A/N: I guess you don't really have to have watched Prison Break, although it might help. I'm not a massive fan or anything (of PB) but the reason I chose that show isn't only because I needed a prison (OZ would have done fine ;) ) but there were Actual Plot Points that I wanted to use. So, yeah. This is supposed to have a plot. Deal with it!

And there is some vague idea of chapter titles being the soundtrack song for the chapter, but... whatever. Any comments are welcome – even criticism. Cheers for reading (if you do)

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...the boys are coming for you...

I made a mistake.

He had slipped up. He had failed. He had been so thorough, so vigilant, so concentratedon all the ins and outs of the Kira case. He had wrapped his head around every hard-to-believe fact and accepted the unacceptable so that he would not overlook any details simply on the grounds of them being impossible. He had the embraced the supernatural aspects fully and kept track of everything. Shinigami, magic notebooks, rules and numbers, strange messages. Who had been where when and done what with whom. He had watched Light's every move, every reaction and every word. To see if he slipped up. See if he mentioned something that only Kira would know. He had been waiting for it, listening for it. He had focussed so hard on the world of Kira that he had forgotten about the real world. Memorised the laws of the death note and forgotten about the law. And that's how he had failed. That's how the tables had been turned on him and he, L—not Kira—had ended up in prison.

It was the feds. They had been sent by the American government, yes, but they had been working for him.He had asked for them. He had got them killed. He hadn't seen it like that at the time. He had felt a small pinch of guilt, but the matter of the fact was that it was Kira who had killed them, not him. Working for the FBI, they would have known it was dangerous; possible death came with the job description. The head of the FBI himself had never even hinted at placing any blame on L, but it was clear that just because he was willing to stake his life on solving this case, not everyone felt the same.

Months had passed after those unfortunate deaths, and then, something had happened in America. Some power had shifted, some strings had been pulled, and all of a sudden there was talk about criminal negligence. After that, it didn't take long until the details of the confinement and interrogation of Amane Misa and Yagami Light leaked out and greased the wheels of the litigious unknown forces that had suddenly decided that L's methods were inhumane and downright illegal. For a while, he was still allowed to do his job while the internal inquiry was going on, and he had managed to keep it from Light and his father, and the rest of the group. Things still stood as they were for a while, unsteady and fragile like a house of cards, and he'd pushed on. He needed to test the note, needed to make just one more necessary sacrifice, but it seemed like this was as far as the Japanese ex-policemen would go. They objected, and perhaps that's what clinched it. Perhaps someone was talking to someone, telling them 'L is going to far-do something'. It might be paranoia on his behalf, but being paranoid didn't mean they were not out to get you.

And then, the final blow. Watari's death. Watari's murder. It was Kira, there was no doubt in L's mind about that, and a chill had shot through him then, and he had been convinced that he would die too. Today, while the rain was pouring down outside and the world was putting on a normal face. Die at the hands of someone who, at least at times, he had thought of as a friend. He remembered thinking that now, this second, he would feel the pain of his heart (breaking) stopping, and know that he had lost. He caught Light looking at him then, with an unreadable expression. Anxious, like he was waiting for something, but L couldn't determine if what he was waiting for was something he wanted or didn't want.

And then the doors had been flung open and one man in a grey suit and four policemen in riot gear—in riot gear for god's sake, what did they think he was going to do, take a machine gun to them?—came in and started talking and talking, and just like that, it was over. Overnight, it seemed, he had fallen from grace with both the FBI, CIA, Interpol, and all his other contacts. Some of these people had been on his Christmas card list—well, Watari's list really; he was the one who sent Christmas cards... and L had just realised he never would again. Watari was gone. He was completely alone.

There had been a bit of a scene. Yagami Souichiro had been quite upset, and loud. He had tried to argue with the grey-suited man, and when L had tried to tell him not to bother, that there was nothing he could do, he had not managed to make himself heard over everyone talking at the same time. Only Light had been quiet, at first, and then he had gone to his father and tried to calm him down. When they slapped the handcuffs on L and led him out, he went with them quietly. He didn't look back; he didn't want to see their faces. The shock and disappointment. Especially Light's. In case there was no shock on it, or disappointment.

The American government demanded his extradition, and somehow, somehow, they had managed to get a hold of his aliases, and his true identity. His friends in high places dropped the bomb on him, and when something drops from a high place, it makes a big impact. The trial was a blur of disbelief. He had been doing the right thing, trying to stop a mass-murderer, and now they were talking about misappropriation of funds, unacceptable work ethics, etc. etc. The prosecutor was someone he had never heard of. His lawyer forced him to sit "normally" on the hard wooden bench. It didn't feel at all normal. He found that his analytical abilities dropped a lot more than forty percent.

The sentence, when it was handed down, made his lawyer very happy. The man was glowing with a job well done. "Only five years!" he said, like that was a good thing, "With good behaviour you'll be out in three, maybe two!" He grabbed L's hand and pumped it up and down and L let him. Three years or two, it didn't matter. His real name would become public knowledge, and he doubted Kira would take any good behaviour into consideration. And no matter what prison they sent him to, there was a high percentage chance that there would be some criminals there that he had—directly or indirectly—helped put behind bars. It was really only a question of who'd get to him first.

And so, here he was. Fox River, the name of the place. Maximum security; they had a death row and everything. L thought of the executions he had seen on television, the twisting and sizzling and puking from electricity and lethal injections. Some time in the future, perhaps they would just have a death note, locked under glass like the one back at the 'headquarters'. How neat, how efficient. How dangerous in the wrong hands.

They made him wear an orange jump suit, going in. The material was stiff and coarse, abrasive to his skin, the metal of the zip cold and hard. The transfer wardens were constantly shouting at him to stand up straight; he couldn't understand why it mattered to them how he stood. He tried to straighten up to get them to shut up, but it made his back ache, and when they moved on he slouched again. The other prisoners were talking, sometimes at him, but he ignored them. Then they were lined up in a bare concrete room painted grey and green, and there were bars and loud noises and it was quite cold in here. Some people came in, wearing clothes that were neither orange jumpsuits nor guard's uniforms. Other inmates. Cellmates. L closed his eyes and thought of the awkward days he had spent chained to Light. It had been frustrating and annoying and stressful and he would give anything to substitute this captivity for that one. If he could only go back to those days. The bars rattled behind him and shut with a clang of finality that told him that there was no going back. This was his life now. For as long as that lasted.