Title: whispers hello
Series: Kingdom Hearts/Death Note
Pairing/Characters: Matt/Roxas
Rating: PG-13
Total length: 627 words
Warnings: Zombie apocalypse. Character death.
Summary: Wherein people have died, people have lived, and survivors take comfort where they can find it.
Author's Note: For
darthvair_65 . So, to cure writer's block, I did
a meme. As it turns out, this meme gave birth to quite a few crossovers.
They're all broken on the inside. All the survivors- every single one of them. Most of them have lost everything, everyone. A lucky few have lost most things, but managed to cling to at least one person from their previous life.
Matt, unfortunately, falls into the former category. Losing Near and L and Roger and Watari wasn't really difficult. He loved them, sure, and watching Near's cold eyes in those last few seconds before he put the gun to his head- those moments haunted Matt, day in, day out. If Near had survived- if there hadn't been too many, if his brain weren't whirring with the calculations and statistics of getting out alive, if Matt had been closer- he knows that Near would have made a hell of a partner.
But what he'd really been counting on was Mello. Mello, who was good with a gun and barbed wire and explosives- Mello of the crazy smile and scary amounts of intelligence. He'd been counting to fall into that second category- cling close to Mello and live as long as they could. He'd even had hopes of getting Mello to a lab- using that genius brain of his to make a cure.
But a couple miles north of Surrey, there'd been an incident with teeth and rotting flesh and Matt frantically pressing Mello's intestines back into his belly with one hand and firing off wild rounds with the other. There'd been Mello, white as a sheet, eyes wild, fingers clenched so tight to his rosary that Matt could hear the bones of his hand creaking.
He'd looked at Matt, said "please," and turned before Matt could realize what he meant.
Turning the gun to press against Mel's forehead was the hardest thing he'd ever done. Harder than moving his hands away and watching the intestines slip out onto the dirt, harder than pressing him back so he didn't get a chance to bite, harder than looking into empty eyes and snarling teeth and realizing that his best friend (more, more, so much more) was gone.
Roxas- he thinks that Roxas falls into the former category too, because his lips go white whenever Matt mentions Mello, fingers clenching around his shotgun. He trembles, a little, and says one thing- "His name was Axel, and I couldn't save him either."
So Matt knows to stay away from the topic of 'before' with Roxas, just like how Roxas knows to never buy lindt chocolate or let his hair grow out.
It's harder, he thinks, because of the similarities. Roxas is in no way Mello- his hair's too curly, eyes too blue- and he's not angry enough to just be a clone of Mello. Matt wouldn't let himself think that. And Matt knows about Axel, because of the way that Roxas flinches sometimes when Matt's hair is clean, wiped free of grime and dirt to really show how red it is- how Roxas looks queasy if he talks about video games too often.
It's not that they're replacing the memories with each other, but it's hard to ignore when his first thought on seeing Roxas crouching on the roof of the bumper cars, shotgun in hand was Mello.
It doesn't stop them from curling close to each other in whatever apartment of the week they're crashing in. Doesn't stop them from sneaking kisses and more whenever they've got some zombie free time. Doesn't stop them from laying out in damp grass and watching the stars pass overhead, arms wrapped around each other.
They're broken and torn, grief weighing heavily on their heart, but after a fashion, it's easy to fall in love with Roxas. And apparently, if Roxas' soft smiles are any indication, it's easy for him to fall in love back.