(Wrote this, or began to, for DN-contest's 'culture clash' prompt but homework prevented me from finishing it on time. Still, here it is for the heck of it. Oh, cynicism.)

here's a toast to all our saviors

each so badly behaved

too bad that their world

was the one that they saved

-deep dish, ani difranco

"…beats Wammy's, this," Matt's saying, "doesn't it," letting wispy noxious fumes hit the stratosphere. He kind of means it.

"You're just saying that 'cause you can do that here." A lazy gesture with a gloved hand towards Matt's cigarette.

"Not just that."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. It was always sort of…" Matt shrugs. "You know."

Mello knows. Better than Matt does, honestly, although Matt was there for longer. Mello has always sucked at adapting.

"And they asked stupid questions," Mello adds, after a long pause. There's that weird mix of confidence and resentment.

It smells like old Coca-Cola out here and the air's just as sticky, clinging to them in the dark. Matt doesn't care. They never seem to get far from places like this, no matter where they end up—all this cement. Every time he meets Mello he takes back-streets, only they're all really back-streets, and each is a narrow crevasse of three cement sides: wall, road, wall, and there's a lot of grey-turned-black after dusk and shadows cast by Dumpsters and people looking, what. Hunted?

Like us, Matt has to remind himself.

It's been a long time since he's been in America, and he's never been a criminal before.

"You lost your accent."

"Did not," and the crisp folds are back in Mello's voice, British and indignant, vowels ballooning out like a parachute. "I keep them all."

"All yours?"

"All mine."

The thought occurs briefly to Matt, that if all of them are Mello's, in a way none of them are.

(how many times has he wondered about that name, the one Mello told him the day he left the orphanage: Mihael Keehl infused with the most skewed pride Matt ever heard—yeah, he's wondered where the hell's that from? He did that a lot when Mello first left because he knew what it meant: I trust you, and I'm not coming back. It's what Mello does—always whatever's smart enough to be dangerous and dangerous enough to be stupid.)

Matt's own accent is American; he picked up some polyglot slang back at the institution. He's got no idea what he is. Mello told him once that made him more American than if he'd worn a T-shirt with the stars and stripes.

"Hope you've got a Japanese one."

Mello grins through his scar and says something unintelligibly precise that Matt catches about half of.

"Dammit, speak slower." He rolls his eyes, pulling another cigarette from his pocket. Second to last. Hell. "Psssht."

"Tell me you understood that."

"Most of it. Well. Half."

"You said—"

"I took Japanese four years ago." Click. He feels Mello's eyes on the lighter; the small flame with the faint smell of chemicals. "Cut me some slack. When I get there I'll just listen to the radio for a few hours and pick it all back up. If you're gonna worry about something," he adds, "don't worry about that."

What Mello thinks of the word 'worry' finds its way onto his face; a wrinkle beneath his nose at that might as well be a reaction to the odor wafting over from the trash across the way. A light breeze has picked up a little. It blows the smoke from Matt's cigarette east towards the intersection. "Then what?"

"…then what, what?"

"What." The ex-head of the L.A. mafia is folding a paper balloon from his used Hershey wrapper. "Should I worry about."

"Like…other languages?"

"What d'you—"

"I don't know jack-shit about Japan except that they make some really good games—"

"If by 'good' you mea—"

"—and they turn out top-notch serial killers."

"Bullshit," says Mello acidly. "Kira's second-rate. He doesn't do his own dirty work."

Mello does. Matt knows this. He's known this for a while. He knew it more when he pieced together the bomb thing, but he knew it before, too. He's not sure how he feels about it. He can muster up a dim ethical objection to Kira killing people because it's just so stupid and Wammy's felt L's defeat as a personal affront, but Mello with a gun in his hand seems almost natural.

(almost.)

"Not just Kira," says Matt. Which is also true. He needs to get the hell of Wikipedia after midnight.

"It's the same anywhere."

Probably not Iceland.

Matt keeps that to himself.

Mello is scowling into the dark.

"…It is Kira's country, though," Matt ventures at last. "Kira's from there."

But Mello shakes his head. "—that doesn't matter. Not really. Could've been anyone. American, British, Thai, Australian, Irani." A twisting, shady sort of laugh; a pigeon caught on barbed wire. "Could've been me, maybe."

(because he knows competition; that drug that gives you so much but not sanity.)

"Aaaah, don't say that." Matt laughs, too, but it shakes and so does he. "Fucking scary idea. Me, too?"

"No." –without hesitation. "Not you."

"Why not?"

Mello doesn't answer.

So Matt stares where he's staring, back at the alley wall, a palimpsest of faded spraypaint. Scrawls of defiance. There's one law Kira doesn't punish you for breaking. Maybe he would if anything was actually legible. He briefly wonders what Japanese graffiti looks like. Big swoops of kanji in green and purple.

It's probably pretty stupid that he wants to write their names there just because he can.

He's getting a headache and they leave in two days and he's going to Kira's home territory to spy on Kira's petite Goth Loli fiancée who Mello swore up and down would be at least midly interesting to watch and his Gameboy's almost out of batteries and Mello's still feverish, as much literally as 

figuratively, thinking too much and moving too fast and smiling under harsh streetlight: staring past everything to see Kira's head on a spike and Near's surprise, face so flushed he's likely to burn the rest of it clean off.

He flew across the Atlantic to get here and he's setting out for the Pacific in two days. Three continents, two oceans, so little time and so much shoplifting from the 7-11 candy counter.

Mello's paper balloon hits him in the arm and he twitches, picking it up and throwing it right back. The guy catches it, of course. He always does. He catches almost everything.

"You're not allowed to have guns," Matt muses, "in Japan, right? Like back in the U.K."

"Doesn't matter." The murmured response is a little absent but certain.

"Doesn't it?"

"It doesn't matter where you are. People kill people," Mello says, closing his eyes. He leans back against the brick wall. "It's this thing that they do."

Matt supposes this is true—though he's never killed anyone, and, you know, he never will.