A/N: And here's the end. Which is going to disappoint…maybe half of you?

Blank Note

46. Break

'What did you want with him anyway, Boss?'

Said Boss clicked his tongue. The Death Note was in his hands, and he'd turned it over quite thoroughly, looking inside and out. So far, the information Mello had left behind held fast; tearing all the blank pages just made them grow back again. Apart from that, the book hadn't done anything suspicious…except for dropping an apple-obsessed Shinigami into their laps. An apple-obsessed Shinigami eager to see the Note used rather, however members of the Mafia weren't accustomed to using suicide weapons…and both Mello and Kira were famous figures amongst them…for different reasons of course.

If one believed in Shinigami – and it was hard to deny the evidence in front of their faces – then they had to believe in curses as well. And the Death Note was cursed; there was no way in hell any Mafia member would be writing in it.

'A scribe,' he said eventually, rolling the words off his lips. 'At least until our old friend Near comes looking for us.'

That was an exaggeration, because Near was not even Mello's friend, let alone theirs.

'Shouldn't we just destroy –'

A stomp and a howl of pain. 'Don't be an idiot,' the Boss hissed. 'Letting go of this sort of weapon? If it's a suicide weapon, just let someone else take the fall; that's the way it's always been and that's the way it'll always be.'

And he tossed the Death Note through a cackling Shinigami and into their prisoner's lap.

'Normally I'm not for innocent deaths,' the other muttered to himself, eyeing the boy, 'but when someone doesn't fight for themselves no-one's going to fight for them.'

'Hmm, when did you grow some morals, Shirikawa?' the Boss chuckled, before turning to the boy. 'Write a name in that Note. Any name, except your own. Can't have you dying on us after all.'

That would defeat the whole purpose.

Pale fingers slowly clasped the book, and the Boss threw a pen to land on the open pages. The other didn't pick it up.'

Ryuk drifted slowly closer. 'Want the eyes?' he offered, after the men had left.

'Why?' the other asked.

'Who knows.' The Shinigami tossed his arms. 'I like apples; you like knowing things, don't you? Names, faces…the time they'll die to the second. It makes things a whole lot simpler you know. Won't need to sit blind anymore. And you need a name, don't ya? Can't give you one; that'll be breaking the rules and all, but I'll trade you for half your life.'

'Half my life,' was the monotonous reply.

'Well, yes, but that's hardly a bad deal for some peace of mind, don't you think?' Ryuk shook his head. Sometimes all the different ways people thought was confusing, but he'd watched them long enough to know exactly where to twist.

Actually made things somewhat boring, but it was fun when he was stuck between following the Death Note or following its owner. He needed a change of pace once in a while after all, and he didn't think he would be convincing Koji Minamoto of anything anytime soon…if ever.

Shame, but it looked like his time on earth was coming to an end. But maybe he could milk a little more before that…even if it was mere weeks upon his time.

He supposed it was back to the drawing board.

47. Share

His reflection was on the door. Something had changed: something more subtle than the colour of his eyes – flickering from blue to red and then blue again.

Something more than the names and numbers floating over masks called faced. Something more than the lips that moved and gave way to incoherent sound – whispers and shouts and bangs and shots and nothing else.

He thought he'd be scared, or sad. But he wasn't. Scared. Or sad.

He was supposed to write something? Or was he? He didn't have to; not really. It wouldn't change anything, it seemed. Not that he really cared. Why should it impact him, whether something changed or not? He didn't change; he wouldn't change. Too much time had passed. It seemed he would never find what he was looking for.

It was easier to just…follow…

He had a pen in his hand. A pen wrote. He wrote –

And then the pen wasn't in his hand. A bang, then more whispers.

New faces. New masks. New names that meant nothing…though faces, faces were familiar. He couldn't see though, could he? It was all dark.

He had eyes though. He was looking. And reading. Names. Numbers. And then no names, or numbers. Just the dark. Just the waiting place.

48. Danger

Satomi had come home to find her husband looking extremely ragged and both children missing, and it didn't take all that long to get the story out.

In the days that followed, she felt her emotions and thoughts tumbling about. The house seemed empty, and yet packed with some sort of negative energy she couldn't hope to understand. It made her feel dry inside though, hollow. It made her realise the little quirks in her family that she was missing out on, the things she knew all along but never really identified. Never named.

She visited Koji sometimes – no-one save Koji himself seemed to have a problem with that – but she simply didn't know what to do. She wasn't his mother; she wasn't a replacement – and God she didn't want to be. But she was a woman and she still had her maternal instincts, and they wailed at the despondency, the hopelessly guilt-wracked form that greeted her without life.

Anyone would have done the same. She knew it. She believed it. Her husband did the same; hadn't he spent half his life acquitting those teenagers that got themselves into trouble without knowing the entire cause? Freeing them from the lethal injection and guiding them towards rehabilitation instead – but those were one, two murders at the worst – but Near had the power to do it, and he was considering. Considering. She clung to that hope; she knew Kousei was clinging to that hope as well, and while she had only talked to Tomoko once since, she knew the other woman, the boys' real mother, was clinging to that hope as well.

As for Koichi, she believed the strange albino detective when he said he was putting all his resources towards finding him. She believed him because he reminded her of a child as well, a child who seemed disappointed – almost annoyed – with himself. A child who considered something in the current circumstance a failure that he had to correct. It didn't really matter, as long as her children (so what if she wasn't their mother?) were safe at the end of it.

But the house spoke otherwise, and she knew exactly what when the phone call drove her to the hospital, to find her usually stoic husband shaken once more and Koichi doing nothing more than reading names and senseless numbers with eyes that flickered between blue and red and a bullet hole in his right palm.

It didn't matter that they were all out of danger know. She had already lost the two boys she had come to think of as her sons.

49. Escape

Koichi suddenly grasped the cloth on his chest, and it was so sudden and unexpected a movement that Satomi quickly abandoned the wheelchair handles and came around to him.

'Is everything okay?' she asked worriedly.

The other shook, and she rearranged the blankets so they covered more of him, then stifled a gasp as the red eyes lifted to see her face. It was always discerning, watching them change from their natural but now hollowed blue to a red that reflected blood…and death. Even more discerning was watching them change back, even if they were still focused on her face…or rather, somewhere above it. That, she had never seen; the Shinigami eyes always saw the name and death once a person's face was in their vision, or so she had been told and she had witnessed for the past two weeks.

But they were still staring at her, and it was only when the weight slumped entirely into her arms that she realised what had snuck up, so quietly and unexpectedly, and she screamed towards the house for someone, shaking the other's limp form and fumbling for a pulse or an obvious string with the other hand.

Despite all the death around her city, and her family, this was the first time she had witnessed it. And she couldn't believe, couldn't accept, that it had ended with her losing the two people she had, for a while, been proud to call her sons. Even if she hadn't borne them, she still felt like a mother.

And as a mother, she could only hope that this son, at least, was now in a better place.

50. Lie

Koji brought his knees to his chest, eyes focused on the unfamiliar – but somehow suitable – fabric that clothed them. When he had first picked up the Death Note, he had never imagined losing control of his life the way he had…or causing so much damage to others.

'Did you kill him?' he asked, his own tone as flat as the death he spoke of.

'Who?' Ryuk sounded faintly amused. 'Your brother? No, I didn't.'

And as much as it sounded like one, he didn't lie.

'He took the Shinigami eyes and cut his remaining life span in half.' The Shinigami sighed. 'Sheesh, I gotta spell it out…but I guess I might as well. Consider it a parting gift.'

The other really didn't seem to care of the implications of that.

Ryuk shrugged. Hence why he had gotten bored so easily. 'You're lucky I hung around the extra day,' he commented. 'I killed Light before he got to jail, you know.'

Koji was beyond caring about any of that.

Explain, the silence seemed to say. Explain, about my brother…

'He cut his life span in half,' Ryuk said, leaning close to the still form. 'Whether you had ever picked up that Death Note or not, he would have died within the month. Sad reality kid; you can bring death forward with a few letters, but it takes real heart to extend it. Your humans…' He chewed on his pen tip. '…are so fragile. Makes playing with you pretty boring. Light though, he was an interesting one. Shame there aren't more like him in the world.'

Silence.

'I guess that's it.' Ryuk tucked his notebook and pencil away. 'It was kind of fun I guess, but over too fast.'