Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note.

Characters: Matsuda (Light)

Genre: Angst

A/N: Some slash if you want it to be, but it's up to you.


For the hundredth time since That Day, Matsuda awoke with a shout.

Panting, he sat stock-straight in his bed, eyes huge, his heart pounding in his ears as he tried to get some control of himself with little success. It had been years, years, and still he could see it as if it was happening right in front of him. In fact, when he closed his eyes, it was all he did see. Flashes of it like nightmares, which he didn't think was fair because he wasn't even asleep. But when he did sleep, it was worse. It was worse because his mind, apparently in an effort to give him some new material, twisted the memory, added whatever case he was currently working, adding L, who should have been dead when it happened. Adding whatever scary movie he had just seen. Anything it could do to make an already horrifying memory even worse.

For the hundredth time since That Day, Matsuda let the tears go, knowing from experience that trying to hold them in just made him unstable for the rest of the day. He didn't need another day not at the top of his game. He was in charge of a small team, now, mostly thanks to his experience gained in the very thing that now made him like this. He had to let it out now, or it would just happen later in the day when he least expected it. Sometimes he still saw it, almost as clearly as a hallucination. Still saw the blood where it bloomed from the man- barely more than a child- that he had fired upon. Not that he ever really forgot. Posttraumatic Stress was a bitch.

His face sank into his hands and he let himself weep.

Through his agony, as his thin shoulders shook and as he curled in on himself, he wondered if he'd ever, ever stop being like this. How did Mogi do it? Aizawa? Why weren't they reduced to shuddering masses of useless, worthless... why was he the only one that, years later, was still this pathetic creature in the fetal position because of one night he couldn't get out off of a loop in his head?

He had been the only one who never doubted Light. That was why. That, more than anything, was the reason he was who he was today. Maybe he could have born it if he hadn't trusted Light so completely, in all ways, not just in relation to Kira. He had told him secrets, had long conversations with him, told him his problems and listened to what he had believed were Light's. He had shook his hand... hugged the man! He had hugged Kira... had his arms around the evilest, most dangerous serial killer of all time. Ever. In the history of the world, no single man had directly killed as many people as Light had.

And what made it all the worse, what haunted him, what he still couldn't get over, was the obsessive disbelief that someone so incredible could have done something so horrible. How could this person he had respected so much turn out to be Kira? How could someone so... mind-blowingly incredible, so smart, so beautiful, so (apparently) gentle... be that monster?

Matsuda still didn't even know where he stood on Kira.

But if Kira was Light... surely, Light must have known what he was doing. He always did. And he had made the world better for the innocent, which is what the police tried to do all the time. Crime went down by seventy percent. So... was he right? Did the ends justify the means? Could someone like Light be wrong? And, if Kira was good, did that make L evil for trying to stop him?

Matsuda shook his head hard, making his ears ring, and ran his fingers through his bedraggled hair. He couldn't let himself go through this again. He did this every morning. Doubt, confusion, guilt, and, ultimately, plain hurt, because Light had been his friend.

But he hadn't been, Matsuda reminded himself for the millionth time. None of it had been real. Not a word, not a smile. Every pleasant conversation they had ever had- Light had been thinking stupid Matsuda, or had just been sitting there being glad that Matsuda was too dumb to pose any kind of a threat at all.

He was- he knew that. Too naive. Not that he'd ever make that mistake again, of course, which, in turn, had made him a better cop. He had never fallen for a trick or a trap even once in his four years in a leadership position.

But, dammit, it hurt.

Matsuda's tears finally began to slow, but he still had that feeling. The way he had felt every single day since the day he had killed Light.

Cold.

Empty.

Hollowed out.

And that was all.

He rubbed his face and forced himself out of bed for yet another day of... nothing.