“The cruelest lies are

often told in silence.”

-         Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘Virginibus Puerisque’ title essay, pt. 4, (1881)

Mello hated chocolate. When Matt had first met his scrawny blond roommate, Roger had pulled a peace offering, a Hershey’s bar, from his pocket simply because what small and lonely child didn’t go for chocolate?

Mello had snarled at it, blue eyes sparking, and turned away. He made a terrible child.

The years rolled, and then L died.

* 

The other children said that Mello was a compulsive liar. They said that he couldn’t help it.

Matt knew otherwise, as he had the right to. Compulsion had nothing to do with it; Mello was just a liar. Mello would be dictated by impulsion, more than anything, anyway.

When they were nine, Mello broke his wrist.

“Fell outta that tree, over by the lake,” he told Shârn, when she asked him about the pristine white bandages tucked beneath long black sleeves.

“Crashed m’bike into a wall,” he told Jary.

“Flew off the end of the banister too fast,” he told Crana.

“You should see the other guy,” he told Linda, who laughed and shook her head.

Mello lied because he had a demented hate of people in general. “I’m not stupid!” he had shouted in one of his random and destructive rages. “I don’t believe that just because I tell them the truth that they’re going to understand what I’m saying, because they don’t, these people. These stupid, ignorant people.”

Matt knew this wasn’t about a broken wrist, or even about lies. It was just Mello’s anger, and his war against a world that couldn’t handle him.

“Liar, liar,” the children called, and five years later, L died.

 
*

“Lies are wrong,” Mother had said (so, so long ago).

“Lies are sometimes necessary to be right,” L had said. ‘Right’ had meant ‘justice’, of course. And then, he died.

 
*

Matt lied, sometimes. What small child didn’t? Childhood has always been a war between what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’.

Beside Mello’s consistent rebellion against common ignorance, Matt’s lies were more of the ‘No, I didn’t steal the cookies from the cookie jar’ variety.

Mello, apparently, disagreed.

“You’re a liar,” he claimed loudly, straddling Matt’s desk chair.

Matt didn’t look up from the equations spread over his mattress, and nodded. “Yeah, I am.”

“Not that kind of liar,” Mello said, scowling at the top of his friend’s messy head. “You’re the worst kind of liar.”

Matt looked up, irritation flashing across hazel eyes.

“You don’t tell lies, because when you tell lies, people don’t have to believe them if they’re not stupid.” That little bit of venom wasn’t lost on Matt, who noticed all these things. “Your lies don’t really have any alternate truth to them.”

Matt gave up on homework, setting down his chewed and splintered pencil. ‘What are you talking about?’ his eyes asked.

“’S ‘cause you don’t say your lies,” Mello explained. Words matter to twelve-year-olds, and they all spent a fair bit of their time talking. (With the exception of Near, who wasn’t twelve anyway.) “You look them.”

Matt didn’t protest, simply because he knew Mello. He creased his brow slightly and shifted his head to the side, telling his friend that ‘Yes, you have confused me,’ – because that’s how Mello started all of his revolutionary speeches – ‘therefore I am interested, please continue’.

“You never wear patterns,” Mello stated, rocking the chair forward onto its back legs, his hair swinging to cover his face slightly, but making sure that his blue gaze stayed firmly on Matt’s. “It’s always a singularly coloured t-shirt and blue jeans. You look at people when they’re talking to you. You always stack your textbooks at the very corner of your desk…” Mello paused, setting the chair back onto four legs, crossing his arms over its wooden back. “You’re predictable.”

Matt considered saying something, but noted that Mello’s stance lacked the triumph and confidence that would be there if he’d finished. His head was still slightly bowed, and Matt knew he was thinking.

“But in this room,” Mello continued, tilting forward once again, “your stuff is all over the floor, you change the pattern on your pillowcase at least once a fortnight, and your laptop has passwords on freaking everything.” He dropped the front legs of the chair back to the floorboards with a loud clack. “It’s a completely contradictory personality! You’re a mess, but everyone thinks you’re a neat-freak! You only ever wear solid colours, but I swear, you’re thinking green and blue checkers right now. And… and, the passwords! You’re confident, you look like you trust, but you don’t, because I know you, and that’s not what you’re like. So –“

There was a moment of silence and Matt noted the straight lift of his friend’s chin despite the exasperated set of his eyes and decided that he believed that he’d made his point. “Did you crack the passwords?” he asked casually, because that would be annoying, and he was a child.

That got him the promised dark glare and a bonus toss of the head. “No, I didn’t try.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Matt agreed, smiling behind his eyes.

“The point,” Mello insisted, directing attention away from his small failure, “is why you do it. Why you play it up when you’re outside this room.”

“I’m predictable, you said?” Matt repeated, picking up his pencil and spinning it lightly between two fingers.

“Mhm.” Mello always was impatient.

“People trust predictable people,” Matt said. “And trust gets you places.”

Mello nodded slowly. “Trust.”

“Yeah. Trust,” Matt agreed, fending off the sarcastic comment (‘Trust, you know, that weird trinket that Roger has.’) budding at the back of his tongue.

“D’you trust them?” Mello demanded, even though he already knew, really, and he was just being insecure and possessive, as he did.

Matt fought the urge to roll his eyes. “No, Mello,” he said, because he didn’t. He was going to leave Wammy’s one day (soon, maybe, if Mello did), and none of these people would ever matter to him again. “They’re half-baked geniuses with hormones. I’m not stupid.”

There was a moment of silence as Mello basked in his small relief. “I wouldn’t trust you,” he said, finally.

Matt said nothing.

“Too perfect, too weird,” he elaborated. “You wouldn’t make sense, and I wouldn’t trust you.”

Matt nodded, understanding.

“But you’re a liar,” Mello continued, “so I understand you. I trust you.”

Matt grinned.

Three years later, L died.

 
*

L was justice. This was the number one principle of the Wammy House. L was a concept, not a man. L was a sexless ideal, a perfect power, the faceless form of justice.

L was everything to Mello. L was the kind of idea that you dream about reaching but find difficult to place in terms of reality and what is likely and what is not.

No, Mello was not incredibly confident. Not really.

So when L died, as untimely as a death could be, poor Mello’s world swung out of balance. Near was better. Mello hadn’t had the time to beat him. That’s all it was. It was a matter of time.

So L, the infinitely idolized and ultimate aspiration, became his nemesis in a matter of minutes as Near took the title (because that’s all ‘L’ was, suddenly; a title).

It was all so wrong. What was a boy to do? He ‘left’ to do things his ‘own way’, but Matt knew damn well that he was running away from a world gone insane.

Mello didn’t miss a stride through the six hallways and two staircases between Roger’s office door and his and Matt’s room. He didn’t skip a beat as he stuffed the things that mattered into one of Matt’s spare backpacks (he always had about three at least partially empty ones lying around, because he was random like that, the liar), even as the boy himself sat watching over the top of his laptop from his bed and spotted pillows.

Small bits of plans darted through his mind, circling together, some of them joining up and others just floating about. When he was done packing (this didn’t take very long, as he’d never been incredibly good at owning things, at least not in the literal sense,) he knew where he was going, and what he was going to do with the cash in his back pocket.

Lies were sometimes necessary to be right. And Mello just wasn’t complete, yet. He would be, though. Things were going to change.

And as he turned to face the door, his eyes drifted straight over Matt, and he didn’t have anything to say.

“I’m leaving,” he said, because that was the only truth he could think of.

“L is dead,” Matt was certain.

Mello didn’t offer any confirmation to that, because Matt was fourteen now, and he was damned good at what he did. He considered saying ‘goodbye’, but if you broke that down (good, bye) it was a lie.

“You’ll win,” Matt said.

Mello turned to his friend. “Goodbye,” he said, and left.

Liar, liar.

* 

L was a child, now, and Mello responded. He grew up. Innocent dark sweaters and slacks were exchanged for glossy leather and vinyl. Comfortable sneakers were burnt and loud, heavy boots made their presence. Explosive sex appeal and a fury that blistered your nerves like white noise in black form.

L would go to the government, Mello knew. Children liked playing with big authorities. He rebelled, heading straight to the underground, digging his way to power.

The peace offering, the Hershey’s bar, became everything. There was always chocolate, iconic in its ironic force, reminding him why he was here, what he was doing, and how to lie, biting and cracking, chewing and swallowing.

 
*

Matt left two years after Mello, with a little more cash and all the support Wammy would give (which was a lot, as it turned out). He knew he where he was going; he knew Mello.

But he didn’t know, he discovered. Not really. He must have forgotten, as the years scrolled past his eyes, how extreme that child could be.

Mello returned a man, collapsing into Matt’s chest, half his body burnt and bleeding, and soon the world was spinning decidedly too fast, and apparently Misa Amane’s favourite colour was green, and Kira was too old for the job, and Mikami was a try-hard, and Takada was a slut, and the murder weapon was a freaking notebook, and then Mello asked Matt:

“Why stripes?”

Matt didn’t ask what he meant, because he knew. They were older now; words were less important. “’Cos I like ‘em,” he said.

Mello snorted, cracking into his chocolate “You’re a liar.”

Matt smirked around his cigarette. “Yeah, I am,” he said.

Liar, liar.

Author’s Note: It’s over. Finally. I think I’ll go hug a tree, now.
 

I have to tell yee now, though, that these are all stand-alone fics. They all fit to the cannon, but they likely don’t fit together. That parting scene between Mello and Matt at the orphanage is likely to be written differently quite a few times.