Title:A Tale of Two Men
Characters: Matsuda, Light
Rating:PG
Word Count: 728
Summary: There were once two men. One was true, the other false. A collection of drabbles and ficlets in three arcs.

Notes: The last of the arcs. Sorry for taking so long to edit. Thank you to everyone who read this, and those who reviewed and favorited this fic to show that they liked it.

PART THREE: THE LIVING

"The past is never dead. It's not even past."

-William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

I: Reset, restart

"Crime rates are back up." He tosses a newspaper on the desk.

"Are you trying to make a statement, here?" Aizawa rubs his eyes, tired. Too tired to want a fight.

Matsuda shrugs. "I'm just saying that the world is going back to normal. The way it was before…Kira."

II: A boat against the current

When the cat is gone, the mice come out to play. The criminal element, repressed for so long, springs back to life as though trying to make up for lost time, and for a while Matsuda is kept busy. The Kira case had consumed his life utterly for so long that it is only in hindsight that he can realize, aside from the looming threat of a heart attack descending out of the blue, just how easy it had been in comparison.

Things, nevertheless, are comfortingly black and white once more. He's not really sure how he is supposed to feel about that.

But he knows he isn't supposed to feel guilty, when the letters come in, scored with angry lines, or sometimes worse, stained with tears: What did you do to Kira to make him go away?

And then he is angry and sad all over again, both at the same time, because those people only thought they knew Kira, that he had been some sort of shining saint, pure and untouchable; when he had been merely human and mad with too much power. He had thought he had known who Light was, and had been wrong; now he thinks he knows what Kira was, and it is his greatest fear that maybe he is wrong again.

For some people, Kira had meant hope.

III: The shape of his/her heart

On February 14th, 2011, Matsuda goes on a date with a co-worker. They hit it off straightaway and spend the night staggering from nightclub to nightclub, laughing with just the faintest trace of drunkenness. He walks her back to her house at three in the morning and kisses her under the soft glow of a streetlamp.

He is dressed in white; and the red of her lipstick glows against his collar. He thinks he might like her.

On February 14th, 2011, Amane Misa overdoses on sleeping pills and kills herself. She is found three days later by her sister, sprawled sideways on the bed she and her fiancé used to share.

She is dressed in white; and on her finger, her wedding ring glitters in between the crawling flies. "Poor thing," they murmur later. "She was still in love with him."

IV: The importance of being alive

Matsuda pays his respects at the grave, afterwards; because he feels responsible, because they were all the same, made fools of by Light and his fake/true smile. Most of all because she should have lived.

I would have once died for Light, too.

Matsuda tries hard not to feel guilty that he is alive. To his surprise, he mostly succeeds.

V: A new beginning

Who knows who was right?

Maybe Near did kill Mikami. Maybe he did burn the notebooks to hide his guilt, and he certainly was a bastard in the finest tradition of the L line capable of doing such things. It doesn't make Light's guilt any less damning, his deeds any less heinous.

Matsuda still thinks of the past, the Yellow Box, everything that seems more and more like some incredible dream as time goes on. A notebook that killed—how ludicrous, if he had not borne witness to it, and lived to remember the tale.

But Ide is right, about one thing: that they are alive, there's a life before him to fill with less painful memories. Others weren't so lucky. He had for a brief moment glimpsed death; he had known the depths of despair. Everything could only be uphill after that.

He will live life to the fullest, and do his best what he thinks is right. It's not the best philosophy that ever was, a humble one in light of the competing beliefs that had shaken the world, but it is one that he is sure he can live by, and hurt no one else but himself. It is enough to comfort him.

VI: And life goes on…

This is the tale of one man, and he was true to the end of his days.

The end