And as promised, my taskforce fic.

Guys, I'm not gonna lie. This has completely absorbed me already. I've been planning to write this for…goodness, it's been a good couple of weeks before I was able to sit down and finally start it. And, honestly, it has completely absorbed me.

I sincerely hope that everyone gets something out of this fic. I want it to be unlike anything I've written before. You'll see onesided IdexMatsuda, MatsudaxSayu, AizawaxEriko (they are married), and perhaps some hints at MogixHal. All of these are entitled to either fail or succeed.

In regards to the title, it's inspired from a song called "Glass to the Arson" by Anberlin, which I heard in my favourite AMV ever. If you want to watch it, search for "We Are the Arsons Tribute to the Taskforce" by KerpymonKaizerin. She is positively phenomenal at making AMVs, and I've connected that song to the taskforce ever since.

I don't own Death Note. Lyrics are Anberlin.

one

[tonight i'll just let go,

lost in your lies,

transparent cries.]

Aizawa knows.

Light Yagami is sprawled out dead in this rusted building, just beyond this towering wall; he knows this the second he stops within eight feet of the doorway.

Matsuda is still running, legs flying, wheezing, and Aizawa knows something else: he's not letting this man go into that building. In fact, he's not letting him take one more step forward. Matsuda is just about to run past him when Aizawa catches him by the back of his suit jacket, nearly causing the man to crash to the ground but keeping him in place nonetheless. Matsuda's eyes are wild when he jerks his head up, demanding an answer that Aizawa feels no obligation to give.

"What are you doing?" Matsuda hollers. He makes a sad attempt at releasing himself from Aizawa's grip, but Aizawa is holding his shoulder too firmly and Matsuda is far too spent to put forth enough effort. Physically, emotionally spent.

"You're not going in there."

"What are you talking about?" Matsuda shouts. "You saw what I did back there. You saw everything, so why shouldn't I go-"

Ide barrels up to the two just in time to steady Matsuda's fist that is forming by his side. He is slightly bent over from the long run, but he is here and he is holding Matsuda back enough for Aizawa to meet his eye and give him a small nod. Ide agrees with him, for he keeps an unyielding hold on the quaking officer in his hands and returns the nod gravely. "You go," he says to Aizawa. "I'll make sure he stays here-"

"I'm not staying here!" Matsuda makes another sad try at freeing himself. "I'm going in there and I'm going to see him, I shot him, didn't you see-?"

But Aizawa knows, and no one is going to tell him any different. He will walk with care into this building with its gripping energy that screams out that this is the place, this is where Kira lies dead. And Matsuda will stand back with Ide, cursing, struggling, choking on his own air, and one day know that it was the most that they could do for him at the time.

No one is speaking at Yellow Box. Normally, this would hardly be notable for a minimalist like Mogi, but no one is leaving, either. In fact, no one has moved in five minutes, perhaps more, and Mogi is starting to feel anxious. Are they waiting for something? For Light to waltz back inside and bow his bloodied head and let them take him away?

It's a stupid idea and Mogi knows it. Wherever he is, Light is down by now, without a doubt. He saw his wounds, he saw the way the boy staggered out the gap in the door. Everyone did.

There is a voice outside the doorway now, and Mogi is familiar enough with the SPK enough to recognize it as Gevanni. He is on his cell phone arranging matters for the removal of Teru Mikami's body, which has been unceremoniously covered with Rester's coat. Everyone in the warehouse has made a point out of averting their eyes from the man that had been almost as disillusioned as his makeshift god. Almost.

The sound of Gevanni's voice seems to be the motivation that everyone else needs to breathe, to move; Rester slowly paces the room, eyes on the high fan on the wall, Lidner clears her throat and brushes her hair out of her eyes, and just as Mogi is about to better conceal Mikami's half-exposed, anguished face, Near speaks.

"You surprise me, Mr. Mogi."

Mogi pauses, coat in hand, and says nothing. It's his job to say nothing. It's in his comfort zone to say nothing.

Near picks up the small finger puppet representing a burly, grave-faced Mogi. The boy regards it for a moment before setting it down, away from the puppets that Mogi assumes represent the taskforce. Something in Mogi's brow knits at the sight.

"I expected you to go against my words given to Mr. Aizawa and run after Light Yagami as well," Near says thoughtfully. He looks up at Mogi, but the officer keeps his eyes on the finger puppets that lay scattered around Near's feet. "And yet you stayed here with the SPK and I. Why is that?"

Mogi doesn't really have an answer to that. Either that, or he is too tired to think of one. He's been tired ever since that beginning stages of this case, back when more people were alive and Light had just been a suspect on honor roll and on surveillance cameras. Instead of dragging out some half-assed answer that would ultimately be useless in the end, Mogi simply shakes his head and finishes laying his coat over Mikami. There, that's better.

"Fair enough," Near says.

Mogi watches as the boy, his white head tilted and his eyes narrowed, tips over the Kira finger puppet and flicks it with his fingertips, sending it skittering along the concrete floor. It comes to a stop and rests on its back, its black-rimmed bandit eyes aimed up at a dead heaven.

Ide has managed to get Matsuda to sit down with him on a dilapidated bench, only because Matsuda has managed to twist his ankle after pacing for five minutes straight. He had tripped on something only visible to himself, for Ide hadn't seen anything possible of stumbling over, and his tired ankle had turned a funny angle and he was forced to sit down with a huff. Either way, Ide feels a watered down triumph at getting the man to stop, however little he had had to do with it, as he looks at him out the corner of his eye.

"Hey."

Matsuda's head is in his hands, and he turns a fraction to look at Ide. "Sorry," he says, a flat line. He looks back down at the ground, clutching his hair.

"You didn't even know what I was going to say, Matsuda."

Matsuda is quiet. His knuckles turn white from pressing his fingertips into his scalp, and his eyes are wide on the ground.

Ide looks away; either by choice or by instinct, he is unsure. "Aizawa…Aizawa has his reasons, alright?" he says carefully. He's never been good at consoling, and consoling Matsuda is a special case. It's not like talking Aizawa off the ledge of a bad temper, who usually just needs a few minutes of fuming and a drink to follow. Mogi is a brick wall, firm and tall and never letting on about anything that goes on in his head, and Ide has a feeling that he would do just fine consoling himself and prefer it that way.

But Matsuda is different. He needs something else, something more personal and more tightly-woven than a drink or a pep-talk in the mirror. Matsuda needs someone that knows what they're talking about, someone that has made a lot of good decisions in life and is able to reflect that onto others. Ide is well aware that he is not that person. Perhaps the chief had been, and that was why Matsuda had so adamantly admired him, but Hideki Ide? Not even close. He's lackluster. He's crooked. He's left-handed and doesn't know what else to say at a time like this.

Then again, Ide is the only one here, the only choice that Matsuda has, and he might as well work with what he's got.

"He has his reasons," Ide repeats, nodding to himself. "That's just how Aizawa is. And something in his head told him that he didn't want you going in there."

Not too bad. Could have been better, but not too bad.

But Matsuda doesn't seem to be listening. He justs sit on the bench, clutching his hair and squeezing his eyes shut and already feeling too far away for Ide to get up and walk away from. Only fifteen minutes have passed since they got here, after Light had fled the scene of his exposure like something fallen and desperate, perhaps a dying butterfly, or the very end of a violent rainstorm.

And already, Matsuda feels like he's stuck in somewhere else. Somewhere riotous and callous and cold. Somewhere bragging and proud and defeated. Somewhere like Yellow Box.

Light Yagami's body is draped over the stairs so elegantly that it is nearly criminal. At first, all Aizawa can do is scratch the stubble on his face and release a weighty sigh, and it takes him a good two minutes before he can approach it. The boy is bullet-mangled and washed over in early evening sun, and something about the scene strikes Aizawa as a paradox of sorts. Even in death, stretched out along a dirty stairwell and having bled out on the cement, there is golden-grey sunlight coming from the doorway, from the windows, from every crack and corner it can weed through. And it completely drinks this body and this boy up.

"I don't know how you ran this far, Light," Aizawa mutters without thinking. He grimaces to himself and wipes his hand over his face. He needs a drink. He needs rest. "Jesus…"

Stricken, he takes another moment to study Light's face, the closed eyes, the blood on his jaw, before he turns away slowly and takes out his cell phone. He is feeling the beginning stages of a headache creeping up his neck with spindly fingers. It will soon grip his brain and he really will need that drink after all.

Mogi answers on the first ring. "Aizawa."

"Mogi, put Near on the phone."

There is a pause. "You found him," Mogi says without prompting.

Aizawa looks down at his shoes, pinches the bridge of his nose. Advil, a drink, sleep. Rinse and repeat. "Yes," he affirms.

Neither end speaks. Aizawa turns back to Light's body, as if it had found its chance to escape the building and is on the run again. It wouldn't be the first time Light had jipped them. But he's still there, lying on his back, arms out by his sides and palms upturned, looking so very much like -

"Alright," Mogi says, breaking the thought just in time. Aizawa wants to sit down. He wants to bury this case and cover it with soil and forget about it, but Near's wraithlike voice fills his ears and all thoughts of forgetting about anything fly out the window. He is asking for his whereabouts, all calm words and lack of inflection, and Aizawa tells him only because he wants Light's body out of this building just as much as Near does. He is just about to hang up when Near speaks again.

"Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Aizawa."

He pinches the bridge of his nose harder. As if I had a choice but to cooperate, I could have been killed either way.

Before the line clicks, Near, with an air that had belonged to another droning detective years ago, finishes with, "This case is now closed."

Aizawa purses his lips and watches the golden-grey light dissipate and fill back up. He can't help but have his doubts.

Light's body is carried out by a team of men that have no idea who he is. Ide feels that it's a waste of time, the task force could have handled it, but one look at Matsuda's face when the van arrives tells him otherwise.

Matsuda is staring at the doorway of the building where the men are beginning to come back out, and Ide is quick to act. He pulls him gently by the shoulder, coaxing him away from the scene, but Matsuda is unmoving. Ide tries again, this time with words. "Matsuda, come on, let them do their job-"

"And let me do mine," Matsuda retorts, clenching his fists by his sides. His gaze is still pinned on the doorway. Light's body will come into view any moment, and the thought of Matsuda seeing it, seeing the man he shot, forces Ide to act again. He takes him by both shoulders and tries to lead him away, but Matsuda jerks out of his grasp and whips around to face him, eyes alight with an expression that doesn't belong to him. "Ide!" he shouts, voice cracking. "I just got the same thing from Aizawa before he went in there, and now I'm getting it from you?"

From over Matsuda's shoulder, Ide sees that Light's body is in full view now, in the arms of men that are clueless to the fact that they are carrying Kira. Stall him. Keep his back to it. Keep yelling, Matsuda. Keep yelling at-

But Matsuda turns back around, as if a siren has called out to him, and he sees Light's defeated, frowning body in the arms of three strangers. Ide freezes in the middle of trying to turn him back around, arm outstretched to him.

Shit.

They both watch with opposite thoughts and expressions as Light is laid out in the car, his arms tucked by his sides, dressed in a suit and soil and blood and a sickly pale sheen to his face. Ide isn't entirely sure of what to think, what to say or do, to walk towards Aizawa standing at the entrance with crossed arms, to stand back with Matsuda, to run away and say "to hell with it, I'm done", to wear a passive face and block it all out.

Instead, he'll rub his temples with his fingertips and sit back down on the bench, sorely preparing for the night ahead of them.

As Aizawa is walking towards the bench, Matsuda thinks he needs to close his eyes.

Matsuda thinks that that body wasn't Light's.

Matsuda thinks this whole ordeal wasn't Light's.

Matsuda thinks he's going to be sick.

And Matsuda thinks he's right. He bounds up off the bench before Aizawa can reach him and promptly vomits into the nearest trash bin until he is heaving for air, quivering, half-sobbing and half-something. Christ, he needs water. The taste in his mouth is vile and his eyes are stinging and that couldn't have been Light.

There is a hand on his shoulder and a voice by his side, both belonging to Ide. "Breathe," he says quietly. "In through your nose, out through your mouth. You'll just get sick again if you don't."

Through his peripheal vision, Matsuda sees Aizawa off to the side, watching the scene before him with something dark in his eyes. Suddenly infuriated at the sight of him, Matsuda whirls around and begins marching towards the man, still heaving for breath, still on the verge of throwing up again. He's just about to send his fist sailing into Aizawa's jaw before Ide stops him, gripping his fist from behind him. Aizawa stands completely still, looking at Matsuda with something like sadness in his eyes. Pity. Matsuda doesn't want pity, he wants to knock his fucking teeth out, but even as he flails and tries at it again, Ide is behind him and catching each fist he throws. His hands are suddenly pinned behind his back, rendering him motionless, and all Matsuda can do is squirm, curse, heave for breath, like a child having a temper tantrum. Which is exactly what he is, exactly what he's always been. He's never been collected or unphased or even indifferent to anything, and yet Aizawa can stand before him and not even feel the need to move out of the way-

"He needs to eat something," Aizawa tells Ide gravely. "And we're not risking leaving him by himself for the night."

God, he's talking as if he's his mentor, for heaven's sake! A life coach instead of a colleague. A fresh wave of anger hits Matsuda hard in the chest, but he is too tired to act upon it. He stands slumped over, staring dazedly ahead with his hands still behind his back courtesy of Ide. "I'm fine," he presses, sounding about ten years old. He cringes.

"Risking?" Ide asks sharply.

"Ide-" Aizawa stops himself. He has raised his voice in record time and takes a breath. "Ide, you understand what I'm saying. God knows what he might do if he…"

His voice trails off and Matsuda briefly wonders why the man suddenly gives a damn what stupid thing he might do in his spare time. Aizawa never seemed to care too much in the beginning of this case, and now it's his right to treat Matsuda like he's broken, telling him he needs to eat something like his mother would, talking as if Matsuda isn't there to hear him. Another wave of anger. But so tired…

"You understand what I'm saying," Aizawa repeats, keeping his voice low to Ide. As if he just knows that Matsuda can't hear him when he is only two feet away. Hell, Ide is farther away from Aizawa than Matsuda is. Another wave.

"I'll see him home," Ide says from behind.

"Good."

Like he's a fucking child. It never changes.

Mogi goes straight home after Yellow Box, where a message on his answering machine is waiting for him. For a fleeting second, he considers ignoring it, shrugging it off until he gets some sleep, but he feels obligated to attend to it after so long of attending to everything else that calls upon him. He presses the message button and listens.

It's Aizawa.

"Mogi, hey. I'm…not entirely sure if you would be up to this, but…Ide and I are meeting at Matsuda's apartment at seven tonight. If you've seen him since we went to look for Light, you already know what I'm talking about. The last thing we want is for him to…anyway, we're all tired, so I get it if you won't be there, but…well, you know what I'm saying here. It's Matsuda. So, if you're willing to be there, try to bring something for the guy to eat, I doubt he's put much thought into groceries lately. Thanks."

Mogi stares at the answering machine, mulling the message over in his head before he sighs and rolls up his sleeves to his elbows. Someone has called upon him again, and he's obligated to attend to it. That's the way his mind functions. That's the way Mogi has climbed rung to rung in his career, in his life. Ryuzaki had said it himself once: "Mogi has always worked very efficiently."

And it is Matsuda. Mogi knows all too well what Aizawa is implying, understands the gravity of what's to come, especially for the man that had more or less shot Kira to the ground.

Besides, Mogi has some bread and rice to spare. He packs some into a plastic bag and sleeps until six, sleeps for what feels like the first time since this neverending puzzle began.

I just realized that this is the first time I've written from Mogi and Ide's point of view. That's…rather exciting.

Feedback, with this fic in particular, is greatly appreciated.