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Near is pretty.
That’s one of the first things Mello notices when he sees Near for the first time, when they are merely children. The fragility and timeless beauty of the white-haired male is elegant, a new kind of ethereal grace that is immeasurable in the simple numbers one through ten. Snowy hair is long and shaggy, messy in curls that pile on top of his big, round head. He wears dark contacts that make his eyes look charcoal-colored, but Mello is smart enough to know that albino sheep like him have red eyes, so he must be wearing contacts. His skin is pale, almost white. He looks delicately elvish in his baggy white button up and matching pajama pants that drag on the floor, and he moves Mello in a way that not even music could.
For this, Mello hates him.
He pulls off beauty in a way Mello could never, not Mello with his sharp jaw and cheekbones, not Mello with his bright cerulean eyes, not Mello with his subtle tension, not Mello with the fire in his eyes and the ravenous, aggressive hunger in his every movement, and definitely not Mello with his blunt bangs and chin-length blond bob. Mello is far, far too intense to be pretty.
And then there’s the tattoo on the inside of his wrist. Everyone is born with one, and he is no exception. He is extraordinary, in many ways, but each human has one of these. No one is exempt.
The little black-inked tattoos are said to reflect your very soul, the deepest facets of your personality, every one of your wants and deepest desires. The things you’ll never let go. The secrets you hide, the feelings, thoughts, and emotions behind the masks you don. They connect you to the other half of yourself, and disappear without a trace when they die. Mello has seen men and women alike collapse in the street sobbing as the black ink fades from their skin.
Two stars.
Mello has two stars as his black-inked tattoo. Directly diagonal to each other. The top right one is bigger than the smaller, bottom left one.
He thinks it’s a cruel nod to the way the albino child, two whole damn years younger, is always better than him. Always brighter, smarter, faster, better. The bigger star.
Mello reminisces alone one day, lounging on a leather couch in the Mafia hideout, a piece of chocolate in his mouth, thinking of what was, and what could have been.
A sharp memory hits him as he lays there on the couch (he is near positive that some woman died of a heroin overdose on this very couch, but what does he care, it happens all the time now), one of his earliest ones. He is perhaps ten. Their rank tests are handed back one day, and a paper with “Mello” scrawled on it in his messy handwriting is handed wordlessly to him by the teacher, a tall, austere woman with dirty blond hair pulled up in a severe knot, red lipstick on her thin lips, and glasses, who Mello has never seen slouch or smile a day in her life.
He thinks to himself that it must be a boring life, never being allowed to smile or play games or laugh. But of course, he doesn’t say it. One more day spent in Roger’s office is one more day taken away from his schoolwork, and that’s another day that Near has over him.
He examines the number, and he rejoices at the one hundred percent at the top of his page, circled in red ink, thinking, “Finally! It’s enough to beat Near.”
No. The albino’s number flashes at him, just a peek at it, and heat spreads into his face.
One hundred four percent. Near has, once again, beat him.
Five years later, he is almost fifteen when he leaves Wammy House. L is dead, and Mello is not going to be his sole successor like he was always promised. If he stays behind, he will have to work with Near.
He does not want to work with Near.
His only friend, Matt, predictably follows him to the New York branch of the Mafia, but Near is left behind. Like he ever even wanted to extend an invite to Near. He hates Near, and Near hates him right back.
They don’t speak again for four years.
Mello is doing just fine, just fine with Matt and Rod and the rest of the Mafia. It is the reign of the murderer Kira, that bastard. Criminals in the Mafia have been dropping dead left and right because of him.
It is so inconvenient when a Mafia member dies on an errand Mello has put them on, and that’s when they have a heart attack. No matter how much sympathy he has for Kira, he deserves to die.
People call these years, these awful years where L is dead and nothing and no one known to many opposes the murderer “Dominium Kira.”
The Dominion of Kira. Mello never calls them that. He calls them the “Second Dark Age.” His desire to find and kill Kira is second only to his desire to surpass Near.
Either way, it matters little. Thoughts of Near connect in his agile mind, then…
No. No, no, no, that can’t be. Kira needs a name and face to kill. This is absolutely the worst outcome he could think of.
Near, more likely than not, has a photo of Mello. Every Wammy child has a single photo taken of them when they get to Wammy’s House. Linda painted over hers, then soaked it in water, ripped it up into a glob of paper mache, and used it as part of a collage. Matt shredded his photo and burned it. Mello kept his photo, and he has no idea what Near did with his. It’s highly likely that Mello’s photo has fallen into Near’s hands.
And Mello needs to acquire that very same photo before Kira does.
A few days later, Mello makes a plan to “kidnap” Halle Linder, one of Near’s agents, as a means of acquiring the photo of himself. She is an attractive blond woman, and his teenager side urges him to indulge in the simple act of watching her shower, even though he feels nothing for her. She is lean, beautiful in many ways, but he feels no pull to her. Nothing urges him to touch her or caress her; he even feels slight revulsion for her.
Either way, once she is done, he grasps her and silences her with a gun to her temple, before forcing her on his motorcycle. She stays remarkably calm throughout this whole ordeal; she must have been trained, Mello notes, because no normal citizen could have withstood the fear he is attempting to inflict on her without passing out or vomiting, and definitely without her calm and emotionlessness.
He drives to the headquarters of the SPK, and marches her in with a gun pressed to her back. Again, she doesn’t panic, doesn’t scream. She is completely calm, and he is not sure whether he hates her for that, or appreciates her.
Upon seeing him (as he expected), the other men draw guns and aim them at him. All in a split second, he aims his own gun at Near and all but flings Halle Lidner into one of the tables. She hits it with a sickening crack and a grimace. Near, crouched on the floor with his back to Mello is the first thing the blond sees. Perfect Near, who has not said a word since Mello walked in the room with Halle Lidner. Little Near, all in white as he plays with his action figures and little finger puppets.
“Mello, if you’re going to shoot me, just do it,” he says softly in his cold, emotionless voice. Mello is shocked to hear that it is just as high-pitched as it was when they were children at Wammy’s House. That is strange, considering Mello’s extreme voice drop. Mello does not like that Near still sounds the same as he did at Wammy’s, though he doesn’t know why.
“Just…” He cocks the gun, causing a loud snap to reverberate through the room. “Shut up, Near!” Near doesn’t even flinch at the metallic click of the deadly weapon.
“You won’t do it,” he says, calm as ever. He is smug, confident in his answer. Mello snarls, long and low in the back of his throat.
"I'm not just a tool for you to use in order to solve your puzzles, you know!"
He knows. He knows he sounds petulant and childish, but he doesn’t care, not when Near sits on the floor so, not when Near seems to be unweighted down by that tattoo on his neck that Mello can see through his white shirt. How has the SPK not noticed it? But then again, Mello mused, Near was their superior. They probably didn’t dare question him too much. He remembered the one time that someone from the Mafia dared question his tattoo.
They were dead within seconds, Mello’s Beretta smoking in silver ribbons, the silver of the gun now blood-spattered and a stony expression on the blond murderer’s face.
“Don’t shoot,” Halle demands, holding the side that crashed into the table. “If you shoot, then we’ll have to shoot you too.” He turns his head to bare his teeth at her menacingly, and she shuts up and looks away. How stupid is this woman? Submissive, too. He lets out a sigh before turning to Near, who hadn’t even flinched at his comment about not being a tool for him to use to solve the puzzles and games the little white-haired boy played with other people and their lives like they were nothing, just pawns with no name and no face. How strange. Near wasn’t even fazed.
“Listen,” he said in a deadly calm tone, “I think you know what I came for.”
“Hmm. Yes.” A Polaroid picture comes zinging at him like a Frisbee, and he barely manages to catch it with a little grunt of annoyance. Like Near can’t just hand it to him like a civilized person (not that Mello is a civilized person, he’s just saying, Near could just walk over and hand the damn photo to him). He flips it over then. “Dear Mello,” it reads in elegant font.
There are two stars drawn in the lower left-hand corner, and he hates seeing his soulmark drawn out there by the same hand that wrote those words.
Near’s soulmark too.
Near’s soulmark is on the back of his neck. Mello knows because one time, Near looked down at his puzzle and there were the two stars. Mello wished he hadn’t seen it, because the expanse of pale flesh marked only by that dark ink is too much for him and he hates knowing that it’s there, hidden so effortlessly by the mass of curls at the base of his neck and he hates that he knows.
“This is the only photo, no copies have been made. I’ve already dealt with everyone, inside Wammy’s and out, who knows your face,” Near rattled off in his bored tone, as if this conversation dulled him beyond belief. Mello turns to leave, but stops and turns back around and begins to speak again.
“Near. I don’t want to work with you,” he emphasizes. “That being said… I can’t just take my photo and leave. That wouldn’t be right. So I’m going to pay you back.”
Near’s little sound of utter confusion and “what the fuck is he talking about” is all the satisfaction the blond will ever need, other than the satisfaction of finding Kira first. “Huh?” Now he’s interested. He actually stops playing with his toys for a second, so thrown off is he by this declaration.
“The killer notebook… it belongs to a shinigami…” Mello trails off, a wide, slightly crazed look in his crystalline blue eyes as he speaks about the shinigami.
Near’s small gasp fills the blond with a vindictive sort of satisfaction, because Near does not expect him to say this and Near expects everything, and therefore Mello has shocked Near enough for him to break the shell of ice he hides in and show him a genuine reaction. Of course, Mello isn’t finished. “Whoever touches the notebook will be able to see a god of death.” The last word is bitten out harshly, like it is poison on his tongue and the SPK members step forward in foolish incredulity.
“That’s insane! Who would believe that?” they cry. Mello does not flinch.
“I would.” The soft voice shocks every single one of them into looking at the boy curled up on the ground. “What good does that do to Mello to lie about this? If it is a lie, he would have made a better one, a more convincing one. Therefore, he is telling the truth. Shinigami do exist.”
Mello clears his throat as he finishes what he was going to say. “The notebook that I got was once held by a different human. Moreover, some rules in the notebook were fake.” He can’t withhold the smirk that infiltrates his voice as he sneers, “That’s all I have to say.”
With that, he turns, smoothly giving Near his back. “Near.”
The other does not disappoint him. “Mello.”
He lifts the chocolate to his lips. “Which of us will find Kira first, I wonder?”
He can practically hear the smirk in the other’s voice. “The race is on.”
“Our destination is the same. I’ll be waiting for you at the finish line.”
“Ha. Right.”
And then, Mello turns, the three small words dripping from his lips like cyanide as he looks at the younger. “Remember the stars.”
The other hisses and his back tenses because he knows, he has to know what Mello is talking about as the blond slinks out, barely keeping his head as the door closes. But as soon as he is sure the SPK cannot see him, he clutches the back of his photograph to his chest, biting into the two stars on his wrist as he sobs silently, holding his wrist in the grasp of his teeth as he tries to muffle his cries, feeling his chest cave and his lungs cave out, because he knows he will never be loved by his soulmate the same way he has always wanted.
And he knows, at the end of the race, the game that the two boys play, Near will carry no soulmark and Mello will be too deformed for anyone to know of the two stars that only Near's memory will hold.