So, I'm back, the internet is fixed and there's a new chapter for you! And it's on time this week, kinda, so that's better. You only had to wait six days instead of seven. Anyway, moving on...

Thank you to Fairwaters for reviewing once again, much appreciated. I was going to say thanks to those who favourited/followed but then realised that no one did this week, but oh well. I assume that everyone liked the last chapter, I haven't heard otherwise.

So, on to the chapter and hopefully, this is up to standard, although only slightly shorter.

Karabas Bretznev was bored. Or at least, that was one way to describe how he was feeling. More like that he was falling into the ever-deepening pit that held the feeling of nothingness that everyone felt when there was so little to do that even staring at the ceiling seemed like too much effort. There was nothing of note in his room anyway and he had nothing better to do than lie on his back and stare at the cracked and peeling yellowing paint on the ceiling of the room. At least it wasn't a padded cell.

He had been dreaming again, thinking back to some of the better times in his sad and lonely life. Thinking back to the only two people who still remembered that a person existed behind the second persona (at least that was how he referred to his constant ongoing breakdown at the least) made him both bitter and happy at the same time, swinging constantly between the two, although right now, the feeling was definitely bitter. There they were, across the world and enjoying life, while he was forced to sit here, staring at the ceiling of a building that was so run down that someone really needed to consider giving the stupid roof a new lease of life before the rain drenched him in his sleep.

It wasn't fair, he knew, to judge them this way. They had done everything they could to help him, to save him from the monster brewing beneath, the thing under his skin that was still there. If not for them, he would have bathed in blood before setting himself on fire to burn in hell with them. It was a strange notion when looked at in hindsight, definitely unappreciated by those who had lost relatives to his breakdown, and he was reminded every time he closed his eyes. He had been dreaming lately of the trial that had led to the fourteen different psychiatrists that he knew would become fifteen, sixteen, perhaps even twenty eventually. Surely Dr Collins would soon realise that he was a lost cause and was only sane in the company of old friends.

Kill me he had once begged. Kill me, let me join A where the rest of us cowards live. I deserve it. Karabas shook his head, growling in an attempt to frighten those thoughts back into the void that he locked the other side in. Besides, they would never let him take his own life. That would make him just as bad as A, just as weak and as far from as strong as A too. One would think that that sounds strange… he thought, wondering if the others remembered A the way he did.

There was a rattle outside the door, the sound of the locks turning, and Karabas briefly considered whether it would be worth the effort of turning his head to take notice of this new development. The routine was the same every day in the Brooklyn Psychiatric Hospital. He was locked in his room all day except from between ten o'clock and midday, where he would spend the time in the company of Dr Collins, and three o'clock to half past four, where he would spend an hour and a half wandering about the specially emptied grounds to make sure that he harmed none of the other inmates. By the sounds on the other side of the wall, he wasn't sure why they bothered. The others seemed perfectly capable of ripping themselves to bits without his help.

"Get up," the guard snapped, the rattle of handcuffs breaking the silence of the room. Karabas didn't make any movement towards obeying the order, knowing that by resisting, he would have a few extra moments in bed as the guard went to find a wheelchair, straightjacket and friend to bundle him into the entire lot. I wonder if I could get a job as the next Houdini he thought blandly as the guard rapped on the door. "Move it, Dr Collins wants to see you!" Karabas frowned.

"I've already seen Dr Collins today." In fact, he had just broken Dr Collin's laptop by attempting to throw it at her head. The numbers had flickered for a brief moment before she had ducked fluidly out of the way.

"Something's come up. So are we going to do this the easy way or the hard way?" Karabas wondered vaguely if any of the guards didn't watch over the top prison break programmes, or if they were trained to be as clichéd as possible. He decided that it really wasn't worth the bother of practicing again today so merely sat up and held out his hands, meek as you like. The guard sniffed at his innocent expression, snapping the cuffs on and giving them a hard tug so that Karabas was forced to stand or fall face first onto the floor. He decided that standing was far better than falling on the floor face-first and jumped up with the force from the guard and sent the man a bright smile, one of the many he held in his arsenal. Not my favourite though. They're only for Mitsu and Lael.

The walk was the same. They passed Dr Johnson who scowled at him, but that was nothing new. Karabas knew that Dr Johnson was one of those who had advocated the death sentence for him. In fact if it hadn't been for Lael standing in at the last moment- he really liked to pick his moments nowadays- that may have just happened, but instead he had gotten off on an insanity charge and had been locked up or carted around the country since. He had been here for the past six months, although it had been three years since he had last seen Lael, standing in front of a jury, no masks other than a name, making it out like he was giving evidence from a third party. Another pair of grey eyes had been looking on from the audience behind, wide and frightened but not for herself. Never for herself.

Karabas was soon shoved out of one memory and into a room, not the usual room either. He knew that this was not Dr Collin's office, he had been there several times, and it was not one of the therapy rooms. It felt more like someone's front room more than anything, with sofas, table, chairs, a couple of actual metal pieces of cutlery (I had almost forgotten what they looked like) and, a TV. But no books which was a shame. He preferred books. At least the character's names were supposed to be there.

"Hello Karabas. I hope I haven't intruded on any plans?" Dr Collins asked, polite as ever. He had learnt a long time ago that this woman was both tricky and easy-going at the same time. She appreciated his dry humour and sarcasm but was stone faced in the presence of the other side, of the beast. He could respect her for that.

"Oh, I wasn't doing much really. Counting the cracks in my bedroom ceiling and chiselling away at my escape tunnel," he said airily. She actually cracked a smile at that. "What have I supposedly done that has set the cat amongst the pigeons then?"

"Nothing. An old friend called in," Dr Collins replied smoothly. Karabas blinked at that. Nobody had called about him in the three years since he was sentenced away from the hell that had been prison. He had the odd visit from Mitsu but that was it.

"Who?" he asked.

"Miss Rue. She wanted to know if it were possible for you to join her and her brother out in Japan for a short while. A test to see how much better you have been doing." Dr Collins' face was a mask, as stoney-faced as it had been when he had entered the room.

"Dr Johnson would rather see me dead than outside this hospital," Karabas stated flatly.

"He would also rather not have you here at all." So she is abandoning me. I wondered how long it would take. "Unfortunately, he is not in charge of you, I am. And I think that a small trip away for a while may do you a world of good."

"Mhmm, yes it would. And a break from my presence would be good for you too I assume." Karabas wondered why he felt so bitter over this parting of the ways. Dr Collins was merely his psychiatrist and only two people in the world had never abandoned him in his life. Two people that had called to see if he could come and see them a world away. After his mother's abandonment, he should be prepared for everyone to leave.

"Oh, I'm afraid you're stuck with me," Dr Collins said, her lips curving into a smile. "You see, while I do trust you not to break people in here, I'm not so sure about out there." A pause. "So I'm coming with you."

"You're… what?" It was hard to throw Karabas for a loop but Dr Collins still managed it at least once a week. He thought that she did it in order to keep him on his toes so that anything psychotic failed to kick in. But this was as far from what he had been expecting as anything. The numbers flickered in that odd way that they usually did, especially when he was confused.

"I'm going with you. I've always wanted to visit Japan and I'm sure you're anxious to meet with your old friends," Dr Collins said with that same smile that said she was politely laughing on the inside. This was normally when he grew so frustrated at her that it triggered some kind of rampage, mostly of her precious things, but this time he merely plopped into a seat, confused.

"You're not… leaving."

"No." She's lying the other half whispered. She always lies, just like the others. It would be so easy… so easy to watch those numbers fall with our hands around her throat. Or perhaps that pen in a vein.

But it's Mitsu that wants us in Japan his own voice in this whispered back, timid as a child. Sometimes he hated that he was always so scared of the other side, of the monster, but today he just wanted to be left alone by it. This was his chance to see them again, to set things back to the way they should be!

Things will never be the way they should be. I still exist. Karabas growled and shook his head, trying to claw out that voice inside his head. It hadn't always been there, only since A…

Blood in the bathwater, didn't get there in time, stupid, stupid, stupid… The numbers stopped, I should have known! Two hands caught at his own, gently pulling them away from his head as he blinked away the after-images of that bathroom to find Dr Collins crouched in front of him.

"Better?" she asked, face blank once more. Karabas stared at her, at her face, her name, the numbers above her head. She'll die old he thought vaguely, mind still twisted in the aftermath of flashback. In fact it kept trying to revert back, but every time it did he read her name. It was something to focus on, the present, so he did it again and again and again. Johanna Collins, Johanna Collins, Johanna Collins… "Karabas?" she inquired softly. Johanna Collins… "Would you like to return to your room now?"

"I want to go to Japan." The words were out before he could stop them, before he could check them to make sure that they actually made a sentence and weren't come kind of ramble. "I want to see Mitsu and-" He would have continued if he hadn't remembered that technically Lael didn't exist. Dr Collins seemed to get the message however. She nodded and then pulled something out of her pocket.

"Take these," she said, pressing two small tablets into his hand. "And don't try and choke yourself with them this time." He swallowed them dry and allowed himself to be taken back to his room. It was only when he collapsed on the bed that he realised he had been so out of it that he had allowed her to slip him sleeping pills.

The house was quiet when no one was around other than himself. Raito preferred the house like this, without any of the Task Force members inside making noise and with Misa away on a shoot in America. It was convenient that she wasn't here right now- that would only make this all the more complicated for himself. He had been sitting on his sofa in front of his laptop, intending to catch up on all the work that he had missed in an attempt to keep on top of the annoying amount of paperwork that detectives seemed to do (and he was sure that L never did any so he must have left this up to Watari). But it was no good, just as it had been no good attempting to be fine earlier that day with his father. Out of everyone, he should have realised that Dad would be the most likely to notice that something was wrong.

But then they had had that talk which just seemed to mess things up even more.

He had thought that his head was a mess yesterday when confronted by this strange version of L, smuggling him out like some kind of dirty secret to hide from a stranger. A stranger that Raito didn't even know about, to add to the list of everything that was wrong with this situation. It was bad enough to come to grips with a case that was out of his control, an aspect of life that he couldn't dominate in, but this was on a while new level. Raito liked to think that he was capable of looking into cases without feeling, able to compute facts without bias. Now he was struggling with the tidal wave that was the fallout of meeting L again and he sighed, deciding that he was going to have to put off sorting out this paperwork once again to clear his head. He stood up, stretching, and headed into the kitchen in order to make himself some coffee.

First things first, he needed to come to terms with this fact that L no longer remembered him. That was a good thing though, he was now separated from all the suspicion of earlier… although L had still seemed wary of him and the fact that he had gone to such great lengths, first to dissuade him from entering, and then to keep him out of sight, was probably evidence against that. But it didn't matter- all he needed was the time to once again entice him into the web and cut him off whether that was through death or conversion it didn't matter. You won't be killing him again whispered that voice, the one that had escaped it's cage. You know you can't make yourself do it a second time.

Yes I can he thought back through gritted teeth, shoving the image of that day back where it belonged, attempting to push that voice with it. But it was no good, the dam was broken beyond repair and it seemed to revel in its new found freedom to torment Raito from inside his mind. When he had locked it away all those months ago, technically over a year now, he had given it what he had thought were the greatest of barriers, locking away all feelings that did not comply with what he had planned. Sure when he regained his memories with the Death Note he found that it had been worn away a little, but nothing that wasn't fixable. This disaster had ripped it to shreds and he found himself now with a disconcerting alter ego inside his head that countered nearly every move he made. It wasn't right and he didn't like it one bit but for now there was nothing he could do to defend himself against it but logic and cold calculation- much the same strategy as he had used to lock it up.

The next thing that he needed to sort through was the feelings that had been brought up earlier that day with his father, hearing about the true tragedy that had led to L's life being saved. Why did he do it? Raito thought in frustration, sipping the still too hot coffee. Dad never liked L from the start I'm sure, so why? It had to be something from that day, or maybe even respect for him to have asked the doctors to try to save him but not to pay the bills. I don't understand…

I do his alter ego whispered. I think I do anyway.

And what would you know he snapped back at it and it recoiled slightly, but it was far bolder now than it had been in years and it smiled at him with those stupid innocent eyes. Wait, why am I giving you a face? He asked himself as it laughed at him. You're not even real!

I'm still a part of you. You might not want me here but I can't leave. Reject me all you like, you can't prevent my existence. Raito recoiled from that, realising for the first time that this was what it must be like to slowly go insane. Does that make me a psychopath?

Yes.

Go away.

I can't. You know that. Raito scowled and tried to turn this conversation back to the original point.

I still can't understand why Dad would pay for those bills, why he would be so concerned about L? It's not as if they had any kind of personal relationship that nobody knew about he thought and he could imagine the other side shaking its head at him.

Dad's more used to be emotional than you are. I can't imagine what it was like to know that someone is still alive, trapped in some kind of cocoon that is a coma. However hard this is for us, it must be harder for Dad and worse for Ryuzaki.

That's not even his real name Raito snapped, not wanting to think down that uncomfortable road. This was why he had locked the damn thing away. It just got in the way of all his logical thinking and deductions. Wjere had emotions ever got anybody but pain and trouble? Even L had discarded them, becoming a machine to solve crimes.

That's not true his other side protested. He cares about us, like how we care about him. He cared about Watari before you murdured him. The other side was pouting, Raito was sure of it through the disapproving tone that he was receiving. No, it can't pout or frown or anything like that! It's not real!

I'm still here.

Then go away. I need time to think without distractions. The other side huffed, but surprisingly Raito thought that it retreated slightly and he seemed to have a better control over these pesky emotions that wouldn't leave him alone.

Alright, so Dad decided to pay for the bills because of some kind of emotional level that I don't understand… I can work with that. Maybe he was thinking that it could just as easily have been me and felt guilty that L has no family… That still didn't seem to fit, but it was the best that Raito could come up with. Personaly, he had a niggling feeling that his father wasn't quite sure why he had done it either. Soichiro Yagami, like his son, was not the spontaneous kind. It was enough for now to leave it all on something that only his father understood than to try and puzzle it out. There were greater priorities. Like the annoying Shinigami that had twisted himself into impossible shapes and was making very aggravating, very loud complaints.

"Oh, Raito, please I need apples!" Ryuk wheedled, rasping voice six times more grating when he was pleading for something. Raito just regarded him with disinterest, knowing that if he were to give in, the Shinigami would not respect him, would take advantage of its skills once more. Who knew what kind of information it knew or was intentionally retaining? It irked him that Ryuk had withheld the truth about L for so long, especially when it involved members of the Task Force.

"Don't worry Ryuk," Raito said pleasantly, not giving away any of the irritation he felt. "I'll buy you some…"

"Yes, please do that!"

"… Tomorrow."

"What!" This seemed to anger the Shinigami so much that he untwisted himself from the ridiculous position he was in to glare at Raito.

"You heard me. I'll buy you some more when I go shopping tomorrow." Truthfully, the house needed to be restocked today, usually a task that Misa occupied herself with, but what with Ryuk's punishment and her not getting back for another couple of weeks, he would go tomorrow instead when things were truly dire. It would mean a miserable dinner tonight and skipping breakfast tomorrow morning, but it would be worth it.

"You know, I could just write your name in the book and be done with it," Ryuk threatened. "And what would happen to your perfect world then?" Raito set his mug down, unperturbed. In fact, this conversation was helping to centre his thoughts back to where they were supposed to be.

"If you write my name in the book then you'll never get your apples," Raito pointed out, eyebrow raised. Ryuk merely scowled at the logic.

"You're no fun," he muttered as he turned and phased back through the wall. Raito sighed. One problem down, now on to the next one… His thoughts were cut off by the phone ringing. Raito frowned, wondering who would be calling at this at night. He didn't have any close friends that would call so late or just randomly and none of his family were into spontaneously calling for no reason- if there was any news his father would have told him earlier or would wait until tomorrow. Hesitantly he picked up the phone, thinking that it was most likely Amane calling from American and, if so, he was prepared to tell her that she would be paying this month's bill.

"Hello," he said politely and then nearly dropped the phone when he heard who was really on the other end of the line.

"Hello Raito-kun," L intoned down the phone, sounding as bored as usual. "Is this not a convenient time?" Damn it, he thought, angry that he had allowed any sound of surprise to pass through his lips.

"No, it's just me here right now." Inside he wondered why one earth L was calling him now. He never did anything without reason, so he must be angling for something.

"Good." Raito suppressed any thought of anger at how the other man sounded. "I would like to invite you back to headquarters on Thursday 23rd March." Why that date?

"Why not tomorrow?" Raito asked.

"Not convenient."

"Really?" Raito said, trying not to sound too interested. "Why not?" Silence.

"Goodbye Raito-kun." With that, the line disconnected and Raito was left standing alone in the kitchen with the receiver in his hand wondering once more what on earth was going through the genius' head.

I will admit, writing Raito in this chapter was a lot of fun, especially the brief moments of clarity when he realises that he's almost developed this split personality. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did and also I hope that you can bear with me through the first part that once again seemingly has nothing to do with this... most of it. Although I think you can see where this might be going but if not, I'm not going to be giving the game away just yet ;)

I apologise that L never really made an appearence in this chapter, or really anyone else of note other than the made-up Dr Collins and Raito's split personality. There will be more, especially when things start to heat up in the next chapter. As for anyone wondering where on earth Misa has gotten to in this story, she's not my favourite character and, honestly, for me she is the hardest to write as for me she is almost bland in personality past 'I love Light!'. I know that there are flashes of personality that aren't annoying in there, she just annoys me to no end at times, hence why she has disappeared for the moment. Unfortunately, since she is cannon, I can't just forget about her and she will inevitably return, eventually, but for now, she is staying in America.

Other than that, please leave a nice review of what you think, or don't whatever floats your boat I guess. I will see you next week with a new chapter!