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Consider the following exercise in critical thinking, if you can tear yourselves away from gossiping about each others' love lives long enough to put some actual thought into formulating an answer:

If you had never before encountered a being like yourself before - a human, for example, or however you classify yourself - what would you most want to know about these beings? What are the most important concepts that are fundamental to your existence?

Comments

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[He hesitates in answering this time; the truth is an ugly piece of business, and Mello knows that, just as he is sharply aware of the fact that this, like many of the things he's done in the past five years on his quest to end Kira, is one of those things that society generally frowns upon. He doesn't care about what other people think about him, most of the time, unless there is a good reason to get on their good side, but Sharon is a notable exception. Mello cares a great deal when it comes to what she thinks of him.

He could easily lie here, even if only by omission. But he has been more honest with Sharon about who and what he is than anyone else in his entire short life, and there's no sense in changing that approach now.]

There's a difference between propositioning someone and going on a date.

[Which is a sideways admission that he's done plenty of the former, yes.]

It's difficult to invest your time and trust in other people when you're on the run.

[He knows this too.]

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[ Huh.

Sharon knew what his response would be, knew what it would be because she knows what kind of person he is—knows what he'll do, or who'll he'll do, to accomplish his goals. She never thought she would be the kind of girl to get jealous when it comes to someone, but there it is, like some sort of foreign invader, climbing down her throat only to settle in her chest. She desperately tucks the feeling away because she's aware enough to realize just how stupid a feeling it is.

She jokingly types I hope you've been tested but quickly backspaces until the text box is empty again. What a stupid feeling envy is. She's wanted what a lot of people have, a nice house, a normal family, a future that matters but she's never wanted to keep a person to herself, not anyone except her family. Hell, as often as she clung to Vincent, she would have sacrificed his life if it meant keeping her father safe.

She couldn't do that to Mello. ]

I guess there would be. [ But she wouldn't know. She's been propositioned before but assholes in cars and the odd man on the street were just assholes being assholes, or school boys intent on somehow embarrassing her. ]

But, yeah, that's true. I think the only person who came close to getting to know me back home was a guy named Vincent but he kind of ended up being a member of those crazy bastards after me. His mother, Claudia, was actually their leader and he was sent to be a lure. He was a shitty lure.

[ She cares about Vincent but they knew one another for two days, tops, most of that with Sharon's focus on searching for her father and just trying to survive the horrors of her life, not looking to get in his pants. ]

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[Jealousy is a feeling with which Mello is all too well acquainted, and he can feel it rise up in his throat like bile when Sharon mentions Vincent. The feeling only pulls at him stronger when she says he was intended to lure her to the cult. He doesn't even know this guy, and Mello finds himself stricken with an impulse to make him hurt.]

I'm glad he was a shitty lure.

[The rest of what he wants to say - to explain - is too important to commit to mere typed words, so he switches to voice instead. Sharon deserves to hear the importance of what he wants to tell her.]

Sharon ...

[It's difficult to be honest. Mello wasn't built for it; he was broken and remolded against it by the House over so many years that it feels foreign to him - wrong in a fundamental way.

But Sharon is worth pushing through the discomfort. He doesn't so much owe her honesty as want to give it to her.]

I know you know that I've done a lot of terrible things in my fight against Kira, and I know this is exactly the sort of thing that assholes like me say to people in order to get what they want out of them. But I really hope you can believe me when I say that I'm not lying to you about this - you're important to me. I haven't felt like this about anyone else in my entire life. Not even Luke, or Near.

[L had been too distant, and Mello's feelings too one-sided to qualify. His relationship with Near was all too often antagonistic, his feelings more often negative, despite the importance he held in Mello's estimation. What Mello feels for Sharon is something different, something closer and warmer, something that makes him feel more human than he can remember feeling since he was a small child.]

I would never use you like that.

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[ Sharon could never deny that that was a fear of hers, nestled deep in her chest. In moments of quiet, all alone, she would imagine him coming clean to her, that everything thus far has just been another lie in what is her life.

And she was prepared for it.

She prepares for it with every person she meets and speaks to. It's easier to expect it than to throw your trust so wholly into another when the chances of betrayal were far too high. But Mello's been different. She knows that. They didn't start out like friends. He didn't ask her out. He didn't try.

He just killed her and she could see it in his eyes back then, despite her vision blurry with tears, that he didn't want to kill her then. That made him more different than those of the Order. ]

I-I know you wouldn't. I won't lie and say I don't... think about it sometimes. But you're different than Vincent. I know that. He was... He eventually figured out he'd been brainwashed, that all the things the Order told him about me were just fairytales, but he still... He'd followed me at school, to the mall, walked me home under the guise of being a gentlemen.

Stood outside of my house as I screamed because there was blood all over the wall and my dad was gone. Offered to help me find him. And then... And then when we were close he switched his mind. Told me not to go, that they were going to do something horrible to me and that it was best if I just ran; forget about my dad, my life, my memories. [ A pause, emotional. Vincent wasn't a bad guy, he was just... he was just brainwashed. ]

Vincent's not a bad guy, he just had a bitch of a mother. He was just as trapped there as I was. You've seen what happens to all right people when they've reached their limit. [ They turn Hadriel into Spookcity. ]

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[He sounds like a creep, he thinks, and I hope I never meet him, because the wave of violent protectiveness surging through him as he listens to Sharon describe what Vincent did to get her to trust him, even a little bit, is too strong to push back down. He's angry about anyone treating Sharon badly - and there have been so many people in her life who have treated her badly - but it's also highly discomfiting to recognize that the methods used by Vincent and the Order are strikingly similar to his own: lie, gain trust, move in for the kill.]

Yeah. People in extreme circumstances can be pushed to take extreme actions.

[Like shooting down someone who's scared and angry and using every available weapon at her disposal against those who've hurt her.]

I won't lie to you, Sharon. Not like this Vincent guy did, not like I've done to other people before. You're too important to me, and - I know it's hard enough for people like us to trust anyone.

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[ His words make it almost hard to breathe. He, better than anyone here, understands what she's lived through; they've exchanged enough of their lives with one another to know how hard trust is created within them; exchanged enough to know just how delicate it is when it is born. It's something precious for people like them. Their lives may not have been the same, their suffering different, but they still both grew hard from it; learned to protect themselves from the world and how to strike down anyone who gets in too close. ]

Thank you. [ Breatheless. He trusts her, she's known that but it's different when it's said aloud—it turns it into a promise. ]

You know I won't lie to you, either. I won't do anything to break your trust, not if I can help it. [ She'd rather die again than do that. ]