So I failed to update quickly. I finished the majority of this chapter shortly after uploading the previous one... but the last scene was extremely, extremely difficult for me to write. It took quite a bit of debating as to whether or not I even wanted to include it, but it's... going to be important regarding the romance side of the story. -coughcough- I'll leave it at that until you read it.
Sorry if some of the usernames aren't underlined; the fanfiction'dot'net editor is being stupid at me.
yvonna: Erm... hopefully updates will start coming quickly again now that I'm past this chapter. I tend to stall and procrastinate on difficult chapters Dx
Wydra-and-MashumelloKage: Don't worry, I haven't left! I've worked much too hard on this story to ever abandon it! I might take a while on the chapters sometimes, but rest assured that it will never be abandoned. Aaaaah I wish I could find some way to include them, but because of the timeline this is on it'd be rather difficult :( B's already dead at this point, and Mello and Near and Matt are safely tucked away at the orphanage. They're all quite prominent in my Mellow Out series, though; I had to have something with them since this project didn't include them! You're quite welcome, and thank you for reviewing :D
randomgurl: Here's your update :D A little late, but rest assured that no matter how long I take to update, I always will update!
waterpeach4: I haven't read it, actually, but yeah, I've been asked that before. It was a crazy coincidence that I was informed of in another review, and it's ended up tying into how she chose her name in the first place in my OCs' histories xD I'm positive she will get a chance to speak with Ryuk... I couldn't pass up that sort of opportunity. I'll have to figure out exactly when, but it's going to have to happen at some point. Hehe, thanks! I do my best to keep the other characters as in character as I can; I really respect Ohba's skills in characterization. He's been a major influence on me in that area, and I'd feel I was insulting him if I didn't give my all in getting his characters as in-character as I possibly could.
xxyangxx2006: I'm glad you've enjoyed it so far :D I'd like to advise you not to read the original, though, unless you'd really like an idea of just how horribly I used to suck at this sort of thing xD I did leave it up so people could read over it and offer suggestions if they wished to, though, so it's entirely up to you.
lonewolfgirl-sademo588: Thanks! ... and I hope you don't mind if I take that suggestion to heart. I'll credit you for it entirely xD I agree that would be an amazing opener.
fezzesandbowtiesarecool: First and foremost, I love your penname :) Second, thanks! :D It's definitely going to be continued, and definitely finished. I've put too much work into this one to discontinue it at any point.
Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note, and the opening line of this chapter is also credited to lonewolfgirl-sademo588, because that suggestion was just far too amusing to turn down.
Warnings: Errrr you may kill me?
Quoteyfier:
"Hmm." He tucked his hands behind his head, frowning thoughtfully. "He strikes me as a bit of a loony himself, honestly. Al may not have been quite on that level, but at least all his marbles were still in place. I'm not against him, but I'm still wary of him. Though honestly that incident with the tire iron could be to blame, in which case I pity the poor bloke and hope we don't get sued or something for brain damaging the world's greatest detective…"
"Just add it to your list of preexisting felonies. And from working with him, I believe his head is on pretty straight. He's a little eccentric, but it's also his first time working in person with anyone aside from Watari." Don only sighed in response. "Stop being crabby. After hitting him over the head with a tire iron and planting cameras all over his hotel rooms, we should count ourselves lucky he hasn't had us all detained."
"YOU WHAT?" Don and Pat yelled in unison.
Katherine flinched. Disbelief, suspicion, anger—she suspected the two of them to cycle through all of these as she explained when and how she had retrieved her own death note, why she had decided to keep the murderous thing. Disbelief, of course, would be the first, if only for the fact that the two of them—Pat particularly—were still in disbelief that these notebooks of death existed.
After a silent moment, Pat blinked, and spoke uncertainly, reiterating his previous outburst. "You have one… of what, exactly?"
"A death note."
"And why have we never heard about this before?" And of course, it was Don who jumped immediately to suspicion. "You've had a way to save us all from being killed by Kira and you haven't bothered to say a damn thing about it?"
"You wouldn't have believed me until now. And you wouldn't have let me prove it was a death note. None of you, especially not Al, would have let me kill anyone, and I wouldn't have wanted to anyway."
"You're supposed to be able to see the Shinigami attached to it, though…" Pat looked from Katherine to a bit behind her, a bit off to the side, as though he wondered if he might catch a glimpse of some spook hovering around her. "If you touch the notebook. Then wouldn't we have just had to do that?"
"Well, that's the thing, really…" All she could do was tell it from the beginning. "Was a few years back, you were off in Dublin for a week or two for some mad sort of heist," she said to Pat. "I was at the house in Trim by myself that morning, guess Don had spent the night in some sleazy motel." She received an eye roll for this from the accused party, but went on without pause. "I went out to check the mail, found a few days' worth of it stuffed into the mailbox. I spotted something in the front garden while I was taking it in and just went over to see what it was. It looked like just a plain black notebook, maybe someone's address book. I picked it up and took it inside with the mail and looked at it a bit closer. The words 'death note' were on the front cover in white letters. I opened it and found names written inside of it. Only a few. Between the title on the front of the thing and the names inside it, I was a little suspicious. I looked up the names on the internet and it turned out that the few names I found, the people had died of heart attacks.
"I dropped it in my room after that and stayed in the sitting room and tried to put it away from my mind with a little TV and ended up dozing off. I woke up and found a monster hovering next to me. It told me the notebook belonged to the King of Death, but that it was mine since I had picked it up. I could kill with it or save lives with it, or I could give it up. I don't know why I kept it." She looked down at her knees. "Maybe I thought I could use it to get rid of the bastard that was framing Al with all those murders. Maybe…" The parents she had never known, that had abandoned her at infancy flashed in her mind, and she pushed them out immediately. That had indeed been one thought on her mind then. "I don't know. I just know that I did keep it, and I spent the past couple years trying to convince myself that the 'death god' I met had just been a weird dream."
"So…" Pat looked a little apprehensive, "it's… not here now, right? The… god-thing." Katherine shook her head.
"Neither of them?" She looked over at Don. "The messenger or the 'King?'"
Again, she shook her head. "Apparently the King never really leaves their realm. He just sends out others to do errands for him when necessary. The Shinigami running the errand just dropped the King's notebook. I guess that one would have ended up being my Shinigami, but he got the death sentence for losing the notebook in the first place."
"And," Don went on, "the only difference from Kira's notebook would be its ability to save lives?"
"Well, from the Shinigami side, yeah. But on the human side, there's also the benefit that anyone who touches it can see any Shinigami in our world. There aren't that many of them. But there's definitely one following Light. I think it's a little more than coincidence that the main suspect of the Kira case has a Shinigami following him around making sarcastic comments on a regular basis about how Light is Kira." She sighed. "Problem being that the testimony of a Shinigami probably wouldn't hold up in court."
"So I guess the Shinigami doesn't realize anyone but Light can see it, right?" Pat said.
"Actually…" She laughed, humorlessly, nervously. "He and Light might both know."
It really wasn't much of a surprise that Don and Pat both looked horrorstruck. Had she thought ahead at all, about the fact that she might have to explain all of this to them one day in the future, perhaps before the Kira case was even over, then she might have never done it in the first place. But as it was, it made Light a little more vulnerable, that he knew at least one person that he couldn't affect with his death note was working against him, a person that could see and hear his Shinigami—a person without a name.
"For fuck's sake—what the—what were you thinkin'? You—for the love of—dammit, I need another beer…"
"Have mine." Katherine sat forward in her armchair and held out her own bottle before Don could take more than a couple steps toward the kitchen. "I don't think I could stomach anything other than water right now." It was snatched from her hand a moment later, and set on the coffee table quite hard as Don sat down on the sofa again, a hand covering his face. "Can I explain or are you just going to—?"
"What good did you think it would do us for Kira to know that you know who he is?"
"And you're just going to," she grumbled, sinking back into her armchair.
"You do realize he kills criminals." He was glaring around his fingers now. "Con artists. Identity thieves. Burglars. I'm sure you know the type." The hand left his face to pick up the bottle from the table now, and Katherine took the opportunity to speak when he was taking a drink.
"I—I wanted to make him get a bit reckless. Slip up. Get desperate because he knew someone he couldn't kill was working against him. We'd already looked at Yagami as a suspect, and when I saw the Shinigami, it was the only thing I could think of."
"We'd already looked at Yagami," Don repeated slowly, setting the bottle down, "so you already knew he was at genius level IQ. Did you really think he was going to fight recklessness with more recklessness?"
"What about the Lind L. Tailor incident?" she said—even she knew it was a weak attempt at justification. "And killing the FBI agents? If he had left them alone, odds are that all the agents would have reported back with nothing unusual. It proves that he's capable of being a little rash occasionally. Especially when he thinks he's being threatened. But he can't kill me, so I thought I might be able to distract him into thinking of ways to kill me and he might let his guard down again enough to give us another clue—"
"And you conveniently forgot that you weren't working alone in trying to get rid of Kira?" That cut into her like a knife, and her eyes averted to her knees immediately. "You didn't consider he might use others if he couldn't kill you? Like, oh, I don't know, maybe Al?" She flinched, feeling the knife stab that time. "Of course, Kira couldn't kill any of us, he didn't know anything about us. He didn't know you weren't working alone—until you mentioned that you were working for the most wanted serial murder suspect in all of Ireland, right?" The knife twisted this way and that, and she cringed, but didn't respond. She had already admitted that it was her fault, already said just that, in those words exactly, and there was hardly anything else she could do.
Don sighed when she failed to reply, and asked in equal exasperation, "So where's the bloody notebook right now, anyway?"
It was as though things weren't already bad enough for him. Unable to bring herself to look at him, she stared out the window, eyes closed. "I… I don't have it."
Silence rang around the room for a moment, broken by a heavy sigh across the room. "Why not?" Don asked levelly, though his patience was obviously not far from breaking. Katherine knew what he could be like when he was angry. A few times she had witnessed it, and only once had she been at the receiving end of it. She could only hope that this wouldn't turn into the second time.
"I didn't trust myself with it. Especially after Al… I—I knew if I had a means to kill Light, I'd do it, and then he'd never get what he deserved. The Kira investigation would keep going until it hit a dead end, and then it would go cold. Just like the bastard that framed Al. Light doesn't deserve the easy way out."
"So you gave up the notebook, I take it?"
"N… not exactly."
"Then where is it?" he asked again.
Just a glance at him told Katherine that he was already growing impatient. The point of no return had been reached. She could really only dig herself deeper into this hole now; there was no chance of climbing back out. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and said, "L has it." She continued over the swear she heard at the other side of the room. "I didn't want to bring it back here to show off. For one, I was tempted enough to kill Light right there in the hotel. For another, I was planning on telling you about everything tonight, and I know I wouldn't have been the only one tempted to get rid of Light the easy way. L is too determined to catch Kira for himself to kill him. He's really the only person we can trust with it."
"You can trust some detective that would probably have us all thrown in prison if it weren't for the Kira case better than us, then, yeah?"
"Don…"
"Then why're ya even still here?"
"Look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn't have killed Light if I'd given you the bloody book," she said, looking over at him finally. "I know you would have. You know you would have. That's the only reason I didn't bring it here, that's the only reason I left it with—"
"Yeah, with L. Why don't you just go crawl back to him and his task force? Not like you lot have any use for us now that our mastermind is gone, is it?"
"'You lot?' Do I look like a cop to you?"
"Not really, but it's obvious you trust them more than you do us—"
"I never said—!"
"But why wouldn't you? We've only been like family for eight bleedin' years, after all—"
"You know what?" she yelled over him, standing from her chair. "I think I'd rather go back to them and be accused of being Kira than this."
"Then go on!" he yelled back, gesturing towards the door. "No one's feckin' stoppin' ya, go run back to your investigation team and see if they'll want you back when you can't even be a link between our side and theirs. Though with how much you seem to trust L, I guess maybe—"
Something slammed in the living room, on the coffee table, a fist that wasn't either of theirs, and Pat stood at the doorway between the sitting room and the kitchen a moment later. Katherine had nearly forgotten he was there, silent as he had been through everything. He certainly didn't look particularly thrilled, particularly happy with the turn their discussion had taken, fists clenched at his sides and jaw set. No…. Not Pat. Pat didn't get angry. He was their humor, their comic relief when things got too serious, when things got like this… but was there really any possibility of laughing this away? Don looked as though he had been shocked out of anger himself, and Katherine was frozen where she stood, waiting for the silence, the stillness to be broken.
"P…Pat, mate—?"
"No—" Pat looked between them, shook his head. "No. I don't want to hear a bloody word from you two," he said, voice gradually rising, "and no one's going anywhere, so sit down!" he finished in a yell; Katherine nearly fell back into her chair in surprise. Sighing, he crossed his arms, looking away from them both, eyes on his feet. "Is this what it's going to be like without Al around? We know this's what Kira wants, yeah? To break us apart so he doesn't have as much to worry about. And you two're just pushing it right along, aren't ya? W—we don't—dammit, if we do this, we won't be anything. We need each other, we don't have anyone else. Al's not here to hold us together anymore, so we're going to have to do it ourselves. You both need to just… just get over yourselves. I don't care whose fecking fault it is and neither should you two. It happened, and it's done. We can't bring him back, but we can at least try to stick together for long enough to give Kira what he bloody well deserves.
"I'm…" Pat shook his head, and Katherine's eyes went straight to her knees when he finally looked up. "I'm going out. Don't know where, I'll call after a bit. If you two haven't sorted this out when I get back, then I'm done with you both."
A moment later, the front door slammed behind Katherine's chair. The two of them remained silent for quite some time, long enough to hear a taxi slow down in front of the little suburban house and drive off after a moment. It wasn't a minute later when Katherine stood and walked swiftly to the hallway, to the room that had been hers when she had been living here, and closed the door behind her.
Sure, she could reconcile with Don. There was no doubt about that in her mind. It just wasn't going to be possible for her that very moment, given she hardly felt capable of speaking. Face in her hands, she leaned back against the door. Al would have been able to fix all of this. There wasn't a single doubt in it; it was an inarguable fact. But Al wasn't there. Al was the reason for it, and he would never be there to fix it again. It was hitting her like a backhand across the jaw now, harder than ever. Al was gone. Gone, not coming back. She couldn't bring herself to even think of the "d" word right now.
Ears pounding, heart a throbbing lump in her throat, she slid down the door, wrapped her arms around her knees and declined her head. Her next breath came out as a strangled sob. This wasn't how she had planned for any of this to go; she almost wanted to go back to the hotel rather than face any of this for another moment. Though there were but a few hours left until sunrise, though the night had been near finished when she arrived, it was still turning into quite a long night rather quickly.
Somehow, Katherine had managed to make it to her bed by the time a few knocks came to her door, though she was by no means asleep. It might have been an hour later, maybe a half an hour—she wasn't sure. Nevertheless, she quieted instantly, wiping her eyes. She gave no sign that she had heard the knocker, but the door opened without her consent anyway. There was no need for her to look up; Pat hadn't gotten back yet, so it could have only been one person.
"Pat's in Aoyama. Said he'll be back an hour or so after daylight." Katherine tried to swallow the lump in her throat down, sniffed a little rather than breathe through her mouth and risk dissolving back into sobbing. Talking still felt beyond her. It was going to have to happen now, however; footsteps approached her bed slowly, and the bed sunk behind where she lay with her back to the door. "So… how're you doing?"
It was so ridiculous, so awkward an icebreaker that Katherine nearly scoffed—it only came out as another sob, however. Not wanting to leave it at that, she shot a glare over her shoulder at him. "D—d'you really need to ask?" She despised how choked her voice sounded, though she wasn't surprised by it.
Don did give a humorless laugh at this, though not scornful at all. "Suppose not," he said quietly. "I guess I should know what this is like."
Katherine sat up and turned around to look at him. He was only staring at the wall, mostly unmoving. "That so?" she said quietly. "Why?"
"I know how I felt when I found me mum dead in the alley behind Mac's. I don't imagine it's much different for you right now." He ran a hand back through his hair, and it landed heavily on the bed. With a sigh, he added quietly, "It's definitely not for me."
Frowning, Katherine moved along the bed and sat behind him. She sighed. "This is familiar." He glanced back at her, and she smiled wryly. "You make me cry and I have to comfort you. And I don't think I'm experiencing any déjà vu."
Another humorless laugh. "You don't have to. You could always just tell me how much of an arse I am and kick me out."
"Yet you know I won't." He was silent. Sighing, Katherine sat up straighter and looped her arms around his shoulders, resting her forehead against one. "I guess I still like you too much."
"Yeah…"
The silence, a not entirely comfortable one, rang around them for a few moments, drowning out the sounds of a few cars passing by on the suburban street in front of their postage stamp of a front lawn. There was no doubt in its reasoning. Katherine knew what was coming of this quiet, and sighed inwardly. Of course, part of her had expected this, even this soon. Getting angry about how soon it was wouldn't be of any help; this talk was going to happen eventually, and better sooner than later. When Don finally sighed, she braced herself for it.
"Only 'like,' eh?"
Katherine rolled her eyes at the smirk in his voice. "Maybe. Maybe not. It doesn't exactly matter anymore, does it?" He remained silent. "My opinion on this is still the same. Al's…" She closed her eyes tightly and took a deep breath. The d-word simply refused to come out, to even remain in her mind for more than a brief moment. "Al's gone. But I wasn't as worried about him finding out as I was about… I felt guilty for hiding it from him. I'd still feel guilty."
"It's not like he doesn't know now anyway, is it?"
"That doesn't exactly make me any more comfortable," she mumbled, letting him go and sitting back on the bed. Her arms crossed, she looked pointedly away when he glanced over his shoulder at her. "It'd be like taking advantage of the fact that he isn't here. I can't do that. That would be worse than lying to his face about it, to me."
To her surprise, Don laughed under his breath. "I figured that's what you'd say. Just had to give it a shot while you were here." He lay back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, smiling half-heartedly. "It's like you said earlier, you don't want many more days off if you're only getting them when someone dies." She flinched slightly at the word. "I figured I should bring it up in case I'm next or something."
"No one's going to be next," Katherine said, shaking her head. She pulled bent her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, leaning forward to rest her head against them. Smirking, she added, "And it's not like you have any tact, you could have just texted me on a random Tuesday or something."
"Yeah? I guess I still like you too much," he mocked, grinning back.
"Funny."
"Well, in all seriousness, I'll still be here if you change your mind. Kira isn't going to get any of us. You've got no name. Pat and I may as well haven't, given no one knew anything about who Al worked with on a regular basis. Aside from L," he added, rolling his eyes.
"Problem with the letter?"
"Hmm." He tucked his hands behind his head, frowning thoughtfully. "He strikes me as a bit of a loony himself, honestly. Al may not have been quite on that level, but at least all his marbles were still in place. I'm not against him, but I'm still wary of him. Though honestly that incident with the tire iron could be to blame, in which case I pity the poor bloke and hope we don't get sued or something for brain damaging the world's greatest detective…"
"Just add it to your list of preexisting felonies. And from working with him, I believe his head is on pretty straight. He's a little eccentric, but it's also his first time working in person with anyone aside from Watari." Don only sighed in response. "Stop being crabby. After hitting him over the head with a tire iron and planting cameras all over his hotel rooms, we should count ourselves lucky he hasn't had us all detained."
"Yeah, yeah…" Katherine rolled her eyes this time. "I'll get used to it, I guess. But if he tries anything, I might end up doing Kira a favor and murdering him myself."
"'Tries anything'?" she asked, quirking an eyebrow. "Like?"
"Like say he gets the wrong impression from you entrusting that notebook—"
"Really?" Katherine laughed at the increasingly impatient look upon his face. "Is the poor wittle Casanova jealous—"
"No, I'm just—"
"—of a social recluse that probably doesn't even know what a 'wrong impression' is?" He was nearly scowling now; he closed his eyes and let out an annoyed sigh that was almost a growl. Still laughing, she reached over and patted his head. "I somehow doubt you have anything to worry about."
Don didn't open his eyes, and his expression didn't lighten at all. "I suppose we'll see."
Yes, seriously. You may learn a bit more about this past relationship in later chapters, so I'm not blabbing everything right now... unless you force it out of me.
The word of the day is "pleasedon'tkillme?D'x." And on this hopefully nonlethal bombshell, I'm off to hide under my desk.