Dragging You Down With Me

12th day of Light's confinement

"Ryuzaki," said Aizawa.

Ryuzaki ignored him.

"Ryuzaki" Aizawa said again.

Ryuzaki stayed curled on the bed with his back to the door, eyes staring dully at the papers stacked in front of his face. He didn't move.

"Ryuzaki." Aizawa was starting to sound irritated.

Ryuzaki couldn't bring himself to care. And if he moved, the stacks of paper around him might fall over. Then they'd need to be organized again.

"Ryuzaki!" Aizawa shouted, striding over and grabbing him by the shoulder, forcefully trying to roll him over. "Get up already!"

The stacks of papers fell over, white sheets scattering over the comforter.

He sat up slowly, turned his head to look at Aizawa, one hand coming up to rest over his opposite shoulder where the man had grabbed him. "That hurt, you know," he said.

Aizawa's fists were clenched, his teeth gritted, eyes burning. "Then maybe you should have answered instead of ignoring me!"

"What do you want, Aizawa-san?" Ryuzaki said. "Now we have to organize the documents again."

"It's been twelve days, and the killings haven't started up again," Aizawa grit out. "How long is this going to go on?!"

"I don't know," Ryuzaki said.

"You can't just lie there and not do anything!" Aizawa shouted. "You're the one heading this investigation! You can't just shirk your duties!"

Ryuzaki turned his back to the man, started reorganizing the stack of papers that had scattered into the space he'd been lying in. "Why don't you ask Light-kun to lead the investigation?"

"What?!"

"It's the same thing," Ryuzaki said, straightening the stack of documents and then lying back down again, knees pulled up to his chest. "We're both just as likely to be Kira, and his deductive abilities are on par with mine, if not even better."

Aizawa stuttered behind him, incensed. "And what, you're using that as a cop-out?!"

"I'm not copping out of anything," Ryuzaki said, staring dully at the pile of papers in front of his face. "I should be locked up, too. It's not fair that Light's the only one of us who's locked in a cell, is it?"

"I thought you were the one who was supposed to be leading this investigation!"

"But I may have been leading the investigation because I was Kira," Ryuzaki said. "You're the one who's copping-out here, Aizawa, looking to me for direction. You're an adult, aren't you?" He hugged his legs tighter to his chest. "You're older than me, even."

There was a long pause. "I thought Light was more likely to be Kira than you," Aizawa said finally, voice cold, "but now I'm not so sure anymore."

"You shouldn't be," Ryuzaki said.

Aizawa stormed out of the room, and Ryuzaki stayed curled there on the bed, staring at the stack of documents.

The pile was crooked, but he didn't have the energy to move to straighten it.

"How do you think it feels to be accused of being Kira?" Light had asked.

"It feels terrible," Ryuzaki had answered.

(And as always, he was right.)

Misa Amane was aware that she was hallucinating, but she didn't really mind. The hallucinations were pretty, sometimes amusing, and were a lot better than just staring at darkness all the time.

Sometimes the hallucinations were as simple as colorful flashing lights. Sometimes, though, they were more complex; floating skulls, fluttering butterflies, flower gardens, ornate Gothic buildings. She'd started seeing a robotic cat whenever her stalker would talk to her with his computerized voice, and it would chase around a mechanical mouse as it interrogated her about Kira. She found it amusing the way its ears would twitch whenever she said that she didn't know anything, and she hoped that her stalker was just as frustrated as the robotic cat she was hallucinating.

Sometimes she saw Light, too; she always liked when that happened. She knew he wasn't actually there, but seeing his image still made her feel calmer. His carefully styled hair, his warm brown eyes, his perfectly pressed slacks, collared shirt, and designer jacket, his perfectly-tied tie (he always dressed so well; appearances were incredibly important to him, and she loved that about him).

The image would smile at her before it faded away, and she would feel a surge of determination; she wasn't going to let her stalker break her! She'd heard somewhere that solitary confinement was a form of torture, after all. But no matter how she was tortured, or for how long, she would not break—and Light, when he finally got her out of there, would be so proud.

Light deserved only the best, and she was determined to be best; she would show him how strong she was, that she was worthy to be his girlfriend and stay by his side for the rest of their lives.

And so when her stalker stopped talking to her—she wished he'd interrogate her again, just to have someone to talk to, even if it was just the computerized voice of stupid stalker who was keeping her from Light and who appeared as a robot cat in her mind and who was a criminal and she hoped Kira would one day kill—she started singing.

She sang sad songs, and love songs, and sad love songs, and thought that on the bright side, when Light got her out of there, she'd be a better singer for all the practice she'd gotten.

There was still the stalker's accomplice, though, who was the one who let her out to go to the bathroom, and fed her with a spoon. It was pretty degrading, if she were honest, but she appreciated that they weren't starving her and hadn't completely forgotten about her, and she could get the accomplice to talk, a little bit. She knew he couldn't be her actual stalker because his voice sounded old, and he was far too polite—her actual stalker was really rude.

"You seem like a pretty nice person, you know," she told him, between bites. "Why are you helping Stalker-san? You seem like you're better than that."

"It's complicated," the man said. "I really am sorry about all this…"

"Why can't you do something about it, then?"

"I'm sorry…"

"All you do is apologize," she sighed. "Words are no good without actions to back them up, you know!"

The man hadn't answered; he was finicky in his responses like that. Almost as bad as Stalker-san.

(Her stalker made her really angry, sometimes, but she couldn't completely hate him; he hadn't done anything to her aside from lock her up, after all. He really just seemed like a very pitiable person, who felt he had to kidnap someone he liked just to get their attention, and had to come up with a stupid excuse about Kira in order to talk to them. He really should have just written her fanmail, or approached her and asked for an autograph.)

It was pretty sad, she thought, that this was what her life was at the moment. But she comforted herself with the knowledge that this would all be over soon, and then the memories would just seem like a bad dream, and life would go on as normal with her and Light and she would be happy. Light made her so incredibly happy.

She thought longingly of the way he smiled, the way he had kissed her, the way he sighed when he thought nobody was looking, the way his eyes lit up, the way his brow pinched up when she confused him.

She loved that she could confuse him like that; that he had such a hard time understanding how someone could love him so much, and the way he'd never tried to use her as other guys had. He didn't actually love her, yet, she knew, but that was one of the things that was so attractive about him; he wasn't like other guys: he didn't love her for her body, or for her celebrity status. He actually cared about the feelings and emotions in relationships. That was why he kept trying to push her away—he was concerned that her affections weren't real, and he didn't want to enter into a relationship with a girl he didn't love, because then he'd be using her, and he was above that.

But he cared about people's feelings, too, which was why he'd kissed her—because he knew it would make her happy—and why he'd gone out with all those other girls he didn't care about before he'd met her—because he knew it would make them happy. He didn't want to cause anyone undue pain.

And that's why she knew that once she got him to fall in love with her, they'd be perfect together. Because she wasn't like other girls—she didn't want to be with him just because he was attractive and so smart and talented that he was practically a celebrity—she'd seen and recognized the way that his 'friends' he'd been walking around with in Aoyama had treated him, the way the girls at his college had regarded him, and the way he'd acted in turn—and she didn't care about what status he could giver her. She could understand him better than any other girl could, and she loved him not because he was the famous Light Yagami but because he was him.

He was an actor, just like she was, and he was disconnected from others by his superior status, just like she was; but in each other she knew that they would find something real. She would show him that—unlike all those other girls—she wasn't faking an interest him, and hers wasn't a passing fancy. She would show him how genuine and forever-lasting her love for him was, and then he wouldn't have any choice but to love her back.

And she knew, even though he didn't love her yet, that he would still get her out of there—because she knew that he was the kind of nice, genuine person who wouldn't sit idly when somebody he knew be kidnapped, and because she knew that he was intelligent enough to pull off anything. He would definitely solve the case of what had happened to her and then get her out of there.

And it was because she knew that he was working to get her out that she knew she could survive anything.

She watched the hallucinations of bright, sunset-colored butterflies alight on surprisingly detailed lilies of the valley and purple snapdragons, and started singing another love song.

Her stalker had been nice enough to tell her that she could sing as much as she wanted without any consequences, but she still hoped he was awed by the fact that, even after she'd been bound there for countless days, she was still able to smile.

She doubted that the same could be said for her stalker.

Ryuzaki could hear Aizawa yelling in the other room.

"Amane is smiling for some reason, the Chief is wearing himself ragged, Light is crying, and Matsuda hasn't been back for days! Does Ryuzaki not care at all?!"

Ryuzaki couldn't make out the words of the response, but he recognized Watari's low, comforting tones.

"That's it!" Aizawa shouted. "I'm fed up with this shit! I'm informing the Chief of what's going on!"

There was the low, droning murmur of Watari's voice again. Probably advising Aizawa to be careful and wait till he's calmed down, Ryuzaki thought. It's fully within his jurisdiction to inform the Yagami-san, after all, but he shouldn't take his anger out on him, especially not when Yagami-san has been in such a stressed state. The fallout of conversation suffused with such high tensions and volatile personalities isn't likely to do either of them any good, and may just make the situation worse all-around.

But despite those thoughts, Ryuzaki did not move from his place curled up on the bed.

Several minutes later, there was the sound of Watari's footsteps coming into the bedroom, the clink of a ceramic dish on the bedside table. Given that there had been no more yelling from Aizawa, it seemed that Watari had succeeded in calming him down.

He always has been good at that kind of thing.

"I brought you some tapioca pudding," Watari said.

"I'm not interested," Ryuzaki muttered, closing his eyes and hugging his legs closer to him.

There was a pause, and then there was the sound of stacks of papers being moved, the slight tip of the mattress as Watari sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Ryuzaki…" he ventured.

Ryuzaki just curled up tighter.

Watari sighed almost inaudibly. For several minutes they both remained as they were, silent.

Ryuzaki knew that Watari knew from experience that, when he was like this, there was nothing he could he could say that would help—aside from that another promising case had turned up.

But not even that would help in this case, would it?

Finally the mattress rose slightly as Watari stood up. "Try to eat a little bit, if you can, Ryuzaki," he said, and then the sound of his footsteps retreated from the room.

I don't feel like it, Ryuzaki thought, and didn't move except to press his face harder against his knees.

He couldn't shake the feeling that he'd lost.

The migraines had, at first, made Light feel like he wanted to die—that anything would have been better than the pain. And after the painkillers had kicked in and the migraine had subsided he had felt helpless, unable to do anything but wait for the pain to return, and he had thought again that it would be better if they just executed him. He did not want to be alive just to suffer, and the overwhelming weight of hopelessness made it hard to breathe.

Maybe I should give up, he thought. This is the end… I can't do anything… I'm going to die like this… why did I ask to be detained again?! All it did was secure Ryuzaki's victory… he agreed to this because it's the perfect way to cripple me… he probably found something to pin me down with in that conversation about Kira…

He was furious, and if his ankles and wrists hadn't been cuffed he would have thrown the cot across the cell and punched the concrete wall, even if it would have likely broken his fingers.

But just as quickly as the fury and hopelessness overtook him it faded, because suddenly the answer was there and it was so obvious he wanted to laugh.

No, he thought, I'm securing my own victory. By asking to be detained and by my willingness to undergo this suffering, I've shown my commitment to the case. The more I suffer, the less I look like Kira.

It's in my advantage to suffer here. Because the more Ryuzaki is forced to ignore my suffering for the sake of the case, the more he looks like he's the one who's Kira. If the pressure becomes great enough, he might break; he's not used to dealing with people directly and facing their anger and suspicion, and he's not used to being wrong, or to having this much difficulty with his cases. He'll be painfully aware of the fact that he's lost, and the longer he waits and nothing happens the more he loses—but there's no course of action for him, either. He can't let us out at this point. He has no choice but to continue digging himself deeper.

That's why he asked me what my feelings on Kira are, and why he admitted everything he did—he's honestly scared of that possibility that he's Kira, or at least that everyone will come to believe that he's Kira. But he doesn't want to die, and was trying to gage my reaction not to try to determine whether or not I'm Kira, but to try to determine how I will regard him if it turns out that he is Kira, or if the rest of the Task Force decides that he is. He wanted to know if he could count on me to possibly defend him.

And, as long as there's even the slightest suspicion that I may actually be Kira, it would be in my best interests to do so, wouldn't it? As long as the case isn't 100% conclusive, it's in Ryuzaki and my's best interests to band together. In fact, we can't afford to be enemies—everything we could use against each other could be turned back against us just as fast, and we may end up condemning ourselves to the death row instead.

But that requires that we are truly on the same level of suspicion, or near enough to it. Despite my accusations, I doubt the Task Force immediately turned on him completely. It's much easier—safer and more comfortable—for them to keep believing that I'm Kira, to keep looking to Ryuzaki to lead the investigation. They're all cowards, after all; it's better for them to look to Ryuzaki for direction, because that way if the investigation fails it will all fall onto him. They won't want to take responsibility for the case themselves, and so they won't believe that he's really Kira.

If I'm going to get out of here without being executed, then I need to make them as suspicious of Ryuzaki as possible. I need him to break under the pressure.

So when the migraine returned and turned the world around him into an throbbing, inflamed and infected wound, Light let himself succumb to the mind-numbing pain that made him feel like he wanted to die, tears of agony trailing unbidden down his cheeks, clinging to sanity with the thought that he was dragging Ryuzaki down with him.

Author Notes

It has been well-documented that deprivation of sight can cause visual hallucinations. These are different from psychotic hallucinations in that the people who have them are aware that they are hallucinations, and they are not usually disturbing in nature/do not have any correlation with a disturbed mental state in individuals affected. They range from simple flashes of light to intricate and detailed images, and are thought to be caused from neurons firing in the visual cortex, due to the hyper-sensitive state caused by significantly impaired visual circumstances (whether from being blindfolded, as in studies, or from loss of sight for medical reasons, such as in the elderly). The visuals I mentioned here for Misa are not out of line from those described in the study "Visual Hallucinations During Prolonged Blindfolding in Sighted Subjects" by Merabet et al (2004).

If you've heard any rumors about being in darkness for a certain period of time causing blindness, they are false. When Misa is unblindfolded, it will take her eyes an hour or a few to adjust to light again, and the visual hallucinations can last up to a few hours after sight has been returned, but then her eyesight will return to normal.

It has been proposed by members of the scientific community that solitary confinement for a period of over 15 days constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Despite this, though, lengthy solitary confinements are fairly commonly used on criminals by governments...

The effects of prolonged solitary confinement have been pretty well documented and are pretty alarming, even from what little I've read, though are less so when the solitary confinement is voluntary (such as in Fox's reality game show Solitary).