, weighing it, and decided that it was true. "Then I guess I'm just stubborn till the end," he murmured.

Yes. He was. Why had he been so married to that idea, anyway? The question was very relevant, given that he had just been proven wrong.

It took him a few minutes of thinking before he could articulate the answer clearly. It was because the afterlife and the "soul" were directly connected to the idea that there was some sort of higher authority or "God" watching over the world, the theory that things happened for a reason. Those were things that Mello used to talk about with great conviction, but they had always baffled Matt—because that clearly wasn't how the world worked. It ran according to cause and effect, not because there was some ultimate purpose behind things. Humans were just meat and bones, carrying out biological functions based on chemical processes. It was the laws of physics and the forces of evolution that had shaped them, not some benign guiding hand from above. Each of them tried to have fun and find some sort of happiness in life, and that was it. There was no deeper meaning than that.

But the afterlife is clearly real. So do the rest of your convictions about the way the world works still add up?

It was the first time that Matt became aware that there was actually a second voice, and not just the sound of his own thoughts playing devil's advocate. He looked around warily, but saw nothing. "Are you real?" he said aloud. "I know I'm isolated and in sensory deprivation, but it seems too soon for me to have lost my mind."

Real.

Matt hesitated, then shrugged. There was no point in questioning his sanity. If he was crazy he couldn't trust his own thoughts anyway; it was easier just to accept it and move on.

"Do my beliefs add up?" He repeated the question aloud as he considered it. Then he snorted. "Yes they do. Overwhelmingly." His life had been full of bad things that happened for no reason at all, from birth to death. His entire existence had been aimless and pointless. If someone was watching over him, it was someone with a sadistic sense of humor. "My father was killed in a freak car accident when I was four," he said accusingly. "Where's the meaning in that?"

Then he froze and gasped. Suddenly he could remember it all, every single moment of his life, as clearly as if it had happened earlier this very day. His memory was perfect. He relived the crash, the endless hours of surgery, the doctor telling him that his father was dead. It played in his head on endless loop for what felt like an eternity, until he learned to hold the recollections at a distance and examine them from a slightly detached vantage point. He remembered how the dread certainty that his life was over had settled on him that day, and he remembered how the police officer had assured him that everything would be all right.

But nothing had been all right. His father's death had set him adrift in the world, all alone. His first orphanage had barely been real to him. Beige walls, the stern frown of the headmistress, the counselors who prodded him and made him talk to them…all he had wanted was to be left alone. He didn't form any attachments while he was there. What was the point, when they could vanish at any moment? Matt had understood the impermanence of all things at a very young age.

He had escaped into video games. They occupied his time and staved off boredom, and, perhaps most importantly of all, they were always there waiting for him exactly as he had left them. Games wouldn't abandon him. On the glowing screen, life was completely on his terms.

And so things had remained for the next five years. Until he met Mello.

Now Matt smiled, his train of bitter memories completely derailed. Mello had changed everything. With his golden hair and irrepressible personality, he had pierced through the barrier that separated Matt from everyone else. Mello had become a part of his world, had turned his world into their world. These times, too, were now fresh and vivid in his mind. Sneaking around Wammy's House late at night, causing trouble; confessing their real names to each other; their first kiss. These were powerful memories, good memories. Mello had made him happy.

For a time, anyway. Even that had fallen apart near the end. The pressures of Wammy's House had warped Mello. Years of struggling to be Number One had turned him into something Matt couldn't cope with anymore. He had been forced to leave the House and his best friend behind for the sake of his own sanity.

Leave them behind? The implications of his thoughts caught up with him and he guffawed. Another way to phrase that would be to say he had run away. That was what he had done when he had exited Wammy's House without even telling Mello why. He hadn't even tried to make things right between them, he had just turned tail and fled. And he had still been running when he started using drugs afterwards. In fact, he realized, that was also what he had done when he lost himself in video games after his father's death. He had never wanted to deal with painful things head-on, he had always just pretended that they weren't even there. There was a common theme here, a pattern, and it was cowardice. He could see that now.

Funny, how being dead gave a completely different perspective on things. Matt hung his head in shame.

Yet despite that, Mello had come and found him again. They had been reunited, years later, and Matt had had a second chance at happiness.

How did he find you? asked the other. It had been so long since it had last spoken that Matt had all but forgotten it was even there.

He smiled mirthlessly. Mello had admitted that it was no coincidence that they had both wound up in L.A. at the same time. Matt knew the exact moment that he had slipped up and left a traceable trail. When he had moved from New York to L.A., he had accessed his Wammy's House trust money in order to buy a car. He had been in a hurry, and had made the erroneous assumption that nobody was still looking for him. He hadn't covered his tracks as well as he should have. That was how Mello had found him.

That's all there was to it?

The question made Matt pause. He had never put too much thought into it, since Mello's finding him had obviously turned out for the better. But now that he was considering it, he realized that a lot more must have gone into finding him than just a blip on his money trail in New York. For example, he'd used cash all the way across the country, then changed identities and the plates on his car when he arrived in L.A. Mello had no way of knowing he had even gone west. How had he followed that move?

And that wasn't even the biggest question. Mello had begun in Winchester. He had first had to trace Matt back to the States.

Now that he was thinking about the practicalities involved, Matt realized that Mello must have spent a staggering number of hours searching for him. And it wasn't as if Mello had nothing else to do—he was also hunting Kira and fighting his never-ending battle with Near. The majority of the Kira case was Japan-centric, and yet Mello had set up his base of operations in L.A. Where Matt was.

Mello had made incredible sacrifices for them to be together.

A sob tore its way free from Matt's throat. He couldn't believe that he had never put the picture together before. Mello had done all that, and yet, the first time they had met up again after years apart, Matt had chosen to lose his number and leave him hanging. He'd been intimidated by the company Mello was keeping and confused by his own mixed feelings about the past, and he hadn't been able to see the bigger picture—which was how much he loved Mello and how desperately unhappy he was without him. Matt had done nothing to help his own case. Mello was the one who had fought for them—had fought for him. Mello had given him even a third chance. It wasn't until after the blonde's brush with death in a burning warehouse that Matt had let him back into his life. Soon after that, like clockwork, Mello had made him happy again.

The tears on Matt's cheeks had nothing to do with his death. "All of the good parts of my life were with Mello," he whispered as realization dawned. If he made a Venn diagram with the largest circle labeled "Matt's life," the smaller circles "parts that were good" and "time spent with Mello" would overlap perfectly. The rest would be labeled, "times that sucked" and "times Matt was on his own"—also a pair of identical sets.

From the vantage point of death, he could see the truth in stark clarity. Mello had picked up what pieces of him still remained after years of addiction and hopelessness, and reassembled them. It was a task so daunting that even Matt himself had shied away from it, but Mello had faced it head-on. Mello had healed him.

"I'm such a pathetic idiot," he exclaimed miserably. "He did so much for me and I didn't deserve any of it!"

He felt, rather than heard, the other's query. Then why did he do it?

Matt stilled. "That's a good question," he said, rubbing salty liquid off of his cheeks. Mello didn't need him. He was, speaking honestly, any hot-blooded gay man's wet dream. He could have anybody he wanted; there was no good reason for him to go to such great lengths for Matt. "Hell if I know. He just fell for me at a young age and he was too stuck to move on and find someone better." Matt had gotten him through sheer luck alone, and the truth was that Mello would have been better off with someone who matched him better. Someone with passion and determination, not a junkie gamer who had never done anything with his life. He hadn't deserved Mello at all.

He wallowed in the morass of those thoughts for a long time before a different one started to make itself heard. The new thought reminded him that he had asked Mello that million-dollar question while he was alive, and Mello had actually had an answer for him. He had said it was because Matt was the only person who could handle him.

That's right—that's right! Matt's eyes widened in shock. He had handled Mello. He couldn't count the number of times he'd had a gun shoved in his face or taken a black eye from the blonde when he was in a foul mood. He'd had to talk him down from the heights of manic rage and out of the blackest pits of depression. As beautiful and brilliant as Mello was, he had his dark side. It took a special constitution to be with a man like him, and Matt had it.

The realization left him slightly stunned. How had he forgotten about that? They had discussed it more than once while he was still alive, yet it hadn't sunk in. No—that wasn't quite it. He had never been able to bring himself to believe it. On some deep level, he had been so convinced that he didn't deserve Mello's attention that all suggestions to the contrary had slid in one ear and out the other.

But now he could see it clearly. He had pulled weight in their relationship. He had kept Mello somewhere near equilibrium. The blonde had been incredibly unbalanced during his time in the Mafia when Matt wasn't there to help him. He had done some unspeakable things, things he would never forgive himself for. It was only when Matt was there to stay his hand that he had any sense of perspective. Matt had contributed. He had done something worthwhile.

The knowledge washed over him like a cleansing wave, lifting a burden of self-hatred from his shoulders that had been such a part of him that he hadn't even realized it was there. It left him breathless, light as a feather, laughing in exhilaration. He was worthwhile. Mello's devotion to him was a measure of that worth. They were a matched pair, not an unimaginably perfect being taking pity on a charity case. He had mattered. He, Mail Jeevas, had done things nobody else could. He had made a difference in Mello's life, and he had made a difference in the Kira case. He had sacrificed his very life to stop the bastard, and if he hadn't been caught as a result of his and Mello's actions yet, then it was only a matter of time. He had actually made a positive contribution to the world.

Yes, answered the other voice, and Matt could feel that it was proud. This was the realization that it had been prodding him towards this whole time.

Tears poured down his cheeks. "I never realized—Mello tried to tell me so many times!" He would say, "Matt, I want you to know that when I call you beautiful—" or smart, or worthy, or wonderful, "—that I really mean it, and I'm not just saying it to try to please you." Matt had nodded and said that he understood, but he hadn't.

Now he did, at long last. He was hardly perfect, but he had his good points. He deserved the happiness he had found in life.

That thought startled him yet again. He had always thought of his life as generally painful and unpleasant, but the truth was that there had been happiness there. He had had a father who loved him. Only for four years, granted, which was nowhere near long enough, but many people didn't even have that. And he had found love, with Mello. True love.

Matt shook his head in bemusement. He had always scoffed at phrases like "true love" in life, because who could say what made one love more "true" than another? But now, looking back on the entirety of his relationship with Mello, he realized that it was something that very few people got to experience. Mello had crossed oceans and continents for him. Mello had hunted him for years to fulfill a promise made at age fourteen that he would follow him anywhere. He had come and rescued him during his darkest hour, like some scarred, violent inversion of Prince Charming. Prince Mello, with shiny leather in place of shining armor and a motorcycle instead of a proud steed. Their love was almost like some gritty modern fairy tale, adapted for the twenty-first century by filling it with guns, drugs and computers, and replacing the damsel in distress with a second man.

Matt laughed softly. He had never conceived of their relationship in those terms while he was alive, but now he could see the truth of it. Their love was the sort of thing that ballads were written about, the stuff young girls dreamed of. He had been damned lucky to experience that.

When he looked back now, Matt saw everything in a different light. He had done some things he was ashamed of, but he had also had moments that made him very proud. He had lived through many painful times, yes; but in amongst the years of addiction and suffering had been an epic love that spanned the years and the miles.

There had been bad, and there had also been good. But that was just life. He could see that now.

The moment that thought crystallized in his mind, everything shifted. The sensation of timelessness lifted, and Matt found himself sitting on solid ground. It was still gray and featureless, but there was now a discernable horizon and sky.

You have arrived, the other informed him.

In front of him was suddenly the Gate. Matt knew that on the other side was somewhere else, and that it was a good somewhere. He knew he was meant to go there. He even knew, in a burst of insight that shook him to the core, that his father was there somewhere, and so was the mother he didn't even remember.

But even so, he hesitated.

"Mello," he said simply, knowing that the other would know what he meant.

Very well. The gray pulled back from a circle in the ground in front of him and Matt found himself peering into the world from a bird's-eye view. It took him a second to make sense of what he was seeing, but he cried out in dismay when he did. Mello's body burning in a church. "No! He's dead too?"

There was acknowledgement. His part in this is finished, just as yours is.

Matt clenched his eyes shut and wept silently for his friend. Mello should have had a lot of good years left to him yet. "How long…?"

It has been several hours since you died.

That was startling enough to interrupt Matt's grief for a moment. "It felt like much longer than that."

It was, for you.

Matt took a deep breath and resolutely forced his tears to stop. "If Mel's dead, does that mean he's coming here too?"

Now he sensed hesitation from the other for the first time. There is no guarantee that he will ever make it here. Attached to that statement in a wordless form was the knowledge that whether or not Mello arrived rested solely on the blonde, and not on any outside forces.

Matt shook his head. "If there's even the slightest possibility, he'll make it," he declared. "You don't know him like I do." He glanced at the Gate and hesitated. It beckoned him. His father beckoned him. But the Gate would still be there a few hours from now. "I can't go without him." He sat down stubbornly on the ground. "I'll wait."

The other accepted his decision without argument, and suddenly Matt knew that he was about to be left alone. "Hey, hang on!" he exclaimed. He felt the other's attention on him. "Um, about that whole "higher authority" thing…"

It understood his question, even though he couldn't formulate it in words. I will try to answer. You are very smart, so perhaps you can understand.

It started with an atom. Then it was many atoms coming together to make a molecule, then many molecules evolving over time into more and more complex systems until it was a cell. Then the cell became an organ, then an animal, then an ecosystem; and then, in the same way that cells combined to make an organ, it was all of the ecosystems in the world coming together to form—

Matt collapsed backwards on the ground, reeling. It was too much for his mind to hold at once. But for a second there, he had seen it—overarching patterns that were at work in the world, forces that grew organically out of the complexity of everything in it. It wasn't a "God" who reigned down from above, per se—although Matt realized that had Mello seen the same thing, he probably would have interpreted it as such—but something larger than just the individual. He found that knowledge oddly comforting.

He realized that he was alone now. The Gate was still there, but Matt let it be for the moment. He gazed down through the window into the world, at the blazing ruins of the church, and smiled fondly. How appropriate, for Mello to die in blazes, in the house of God. "We can have a great big theological debate about what I just saw when you get here," he murmured. He settled himself comfortably and prepared to wait for as long as need be.