Misa is dirty. Her knees are muddy, her hair is slicked back with sweat and dirt, and her fingernails have cracked in bled from her clawing at the ground once the shovel began to cut into her palms. The coffin is visible now, and she's glaring at the gasket mechanism, enraged by her massive oversight. She has no idea how to open it. Nor does she really want to. Ryuzaki's body must be nearly rotted away and the smell will be overwhelming.

"Ryuk?" She asks, a manipulative little smile on her face. "Can you open this up?" She giggles mindlessly and rubs at her face, feigning innocence. The shinigami rolls his eyes.

"Do you have apples?" She perks up, eyes wide and her trademark smile on her face. He holds out a hand expectantly.

"Not with me, but I can buy you as many as you want once we're done here!" Ryuk sighs and simply breaks open the coffin, not bothering with the lock. "Yay! Ryuk is strong!" She claps her hands and immediately gags at the smell. She doesn't look, she doesn't have the heart. She looks to her shinigami counterpart, "So I just erase his name?"

Ryuk nods. "There's no guarantee it will work. He's been dead for years now." She shakes her head, bleary eyed.

"Ryuzaki wouldn't have told me to so it if it wouldn't work! That's just who he is. Or was, I guess." She flips to the most recent page. With a deep breath, she erases the name.

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"Kira brought on an era of peace that was unprecedented. But the people were reigned by fear." Said the newscaster, a tortured expression on her face. "Before us is a shining new world, where all nations can band together and rebuild after Kira's terrifying rampage. We have still not received word on exactly how these murders were orchestrated, but the Kira Task Force, the FBI, the CIA and the SPK have all reiterated—Kira's reign is over. " The television clicks off and Sayu sends a terrified glance across the room to her resident shinigami, her brother.

"When I received the notebook I didn't know what it meant." She murmurs, "But I knew it had something to do with you. I'll admit that I sympathized with Kira, and it seemed that fate had placed this notebook in my hands. But it was just you." She throws the death note into the corner and puts a hand over her face. "I don't know what I'm doing. This is wrong."

"Is it?" He asks, picking up the notebook and reading over the series of names she's written. He laughs. "No one told you to write in it. You didn't have to. I just gave you the option."

"Well I'm done with it. You can have it back. I just killed those criminals because they were unforgivable, and now I've damned myself." She looks at her brother sadly. All the vestiges of his humanity are gone, but his eyes are still those of her older brother, only colder.

"I'll give it to someone who deserves it. Someone willing to step in as a servant of Kira, and if you stand in my way, I won't hesitate." His eyes flash red. He vanishes with the notebook, and all memory of her past as Kira is wiped clean. She goes to bed shaken, not knowing why she feels cold all over.

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"Ryuzaki!" Misa yells, leaning over his coffin. He looks dead, flash rotted to the bone, hair gone withered and gray with age. There's not a trace of life in him and it bewilders and terrifies her. And then like the flip of a switch, skin begins knitting back together, rot disappears, and wounds close. Once again he looks human, but he isn't breathing.

"Ryuzaki!" She says again, quieter, a hand moving to his forehead. She feels no warmth and his skin is pale as death. "I've come so far. You have to wake up now, okay?" Her joy fades as he doesn't breathe. She wrenches her hand back and smacks him across the face. His head lulls to the side and she bites her lip to keep from crying. "Wake up!"

Her head rests on his chest and she listens for a heartbeat, and slowly, very slowly, she can hear it beating. "He's alive!" She cries out. Ryuk looks on, entertained.

Dark eyes open painfully, lethargically and the first thing he feels is the pressure of something on his chest. Brown cropped hair and a feminine frame, Misa's disguise. "Misa-san?" He asks, his voice raspy, mouth dry.

She gasps and sits up quickly, tears in her eyes. She wipes at them and closes her eyes, a bittersweet expression on her face. "Welcome back!" She hugs him then, and as if exhausted, he falls right to sleep. "Ryuzaki!" She chastises as his eyes roll back.

She groans and begins trying to lift him out of the hole she's created. "This would be easier if you were awake, you jerk!" He merely mumbles in response. He smells like something dead and she has to overcome the urge to pinch her nose.

When he wakes up again, they are in Misa's apartment, and she is watching over him. "I died." Is the first thing he says, and his eyes are still closed. Misa makes an affirmative noise. "Then why am I alive?" He looks over at her then from his horizontal position on her couch. He waits calmly for an explanation.

"I brought you back to life." He looks at her incredulously as is to say, 'go on'. "There is a new Kira. People are terrified. " succinct, to the point, something Misa was never during the time he knew her.

"Why the change of heart? You worshiped Kira." His eyes are still bearing into her. "I'm assuming Light is dead?" She nods and looks to the ground.

"I don't know what changed. Bur when Light died and I started thinking for myself. I accepted that my parents were murdered and learned to see that no one should live in fear. I realized that Kira's era of peace was like tyranny. Light cast me aside. I was a tool at most. I remembered that I loved him for being Kira before I ever got to know him as Light." Her eyes look sad, and she's older than he ever remembered her being. "I'm guilty of a lot of things. But I had a dream the other night and thought maybe I could fix some of them. And that's the truth."

It's the most lucid and coherent thing he has ever heard her say. He looks at the ceiling and then at the death note sitting on her table. It's one he has never seen. "You didn't kill me, did you?" She shakes her head, although she blames herself anyway.

They have a long conversation. She tells him everything about how the note works, the fake rules, and recounts him on every development from the last 6 years. He nods methodically through it all and eventually sits up. She makes tea. He overloads it with sugar.

"Can you ask the shinigami if those who use the death note become shinigami after death?" Misa looks pointedly at Ryuk who is sitting on her counter eating apples.

"Sometimes. Not generally unless they have a really strong killing tendency." He laughs, aware of what L is implying. "Like Light for example." Misa drops her tea onto the floor and fear chills her to the bone.

L looks concerned, biting his thumb. "What did he say?" She looks over at him, eyes bulging and heart beating staccato in her chest.

"Light may be a shinigami." His eyes narrow and the room goes silent. The spilled tea soaks into the carpet, and Misa looks down, ashamed. "What are we going to do, Ryuzaki?"

He pulls his knees up to his chest and closes his eyes, thinking. "Light will have given the notebook to someone he trusts, someone he believes will carry on his work in the human world. Since Teru Mikami is dead along with Kiyomi Takada, he'll have found someone new. Most likely a friend or family member."

"His father and mother are dead now. It's just Sayu-chan that's left of their family." Her lips shake and L shoots her a little grin for reassurance.

"I'll investigate her and If she complies, that is, on the condition that she's guilty, I'll make sure she gets a lighter sentence, okay?" Misa smiles brightly, heart pounding.

"Thank you, Ryuzaki." He smiles teasingly at her.

"Do you have any cake?" She laughs.