Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note. Lyrics are...uh, Heavens, I think? Sorry for poor crediting today. I know the song's called Patent Pending and one of the guys was from Alkaline Trio. And yes, I'm actually too lazy to Google it. Don't sue me for sloth, internets.
Note: DIDJA MISS ME, PASSAGES READERS. It's been ages, hasn't it? But to be fair I left you with an epically long chapter for what I'm used to. This one checks in at a mere 3200 words. Pitiful. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. Was actually fun to write once I got going. What does everyone think of this style, by the way? The multiple storylines? 'Cause I'm finding them rad as hell. Great fun to write, only question is who gets a say in which chapter. And with that, we're half way through.
Oh by the way. I introduced a couple of things here. One, a pairing I've been planning on it starting to dig its feet in. Two, a complete twist I had no plans for until it started appearing on my computer screen. But I like it so I'm totally going to run with it. I hope the backlask against this twist (it's obvious when you get there) won't be too big. Because I am thinking I can have fun with this. Enjoy.
x
July
high time we swore off everything we knew
The first day of July scorches and crackles. Heat sears through the air, and every window in the district is open, every air conditioning unit cranked up to full. It's no time to be in a hospital, inside the clamminess of the walls, surrounded by monitors and machines pumping out warmth. But that's where Aizawa finds himself, asking hurried questions of a flushed-looking nurse. She's polite, and happy to help, and keeps apologising for the heat like she's the one who asked the sun to blaze so ferociously on this day of all days.
A little way down the corridor – this white tunnel arching into corners and wards – Matsuda is sat on the floor. His knees are pulled up and he's cradling his head in his arms. From what Ide's said, this whole thing seems to be pretty much his fault.
But Aizawa's never going to say that to him. Once upon a time, he might have. Today, he's different. Today, he doesn't want to see Matsuda crumble to pieces in front of him. So he nods to the nurse, thanks her for her help, and in three, quick strides, is standing next to Matsuda's hunched, defeated form.
The younger cop looks up. His eyes are red and puffy.
Aizawa doesn't say a word. He jerks his head, motions him into the room.
Misa's lying there, on a bed, looking for all the world like an angel, in the pure white of the hospital gown she's garbed in, with her blonde hair sprayed out across the pillow. There are tubes of plastic winding their way over her, though, and no angel needs life support, or a little IV drip in their arm. And there haven't been many angels with an ugly mark on their neck, thick and violent and much more red than Matsuda's eyes. The ones with marks like that – well, they haven't stayed around very long.
Like a fallen angel, crashed down to earth, Aizawa thinks idly, and then it's back to business. The nurse is behind them, changing Misa's medication.
Blearily, she starts to wake up.
-
July has always reminded Near of Mello, even though it is irrational and sentimental, because it is hot, after the blossoms have faded and before autumn tempers the climate. It is brash and loud and obnoxiously hot, and there is very little beautiful about it at all, but people still spend their years waiting for it.
Near knows he could spend the rest of his life waiting for Mello, and it wouldn't make the damndest bit of difference.
He wonders why he cares so much. If he can break this down into its component parts, if he can understand that mystery that was Mihael Keehl (as he came to learn his name was, and it stings, in some sad part of him, that Kira knew that name before he did) – then he can get rid of this fuzzy little ache inside of him, this squirming discomfort, this twang of guilt and loss.
He's the winner. He's not meant to be feeling like this. Not this long after –
Mello wouldn't be feeling like this if it was he who had gone down in flames with an unbeating heart.
He wouldn't be – would he?
What if –
Near shakes himself. No. Stop it, Nate. He thinks of himself in his first name for a reason – it reminds him, in the midst of his success, that he is not invulnerable. He still has his weakness, his exposed skin, and caring about a dead blond boy is going to wind up being far, far more dangerous that his God damn name.
He heard yesterday that Misa Amane tried to commit suicide. She failed, it seems, and was taken to a hospital during the heat wave that had swept Japan on the first of July. She had woken up not long after, with the aid of drugs ensnaring her and pulling her into consciousness. He didn't care to think about the kind of questions she'd been subjected to by the Japanese task force, and he didn't care to imagine how she is feeling right now.
Near does not like Misa Amane. He has no time for her –she is flighty, overly cheery, and far, far too stupid. But it would take a fool not to see (and Near is no fool) how completely devoted to Light Yagami she was. Near was never devoted to Mello, and his death is causing little things inside him to curl up into ash, so...
He pities Amane, even if he does not like her.
The news of her attempted suicide (hanging, he hears – how grotesque, and he wonders if she knows how inelegant her corpse would have looked. He wonders if she'd have cared) reminds him of someone else. This someone else is a boy who was unconscious when he turned twenty, and who should have been dead by the time that birthday rolled around, but through a combination of sheer luck and maybe even a dash of divine intervention (and Near's intervention, at the very least, though he's anything but a God and he knows it all too well) is still lying, alive, fading, in a bed somewhere.
It's nothing to do with Mello, Near tells himself over and over. He called people in to drag Matt out of that place because if Yellow Box went wrong – and however well Near planned it, there had been nothing, absolutely nothing, stopping Yagami from just shooting them all – then at least there would be someone there, someone alive to carry it on. Someone who knew everything that had happened and would be the one person left perfectly poised to finish Kira off for good.
The fact that he was Mello's best friend is purely incidental.
He hasn't visited in a while, Near thinks. At least a couple of months. And it makes no sense to go and stand next to a motionless body, unresponsive and inanimate, but he does it anyway, every so often. And he talks, like some silly sentimental fool.
He isn't even sure what he says, really.
But it really has been a while.
He reaches forward and presses a button. Roger's voice crackles over the connection.
"Yes, L?"
"Watari. I would like to go to New York when this case is concluded."
A pause, and something rustling. Or it might just be static. "The hospital?"
"Yes," Near answers, with just the right pause – not too quick, not too long, so it looks perfectly natural and not at all as if his chest contracted at the question. He released the button before Roger can ask anything else, repositions the action figure he's been playing with, and lets out a breath.
And he goes back to the case at hand.
-
Mogi isn't the only one to remember that he shares – shared – his birthday with Deputy Director Yagami.
He declines a party, so instead, Aizawa offers to take him out for a meal. It's a small affair, with none of the 'old friends gathering' feel Aizawa's birthday had. As well as a celebration, there's a certain air of remembrance in the air, and regret. They raise a toast to Mogi, and behind that, there's a toast to Soichiro Yagami.
Mogi remembers what Light said in the warehouse, about people like the Deputy Director always losing out. He doesn't know if it's true. He doesn't think it is.
Rather, he can't think it is. Believing in that...
Believing in that would be like rolling over and saying the world had won. Not even that Kira had won – it was bigger than that. In the end, Kira had just been a boy in a suit with big ideas and a bigger brain. Gunfire had taken him down, whatever the coroners report might say, it was the gunfire that broke him. And even though Mogi would never admit it, and even though he feels passionately that violence is wrong, and even though he knows what it's doing to Matsuda –
He's never been more proud of the man than when he held that gun up to Light's face and saved Near's life.
He notices that Matsuda isn't drinking tonight. He's sitting quite quietly, poking his food around his plate, occasionally taking a modest mouthful. Mogi doesn't mind because tonight he's not paying, but he glances over at Aizawa to make sure that the guy footing the bill isn't getting antsy.
He isn't. He is, however, looking at Matsuda, with more concern than Mogi's ever seen him show for anyone but his daughters. Come to think of it, the idea of Aizawa looking at Matsuda as a son...it hadn't really crossed his mind before. But Matsuda had always seen the Deputy Director as a father figure, and now Aizawa had taken over the position...
No, it didn't fit, really. Aizawa's more of an older brother. Irritated by how flighty and irrational the younger sibling is, irked by his lack of responsibility, but still his passionate defender should anything rise to harm him, still one of the few things standing between the harsh realities of life and the innocence of youth.
But reality has bypassed Aizawa, and hit Matsuda straight between the eyes, and as near as Mogi can tell, he's still reeling.
Sometimes Mogi wonders if there's something wrong with him, that he's not more affected by what happened with Light. Maybe, he thinks, maybe it was Near – Near had almost conditioned him to accept it, so that by the time they walked into the warehouse, he'd have been more surprised if Light hadn't turned out to be Kira.
And he'd liked Light, sure, but he'd always been that little bit too quick to belittle Matsuda's intelligence, that little bit too sharp when correcting his father's errors.
The struggling and the good, and Light had no time for them. Mogi wasn't sure how far he could respect a man like that, and in the end, he'd been right.
Kira was just another criminal with bigger ideas than morals. And Mogi had done his job.
He had nothing to be ashamed about.
Across the table, Matsuda cuts a boiled potato in half and rubs it round the edge of his plate, picking up grains of salt. Aizawa looks tired, and overworked, and Ide sighs, like every life Light took is pressing down on his shoulders.
And Mogi's birthday wish is that they be okay.
-
The heat wave of the nineteenth puts the heat wave of the first to shame.
Lidner cranks the air conditioning up as high as it will go. She's sure it's broken, because the damn place is never as cool as it should be with what is theoretically a hell of a lot of cold air pumping round it. She's stripped down to a tiny pair of shorts and a thin t-shirt, more casual than her usual night-wear preference but just about the coolest things she owns. Her hair is pulled up, uncharacteristically casual, into a messy bun. Anything to escape this heat.
A floorboard creaks. Rester emerged from the kitchen, unbuttoning his shirt.
"You don't mind, do you?" he asks, gesturing to his chest.
She shakes her head. She's seen Rester shirtless before and she's practical enough not to let a silly thing like modesty or a concept of politeness to make the man uncomfortable. He tosses the shirt, which looks stained with sweat, into the laundry basket, and offers her an iced coffee.
He disappears back into the kitchen to fix them up, and Lidner moves over to the window. Leaning on the sill, she looks down at the street below. Gloom is beginning to gather, flecks of darkness clustering around the outlines of buildings, and as she watches, the streams of traffic thin out. It's just stupidly hot, and everyone is rushing home to icy showers and loose clothing, shedding their suits until the next day.
She's working as a secretary. Never in her life did she think that she, Halle Bullook, would take a job filing papers and making phone calls, but she has. And maybe after a while she'll give it up.
She doesn't need to work, really. Near made sure that, in exchange for their help, they were more than covered financially for a good few years. Even with the annihilation of L's inheritance, Near's manic casework over the past few months had meant that footing the bills was not a problem.
But still, it helped to have something to do, and Lidner's finding that it's not so bad, really, the simple life. Doing something innocent and mundane, working in an office, just remembering what life is like. Taking time out to sew, to cook, to take walks around a park and to wear dresses, when the mood takes her. Just to...live. Not chasing criminals down strangling, narrow alleyways, not examining evidence in order to cut off a chain of murders, not fearing every day that a faceless nameless killer is going to break off your existence with a flick of ink...
Something brushes against her arm and Rester leans over her to place the glass of ice and coffee in front of her. She smiles at him, and shifts over, so there's room for him at the window, too. It's silly standing this close in this kind of heat, she thinks, taking a sip of the coffee. But she doesn't move. She doesn't move because a part of her – the silly, irrational part that says it's okay to dehydrate – wants to stay standing by Rester.
It's not a particularly big window, and their arms knock together a little as they move. Lidner finds herself leaning forward, making excuses for their skin to brush, and she wonders what the hell she's playing at.
And then she realises.
She's attracted to him.
Rester, with his defined chest, Rester, who just understands when for no reason at all she can't sleep, who knows why the demolition of a burnt-down church on the news made her lock herself in her room. Rester, who offers her iced coffee when it's hot and hot chocolate when it's cold.
And now she notices that he's looking at her, too.
The movement she makes is a cross between a tentative first step and the usual calm, self-assured deftness of her business attitude. It ends up being a little bit clumsy, but Rester doesn't mind, when her hand closes around a couple of his fingers. Twisting his hand slightly, he catches hers, and they stand like that, by the open window, drinking cold coffee, for quite a while. The sun sets, and finally, a vague breeze blows in from outside the city. They finished the coffees a while ago now, but neither of them wants to move.
And so, they don't.
-
Misa is not allowed to be on her own. They are watching her closely, the doctors, and the detectives who worked with Light, whenever they come round. They all look at her differently, talk to her as if she's made of glass, act as if she's going to shatter if they say something wrong.
Except Matsuda, who barely talks to her, and barely visits, but when he does, he just looks a mess and sounds miserable.
Misa would probably feel sorry for him, if she could feel anything at all.
Inside, she's dead. When she realised, when Matsuda kissed her, and the horrible, crushing realisation struck, she collapsed. The whole of her future, so carefully constructed, build around one, single constant, caved in, crumbling under the pressure of its own futility and falseness. And Misa had caved in with it.
She can't live in a world without Light, anymore than she could live in a world without the sun.
Trying to hang herself hadn't been an act of sorrow. The sorrow had come before then, great, echoing howls of grief, as she had curled up in her apartment, crying until her throat was sore and her voice was hoarse and she couldn't find enough water in her to cry any more. Sobs that had racked her body for hours and left her exhausted and devastated, empty and completely alone. It was like something inside her had been ripped out, leaving a gaping hole, bleeding and making her scream in agony.
And then, the pain had stopped. But the thing inside her was still gone, still pulled out, but now, there was just a hollowness. A strange gap where something important should have been, and Misa just though – why bother?
It hadn't been an act of sorrow. It had been an act of utilitarianism, because getting hit by a car put someone else in trouble and waiting for a natural death just cost too much and took too long.
But what she's going to do now –
She doesn't know.
Light is dead. Light is -
Gone.
She doesn't know.
-
The hospital is upmarket and very elite. Very private, too, and very expensive, and Near doesn't admit it but there's been a dual reason for working so many cases: to occupy his mind, and to afford this place. They're the best, and they're the most discreet, just what you need when your patient is, officially, dead and buried.
Matt's room is on the third floor. Near blends in perfectly here, with the sterile white walls and the obsessive cleanness of everything. He just fits. A doctor he recognises nods him in, and the door doesn't creak. A chair by the bedside is angled perfectly so that the visitor may look at the person in the bed, while being at a respectable distance.
Near doesn't care much for respect right now, so he pulls the chair up closer to the bed, climbs onto it, and looks at Matt.
He's skinny. Matt's always been skinny, but he looks skinnier now, all bones and bullet wounds. Near can make out the scars on his arms. They're mostly on his chest, though, and that's covered by a hospital gown, so he can't see that much.
He's glad.
The monitors are making the same sounds they made before. There's been a change in the medication they're feeding into him, he notes, and he reminds himself to tell the staff to inform him of such changes.
But it's not always that easy to contact him, so maybe they did try after all.
Near opens his mouth, without knowing what he's going to say. What comes out is –
"I miss Mello."
A pause. Then –
"You would too if you were awake."
Pulling a leg up, wrapping an arm round, studying the green and grey space ranger doll.
"The world seems duller. Less vibrant. Like everything is just ticking along now. Following its path. Nothing is mad and bad and dangerous."
Near knows he sounds like an idiot, and a whiny idiot at that, which is why he's glad Matt probably can't hear him. And even if he could hear him, he knows that Matt is the one person in the world who almost, sort of wouldn't judge him on this.
He'd just understand.
Near sits there for an hour or two, occasionally saying something. Eventually he peels himself off the chair, says his goodbyes, and his feet touch the floor. He turns, five padded footsteps take him to the door –
- and behind him, in the bed, Matt coughs.