Epilogue

Mello will wake him up, tousling his hair, saying, "Get up, lazy bastard," and Matt will pretend to stay asleep until Mello calls him "Matt", which he will eventually, rolling his eyes and shoving Matt out of bed with unnecessary vigor.

It will be noon, no, morning. The day will be all gray and watercolor with winter sun. No clouds though.

They'll shower, silently, because Mello has to come up with a plan to kidnap a celebrity connected directly with Kira, not to mention she's surrounded by what amounts to an entourage of mercenaries.

Mello will spend his days, nights too, following Takada's schedule with excruciating attention to detail, listening to the stiff conversations between her and that Light Yagami, occasionally getting Matt to help by hacking into NHN for floor plans or into some international criminal database for profiles on each of her bodyguards, drivers, etc.

He'll talk to that SPK bitch everyday, changing the hours every time, vanishing out of Matt's sight and out of Matt's earshot.

Matt will get so fucking tired of having to scramble the outgoing signal so no one will be able to listen in, not on hard wire or on satellite, and he'll have to keep hacking into the cell phone company towers so no one will be to triangulate their signal and find out where they are. Still monitoring the news of course, always watching the news, no matter how much bullshit everyone spewed now that Kira had the world in his pocket.

Honestly, it's no problem for him, he's doing this for Mello, but they will be so close to the end of—

--something, and the fact that Matt won't be able to put his finger on it precisely will frustrate him to no end.

Mello will tell him the night before, that tomorrow will be the day he takes her, that tomorrow everything will finally start. Matt won't say anything, he won't want a fight, but Mello is no idealist, he will know what Matt's avoiding and will confront him head on. They will argue until Mello physically can't argue anymore, he will be too exhausted, he will not have slept properly since the burn.

The second burn, not the first. Matt's burn.

Mello won't be able to get to his room without leaning against the wall, since of course he will refuse Matt's help. He'll be too exhausted kick him out of bed though, and Matt will sleep next to him, stroking that strange spider web of flesh that stretches across his face, because in his sleep is the only time Mello doesn't flinch away.

Mello won't be sleepy when he wakes up, but he will be nothing compared to Matt. Matt will bounce off the fucking walls. Mello will swear and call him names and point his gun at him and if Matt makes him waste a bullet, for fuck's sake, stop pissing him off, and Matt will stop.

They will need to burn the evidence, all of it.

They will douse the whole hideout in booze, soaking the place with liquor, wine splashing the walls and beer in puddles on the floor, and on their least trip they will set fires as they go.

Then they will watch it burn, standing side by side.

Matt will light his cigarette with a Molotov cocktail before he throws it accurately through one of windows in what used to be Mello's bedroom.

Why are you doing this? He will ask Mello. Allying yourself with your enemies. That's the same mistake L made.

He will keep smoking, flames reflected in his goggles.

Look what happened to him.

Mello will say nothing, either because he doesn't have an answer or because the one he does have won't satisfy Matt at all.

Matt will look at him, flames making eerie shadows along the grooved skin of his scar even in the middle of the day. He will look otherworldly. And Matt will wonder how Mello can be so fucking oblivious.

Eventually Mello will look back at him.

Mello, will tell him, slowly, so Matt can memorize it, exactly what he has to do, and precisely when he has to do it.

Mello will tell him what he needs to do, and he knows that every word he says to Matt is retentum, a mercy killing.

Matt knows it, too.

A/N: Whew, that took a while. My first time writing DN fic, it probably shows.

The title, "retentum", comes from the method used exclusively in France during medieval times, when witches would be burned at the stake or convicts broken on the Catherine wheel, the executioner would sometimes strangle the victims if the torment lasted too long. Mercy killing, basically.

And when Mello's thinking about something he read in which weaker beings avert their eyes , that's from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. It's certainly dark enough so Mello would read it, and there's fire. -shrug-

Thanks for reading, please comment!