He hadn't expected L to look so much like Near.

He hadn't expected those same charcoal black eyes or the squat position reminiscent of Near's legs crumpled under him like a broken toy's, or the delicate way that L stacked sugar cubes to be so similar to Near's precarious towers of dice. More than ever he could see the L that Near would become—the L that he was not—but they couldn't choose him based only on similarity.

Thinking that made it worse. If Near were chosen, Mello could have claimed it was for that reason, it was due to favoritism—but he had no such illusions. If Near were chosen, it was because he was better than Mello.

If Near were chosen, Near won.

"This isn't a social visit, old boy," Watari had said to Roger on the day L came to Wammy's, where nothing had changed. The kids were smaller now, but they still crowded at the sidelines everywhere the staff would allow—eyes hooded or rimmed with dark bags or bright and intelligent glued to the windows, traces of sugar or cheese or chocolate in the air to the measured clicking of puzzles or games or clocks—to catch a glimpse of L, not as the strange black-haired boy who never slept but as the great detective. Funny how fame was really no different either way.

Mello was among them, pushed to the front with the other true potentials of his time, but the number one candidate thus far was conspicuously absent. Stupid Near.

Whispers cropped up among the other children as Watari moved and the stooped figure of L, like his own letter turned upside down, loitered awkwardly in the doorway. It was like he didn't know what to do with himself or wasn't even sure if he were welcome here, like that could ever be called into doubt—

"…I see. In that case, please," Roger said, directing them to the office.

A quick tussle over the keyhole, which Mello won, and little had changed. He was now able to compare, as L squatted by Watari and toyed with the sugar cubes, and hate himself for it.

"And what is the likelihood…?" Roger didn't finish that, but everyone who could hear him understood.

Watari looked like he was going to answer, but instead he stopped and looked to L, who continued to build his tower as though he hadn't heard the question.

"Fifty-eight percent."

It was hard to say if the crisp, deep sound of L's voice or the words he was saying shocked Mello more. The fact that L doubted—the fact that L could doubt himself seemed like an idea bordering on heresy. And yet in the end, he was only human, wasn't he?

But if Watari and Roger were surprised at that, they gave no indication. They only exchanged significant glances, as though this one were the last, and turned back to business. "Then I suggest an evaluation of—"

"It's too early for that," L said somewhat testily, probably more agitated at the suggestion that he could be replaced than any premature concerns. "There are concepts many of them haven't grasped. If I die tomorrow, you can't send someone who doesn't understand what they're risking."

We KNOW we're risking our lives, don't be… But a cold finger went down Mello's back anyway, because L's words could make him doubt like nothing else. For the first time, the notion of death seemed real to him—but the permanence still escaped him.

L didn't speak again after that, so the rest of the meeting was Watari and Roger making arrangements for the unthinkable. Mello's eye was always on L, as impassive as Near as they discussed what would happen after L. How could he just sit by and absorb that, wasn't he—?

There!

The faintest tremor disturbed the hunched line of L's shoulders for a fraction of a second. Mello would have missed it if he hadn't been looking for it, and he couldn't be sure that he'd seen it in the first place—or if it was what he knew it was. He's scared, Mello thought, and smirked—not out of ridicule, but because it meant L could feel, like Mello did, and Near couldn't.

Too soon Watari rose and announced that they would be leaving, and L murmured a faint request that Mello couldn't catch. "Of course," Roger said, and the staff redoubled its efforts to restrain its charges.

According to the staff, Watari would be evaluating the conditions of the House and the residents should remain in their rooms, but Mello and select others were smarter than that. Watari wouldn't mind having them about, and would probably encourage it under the circumstances. For Roger to crack down this hard this quickly, L himself had to be making the rounds.

The chocolate bar served a deterrent, as always—a fragment of the crumpled up wrapper was enough to stop the lock's tumbler, and once activity had died down along the hall, Mello cracked the door.

"Where're you going?" Matt had wanted to know back then, before his hair darkened up and his eyes had an orange tint.

"To see L," Mello had said simply, and was gone like a cat.

He wasn't hard to find, standing hunched in the courtyard with back to Mello and his eyes on the bell above the chapel. It was hard not to think something was wrong with him when he slumped like that, but Mello knew better than to assume L was what he appeared.

"You're breaking the rules," L remarked before Mello was within five feet of him, but that dark voice seemed almost light with simple amusement.

"I do that."

A faint chuckle. "So do I."

It was like a spell that struck Mello dumb. He wasn't sure why he'd come out here in the first place. It seemed like he'd been about to say something, but that he had something in common with L—that L had confirmed this himself—and the whole fact that this guy was really L in the first place—made everything somehow surreal and magnified.

A hollow sigh stirred him and locked his eyes on L again as the detective shifted but didn't turn around, and Mello was suddenly aware of the bells that time had made him deaf to.

"My best memories are here."

By the time Mello could muster the certainty to ask—of all the cases he'd solved, all the places he'd been, all the people he'd met, really, Wammy's?—L was already moving towards the figure of Watari at the door to the main building, and it felt like Mello was about to lose him forever. He dashed up alongside, matching two steps to L's one. "You'll write to us, right? You'll let us know what's going on with Kira."

"You'll hear from me."

"You'll make sure we're ready," Mello added as they passed on into the building. As confident as he was, on some level he would never admit he didn't feel ready—didn't feel like he would ever be ready, but maybe it was supposed to be that way.

L stopped and met his gaze. "You'll be ready," he said to Mello—charcoal black eyes locked on him, he was speaking to Mello, and it was perfect—

Except that Near appeared at the top of the stairs just then like a ghostly prince. He didn't say anything, but he didn't have to. L caught sight of him anyway, tearing his eyes from Mello to fix them on Near instead, and something seemed to pass between the two of them that Mello would never be a part of.

"L," Watari said.

Before Mello realized what was happening, a pale, spidery hand was on his shoulder and L's lips were practically at his ear. "Keep an eye on that one for me."

What?! "But—!"

"It's bigger than that."

Then L was gone, and Mello couldn't believe it.

Near had stolen the moment. His moment. As it turned out, the only one he ever had.

He didn't keep an eye on Near when he could keep a fist on him, not that Mello gave in to violence unless it suited him. But it was hard when that puzzle came from L—and harder when the message came, the one they had all been waiting for without realizing it, and Near's unfeeling hands froze over the puzzle while Mello's tightened around Roger's collar. His first thought was that he wasn't ready—that L had lied—but he was ready.

Just not to be L.

L had as good as chosen Near. And so Mello would have to be better, again, whether Near eventually wrenched the title from Kira or not.

Except, hunched in the armchair with Lidner's voice in his ear, Mello came to the realization that it was never going to happen. If he sat by and did nothing, Near would mess up, he could already see it. Near was too soft and hadn't tested it, he would fall right into Kira's hands and Near would lose…but…

It's bigger than that.

But Mello could stop it, and if he didn't, everything L had done—everything Mello, Near, anyone had done…

L couldn't have known. He couldn't have known something like this would happen…could he? Why else would he have said something like that? But he'd died before any of this…

He was L. It's not impossible.

Mello flashed the wall a grimace of a smile. "I guess I'll have to do it," he murmured to Lidner, and clicked the phone shut.

Dark-haired, orange-tinted Matt adjusted his cigarette. "Going somewhere?"

Mello nodded. "To see L."

A/N: So I sat down one night and decided to work on something current. And failed. And wrote this instead. So I know I seem really scattered lately, but it's 'cause I get bored of one thing if I work on it for long enough (even Zenith) so I'm still trying to get my stuff together on that.

Anyway. This is just a little majig thing to expand on the character of Mello just a bit and theorize about what might have been without breaking from canon, because I've basically ignored Mello and Near both in favor of L ninety percent of the time (or should I say five percent). Much thanks and yay to my BFF, ErsatzLove, for looking this one over and making sure I wasn't completely butchering anyone.