Author's Note:

I'm exhausted. I just had a bad case of flu, so I missed five days of school and had to catch up with all the work (this weekend is not going to be funny at all), and my insomnia decided to make an appearance, so I can't sleep at night and when I hit the bed in the late afternoon my mind doesn't stop working.

These days I'm running on one, maximum two hours of sleep against 22 of consciousness.

And it seems my body is in tune with the new chapter!+

Enjoy! (and let me know what you think)

His eyes were red and puffy. Under them, two big purple bags gave him the appearance of a red panda.

His hair was oily and disheveled, his skin dry.

He was dropping from exhaustion.

He had a headache the size of Himalaya.

He hadn't slept for three days, going on hooked on caffeine and sugar to keep him awake.

But he couldn't stop.

He had to find him.

His world was reduced to a single goal, his vision tunneled on the graphs on his desk, on the files on his computer's screen.

He had lost 11 pounds, and everything he ate came back up, his stomach too upset to handle anything other than soup.

"River."

Why he was so stupid? Why he couldn't find any clue? Why?!

He used to be number 2 on Wammy's list, and he could have been first if he had wanted. Had he lost some brain cells in those twelve years? Had his IQ dropped so much that he couldn't figure out something that could cost his child's life?!

"River!"

A hand touched his shoulder, making Light startle so badly he knocked with his elbow his cup of coffee, making it fall and shatter on the floor. The sound seemed to echo in the Station, and for a moment the busy buzz of working officers came to a halt. Every eye seemed to focus on him, judging him, finding him worthless, useless because he couldn't find his child, his baby was going to die because he was so stupid…

"River!" Aizawa's voice barely seemed to reach him, and in a detached way he noticed his increased breathing, the black spots in front of his eyes, the cold sweat on his forehead.

A panic attack, he concluded. He never had one. So it was like this that people felt when they had one? Because it was horrible.

He couldn't get air in his lungs, which constricted so much it hurt. He couldn't breathe, and he was going to die and with him his child, his Near who would die because he was not good enough to find him, and the next body they would find would have snow white hair just like his-

A slap made him snap out of it. Air rushed into his chest, too fast. Light started coughing, feeling hands on his shoulders, a rag drying the sweat on his skin.

"Don't you have things to do? Go back to work!"

He dimly heard his boss' voice over the cotton padding in his head, and immediately felt a million eyes leave their watch on him. He almost collapsed in his chair, and opened his eyes – he hadn't even realized he had closed them, and now the world seemed so bright, too bright, how could the globe be this cheery if his child was missing right now?-.

The concerned face of Aizawa filled his vision, a mask of concern and worry on his features.

"River, you have to go home."

"No, I can't!" answered Light, another wave of panic threatening to overwhelm him. It took a titanic strength to even again his breathing. "I can't, I have to work on the case, my son is out there in the hands of a slaughterer and I-"

"You will collapse if you keep going on like this. Come" the Chief helped him stand up and led him to the comfort area, pushing him gently towards one of the couches.

Light almost fell on the cushions, leaning then forward with his elbows on his knees.

"Sir, I can keep working on this case, I just have to find a lead. If you let me-"

"You are not helping anyone like this, certainly not the investigation" interrupted his boss, sitting in front of him on a chair.

They looked at each other, Light's tired brain struggling to catch the hidden sense of those words. Then he got it, and his eyes widened, filled with desperation.

"You're throwing me out?! Y-You can't, I have to follow this, you can't-"

"River!" snapped the Chief, and he closed his mouth, fuming inside. "Light" continued the other, his softened eyes trained on him, filled with pity and understanding. "It's the rule: if an officer is involved in a case in any way, like you, I have to throw him out of the investigation in order to lower the possibilities of jeopardy." He put a hand up, blocking Light's retort. "This doesn't mean I will do it."

"I… What?" asked Light, blinking his eyes. Hope surged in his stomach, and he almost felt sick with anticipation.

"I will not throw you out of this. I have kids, so I can imagine what you feel right now. So you will still be allowed to work on this case, but you have to rest. You are a mess right now, and to put it bluntly, if you're this tired you won't find any clue. We're stuck anyway. It's been what? two months that we are on this, right? And apart from the black market lead, that we lost, we don't have anything."

"Then what we will do? I can't let my kid be killed because we did nothing!" shouted Light, jumping on his feet.

The Chief remained unfazed, watching him from his unmoved position on his chair. "We need help. Help that I will ask while you rest. I want to be honest with you, River: you're the most valuable officer in my team, but you're also the latest arrival. I'm still the Chief, and I'm ordering you to go home and sleep. For your own sake, and that of your son. And if you don't listen to me, and keep on doing what are you trying to do – work and work until you die -, I will fire you, and you will not have the possibility to save your child."

After that, Light remained on the couch, while Matsuda called Mikami. It seemed they didn't trust him to go home without crashing into a tree – and probably they were right.

So Light waited, and when his friend came he sat down on the passenger seat of the car, pouting like a child. The ride home was silent, and Light was heading up the stairs when Mikami spoke up.

"They were right, you know"

Light turned, watching his friend without understanding what he was talking about.

"That guy, Matsuda, explained the Chief reasoning. And they are right. You can't keep going on like this. This – not eating, not sleeping, not taking care of yourself – will not help Near."

"I…" Light staggered, feeling his bones weight him down.

"I know you miss him. I know how you adore that child. I was there when you were scared during you're pregnancy, when you were in pain, when you felt fat and unwanted, when the mood swings hit and after them you cried your eyes out. Hell, I had to endure you throwing yourself at me because you were horny" Mikami chuckled, nearing his friend and putting a hand on his shoulder. "But I never once heard you complain about your baby. Never. You cursed L, the world, even the global warming, but never the little miracle growing in you. So I know how much you love him. But you can't be like this."

Light stared in his friend's eyes, and suddenly saw his tired face, the worry lines on his forehead, the bags – lighter than his – under his eyes. God, had he been so self-centered to notice that Mikami cared too?

Tears rose in his eyes, almost spilling on his cheeks and giving him the impression of being underwater.

"Don't cry, Light" Mikami took his face between his hands, gently cradling it, and gave him a forced smile. "We will get through this. I swear. Now, you have to rest, and then, after a few days, we can think of what to do. Near will be safe until then, because the killer can't kill him. It would attract too attention to him. Besides, your son is clever. His kidnapper will probably end up insane with him around."

Light sniffed, and smiled. He thanked the man he considered his brother and started climbing the stairs, gripping the banister like a lifeline and practically heaving his body on the next step until he came to the landing.

After a few seconds of indecision, he walked to Near's room.

The mess in the room had been sorted. The dice was stacked in the big trunk in one corner, the toys sorted in line on the shelves. Light looked around, expecting to feel destroyed, but he only felt a horrible tiredness weighing on his being. Closing the door, he shed his clothes in a clean spot on the floor, heading for his son's bed and slipping between the cool candid sheets. A sigh left him, feeling his body melt into the mattress. His eyes closed.

The sheets had a subtle scent of vanilla and, strangely enough, flour. It smelled familiar, and he breathed it in, the comforting smell helping him relax.

But sleep wouldn't come. He opened his eyes again and looked around.

The room was tidy, the walls painted an almost white light blue. Books were stacked on shelves and piles on the floor, topics ranging from psychology to languages to herbal medicine.

On the wall over the head of the bed was placed a bulletin board, bulging with newspaper's articles.

There were titles like The Great Detective L solves another mystery and similar others. One of the front ones caught his eyes: it was an old one, nearly seven years old, and it came from an American newspaper imported in Japan; it said L Against the mysterious BB: the only case the Great Detective couldn't solve.

Light smiled, his dropping eyes shifting to the cabinet near the bed. On the top there were some finger puppets, put in strategic places. The central ones were the white one, with accentuated grey eyes, and the golden one at his right. On the left, a little distant, was a blank puppet, filled with barely traced black hair and grey eyes. Next to that, the one with dark hair and red eyes seemed to hover, the smile on its face taunting and malignant. At the right of the golden one was a figure with glasses that Light recognized as Mikami.

Light cried himself to sleep on his son's pillow.

The day after his confrontation with Light River, Police Chief Inspector Shuichi Aizawa entered the room labeled Conference Room 3. Inside, he greeted Commissioner General Tsubasa Sugiura and Superintendent General Yusuke Maeda.

The three men sat down on the big rectangular table, all facing forward towards a computer put in the center of the desk.

"What time is it?" asked Maeda.

"Ten to Eleven. The scheduled meeting will begin at eleven."

They waited, each of them fiddling with a pen and a notebook. Aizawa thoughts wandered to his subordinate River, and he jumped when the computer's screen flickered to life, bleeding white. A gothic W appeared at exactly eleven.

"Gentlemen, good morning" greeted a robotically modified voice. "It seemed you have something really important going on to pretend a sudden meeting with L."

Sugiura cleared his throat. "Yes, we have. Where's L? We asked specifically for him."

"L is busy with another case, so everything you have to say can be conveyed to me. I will then report back to L, and by tomorrow you will have his answer."

"Very well" the Commissioner inclined his head, letting Aizawa take the lead.

"Two months ago, children started being kidnapped and then found dead a few days after. We haven't been able to come up with anything, and it has become too personal to just let it end with the dismissed files."

"How many victims? And why it has become personal? What changed?" asked the disembodied voice.

"Seven victims, five found dead and two we presume still alive. The last one is the child of my second in command."

The voice stayed silent for a few seconds. "Why that officer is not here? I would think a father would try to do his best to find his child."

Aizawa almost snapped at the judging tone of the voice, reigning himself just in time.

"Agent River worked himself to the ground trying to find a clue, and I had to send him home before he died from exhaustion at his desk" he said, his voice frosty and toneless.

"I see" the voice said, pensive. "Well, I'll let you know if L will take the case. Gentlemen, goodbye."

Near was thirsty.

It was a new sensation, and he examined it, storing in his brain the feeling of his parched throat, the slight swelling of his tongue leaving an unpleasant taste in his mouth.

He was feeling a lot of things at once, things he had never felt before in his life, and he had to admit that he felt overwhelmed.

When he felt overwhelmed, he had found out that twirling a strand of hair around his finger helped a lot. It was a repetitive motion that calmed his mind, helping it focus against the onslaught of information that hit his senses. But he couldn't do it now, not with his arms restrained behind him, and he had the strange urge to whine and kick the floor. An illogical reaction, of course, since the floor wouldn't give in, and the force put in the kick would be sent back against him in equal measure, probably leaving him with a sore foot.

He was wandering off. Back at the topic.

His arms were restrained behind him, bound to the chair he sat. The chair was common steel; the rope biting in his wrists seemed to be made by hemp.

None of this helped him. His shoulders were hurting from staying in the same position too long, and the rope was too strong to break. He suspected that, if he tried, the bones of his wrists would snap before the hemp.

He was hungry too. Another thing he had never felt - that he remembered, of course, since as a baby he probably had felt hungry a lot. The hunger was gnawing at his belly, and Near scrunched his nose. He didn't like it.

The other boy was sleeping a few meters away from him, having tired himself out crying and screaming and being a brat. Near appreciated the silence. During the other boy's tantrums he hadn't been able to think, feeling childish screams bounce around his skull. He had almost snapped to the other boy, telling him to stop wasting breath already, because it wasn't helping, but he had decided against it.

He had waited. And now, he had the blissful silence.

He loved silence. Silence meant clear thoughts, silence meant home and safety and his dice. How he missed it.

Near was in a basement. The drug the kidnapper had dosed him with had been wearing off when he had bought them there, so he had been able to see a large warehouse, and a rectangular trapdoor disguised by straw. Under that, an old metal staircase, and the basement he was currently in. It had probably been an air-raid shelter built during World War II, and the steel walls were still in good condition, a little dirty in the corners.

There were no windows, of course, so it was difficult to say how many days had passed. But he trusted his internal clock, and if it said four days, four days had passed. But he couldn't tell the hour. Initially he had been able to, but with the exhaustion setting in some things were becoming blurry, so he had only a faint feeling of time, enough to pass by.

The chair were put facing the far wall, so when the trapdoor opened with a screech he saw only a faint light, and his grey shadow on the wall. Feet landed on the steps of the old staircase, making it creak piercingly. The noise was like a knife in his brain after the never ending silence. Near grimaced.

The man approached, and stopped in front of him. Near kept his eyes closed, with his head hanging forward. He had learned the hard way not to look the man in the eyes. It seemed that his eyes unnerved the man, and he had earned a stinging cheek for his imprudence.

It was still throbbing, and Near could feel its swelling, heavy on his face.

Water was thrown on his face, and he jerked his head up, blinking his eyes and faking waking up. The other boy had received the same treatment, and had already started crying.

How annoying.

They were fed with a small piece of stale bread, and then unbound to release their bodies of their natural waste in a corner. Then back to the chair, and the rope.

Beside the other boy's crying, no one said anything.

The man left. Darkness fell around them.

Near sighed, resting his chin against his soaked and dirty shirt and willing his mind to sleep. But he knew he wouldn't rest a minute.

More than anything else, he missed his mother.

The Great Detective L had a difficult decision ahead of himself. He furrowed his eyebrows, feeling the weight of the decision settle on his shoulders and making him hunch his back more than usual – if that was possible without snapping his spine.

His grey eyes were fixed on the two choices, trying to find the better of the two. His cunning mind was completely dedicated to the task, so much that he failed to register the sound of a door opening.

He put his thumb against his bottom lip, resisting against the urge to bite down on it – he was thirty years old after all. The decision… he had to make up his mind, and soon.

"Master L?" a voice called, making him jump.

L barely managed to stay on his chair, throwing his weight back to avoid falling on his face. The result had him colliding with the back of his armchair, making him release his breath with an "Ow".

"Master L, have you decided? It has been twenty minutes, after all" asked Watari, his back straight and his expression blank.

"You should give me more time, Watari. It's a critical decision to take" explained the detective, his eyes staring again at the two choices laid out on the table in front of him.

Silence answered him. Feeling watched, L turned slowly his head, almost flinching at the very expressive gaze pointed at his head.

"Oh, fine" he relented, taking one of the plates. "I'll stick with the strawberry shortcake. The cherry one doesn't look appetizing enough to change my habits."

"Very well, sir"

Watari bowed, took the discarded plate, and went out of the door, his steps silent against the elaborate carpet of L's chambers at Wammy's House.

L sighed around the fork, chewing slowly the delicious pastry. He was feeling melancholic, these days. The day before, he had wasted two hours going around the Institute, mapping the already familiar corridors and the unchanged classrooms. He had stopped in front of his old room, staring at the wooden door.

The wood was a deep cherry in color, almost burgundy, and the plaque on it had been still shiny like twelve years earlier, when the room was still occupied. When he had been moved, he had vehemently refused to let his old room be occupied by other orphans, and Wammy, while disgruntled, had respected his wish. The place was cleaned every week even if no one used it, like everything in the Institute.

The ornate incision on the plaque had felt like coming home, and at the same time like a stab wound to the chest.

L – Kira.

He had traced the letters with his fingertips, feeling the swirls and turns and wondering, after all those years, why he hadn't tried to stop him. Why he hadn't asked anything.

He hadn't found in him the strength to open the door. He had simply walked back to his room.

And now he was there, in his new chambers, looking out of the window, overlooking the orphans playing on the grass.

He spotted at once his successors, all huddled together in one corner, separated from the other children. They were easy to recognize: the sun shined on Mello's blonde hair, making it look like the sun itself, while the rays filtering through Matt's made him look like he had stuck his head inside a bloody carcass. The most inconspicuous one was Linda's hair, its brown color dull in comparison to her fellow successors. They were chatting – Mello and Linda were, Matt was, as always, tapping on his videogame.

He leaned his forehead against the glass, sighing. Their lives would be hard, and he almost wanted to release them, letting them live their lives carefree like the children they were. But deep down, he knew that they would never be normal.

A genius's brain was a curse. It set a mere child apart from the others, out of society, making him see things that others couldn't see, making him feel pain in a level deep enough to slowly suffocate him. L abhorred the Institute, what it stood for. It was a bloody factory, set on creating damaged heroes to be used by the society to save itself. No matter that they were human beings, no matter their emotions, their loved ones. The factory robbed them of their souls, gave them a fake purpose. A goal that would benefit the world over the genius himself.

He and Wammy had fought over the Institute for years. They both had to concede things to the other. Now, Roger accepted also children with slight above average intelligence that were not geniuses, and those children could be happy and cared for, without having the weight of the Alphabet on their shoulders.

But L had also had to recognize that the Institute, when gives geniuses purpose, saves them. It doesn't matter that that purpose is fake, or damaging. It gave a goal, an end, a way to keep children and men alive. To keep them from wasting away, eaten from their own mind.

L stared out, until the light gave away to twilight, then darkness.

Then he got to work, pushing things away in his mind until only the next case remained.

Mobsters were being killed all around Europe.

Of course, that wasn't the problem.

It wasn't even a case a country had provided, because… Well, what sane country contacted a detective to find a man that was helping them with their mafia's problems?

No, he had connected the dots, had taken interest without Watari's mediation.

The death toll was high, fifty seven and still counting. He had agents all around the globe, and those in Europe and Asia were sending him updates every hour. Fifty eight now.

L saw this as a pet project. He would find the killer, but wouldn't prosecute him – because it was certainly a man, eighty nine percent of chance -, merely observing from afar. But at the first sign of violence against civilian, he would intervene.

Two hours later, he knew the identity of the man.

L sighed, leaning against the back of the armchair, rubbing his tired eyes.

Beyond, what are you doing?

Watari entered the room, but he didn't acknowledge him. The elder man even cleared his throat, but the detective kept on staring at the map, trying to see a connection, a way to see what his evil twin – what a cliché idea – was doing.

"There's a case from the Japan's NPA."

L listened, humming softly. He took a black marker. Maybe if he connected the dots…

"Someone is kidnapping children, killing them. Two are still alive, one is the son of an officer."

The slight squeak of the marker's tip on the tracing paper was irritating him. He squatted tighter on the chair, enduring the annoying noise.

"L? What's your answer? Will you take the case?" asked Watari, coming to stand near him.

"Mh?" L turned towards him, blinking with wide eyes. "What?"

The old man sighed. "Case, Japan. Dead children, two still alive, one's the son of an officer" he summarized to the man in front of him, who turned again toward the map on the table with a frown.

"Mh. No, I don't think so. It's boring. Ordinary. I don't want it."

"Very well."

Wammy bowed and left the room, not looking forward to giving the answer to Japan's Commissioner.

L kept on drawing on the map, connecting the dots, the children case already leaving his mind.

Ten minutes later, he observed his work.

A bloody mess. He was back to square one.

L groaned.