want_the_world: (blue)
Mello ([personal profile] want_the_world) wrote in [community profile] soul_logs2013-10-30 12:14 am

[closed]

Characters: Mello and Near
Location: their place in Tartarus Terraces
Rating: PG-13
Time: 15 July, evening
Description: BREW takes its sweet time bringing one person back.


[Mello doesn't sleep. He knows he wouldn't be able to, and that if he somehow did manage to fall asleep, the nightmares would be waiting for him as soon as he closed his eyes.

The evidence suggests that Near, like so many others, was sent home around 11 on the morning of the 14th.

But no one Mello has talked to was gone for very long. The conclusion he's been avoiding arriving at is that one of two things happened: either what both of them have feared for so long finally came to pass, and BREW decided Near's time in Death City was up, coincidentally sending him back with the others who were slated to return almost immediately. Or Near was supposed to be gone for only minutes, and BREW fucked up. The latter seems more likely to Mello.

It seems even more likely as the 14th becomes the 15th, the sky outside starts to lighten, and there's still no sign of Near. When Mello realizes he's consciously putting off a task he'll have to deal with eventually, he forces himself to do it, and starts looking for the message he knows Near would have left.

He finds the box with sheet music and finger puppets inside easily enough, but there's no note. (The piano will have to be dealt with somehow, but Mello can't bring himself to think about that yet.) The unexpected troll figure in the box makes him miss Gemini more sharply than he has in a while, and not knowing why he feels he ought to do it, he takes all of them--a Near puppet that actually looks like him, one of himself that's even more detailed than the one Near had in their world, Genesis, Matt, and Sollux--and lines them up on Near's desk, where he can see them as he hunts.

The search serves as an effective distraction, as long as he doesn't think about why it's necessary. He even curses his partner's paranoia and skill at hiding things, as more and more potential hideaways for the message turn up empty.

Finally, well into the afternoon, he notices that one of the toy robots is making the lineup of toys across the top of Near's desk asymmetrical by not having a mate, and discovers it's a flash drive.

The message begins as matter-of-factly as he expected, but, once the practical arrangements are out of the way, it's clear that Near is uncertain how to proceed. The most important things have always gone unsaid between them, both of them having a deep distrust of, and distaste for, sentimentality of any kind. A message like this forces them to say those things (Mello has written one himself, and hasn't, until now, stopped trying to find a better way to say them).

I never needed or wanted to have a home, Near says in the recording, and I certainly never wanted to feel happy or content. I still don't think I need either of those things, but you made me feel them, and I can’t say I dislike it. It's… surprisingly pleasant.

Mello huffs a breath that's meant to be a laugh, but it's much too shaky. (He'll deny until his dying day that he has to blink very quickly for several seconds after the audio cuts off.)

I should've told him, he thinks. Everything in my letter, no matter how badly I said it. He should have known it before he left.]


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