Disclaimer: Don't own it. Quote line is Thin Lizzy.

Note: Aaand chapter two. I find March to be an uninteresting month. I have no idea why. So I think what's developing here (because I have vague outlines but no definite ideas) is that a Matsuda and/or Misa storyline will run through every chapter, and other characters will flicker in and out of view around that. Near will also feature prominently, and though I love Gevanni (and have made him an ass here unfortunately) I shall be practicing my Rester and flexing my Lidner muscles.

Hope you like.

x

Chapter Two: March

pack up, i've had enough, that's it, i quit

March would have snuck up on them, if it hadn't been for Light's birthday. With than painful reminder gnawing at the seams of a delusional perfect reality, they cannot ignore the shifting of the months and the changing of the days. The twenty-eighth fades, thankfully, into the first, and Matsuda is asleep on Misa's couch, because they both missed Light for different reasons and they both drank to much, and Misa didn't have the heart to order him to catch a bus.

When he wakes up, his head is fuzzy and his vision is blurred and he just wants to go back to sleep. He has the beginnings of a horrible hangover, but through the mess in his mind one thin fact is fighting its way forward. He had no nightmares.

He had no nightmares.

For the first night in over a month, he has slept through, and though the amount of alcohol working its way through his system means he is by no means well-rested, it was rest, all the same.

He regards the empty bottle on the table with a doleful look. If alcohol is what it will take to dull the images flashing through his brain, he thinks he might take it up on it's offer.

There is a high-pitched yawn from an adjoining room (and Matsuda didn't even know yawns could be high-pitched, thought that they were, by nature, low-pitched, but Misa is a constant contradiction and yet again has proved him wrong). Matsuda glances down at himself to make sure he is decent, and realises that his clothes are crumpled from being slept it. He checks his watch. He is late.

He checks his premises. He hasn't got anything to be late for, not at the moment.

"Matsu?" Misa sounds sleepy. She pokes first her head, and then the rest of her tiny body around the doorframe. As usual, she is barely clothed. A satin nightgown is clinging to her curves and draping off her body, and Matsuda forces himself to look away. She is still Light's fiancée, and she always will be. Matsuda can't - even to look - he shot Light…

He suddenly feels very sick, and staggers to his feet. Misa interprets the look on his face correctly, and points him in the direction of the bathroom.

It was the alcohol, he tells himself later, but knows it wasn't. He still determines to build up a resistance to the stuff, learn not to be such a lightweight, if that's what it'll take to clear his mind and let him sleep.

-

For a week, Aizawa has done nothing but be the father and husband he had almost forgotten how to be. He has played with the child whose first steps he missed, caught up on what subjects his eldest is taking in school. She wants to be a nurse, she tells him, one night over dinner. She thought she wanted to be a vet but if she's honest she doesn't really like animals. She'd much rather help people, like her daddy does.

She's wanted it for two years, and he's never known.

He tells his wife what happened, because he needs to tell someone, he needs to talk about it, and he can't, not with the others, because they're all looking to him to be strong and brave and not need to talk about it. They're looking for him to move on so they can too, and it'd be fine, except he can't move on because he still, after all this time, sees a fifteen year old boy helping out around headquarters, and not a psychopathic mass murder locked in his grave.

Eriko runs her fingers through his hair and tells him she likes it short. He's not sure if it's the truth or not, and doesn't really mind if it isn't. He catches her fingers and clings on to him, running his broader, rougher digits over her soft and slender ones. Her arms fall round his shoulders and rest a moment before circling his neck. She holds him and does not let go.

All of them are suffering nightmares and they have all confided it in each other at some point. Aizawa knows his aren't the worst. When he wakes up, Eriko's body is unscarred and unblemished, and she is next to him, breathing lightly with a hand curled into the blankets and her knees pulled up just a fraction. When Matsuda wakes up, Light is still dead.

Aizawa knows he is one of the lucky ones, and that's probably what stings so much.

-

Anthony Rester could easily have gone back to using the name Carter by now, but he doesn't. Instead, he gets all his documents changed to the new name, and because he's FBI there aren't many people allowed to ask questions. Then, just as impulsively, he packs up and leaves the city. He can't connect himself to his life anymore. It's been a year - a year to the day, the twelfth of March - since he left, and now, he can't get back to it.

Routines. Groceries that don't involve plastic figures and more coffee than four people should be able to consume. Paperwork. Reports. Social interaction. Friends, fun, drinking, laughing…It's all so simple and natural and none of it is coming back to him. He stumbles, awkward, through conversations, far worse than he ever was before, and forgets elementary things when he goes shopping, like milk or food. That morning he had returned to his apartment, unpacked his bags, and found that he had bought twelve packs of playing cards, a board game, a box of dice and a pack of tampons. He had stared forlornly at his purchases, before realising that none of them were edible and that if he didn't get out of here soon he was going to go insane.

So Rester leaves New York. He has no idea where he's going and he thinks he should try his parents. Only he hasn't spoken to them in three years, and he's not sure they still like him. He thinks of Gevanni and Lidner. His mind casts around and falls onto Near, too, but he abandons that thought before it has a chance to form.

They still have each other's numbers. Gevanni's line is busy, and his voicemail says cheerily to leave a message. Says he's reached 'Stephen' and Rester immediately wants to find the kid and shake some sense into him for putting even the first part of his name up and out into the world like that. He knows Kira is dead but he's really, really never going to get used to using his name again.

He considers the people who call him 'Carter' and the people who call him 'Rester', and he thinks he'd rather stick with this one anyway.

Eventually he gets through to 'Stephen'. He tries to bite it back but the comment about him using his name slips out anyway. He has enough control left to tie it up like a joke, though, and Gevanni laughs, politely and condescendingly. Rester asks what he's up to 'these days', and Gevanni says they only moved back home three weeks ago. Rester make a noise that's the verbal equivalent of a shrug. Gevanni's voice is brusque and he sounds bored. Irritated. Rester thinks about asking him for a place to stay, but the clipped edge at the end of his utterances makes him think Gevanni wouldn't be that accommodating.

They exchange pleasantries and hang up. Defeated, Rester dials Lidner. If she'll let Mello live in her bathroom…

"Hello?"

"Halle?"

"Rester?"

It's a greeting, not even that. He can't even begin to explain why his heart clenched the way it did at the sound of the name. "Yeah. Hey, Halle, I know this is going to sound odd, but…can I stay with you for a few days? I…I don't know if I can explain it over the phone, but -"

"Don't try," Lidner interrupts. Her voice is tight, like Gevanni's, but it's different, like it's been tied with different knots. Lidner laughs, or tries to. She sounds tired. "I think you've done the same thing I have."

Rester is quiet. He can feel himself smiling. "Feel like shacking up together for a bit?" he asks, and he doesn't mean it to come out like he does but then he's said it, and as he sits there and it plays itself over in his head, he realises that's exactly what he wanted it to sound like, but hadn't had the nerve.

-

Near is alone.

March is a neutral month, with occasional flicers on sunlight and patches of rain, frost easing off into slush and winds too cold to leave a jumper behind but not cold enough to make you shiver. The skyline is somewhere between blue and grey, unimposing and slightly blurred, and the silence, the pure, unchallenged silence, is practically deafening.

Near relishes every second of it.

The Kira case is over and he has won. It took its toll on both sides, he thinks, in the way these things do. He tries to clarify what he means by 'thing', and his mind supplies 'wars'. The word fits, like the final piece of a jigsaw slotted into place, because what was their battle, their matching of minds and their faith in their righteousness, if not some absurd parody of a holy war?

He doesn't smile because the idea doesn't amuse him that much, but the firm line of his mouth softens a little, and he blinks a little more slowly. It had been a war alright, and all wars have their casualties. They make their mark on everyone, even a shadow of a boy at the back of a room. Near takes a bite of his chocolate.

He hates chocolate.

He has not taken on any new cases. Roger has been adjusting, trying out his links as Watari, experimenting with how far his abilities can stretch. He has been practicing his marksmanship, too, because the first Watari could shoot a notebook from the hand of a murderer, and Near has seen a cop do that too. Roger thinks it would be prudent for him to be able to do the same.

Not that his shooting skills did much for the original Watari, Near thinks, lining his finger puppets into rows. Nor for the original L, he supposes, because both of them (and Near, in moments of fantasy between logic and reason, has called them secretly in his mind 'the old guard', though he'd never say it aloud) have ended up dead. Near wonders if he feels any sympathy. If you can't solve the puzzle you're nothing but a loser, he said once, but they did solve the puzzle, they just didn't put the pieces onto the board.

Kira was playing with a stacked deck, anyway. For L to even get as far as he did…

L is still dead, though, and he has failed. Near has succeeded.

Near and Mello have succeeded, but Mello is dead too, so by default he has failed.

Mello…has failed.

The thought doesn't sit well with Near. He decides to revise his definition of failure.