Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note, I'm no Mangaka and if I was everyone would have to suffer through my horrendous ability to keep a schedule. So be happy.

It was peaceful in the garden with the soft humming of Oma Ulrika and the faint smell of lavender and cotton hanging in the air. I was staring down at the ground where a beautiful lily grew. Spider lilies. The long stems reached towards the sky like a child reaching for the clouds, and I find myself asking,

"Oma, why are the leaves at the bottom of the stem? Shouldn't they go all the way up?"

Oma Ulrika chuckled softly as she moved over to me with her frail, worn body and took my small hands in her thin, calloused ones. She smelled of butter milk and tobacco.

"There's a legend that says there were once two people who feel deeply in love but couldn't be together, for the gods forbade it. Though the gods said it wasn't to be they decided that they would rather be together then have the favor of the gods, and so they decided they would be joined in death, and killed themselves. The gods wouldn't have this, and so they reincarnated the two lovers as a single flower, but there was a twist, the boy was to become the leaves who would be forever at the ground, and the girl was to be fated to forever reach towards the sky. Thus though the two would always be connected yet they could never be together and would be forced to grow apart." She said.

I looked back down at the flower, reaching up far past me into the heavens and the leaves stuck forever cradling the earth.

I looked up at Oma Ulrika.

"I don't like that story."

There was no light or sounds when I awoke. My breaths came out quietly, quickly, and each inhale made my chest twist a little tighter. Bound, bound, bound, like Hannibal the cannibal on a rig. I wouldn't make a sound though because they were watching, I could feel their eyes boring into me like a thousand needles. I shifted slightly, trying to find a way to feel less trapped but it was so dark and quiet and I almost cried in relief when a speaker came on and began to speak.

"Miss. Patterson," It stated in a mechanical voice that sent shivers down my spine. It was them. "Are you aware why you are being held here?"

I could be here for many reasons. I could of caught onto their plan, those conspiracies might of been heard finally and the people up top might of ordered silence. It could be aliens getting into my mind and getting ready to implant me with some cyberpunk device.

"I assure you none of the things you just listed were true." The thing bluntly said.

Was it a mind reader too? Oh, no, I had just said all that aloud. Oops.

"Please allow me to inform you that you are currently being detained under suspicion of being the second Kira." It said with something akin to apathy.

I wanted to scream, but instead i just rocked my head the little ways I could and took a few shuddering breaths. I couldn't feel my eyes.

"I'm not it." I stated, amazed at how level my tone was for a few moments before deciding that was probably done by scientists earlier so I could no longer feel emotion. Those bastards.

"We have found your DNA on the packaging for the tapes sent to Sakura TV. Do not play stupid." It droned.

I rocked some more before biting my lip because I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.

"They were a friends!" I croaked out

"And who was this friend?" It asked, the robotic tone devoid of any humanity.

Misa, Misa, Misa. My perfect, beautiful friend who I loved and trusted. I couldn't say it. Maybe I was over reacting as usual. But I knew I wasn't. Maybe she is innocent and didn't leave me to take blame. But I knew she did. I hurt, and it hurt, and it hurt and cut me deep down inside and I cried to myself.

The voice didn't come back on for a long time.

I didn't like the kids in my school. They would stare and make comments and whisper behind my back. They would tape signs to my desk and write on my locker and the teachers wouldn't bat an eye because hey I was that girl who was strange and a freak so why not.

She wasn't like that. Sure she was petty, talking about boys and clothes and parties she wanted to go to. She dyed her hair bleach blonde in ninth grade because someone said that the black hair made her look like that girl from the ring. But she didn't do mean things. And sometimes when the halls were empty and I was alone trying to scrub off the marks on my locker she would come over and smile, cracking a joke about how my locker was always messy, and help.

"Rileigh," she'd say, "just keep your head up. There are plenty of people way worse than you in this school, and you wouldn't be so bad if you just put on some make up and stopped talking about aliens and stuff."

I'd smile and she'd laugh and then tell me about the boy she was dating at the time or what she did over the weekend. Everyone liked her, she was something soft and beautiful on this earth.

Misa would smile over at me and say nice things to me that even my parents had started to forget how to say. She eventually chased away the bullies and the torments and replaced it with silence.

And for that I would be forever grateful.

The minutes molded into hours which blurred into days and the world just began to slip by on a stream on nothing. The only passage of time was marked by the mechanical voice occasionally speaking out, informing me of how many days had slipped through my grasp. It didn't matter though, I couldn't find it in me to speak, sometimes I couldn't eat and sometimes I would bite my lip hard just to know that I existed and I was alive, though sometimes I still doubted that.

The voice hadn't talked in today, yesterday, whatever the moment I was in. It had been silent and in the silence I heard a thousand whispers telling me to speak. To open my mouth and scream. The dark in my vision swam and formed Old Lady Yukiko smiling at me like I mattered, and my parents fearful glances as they stared into the unknown.

I wanted to speak but Misa kept whispering the loudest. All she had done for me, all I owed, how she was the only one nice to me and the only one that understood and I was petrified to say anything.

The voice came on and talked.

I didn't respond.

Japan was weird and beautiful and scary, there were hundreds of people milling about and the college was so big I wanted to scream. I clutched my pills closer to my chest and walked up the stairwell to my apartment. Second building, Second floor, apartment 413.

I froze at the top of the stairwell, for a woman was standing in front of my apartment, facing out towards the road, tending to a small basket of flowers that hung there. They were beautiful small white flowers on bristly stems.

And I found myself wondering aloud, "What are those little ones?"

The old woman looked up at me and her face crinkled into a smile, a small twinkle in her eyes.

"That's Edelweiss, a mountain flower." She replied in a slow, steady voice.

"But if it's a mountain flower then how'd you get it into that pot?" I found myself asking, curiosity overriding the sharp panic as the woman looked me up and down.

The then shot me a strange look, her eyes not quite glaring and her mouth pursed.

"Are you daft child?" She asked, somehow managing to keep her tone soft but firm.

I cringed slightly and looked away as the woman sighed to herself.

"The flower doesn't need to grow on a mountain." She said stiffly

"Well then," I said, "it's not much of a mountain flower then is it?"

The woman stared for a moment more before she brightened up noticeably and laughed as if I had told a joke. She wiped her wrinkled hands on her dress then held one out to me.

"I'm Amaka Yukiko, and I believe that we will be neighbors." She stated in a light voice.

I stared at her hand then back at her face before sucking it up and giving it a quick, jerky shake.

"Rileigh Patterson." I replied as I removed my hand from her grasp as fast as I had placed it there. I smiled internally because I was able to shake her hand, after all it's not like old people can harm you. Old people are safe.

Misa kept talking to me for hours and hours. Her face what everywhere in the dark and even when I closed my eyes she kept telling me how I owed her, even though I didn't, and how I was a part of this, it was an accident. Misa wasn't Misa but was Misa, I concluded.

My skin crawled constantly at being looked at, my muscles constantly tense and wound d up, up, up like a spring ready to pop. I hadn't slept since I got here, I was too wired, my body too prepared to go, go ,go. How long had it been? More than days, had it been Weeks? Months? Years? What if Old Lady Yukiko had fallen ill again and no one was there to help her? What if she had died?

If she was dead I'd hate Misa forever, I decided.

I'd hate her and the mechanical voice.

I'd hate me.

I felt my hand twitch under the impulse to pick at something but I couldn't move it and it buzzed from inactivity. I chewed my lips instead, tasting iron almost immediately that's to the raw tissue already chewed away there. I needed to get out, out, out. I could feel my brain burning and I Misa kept talking on and on and every iota of my body felt like someone had put an electric charge through it and I couldn't even tell if it was the mechanical voice doing that, or Misa, or the aliens but I just wanted out, out, out before my body fell apart so I screamed. I screamed at the mechanical voice. I needed Misa to get out of my head, and for my body to stop spazzing and for my brain to turn off and for my meds and that I'd do anything for silence inside on myself.

The voice was silent then came on with a simply, "Very well then".

And a few minutes later there was someone in the room and there were pills at my mouth and water and I almost didn't want to take them because they could be trackers, or poison, but then the person said in the same slow, soft tone that only old people can do,

"Be careful not to choke."

I made extra sure. And Misa slowly faded out of my head and my body ceased to burn and twitch as the mechanical voice asked me all about the tapes and Misa, he must of been a mind reader, and all other sorts of things like the silence and the dark and something about something schizotypal and that was the only one I didn't know.

I answered every question he gave me, and then I finally fell asleep.

Authors Note: Hey sorry for the lack of updating I had finals then my winter break was pretty crammed between going between two states and seeing a few people for the first time in like six months. So yeah. Happy New Year and Holidays to everyone, I hope 2014 treats you well!

I start school on Monday and I can't say I'm looking foreword to it. Oh well, hopefully expect more updates though as school never seems to keep me busy enough.