Disclaimer: shalalalalalalalallamalalala~ I don't own Death Note. I'm merely borrowing some characters.

A/N: after a long wait…it's finally here. thank you to all my faithful readers, I know I'm pushing my luck with making you guys wait so long ;;

THANK YOU: Ayaken, Zedin, jjwitdaheydiddydiddy, MacyL-kun, Anonnymus, spock-of-the-fridge and Friendly stalker!!! ^________________________________________^


The Black Cat

There was a moment of pause in the air, a feeling of disbelief and horror. At first he didn't think he heard right, like he was going crazy all of a sudden. What else could it be? Light's hold on the man below him stayed firm, albeit shaky, and he forced his stare away from L and to the shinigami on the other side of the room. Ryuk, with his usual slouched posture and grotesquely long arms dangling from his shoulders, didn't look as taunting as Light expected him to be for this occasion. He actually looked just as intrigued as he would if he found a talking apple begging for mercy.

"Oooh?" he breathed in that grainy voice, "What's this? He can see me?"

The young man's brow wrinkled in confusion, something wasn't right about this. Light whipped his head around to L, and staring into his face hard, realized L was just pretending he knew what Light was doing, when he was trying to get the shinigami to go away. He was playing along with the information he let out. "L, you-"

"That's your shinigami's name, am I right?" he said quietly, like the calm after the storm of screams, "I have met Rem, but that was not the shinigami that was attached to the Death Note you had in the beginning."

Ah. So L was doing his share of cogitating in his isolation. "Is that what you think?"

"Yes." He said firmly, "That is what I believe."

He can't know that Rem has died…can he? That's impossible, Light thought to himself, there's no way he can know that shinigamis can die without consulting Rem, Misa or myself. And I know for sure that Rem would never tell him anything like that, it would be pointless, and Misa would never dream of it. He also knows that you can't see a shinigami unless you physically touch the notebook it's attached to, but does he know that if you haven't touched the Death Note in 490 days that the shinigami can no longer be visible to you? So many questions… "Rem," Light said tersely, "Take Ryuk and leave."

"Huh?" Ryuk said stupidly, "Light, Rem isn't here-"

"Are you bluffing, Yagami-kun?" L chuckled, his thin chest heaving, "I know that there is only one."

"Is that right?"

L's chuckles were more like hard breathes being forced out of his lungs, "Maybe if you are a little nicer to me, then I will tell Yagami-kun more."

"Like letting you go? You know I can't do that."

"Well," he said calmly, "getting off of me is a kind start, and supplying me with a few books would be a nice treat."

Light wasn't sure of how to take this drastic change in mood. Only a few minutes ago L was thrashing his body around in a fit and now he was gently asking for a book to read. Was he supposed to be compliant and go along with it or stay cautious and refuse to get him what he wanted? "I don't know, L." he said, and saw the man's jaw tighten, "With the way you've been treating me, I'm not sure if I want to do even that."

L didn't say anything, as if he was trying with his entire his being to stay docile. He was dead tired, maddeningly frustrated, and so angry that it felt like he could burst. But he couldn't do anything yet. Not yet.

The young man saw the fire blazing in L's dark eyes, which thankfully weren't directed at him anymore, and felt an enormous amount of heat radiating off of him. For a crazy moment Light thought that the man was going to catch fire, but he quickly realized it was because his body heat was being carried by the blood seeping through the layers of cloth and onto him. He gasped when he looked down on himself, as there was small dark area crawling up his right inner thigh from sitting on top of one of the wounds on L's body, and jumped off immediately. "Shit-"

When L had fallen out the window, the table he landed on splintered horribly and although the table cloth protected him for the most part, he had sloppily crawled out of the mess due to his impaired sight. There was a long scratch all along his left side and tiny slivers of wood in his hands and ankles Light had to extract. He should have thought better of holding him hold down with his own body, because there were more bruises than anything riddled along the thin body and he was only causing him more physical pain.

Light scrambled around the room again to fetch the necessary equipment to treat him. Meanwhile, L lazily lifted his head to look at himself, assessed that his left side was nearly covered in his own blood, and lay back down.

Ryuk turned his head when he heard the door knob rattle softly, and continued staring until Light irritably told him to stop fooling around and fetch him the gauze. He blinked and looked over to the humans. The shinigami kicked the stray roll of gauze over to the young man, and thought how strange of a situation Light Yagami had put himself in, when he had first used the Death Note, to when he erased that last name.

--

"Isn't this the third time he's tried to escape?"

"The fourth, actually."

Ryuk held up his hand and counted off his fingers in sync with his memories, "Really? When-"

"There was a small hole in the wall before, and he ripped out the wooden planks around it to crawl out of." He shook his head in a gesture as he held up his cell phone to his ear. "It wasn't one of his best plans, because it opens to the outside thirty feet in the air with nothing to hold on to. So he gave up after he got a peek at what was behind the wall and waited for me to cover it up again."

"Heh, my favorite was the time he jumped you from behind and knocked you out for a couple minutes. That was hilarious."

"Humph." Light huffed with a small smile, "Especially the part when he tripped over himself and fell all the way down the stairs. I woke up to him trying to untangle the mess he got wrapped in. Where did that cord and stuff come from anyway, Ryuk?"

"From you." He said bluntly, "It was all the things you used to drag the bed and everything in there. I never saw so much water come out of one human before."

He glared at him for a moment, "You could have helped."

"Nah."

They approached the apartment complex where Light lived, and Ryuk, who was actually paying attention to the human's emotions right then, saw an immediate change in face. If there was a word to describe it bluntly, the way the shadows darkened on his features and the shine in his eye dim, the word would have to be sullen. He didn't realize how two-sided the man really was until that moment.

"Why so serious, Light?"

He blatantly ignored him, refusing to be caught seemingly talking to the air. He continued to his floor in silence, and Ryuk couldn't help but snicker to himself. The young man almost threw his key into the lock.

"Light, what's wrong?" Misa asked quietly.

The young man pushed past her as he slipped his shoes off at the front door, not bothering to say anything in return. Enough has happened that night that he didn't want to bother with the lies he had yet to tell her in consolation for his tardy arrival, so he didn't bother. In a way he felt that he already did his part in keeping her happy, by getting rid of any traces of L's blood on his clothes that got transferred as he was bandaging him up.

He retreated to the bedroom, and Misa watched his back disappear behind the door. She stood in the middle of the living room with her hands clasped firmly before her. Her lips quivered at his blatant neglect, and she slowly sat down on the couch, thinking hard. There was something she desperately wanted to talk to him about, but she knew better than to talk to him when he was in a foul mood, as he had been for the past two weeks. He hardly even looked at her anymore. Hot tears began to well up in her eyes as she forced them back. If he was too busy to listen to her, then she had no choice but to act on her own.

She had noticed that he was acting amiss, and she knew that it was probably from stress, but she didn't know how directly it related to the Death Note. Literally. Misa had absent mindedly been flipping through the pages a few days ago as she reminisced about Rem, and wanted to see the kinds of names she had written down before she crumbled.

She couldn't help but notice that the last name had been erased.

--

"Who are you?" L said to the cat beside him. "What are you?"

The cat continued to preen herself, paying no heed to the man's questions. L heard the rattling clearly this time, as he heard it before. The doorknob had been shaking ever since the young Yagami had left, softly, barely noticeable until the room was completely silent. It echoed around the small cage, and L could only observe from the bed, as he was still tied down. He was on his own.

There were a lot of things he couldn't explain, and a lot of things that happened in this room that slightly frightened him at first. The creaking floorboards weren't always because of the wind. The cat suddenly looked up from her prudent grooming, and meowed loudly.

L felt the cold air brush along his face, along his hair, and almost snuggle up to him. He didn't know what to make of it, and just kept still. This was the first time that all these strange things happened in one night. It was usually one weird event at a time, so the creaking and the rattling and the cold, cold air all seemed to be some kind of warning, a premonition for an unseen disaster. The man slowly sat up in his bed, heeding the pain in his side, and stared openly at the doorknob. He wanted to get out more than anything, even if he couldn't get in contact with all of his old resources of power, just being outside and free was enough.

After mulling over the off chance that Light had left the door unlocked, he hobbled over the door in his oversized sweater and pajama pants. He stared at the little knob to freedom tremble and shake in its fixed place on the door. L cautiously lifted his arm, and wrapped his hand around it and twisted.

--

The first thing Light saw in the morning was Misa's sorrowful eyes. He held in his surprise and grunted a "good morning" as he rolled over and heaved himself off the bed. Misa watched as he retreated to the master bathroom.

She didn't have a wink of sleep that night. The memories of three years ago rushed up to her in torrents, painfully reminding her why Light never seemed to give her all of his attention. Contrary to popular belief, she wasn't stupid, only naïve.

Naïve because she kept hoping that he might love her the way she'd always dreamed he would, but her hopes of that ever happening dwindled away over the long months. And toward the end of last year, all her imaginary indulgences drained out. Light simply had no interest in romancing her in any way, even just to go along with her advances a little. Like all of a sudden celibacy was preferable to what she had to offer. That thought rattled in her self confidence like a rusted blade, and her bottom lip trembled for no one to see.

It was all his fault. He was the one that held Light back. Even if Light himself didn't realize it when the man was alive, she saw how he had acted around him. She of all people knows how it is when one is in love.

Her heart ached in her chest, partly for herself, in her misfortune of falling head over heels for a man that couldn't return her feelings. Another part was for Light, who couldn't see what was right in front of him while he was the happiest she had ever seen him, and got rid of the person he cared about most. The other part was for Ryuzaki. As much as she held a grudge against him, the guilt over the part she played in his downfall swelled in her throat. She could have intervened, gone one step out of place, and L would have been spared, and Light's heart saved. But she didn't, because she wanted him out of the picture, so that she could have her man to herself. Oh, and so they didn't have to be convicted as the first and second Kiras.

The sound of the showerhead sighing in the bathroom put her mind in a buzz. When did she first notice Light acting differently when L was still alive? Was it when they fought while she and Light were on their "date"? No… it was before that. It's more like, when did she realize it? It began before Misa met L, and she noticed it a few days after the handcuffs went on. One of the most clever men she has ever met, the one who has kept the both of them alive and hidden from the world for this long, didn't know how badly he had fallen for the person he was handcuffed to. Maybe he was able to stay ignorant about it for so long because they were always within reach. So he didn't have the opportunity to miss him, and mull over him on lonely nights.

Then how much pain did his heart have to endure when he fully realized what he had done?

Misa knew now, that it was Ryuzaki he was thinking about when he couldn't look at her. It was Ryuzaki he was remembering when he would ignore her pleading arms. It all made sense, missing pieces were recovered, and she was left not knowing who to cry for.

How unfortunate! How tragic! What kind of mess was she involved in? Misa hid her face in the blankets, wanting to disappear before Light came out of the bathroom. Did he really miss Ryuzaki so much that he erased the man's name in the Death Note? In the strange hope that he might come back from his unmarked grave? Was she doomed to a one-sided commitment? She hated to admit it, but she pitied him so much that it physically hurt.

Light wordlessly exited the steaming room and glanced at the little mound of blankets. He vaguely thought that it looked how L was while he was still in the early stages of being resurrected. He headed out to the living room. "I'll get breakfast ready if you're not feeling well." He called over his shoulder.

He didn't even make it to the kitchen when he spotted the Death Note on the coffee table, innocently open to for the ceiling to behold. He walked over to it, and noticed that it was opened to the last page Rem had written on. He snapped it shut, and cautiously looked over to the bedroom door. Misa was still hidden in the blanket, so he breathed a sigh of relief. Why would Ryuk leave it out like that again? They needed to have another talk when he got him alone.

--

Misa took a day off from modeling and rescheduled her sessions for another time. She wasn't feeling up to pretending to be happy, so she felt it better this way.

Rummaging through her vast closet, she pulled on a black pinstripe dress with ruffled black lace lining the bottom seams that ended right above her knees. A gray corset went over her midsection and she embroidered herself with more accents of crosses and symbols. She painted her face lavishly to emphasize her sad eyes and emotionless expression, and slipped on her three inch heel clogs. The more exaggerated she dressed, the less people noticed her miserable aura, and distracted by her gothic Lolita countenance.

She took her time walking the streets of Tokyo, and for once, ignored the excited chatters from some groups of passerby who recognized her. She would make it up to them later. Her destination was the cemetery, yet again. And this time, there were going to be no distractions. The gates came into view, and the little black cat was sitting beside the gates as it was the last time she tried to visit. Its fur stood on end, but she brushed past it. She had enough layers of clothing to withstand a few little scratches.

The tall headstones stood silent, and it didn't take long for her to see that there were a couple other visitors at the cemetery. One was way on the other side, and looked like an elderly woman. The other visitor, although she didn't want to judge, looked like a hobo. She never came to Ryuzaki's grave before, but when she asked Light how the funeral was when he had returned three years ago, he said that the cross was a fitting stone for him. She had no idea what he meant, but she knew that it was a blank cross.

Misa searched the entire cemetery for a headstone of that description, but she couldn't find it anywhere. Frustrated, she decided to ask around. "Excuse me," she said softly, and the elder woman turned to face her, "I'm a little lost."

"What do you need, young miss?" she said kindly.

"I was wondering if you might know where a cross shaped headstone could be? It wouldn't have name on it."

She nodded slowly, "Yes, I remember I saw it a few times. Always wondered who would have such a lonely grave." Her weathered eyes peered over the rows of carved marble and stone. "I believe it's somewhere up there, but the last time I saw it there was some weeds creeping up the stone bit by bit." She pointed in the general direction of the hobo, "Over there, but I imagine that the cross would be covered in those vines."

"Oh, maybe that's why I couldn't find it." Misa said wistfully, "Thank you so much, granny."

The elder woman merely smiled and turned back to her husband's grave, brushing away the tiniest speck of dust off the headstone. Misa couldn't help but feel a little sorry for her.

As she headed toward the direction she was guided to, she immediately spotted what she was looking for. There was no nameless cross any longer. A tangle of vines replaced it entirely, and a ragged man stood in front of it. Misa didn't know what to make of this hobo-looking person, but she was uneasy as she made her way toward him.

He was wearing a large stained white sweater that did little to hide how skinny he was, and his hood was pulled low over his face. What covered his legs were simply loose cotton pants that looked comfortable enough to sleep in, and most strange of all, he was barefoot.

She stood quietly next to him as she gazed at the mess of vines. Now that she saw it up close, she could see the stone beneath the wiry plants. She saw the hooded man slightly turn his head in her direction, but then seemed to think better of it, and went back to staring at the vines.

Misa expected her visit to involve more contemplating on her part, but now there was this man doing the same, and she couldn't help but burn in curiosity. Did he even know who was buried here?

"Strange."

The young woman almost jumped at the whispered word. She didn't expect him to say anything, but looked over at him. "What do you mean?"

"A pack of seeds were dropped here last year. And after a long struggle, the grave keeper finally decided to leave it alone."

"How is that strange?"

"Hm?" he lifted his head. "Oh, I wasn't referring to that. I apologize for misleading you." He fell silent, forgetting to answer her question.

There was something weird with this man, and Misa suddenly didn't like how close she was standing to him. It would be rude to abruptly back up a few steps, so she stayed where she was and observed him at the corner of her eye. He was very skinny, and his voice was deep and raspy. Not so much of smokers rasp, but the kind when one begins speaking after staying mute for a long time. His shoulders were rounded, and he slouched like an old man who worked too much in his prime.

Ryuzaki used to stand like that, she thought listlessly. He would always hunch over like an old rice field worker, and would hold things like it was going to attack him at any moment. She always found it a little cute, because that was uniquely L. He was a nosey pervert who couldn't function without cameras watching everyone, so if someone were to sneakily pick his nose, Ryuzaki would know.

Maybe if Misa didn't remember that the man wasn't wearing any shoes, then this visit to the cemetery wouldn't have been as ominous. But she did. And it struck her as odd, how the man reminded her so much of Ryuzaki. Her eyes traveled up and down his body, from his colorless bare feet to his white hood. Her mouth felt dry.

If he was wearing a three-quarter sleeve white cotton shirt and a pair of oversized faded blue jeans instead of- No! It can't be…. Misa didn't know what to do. Was she panicking over nothing, and all of it was coincidence? That this man just reminded her of Ryuzaki because she was thinking about him earlier? She had to find out.

"Excuse me," she managed to force out.

The man slowly turned his head again, his face still hidden in shadow. She peered into the hood the best she could from where she stood, but she still couldn't see him.

"I'm sorry, but you remind me of someone I knew a long time ago." The tiniest tremble shook her sentence, but she went on. "May I ask what you're name is?"

He stayed silent. Misa waited for him to answer and almost leaned forward in her eagerness to be proven wrong in her suspicions. She was disappointed, however, when the man suddenly hitched in a swift breath and began edging away from her. She saw from his jerking movements that he was blind, with his arms held out to the side and hands reaching, or feeling for anything he might bump into.

She let out the breath she held in. He couldn't be Ryuzaki…stupid of her to even think it. And now she's off and frightened this poor blind man. Misa reached out to gently take his arm, "Sir, I'm sorry if I scared you, here let me help y-"

"Don't touch me!" he wheezed and suddenly his right arm swung to his midsection, as if it pained him to move too quickly. "Stay away!"

Misa was shocked at his behavior, and obediently backed off, a hurt expression on her face. "Ok…" Then as she saw one of his legs buckle beneath him, she went back to his aide as the man fell over, landing hard on the ground.

His hood slide back a couple inches, and he gasped in pain as sunlight hit his sensitive eyes. He covered them with his hand, while the other pulled the hood lower onto his face. That was enough for Misa to see his entire face, and the blood froze in her veins.


A/N: ouuuuuuuuu such drama! this is bound for disaster, i think.

also, i recieved a request from spock-of-the-fridge to let something good happen, and i think maybe i could back off from being a sadistic dramaqueen and give everyone a breather...but then it'd throw off the storyline :P but i'll sneak something in there, i promise ^_^

as always, reviews are well recieved and loved, so keep 'em coming!

-Zak