lifetothefullest | [IC Inbox]

[There's a slight delay as Lance thinks it over, because it's taking a risk--especially in this place--to go to someone's home that he doesn't know particularly well, especially here. But he doesn't think Mello means him any harm, and now that Lance is pretty much healed he's slightly less nervous about whether he'd be able to defend himself, so eventually he decides to agree.]

That would be fine.

[It's good that Lance doesn't immediately agree - it most likely means he's considering the risks, which is smart. Mello has no intention of harming him, but he has made Lance aware that he is capable of killing, when he feels it's necessary.]

The number 7 house in the cluster that's half underground. Whenever it's convenient for you.

[And because he does understand basic courtesy, he adds:]

Thank you.

Edited 2017-08-04 19:22 (UTC)

[That's one of the things that makes Lance concerned, even though he doesn't believe Mello intends any harm; counseling sessions can sometimes get emotional or heated, especially with the kind of topic they'll be discussing, and so there's a risk that things might go badly at the time even if Mello doesn't intend anything going into it. But Lance is willing to take the risk on this, although he'll be cautious about it.

And Lance is up and awake at the moment anyway, so--]

Alright, I know where those are. I'm not doing anything now, if this time works for you?

You're welcome.

I'm not busy. Now would be fine.

[No time like the present, really.]

I'll be there in half an hour, then.

[He needs to look at least somewhat professional, and probably should get a snack or something.

But half an hour later, as promised, he knocks on the door; he looks tired but otherwise pretty put together, and even bothered with a suit again. He's also carrying his gun, just in case, but it's hidden by the hem of his suit jacket.]

[Mello, on the other hand, makes no effort to dress differently to meet with Lance. He's not a slob by any means, just wearing casual clothes, dark jeans and a loose-fitting plain black shirt, the rosary as always around his neck, tired eyes and somber expression underneath mildly mussed blond hair that's half fallen over his scarred face. He answers the door barefoot, a knife hidden under his shirt, tucked into the waistband of his jeans at his back. He doesn't expect trouble, but he also doesn't trust easily, and this house is only as safe as he can make it - mostly by limiting the number of people who know where he stays. He's extended a measure of trust in asking Lance over, but it's incomplete and tentative.]

Dr. Sweets.

[He gives him an acknowledging nod and steps back, opening the door wider to allow him to enter, and scoops up the black cat chirping curiously at his feet. The cat meows in protest but settles easily into the crook of his arm, all three differently colored eyes watching Lance alertly.]

Will you come in?

[Lance nods and steps in, subtly but still carefully avoiding turning away from Mello as he does so, although his attention is a little distraction from caution by the sight of the cat. It's a weird little thing, but it's also oddly cute and Lance has always liked animals, even if he's never had any.

But there's a reason he's here, and he casts a brief, appraising look around what he can see of the house from here; there's a lot to be learned about someone by what they do with their home. He turns his attention back to Mello quickly enough, though.]

It's nice to meet you in person.

[In what isn't a fake alternate reality, where he'd occasionally seen Mello--or was it Michael, there?--due to knowing Brennan.]

[What Lance will learn about the house from a visual assessment is that it's sparsely furnished and there have been no efforts made to decorate or personalize the space - it is almost exactly as Mello found it. He has not lived here for very long, and he isn't emotionally attached to it. He is accustomed to keeping on the move, to the spaces where he settles being temporary, and even though he has lived in Hadriel for more than a year, that is still very much his mindset.

He closes the door behind Lance, noting his body language (as he was trained to do as a child), turns the locks, and sets the cat down on the floor again. The cat cautiously approaches Lance with a questioning trill, sniffing at his shoe.]

Katze, behave. [To Lance, briskly:] You as well. I appreciate your assistance with this matter. Kitchen?

[The lack of furnishing is interesting, although he isn't completely sure how much to read into it; his own apartment is not particularly furnished either due to a combination of lack of options in Hadriel and being unable to really lift anything for the first few months. But it's worth noting, all the same, even if his attention is soon caught instead by Mello shutting and locking the door.

It's not like the action is weird or out of place but it does make him slightly nervous, although the weird-cute cat coming over to him helps a little with that.]

Hello.

[He tells the cat gently, though he doesn't reach down toward it; he doesn't want to scare it. He glances back up at Mello, nodding in agreement and waiting for him to lead the way toward the kitchen.]

'Katze' is German, right?

[He's pretty sure it means cat in German, although he doesn't remember where he picked up that knowledge. Surely from a book somewhere.]

[The cat mrows back at Lance's greeting, rubs his cheek on his ankle, and trots off, satisfied. Mello nods and takes lead in walking toward the kitchen. He can understand Lance's wariness better than most, and though he continues the conversation while walking, he remains alert, out of habit.]

That's right. [And, before Lance can ask, he adds:] German is one of many languages I studied as part of my education - which I know was a bit unorthodox, but I think it's a stretch to call it brainwashing, or to describe it as cultish.

[But that's why Lance is here, after all. Once they reach the kitchen Mello gestures toward the table and chairs in the center, as oddly shaped but serviceable as all the furniture in Hadriel tends to be.]

Before we start, would you like a glass of water? I don't have much else here ... I don't do much social entertaining.

I didn't exactly have the most normal education either, so I'd hesitate to judge on that alone.

[In other words he doesn't think it's too strange just from that, following Mello into the kitchen; the weird Hadriel furniture is familiar and a little comforting at this point, especially since he spends a lot of time--for various reasons--talking to people in kitchens here. So he takes a seat, shaking his head a little at the question.]

I'm fine, thank you.

[He's here on a professional call anyway, so Mello really doesn't need to worry about the social stuff.]

Is there anything you wanted to ask or had concerns about, before we get into the actual issue?

[Learning multiple languages is probably the most normal activity from the Wammy's House educational system, so that facet is not necessarily the best representation of its unusualness. Mello takes out a glass from the cabinet for himself and fills it from the tap, then sets it down on the table in front of the chair that he turns sideways and sits down in, one arm wrapped around the top of the chair's back. He silently considers the question for a moment, mouth pressed into a thin line, fingertip slowly tracing the lip of the glass. Finally, he shakes his head.]

My only concern is confidentiality, and I think you'll understand why once I get into the details. But you've already covered that, and I believe you to be a professional, just as I believe myself to be a good judge of character.

[So, in other words, he believes Lance will keep what Mello tells him to himself. There are only two people left from Mello's world here in Hadriel other than himself, and only one of them might be considered a threat to the other, but old paranoid habits die hard. Preparing to disclose what he intends to goes against everything Mello was ever trained for. He inhales a slow, deep breath, and begins.]

I told you before when we spoke about the Guard that I was trained from the age of seven to solve crimes, and that's true, though not the entire story. Some people, hearing that, might assume that solving crimes was a family business, to explain my involvement from such a young age, but that's not the case. I have no family - I'm an orphan, you see, and I have been since my mother died, when I was five years old.

[He pauses, expression pinched at the too-recent memory of his mother's reappearance here, the joy seeing her again brought him, the pain losing her a second time caused. He takes a sip of water, pushes his feelings aside, and focuses on continuing his story.]

Since I had no other family to take me in, I was sent to a Church-run orphanage, where I lived for the next two years, and I hated every day of it. [Interesting, perhaps, that he chooses to wear a rosary, then.] One day, though, I was approached about taking a series of tests, which I agreed to, mostly because it got me out of the class taught by the sister I disliked the most. [He half-smiles, thinking about what an impact that one small decision motivated by simple enmity ended up having on his life.] I scored very highly on those tests. It may be an oversimplification to put it in these terms, but the results said that I was a genius.

[He doesn't say this with any sense of boasting - it's merely factual. Mello glances up to Lance, gauging his reaction to what he says.]

[Lance nods once in confirmation at Mello's response to his own comment, both in agreement and understanding; he takes his job very seriously, and has no intention of anything Mello tells him leaving this room without permission otherwise.

He sits up straight, listening silently as Mello begins to explain, and it's difficult not to immediately draw some parallels. That, combined with the way Mello speaks and his expressions, makes it easy for Lance to understand the progression from place to place and the kind of motivation a child would have to get themselves out of a bad situation when given the chance. That motivation--or desperation--makes them an easy target, which is something commonly exploited.

But he's reserving judgement on that just yet, although combined with the entire reason Mello wanted to speak with him in the first place and the being trained to solve crimes doesn't exactly paint a promising picture.

His expression is carefully neutral, as it usually is when he's listening to someone get things out at the beginning of a session, not wanting to influence their story in any way or discourage them from continuing. So when Mello looks at him he just nods in understanding and an indication to continue if he wants to.]

[Mello returns the nod, and continues; as he talks, he slowly twists the glass a half-circle clockwise, then counter-clockwise, then back again.]

I was approached about transferring to a different institution, one that was designed for children like me, orphans with brilliant minds, collected from all corners of the globe. Naturally, I accepted. I didn't entirely understand what I was accepting until I got there, but what I was told sounded a hell of a lot better than staying where I was.

[Katze jumps up on the table, nearly soundless, and Mello reaches out to scratch underneath his chin. The cat purrs loudly.]

It wasn't just another orphanage, of course. It was also a training program of sorts. The man who founded it was an inventor, and what he invented in founding that institution was a replication program for one very specific person - the single greatest detective of the century, a man known as L. He was recorded to have solved more than 3,500 difficult crimes in his time, and he never once showed his face publicly. He had the respect of every major law enforcement organization across the globe, and it's not an exaggeration to say that his death would have sent crime rates around the world skyrocketing, under normal circumstances. It's no wonder, then, that an inventor looked at him and wanted to make a copy.

[Well, it's starting to sound kind of like a cult now.

If it weren't in some sort of attempt to emulate a particular individual it might've appeared more like a special private school, but the way Mello's describing it makes it sound a whole lot more like some person--this inventor--had an obsession with this L and wanted to create his own version. Not only that, but he apparently decided to use children who were in positions to be manipulated in order to do so.

SO Lance's opinion of this entire subject is definitely moving toward being incredibly sketchy at best and downright malicious at worst, but he's still trying to stay neutral for now and again nods for Mello to continue.]

[The cat settles onto his side, stretched out, tail twitching contentedly while Mello rubs his ears.]

Obviously, this program had a period of refinement. I was from the fourth generation of potential successors at this institution, but the first class had some fairly spectacular disasters - one boy cracked under the pressure and committed suicide, and the second became a serial murderer.

[He also happens to be in Hadriel right now, but that's something Mello will keep to himself for the moment. Beyond's story is of personal significance to Mello and helped shaped the path he took over the five years before he was brought to Hadriel, and he may yet discuss it with Lance, if the conversations turns toward it, but it's not an immediately salient detail.]

But I did well in this program, though I wasn't the best. [His expression hardens slightly at the admission. He's had more than a year away from his world and even reached a kind of resolution in forging an alliance with Near, while he was here, but the feeling that he will never quite be good enough is a persistent sting, woven into the very fabric of his being.] There was another boy called Near, and I always came second to him, no matter how hard I worked and studied. At any rate, Near and I were said to have come the closest to following in L's footsteps - Near more so than me, I think.

[It's sad but not surprising to hear about the results of the early class of children; those are both, unfortunately, potential outcomes of putting high risk kids into a situation like that.

And he understands the hints of Mello's competitiveness and need to be the best, because they're just as expected. When success and making yourself stand out as best at something are your keys to improving your life, it's easy for it to become an obsession. That's partially why Lance excelled so much in school in himself; although no longer in the situation he'd been in, overachieving had been a way to prove--even though he knows, looking back, it wasn't necessary--that his parents hadn't made a mistake in adopting him.

He pulls himself from his thoughts, nodding again at Mello's words, still following along with the story well enough but not wanting to ask any questions until Mello's totally finished.]

[Mello takes a longer pause before continuing with his story, because the rest is more intensely painful to recount, and will sound the most fantastical to an outsider not from his world. He takes a slow drink of his water and sets the glass back down, a little farther to the side so as not to tempt the cat.]

Near was the one who succeeded L when he was killed. There was a case - a very difficult case, with worldwide impact. I mentioned to you before that our world had been held in the grip of a murderous tyrant for several years. This was L's final case, to uncover this mass killer's identity and bring him to justice. He was known to the world as Kira, and his method of execution was a supernatural notebook that belonged to a shinigami, a god of death. [He pauses, watching Lance for a reaction, because he knows how much this part sounds like complete bullshit. Quickly, he adds:] I'm not someone who clings to fantasy, Dr. Sweets. I was trained to seek out evidence, to remain skeptical until I found concrete proof. I wouldn't have believed shinigami or their killing notebooks were real if I hadn't held a notebook in my own hands, saw it tested with my own eyes, and spoke with the shinigami it belonged to, personally.

[Lance's expression doesn't really change at the talk of shinigami and killer notebooks; after everything here that concept just doesn't sound all the weird. Creepy and a serious problem if in the wrong hands but not half as outlandish as some of the stories he's heard from people here, or even just being here in the first place.

So he doesn't question it, especially since he sees nothing in Mello's expression, voice, or anything else to indicate that Mello is in any way lying.]

I believe you.

[He says it just to make it clear, because Mello does seem concerned about that part.]

Edited 2017-08-08 19:06 (UTC)

[The part about shinigami and supernatural notebooks that can kill is the most ridiculous part of the story, so it's little wonder Mello's concerned about being taken seriously on the subject. Near was easy to convince, using the reasoning that if Mello were to lie, he would make up something that sounded more reasonable - they were both trained under the same system, so in that respect, they knew each other too well.]

There were two notebooks in play, actually. I'd acquired one, and Kira had the other. In order to kill, the notebook's owner needed two pieces, their intended victim's face, and their true name. "Mello" isn't my real name, of course, but that was a safety measure put into place by the orphanage, well before Kira ever came to power. None of us knew each other's real names, and it wasn't really important - we were encouraged, maybe not explicitly but implicitly, to forget our pasts and focus on our training, on who we might become.

[He pauses, chewing on the black-painted nail of his index finger while deciding on the best phrasing for the next part of the story.]

I didn't have the notebook in my possession for long - Kira and his forces, which included law enforcement, stormed my safe house in order to reclaim it. I was cornered by one of those agents, after he'd taken possession of the notebook, and he was able to discover my name. Now, as far as I'm aware, that name should have remained a secret - I'm not even sure the orphanage kept it on file, once I'd been placed there. No one should have been able to find it. But there was, of course, something a loophole - when you became the owner of a shinigami's notebook, you had the option of making a deal for the shinigami's sight, which would tell you the name and remaining life span of anyone whose face you clearly saw. This man who had me cornered had made such a deal, so all he had to do was look at me, and he knew my name. He had the notebook in his hands, and he could've killed me in less than a minute.

[But he hadn't. Soichiro Yagami had tried to convince Mello to give himself up, right to the end.]

He didn't kill me, obviously - he was a good man, I think, except for being mixed up in Kira's war. I asked him if he'd ever actually killed anyone before. He hesitated, and one of my associates created a diversion. I was able to escape, but I had to blow up the entire building to do so.

[Thus the scar over the side of his face. No need to draw attention to it; Mello has no doubt Lance is smart enough to fit those pieces together.]

I lost everything, that night - the notebook, all the resources I'd built. But I was determined to keep fighting. I kept monitoring Kira and his agents, and Near did the same. One of Near's people was feeding me information about their progress - it may've even been Near's idea, so he could keep an eye on what my moves were. But when she told me about Near's plan to face Kira in person and trick him into showing his hand by writing a name in the notebook, I ...

[He trails off, looks away, frowns deeply. It's been more than a year, and it's still hard to remember the moment he made the decision to end his life in service of stopping Kira.]

You see, one of the ways in which Kira was able to operate for so long is that he had proxies. I'd come to the conclusion that there were two such individuals, and only one of them was using the real notebook. The other, the one that Near and his team had focused on, was using an elaborate fake. If Near had faced Kira as he intended, he and his team would've been killed, because Near had failed to consider the possibility that the notebook this proxy was using was a fake - an effective piece of misdirection. And I decided I couldn't allow that to happen. I decided ... Near had to be shown that there was a fake notebook. And the only person who could do that was me. I planned to kidnap his second proxy, the one who was carrying out the executions in secret, in order to trick the other into revealing the location of the real notebook. I figured ... she must've been told my real name, so all I would have to do is show her my face. Then she could write my name down, and ...

[Well, no need to finish that sentence. He shrugs. It's pretty obvious what would happen, with his name and face and a piece of the notebook in her possession.]

I was brought here the day before I'd intended to put that plan into action.

[The whole thing is... Complicated to say the least, especially considering he's unfamiliar with the situation and hasn't had much of a chance for it all to sink in yet, but this is one of those areas where his high intelligence really actively aids him. So the story makes sense, for the most part anyway, and the most important aspects regarding the subject at hand--and Mello motivations and mental state--are as clear as they can be with such limited information.

Now that the story itself seems finished, Lance takes a moment to mentally go over a few parts and sort out how to respond and what to focus on first, but as he does that there's something very obvious to address before anything else.]

I'm sorry you had to make a decision like that.

[Being in the position to have to do so, and then choosing that particular option, couldn't have been easy and, more than that, it must be very lonely, in a way. It's important to acknowledge that, especially because he gets the distinct impression that Mello doesn't place as high a value on his own life as he perhaps should.]

[He's not good at accepting sympathy, though he's arguably better at it than he used to be - thank Sharon for her somewhat normalizing influence, showing him the way back to being a human being instead of a broken machine. So he doesn't freeze up or lash out at Lance for saying what he does, as he might have done a year ago, even though the words make him feel uncomfortable. His mouth presses into a thin line, not quite a frown, and he nods soberly in acknowledgement.]

The world is not a perfect place, Dr. Sweets - I'm sure you know that better than most. People often have to make difficult decisions, especially in extreme circumstances. For example, my father - I don't remember much about him, he was killed when I was very young - but he was a soldier. I imagine he probably had to make some very difficult decisions during the course of the war that eventually claimed his life.

[Like father, like son, perhaps. Mello may not have been a soldier in the traditional sense, and the battle to defeat Kira may not have been the kind of war most people would understand as such, but it's not such a stretch for Mello to view it this way. He sits back in the chair, arms folded over his chest, and shrugs again.]

Some causes are more important than individual lives. I recognized that in the grand scheme, I was ultimately an expendable piece on the board. No one else would have been able to do what I'd planned. No one else could have done it.

[Again, Lance listens carefully, although he's actually paying far less attention to the words than to Mello's expressions and tone; like Mello said, Lance knows all of this already except for the specific information about Mello's father, which he makes mental note of.]

Of course. You're right, and logically that all makes sense.

[He says it understandingly, not judging or pitying, but his choice of words is deliberate.]

But even when the correct choice is logically obvious, that still doesn't mean actually making it is simple. Especially in a case where someone's life--such as your own--is at stake; no amount of knowing it's the right thing to do eliminates the effect it has on someone mentally and emotionally.

[And he presumes those effects are probably still lingering, and even if they're not the reason Mello wanted to talk to him about it's worth acknowledging them. It's also important to mention another thing as well--]

There's also a difference between choosing to make a sacrifice and considering yourself expendable.

[It's a subtle distinction, but an incredibly important one.]

They're different, yes, but they can be related.

[Much like the factors that led to Mello making his decision. He considers what Lance has said, mouth a tight frown as he falls silent. Did his choice create a lasting effect on him? There was no time to dwell on it, once he decided; he had just a few days to cobble together his final stratagem, settle in his mind what few affairs he had left in the world he intended to leave behind. He didn't expect to live this long past that decision, and he hasn't taken the time to think about it much during the time he's been here - too many other crises to navigate.]

What effect would that be? The mental and emotional effect of choosing such a path, I mean.

There's no one answer for that.

[As usual, in a lot psychological matters.]

For most people, that would be a traumatic event. But, again, how someone reacts to trauma varies depending on individual and the nature of the situation.

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i'm so sorry for this novel /o\

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