Author's Note: Took me longer to update than I thought. Yay. I apologize for the typos in the other chapter.

Thank you shinydragonmist for reading and reviewing, (and thanks to any eventual readers) and sorry for the wait. I was only able to do this today.

Disclaimer: Same as ever. Don't own Death Note.

January 28th, 2015

It was chilly when he stepped outside. The air threatened to rain, and each breath left a thick cloud of smoke in front of his eyes. As he tried to get his scarf properly snuggled around his neck and chin, Matsuda let out a sigh that turned him into a makeshift dragon for a little boy passing by to laugh at. Matsuda's lips had to curl into the smallest of smiles in face of the child's enthusiasm, but after that he felt the small happiness drain away again.

He looked up to the sky as he searched his pockets for his cellphone. Not today, he couldn't do this today. He felt bad for calling on the very day but he had to do it; he couldn't face his former taskforce collegues.

It took some seconds for Aizawa to pick up the phone.

"Matsuda? Why are you calling to this line?"

"Hey, Aizawa," After five years, it still felt strange to adress Aizawa simply by his name when he was the Chief. They had all come from such long back it was slightly awkward to think they had lived through so much with their boss. And Aizawa was Aizawa all the same. "I'm sorry for asking this just now... but can I have the day off?"

There was a pause that left Matsuda embarrassed and he tried to elaborate: "I, uh, I'm sorry but I feel..."

"You can have the day," Aizawa interrupted. Matsuda nodded for his understanding, even though he knew Aizawa couldn't see him. "But you know you're not going through this alone. You don't need to go through this alone."

"Thank you, Aizawa," but it's different for you guys. Mogi once told him he remembered that day frequently, even admitted the sound of screams still branded his mind and would sometimes return for no apparent reason. But it was different.

Thank you Aizawa, for your understanding. Thank you Mogi, for sharing your pain to lessen mine. Ide too, for listening to me. But you weren't the ones who pulled the trigger.

He faced the cold air on the way to his car and there was a sense of relief and comfort to be engolfed in a lukewarm shell. Still, it didn't change his resolve. For five years, he had avoided facing the truth of his actions; he tried to find different explanations for that outcome, blaming Near on the way too - it seemed easier. Being L or not, Matsuda couldn't help his suspitions about the white haired boy all the same. But there was one undeniable truth that he couldn't run away from, no matter how much he tried to look the other way and smile like he used to before.

He killed Light. When the Shinigami wrote the name down, Light was already dying either way, and Matsuda was the one responsable.

There was no lukewarm shell that could keep that cold out. Matsuda almost sighed again, but it was enough. He started the engine with a firm twist of the carkey and focused on his resolve alone. I have to do this. He then drove his way to a place he had avoided for five years.

Matsuda arrived at his destination with what seemed an unreal ease, and found himself looking at the field in front of him without being able to have clear thoughts in his mind. He hadn't been in a cemetery since the Chief's funeral, and Ryuzaki's secret funeral before that. That had been... a decade ago? He didn't miss it the slightest.

So much changed. So much changed with Ryuzaki's death, and so much changed after the Chief's death.

The cemetery was well taken care of, each memorial stone clearly looked after and fresh flowers here and there, like casually dropped splashes of color in a monochromatic background. But with the heavy grey cloak over the sky, everything looked drained out and suspended in uneasiness. It left a physical discomfort and no matter how much he tried to keep his coat and scarf away from the wind's hands, the cold remained the same.

He knew where the Chief was, so he knew what direction to take. He kept following the paths surrounded by memorials without looking much past his own feet, focusing on keeping them moving one after the other instead of distracting himself and losing the will to move foward. Because of that, he wasn't completely aware of his surroundings, otherwise he could have stopped far enough from his destination to be unoticed, with the feeling of frozen surprise holding him in place. Instead, when he looked up he felt that surprise strike him like a punch to the gut and he was too close to run away.

I should have known. I'm so stupid!

There were two familiar women kneeling in front of a family memorial stone. They seemed surprised for seeing him, but Yagami Sachiko's feint smile was welcoming.

"Oh, Matsuda-san," Sachiko greeted, recognizing him from afar. "Matsuda-san, come close. It's been so long."

A cold knot in his throat seemed to block all air from reaching his lungs, freezing him in place. He couldn't possibly turn around and ignore them, but his feet seemed to weight a ton and worse than that was the pit in his stomach. He couldn't move foward.

How can I face them, knowing I'm the cause of their grief?

"Matsuda-san," it was Sayu who called him out this time. She seemed so older from what he remembered her, and from her actual age. It wasn't the first time he'd spend years without seeing the younger girl, but the last time it had been such a wonderful surprise to reunite with her and see the little middle school girl had turned into a beautiful young woman. It had been on Chief Yagami's home, what seemed like a lifetime ago, but it had been only six years before. Everyone was together, the Chief, his wife Sachiko, Light, Misa-Misa... then Sayu joined too, smiling and happy.

That moment in time seemed now unreal, like a warning for the impending doom. Matsuda realized it had been the last true happy moment they had shared, and it lasted but a few minutes. Director Takimura's kidnapping news came that very day and was but the first of the chain of events that ended that ephemeral moment and changed the lives of so many people. Mello and Near's respective uprisingings followed with Sayu's kidnapping, evolving and culminating on the November 11th events that brought Chief Yagami's death and more pain to everyone... but it was Light who caused it. The one who cried and screamed over his father's corpse had been the one to brought that fate to him.

Light had been the one to cry and scream in that warehouse. Why did it have to end like that? How could he have done so much, decieving so many people? Sometimes it was still hard to accept it, how the same person these two women loved and cared could be a worldwide mass murderer who would kill any and everyone to continue on his path. But the cold always reminded him of the ugly truth.

No one involved the happy moment on the Summer of 2009 remained the same.

"I'm grateful for you coming here today, Matsuda-san," Sachiko said, managing to pierce through the stream of thoughts that had taken over him. "It's been five years now. It's unbelievable how time flies, and yet I miss him so much. I miss them so much."

Matsuda's lips parted, but no words managed to come out. What could he say? What could he possibly have the right to say? These two women he knew for so long had to mourn because of what he had done. He was the source of their grief. The weight of that realization, of being face to face with the direct victims of his actions, seemed to crush him down and he didn't know what to do.

But what could he have done? When in face of the truth, the horrible and painful truth only the people in the Yellow Box warehouse on January 28th 2010 faced, what could he have done differently? Was he really the one to blame for this?

If he had asked Sachiko and Sayu for a moment, he didn't even remember, for he wouldn't even know how to speak in this situation. But he found himself alone in front of the memorial stone with Light's name engraved, and he suddenly couldn't worry about anything else, the blockage of pain and shame finally erased from his mind.

"How could you do this, Light?" he was speaking out loud; he needed to hear those words, he needed the words to be heard to get a reply. "How could you bring so much pain to your mother, to your sister? And Misa-Misa? And Ryuzaki... Ryuzaki was your friend! But it was all a lie, and you killed him. You held him in arms, Light. How could you.. And your father? How could you do what you did to him? You would have killed him, wouldn't you? You insisted that Mello's name needed to be written down, would you have killed your own father after that?"

He raised his hand and pushed his fingers into the carving of the kanji of tsuki, Light, as if he could manage to reach something or someone from doing that.

"You would have killed Near's team for standing in your way. You would even have killed Mikami eventually, the same way you killed Takada, just to get rid of the evidence. You would have killed everyone on the taskforce, who worked side by side with you for years... it was all a lie. How could you live like that, not carrying for anyone's suffering? Light! How could you do this to me?"

How could I bring the pain of his loss to these people?

"No!" he faced his own thoughts, shutting his eyes as he felt the tears he held back for so long. "No, you brought that pain, you caused all this suffering. You were responsible for what happened in the Yellow Box warehouse. You should be the one to face your mother and your sister and see the pain you've caused them! You should be here to see the pain you've caused me! I believed in you all those years. You were my friend, Light. But I was just a fool to you, wasn't I?"

Matsuda sniffed unvoluntarily. He needed answers, he needed some sort of explanation for all that evil... all the evil Light's good intentions brought.

"I believed in Kira, Light. To some extent, I couldn't disagree with Kira's views - your views. But I can't agree with any of it, not even with the good intentions you had in the beginning, when I see who you really were, what you really did. How could you cause all this suffering? Do you hear me? How?!"

There was no reply. No answer he needed.

His fingers tried to carve the stone, but there was nothing he could do anymore to get answers. The one he considered his friend, who he admired and respected, whom ruined all that with the horrible lies, whom he ultimately brought to his death, was gone forever along the thousands of his victims. There was nothing left but that pain and the memories.

"How could you do that to yourself, Light?"

~おわり~

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