Chapter 1

It had all been for nothing.

That was the stark reality which Matsuda, which all of them-though the others had all refused to open their eyes and see it-had found themselves in, as if waking up from a nightmare, after the Kira case had ended. He'd seen Light as the Devil, in that moment when he'd filled him with all the bullets in his gun, when he'd stood above him prepared to fire the final shot, before the others had stopped him. But what had the Devil been convicted for, long ago in the garden, if not helping Humanity?

Light, too, had only wanted to help Humanity. To bring real justice to the world. To make a place where the innocent and good could live without fear. But he'd stopped him. He'd killed him. And he'd damned them all. Light had only tried to bring them back into the garden, and now the gates were barred to them forever.

An hour. An hour after the announcement of Kira's end was all it took before everything which Light had built had come crumbling down. Before the gates of Hell had burst open and the monsters which had been hiding in the shadows beyond Light's piercing gaze had re-emerged. All of it, everything, was pointless.

Perhaps what Light had done was evil, to some degree, but couldn't the same be said of most Gods? Did cleansing the wicked not involve at least some death? And the 'innocents' which had stood in Kira's way? They'd made their choice.

How many had died in the old stories? In the great flood? The twelve plagues? The rain of fire? Truly, Light had been merciful in only targeting those who had failed or opposed him.

What had they done?

That was a question which Matsuda had asked himself time and again in the three following years which he'd continued to work as an officer of the law before he'd resigned. Though resigning hadn't been his choice, entirely. Frustrated beyond belief that the world had come right back to rotting, that they'd once more been forced into close working proximity with 'L'-and Near was still a sassy little brat-he'd snapped and told the child on the other end of the line, along with the rest of the task force, that Kira had been closer to justice than they would ever be. Aizawa, of course, had made him hand in his badge on the spot.

Losing his job, and essentially being blacklisted from ever working in law enforcement again, wasn't really a problem. He hadn't needed to work in the first place, not really. A perk of coming from a rich background that he'd never thought he'd end up using.

The seven years since that day had seen him 'using' it a lot; not long after his fall out with the others, Matsuda had embarked on entertaining something of an idea. A way to try again. To make the right choice, this time. To help Kira instead of standing in his way. Death Notes. Shinigami. They were real. So, what else was? Magic? The Occult? And could any of it be used to go back?

By no means a genius in the way that Light, or even the original L, had been Matsuda had none the less thrown himself into all of the studying that he could. Every grimoire, tome and spell book he could hunt down and get his hands on from Wicca to Voodoo and everything in between. Rare books. Old, rare books. Lots of travel. All in all, the expenses were really starting to add up, but he'd finally gotten close.

A knock on the front door pulled him out of the text he'd been struggling to translate for the better part of the last three months-the passage which, if what he'd been lead to believe was true, was real and worked, would prove precisely what he wanted-and the former officer scowled. Rising from the desk in his office: a room which, before this, had seen little use and now saw more than any other, he proceeded down the stairs and opened the door. Squinting against the afternoon sun, it took him a moment to decern who was standing in front of him.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Ide and Mogi both blinked in surprise at the surly greeting but didn't immediately respond. "If you're here because of L, you can tell him to sit on his sharpest toy and spin. Now, kindly get off my porch."

His attempt to slam the door in their faces was thwarted when Mogi jammed his foot into the door. With no sympathy for the larger man's wince he glared around the doorframe at them.

"Matsuda," Ide finally said, features pulled into a genuine expression of concern. "We're worried about you."

"Worried about me?" he repeated, a very clear edge to his voice. "Seven years, and now you're worried about me?"

"We've been worried about you," Ide insisted, "but you've been traveling so much that we've never been able to catch you."

"And you expect me to believe you've kept trying for this long? Even I'm not that much of an idiot."

"Near was going to send some of his agents but we convinced him to send us instead." Mogi rumbled.

"To what? I've done nothing wrong. Certainly not enough so to warrant the attention of the police."

"The violent cult leader Near's agents have pictures of you meeting with in Romania has."

Fuck. "I bought something off of him, that's all." Reluctantly, he stepped aside and opened the door wide enough for them to enter. "I'll show it to you if you're really that interested. Even let you take pictures for Near." He turned and started back up the stairs, leaving his unwanted visitors to close the door behind them. "It's just a book."

Exchanging a brief glance, no doubt on account of being well aware of what some things that were 'just a book' could do, they followed him up.

The numerous full bookshelves clogging his office spaced seemed to take them both off guards, judging by the looks on their faces. "Well," Ide pulled down a book at random and flipping through it, "you've certainly been busy."

"It's a hobby." Grumbled all but under his breath.

More like an obsession, really, but they didn't need to know that.

"Kodoku?"

"It doesn't work."

Ide's eyebrows vanished into his hairline. "You've tried?"

"I want to know what else is real. Put that back!" Snatching the book out of his former colleague's hands, he shoved it into its proper place. "The book is over here; I'm still trying to translate the passage in question and make sure it says what I need it to."

The tome was small and obviously very old, sitting on top of the wooden desk. The lettering was in a language which neither recognized and appeared to have been etched with something sharp into a material that wasn't parchment.

"Take pictures if that's what Near wants, just be careful when you touch it. Regardless of whether or not the whole 'written by the Devil on Human skin' thing is true, the pages are delicate."

"Are you sure you should be messing with this?" Ide now looked quite disturbed. Mogi had begun taking pictures. "If any of this is real…"

"Some of it was." And it hadn't turned out particularly well, though he'd always managed to get himself out of the situation somehow. "The risk doesn't matter to me. Everything will be worth it if the passage I'm almost finished translating is really what I've been told."

"What are you trying to do, exactly?" Matsuda refused to answer. Clearly beginning to become frustrated, Ide sighed. "Can we see the translation?"

"No." He said. "I've spent months, and gone through multiple sources, to decipher that out of Hebrew. I'm not going to give Near help he doesn't need." Neither of them looked happy with his answer, but he was well passed the point of caring. "If you wouldn't mind, I'm busy."

"Busy?" but when he wouldn't answer the pair seemed to finally give up their efforts to question him and finished with their pictures. Exiting the premises without making another effort to speak to him.

Blind. It was sad, to a degree, that they couldn't see the truth. That they'd have to be sacrificed for a better world. But, he supposed, knowing that they willfully refused to be saved would make doing what he had to later that much easier.

Resuming his place at the desk and picking up the book he'd been using in an effort to translate the passage for examination, Matsuda resumed work and for many more hours the only sound was the scratching of his pen on paper until, finally, he'd finished.

Seven years. Seven years of searching and he'd finally found it. They'd destroyed the world's last chance at salvation when they'd slaughtered Kira in that warehouse, he'd realized that much long ago. Alongside the notion that he'd be willing to give up anything he had to for a second chance.

Even if it meant asking the Devil himself to turn back the stars; erase all that had been so that history could be rewritten. Precisely when he'd wind up and how much he could do he didn't know, but even if he could only change his final decision and follow Light's order to 'shoot them' it would be worth it.

Pronouncing the unfamiliar lettering wasn't the easiest feat but stubbornness and painstaking care appeared to be a winning combination as, when the passage came to an end, his vision was obscured in a blinding flash of light.