Chapter 11: Meltdown

AN: Sorry guys, after this chapter things might take longer because I need to start planning which parts will diverge from canon. In the manga the plot is a little dry until the part where Misa gets arrested, so it's tricky to write without being boring.

AN2: Rui has been dealing too well with things thus far, hasn't she? She's actually Queen of Repression. Well, her and L are Royals of Repression.

April 29, 2004

Rui tossed and turned all night. She was half-asleep, but she couldn't get into a comfortable position at all. She threw off the blankets, for she was too hot, then pulled them back over herself when she felt too cold. Her mind was racing with half-formed thoughts, her heart felt like it was going to vibrate right out of her chest, and she was starting to get a pounding headache.

This had been her usual sleeping pattern ever since she'd entered this world, but when she sat up, stumbling closer into wakefulness, she knew she'd reached her breaking point. The blood pounded in her ears and a vein throbbed at her temple. She couldn't stay here in this hotel room anymore, the room where she'd been confined in for the past 2 months. Yet, she couldn't leave, for fear of needlessly arousing Ryuzaki's paranoia.

Taking in a shaky breath, she closed her eyes tightly to try and forget where she was. A sense of claustrophobia overwhelmed her being and she balled her fists tightly, hugging her teddy bear close to her for comfort.

She'd tried, really she had. She'd tried to avoid facing the very-real possibility that she might never go home again, might never again see her mother, her brother, and the few friends she'd made, and just when they were getting closer, too. She missed the constant warm heat of her country, the familiar shapes of the cityscape she had grown up in. A tear slipped from her tightly shut lids as her heart began to ache. Huh, she'd never thought heartache could be literal.

She'd done her best to be strong. For the past 2 months, Ryuzaki had been gaslighting her. If you asked her what he did or said, she couldn't tell you, but she just knew he'd been doing it. She worried about Ryuzaki and his hair-trigger paranoia, and about Watari, whose loyalty to Ryuzaki came first. Ryuzaki had already proven that he didn't care that much about human lives compared to the need to assuage his paranoia. Ukita had been valuable. She was not. She was only a regular civilian girl with no training, no means of helping advance Ryuzaki's aim to defeat Kira. She did her best to keep him happy, but he was so blank-faced that she often had no idea she was doing anything wrong until he reacted. A choked sob escaped her despite her clenched jaw, and tremors began to wrack her crumpled frame. She really wanted to scream, but did not want to alert either of them.

The one insurance she'd had against the possibility of him choosing to sacrifice her had been her foreknowledge of canon events, but even that wasn't perfect. Who in their right minds would remember every single plot point to the letter when it'd been ten-ish years since she'd read the manga? If she'd known this would happen, she would gladly have read the books cover to cover at least ten times (or better yet, pack them in her luggage case before her trip). Her composure completely cracked as she realized there wasn't really anything to protect her – she was an unknown in this world, easy to get rid of if he wished it so, and she wouldn't see him coming until it was too late. Burying her face into her pillow, she sobbed as quietly as she could, ignoring the snot that was starting to hamper her breathing.

She had no one to talk to about this. No one else knew about the circumstances of her existence in this world, and no one would. That realization chilled her to the bone and she'd never felt as alone and abandoned as she did in that instant. Who was she? Was she still Rae Wong, 26-year-old Chinese girl? Ryuzaki had destroyed the last evidence of her old identity. Would that girl cease to exist if she could not return home? What if she forgot herself?

"Why are you crying?" a familiar, monotone voice asked. She choked on her own saliva and tears and whipped around to face the door, recoiling a little when she caught sight of the detective's hunched silhouette.

Oh, right, the surveillance cameras and bugs. He, the creeper he was, had probably been watching for a while. Can't a woman cry in peace?

She stared at him for a long moment, unsure of what to say, wanting to continue but not knowing how he would react. He, in turn, stared back at her with eyes stretched open so wide that whites surrounded his impenetrable irises, chewing on the tip of his thumb. She tensed as he shuffled closer into the room.

"You're… afraid of me," he observed calmly. No, duh!

She watched him with teary, unblinking eyes as he sauntered his way over to her, looming over her side of the bed. Peering at her face, he frowned visibly, then proceeded to wrap her in her blanket like a roll. What the hell did he think he was doing?

"Deep pressure therapy*. It will balance your autonomic nervous system so that you'll be calm and be better able to regulate your emotions," came the matter-of-fact reply to her unvoiced question. "I've used it before, myself." The detective frowned, biting his thumb as he considered her wrapped form.

What now? She thought uncharitably. At least annoyance was beginning to replace the cloud of fear, sadness and confusion that was affecting her senses.

Without any warning, he climbed up on the bed beside her and laid half his body weight on top of her. "Not enough pressure was applied," he said blandly. The nerve of this guy!

Something about this was niggling at her sleepy mind. A guy like him… She was sure that he would've been flustered, well, as much as he was able, at the sight of a hysterical crying jag like the one she was exhibiting. It was almost as if he had expected and planned for this scenario-

Oh, that bastard. He'd done this on purpose. Perhaps her perpetual outward serenity had worked against her. Perhaps she had said or done something to set off the hair-trigger alarm bells in his head. Whatever the case, he had seen the need to crack her open, to strip the equanimity from her social veneer, to study exactly what lay beneath.

"Yes, I had accounted for that, but not for its severity," he agreed, predicting her thought pattern again. He almost sounded remorseful. He didn't seem to be faking it, and him faking it would not fit his MO, either. He was a liar, there was no doubt, but he wasn't the kind of guy to bother with social niceties like false sympathy.

She thought back again to his reaction when Ukita had died. Ukita's death had unsettled him, which had in turn made him vulnerable to Aizawa's outcry. But he'd done it anyway. Her distress now affected him. But he'd done that to her anyway.

She'd been wrong; Ryuzaki didn't sacrifice people because he had no feelings. He sacrificed people in spite of his feelings. What had he seen – to cling only to his paranoia and his pride in solving cases? Had he nothing else in his life?

She didn't know what to think about him. On the one hand, she understood, to a less severe extent, the need to question everything in one's surroundings. It was probably worse for him because of the dangerous nature of his job, which mired him in the ugliest aspects of humanity. On the other hand, he really had no right to do this to her at all.

She glared at him poisonously, and then sighed again heavily. She really wanted to slap his face upside down, scream at him, cry some more and then get the hell out of dodge forever, but she knew also that trying to resist him was like kicking a concrete wall – your foot got broken and the wall remained intact. What to do?

You know what? She wasn't done crying. If he wanted to see her at her most vulnerable, she'd show him. She wasn't weak for crying; it was a good way of relieving stress so that she didn't end up like him. And if it made him all the more uncomfortable, well, he asked for it.

She could feel him watching wordlessly, whether in sick fascination or distress she didn't know, but she screamed and let the tears and snot run down her face as she cursed the world, cursed him, and cursed her circumstances. Why did they think she would like being here? What right did they have to transport her here and subject her to this indignity and this farce of a detective case? He was surprisingly warm and comforting on top of her, and she took what comfort she could get.

She didn't know how long her tantrum lasted, but finally her tears died down into involuntary sniffs, and he took something out from his back pocket. It turned out to be some chocolate which he unwrapped and held up to her lips.

"This'll help," he said. Was this guy serious? She considered resisting, for she had brushed her teeth, but was too tired, so she obligingly let him place it in her mouth. She took her time savoring its taste. It was surprisingly good, but she wasn't going to ask for another. They stared at each other in the darkness.

"If you want to help me, then tell me, truthfully for once, are you going to test me in such an emotionally damaging way again?" she demanded archly.

He propped his face on one of his arms as he considered her. She didn't know what he was thinking but she pressed her lips against each other, determined not to be the one to break the silence.

"…No," he replied, finally looking away. He wasn't lying this time either.

"In any case," he continued, "I thought you might like to know that a trust fund has been set aside for you in case Watari and I end up… incapacitated."

She stared at him incredulously as he continued to avoid her eyes. "Why-" she cut herself off, thinking. How should she proceed from here? He would've anticipated that his gaslighting would no longer work on her, which meant that it was unlikely he'd continue with them. Could she leave him and Watari? No, he would find her, and then he would never trust her again (not that he ever showed he did). Could she throw her lot in with Kira instead? No, Kira would kill her after.

Why was he testing her so intensively? He was afraid. No, she understood. He wanted to trust her, and was trying to find a reason not to. Why did he want to trust her?

"There are many types of monsters that scare me," Ryuzaki had said through his webcam, to the curiosity of the children in Wammy's Orphanage. "Lying monsters are a real nuisance: They are much more cunning than others. They pose as humans even though they have no understanding of the human heart; they eat even though they've never experienced hunger; they study even though they have no interest in academics; they seek friendship even though they do not know how to love. If I were to encounter such monsters, I would likely be eaten by them… because in truth, I am that monster."**

They seek friendship even though they do not know how to love.

"You are free to leave as soon as the Kira case is wrapped up. In the meantime, all necessary protection will be accorded you," Ryuzaki added. He still wasn't lying. Was he… trying to reassure her? That was oddly nice of him. The last vestiges of her fear towards him dissolved like sugar in a cup.

"Thank you, Ryuzaki," she finally said, trying for a gentler tone. He didn't respond, so she tried to nestle closer. That was okay, right?

He smelled warm, soft and clean, like the lavender-scented ultra soft softboy*** he most definitely wasn't. Watari must've used some good fabric softener. She leaned closer and boldly breathed in his scent, ignoring the weighty gaze on her that made her pulse speed up. What? Two could play at that game. If he didn't want her acting like a creeper, he shouldn't have set an example. In any case, he didn't move away so that must've meant he was okay with it.

His oddly-comforting warmth and weight eventually made her doze off.

*Deep pressure therapy: /blogs/news/a-complete-guide-to-deep-pressure-therapy-dpt#:~:text=Deep(DPT),sensory. It just seems like something that is both weird and efficient, like something L would do.

** Taken wholesale from Ryuzaki's monster speech in the OVA Relight 2: L's successors.

***I first came across this phrase from the Webtoon 'Freaking Romance' by Snailord. Best to put in as many real-world references as I can to make this story believable lol

LONGER AN: This emotional breakdown was long overdue. Both L and Rae are as bad as each other in terms of how easy it is to arouse their paranoia, and L definitely used that against Rae to test her.

About L:

I think L actually feels things deeply even though he keeps a calm façade. I mean, in canon we see that he needs to eat a lot of sugary foods the longer the investigation proceeds, he has to practice a combat sport, he bites his fingernails and he seems to slouch more in situations he perceives as more dangerous.

Perhaps I should go also into just how dark a character L is. Since young, he's been by himself and has been solving cases; what has he seen? Maybe drug trafficking rings, women and children forced into slavery and prostitution, lives destroyed because of unscrupulous conmen who steal retirement savings and leave the elderly destitute, corrupt government, etc. Maybe, some of these people he caught were rich enough to buy their way out of trouble, and that's why he's got enemies. He can't trust the law, he can't trust anyone. He only sees the dark side of life and doesn't interact with normal people, so he doesn't see the positive side of life. Even Watari himself… I don't think he's such a benign character. Watari was the one who put Misa under mild torture when they were trying to extract her confession, even if it was under L's instructions. Making a kid solve crimes, even if he is a genius? Cultivating more geniuses to take over L? Not providing therapy or something for L? There's something messed up there.

L is OOC here because if I'd written him truer to character, this would've turned out to be LxOC Stockholm Syndrome. Instead, I'm going to headcanon here that he does subconsciously want to bond with someone. After all, he never trusted Yotsuba!Light but ended up caring a little (just a little) for him because they were compatible intellectually. Here, Rae is even more innocent than Yotsuba!Light and already shows signs of wanting to connect with and understand him. How could he resist that?

I've rewritten this chapter like, 5 times because I didn't want too much toxicity in this story. What do you think?