Chapter Ten

"V? V, are you alright?" Quinn quietly said in English, opening the door and slipping into the room. He took one look at me on the carpet and was instantly at my side.

"What happened?" he asked, his monotone holding a glimmer of the rage that was still simmering within me. With strength that belied his skinny body, he hauled me up and onto the bed. For a fleeting moment I recoiled, remembering Ryuk, but the Shinigami had left no trace of his recent occupation.

"It was nothing," I murmured, allowing myself to be mothered. The urge to laugh rested like a weight on my chest, waiting for me to rescind control to madness once more.

Quinn looked at me sharply. "Was it like BB?" I choked on air. One look in my brother's worried, angry, terrified face made me want to cry again. He'd been the one to find me in BB's room, only ten at the time, so of course he would remember what had happened. His fingers lightly tapped my left temple, just a little too close to my eye. I flinched at the reminder.

"No. He didn't try anything. Things have just been . . . getting to me." Quinn did not look convinced but he knew my stubbornness as much as I knew his, especially when it came to revealing personal information. So he let it go and instead dragged an easel, brush and palette over to the bed. He forced the brush and palette into my hands and scrounged up a blank canvas from one of the dark, over-crowded corners of the room. I loved my room – it was small, dark green, and had no windows to let bleaching sunlight in and harm my paintings, it being on the right side of the hallway. Every surface, from my desk to my chair to my drawers to the end of my bed, was covered in all manner of art supplies – pens, pencils, paints, brushes, palettes. Easels and canvases leaned against walls that were covered in drawings, stuck there by bluetack.

"You need to tidy up," he muttered, more to himself than me, as he fixed the canvas in place.

"Yes, mum."

His lips twitched into an almost-smile. It disappeared just as quickly as it came. He pointed at the canvas. "Paint. Now." There was nothing demanding in the way he said it – Quinn had always had the curious ability to make any order sound like a very pleasant request that you would feel guilty to ignore. It was something to do with the way he tilted his head down and added a slight tremor to his voice.

"What should I paint?" I was drawing a blank. Well, not quite, but I couldn't very well paint a knife and not have Quinn jump to conclusions about Light and I's confrontation.

"Anything. Something for Sayu."

I hummed, and a fire burned on the canvas. Not the one of my dreams, but the housefire.

"Q, can you grab my red?"

The door opened for a third time and to my surprise it wasn't Quinn checking on me again, or even Light coming back with his kaleidoscope of fake emotions. Sayu peeked around the door, her eyes red and puffy. She swallowed thickly and said, "I wasn't sure you would be awake," in a hoarse voice.

I checked the silent clock on my wall and saw it was well past three in the morning. For the past five hours I'd been focused on the painting.

"Come on in," I said quietly. She closed the door behind her and sat down on the bed, pressing herself into my side. For a few minutes we sat in silence, Sayu watching my brush on the canvas, leaving blazing trails of vermillion, amber and aureolin.

I take it back. No matter how similar they are, Sayu is better company than Light.

She broke the melancholy silence. "What are you painting?" Her voice had a hitch in it, like she was trying to avoid breaking into tears again.

"Well . . ." How would she react? This was her house, on fire, mere hours after the actual event that she was only just beginning to understand the implications of. Still, the girl was intelligent enough to figure it out for herself, and lying would be an insult to her.

"It's of your house." She nodded, like she had expected as much. Another swallow. Her hands were shaking slightly.

"What – what are the lights?" She pointed to the two ethereal balls of light hanging above the structure, not obvious in the face of the bright flames but unable to be ignored upon discovery.

Now, this was the part that might have sounded ridiculous if it wasn't three in the morning, a Shinigami wasn't next door and I wasn't in a complicated relationship with a supernatural serial killer. In all honesty, it sounded rather pleasing in comparison to my reality.

"Their souls. They were good people. I believe they will be rewarded."

"You think they'll go to Heaven?"

"Romans says 'If you declare with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.'"

"They didn't believe in God."

"You never know what people will say in their final moments."

Sayu contemplated this in silence. For her, the concept of the Christian God wouldn't be foreign, but perhaps exotic. It was interesting that within literature all over the world, people wished to go to Heaven, but only few relayed the specifics of how to get there. In a Japanese society, it was probable that Sayu had never been brought up at Sunday School, learning of Jesus and his twelve disciples. Maybe her parents hadn't given it a second thought either. I hoped not. If God existed, I didn't want to know that Soichiro and Sachiko were in Hell because of societal unawareness.

"How do you remember that?" Sayu asked at length.

"What?"

"The quote."

Quote? "Oh, you mean the Bible verse. I was taught it."

"By who?" The fifteen-year-old turned to me, her eyes glassy with tears just waiting to be shed. She was looking for a distraction, something to take her mind off the lights above the house. She looked so fragile, so terrified under the careful mask of stoicism, that I couldn't refuse.

"Quinn and I were with a family in Canada for the past two years. We had run away from . . . home, and hitchhiked across the country." I spared her the details of the grisly condition we'd been in, having stowed away on a ship from England to Canada and then somehow survived the week it took to get to Thunder Bay, with no money and only a story of being orphans to commend us to sympathetic travellers. Quinn was even more stick thin by the end of it than he was now.

"When we made it to the town, well, we really couldn't keep going. Luckily, an elderly woman named Hiro Watazaki –" Sayu frowned. "Sorry; Watazaki Hiro. She had been taking a walk and found us at a park. She took us in, gave us something to eat, and never once told us to leave again. So we stayed. She taught us Japanese and one of her daughters was a school teacher, so she gave us lessons in the afternoon." Not that we needed them – the cirriculum at Whammy's was ridiculous in its intensity. Though I'd been unable to attend some of the classes, hearing from Quinn about the amount of homework they had was enough to make me wince.

"Granny Hiro lived on a hunting ground, at the lodge. Those were good days . . . Taking a bike out and just driving, for as long as I wanted. Painting until the sun set. Learning things without them being forced down my throat. Having space for once. And Granny Hiro loved us. I know she did. We sat by the fire at night, her brushing my hair as I drew Quinn playing guitar. The rest of the family thought we were strays, runaways, not worth notice, but she loved us until the end." I lapsed into silence, my mind full of afternoons spent by the lakeside with only a sketchpad, of conversing with Quinn in broken Japanese while doing our maths homework in her room, of being wanted, loved, as we had never known beyond our two-person family.

"The end?" Sayu inquired, breaking my reverie.

The door on happiness slammed shut and was replaced with angry faces, a quivering plea, and running again. I rubbed my eyes with paint-stained hands, trying to stop the onslaught of emotion. It had been over two months ago. I should have moved on by now.

"She died," I croaked, mortified by the crack in my words. Sayu sucked in a sharp breath. Her hands tentatively reached up to wrap me in a hug that was nothing like Light's calculating caresses and Quinn's bony embrace. I hiccupped and found myself clutching her, sobbing into her shoulder.

"They're dead," she whispered, and with that she burst into tears as well, pressing her face into my neck. "And Light doesn't care."

I froze. Gently, as though dealing with a injured wild animal, I shifted away and held her at arm's length, staring deep into her eyes. There was a pained ferocity there.

"What do you mean?" I asked hesitantly, though I understood her perfectly.

She sniffed, wiping away tears with the back of her hand. "Light he –" she coughed. "He's been weird lately. And now, when he hugs me, it's not like Mum and Dad's, you know?" Her voice went up an octave, just on the underside of hysterical. "There's no love. It's like he doesn't care! And he just stares out the window and there's always something more important than me and I just – I don't know what to do!" With a cry of frustration she buried her face in her hands and broke down once more.

I sat back in a daze. Sayu knew? Or at least, could tell that there was something off with Light? Even with all his careful planning, all his acting and perfect words? Sayu was more empathetic than I had first assumed. It seemed Light got the head while Sayu got the heart.

"What should I do, Mi-chan?" It was barely above a whisper. I had to lean in to hear her properly.

First of all, tell me why I'm now Mi-chan.

"Give him some space. I'm sure he is just dealing with the stress of exams coming up and this on top of that –"

She shook her head adamantly. "Light's never been stressed by exams. He's too smart for that. And he hasn't even cried once since the fire! What is wrong with him, Mi-chan? You spend time with him now."

"I don't know." Stop looking at me like that. I can't tell you anything. I have to lie for your own sake. "If he's not back to normal in a week, tell me, okay? I'll talk to him."

Sayu shifted slightly, weighing up the proposal. After a time she nodded and said, quietly, "Can I stay with you tonight?"

With those teary, damaged eyes pleading with me, there was no way I could say no.

The funeral was on Thursday. Part of me was grateful for the distraction and a reason to get out of the house after four days of Quinn hiding in his room, Light staring at me assessingly and Sayu avoiding her brother by sticking to my side like glue. I loved them all (well, two of them), but like I'd told Sayu, I found having space to myself to be a precious commodity. So when all of us, dressed in black, left the apartment and stepped into limousine sent by L, I was glad.

At the funeral we sat in the front right-hand side, with the rest of the family. Quinn was at the aisle, then me, Sayu and finally Light. Again he was appropriately dejected, but compared to Sayu's silent sobbing he did not pull off 'grieving child' well. I might have told him to act a bit more unhappy, if only so L didn't suspect him even more of being a sociapath, if it wasn't for Watari staring at me from the back of the room. I could feel his gaze drilling into the back of my head. This was being broadcast to L, I just knew it.

There were ceramic urns were empty. Light had deemed it an insult to his parents that they be 'symbolised' with the ash of the house that had trapped and burned them alive. Their pictures watched us from beside the urns, Sachiko kind, Soichiro stern. I felt like I was being judged under their gazes from beyond the grave and found wanting.

Then it was over and Sayu and Light were standing at the graveside, surrounded by mist that clung like a blanket. Watari gestured for me to approach. With a careful glance at Light, I took Quinn's hand and we went to the elderly man.

"I have a message from Ryuzaki," said Watari quietly. Quinn's eyes were so wide it was comical. Then his expression crumpled into one of abject hatred and I was suddenly worried he would scream at the man like he had at L the day before we left the House.

"What is it?" I said, cutting off whatever speech Quinn was working up. He glanced at me in shock and anger.

"The deadline for the apartment has been moved up. You should be able to move in within two months."

"That's fast."

"It's slower than Ryuzaki would like but having a building built in a month is bound to raise questions, even in Tokyo."

"I see. Where will they stay?"

"Top floor."

I gave Quinn a sidelong glance and decided that him knowing the particulars wouldn't jeopardise the situation. He'd find out eventually.

"Will Ryuzaki be staying there too?"

"Yes. He and the task force will use to building as their headquarters. It's security is top of the line."

"That's good. Thank you, Watari." The old man bowed, placed his hat back on his head, and left the gates of the cemetery to where his car waited. Was L in there with him?

"V?" Quinn did not look impressed. At all.

"Yeah?"

"How long have you been talking to Ryuzaki?"

"Heh." I cast around for something to take his attention away from the conversation but there were only rows of tombstones, disappearing into the fog within forty feet. It was rare to have such heavy mist in the capital I had been told, but apparently the weather thought our trek into the resting place of the dead required a horror-movie atmosphere to make the occasion worth it.

"V."

"Fine," I groaned, running a hand through my hair, and realised at Quinn's frown that I was copying Light. I quickly dropped my hand. "Watari picked me up on New Years. I saw him again last night and that's it."

"What did he want?"

"Uh . . ." "You've grown, Valerie." For some reason it was that comment that stuck in my head and some childish urge to blush reared its head. "He wants us to go back to the House, for our own protection."

Quinn's fists clenched. "No," he spat. "Never again."

"That's what I told him."

"Good. We aren't going back." His eyes flashed. "Let's go home." He stormed over to Sayu, taking her hand and murmuring to her. Light looked over at me, Ryuk hovering by his shoulder. I nodded my head slightly and turned away to gaze at the gravestones swallowed by fog. That reminded me; I never saw Granny Hiro's gravesite.

At home Ryuk stuck himself to my side until I grabbed three apples and went to my bedroom. He ate them hungrily as he always did, his sharp teeth tearing into the flesh and sending juice spraying over his chin. It was a gruesome sight, but also amusing to see apple juice dripping off his chin.

"Tell me something, Ryuk." I stripped off to my singlet and underwear, uncaring of the Shinigami present. He'd explained that death gods had no reproductive organs and therefore didn't care one iota about the naked bodies of humans. They didn't possess the hormones to feel lust. It was one of the many things he'd told me in the past few days, even when Sayu was in the room.

"What do you want to know?"

Dragging on a pair of paint-splattered jeans and an old checkered shirt from Granny Hiro's twenty-year-old grandson, I stood in front of the burning house painting and examined it, analysing the colour palette and the shadows. In a moment of spontaneity, I copied Ryuk in his apple-withdrawal stage and did a handstand.

"What are you doing?" he asked, floating upside down beside me.

"Checking if the shadows are right. If they're done wrong you can check by putting the picture upside down and seeing if it looks like its floating instead of attached to a floor."

"Why not just turn over the painting?"

"That's no fun." The house was a little disconnected from the ground at one of the corners. With ease I dropped down from the handstand. "And you say you're adventurous."

"Hehe, who's the one who dropped a Death Note in the human world?"

"Touché. So tell me, how long have you been around?" To my surprise, Ryuk handed my palette and brush before I asked for them. At my questioning glance he held up his last apple and bit into it.

"No idea. As long as there have been people to write names of."

"And how long is that?"

"Didn't keep track of time."

I groaned. "Of course you didn't. Still, know any good stories?"

Ryuk hummed, falling onto my bed silently except for the jangling of his belt and earring. "Wanna know about Jack the Ripper?"

I turned to him in astonishment. "You know who he was?"

"Uh huh."

At that moment there was a knock at the door. It opened and Sayu came in. Her eyes weren't bloodshot, for the first time all week, and her hair was wet.

"Hey, Mi-chan, were you talking to someone?"

"Not anyone important."

"Hey!" Ryuk exclaimed.

"Oh." Sayu crept into the room, avoiding the numerous sketches and pencils littering the floor. She sat herself on the bed, sinking straight through Ryuk's stomach. The death god yelped again and floated over to the window, casting a shadow only I could see.

"So . . ." The girl swung her legs back and forth. "How's the painting?"

"Give me a few more days and it'll be done."

"Can I have it when it is?"

"You want it?"

"Yeah . . . it's nice to think they're in Heaven right now, watching us." Ryuk started to cackle and I threw a pencil from my pocket across the room at him. Sayu blinked. "What was that for?"

"Sorry, saw a fly. Hate those things." Ryuk only laughed louder. "Anyway, sure. You can have the painting. Do you want me to name it?"

"Name it . . ." Sayu frowned thoughtfully, staring into space as she thought. A light clicked on in her eyes. "Oh! Name it Tengoku. It means paradise."

I smiled. "Sounds good."

There was another knock at the door, and Light's copper head appeared. "Hey, Minerva, have you seen –" he broke off, stumped at the sight of both Sayu and Ryuk hanging in my room. His mask slipped a tiny bit and his eyes narrowed.

"Can I talk to you?" he asked politely. I recognised the undercurrent of annoyance well enough to know Sayu and Ryuk weren't invited to listen in.

"Sure thing. Give me a sec." Sayu took my painting things from me and I followed Light to his room. He and Sayu were sharing at the end of the hall, in the newly refurbished space done by some men L hired under my name. In reality Sayu had been spending most nights with me since they moved in. The room itself was spartan, with whitewashed walls, two single beds, bedside tables, a wardrobe and one desk that Light had appropriated. I wondered where he was hiding his Death Note now.

As soon as the door was closed he whirled on me.

"So this is your plan, is it? To take my only family and Ryuk from me to show how alone I am?"

"What? No! Why in the world would I do that?"

"It won't make a difference, Minerva. I won't stop changing the world."

It took all my willpower not to explode at him like I so wanted to, because that might end up with me giggling hysterically as he cycled through his different facial expressions again, and that hadn't been fun.

"No," I said calmly. "I'm not trying to stop you. You have to decide that all on your own. Just know the longer you do this, the worse the consequences will be."

"I'm getting bored of your constant advice, Minerva."

"Then stop doing things that make me give it."

"How about I stop you," he muttered. I probably wasn't supposed to hear it, but I still jerked, both disturbed and horrified. Those feelings disappeared though, when I remembered one vital fact. I smirked.

"Unless you're willing to do something that doesn't involve a pen, I'm not going anywhere."

It took him a second to click. "Minerva Catearro isn't your real name?"

"Nope." Just for fun, I spoke in English, my strange French-English-Canadian accent shining through. "And until you burn that book, you'll never know what it is. Sorry, mate." I patted him on the shoulder. "I lied. You're never going to truly be alone. You're stuck with me."

Light's fingers twitched. Before I knew what was happening, he had me around the waist and flush against him. He leaned in close, his breath feathering over my skin. So disorientated by his sudden mood swing, – honestly, I should have been used to them by now – I didn't pull away.

"That doesn't sound like such a bad thing," he whispered.

I slapped him. His head snapped to the side with a crack. His grip tightened.

"What was that for?" He sounded almost like his old self, but the fire in his eyes was scary. I remembered the time I'd seen him from the art room, when he saw the Death Note for the first time. That bright, blazing red was back, and this time it was directed at me. I gulped.

"To snap some sense into you," I said. "Sayu's noticed it. You aren't acting normal anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"Like I told you before, you have to feel something for your parents. People know when you're putting on a show. Sayu can see that there's something else on your mind."

"Hmm." One of his fingers tapped my tailbone.

"And you have to control these mood-swings. If someone ever sees you switching like you did on Monday, they are going to have you committed as insane."

"Takes one to know one," he said lightly. I glowered.

"Let me go. Your sister is waiting for me." I struggled to wrest myself from his grasp but he had arms of steel. He chuckled.

"I don't think so. We have things to discuss."

"Like what?"

"What you were talking to that man at the cemetery about, for starters."

"You saw that?"

He gave me a look that clearly said 'duh'.

"It was –" His hand covered my mouth.

"If you say 'nothing' I will tie you to the bed." He removed his hand before I did something I'd regret, like bite it.

"Why is that your first threat?"

"Because other ones won't work." He leaned forwards, his breath hot on my ear. "And think of what your brother will say when he finds you."

A snarl twisted my mouth. "He was a representative of L, okay? He told me they are building a new headquarters that you two can move into in two months."

A frown flitted across Light's face. "And you too?"

"I . . ." actually, would we move in? For whatever reason, I had always assumed Quinn and I would be joining the siblings, and neither L nor Watari had said anything contrary, but . . . was I willing to sacrifice more of my freedom?

"Sayu needs you," Light said quickly. I scowled.

"Only because she has a useless big brother." He raised an eyebrow. "Fine, Quinn and I will be there too." And like that, Light's face relaxed from its pensive frown. I rolled my eyes. "You are too possessive, Yagami."

He smirked. "Only of things I want."

TOWRTA: In my honest opinion, Light is a bit of a cretin, wouldn't you agree? Still, he's fun to write, though it takes a bit of time to make sure he doesn't go too OOC. After the great response from the argument in the last chapter, I'm not sure this compares, but you get a bit of Minerva's past and Quinn got developed more! Woo! (And I'm loving that everyone's questions are mostly 'what in the world did BB do to her?')

Alex (anon): Mate, your long reviews are fantastic! Hope this answered some of your questions about what Quinn knows of her interaction with BB and in the future you'll see a lot more of how important Quinn is to Minerva's life and sanity. And it's not just BB that messed with Minerva's mind (mwahaha); her problems are a bit deeper than just him. See you soon!

Guest (anon): I watched the anime recently and Light mentioned that he was sure that L meant for him to find some of the cameras, considering there were a ridiculous number of them (above 40, I think). So it's not too much of a shock for L that Light knew of them too. And you, like everyone else, will have to find out what BB did in time! Ahaha! See you soon!

To everyone who is following, reviewing, favouriting or just stalking me from beyond the ether; You are all fabulous! You make me want to continue writing!

Oh, btw: I'm not going to update for a while. Got study and exams for the next six weeks. Then summer! We'll have to see how it goes.

Next Time: what did BB do?