hadriel | Je me fous du passé

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Je me fous du passé

[The feed opens with Bianca. She stands in Delight's bar, the lighting rearranged to get as close as she can to the appearance of being on stage, and she glares into the camera and takes a large swig of the glass in her hand before she makes any sound.

Then she sings. Inside the bar, her voice is strong enough to rattle glasses.

People listening to the feed on the network may hear the familiar Lancastrian accent of Kate, grumbling almost inaudible complaints. Most of them seem to be along the lines of why did I agree to this and why did I give up booze.

The song ends and Bianca casts a grateful look at Kate before launching into speech.]

I have lived a long time, my friends. I am sorry for many things. I've been unforgivably careless of people's hearts and hopes. I've allied myself with the most treacherous of worms - I have trusted too much, cared too much, and -

[She stops.]

Or not cared enough. I have broken people for my own gain. I have sold myself to a power I knew to be malevolent, to buy my own life. I have tormented those I believed I loved, and abandoned those I know I did. Kate -

[She gazes, stricken, past the camera.]

I pulled you into this scheme. You almost died. Sharon and Maketh did die. I'm sorry, so sorry, for that.

[And then she lifts her chin, defiant.]

But I'm not sorry we made the attempt. I'm not sorry for taking a risk on the chance of buying all our freedom. Are you watching, Hope? Did you feel it, just when it started? The only real hope I've felt since coming here? I hoped so hard to end you.

I'm only sorry we failed.

[There's a brief resigned sigh from behind the camera as the feed goes out.]

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Shut the fuck up, Mello. [ no real anger to her tone, just irritation. ]

[Mello's tone is tense, defensive.]

I'd say "make me," but I'm not five years old anymore.

I bet you're just afraid I would. [ the temptation to hunt him down is there, her heart quicker to clamor for vengeance than offer forgiveness, but she honestly does not have it in her. ]

I'm not afraid of you, or of anything you think you can do to me.

[He expects retribution - if not from her, from someone else here. He's accepted this as part of the risks associated with his analysis and the ultimate decision he made to kill her. He's prepared for it. This is an acceptable cost, in his mind.]

If you're planning to come after me, get on with it. I hate waiting.

Edited 2016-06-27 19:06 (UTC)

You should be, though. [ it's not confident, not meant to scare, just cooly factual. she's got more power beneath her fingers than just summoning another world. and she knows what sort of cruelty she's capable of. ] But, don't worry, I'm not going to come after you. It would be a waste of my time.

You shouldn't make idle threats, Sharon.

[There is an advantage in showing people what you're capable of - but not talking about it, especially if there's no intention to act on it.]

You're not the most frightening thing I've seen. Not by a long shot.

[Said seriously, without bluster - which is both a sad statement on the sorts of things he has seen, and a note of understanding that he believes he's gleaned from her, that she acted in the way she did because she was angry and tired of being fucked around with by the gods here - and who knows what else, before that. And he understands that, fundamentally, better than she probably imagines.]

Edited 2016-06-27 19:35 (UTC)

[ I'm not trying to be, she wants to tell him, but instead she holds her tongue and self-pity. ]

And what would that be? [ What monsters have you seen? ]

[He shouldn't be considering this, but he is. It's risky to talk about himself, the things he's seen and done. A large portion of what he's been able to accomplish has depended on people underestimating him and his abilities. Wise men do not wear name tags, he wrote once, in that document he left for Near to find after his death.

But despite all logic, despite all the paranoia and secrecy he's lived with for so much of his life, he finds that he wants to tell her. Maybe it's an effect of the newly resurrected god's presence; maybe it's because he senses something about her that is fundamentally like him.

Maybe, in spite of the fact that he gave her every opportunity to stop, in spite of the fact that he made a logical assessment of the risks and determined the path that made the most sense and was necessary, he feels a small internal tug of guilt over killing her. Because he should have been better. And he wouldn't ordinarily feel like he owes her an explanation - he doesn't, on principle, owe anyone anything - but this isn't an ordinary situation.

Maybe this is his way of extending an olive branch. Near is right; he's supposed to be better with people.]

Why do you want to know? I'll tell you, if that's what you really want - I just want to know why first.

I don't know, maybe it's... [ The words catch in her throat like jagged pieces of glass, realization striking her. She feels guilt, not just over what she's done, but what she drove another person to do. He hadn't wanted to kill her, she knew that back then, but she wanted him to. ] ...maybe it's because I wouldn't mind hearing about something worse than myself.

[ She is a monster. The cult had always been right. ]

[ ... Oh. Her answer hits him harder than he expects, harder than he's prepared for, and it takes him a moment to swallow down the complicated tangle of feelings that rise up in his throat.]

All right.

[He inhales a quiet breath, deciding where to start.]

The world where I'm from exists under the thumb of a tyrant known as Kira, and has for a number of years. You might think it's a cute-sounding nickname, but Kira is anything but - he's easily one of the worst mass murderers in history. I'm not afraid of Kira - I mention him only for context, as a foundation for the rest of what I'm going to tell you.

[He had been afraid, once - that night in November, facing Soichiro Yagami with the Death Note in his hands and his true name, Mihael Keehl, hanging in the air between them. But that fear is gone now, dissolved in the plan he'd crafted that relied on that exact fact, that his true name was known. Kira would use his name and his face, half-ruined in the explosive escape from the warehouse that night, and kill him with the Death Note. And this would show Near an important fact he'd overlooked.]

I left the orphanage that raised me for most of my life when I was fifteen.

[There's more to that statement that he isn't saying, but it's easy enough to pull from the spaces left in what he does say: that he is an orphan, without family of his own; that he has been so for a long time.]

When I left, it was because I'd decided that I would put a stop to Kira's reign of terror, on my own, by any means necessary, and the way I'd do this was by working outside of the law. Those who worked inside of the law had already tried, and failed.

[More of what he doesn't say: he is a criminal; he has been so for a while; he chose this path intentionally.]

I mentioned Kira is a mass murderer. His targets are criminals, and anyone who opposes him is, of course, a criminal.

[This was a risky path to take, and Mello was aware of the risks from the start. He is a risk-taker, and he is willing to take extreme measures, if it's necessary.]

When I was seventeen, I joined up with what was left of the American Mafia, and I proved that I was a valuable ally by bringing them the head of a rival gang boss, someone not even Kira had been able to target and eliminate.

[He is a murderer, and Sharon wasn't the first person he'd killed. He is ruthless, determined, resourceful, and effective.]

You can probably tie me to any kind of crime the Mafia is known for, because I acted as an adviser for a year and a half. Directly, I've been responsible for kidnapping and extortion, and I even got the President of the United States to submit to my demands.

[He recites this list of crimes entirely factually, without any trace of boasting, and continues to do so into his conclusion:.]

I am the thing that people are afraid of, Sharon. That's why you don't scare me.

Edited 2016-06-28 22:03 (UTC)

[ It's strange to listen to Mello speak, with her knees up to her chest, phone cradled to her ear, back against the crumbling wall of the building she's holed up in. His words are surprisingly heavy despite the factual way he recites the things he's done, and gone through, like it's history from a book. By seventeen, he was doing things she'd only ever read about in books—as Sharon, that is, Alessa's seventeen was torturous, as it'd been every year before for seventeen years. ]

You sometimes have to be worse than the monster you're after. [ Quietly, heavy with sympathy, and understanding. She's not really afraid of him, either, but perhaps that's because they're both monsters, and what do monsters really have left to fear but themselves. ]

Did you stop him? [ Was all of it worth it? ]

You do, sometimes. If it's what's necessary.

[He learned that from the story L told him once, the story of Beyond Birthday and the LABB Serial Murders. Beyond was trained at the same House as Mello, in the same methods, and he also chose to become an inversion of everything they both were trained for since childhood. Instead of a great detective, he fashioned himself into a horrible murderer in order to reach his goals. Mello treasured the story as a rare gift because it was L who told it to him, but he only understood the true value of it once he'd decided to set out and take on Kira in his own way. There was strength in that story, and solidarity, and that's partly why Mello chose to write it down for Near to find after he was dead.]

No. I didn't. I wasn't -

[I wasn't good enough, he wants to say, but he chokes on the words, heavy in the back of his throat. It's too personal, too much like pointing out his own weakest point. So he settles for something that sounds more objective instead.]

I wasn't successful. I got close, but in the end, all I could really do was shine a light on an important clue. But I'm told that was successful, and he was ultimately defeated.

[He was told, but he didn't witness it himself. Even if he hadn't been yanked here before he'd been able to put his plan into motion, he wouldn't have known for sure if it worked, because he would have been dead.]

Edited 2016-06-29 21:21 (UTC)

Then it sounds like you were successful. [ It's not some attempt to pat him on the back, but a genuine sounding observation. He may not have had a chance to witness Kira's defeat—whether he's dead, or simply pulled prior, Sharon can't really bring herself to ask—but he was an integral part of the murderer's defeat.

To Sharon, that sounds a lot like success. ]

Not really. If you can't beat the game, you're just a loser.

[Near was the one who'd said as much, when they were both told that L was dead, but Mello doesn't disagree. It's what the House raised them to believe, and Mello recites it here not in a self-pitying sense, but as a simple statement of fact. He may have been told that his plan had achieved what he set out for, and he may have been told that Kira was defeated, but acting as an assistant doesn't feel like any kind of victory.

Some people are just born to lose. Maybe Mello is finally realizing that he is one of them. He takes in a slow breath and quietly exhales.]

I'm sorry I killed you, Sharon. I miscalculated. It wasn't necessary.

[He doesn't expect forgiveness, and that isn't really what he's after with this confession anyway, though what that is, he can't exactly pinpoint. He's never felt remorse over killing another person before, because he always believed that what he did was necessary. But maybe that's just it - he knows that it wasn't necessary, because it didn't change anything. He'd been wrong. He'd lost, again.

Maybe this is a roundabout way of expressing his regret that no matter how hard he tries, he'll never, ever measure up.]

[ That is such a strikingly depressing statement, and not one she expected out of someone like Mello. To live a life thinking something like that has got to be heavy, and it tells her a lot about how he views himself, and every action he takes.

Does every failure cut him as deeply as the last?

She's ready to sharply retort that that's such a stupid, useless way to think when he apologizes. It's unexpected, and she finds herself at a sudden loss for words, her breath caught in her lungs like a butterfly in a web. ]

Don't be. [ It's stiff, whispered beneath her breath. ] I... [ She swallows. There's no real reason to tell him this, except, perhaps, to alleviate his guilt. ] I didn't want to live anymore anyway.

[ And still doesn't. It hurts too much, and just gets worse, and worse. Death is as much of an escape from this place as leaving through the Door would be, at this point. ]

[It is depressing, and a rigid view of the world. Mello may be a highly creative thinker, but there are some things he learned at the House that he either hasn't been able to abandon, or else hasn't had the desire to. This is one of them. When you're raised in such a fiercely competitive environment, when you've always come close but never quite achieved first place, it's bound to produce this sort of result. Mello may never have won, by his definition, but he also never stopped trying. Every failure only served to strengthen his resolve and redouble his efforts. It's only now, after he's resigned himself to the very real nature of his own impending death, that there is no sense in continuing to make the attempt. He's accepted that ending Kira's reign is a no-win scenario for him, and while he doesn't like it at all, he is entirely too practical to cling to illusions of grandeur when the evidence is so firmly stacked against him.

He's prepared to die, but he doesn't want death, doesn't crave it in the same way he hears in what Sharon says. And he can understand it, in a detached, intellectual way, that there are people who feel this way and circumstances that cause those feelings, but he has never been able to understand that desire in an emotional way, because it's an expression of despair, and his own despair has always been quickly dissolved into anger and action. What she confesses isn't really a surprise - she hadn't made any effort to fight back when he came to kill her, and he'd honestly tried to give her the opportunity to avoid being killed - but it isn't something he can immediately parse, either.]

But you had to know it wouldn't be permanent.

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cw: suicidal thoughts

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threadjacks

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