Draft date: 01/22/08

Disclaimer: Death Note and it's characters are not mine, the quote is from the Marquis de Sade. This is a not for profit work.

Name 04: Philosophy In The Bedroom

Get it into your head once and for all, my simple and very fainthearted fellow, that what fools call humaneness is nothing but a weakness born of fear and egoism; that this chimerical virtue, enslaving only weak men, is unknown to those whose character is formed by stoicism, courage, and philosophy.

--Dolmancé

from Marquis de Sade's "Philosophy in the Bedroom"

It is 1:30 in the morning and Light is still awake in his bedroom. Light sat in his bed dressed in his pajamas. The desk lamp was on but the rest of the room was dark. The events of the past few days still bothered him. He made notes over the whole incident at Flammende Rose up to and including when Naomi got upset and smashed an entire neighborhood's worth of glass.

He looked around for Ryuk and noticed he was, for once, nowhere to be found. Light sat at his desk and took a manilla folder out of the drawer and assembled his notes properly. Let's review what's known here he thought as he took out some paranormal studies books and his personal diary out as well. He sharpened his pencil and checked off the facts one by one.

---Naomi Misora is dead. Spirit type: earthbound.

---Edward Sawaguchi, 10 years old, is dead. Spirit type: earthbound.

---I saw everyone that day, human and spirit alike.

---Naomi and Edward saw everyone, human and spirit also.

---Naomi could be seen by Penber-san and Ryuuzaki-san.

---Edward could NOT be seen with the naked eye by Penber-san and Ryuuzaki-san.

---Penber-san saw Edward playing at the dinner table but did not get a visual of the child.

---There are two major planes of existence: Material (my world) and Spiritual (afterlife).

---Naomi and Edward most likely are able to see everything because once dead, the veil between the Material Plane and the Spiritual Plane is lifted. (Must check with Ryuk on this!!)

---As far as I know, Ryuuzaki-san and Penber-san can only see Misora-san and not other spirits.

---Earthbound Spirits are powered by the strength of their will.

---Naomi must have an incredibly strong will if she can be seen by certain people and destroy a large neighborhood's worth of glass objects in a moment of anger.

---Edward was murdered by his neighbor and left for dead in an abandoned car.

At this, Light frowned and felt his anger rising. He'd ask his father if there was any news about this particularly malicious case. He looked around to see if Ryuk came back. Nothing. Typical, when there's any kind of work to be done he's nowhere to be found. Light continued writing.

---Signs are considered one of the principal ways the Spiritual Plane establishes contact with humans on the Material Plane.

---Sometimes they can be purely a premonition or a warning.

---I was presented a sign about Ryuuzaki-san, but I am unable to figure out why.

---As far as I know, Ryuuzaki-san is a living being. (Not that you can tell by the way he presents himself. Honestly, he was at a high-class restaurant he could do a little extra something!!)

---Ryuuzaki-san is a mystery in of himself. He said he was from OMNI magazine, but OMNI folded some years ago. If he knows Misora-san, a former agent with the FBI, could he be a foreign government agent too?

The very memory of that Ryuuzaki character filled him with disgust. He had the appearance of some kind of mentally retarded, anorexic, drug-abuser. Why do they let people like that out in public anyway? Isn't there some kind of halfway house or something they could just dump people like that away in?

The events of the past few days really stressed Light out. In addition to trying to convince his family that he survived not a terrorist attack but a supernatural incident (something that his mother believed but was not exactly comfortable with) he still had many unanswered questions in his mind about Ryuuzaki, Naomi and Edward. He hated unknown factors.

Just then, Ryuk came flying in the bedroom, interrupting Light's thoughts as he put his notes away.

"Damn, you sure know how to cause a scene!"

"I did nothing of the sort. Misora-san freaked out, then took off before I could smooth things over." Ryuk then helped himself to Light's fluffy, soft bed. "Ryuk, isn't it your people's job to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen?"

"We can't devour earthbound spirits, only those housed in a mortal body or those on the other side. It would be like you humans trying to eat a rock off the pavement."

"Yes, but it is possible to eat a rock even if it's not healthy."

"Yeah, but who wants to eat a rock? It tastes terrible and trying to shit it out is the worst."

"Ryuk, have you been eating rocks?" Light asked incredulously.

"Uh,...no. I saw other guys eating rocks and thought it'd be a bad idea." Ryuk didn't sound too convincing.

"..."

"..."

"Moving on, is it possible that when a person has died they can see all the things that were previously hidden in relation to the Spiritual Plane?"

"Hyuk, hyuk. That's a good question, Light-boy."

"Oh, come on!"

"Okay, okay. Seriously, I don't know the specifics except for a couple of things. When souls die and crossover to Spiritual Plane their essence does get a visual reference of their surroundings and they can see where they're going. We don't know what the earthbound sees or does because us Shinigami don't spend a whole lot of time on the Material Plane." Or are supposed to Light thought to himself.

"Basically, you're telling me you don't know if the souls are aware of everything because they died or they became aware of everything because they entered another plane of existence, right?"

"Yeah, that's it. You seem like you're working something out."

"Naomi and Edward saw each other plain as day. Because of that, I think they'll be able to see you. The two didn't seem like they ran into any wandering Shinigami on the way to the restaurant so I can't say for sure yet." Light leaned back in his seat. "Sounds like you don't know how your own world works, that's bad form Ryuk."

"Hey, you try living for a few millennium! It's not like they offer a civics class in the Shinigami Realm!"

"I'd rather think that it would be a combination of civics, biology and geography."Light gathered his papers and Ryuk stuck out his tongue.

"Not my fault. There's stuff even our king doesn't even know and he knows a lot of stuff. I try and ask him but he gets mad at me and busts me upside the head."

"I bet you ask him trivial stuff."

"I'm just a curious guy. I mean if you think about it, there things we know. Then there are things we don't know. There are things we know that we know about. Then there are things out there that are known unknowns. Stuff we don't know about but know that's out there. Then there's this unknown unknown stuff we don't know that's out there or even exists."

"I'm going to bed!" Light interrupted, frustrated with the Death God. Good grief, there went a few minutes into the void. Ryuk hopped off the bed to let Light slip under the covers as the lights went out. Ryuk sat near the window and began to brood a little. He watched as a drunken salaryman stumbled at getting home from work in the house across the street. The hulking dark giant began to curl into himself a little and in the dead of night the usually happy-go-lucky creature revealed a somber side to his demeanor.

"I'm not playing around Light. I really don't know a lot. It's pathetic."

"You're telling me." Light replied quietly. Ryuk winced a little at Light's bluntness.

"The world I came from is so fucked up. As gods of death, we all had jobs and we all had a purpose in the beginning. Somehow, we lost our empathy for humans. It's not like we go around saying 'I hate so and so' or 'Let make the human world a great place' or 'Let's destroy everything'. Honestly, the human dominion on the Material Plane is meaningless to the Shinigami. We're just hanging on by a thread, devouring the life force from human beings when their time is up. Stop, rewind, press play again. My world is an absolute wreck. Nobody knows why we're here anymore." Ryuk looked at the clouds as they passed by the half moon slowly. He could tell Light was still awake by the sound of his breathing.

Light carefully considered Ryuk's words. The 17 year old felt that the Shinigami just described the human realm including the 'devouring human lives' part. Awakening to face the day never felt more meaningless and violent than it did in these times. So did forcing yourself to go to school, watch the news, pretend to care about people that you didn't give a shit about, while seeing the world drenched in fire and blood. It all felt so wretched.

Light knew everyone didn't feel this way. Why didn't everyone feel this way? Why couldn't everyone see that the human race was stupid, violent and easily pacified. Humanity felt like it was at complete standstill for all the great achievements it accomplished: science, art and philosophy. Light, as an intellectual (a REAL intellect, not a fake poser), appreciated these things immensely. The masses, however, kept holding on to avarice, to jealousy, to hatred and sloth, all the old ways. If he had any power, any active power, he could mold the world in his own image, one of perfection and radiance. If he had his own way, he would punish the guilty and the depraved, instead offering cold consolation to the lost.

Light hated the world more and more with each breath drawn.

After briefly realizing his own feelings about the state of the world he knew what to say to Ryuk. "Idiot."

"Not now, Light-boy." Ryuk sighed and looked worn which was a strange sight in of itself.

"If anyone else discovered the existence of the Shinigami, not to mention your home on the Spiritual Plane, a hell of a lot of mysteries concerning the universe would be solved."

"You think so?"

"Your life and job is so full of meaning it frightens me. This is true in any age, no matter who sees you." Light then sat up in bed and looked at Ryuk directly. Light's piercing gaze made Ryuk's heart sore from this statement because he still felt insignificant. "Look, if you feel meaningless and empty then you can still turn it around somehow."

"How do you figure?"

"The gnawing pain inside your heart proves that you still have one. That you want something to bring joy and significance to your pathetic existence you call your life. Quite frankly, I'm offended that you don't care about humans. You watched over humans all the time and you've never picked up any human feelings and desires? Without you and your people we'd all be suffering without being able to move onto our final destinations, karmically speaking."

"Yeah, but the whole thing is similar to how you humans drive a giant bus full of people. It's tedious and not very rewarding."

"Hmm, I can understand how you feel." Light then sighed. "Have you ever considered dying?" Ryuk's face twisted in fear.

"You some kinda radical? Of course not!"

"I'm just saying. I think the pains and emptiness stem from a refusal to explore other planes and other states of existence. You could be hurting yourself needlessly by standing still and not moving forward. Hold onto life too much and you lose the best reason for living."

"Only a human would say that!"

"Coward."

"At least my people aren't so preoccupied with death they have to make a whole goddamn theatrical ritual over it and have twenty million poems about the subject!"

Did he just throw out a racial slur? Light chose to be diplomatic if only because he wanted to go to sleep sometime within the next 24 hours. "Before we come to blows could you perhaps at least help me out with the situation regarding Misora-san?"

"Like what?"

"Determining why she's earthbound, what it would take to send her on her way and what kind of power she has for starters. I can already tell she's stronger than the usual people I deal with."

"Yeah, whatever. I'll look at her from the Shinigami Realm so she won't notice. But for now, I'm gonna go find an apple tree and just get trashed over the weekend." Ryuk then got up and started to go through the window. Light stopped him.

"It's true what they say, by the way."

"What is?"

"Life is beautiful because it's transient."

"How can you say that to me with a straight face? You're sure not an optimist."

"What passes for optimism is most often the effect of an intellectual error." Light replied seriously. Ryuk then left feeling way more depressed than he entered. Light just sighed and laid back down. Ryuk's immaturity really grated on his nerves at times, enough to wish he would just get bored and go back to his own realm. Still awake, he began to formulate a plan where he would learn the facts about Naomi and Edward's lives so that they could be released from this world and be able to cross over to the spiritual plane. There was one major detail that had eluded Light. An unanswered question which bothered the hell out of the young man...

"How can you just stand there and tell me you didn't know you died?" Raye asked incredulously. Naomi only shrugged.

"I just did."

4:00 AM in the morning and he was pacing back and forth in his rather gloomy hotel room. It's been one week since the Flammende Rose incident and Raye still hasn't gotten any decent sleep dealing with the situation about his now broken engagement. It's been one of the strangest weeks in Raye's life with Naomi being a ghost, Naomi actually thinking something bad had happened to him, meeting a with ultra-preppy, teenage clairvoyant and finally Naomi getting so upset at hearing she died that she blew the windows of a wide neighborhood.

"You're just lucky that Light's father was able to manage to control the situation otherwise we'd be in some serious trouble right about now."

"'We' nothing! You and Light would be in some serious trouble. Even though Soichiro Yagami is an NPA big shot, I think Ryuzaki-san is the one who managed to spin it into something realistic Men-in-Black style. I think he even swept the fact you were even involved under the rug."

"Thank God. Telling my bosses at the FBI all of this opens a whole new can worms I'm not ready to deal with yet...and what do you mean 'we nothing'? You started all of this!" Raye complained.

"I'm dead! Not like they can sue a dead person for property damage!" Naomi said getting hysterical again. Raye ran a hand over his face as he thought about his part in all of this.

Naomi Misora, his fiancee and former FBI agent died almost one year ago in a car accident. A drunk driver hit her car and she died on impact. Raye remembered in sharp detail the day he was at the morgue to identify her remains.

Four months ago, his mother, father along with Naomi's family swore they all saw Naomi in various places including her room, the reflections off of mirrors and windows. They even heard the sound of her voice sometimes. Raye dismissed most of this as grieving until the day he went to go to the Law Enforcement Conference in Tokyo. It was his first overseas trip since losing Naomi and he was to visit Naomi's parents after seeing them at the funeral.

Raye had the suitcase parked outside the apartment door. He unplugged all the appliances. He already told the post office to hold all the mail until his return. He check his pocket for the plane ticket for Tokyo and the envelope was all tightly arranged. As he checked his digital watch he noticed he still had his engagement ring on after all this time. He bit the corner of his lip then made a conscious decision. He went over to the entertainment center where there was a framed picture of Naomi. Quietly he slipped his ring off his finger and placed it in front of the photo.

"I'll be back." Raye then placed his ring in front of the picture. As he walked out the door something out of the ordinary happened.

"Okay, I'll be here."

Raye startled at hearing Naomi's voice but no one else was in the room or hallway. Shaken, the agent locked the door and took his suitcase with him.

"Damn it." Raye growled with frustration as he got up from the bed a broke out a rather large bottle of whiskey from the drawer and started to get a glass out and put on the nightstand.

"Raye, don't even try it!!" Naomi shrieked as the glass flew from the nightstand and crashed into the wall telekinetically.

"I thought we agreed you wouldn't go all Carrie as long as I couldn't defend myself!"

"I don't want you getting drunk unless I can get drunk too!"

"Great logic in that!"

"Better than choosing a course of action on your own and then telling me that we both agreed upon it."

"Are you STILL sore about being a stay at home mom? Is that why you decided to haunt me?" Raye was at the end of his rope and was going to take a gulp straight from the bottle.

"No, I'm here because I only wanted to see you, jackass!" Naomi then made the bottle fly out of Raye's hand and crash into the wall.

"Keep it down in there!" the neighbors yelled through the wall.

"SHUT UP!" Naomi roared angrily and somehow she made all the lights in hotel black out.

Raye shuddered and slumped down in a sitting position with his back against the bed. This was all too much to take in all at once and he wanted to shut down. Raye's face was very pale and he was on the verge of breaking out in a cold sweat. He then summoned from his heart and soul a reserve that was a heady mixture of fortitude and pure machismo even though the latter part was purely there to keep him from running out of the room screaming. He then looked directly at Naomi (who now had a strange unearthly glow when the lights went out) and spoke frankly.

"You don't remember how you died, right?"

"Yes."

"What made you search for me then?" Naomi seemed to have a very large amount of chagrin on her face at the moment.

"I got scared somehow."

"What do you remember?"

"Not much."

"Aside from loving me, which I know you do, why are you hanging around me when there's a whole world out there?"

"I don't think I can leave you now even if I could."

"Naomi...talk to me." Naomi then looked extremely ashamed and embarrassed.

"I'm dead, I don't know what to do or where to go. I feel...I feel goddamn powerless. I can hurt people real easy and not even know it. Above all...I need you to..."Naomi closed her eyes. Raye could tell her pride was splintering fast. "Damn it, don't make me grovel like this!" Naomi's hands balled up into fists. Raye then sensing her unwanted position as the damsel in distress decided to step up to the plate anyway.

Because that's what she wanted to ask of him.

"I'll take care of you." Naomi opened her eyes.

"How? We don't even know where to start."

"Doesn't matter, I'll get Light-kun and that Ryuzaki person and we'll figure something out. We'll hold a seance, we'll get the new age music on, I'll even start juggling knives if it can get you to where you need to go." The young agent then got a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from a coat pocket hanging in the closet. There he goes again Naomi thought bitterly. Directly taking control and receiving any blows goddamn stoically. Secretly, she knew that this is what she wanted, to step back and just let Raye take care of the whole situation I don't want to be the strong one here, but this is still my own life we're talking about here. The last time I stepped back, I was unhappy and it's not being fair to him to try and understand something even I don't know about. Naomi, however, had no real options at the moment except for the plan Raye had laid out for them. New age music, knife juggling and all. There were sirens heard in the distance as well as a couple of helicopters. There probably was some response to the instant blackout cause by her bickering with Raye earlier. She saw he had dressed in a night robe and had proceeded to go out into the balcony to have a smoke. She went behind him. It was almost pitch black in the immediate vicinity and surrounding buildings untouched by the neighborhood blackout shone like glass castles. This being Tokyo, the early darkness of the morning was still extremely bright with manufactured light. He took a long drag from his cigarette.

"How can you say goodbye to a person whom you didn't want to and had no intention to anyway?" he asked. Naomi stood beside him and tried to brush his windswept hair but found that she couldn't. She brushed away a long strand of her own hair out of her face very nervously.

"You don't. You don't have to if you don't want to. Not really." She really wanted to hold his hand or touch his face right now but for some reason she was now very intangible, without form and now very aware of her post-mortem status. "People come together then leave our lives just as suddenly as well. There's so many things we might want to tell them but then lose the opportunity to." The cold breeze ran through Raye's body but Naomi's words kept him focused. "If they were treated with love and respect, then I'm sure they already know what hasn't been said already." Naomi's face flushed at this sentiment but Raye took another drag of his cigarette.

"Say the word and I'll jump. Right here, right now, no questions asked." he said without any hint of hesitation. Naomi much to her secret horror let out an honest, blunt response.

"I'd say yes but I don't think it would help my situation any."

"Getting to the heart of all this, you came looking for me right?"

"I'd hope you would be the one who could take me home." Naomi couldn't look at him now. Raye gave a bitter snort and a small cough. "Who said I was going to let you go home tonight?" Naomi remembered that was their first shared pick up line and code phrase for sleeping together. Even in those first days he was rather aggressive, and she loved him for it.

"I won't."

"Good." He then finished the remainder of his cigarette and got another one ready. Naomi reasoned he was probably going to smoke the whole pack in one go. She then saw a blinking light across the way into another building. It seemed like it was a signal light of some kind.

"Look across the street."

"Yeah, what is that?" Then the power to the neighborhood suddenly restored and they saw very much who it was.

L swinging his bright cell phone light by his forefinger and thumb and waving at them in the office floor directly across from them. "What the fuck? Isn't that building locked for the night?" Raye exclaimed. Naomi was a bit thrown that he went through that much trouble but just then she had a feeling what would happen next. Raye's cell phone started to ring. "Are you shitting around with me?"

"This is mild compared to what rumors I've been hearing."

"It's him isn't it?"

"Poker face time, boy. This is what you wanted." Raye then immediately snapped to professional agent mode.

"Let's see what can be done then. Hello...?"