I love Matsuda. In fact, I love Matsuda so much that this sincerely pained me to write. Let it be known that I do not think of him as a weak, worthless man. I was simply trying to step into the mind of someone who just might have thought that about himself after being told so endless times. And I think that it is very obvious that Matsuda had looked up to Light (to me, it wasn't stupidity that caused him to believe so heartily in Light's innocence), which makes his character all the more heartbreaking to me. Once again, I REALLY, REALLY LOVE MATSUDA.
With that being said, this is a sort of precursor to a chapter fic that I have been dying to write about the post-Kira taskforce. Not sure when I'll crank that out, but it's coming, believe me.
I don't own Death Note. The lyrics are from "Nothing Gets Crossed Out" by Bright Eyes.
antonomy.
[the future's got me worried, such awful thoughts.
my head's a carousel of pictures.
the spinning never stops.
i just want someone to walk in front
and i'll follow the leader.]
Once the bullets have rained down and the funeral procession has cleared out, Matsuda, dressed in a tired black suit and equally tired eyes, remembers that he had liked Light Yagami. He had found him attractive and groomed and polished, with a mind that however intimidating and cold it could have been, had been the perfect reflection of what the outside world saw; a handsome man with endless, endless potential.
Matsuda recalls the days before Yellow Box as he sits alone in his car an hour after the coffin has been laid in the ground. He recalls the sincere admiration that he had felt towards a man (a teenager, for god's sake) that had been everything Matsuda had failed at being more times than he could keep record of.
Brilliant? Hardly the case. He cannot even remember the last time his mother, his father, anyone had told him that he was even remotely notable, minutely worthwhile in...well, anything, really. He is a policeman, yes, but the singular person that had even booted him in after saying that he "had room for improvement, but that there was something there" has been dead for months. Dead. That's how it always seems to happen.
Groomed? Matsuda can hardly keep his shoes on. His pants are always a size too big. His hair is unwashed and overgrown (just like someone else's) as he sits behind the wheel in the cemetery, waiting for...what? He doesn't know. But he waits nevertheless. He waits as Aizawa and Ide speak with grave faces in the rear-view mirror, the two having driven here together. Matsuda had insisted on coming by himself without quite knowing why, and Mogi has his ways of slipping in and out of situations before being noticed.
Light had carried himself with a quiet elegance that had betrayed what Matsuda is now sure of what had been turmoil beneath. Light had never knocked over Ryuzaki's coffee when tripping over something imaginary, or skipped a button on his shirt and therefore threw the entire order off-kilter, or been laughed at and scolded and been the opposite of everything that a man should be. Light had never lost control and shot a man to the ground in a warehouse, his name being cried out, his knees collapsing.
No, Light had been a being that Matsuda, even today, has always wished to emulate. He wants to be effortless. He wants to make people listen. He wants to be something other than a dizzy man in a cemetery with not much to provide the world with.
He wants to be somewhere else.
Someone else.
Matsuda rests his forehead on the steering wheel and closes his sore eyes when the thought comes. But Light was Kira.
This is where it starts digging into him. Kira. Where everything starts unraveling and becoming threadbare like an old sweater. Kira. He wants to be like Light had been, clean and clever and always in the know, but if Light and Kira had been one and the same, then does that mean...? Does that make him...?
They had found Light's body on a stairwell that wore his blood. Matsuda had stared down at that bullet-riddled body and hadn't really said or done much of anything until Aizawa had made the appropriate calls to the appropriate people and Near had given an emotionless "thank you for your work and cooperation that you had no choice but to give" and then something within him had come to and he had darted out of that damn place and he had screamed.
There is a tapping on the car window, which Matsuda reacts to with such a violent start that he bangs his head on the roof of the car. Wincing and cursing, he turns to see Aizawa looking at him on the other side of the glass. The man makes a gesture for Matsuda to unlock the door; he has become so paranoid lately that he locks everything and anything without thinking anymore. Matsuda unlocks and opens the door, turning his eyes away from Aizawa and the world.
What the hell are you doing just sitting here? he imagines the man asking. You're an idiot. Go home and do something with your life instead of-
"Get in the passenger's seat," Aizawa says instead. The words are brittle, but his voice is as soft as Matsuda has ever heard it. "I'll drive you home."
Matsuda doesn't think he's ever wanted to lean on Aizawa so badly in his life, Aizawa, the man that gave him hell for being a fool and a loudmouth idiot, Aizawa, complaining, irate, but alive, Aizawa.
And it is knowing that they are both in this as equals, as men, as humans, that brings Matsuda back to ground as he moves to the passenger's seat and lets Aizawa drive him home.
And the rival for my love also goes to Aizawa. I just love these guys to pieces.
Reviews are greatly appreciated from you, and you, and you.