Author's Note: Two updates in one day? I must be losing my mind! Obsession is an ugly thing folks… Just say no to Death Note before it's too late! But if you're reading this, then I guess it is already too late for you. Oh well! This chapter contains some morbid themes so reader discretion is advised. Thank you for reading and thank you to all who reviewed.
Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note or any of the characters used in this story.
The following months found A in increasingly frequent states of panic, and each time he would think the psychological anguish was a different emergency. B had counted over thirty imagined heart attacks, twenty-seven strokes, and countless manifestations of obscure diseases a third year med student wouldn't even know about. After a while B didn't feel bad anymore. Whenever he noticed A starting to get nervous, he would just leave the room, regardless of A's pleas.
Soon A began to avoid places where he had experienced particularly bad panic attacks and did nothing but study. He lost weight and got little sleep, leaving B to cover his head with a pillow every night just to block out the light from A's desk lamp and the sound of A's mutterings.
The blonde stopped smiling and ate very little, always making sure to inspect his food before putting it in his mouth. The only thing he found safe anymore was the strawberry jam from his ludicrous peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Despite B's exasperation with A's behavior, he could not help but feel curious and a little sad as the boy's numbers neared their end. They had dwindled so fast. Like watching time pass on a digital clock.
In what B knew to be A's final days, A started to act very differently. His mood brightened and he actually started to talk to people that he had once been terrified of. The odd change in behavior allowed B to spend more time around his roommate, but brought his curiosity to a near burning level. It was not until the day before A's death that B figured out just what was going on.
--------------------------------------
B turned over in his bed when he heard a rustling from the other side of the room and opened his eyes ever so slightly to watch A creep through the darkness. He heard the opening and closing of a desk drawer and pretended to be asleep as A passed by him to slip out the door.
The numbers were so low. B had never seen numbers that close to zero. It was almost like seeing that faint glow in the sky before sunrise for the first time. He had seen night, and he had seen day, but never what was in-between.
Though he knew what was about to happen, B did nothing to try to stop it. There was nothing that could stop it. The numbers never lied.
With a groan, he turned over and went back to sleep.
A little over an hour later, B awoke again with a terribly dry mouth. As he swung his legs off the side of the bed, he briefly remembered why A wasn't in the room, but disregarded it to begin his trek to the bathroom in the hall.
B could almost taste the cool tap water in his mouth when he pushed open the bathroom door, but stopped cold in his thirsty tracks when he saw what separated him from the sink.
His roommate lay sprawled across the white tile floor in a puddle of thick, red blood. His hand was outstretched and his face was frozen in a grey mask of horror, as if at the last minute he had changed his mind and reached out to anyone, anything for help. A glaring zero floated above his head, looking uniform next to all the blood.
B took a step backwards and clasped his hands over his mouth.
What the hell!
Is this what it really looked like?
He had not been present for his parents' deaths so all he knew of was dwindling numbers and placid looking corpses in caskets. It had made it easy to take an indifferent viewpoint of the mortality that surrounded him.
But this…
This chilled him to the bone.
He pictured A's reactions to the false deaths he had dreamed up for himself, and then cringed to imagine what the boy must have been thinking in his final seconds, when the last numbers ticked away.
Why had A decided to do this? Of course death must have seemed blissful compared to the fearful half-life he led, but didn't he realize that in order to be dead he had to die?
Stupid, stupid A…
B looked at A's hand again. He looked at the wound on its wrist and the blood smeared over its fingers.
Who did he think was going to help him?
B?
Had he wanted B to stop him?
B couldn't stop him. The numbers were set in stone.
The black-haired boy crept up to the corpse before him, crouched down, and grasped its cold, rigid hand in his own.
"There was nothing I could have done," he whispered defensively to the dead boy. "You just don't understand the numbers, A."
B pulled his hand away and shivered when he saw the layer of blood that had been left behind. He tried to wipe the blood on his pajama shirt, but succeeded only in making more stains. Then he ran his hands under the faucet and scrubbed compulsively at his skin in a Shakespearean manner, working himself into an almost A-like panic. The frenzied ablution lasted for a good ten minutes before B looked up into the mirror and went disturbingly still.
"Wait here," B said to the corpse behind him, unaware of the irony of his statement. "I'll be right back."
B ran down the hall and back into his room where he grabbed the teddy bear from A's perfectly made bed.
He returned to the funereal lavatory and stared down at the body.
"This will make it better. I've got your bear."
He set the toy down next to A's chest and pulled the boy's blood-drenched arm over it in an inappreciable post mortum hug.
"There you go," he said with a smile inappropriate for the moment. "Now you won't be alone."
He turned the key on the stuffed animal's back and walked out of the room, trailing A's blood onto the hallway carpet.
-----------------------------------------------
Roger blinked his tired eyes and nodded with exhaustion. Just a few more papers to fill out and then he could sleep…
He hated late nights like this, but sometimes it had to be done. There was something to be said for the quiet of the early morning, though, and the rain pattering against the window had an almost soothing rhythm.
It was quite surprising for the old man when he heard a knock on his door at such a late hour.
"Come in," he called, wondering who it could be.
The door creaked open slowly and B stumbled in, tripping over his pajama pants. Roger's heart nearly stopped when he noticed the boy's gruesome appearance. Was he covered in blood?
"A is dead," B said detachedly before turning around and leaving as suddenly as he had come.
Roger went numb and the pen he had been writing with clattered to the desk.
----------------------------------------------
After the ambulance had been called and the bathroom blocked off, Roger found himself punching a number into his phone with trembling fingers.
"Hello?" asked a scrambled voice on the other end.
"I want out," Roger said, trying to control the anger in his voice.
"Roger?"
"Yes. I want out. I do not want to be a part of this anymore."
"What do you mean?"
"A child is dead, Qui-Watari. A twelve-year-old boy is dead. He killed himself. A twelve-year-old boy killed himself tonight."
"…Oh my God."
"'Oh my God'? Is that all you can say? Do you even see what you're doing to these kids?"
"I-I never could have expected--"
"Of course. You were too busy thinking about L. Well, let me tell you something you've probably never heard: the world does not revolve around L. These are human lives, not floppy disks. I'm not going to be a part of this anymore."
There was a moment of awkward silence.
"You can't leave, Roger."
"I can and I am."
"No. You can't. You signed into this. You have been granted access to too much information. Your leaving would pose a great danger to L, to the world."
"Did you hear anything I just said?" Roger roared.
"You cannot leave."
Roger paused a moment to consider what his friend was telling him. He felt like a disloyal member of a mafia family being fitted for cement shoes.
"You have damned these kids. You and L and your crazy version of justice."
"Don't say anything you can't take back. Now we just know what works and what doesn't. We won't make the same mistakes again."
Quillish Wammy hung up the phone and left Roger to seethe at an unfeeling dial tone.
Roger set down the handset and looked out the window. The rain had picked up considerably and the water poured off the roof in buckets, splashing noisily to the ground.
Author's Note: o.O I told you this chapter would contain unpleasantness! Thank you for reading though.