December 22, 2007 - 4:50 PM: Yagami Household

Mother screams. Something, someone, is in the room with us, and it is so terrifying, it turns Mother into a statue. I know there's something there because Mary is talking to it, and it gives me a chance to do something. Crawling toward my brother, I cradle Light's bloodied crown in my arms. "Light…" my voice is weak and my throat hurts. I check his pulse. "Light," I call again, but he doesn't stir. My fingers become sticky with his blood, and my words are wasted. Mary's attention suddenly returns to Light. She glares at me.

"Drop him."

I don't.

Mary pries me away from Light, and I fight against her to no avail. She wrenches at my wrist so hard it feels like my arm is breaking, and she jerks me toward Mother where I stumble and fall to my knees.

"Stay where you are, both of you!"

I was in a van with a blonde foreigner threatening me while Hitomi was lying broken on the floor. I was useless, someone who's only value is as a bargaining chip. I want to die. I want to stop being such a burden to my family. I hate that I exist.

Mary

The ropes I'd brought with me come in handy. Call it paranoia, but I don't want Light waking up and pulling some kind of trick out of his proverbial hat. Better that he's bound. Yagami Sachi rouses herself from her stupor of terror.

"My son is Kira?" she asks. Not to me. To Ryuk. He smiles his horrible smile as she argues at him. "That's impossible. Kira is the reason my husband died. Light wouldn't kill his own father. He adored his father!"

I conduct a quick search of Yagami Light's body to make sure he isn't harboring any more hidden mechanisms. I managed to find a small switch-blade in the pocket of his dress-suit. Interesting. Propping Yagami Light onto a chair, I tie him with the knots I'd practiced. It is a scene I've prepared for in my mind countless times.

"Ms. Mary-" Yagami Sachi starts to walk over.

I quickly pull up my knife. "One more move. I dare you! Go back to where you were standing!"

That does the trick. I finish my work and collapse into the couch where I had been sitting. What do I do now?

Yagami Sayu, the poor girl, is laying at her mother's feet, a sobbing heap of snot and tears. Just watching her makes my heart ache with pity, but Yagami Light is Kira. Yagami Light is the reason Jae Song is dead. Yagami Light ruined my life.

What do I do now?

Yagami Sachi has herself worked up in a storm of anger and she is concentrating all of it, her years of pent-up misery, at Ryuk. Ryuk doesn't say anything in response. He laughs and laughs and laughs, cackling like some sort of evil demon. The dry rasp of his laughter stirred my hatred. Light murdered Jae Song, but the original source of all my misery is looming in front of me. A bug-eyed demon who is enjoying every aspect of this farce. He is laughing at Yagami Sachi's indignation, laughing at her suffering. At our suffering

My vision blurs as I start to shake with anger. Yagami Light may have been a deluded, arrogant psychopath, but he only became what he is today by the machinations of this laughing piece of shit.

"What's so funny, demon?"

Ryuk looks at me. He's ignored Yagami Sachi, but he doesn't ignore me. "Demon?" Ryuk tilts his head. His grin is that of a shark with its rows and rows of pointed teeth. One eyeball appraises me with interest while the other lazes in another direction. He waits for me to respond.

I am besides myself with fury. "Is this all a joke to you? Do you enjoy our misery?"

The demon straightens its hunched form, and its skeletal wings open up to span half the living room with its shadow. I am suddenly reminded of the fact that I am looking at a ten-foot tall monster whose sole occupation is to take human lives.

"Yes," Ryuk said, his tone threatening. "I am a demon. A Death God, one of many. I exist to create death. Tell me. What's wrong with my finding a little enjoyment with what I do, little girl?"

My vision doubles. The black shadow blurs before my eyes before coming back into focus. There is nothing I wished to see more at that moment than to have this monster beg at my feet in pain like Yagami Sayu had been. I want to see it suffer. I want to tear off its fingers, one by one as it cries for mercy. I want- an impotent rage fills me. There's nothing I can do, and I know it. He knows it. I cannot touch him. I cannot kill him. There are only two ways to kill a Death God, and I am capable of orchestrating neither.

"You understand, don't you little girl?" Ryuk retracts his wings and he slouches once more. "I am invincible and immortal as far as you're concerned. I'd suggest you direct your energies toward more useful avenues." He gestures at Yagami Light. "I'm sure you would love to see him scream. Hey. Why don't you show me what that's like. I'll enjoy it with you."

I suddenly feel very tired. Hurting Light had been cathartic. His life is in my hands, and my victory feels empty. The one who I want to see suffer now is beyond my reach. I think it says something about the human condition - the fact that I never seem to be satisfied when I achieve a goal. Making friends. Getting perfect grades. Earning a life of wealth and privilege. There's always something more that I want. I'd pretty much done what I'd set out to do, and it's not enough. I want more. I've always wanted more. I will always want more, I think, until the day I am dead.

"Is my son really Kira?" Yagami Sachi asks me.

I look at her and nod. "He is," I say quietly, my spirit deflated.

She is silent, seeming to finally accept the conclusion. "How did you know?"

I glance briefly at Ryuk. He is watching me like I was some species of exotic bird. The anger rises and falls in a short span of seconds. It knows itself to be futile. Sayu is sniffing and hiccupping but her sobbing has come to an end. Everyone is paying attention to me, the stranger. The woman who'd broken into the Yagami household to wreak revenge upon their pride and joy. I glance at Light. He is still unconscious.

An idea comes to my head. My name. What is my true name as it appears to a Death God's eyes? Is it Mary Oldsman? Or is it my other name? Both?

"What is my name, Ryuk?" I ask.

Ryuk chuckles. "I don't do handouts. You'll have to give me something first. Think of it as a trade. Why don't you start by telling me what I want to hear, little girl? What is your secret?"

I glare at the monster. Once it knows, I'd lose its interest. I can tell. That's just the type of character Ryuk had been in Death Note, and it's the type of character I've been seeing before me.

"It'd be no fun if I were to just tell you outright, don't you think?" I answer and feel momentarily proud of myself for having said what I said.

Ryuk is silent for a moment, his mouth is agape and he looks deceptively like an idiot as he thinks on my response. Finally, he nods. "Very true. How do you plan on proceeding then?"

I am unsure. It's the same question I've been asking myself.

What do I do now? I don't know. That's my honest answer, but I wasn't about to say that aloud. I ignore Ryuk's question, just as he'd ignored Yagami Sachi's tirade earlier.
"Mrs. Yagami," I gesture to the seat across from the couch where Light had been while we were talking. The apple he'd peeled is still sitting on the table between us. "Please sit. Yagami Sayu." The girl looks up at me. She is lost. I don't know how else to describe her. "Can you move?"

The girl nods, but doesn't speak. She sniffs and wipes her nose with her hand.

"I want you to sit beside your mother and make yourself comfortable," I command. "If you're worried about Yagami Light, well, there's nothing you can do. I don't trust either of you to be near a phone. You might call the police on me y'know?"

Yagami Sachi nods. "What do you want Ms. Mary?" she asks. "Why do you think my son is Kira?"

The question brings a smile to my lips. "Because he killed Ray Penbar and his fiance, Naomi Misora." I am surprised that I remembered the names of these two characters. Then again, that had been my favorite arc. Naomi Misora's death immortalized Death Note to me. Yagami Sachi doesn't know what I am talking about, but Ryuk does. He stares at me.

"How could you possibly know that?" He asks. He is curious and interested. I can see him wanting to know. Like an itch that he has to have scratched. Ah. Here was a way to torture him, petty though it might be.

I shrug. "I was okay with Light killing L. I guess I'm getting what I deserve for thinking like that. Do I want to stop Kira? Not really. Objectively, the world - human society at large - is better to have had him than not. Just not for me. I lost what was most important to me. Now that I think about it, there are so many others who've probably had to endure the same, and I feel sorry for them now that I have to go through it myself."

I am being listened to so I decide to keep speaking.

"Sometimes the rest of humanity doesn't seem to really matter when our own lives are at stake. Does that make me selfish? Was it reasonable to expect that I could have done something about Kira when he first came about? Is it wrong for me to be hurting him now?"

I look to my audience for answers, and it is Sayu who responds. "How do you know he's Kira?" she whispers.

The same question. Over and over again. I decide not to answer it for the umpteenth time

"There are multiple Death Notes. Yagami Light here knows where every single one of them is. I don't remember very well, but I think one of them is in the hands of a man named Mikami Teru. Isn't that right, Yagami Light?"

The man stirs. I'd noticed his breathing patterns change. He is awake now. Awake and aware of his situation. The chair on which he is bound holds him there. I am lucky, in hindsight, that his concussion lasted long enough for me to secure him onto a chair.

Light groans. "Who are you? What is your relationship to L?"

Great questions. Questions which revealed nothing, admitted to nothing, but asked for everything.

I laugh. "Your Death God, Ryuk, basically admitted to your being Kira already when he asked me how I knew. Admit to your crimes, Yagami Light, and maybe I won't kill you."

That's a lie, of course. I'm still going to kill him, but there's no way he could know that.

"Light," Yagami Sachi, his mother, addresses him. "I see the Death God too. What's going on?"

Yagami Light flashes his eyes at Ryuk who stares back at him with a blank stare. "I haven't seen you in years, Ryuk, ever since you helped us with the Kira investigation," Light says. "Why are you here now? What do you achieve by taking me down?"

"Yagami Light!" I scream, grabbing the piece of paper on which he'd written my name. I shove it in his face. "Tell me what you see?! Keep lying to my face! Do it! I'll write your name on the other side!"

Light stares at the piece of paper with my death written neatly across its surface, and says nothing.

I smile brusquely, take out my pen from my breast pocket, and start to write his name.

"Alright," Light says in a moment of desperation. "I'm Kira. Is that what you want to hear?"

I stop writing. "I don't like how you said it as if I coerced you into saying it. No. I want you to admit to the full truth and leave us, beyond doubt, with the knowledge that you are Kira. Tell your family, your mother and your sister, what you've done. Tell them how you orchestrated the death of your own father, Yagami Souichiro, in order to hide your identity. Tell them!"

I was screaming and I didn't care. I bet I looked like a lunatic and that in a legal court, Yagami Light would come out the innocent victor. There isn't going to be a legal court, though. Yagami Light is going to die, and I was going to kill him by the time I leave this house no matter what he says or does. It is all I have left in this messed up life that I'd carved for myself, and I clung to it like a drowning woman might cling to a log in the middle of the ocean.

A/N: Hiya. It's been almost three years since I've touched this story. Inspiration is a fickle thing! At this rate, I'll be done with this story when I'm an old man. Hahaha!