It's not the things I've seen that are terrifying, but what's been done. [ to her, to everyone. when she speaks next, there's a tenseness to her voice, as if simply thinking back on it brings to the surface something she's kept buried. ]
I woke up once, a couple of months back, in a coffin. Fear buried nearly half of the city alive. Some died. I didn't, but I was down there for days.
[ simply thinking back to it sends her heart pounding in her ears, and her breathing picks up. she can almost smell the burnt satin, and it makes her sick. ]
[It's not that Mello is unsympathetic - his tolerance for horrors is just higher than most. Losing both parents and all sense of security at a very young age, being taken in by an orphanage that groomed him to be less a person and more of a problem-solving machine, leaving the House at age fifteen to carve out his own path with nothing but his bare hands, living in a world held hostage by Kira's tyrannical rule - he's had to construct a hard shell around his heart to protect himself from an uncaring, unjust world. He's done things that are undisputedly evil in service of reaching his goals - kidnapping, extortion, murder - and he's needed to reconcile his actions with what little conscience was left intact by the time he left the House with a mindset of by any means necessary.
There is not much that truly terrifies Mello, and for the most part, he believes he has already lived through them all and emerged if not victorious, at least still in the game - which is a kind of victory in itself.]
Are you claustrophobic? I could understand why being buried alive would be frightening, if that were the case.
[He doesn't sound gentle, exactly, but his words lack the sharper edge they've had up until this point.]
It's not abnormal to be afraid of death - it's incredibly common, in fact. But the truth is that death is an unavoidable part of life, and you can do everything in your power to avoid it, but you can't avoid death forever.
[He knows death well - he's seen death up close, caused death to hasten its approach. And he's accepted the inevitability of his own death; the day he was brought to Hadriel was the day before he planned to launch an elaborate maneuver that would force Kira into betraying his hand, and the way Kira would betray an important detail that Near had overlooked could only result in Mello's death. A Death Note has only one function.]
Accepting one's mortality means fear no longer has a hold in that respect.
[This is what he's told himself, and he mostly still believes it - or at least he still wants to believe it. The dreams, especially the one of breathing his last moments while waiting to be killed, may have planted the tiniest seed of doubt in his mind. It's one thing to imagine what it will be like to await the stroke of his executioner's pen and another to experience it.]
[ It's only a few sentences from a stranger, but in the face of her vulnerability, they hurt. She should have known better. There's never a reason to open up, not at home, and not here. Next time, she'll keep her experiences to herself.
She swallows, allowing the hurt to fester into fury. ]
Oh, so you're an asshole? [ I hope you get buried alive. ] I'm glad we got that out of the way.
You went off on tangential bullshit about death, and made assumptions on my feelings towards it. That's enough, along with a brief listen to your other conversations, to tell me you're a Grade A asshole.
[ like, holy shit, mello. it's amazing how many people he's pissed off. ]
You said that you were buried alive and that people died. I'd hardly call talking about death from there tangential or bullshit.
[It's an incredibly relevant topic for him kthx.]
I also made no assumptions. I asked one question, made a conditional statement, and then made other general statements. If you feel that those statements are about you, I'd say that you are the one making assumptions.
[JEEZ. And this conversation started out so well, too. He was, in part and in a vague manner, talking about himself. People aren't born without a fear of death - it takes conditioning, conscious effort to overcome.]
You can think I'm an asshole if you want. I can't stop you, and I really don't care to try, either. If I spent time chasing the approval of every person I ever met, I would have literally no time for anything else.
[And Mello has always had much better uses for his time - so he thinks. He is, of course, ignoring the fact that he spent much of his childhood seeking approval from L in the guise of competition to be called L's potential successor, and the fact that he has, in some ways, continued to do this in his long-standing rivalry with Near, who did succeed L in everything but official name.]
[ There's a moment of quiet on the other end, but it quickly turns to soft laughter that lacks humor. Mello can spin logic however he likes, but she stands firmly by her opinion: total fucking asshole with the added bonus of being intelligent.
Great. ]
Okay. [ It's entirely dismissive. And here, for extra fun, she'll send him a text with a middle finger emoji. ]
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[Show your work.]
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I woke up once, a couple of months back, in a coffin. Fear buried nearly half of the city alive. Some died. I didn't, but I was down there for days.
[ simply thinking back to it sends her heart pounding in her ears, and her breathing picks up. she can almost smell the burnt satin, and it makes her sick. ]
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There is not much that truly terrifies Mello, and for the most part, he believes he has already lived through them all and emerged if not victorious, at least still in the game - which is a kind of victory in itself.]
Are you claustrophobic? I could understand why being buried alive would be frightening, if that were the case.
[He doesn't sound gentle, exactly, but his words lack the sharper edge they've had up until this point.]
It's not abnormal to be afraid of death - it's incredibly common, in fact. But the truth is that death is an unavoidable part of life, and you can do everything in your power to avoid it, but you can't avoid death forever.
[He knows death well - he's seen death up close, caused death to hasten its approach. And he's accepted the inevitability of his own death; the day he was brought to Hadriel was the day before he planned to launch an elaborate maneuver that would force Kira into betraying his hand, and the way Kira would betray an important detail that Near had overlooked could only result in Mello's death. A Death Note has only one function.]
Accepting one's mortality means fear no longer has a hold in that respect.
[This is what he's told himself, and he mostly still believes it - or at least he still wants to believe it. The dreams, especially the one of breathing his last moments while waiting to be killed, may have planted the tiniest seed of doubt in his mind. It's one thing to imagine what it will be like to await the stroke of his executioner's pen and another to experience it.]
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She swallows, allowing the hurt to fester into fury. ]
Oh, so you're an asshole? [ I hope you get buried alive. ] I'm glad we got that out of the way.
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[Though certainly not the first time he's been called an asshole. There's an almost-laugh in what he says, a hint of surprised interest.]
Care to elaborate on the logic you used to reach that conclusion?
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[ like, holy shit, mello. it's amazing how many people he's pissed off. ]
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[It's an incredibly relevant topic for him kthx.]
I also made no assumptions. I asked one question, made a conditional statement, and then made other general statements. If you feel that those statements are about you, I'd say that you are the one making assumptions.
[JEEZ. And this conversation started out so well, too. He was, in part and in a vague manner, talking about himself. People aren't born without a fear of death - it takes conditioning, conscious effort to overcome.]
You can think I'm an asshole if you want. I can't stop you, and I really don't care to try, either. If I spent time chasing the approval of every person I ever met, I would have literally no time for anything else.
[And Mello has always had much better uses for his time - so he thinks. He is, of course, ignoring the fact that he spent much of his childhood seeking approval from L in the guise of competition to be called L's potential successor, and the fact that he has, in some ways, continued to do this in his long-standing rivalry with Near, who did succeed L in everything but official name.]
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Great. ]
Okay. [ It's entirely dismissive. And here, for extra fun, she'll send him a text with a middle finger emoji. ]
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Are you always this much of a child, or are you making a special effort just for me?
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lovely combination she is. ]
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[My how the tables have turned ... ]
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