Chapter Four: Smudged

She got her answers. In fact, she got them two days later.

Two days might have seemed like a lot of time, but time was funny for her. Maybe it was because of the sedatives, or the fact that she was sleeping more than she had slept ever. She just felt so exhausted. All. The. Time. It wasn't anything new, but now she woke up from hours of sleep feeling like she could go for a nap. It was like her body was trying to catch up on all the sleep that she had missed at once. It was better than the pain, at least.

When she wasn't sleeping, she was staring out the window, at the ceiling, or the walls. Sometimes, when a nurse came to check on her, they would turn on the TV suspended in the corner of the room just to break up the long silence. Erin stared at that too, mostly with no idea what was going on. A lot of what she'd seen so far—which wasn't actually a lot, since it was only two days, seemed to be news related. Not that she understood a single word of it, and not that she paid close attention either. Still, the image of some clean faced professional facing the camera, with a neutral background said enough, along with the periodical map with little suns and clouds on them.

It was on the second day, when she saw it. The nurse had just left after checking over the machine linked up to the disoriented, heavily medicated girl. They'd turned on the TV almost immediately having already discovered during the long, dull hours of the previous day's morning shift that the patient was unnerving, unsociable, and prone to staring. Erin wasn't bothered by the unease she cause the poor attendant—she barely even noticed the tense draw of the mouth, or the sharp flicks of dark eyes in her direction.

Sometime after they'd made a hasty retreat, leaving Erin to her own devices, she found herself staring numbly at yet another news report. Some pretty lady with perfect hair was speaking in a clear, steady voice, eyes even and calm. And than the screen warbled. Static ruptured across the image, and when it cleared a man was on the screen, and behind him was a huge, gothic letter L.

Her limbs were heavy and numb, but she still managed to push herself up from her reclined slouch, so she was sitting up straight. Her eyes glued themselves to the familiar scene.

She didn't have to know the language to know what was being said, and for a second…

She slumped back even as the man crumpled, face down on the table in front of him. This was fine. So maybe the anime had come out ages ago already. It was still a really successful franchise. They were probably just doing reruns of Death Note or something, and she hadn't realized that, mistaking it for the news. She was so zoned out it would have been simple for her to make the mistake. It wasn't like it was real, after all.

Even if, suddenly, a lot of things that didn't add up were adding up under the banner of an idea that she hadn't even given a thought to up until that very moment. She hadn't given it a thought because it was impossible. You could joke, you could dream, you could write it out a million different ways, but it was still impossible. So even though, if that one single thing turned out to be the missing puzzle piece, explaining every other ludicrous thing that had happened to her since she had woken up—before that even, she tossed it aside. No matter how much it might explain, there was no way.

No way she was in some other reality. That was something which happened only the wild imaginings of fan fiction writers. Not in real life.

She chuckled mirthlessly, and tried to zone back out. Tried to ignore the shaking of her hands, and how she just could not get her mind to cloud over. Tried to ignore the proverbial seed starting to sprout in the back of her mind. She stared with great consternation at nothing at all until she felt her eyes burn and water. Her heart was pounding. Her breath wavered.

She sucked in a deep breath, and Erin pressed her eyes closed. She stayed that way for several long minutes.

The door to her room slid open, and her eyes snapped open.

The detective from before entered, but this time he was preceded by another man who carried with him the same strange familiarity. Like she recognized him, without knowing where from. He was also dressed in a suit, and a heavy, long coat, but that's where the similarities stopped. His expression was a great deal more stern than Detective Aizawa's, he wore a pair of square framed glasses, and had his much more tame hair slicked back. A matching, neatly trimmed moustache arched over a firmly set mouth.

She knew before Aizawa even spoke, a niggling feeling telling her who he was, that was only confirmed when this new man was introduced to her as Chief Yagamai. Everything fell into place all at once, and in the same moment her mind creaked and groaned under the strain of everything she ever believed suddenly exploding. Suddenly it was like she had been cast adrift into some sort of black hole that consumed everything. Crushed her. Her universe warped, bent, twisted itself into something that was a gross parody of the one she remembered. She was in a house of mirrors, and the powers that be were chasing her, laughing, dressed like grinning, horrible clowns.

On the outside she simply blinked and inclined her head politely.

Aizawa smiled at her, his anxiety palpable, and then pulled over a seat for his superior.

Erin continued to lose her mind.

The chief cleared his throat. "Miss Harker," he said, his English much better than Aizawa's. "Sorry to disturb you." He paused, waiting for her to respond.

Her eyes flicked towards the TV screen. Ludicrously, she wondered why the chief of police was here, in her hospital room, talking to her, when his son—Kira, maybe, if you wanted to get technical, just had his first confrontation with the world's greatest detective, with whom the police were actively collaborating. Surely they had a lot on their plates. Damage control. Phone ins. Anonymous tips. A wealth of new information handed to them on silver platters by their mysterious associate. They knew around where Kira lived, and was this not about when they realized how old Kira might have been? Or was that later?

Suddenly she wished she had gone out of her way to study and document the entire timeline. Knowledge was power.

And then she wanted to laugh at herself. Of course they were here. Among other things, if this whole ridiculous scenario was actually happening, if it wasn't some terrible afterlife, some messed up coma dream, then obviously the cosmic forces were not going to be satisfied with just dragging her from her own reality. Clearly they had to drag her into the plot too. She had, and would have no control. No power.

A mysterious girl with no identity, and no logical explanation as to her origins was obviously going to face a great deal of scrutiny during these troubled times. Duh. This was obvious.

Unfortunately she had to wonder just whose scrutiny she was under.

But.

She didn't want to jump to conclusions.

She breathed in in deeply, held it for a moment, and then let it out. When she was done, Erin carefully focused her eyes on Soichiro Yagami, fictional father of a fictional mass murdering psycho. In the flesh. He had very nice eyes. Firm, clear, a lovely shade of brown. "Good afternoon, Chief Yagami, sir. I think I should be the one apologizing. I think I've caused a lot of trouble for Aizawa-San."

The man she was addressing smiled politely, and behind him his subordinate smiled awkwardly and shook his head. "No. Um. You… things be… hard for you."

She felt nauseous. She didn't want to have to deal with this. She just wanted to sleep. Preferably for a century. She didn't want to talk, didn't want to think, didn't want to have to smile and try to survive this. She didn't want to navigate social mechanisms on a regular day, let alone like this. With these specific people. She had no idea what choices she was supposed to make, what direction she needed to go in to get free of the whole awful, horrible mess. She didn't want to feel like crying, or feel so tired. She just. Didn't. Could not. Erin was very much out of her comfort zone. "Sorry," she said, inanely.

"It's not a surprise you are upset." Chief Yagami agreed. He paused, brows furrowing even deeper. He glanced back at the television, on which the reporters were talking with more energy and gusto than they had at any other point, between flashes of the same large gothic L. He said something in his native tongue, and the other detective nodded, and turned the device off.

"I guess you can see that a lot is happening," the middle aged man said, turning back to Erin. "We are very busy, so forgive me if I go right to the point."

Erin nodded slowly, and folded her hands in her lap as if that might somehow help. "Alright, sure." God, she wanted a nap.

"The issue, Miss Harker, is that we have tried to contact anyone who might know you, and be connected to you. It has not work. No one related to you in your identification and belongings even exist. As you can guess, that has made us a lot…" he paused, lips pressing together. "…concerned. We are going to have to investigate this matter. We would like it if you cooperate."

"Well," Erin started to hedge, not sure where she was going to say, when a spider skittered across her thoughts. On a whim she reached out for it, "as you can probably tell, I'm not from around here. Is… are there people from my country who are going to be involved? Like… um, Interpol? Or something? I dunno." She trailed off uncertainly, feeling her breath catch in her throat. She was fishing for information. She wasn't really sure if she was going about it the right way, but she wanted to see if there was someone behind them.

Chief Yagami hesitated, clearly surprised. It took a lot for her to not also glance at Aizawa, who was just in her periphery. "That's… we've tried communicating with outside organizations, yes. They also can find no records of you."

That was interesting. It also felt a little too easy. The worst thing for her was if this was all somehow a test from said outside sources. If somehow L was directing attention towards her, there was no way she was going to just slip off the radar. He might think she was suspicious enough… naw. It was L. He'd know intuitively she didn't fit the profile for Kira. That didn't just mean he would write off the odd coincidence of her arrival, of her situation, and the way it was lining up with the beginning of this case. He was like a dog with a bone. He had to eliminate all possibilities, explain all aberrations. He was thorough that way.

Or, at least, that was the way Erin had always thought of his character. Except… could she still afford to treat him like just a character? Real people, people in real life were never so rigid, so well cast within their roles

She could still be wrong. She could have been overthinking everything.

Even if she was, she was still in a shit load of trouble.

"Miss Harker?"

"Sorry. I'm just… trying to understand. This makes no sense to me either. Honestly, the last thing I remember was walking back to my apartment from the drug store. It was the middle of the summer. I lived a normal life. I mean, I was a bit of a recluse, but not so much that I'd completely removed myself from society or anything. I still… existed? I had people I talked to regularly, and… I don't know what's going on, why you can't find anyone." Honesty, she figured, was the best policy. Everyone said that if you were going to lie, the best bet would be to stick as closely to the truth as possible. Not that she was strictly lying. Everything she had said was completely true. She just didn't feel like mentioning the car accident, or the fact that she was currently operating on the belief that she was in some rendition of an alternate reality she knew about from an anime she had watched.

She pretended not to notice the glances to two detectives shared, and waited quietly for them to react.

X.x.X

Later, at police headquarters, Aizawa and Chief Yagami stood straight backed in front of the small, glowing screen of a laptop. The room was empty, save for the rows of tables behind them, the desk with the computer in front of them, and the heavily disguised figure of Watari off to the side. The rest of the task force had already left after the evening debrief, and even the ones who had hung around had been conveniently delegated tasks elsewhere by the garbled voice of L.

For whatever reason, the renowned detective wished to keep this particular debrief as private as possible. Normally Sōichirō Yagami would have been unable to deny feeling offended. As it was he was satisfied to keep the peculiar case of Erin Harker on the down low. Morale was bad enough amongst his officers with the deranged ministrations of Kira, and the workload was intense. He didn't need to add any more inexplicable events to their burdens. In this case, he would gladly leave the judgement to L.

They had stayed at the hospital, in the private room of Miss Erin Harker, for quite awhile, asking a series of question to the strange young woman in several different ways. They'd learned little more about her than they had already been apprised of. They'd already known she was being treated for a sleep disorder, courtesy of the prescription that had been found among her possessions, and who her direct relatives were, as well as her address. She'd repeated it all back to them flawlessly, seeming just as confused about everything as they were. For all intents and purposes she appeared to be nothing an unfortunate victim of a terrible accident, in an unfamiliar place, under uncertain circumstances.

That, or she was a talented liar.

They had left just as stumped as they had been to begin with.

"So," the distorted, ominous voice of L began. "What have you discovered?"

"Honestly? Not much." Aizawa sighed. "The doctors have nothing new for us. There is no explanation for her condition. They've done more scans on her since she woke up, but the results haven't said anything different. They think it's psychological. I'm prepared to believe that. She told us that aside from the meds she gets, she attends therapy semi-regularly. If she's got a history of instability, it'd make sense. If I'm being honest… I wondered if maybe she didn't escape from some facility." He paused, looking disturbed, likely in recollection of his first conversation with the woman.

Yagami had been there for the first report on the mystery girl, before L had surprised them with his own interest in the case. It had sounded perturbing him as well. Aizawa had described it as if she were being tortured. He'd said that he had never heard anyone sound so pained. All Soichiro could think about, especially since meeting the frail, ill looking person, was how much it would hurt him if he ever saw his daughter like that.

"No," L interrupted the middle aged man's inner musings. "There would have been traces of her if that were the case. I would have certainly known had she been institutionalized. As for the doctor's diagnoses… it's a possibility, but ultimately irrelevant. I'm far more concerned about what happened before the accident than I am with the subject's state currently."

Here, Soichiro Yagami stepped forward. "Unfortunately we have nothing new on that front either. It seems she might be suffering from trauma induced amnesia of some kind. The last incident she recalls happened several months prior, during the summer. She say it was just an average day. She was out running errands at a nearby store, and then everything goes blank. When she woke up, she had no idea how she got where she was. Actually, she thought she was being treated for heatstroke until everyone started speaking a different language, and she saw the snow."

"And the pain? How did that fit into her theory?"

Chief Yagami shrugged, and pulled off his glasses to rub at the bridge of his nose. "Honestly, she seemed pretty out of it still. They have her on a high dose of sedative. As the conversation wore on, she grew less lucid. Apparently she's been spending a lot of time asleep or unresponsive. By the time we left she seemed to have completely lost awareness of her surroundings."

There was a long beat of silence from the lap top. "Hm. I'll have to get them to reduce the dosage of pain killers that she receives. Watari? Could you do that first thing in the morning. It's important that we know if it's truly the medication, an effect of the accident, or if she's simply using the situation to her advantage. Was there anything else? Anything that stood out to you?"

The police chief was about to say that no, there wasn't. Other than the overall oddness of the whole situation, things were about as anyone could expect. Something made him stop though. Something about a look she had given him. "That… I think… I'm not sure, but Miss Harker was watching the broadcast. Or, the tv was on, and we arrived not long after it ended. Anyway, they were playing clips of it a lot."

"Oh? And how did Miss Harker react?"

That… "I don't know. She should not have understood what it was about, but there was a moment when she seemed distracted by it. I thought maybe it was just the usual having her attention divided by something playing in the same room. But, then she asked… she wondered if Interpol was going to be involved."

Aizawa nodded. "Yeah, but surely it was only because she is out of her depth? Of course she's curious about things involving her. It may have been unrelated."

"Maybe," Chief Yagami agreed. There was a chance that he was being overly cautious. Everyone was on high alert with Kira running around. "I thought I might bring it up. Your interest in her case is because of its timing, isn't it?" The last part was direct to L.

"Indeed. A strange coincidence. I'm not in the habit of ignoring odd happenings when investigating a case. Particularly when a killer who needs a name to kill, and a girl, who technically has no name make dramatic appearances in such proximity with each other. It's very alarming." His tone was unmistakably somber, and Chief Yagami felt an ominous cloud envelope the room.

Outside, a strong wind blew, and a creature with yellow eyes laughed.

X.x.X

A/N: Yo. Look at me. With my rate of a chapter a year. Aren't I fab. To be fair... I mean, I don't want to make excuses, and I'm not fishing for sympathy, but some stuff happened, and I wasn't in a very good headspace. It infected a lot of areas of my life, and writing was one of them. But I've found my way out, for now. I'm remembering that I'm writing fan fiction... and other stuff because it's fun, and I like it it. I love you all so much, but ultimately I'm a selfish person. I started writing this for my entertainment and self satisfaction. I apologize if the style has changed, for the typos and mistakes, and let me tell you, this story has already changed so much since it's original conception. Haha. Yeah. But I'm just gonna go with it. Let it happen. Words are wonderful things. And in the end... it's fan fiction. I love it. I think it's got a lot of value in helping writers evolve, and learn. But at the same time... like I've said. This is for fun. It's not the end of the world if it turns out to be self indulgent trash. If I enjoyed writing it, and if you guys like reading it, that's all that counts.