A/N: For Ramis Hunroll, who thought it might be cool to see it from L or Soichiro's point of view.
Yagami Soichiro is Chief of Police. Yagami Soichiro is a loving husband, a dedicated career cop. Yagami Soichiro is the father of a nineteen-year-old mass-murderer.
Ever since Light was little he was always so brilliant, so bright, so very perfect. Everything came naturally to him. Murder, it seems, is just another of Light's many talents.
––
Sachiko named Light. Soichiro speaks English proficiently, but not fluently. He knew enough English to be supportive of his wife's decision to name their first child Light, but not enough that when he starts learning it with renewed dedication in the wake of his son's conviction the discovery of the western devil doesn't leave him with chills.
(Lux, lucis, "light", ferre, "to bear, to bring" Lucifer the light-bringer – the devil comes in the guise of an angel, the devil comes clothed in Light.)
Sometimes Soichiro wonders if he always knew. Sayu was always his favourite.
And then he wonders if that isn't why. Maybe Light was always aware of that favouritism, maybe Light saw Kira as a way of striking at his father for not loving him enough, for not caring enough about his son's activities.
I'm certain Sayu isn't Kira, he remembers telling L in the hospital. It was only when he faced Light across an interrogation room table and Light told him with mild reproof that he always knew that Soichiro realised what Light and L had known the moment he said it – he would never say I'm certain Light isn't Kira.
Kira is too cold-blooded to care, he tells himself, but he hugs Sayu less and less. He can't help looking for slivers of Light in his daughter's face, he can't help looking for the absence that was in Light that means he can claim to be the father of the greatest single killer on the face of the earth.
––
"I have something to tell you," Light had said, and Soichiro remembers how he had fidgeted, the minute changes of expression that had flickered over his face, frowns and smirks and scowls and how Light's hands had clenched, a piece of paper clutched in one of them like a lifeline. He remembers the steadying breath he sucked in through gritted teeth. He remembers the sudden serenity that had covered his son's face like veil, he remembers knowing before Light opened his mouth what he was about to say.
Soichiro has heard of knowledge being compared to the bite of an apple's flesh, to the taste of honey, the flicker of candle flame. Soichiro will always confuse knowledge and revelation, both of them a fist in the gut.
"I am Kira," his son had declared serenely, face impassive--
How unstable the world was, falling apart at the seams in a moment, in three words.
Under his outward horror, his shock and rage and fear, Soichiro wondered why he wasn't more surprised. He wondered if the Kira case had already sapped all of his strength. He wondered if he'd seen more of Light than he realised in the days before his confession, the conflict on his face the closer and closer L shuffled blindly towards his death.
"I am Kira," Light had said, and in the moment Soichiro had realised he didn't know his son at all.
––
A fist, a car crash in slow motion.
When he watched L and Light together, it struck Soichiro that his son was more intelligent than he would ever be, that his son saw the world in a completely different way, so far apart from Soichiro's own way of thinking that the only person who could understand it was L.
L. As in, the world's greatest detective. As in, the shadowy faceless mastermind that shuffled international police agencies around as if they were chess pieces.
L's cool-headed cold-blooded approach to investigating had shaken the foundations of Soichiro's understanding of his job, had tilted the world by degrees. For L's desire to find Kira he had turned against his family, had allowed cameras to be installed in his home and defined himself as a policeman above all.
Soichiro thought he had never met anyone like L, and to see his son greet him, stand next to him, speak opposite him and match him, query for query, move for move –
A fist to his worn heart, the tang of an apple's flesh against his tongue. How could he know his own son so little? How could he not have known this side of Light? Watching Light's mind dance with L's – L, the world's greatest detective – how could he possibly be so blind? How could he not see just how brilliant his boy was?
Maybe he shouldn't have been surprised at all that his son turned out to be Kira.
––
The first time Soichiro visits Light in the asylum he screams and shouts at him for half an hour, voice cracking, body shaking, and Light stares through him as if he doesn't exist.
When Light was a child – and he's still so very young, this beautiful murderous boy – Soichiro had never yelled at him, he had always expressed his disappointment in an even tone, and Light had always responded automatically with shame and hurt, had ducked his head with glittering tears in his eyes and had always taken care to never do whatever it was again.
Light stares through him like he doesn't exist and he wonders if all the contrite expressions were merely that – expressions, nothing to do with what was running through his head, just something Light had learned to do to deflect attention and allow him to proceed with his own things. Perhaps all he is seeing at last is what Light truly thinks of him, what Kira truly thinks of him – of everyone – that he is a nonentity, nothing, less than nothing.
Soichiro thinks that perhaps he wants that to be it, because surely his son can't—can't be like anyone else, surely there must be something wrong with Light that he could kill hundreds, thousands of people without blinking. Because if there is nothing wrong with Light then Soichiro must have done something wrong, there must be something wrong in how he raised him, how he taught him. Something, somewhere, just hadn't connected, hadn't fired, and he hadn't noticed and all Kira's victims were his fault for not being the father he should have been.
He thinks that anyway.
Perhaps he shouldn't have praised him so often, so loudly – but he had been so proud of his son, how could he not? Perhaps he shouldn't have let Light work on his cases – but he'd wanted his only son to follow in his footsteps. Perhaps he shouldn't have spent so much time at work, so much time away from his family – but he'd wanted his family to have everything, and everything comes with work (except for Light, for whom everything came with nothing).
He's looked at it over and over from every angle he can think of and he still doesn't know where he went wrong.
Then he thinks of Sayu, and Sayu is not a murderer.
The shinigami crouches behind Light, strokes its clawed fingers gently through Light's uncombed too-long hair and Soichiro can feel his stomach heaving as he watches it stare at him over Light's shoulder, poisonous yellow eyes glowing in its grinning face.
He can't tell the difference between the shinigami's frozen face and his son's.
Light's eyes half-close at the creature's rhythmic touch, and Soichiro thinks this is Kira, this has to be Kira, because this can't be his son, this blank-faced caged creature that looks too much like the Death God next to it.
Soichiro closes his eyes and can still see his son aged five, can still remember how round and soft his cheeks were pressed against his shoulder as he carried him upstairs to bed, can still remember his eyes as bright and honey-brown, full of innocence, so warm and alive.
Soichiro opens his eyes, and he sees afresh how the skin of the boy in front of him is stretched taut over bone, the shadows in his sharply elegant face, the white scars snaking beneath the loose institutional clothing. He sees with fresh eyes and he sees a monster.
––
He runs. What else can he do?
––
A fist, a car crash revelation.
From the moment Light and L fell into orbit around each other, Soichiro ceased to exist as anything except periphery. Sachiko and Sayu ceased to exist at all.
Click.
Puzzle pieces falling into place.
Tick. Tock. Yagami Soichiro was a toy, a pawn, a sketchy, easily manipulated set piece. Forty seconds and his life could have been over, his own son would have killed him without a blink.
King and King took their sides, and Soichiro was just a pawn and now that the game is over he sees that either of them could – would – have swept him off the board if it served them.
It wasn't for his father that Light stopped himself killing. Soichiro wanted to believe the best of his son, but he's not stupid.
He remembers the way Light looked at L near the end when he thought nobody was looking, the way he half-frowned, half-smiled like he didn't know which he wanted to do. He remembers how L had stared at Light from the very beginning, before there was the slightest hint at all that his son was anything other than a very intelligent young man.
He knows that L keeps going back to Light, demanding answers he knows he won't get. He knows in his heart that Light will lift his head and face L, as surely as he knows he will never respond to him. Even now Yagami Soichiro is a lost note in the margins of his son's life.
No. He can't think of Kira as his son, he can't think of Kira as Light. If he did, he'd take the gun he once used to fake an execution, put it to his head and pull the trigger.
––
"When's Light coming home?" Sayu asks, knowing the answer is never.
––
Sachiko tells him to give Light her love, and he wonders at her ability to forgive. It takes him time to understand that she doesn't think there is anything to forgive. Sachiko doesn't take it as a personal affront that Light became a mass murderer, she doesn't consider Light's fall to be her fault, or his, or the fault of their family.
Soichiro is a police officer; Kira is a criminal. He doesn't understand.
Sachiko has never chosen a job over her family. She has never doubted that she did the best she could. Sachiko is a mother. Sachiko believes in the gods. He told her about the shinigami and she didn't laugh, she didn't look at him like he was crazy. She'd looked hurt and accepting, as if sad that something she'd always known should have become fact in such a way.
She sighs, her body comfortable and familiar pressed against his, and whispers, "How could anyone – even our Light – possibly stand against that?"
Our Light. As if their little boy is still the centre of the universe, as if he can still say the words without spitting.
He tries to tell her – Kira chose to do everything he did. He tells her the shinigami never did anything to prompt Kira one way or the other, merely watched, and she looks at him like she can't understand how a former detective superintendent could be so slow.
"Think," she says, her arms around him, her head against his shoulder. When Light was a baby he was rarely out of her arms. No. Don't think about Light. "If Light had never touched that 'Death Note' –" she uses the English words, careful, precise, "—would he have ever killed anyone?"
"No," Soichiro says bitterly but too fast, because someone like Kira – surely that sort of emptiness leaves its mark, surely that sort of emptiness would have to express itself somehow.
"No," Sachiko agrees as if she doesn't hear his doubt. "Something like that isn't meant to be in human hands. Of course it would warp anyone unlucky enough to touch it. Death belongs to the gods. Anyone could have become Kira with that sort of power in their hands."
No, not anyone. Just Light. There have been humans with Death Notes before, the shinigami – Ryuk – had said as Soichiro crumpled and smoothed out the ragged piece of paper in his hand, over and over, trying to ignore everyone else in the room. But never anyone like Light. Never.
He wants to shake Sachiko, he wants to tell her how proud that creature had sounded, how absolutely delighted he was with their son – their son! Such a quick study, such a fascinating, entertaining human who spun vast webs purely, it felt, for its amusement.
He wants to tell Sachiko how sick he felt, listening to Light calmly recite Kira's crimes, he wants to tell her how he talked of using people as lab rats, his dismissal of their lives as nothing compared to his delight at discovering the extent of the Death Note's abilities. He wants to tell her about the clown-faced shinigami, the way it looked at Light, the way it talked to him, about him, so pleased, so goddamn thrilled, telling them with pride that he'd never seen a human like him, that Kira surpassed even a Death God in scope and ability.
Light could have tricked a shinigami into killing herself for him. He could have killed a god and L in the same moment, and he planned it all months in advance. That's the sort of creature their son is.
He doesn't have to say anything. She sees it in his eyes and shakes her head again and cups his face with her hands – worn, tired, years of the constant, never-ending work of a mother has made them raw – he wonders when it happened that his homebody wife surpassed a deputy chief of police in understanding and wisdom. "That Light took it so far – you remember how it was, even when he was a little boy," she says simply. "Anything Light did was always going to be bigger, brighter than anything and anyone else. It's not his fault that this ended up being it, just terrible luck."
He's a murderer, Soichiro thinks.
He's my son, Sachiko's eyes say. "I won't let Kira take Light from me," she whispers. "Give him my love."
––
He knows 'K7193' isn't even aware of his presence. He doesn't need to be a doctor to know that there's nothing going on behind those blank eyes. He can't tell if he's even moved since the last time he was here.
"Your mother sends her love," he tells Light.
It's getting harder and harder to think of the thing in the room as Light. Everything soft about him is being pared away, everything gentle and human, everything he could see his little boy in. Looking at the sharp angles of this stranger's cadaverous face he remembers that the only companionship this broken thing has is a shinigami.
This is my son, he thinks with shock, with pain, with horror.
––
Light grew up so fast – too fast? – always calmer, more mature than the other children his age. He was just so perfect, sometimes Soichiro couldn't believe Light wasn't something he'd dreamed up, that any moment he'd wake up with his hand on Sachiko's pregnant belly, and they'd go back to arguing about names and whether they were having a boy or a girl. Sometimes he felt as if someone had mistakenly slotted Light into their life, placed this little glowing sun in the middle of their tiny family and that was why they drifted in orbit around him, never daring to really know him, because planets can't touch the sun without being destroyed.
(And hasn't Kira destroyed their family? Hasn't knowing the heart of the sun turned everything to ash?)
After a year in Rooksgrove he can no longer mistake Kira for Light. It's like the place is eating him alive, or at least, eating Light and leaving the stubborn bones of Kira behind.
He didn't know he had enough left in him for his heart to shrink with pity.
He wonders if L sees this as clearly as he does, he wonders what L thinks as he looks at this mockery of the elegant effortless genius he knew. He wonders if it strikes L like a knife blow, he wonders if every time he visits he staggers away and vomits in the plain hospital washroom. He wonders if, like Light, L cares at all.
L has always been clear that he is three steps from Kira himself – childish and hating to lose – and maybe L feels nothing watching his 'friend' unravel, just as Light would have felt nothing watching L tumble from his chair, heart stuttering to a halt in his chest.
He wonders if L knows the cruelty he is doing and thinks Light deserves it for spoiling the intricate game between Kira and L. He wonders whether L has done this because he thinks Light doesn't deserve a quick death or because Light didn't give him victory over Kira on his own merits.
(But L would have died before that happened; they all heard Light's matter-of-fact recital. Light would have held him as he died and cried – maybe even screamed – while smiling like a demon.)
How tightly wrapped in each other they were, and they could watch each other die without flinching, and Soichiro just couldn't understand – that sort of connection, that sort of mental understanding, surely it came with an emotional connection? Surely you couldn't wrap yourself so completely around another person and not care for them in the slightest?
Perhaps this is L's idea of caring, and the thought is so wrong, so horrific it makes him want to be violently ill.
Why couldn't you kill him, he wants to say, to beg, why couldn't you finish this, why do you have to rub my nose in the fact that the greatest monster I've ever hunted is my own flesh and blood? Why couldn't you stop thinking of yourself and your precious game for once and do the right thing?
This is my son, he thinks, numbly.
––
He supposes he should be grateful that L cared enough – for Light, for Soichiro, for their family, one of the three – that he insisted the knowledge of Kira's true identity never left the tight circle of those who were there when he confessed.
He thinks L did it because he couldn't stand the thought of other people looking at Light and knowing as he did the monster behind the face. He thinks L did it because he didn't want to share Kira – the truth of Kira – with anyone. He thinks L keeps Kira locked in a little room unknown to anyone because he wants to keep the unfathomable connection between them even though the game of catch me if you can is over.
He thinks L is a monster; he thinks Kira and L are equal in their monstrosity, in their involuntary abnormality. The glimpses of what they might have been are the corona around a permanently eclipsed sun.
Soichiro always envied his son, just a little. He knew he shouldn't have been ashamed every time he watched Light doing something perfect first time after he'd spent hours on it, but there had always been a faint humiliation hiding in his pride. He thinks of Light now, a lingering shadow in an empty room, and he thinks of L, staring through the window at him, having sentenced his 'first ever friend' to something even worse than the death his friend promised him –
If that is genius, Soichiro thinks, he is glad to be nothing special.
L keeps Kira locked in a box. Kira keeps himself locked in his head. Stalemate. And the shinigami who started it all, doing nothing, just watching. Just laughing, like the destruction of Soichiro's family is the most entertaining thing he's ever seen.
He goes home and weeps drunkenly standing alone in his dead son's room.