Turns out I uploaded the wrong chapter 6 last time. This is the right version! There's literally 2000 more words, and they're pretty important, so even if you don't want to reread most of this at least read the last half!

December 31st

When Light finds L watching TV, he's instantly angry.

"You're risking my mom seeing you!"

"Your mother is out shopping with your sister."

"You shouldn't be hanging around here without me with you."

"How possessive of you. There's something interesting on, so be quiet."

Light sits down next to L. It reminds him of the days when they were handcuffed together. A part of him wants to go back to that, but he's got to put L's safety first. If they were handcuffed together, L wouldn't be able to hide the fact he was alive.

The news is on: something about three murders in Winchester and a similarly mutilated body recently found in Los Angeles. Light's fingers are itching for a pen. But there isn't a name yet. A heavily pixelated picture, probably from a security camera, pops up, showing two teenagers. Apparently these are the suspects, but their faces aren't visible, so even Misa won't be able to kill them.

"Hmm," L mutters. Light turns to look at him. "Isn't it strange that the second Kira hasn't killed the murderer yet?"

Obviously it's because she wouldn't be able to find out the names. Too much of the face is obscured, but Light shouldn't know that. "Yes, that is strange, Ryuzaki."

"It wouldn't be because the murderer hasn't been found. We both know that if Kira was able to kill them, those two teenagers would be dead by now."

"It is very strange," Light mutters, "but why are you telling me about this?"

"It was interesting."

"It wasn't."

"Nevertheless, I wouldn't be surprised if Kira was interested in a crime where the killer had not yet been found." L plucks a dusty sweet from his pocket and inserts it into his mouth. "And, following from that, you would try and mask your interest in the case in order to mask that you are Kira. Therefore you are Kira."

"Ryuzaki, why are we in a relationship?"

"Stop avoiding the subject, Kira."

"If you're so sure I'm Kira, then why are you so affectionate towards me? It seems to me that you're just trying to force me into saying something incriminating."

"Yes, I am. Anyway we're not in a relationship. I wouldn't fall in love with a mass murderer."

Light's heart plummets as L turns away to pay attention to the TV. If everyone thinks L is dead, then nobody will know if he's killed. It would be so easy. He'd just have to get his name, which must be written in Rem's Death Note. Except it can't be, because L is alive. He remembers seeing something in the note, though – maybe that's how L faked his death? He just doesn't remember what that something was.

December 27th

By the time Matt wakes up and comes stumbling out the bedroom, Near is sitting against the wall, sorting Henrietta's vast collection of acrylic paint tubes into the rainbow. There are hardly any duplicates, though there must be hundreds of paints.

"Morning," Matt greets her gruffly.

"I don't think Henrietta Fountain was a very good artist," she says back. "She has all these colours, although according to colour theory, it should only take five acrylic paints to create every colour. Therefore she does not have the art skill necessary to mix her own colours, leading her to purchase all these." She gestures to the lines of paint tubes. "This could be a useful clue."

He sits down next to her and picks up a tube. He's messing up the pattern. How disrespectful of him. "Glorious Clay. Weird name for a paint. It's just red." He puts it back down in the wrong place. "I don't know why she needs five Glorious Clays."

"Maybe because she likes Glorious Clay."

"Yeah, but there are five –" he pauses to pick up another tube " – five Burnt Ambers too, and five Ocean Greens, and five Sparkling Fountains." Matt puts them back at random, so that Near's carefully arranged rainbow is cut into by chunks of random colour. "There aren't that many of anything else."

"Sparkling Fountain," Near repeats slowly. "Henrietta Fountain."

Matt leaps up from the ground and grabs Near's shoulders. He pulls her up and wraps his arms around her in a way that feels like he's crushing her lungs. "That's it! You're a genius, Near!" She wonders why he's trying to attack her if he really thinks she's a genius. She goes limp and slumps against the wall. He isn't going to get a reaction from her this time, even if he does break her other arm.

He doesn't attempt to hurt her for a long time. "What are you doing?" she asks eventually. "Is this something you do to Mello?"

Matt lets her go, tipping his head to one side. "What do you mean, what are you doing?" he says. He twists his voice into a thin, whiny mockery of hers. "Of course I do it to Mello, we're friends."

Why would you want your friend to hold you so that you could not move away? "You stop your friends from leaving you by holding them against a wall?"

"Oh my god," Matt mutters. "Please tell me you know what hugging is."

She thinks she had read something about hugging once, in a book with bright colours and irrelevant pictures and a ridiculously simple story line. Near doesn't think she's ever hugged anyone. Physical contact is unnecessary and in her experience, unpleasant.

"Never mind." He sighs, tugs at his striped sleeve. "What I meant is, the paints might be a clue to who the next victim is. Their last name would be in one of the duplicate paint tubes."

This is possibly the most intelligent thing Matt has said in years.

For the next hour they both rummage through the apartment for any more paint tubes that might provide a clue. Near is scared that if they don't find every single one, they'll miss the murder, so she continues searching while Matt sorts the paints according to whether they have duplicates or not. She finds an Aurora Forest in the cutlery draw next to an alarmingly large knife, and another in a box of blonde hair dye. There are several inserted into taps and lamps. She wonders how Henrietta could have possibly lived here for so long with paint everywhere.

In the search they find: two Aurora Forests, three Titanium Silvers, a Cobalt Grey, an Amaranth Pink, three bras, and a Mountain Meadow. By the end there are a huge array of colours scattered over the floor, with thirty individual tubes in one pile.

Five Sparkling Fountains, five Aurora Forests, five Titanium Silvers, five Ocean Greens, five Glorious Clays, and five Burnt Ambers.

They celebrate with the biscuits Near brought yesterday. It is only when the pack is finished that they realise they have no idea what to do next to actually find the next victim. They also have no idea what to do with the body of the last victim. It's just lying there looking dead. Near's been trying to ignore it. The arms in particular are looking repulsive.

"Perhaps one of the residents would know if there were people with those names in town?" Matt says half-heartedly. "Not that they'd tell us. I wouldn't trust anyone new wandering around here, myself, not with two murders in four days."

"Someone in the shop downstairs helped me last night. I wouldn't trust him at all, but he could be useful. You should ask him about those names." Near twirls her hair around her finger. "Since the shop's directly underneath this apartment, he may have also heard something, so you should ask him about that. He'll be easy to recognise – he's got these weird black lines under his eyes."

"How do you know he'll be there?" Matt stands up. He retrieves a thick jacket from the bedroom. "I'll go, but he probably won't be there."

"Why wouldn't he be there?"

Matt puts his palm over his nose for no apparent reason, then lowers his arm to shrug the jacket on. "Have you really never – ah, fuck it. I should be back in half an hour. Don't come and try to find me, you might get killed." He leaves without looking back at her, and slams the door so slowly that the shop assistant must have heard.

Near gets out her favourite toy robot and lies in the same position as Henrietta Fountain.

January 5th

At night, L disappears like a ghost to wherever he sleeps when he's not sleeping with Light. It is this night that Light finally confronts Ryuk. The shinigami might be bound to Misa's notebook, but he still drops around Light's house for the occasional apple.

"Ryuk!" he calls. He'd entered his room just as Ryuk was phasing through the wall.

"Light-o!" he cackles, sliding back out of the wall. It's hard to tell if Ryuk is looking at him. It's hard to tell if Ryuk thinks this is funny – his voice isn't usually this amused, is it? Light has forgotten how it usually is. It's been months, and he's spent those months mostly listening to L. "Good to see you, Kira!" He bites into an apple with a ferocity that makes Light wince.

"Ryuk, I have a question for you."

"I thought you'd figured everything about the Death Note out? You don't normally need my help. I don't wanna end up like Rem."

Light fakes a dull chuckle. "I'm not going to ask you to protect me. It's just a simple question. I'm sure even Rem would have known the answer. How could someone escape dying if I was to write their name down?"

Ryuk's laugh here is not faked, but the way that his body remains perfectly still as his head shakes is unsettling. "Someone escaped your judgement?"

"No."

"Hah... you messed up, Light-o."

"Kira never makes a mistake!" he snarls, leaning towards Ryuk, glaring as well as he can. He didn't mean to let that slip out so loudly. He's let Kira become so much of him that he's become like an animal, willing to kill in defense. His mind flicks back to the pen smooth against the sides of his fingers, scrawling down 'Lind L. Taylor'. Light shakes it off. He isn't anything like an animal. He's the most human person he's ever known.

Ryuk stands there, his arms hanging nearly to the floor. His purple lips are twisted into a grotesque grin. "Well, Light-o, there is no way for someone to escape death by a Death Note, as long as the person who wrote the name did it right."

Rem must have betrayed him. It's the only possible explanation. She couldn't have written L's name. She must have written Watari's name and died of that. But then why had L appeared to die? Had he used a double? But it would have been impossible for a double to be so identical to L. Maybe he had been revived somehow?

"What you thinkin'?" Ryuk prompts him. His mouth hangs open as he chews the apple.

"Is it possible to revive someone after they've been killed by a Death Note? Are there any rules about that?"

"All humans, without exception, will eventually die," Ryuk recites. "After they die, they go to nothingness. Once they are dead, they cannot be brought back to life."

"You told me yourself, Ryuk, there are rules you haven't told me about. Aren't there any that could let someone come back to life?"

"Hah, no. That's completely impossible."

December 27th

The man at the till looks vaguely familiar, and his face drops under sandy-brown hair when Matt enters. He had seen his eyes long enough, though, to know this isn't who Near was talking about.

The assistant who lopes towards Matt, however, is scrawny and pale, with black hair and black lines under his eyes. It looks like an experiment with eyeliner gone very, very wrong. "Hey, darling, how can I help you?" he croons. His voice is too chirpy for the morning, which is cold and grey and grimy. The sun hasn't even risen yet. The store is completely empty, except from these two, and a large model of Santa Claus that feels like it's looking at him.

"Give me information or I'll kill you," Matt says.

"You know," the man says in a singsong voice, "you didn't have to threaten me. I'm a very nice person; I would have told you anyway."

"Oh." He drops the aggression, and folds his arms across his chest. "Did you hear anything from upstairs last night?"

"Many things."

"Anything suspicious?"

"Anything could be suspicious."

"Anything before you closed up?"

"Just before I closed up? I was busy talking to a little girl, so I wasn't listening for suspicious sounds. That must have been near... ten in the night." He says 'near' in a strange whisper, then picks up a marshmallow snowman and begins chewing on it loudly.

"Near?"

"I'm not very precise with timing," he says as he swallows, "we haven't got a working clock in here."

"You said near in a strange way."

He stares at Matt like he's just suggested that humans have wings. "Did I?" He sounds somewhat awestruck.

"Oh, for god's sake. Did you hear anything strange from upstairs while you were locking up?"

The man starts chewing on his thumb, looking above Matt's head as if that will remind him. "Hmmm... no. Need anything else?"

Matt is beginning to feel somewhat uncomfortable. "Are there any people here called Clay, Amber, Green, Silver or Forest?" He hopes he got the names right.

"Do you mean in the whole of Winchester?"

"Yeah."

"Probability says: yes."

"So do you know anyone with those as their last names? Any of them?"

"Well, yes. All of them often visit this shop. What an odd coincidence."

"Tell me about them."

The man leans on the model of Santa and turns to grin at the boy at the counter. "Micky, would you make us some coffee? I think your little friend here's going to be staying for a while."

It's almost seven in the morning when the shop assistant finally lets Matt leave, now equipped with excessively detailed information about nine people, three chocolate bars, and a pack of cigarettes. Judging by the way sunlight is starting to creep over the horizon, he's been away for much more than the time he promised Near.

Oh well. She'd probably have dealt with it well. He thinks she likes being alone, so an extra few minutes shouldn't bother her too much. He sits at the bench they'd sat at yesterday evening and smokes away half his pack of cigarettes.

"Near?" he calls into the apartment as he pushes the door open slightly. There's no reply. "Near, are you in here?" Her toys are still scattered all over the floor. A robot is next to his foot. He steps on it and watches as it splinters into sharp fragments of plastic. "Did you hear that crunching sound? That was your robot. I'll do that to the rest of your toys if you don't come out."

It's mean, yeah, but if she's going to try and worry him by hiding, she needs to know it won't work. Also he's always wanted to break her stuff. Matt glances around for more toys to destroy and notices the body's been disturbed. A price tag is hanging from the collar of Henrietta's jacket that wasn't there earlier.

Maybe he'd just missed it. It had been dark and he'd been too much in shock to look for price tags.

Or maybe the murderer had returned to look at the body, found Near, and killed her.

The thought of Near being dead makes bitter fear rise in Matt's throat. He's never thought this about anyone but Mello before, but he doesn't want Near to be dead.

"Near?" he calls again. He expects no response and gets no response.

Okay, he needs to be more rational. If Near's alive she'll probably be in the bedroom, and if she's dead that's where her body will probably be, so he'll check the other rooms first, so he can keep pretending for longer that she isn't dead.

If Mello's with the murderer, Near is definitely dead.

Near is not in the bathroom. Matt checks the kitchen and finds a cutlery drawer hanging out. It seems perfectly innocuous until he remembers looking for paint tubes, and Near finding a large knife in this drawer. The knife is gone now.

His mind is suddenly flooded by images of Near with the knife between her shoulders, her face pressed against the ground, blood making a pool under her that stains her white pajamas red. Near with lines carved into her chest. Near split up into ten parts and scattered around the house for Matt to find. He grips onto the fridge door to try and regain a grip on reality.

He stands outside the bedroom for minutes that seem to stretch forever, his hand tightening and then releasing the door handle. At some point his breathing had sped up – he waits for it to slow down before he finally opens the door.

The knife is glinting on the unmade bed. Near is sitting on the floor constructing a tower of cards. Despite the wave of relief that takes his breath away, Matt kicks the cards.

Near only looks up once the flurry of cards has settled on the ground. "Hello, Matt," she says blankly.

He wants to kick her and watch her topple like the house of cards toppled. Instead he sits down on the other side of the cards. "Don't do that again," he says softly. "I thought you'd died."

"I don't see why you'd care if I died."

Just like that, the illusion of fragile friendship shatters. "I don't," he barks, "you're just useful for trying to find Mello. Why didn't you answer when I asked you if you were in here?"

"The vibration of the sound could have made my cards fall over. Did you get any useful information?"

Matt sighs and stands up. He moves the knife away from the edge of the bed, then lies down. "Yeah, but afterwards you need to tell me all you know about the murderer. You've barely told me anything and it might be useful."

"What did he tell you?"

"Apparently everyone with the paint tube names visits that shop regularly. Sparkling Fountain is Henrietta Fountain, we already knew that. Apparently she moved in here about a month ago and comes into the shop every morning to buy... I can't remember, just - stuff. He asked me where she was this morning."

"What did you say?"

"I told him I was getting her stuff; now shut up, this is probably important."

Forest Green – Sarah Green or Robert Green, a couple of teachers that visit the shop most weeks. They're in their late 20's, and almost permanently stressed. Their purchases tend to be sugary energy drinks or large bags of sweets. The man has an annoying tendency to talk on his phone while buying, though the woman is notably quieter, and often visits without her husband. They live on Vernier Street, which is just a road away from where Paul Vine was killed.

Glorious Clay – Gabriel Clay, an easily angered teenager, who buys almost anything that's on sale. His visits are irregular, but in every one he skulks around like the store, hands deep in his hoodie pockets. Twice he had been caught shoplifting. If you walked around the city at evening, the shop assistant had said, you'd find him with a gang of teenagers hanging around MacDonald's. He lives alone in an apartment like this one.

Burnt Amber doesn't quite fit, but the closest match is Stanley Amberwood, a meek old man who visits each Tuesday and Friday for the Daily Mail. He's a widower with a frail grip on the modern world but a passion for gardening and making jam. He'll never enter the shop if there's a teenager in there.

Titanium Silver – Bethany Silver and her child seem like they'd fit better in London. She visits once a week, Friday at exactly six minutes past three in the afternoon, pushing her pram in front of her like it doesn't weigh anything. She buys a loaf of bread, a bottle of semi-skimmed milk, and three bananas. Her child is always dressed in green and holding a stuffed frog toy. It feels like deja vu every time she visits.

Lastly, Aurora Forest – Ellie Forests, a woman with long blue hair and a contagious smile. She must be in her thirties but she skips into the shop like a seven year old every time. She doesn't visit often, but when she does she buys sweets and condoms, and makes laughing conversation with whoever's at the till.

"How interesting," says Near in a tone that shows she isn't really interested at all. Which pisses Matt off, because his mouth is really dry from reciting all that.

"So what do you know?"

Near starts curling her hair around her finger. She looks at her feet as she talks. "The killer's name is Beyond Birthday. He grew up at Wammy's with L -"

"He knew L?" Matt's suddenly interested. Up til now, he thought that the only person who knew L was L himself.

"Yes, they grew up together. Beyond was obsessed with L, or rather obsessed with surpassing him. So he acted as L, dressed as L, essentially became L. The major difference was that Beyond could see people's names and lifespans by looking at them."

"That's impossible."

"Yes, it is." Near starts working on her card tower again. Matt kicks it over again, and she glares at him. He grins at her. She deserves it for making him think she was dead. "L eventually became successful as a detective, while Beyond was forgotten. He tried to surpass L by creating a crime that he couldn't solve, and so he murdered people."

"The first person to die was – I don't remember his name, but it was strange, and the initials were BB. Beyond drugged him and strangled him with a rope. He left four straw dolls on the walls, and left slashes in the victim's chest that indicated the location of the next murder. I don't remember how."

Matt grunts, more in irritation than amusement. He sits up and glares down at Near, who is sorting the cards. "Isn't your memory meant to be really good?"

"Mello told me this while I was drugged and paralysed. I think he intended for my memory of the event to be damaged."

"Mello drugged and paralysed you?"

"On a regular basis. It allowed him to gloat without me getting away." Near shrugs and restarts construction of the card tower. "The second murder victim, Quarter Queen, had her skull crushed inwards. Her eyes were crushed too. There were three straw dolls on the wall. The fact that her eyes were crushed led to the next victim's address. At the third location, two straw dolls were hung on the wall."

"So it's a countdown?"

"That's the point of it."

Matt kicks down the card tower.

"The third victim's initials were also BB. She was killed by blood loss, with her arm and one leg removed. The rest of her body was arranged to form a clock, which gave the location of the final murder. However, instead of killing someone else, Beyond planned for himself to be the last one to die. Before he died, he was found by an FBI detective and saved. Now, presumably, he is free and murdering again."

"So how can we use this to figure out who the next victim is?"

Near smiles up at him, her eyes sparkling. "Actually I've already narrowed it down to three of those seven."

Matt rolls his eyes and lowers himself down from the bed to sit right next to her, where the card tower had previously been. He had been expecting Near to shuffle away or at least lean to the side, but no. She stays close in a remarkably unsettling way. "How?" he says.

"The murders he committed the first time around were all designed so that someone would find the body. Henrietta Fountain's murder was designed so that we would be the ones to find it, and the next one will be the same. Therefore the victim will be Gabriel Silver, Stanley Amberwood, or Ellie Forest, because Gabriel and Stanley definitely live alone, and I suspect Ellie does as well. The remaining clue to which of these will die should be on Henrietta's body."

Near's theory is nice and Matt wishes it would be true so that they could find Mello faster. But there's an obvious hole. "He can't know we would find her body, though. We only found her body because she invited us to stay the night." It's almost a shame to pick her guesses apart. She'd seemed so sure of it.

"Actually, he knew that would happen," she says. She looks bored as she reaches up to play with her hair. "There's blonde hair dye in the bathroom and the leather jacket she's wearing is so new she hasn't taken off the price tag. Beyond probably set her up to look like Mello and bribed her to take us in. Then he killed her." She shrugs. "He'll be somewhere around here. We know he looks like L, so that might help us."

Matt sits there quietly, wondering how many of Henrietta's actions were just part of the act to lure them in. He realises with a chill that whoever's doing this must know he likes Mello. Somehow, that's much more unpleasant than the fact that there's a murderer on the loose.

"How would knowing he looks like L help us? We don't actually know what L looks like," he says, just to get back to the familiarity of contradicting Near.

"It won't help us," Near says blankly, "but what it implies will. He's trying to find L, but he can't do that alone, so he's going to force us to help him find him. Which means he won't kill us or Mello."

Matt takes comfort in the fact that both him and Mello will stay alive together. Maybe they'll be able to get rid of Near at some point.

Then he feels guilty for thinking that, so he hugs her.