#really astronaut questions might be more applicable to this post HAHSKL

[applestorms]

the demons got to me and i’m thinking about mello again.

god i so desperately wish we could’ve seen him interact with L in canon. near too, but mello in particular— i’ve already written my mello & misa parallels post so i won’t reiterate all that here but, fuck. i think their similarities would’ve been so obvious if we had actually seen mello’s hero worship of L in practice, like more than just his freak out at roger upon hearing about his death.

do you think he would’ve been loud, in his face about it? i don’t think so. i can’t help thinking back to near’s explanation of why L picked the two of them out to be his successors— the two quiet kids at the back of the room, glowering and watching while everyone else asked their questions. the obvious implication is that L picked them out because they seemed to idolize him, to respect him the least. near at least seems to have managed to stick with that mindset for most of canon… but when did mello’s view start changing? was he just better at hiding it? did his feelings ever become more, less mixed? did he worship L like a cold, distant god— or grow to respect the minor points of humanity that seeped out from the corners?

speaking of: how the FUCK did that conversation about the LABB murder case go? how much of that story was actually, directly told to mello, and how much was his own fantasy, filling in the blanks? he clearly projected onto BB. did he join the mafia with that knowledge in mind, that the desperate, inferiority complex-riddled serial killer was the archetype he fit into better than the world famous detective? did he care about justice, any kind of moral standard— did he bloody his hands or find ways to work around it?

mello knew was never going to be L’s successor, not if he played the game according to its established rules. did L ever imply such things to his face? actually, what the hell did L think of near? was he aware of the burden he put on those fucking kids, did he ever care for even a second? did he mistakenly assume his own immortality, even in the face of a supernatural murder?

(clawing desperately at the walls of my enclosure. L getting annoyed at his pet orphanage of super-geniuses for distracting him from his evil boyfriend is one of my favorite fic tropes of all time, if you gimme recs for that i’ll kiss you)

i wonder if mello ever saw the parts of L in near that everyone else seems to unable to see past. maybe he did, but even so— i think he, of all people, was most aware of all the ways in which near was himself. how easily he fit the role but all the ways in which he broke out of it as well, the similarities in their intelligence & methods of thinking but the minor details that meant near could win where L never could. where mello himself never could. he probably knew how that guy functioned better than anyone, maybe even better than near himself, though i doubt he’d ever do much with that knowledge. it’s one of the few places where i see mello & near switching in terms of passivity— mello knowing Everything about near but doing very little about it, paralyzed by his own self-doubt, while near comparatively struggles to claw as much Mello Knowledge as he can, poking and prodding and pushing him in every direction, all while getting continually blind-sighted as he explodes in random ways he can barely fathom.

i like to think that, in contrast with near’s extreme codependence, mello is actually quite self-sufficient. weirdly, he seems to me like the DN character to be the most likely to actually go to therapy at some point. i think he’s a lot more self aware than he lets on, if only because his inferiority complex drives so much of his self hatred, pushing him to always be better, stronger, more independent. i like to imagine that his apartment or room or wherever the fuck he lives is actually quite clean, that he pushes himself to learn how to cook, how to take care of himself. L never sleeps and near probably sleeps too much but mello needs a consistent, solid 7-8 hours a night or he starts getting cranky— the kind of person who functions better in the sunlight, to take from a fic i read recently.

i wonder how much of his life he remembers from before the orphanage. he seems like he might have emotional ties there, but something he’d never or only very rarely speak about— glimpses of a past life that keeps him up at night on occasion, where near is blessed with a complete lack of any earlier memories. mello just seems more inclined towards sentimentality like that, extreme in all his emotions, particularly when they’re utilized for the purpose of self-destruction. he wears a rosary, has a cross on his gun, chooses to die in a dilapidated church. good lord, he chooses to die in a church.

did he grieve matt? he apologizes, yes. but did he already know he was to join him so soon?

i desperately wish to see a version of mello who had the time to commit to his name and chill the fuck out for a while. get some meds, separate himself from the burdens of L, of the rivalry, and allow himself the chance to relax and breathe and properly heal. part of the reason why his death in particular hits me so hard is the fact that it all seems so possible with him, that he has the most potential to genuinely get over this shit— to not just stew in the corners of the earth and let time wash over him (like a certain someone), but actually, literally get his fucking life back.

he’s explosive, yes, he’s neurotic and emotional and lashes out at everyone and anyone he pleases— but in that same way, he’s honest. mello and near do not bullshit themselves in the ways that L and light do so consistently, they don’t bother lying to themselves or putting on airs about the kinds of people they are or the kinds of things they want. they know their place in the world, the expectations on their shoulders.

everybody likes thinking about “L wins” and “KIRA wins” scenarios, but you know what i really want to consider? what the fuck would mello winning look like? i mean, he’s a character whose primarily fucking trait is the fact that he loses, that he’s always second place. i almost feel like mello winning could’ve been one of the best case scenarios— because for mello to truly win, to not just overpower near and tell him to suck it (a situation which would not make mello legitimately happy, just put him in the same situation as light killing L), he’d have to get over the biggest hurdle of his own bullshit and legitimately grow as a person.

i yearn to see a near that got the chance to grow up with his other half, and a mello who got the chance to live for himself again. they deserve that: quiet afternoons to bitch at each other and argue over whatever book they decided to read that week, near whining about having to do chores and mello yelling at him to clean up his fucking legos, matt shaking his head in the corner.

get those kids a fucking happy ending.