Author's Note: I do not and never will own Death Note. Very AU. This was intended to be a one-shot, but my brain has decided otherwise. It won't be very long though. Warning for suicidal ideation.
"I am Kira," Light says, and the handcuffs click over his wrists.
He is strip-searched (he expected that), and nobody speaks to him (he expected that, also). Misa looks at him with wet, wounded eyes but doesn't say a word (that, he didn't expect).
L says nothing.
The police aren't gentle as he is shoved into a cell, wearing only what is provided for him. Nobody wants to take the chance that he has a scrap of the Death Note hidden on his person. He can't blame them. He feels raw, like his insides have been scooped out and left with nothing to replace them. His cell is tiny. A narrow cot along the wall with one thin blanket and pillow, and a toilet.
L sits crouched outside his cell on a folding chair. He says nothing.
Shame burns in his stomach, lies curdled along his tongue. When he'd lost his memories, he'd thought Kira a monster. Kira's plans were short-sighted, his thoughts overly grandiose. A murderer with trumped-up allusions to godhood. Doesn't it fit that he is the monster after all?
Ryuk is surprised that he has given himself up. He is surprised, too. It wasn't in his plans, but none of this had been. He didn't expect what it would be like to work with Ryuzaki, to be handcuffed to the world's greatest detective day in and day out, what it would feel like to have those maddening blank spots in his memory. Empty holes like tooth sockets, sore and resistant to probing with a mental tongue.
When he finds out what they were hiding, he screams and his shriek is his undoing.
They give him a tray through the bars, but he only picks at it. He isn't hungry. He isn't allowed visitors, but he doesn't want them anyway. There is nothing he could say, beyond what he already has.
L sits in on the interrogation, too, still crouched, his thumb tapping at his bottom lip. Light repeats everything ad nauseum. Yes, I'm Kira. I wrote in the Death Note. Yes, this is what I did, who I murdered... He still remembers every single name he'd written down, and it is a list that scoured his soul.
He doesn't justify it. He's already gone over why his ideals were impossible, why they could have never worked the way he wanted them to. He has no desire to explore the depths of his hubris once more.
Every morning, he wakes up and sees L perched outside his cell, leaning against the bars. The smudges beneath Ryuzaki's eyes grow darker, the bones in the man's slender body more pronounced. If he eats or sleeps, Light doesn't see it.
After a week, he is taken away, handcuffed again, with special gloves placed over top of them. They immobilize his fingers completely, but he can't bring himself to care. He doesn't recognize where they are. It's not the skyscraper.
This cell is more comfortable, looking more like a hotel room than anything else, but Light knows what a prison is, even without bars on the windows.
"Hello, Kira," L says, when he is finally situated, and he prefers L's silence to this. The detective's affect is so flat, he appears robotic. "You have been brought to this place for safekeeping. Kira supporters found out where you were being held before and were planning to storm the prison."
"I'm sorry," Light whispers, but it provokes no reaction.
"There are cameras in here, as I am sure you have already noted, Kira," L continues. "I will take the gloves off, but the handcuffs will remain. Please do not try to escape. You will be tranquilized instead."
"I won't try to escape," Light promises, but even he can hear how empty his words sound. Why should L believe anything he says? He's a murderer.
The handcuffs chafe, but he refuses to let it show. L watches him a few minutes more, dark eyes like black holes, the circles under them more pronounced than ever. When he leaves, Light feels abandoned.
He cries himself to sleep that night. Silently. There are tear tracks down his face, and he knows that the cameras have picked it up, that someone is probably watching (and laughing? to see Kira brought so low?) but he can't stop himself.
They fall into a routine. L brings him his meals, three times a day. He is allowed access to books, although they are mainly fiction and can't hold his attention. He also has access to a television, but news channels are blocked for him. He leaves it on meaningless soap operas and children's cartoons, comforting only for the noise in the background.
Occasionally, someone will come in and ask him more questions. He answers to the best of his ability. He has no reason to lie anymore. They already know the worst of him (does he?), and there is no need to hide.
L still looks exhausted and after the first day, says nothing, no matter how Light tries to provoke him. He doesn't know why he can't stop goading the man. It's pointless and petty. But he can't stop.
"I know what you are doing, Kira," L finally says quietly one day, and Light freezes, his cheeks suffused with blood and his heart thumping unsteadily in his ears. "It will not work. You mean nothing to me. You are a murderer."
It isn't until the day after that Light starts pondering suicide.