Challenge: An outsider's perspective. What do the ordinary people think of events in the manga?
Author: subdivided

Disclaimer: DEATH NOTE isn't mine

Notes: I wrote two for this one.


For Those Who Need Third Chances

The first time he snuck out of his father's apartment, it was through the window and onto the fire escape at just after two in the morning. He bruised one knee when he slipped on metal unexpectedly wet with rain and cut his right palm - thrown haphazardly out for balance - on an inconvenient nail. But he did not fall or, worse, wake his father who slept in the front room, and so he considered the night a success. He still thought so a week later, when the cut became infected and he had to be hospitalized, because he knew that the heart attack his old man would have when he found out would require much more than four hours in the emergency ward and a few antibiotics.

It wouldn't hurt to shake the old man up a bit, make him take notice for once. Actually it would serve him right, the self-righteous prick.

The second time he snuck out of his father's apartment, it was after one and there were no injuries - at least, he wasn't injured. It was different for the other guy. (For a long time afterward he'd felt queasy and scared. Then he'd remembered to be angry at his father instead.) He returned the same way he'd left, quietly slipping into the apartment and past his father asleep on the couch. He was a richer man than he'd been just a few hours ago, but it wasn't about the money.

Showed how well that prick knew him, then, didn't it? (He felt like laughing but didn't think he'd like the sound of it, so he bit the inside of his cheek instead.) His old man was nothing but a collection of rules, his own and the stupid justice system's, but you know what? He wasn't bound by any.

The third time he snuck out of his father's apartment he was caught standing over the body with the knife still in his hand. His father, who had a different last name, pled conflict of interest when asked to preside over the case, his ears burning red with shame. The son asked, scornfully, whether he was embarassed because he hadn't wanted the other judges to find out about his Delinquent Son, but his father just sobbed and said no. It was because he'd failed him. He pledged to do better in the future, and his eyes were redder than his ears.

In the end none of it mattered, because the son's face had been all over the nightly news; he died in his cell (heart attack) before the case ever came to trial.


Saturday Night Conversations

Rick Hunner was young and hawkish and Californian and - this was always the first thing that came to mind - driven. He had a bad habit of living for his work but was pretty good guy, really, to have a few beers with on a Saturday night. If nothing else he told good stories.

"Have I told you about my latest client?" he'd ask, looking right at you and ignoring the way his mug was leaving rings on the countertop. "He's a real character - apparently schizophrenia runs in his family. Completely crazy, hallucinations and everything. Do you know what he did for a living before he went nuts? He was a security guard. With a gun. Scary, huh? But it's an easy case for me; I only need to wait for the psychiatric evaluations to come back before I can get his sentence reduced."

He was San Francisco's highest paid public defender, and he was a great talker. He'd tell stories about crazies, he'd tell stories about self defense or extraordinary circumstances or outside manipulation or even, occasionally, innocent people. He was both slick and sincere. He'd rarely talk about simple murderers, and always with a slightly disbelieving set to his shoulders and eyes that wouldn't meet yours but would slide away to his beer.

Even more rarely, when he was feeling particularly morbid or particularly honest, he'd talk about the clients of his who'd been murdered by the state. That was the way he'd put it, too: "Because I lost a case, a man was murdered." He took his job seriously.

And he hated, hated, hated Kira. What was the point of working so hard to save a human life, he'd ask, when Kira could snatch it away again so effortlessly? What did it all mean except - and this was when he felt like joking - that Kira was a Republican? Too much Kira talk meant he'd drink too many beers, and by the end of the night, when he no longer felt like joking, he'd admit that he wasn't sure what it any of it meant anymore, except that if this kept up he'd be out of a job but more importantly:

The world would be a terrible place, with only that false god Kira to decide who lived or died. Whatever happened to reasonable doubt?