Their Nightmares
Nightmares – Everyone has their demons.
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People wonder why Ryuuzaki doesn't sleep.
Not a lot of people know him well enough to guess why, but those who do pit it to different things, most of them obvious and yet obviously wrong.
Sugar was a common one – ingesting that much sugar could not possibly allow anyone to have a normal sleep cycle.
Many said chronic insomnia, which was just a sly, politically correct way of saying he was so obsessed with Kira, and the Kira case, that sleeping became irrelevant.
Of course, when Matsuda had stumbled into the conversation, he said "well, he's probably worried about the Kira case, right?"
L shook his head from behind the monitors. No, no it wasn't. It was to escape the dreams. He always worried about being trapped in such fantasies, paranoid of never waking. Facing his fear was out of the question, because as he watched each of his suspects and friends and coworkers sleep, he could tell when they became trapped in their nightmares.
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Aizawa's darkest dreams always seemed contrived and he woke up laughing sheepishly at himself to mask his thundering heart. Kira wouldn't kill his family, of course not. And he wouldn't make Aizawa kill them, either…
Although, he thinks angrily, punching the pillows back in line, it would make sense for Ryuuzaki to ask me something like that. "If you work here your family's at risk. If you wish to stay you'll have to kill them before Kira can."
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Mogi is not afraid at first, though he is ever so slowly turning to stone. This dream becomes a nightmare when no one even notices he's trapped.
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Chief Soichiro Yagami used to have normal dreams, about flying and other trivial things. Only now it seems the case is haunting him, because his nightmares have nothing but gunshots, echoing in solid darkness, and a maniacal, sickeningly familiar laugh.
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Misa is usually too happily oblivious to have nightmares. It is all Ryuuzaki's fault, putting her in that straightjacket. Although the blame would be better placed on the black holes in her memory. That must be what's causing her to fall apart to dust in those dreams, piece by piece.
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In the middle of a busy street, Takada stops and screams until her lungs burn and the echoes reverberate in her skeleton and her face boils red. But the faceless public buried in their newspapers don't even stop to look up.
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She knows that Kira didn't touch Raye, or even really hurt him at all. His death was rather painless, in fact. But that doesn't stop his mutilated corpse from tumbling out of the hall closet every once in a while.
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He always wanted to be the next L. It really is a dream, when Near tosses the mask of Ryuuzaki's face down and says "take it, I quit," and Mello picks it up.
It becomes a nightmare when he puts on the mask and it won't come off, when his fingers rip the nails loose and bloody raw for tearing at the suffocating guilt L's face has brought with it.
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Wammy's house has been emptied. Watari watches it dissolve into a pile of useless counterfeit coins while the children vanish in puffs of fake dollar bills.
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There is something wrong with the room. A pen out of place, a file missing, a painting misaligned. Something is out of its usual spot. Mikami is scared, not because he is so obsessive, but because he's never been in the room before.
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Near stands on the roof of the tallest building and squints. But his eyes are perfect, there's no doubting what he sees. Only the biggest city he's ever seen can't be deserted, can it? No way it could be empty.
But it is.
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He wakes up with a jolt, crying and sweating. Those eyes, burning ethereal red. Yagami Light is Kira! Is his first thought, but he shakes it off. Stop it, it's just a dream.
But when nightmare becomes reality, Matsuda needs a new nightmare. This time, against his will, he's shooting Kira again, and again, and again, and he never stops because that's how the dream works. Every shot breaks his heart because Kira looks up at him with Light's face, shots exploding in spurts of crimson but not stopping this murdering creature, immortal as a God.
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Light is best connected with Kira in dreams.
Are you going to kill Ryuuzaki tonight, then? He asks plaintively, so he won't have to wonder later.
Yes. Is all he's graced with.
Light shuts his eyes tighter than they are and sees a ghost, smiling with black eyes in the rain. His hand lifts a pen to a sopping wet notebook.
But I'm not Kira!
His disobedient hand argues with a dismissive flourish. The ink yells black across the page, a single letter "L." The ghost ahead of him fades into the clouds. The raindrops on the pages begin to resemble blood.
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No, no, Kira is your God, and what need does a God have of nightmares?
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This is why L keeps himself awake. What would he see were he to close his eyes? Kira looming over him with death in his eyes? Would he start out flying and then fall? Start out breathing and then stop? Drown, be chased, unable to move?
Sleep could perhaps offer him sugar-coated dreams of candy, or triumphant ones of facing down Kira. But he could be met with his worst fear. He didn't even know what that was.
Better not take the chance, he decided yet again. Reality is much more predictable.
L was pulled out of his thoughts by the faint, empowering sound of church bells. He left to investigate, not even blinking against the cold, metallic rain.
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Okay: Takada's dream? That was mine last night. I woke up, freaked out, and then spotted my sketchbook with all these spastic little sketches of L and that was enough to spark this idea. It was like something out of a movie, seriously. :)
I'm not sure if I believe the whole split personality Kira-Light thing, but it worked really well for this fic. Oh, and if anyone wants to know what happened when my twisted brain came up with so-and-so's dream, let me know. I love messed up symbolism :3
Matsuda's dream is all thanks to Bialy. I tried to come up with a different one for him, but Matsuda's dreams from Inferiority Complex just would not leave my head. sigh Hopefully she'll forgive me if I force you all to go read Inferiority Complex NOW because it's full of so much awesome Matsuda XD
Review if you want a double helping of strawberries. :)