notes/warnings

+ foul language.

+ some adult themes.

Torture

Rae wakes him at 4.15, 4.18, 4.20, 4.25, and 4.32.

By the sixth time, L is starting to have more difficult relaxing, his body tense with anticipation of the jab.

"Stop that," he says sleepily. "What do you think this is going to achieve?"

"You haven't slept in three days," the Shinigami says brightly. "Why start now?"

A vague sense of dread is starting to well up in L. He'd suspected Rae would progress from simply trying to persuade him, but he hadn't be able to gauge how. Shinigami have almost no effect in the human world, after all.

But clearly, Rae is intelligent.

L stays on his side, eyes open, trying to decide whether it would be better to get up and go back to work, or deal with Rae's ministrations.

He wonders what Sascha is doing in Greece. Some sort of rendezvous, no doubt, and L really needs to find out where and why. But he's found nothing, and they've been there almost a whole day. She might have been and gone.

L closes his eyes, just for a moment. It's dark and safe underneath his own eyelids, a whole world of temporary nothingness...

"You know you could use that woman to bring down the entire mafia?" Rae asks loudly, hovering over him. L jolts, startled out of the beginnings of slumber.

"Only if we can take her into custody," L says. "That will be difficult."

"Why don't you use the note? Surely she doesn't deserve-"

"Everyone deserves a fair trial," L says irritably. "Now leave me alone."

L gets up at six and stumbles to T's room, grumpy and exhausted.

"What on earth are you doing awake?" he asks, surprised. "I thought you only went to bed a few hours ago."

"Couldn't sleep," L tells him. He has bruises on his ribs from Rae's bony fingertips, and his head is throbbing dully.

"Still trying to work out how we'll catch Dakis?" T asks happily. "I'm just excited we finally have a proper case again. I was starting to feel so useless."

L smiles at him briefly. Matsuda is many things, but he's rarely useless. Mostly, he's exasperating, childish, and unpredictable.

Come to think of it, L's fairly certain he's heard himself described with the same words. Perhaps such traits are the foundation of all good detectives. He touches his thumb to his mouth, comforted by the familiarity of it, and by T's presence.

He can still see the Shinigami hovering next to him, laughing merrily. It's been laughing for the past two hours, the sounds fills up his ears, a cacophony, inescapable. He wishes Rae would crumble to dust, and wonders absently what it would take.

Where is Misa Amane when he needs her, anyway?

Probably in hell, if L's estimations of her had been correct. No one, not even Matsuda, could confirm whether or not Misa was the second Kira. Not that it had mattered, in the end.

"I was thinking that Dakis might be headed to the firearms convention," L says softly. The business that was the front for the American mafia manufactured firearms. She is supposedly an employee. It wouldn't be suspicious if she attended.

"That's on tomorrow," T exclaims, and L has never really understood why he feels the need to speak so loudly about ordinary things.

"Yes," L agrees. "I think we should go. Or, more specifically, I think you should go. Possibly with M."

"I'm on surveillance? Awesome!"

L rests his head against the wall for a moment. Rae immediately pokes him hard enough that he jerks.

"Uh, are you okay?" T asks, eyeing him. "You just collapsed for no reason."

"I deduced the same thing," L tells him as calmly as possible. "However, I assure you I am fine. Come on, I want to talk to you about Dakis."

"As long as you're sure," T says, falling into step beside him. He automatically grabs the platter of donuts from his table as he passes. L has trained him well.

"Oh yes," L tells him. "Just a little tired."

L sits up in bed. It's almost one in the morning, and he feels vaguely dizzy. He's been woken so many times he can't keep count. He's barely gotten a minute's worth of sleep, cumulatively. Rae grins down at him.

"You ought to stop this," L tells the death god. "It's childish and unproductive."

"I don't know," Rae replies spitefully. "I have to say I've never seen you so rattled before."

"I'm not rattled."

He's a little dysphoric, though. The room seems stretched, surreal. He desperately craves sleep, even for just half an hour. Part of his mind is screaming at him to do anything, anything. Just get some rest.

But L hasn't trained himself diligently every day for nothing. He knows what the Shinigami wants, and he knows he won't do it. Everything else is just detail.

"Do your worst," L murmurs, and closes his eyes once more, craving that tiny snatch of unconsciousness, the closest thing to sleep he's gotten in five days.

They've found Dakis' most recent hotel, and tomorrow, L will be at the top of his game, sleep or no sleep.

Because he needs to be.

Dakis is clever.

She's not as clever as L. She's not on the same level as Near and Mello. She's probably not even as smart as Kira had been. But she's moderately bright, and incredibly paranoid, and the combination makes her very difficult to track.

L stares at his computer screen. She uses a different car company every time she travels, and she goes to a different hotel every day. She's always surrounded by at least five bodyguards, but their identities are unknown. M has fuzzy pictures of all of them, the best he could get without seriously endangering his own life.

L scrubs a hand over his eyes, which feel permanently gritty and sore from being kept open for too long. He showers almost daily, trying to stay one step ahead of the fog that threatens to cloud his judgement and overthrow him. He's tripled the amount of cake he eats.

N comes to see him before she goes to bed.

"L?"

"Yes?"

She twirls a strand of hair around her finger, stalling. The gesture should remind him of Near, but it doesn't. He was always so confident, while she's obviously not sure about what she wants to say.

"You will...tell me if something's going wrong, won't you, L?"

"I don't understand what you mean," he says perversely, not looking up from his computer. "I've kept you up to date on the Dakis case. I suppose you could say it's not progressing as quickly as hoped, but I wouldn't classify it as 'going wrong', either."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it."

L tilts his head at her, and she sighs.

"You're not taking care of yourself. I know that much."

"I take care of myself as much as I ever have," L tells her, mostly honestly.

"Even Matsuda has noticed how prominent the bags under your eyes are becoming," she replies crossly. "You're not sleeping at all, are you?"

"I sleep when I can," L replies, this time completely honestly.

"So what's stopping you right now?" she asks. "Go to bed."

If he lets his mind wander from the task at hand, bed is all he can think about. Crawling between cool clean sheets and fading to blackness that lasts for days and days. It's all he wants. His head aches.

"Raye and I have plenty of medicine in our cabinet, if it's pain or illness that's bothering you," she adds.

L doesn't take medication, and he doesn't accept first aid. Ever. He needs his body exactly the way it is in order to be able to function at full capacity.

And he wishes she wouldn't say R's full name out loud. One Rae in his life is enough.

"Thank you. I'll come down and see you if I need anything," he says, lining his voice with gratitude.

They can't help him.

"The latest victim of the mystery serial kidnapper was a thirteen year old boy," Rae says loudly, reading from the open page of the newspaper that's lying on the desk. "He was found dismembered in a ditch five days later. He was suffering from third degree burns. Coroner's report says it would have taken him at least forty-eight hours to die."

L's already been through the paper. He knows.

"Goodnight, then," N says, clearly still dissatisfied with the situation. "You will sleep tonight, won't you?"

"I'll try," L says, and pretends not to notice Rae's malevolent grin.

She leaves.

"Look at this," Rae says immediately, thrusting the paper in his face. "You let this happen. You're sick. You don't deserve to sleep."

"Perhaps," L says. There is a pattern in her movements, he thinks. She's meeting up with people, but he doesn't know why. Why does she need to be here in person? What are they doing?

His head thumps, a steady beat behind his eyes. He presses his forehead to his hand for a moment, and he knows the Shinigami is watching him, waiting for him to try to nap.

"For the love of god, just write it," Rae yells, slamming the death note down in front of him. "How much longer can you let this go on? She'll send you the names of everyone she works with if you write it. Easy. Over. Nobody else needs to suffer."

L regards the notebook muzzily. The silver words swirl around for a few seconds before they come into focus.

"You sound very convincing," he agrees. "But this is only about you being king. Shinigami don't care what happens in the human world, so I'm not going to be moved by your apparent misguided concern."

"You presume to know what a death god thinks?" Rae asks darkly. "You're pretty confident, aren't you?"

L stares at his tormenter.

"Not at all. It's simple. If you genuinely cared, you'd just write her name down in your own note. No need to involve me at all. Thus, your motivation is simple. Anything it takes to get me to use this."

L taps the notebook in front of him. He hates the sight of it. Such an evil thing.

"I can't do that," Rae says. "You have my only notebook. Part of the deal. So that I can't kill anyone in order to influence you."

"Oh," L says. Interesting. "I was under the impression a Shinigami always needed at least one of their own."

"I'm special," Rae says, smiling. It's possibly the most horrible thing L has ever seen. "And you're a monster. I'm going to make sure you never sleep again."

"I figured," L replies. The world is slowly starting to spin.

L goes without sleep for a week. Seven nights of staring at the ceiling and counting the number of times Rae jabs him in the ribs, carving up the long hours until morning.

The days are still better than the nights - he has company, at least - but the exhaustion is starting to slow him down.

On the eighth night, when Rae stops him from sleeping for the sixtieth time, he gets up and heads down the hall. He doesn't even realise he's moving until he's halfway there.

He's starting to be dangerous, acting and not thinking. He's been requesting that N double-check every decision he makes. The others are starting to worry. This needs to end, one way or another. Rae's always been unobtrusive when anyone else is around, mostly. L hopes it's part of the conditions of his mission, that he can't do anything to reveal to anyone else that L has a death note.

He hopes.

If he went and asked to sleep in the same room as anyone else, they'd be suspicious. They'd possibly panic. They'd know something was seriously wrong, and L would have a difficult time explaining it, in his present state. M would suspect a Shinigami, L knows. N and R have convinced themselves he's not well. Watari might even do something drastic.

So, by process of elimination.

L knocks on the door.

This is such a bad idea.

T answers the door with surprising speed. His hair is a mess, he has pink pyjama pants on, and he smells like bed and sleep. L wants to crack him open and crawl inside.

He's...he's going mad.

"Can I sleep here?" he asks.

"L! Uh...sure. Uh...you do realise I only have one bed, right?"

Of course. T always gets the smallest room.

"That isn't a concern to me," L says, pushing past him and crawling onto T's mattress. He's not sure this will work, but he's also running out of options. He presses his face into the pillow, ignoring the way Rae's shadow falls over him. His skin itches, and he feels stupid, desperate.

T closes the door.

"Are you hitting on me?" he asks, hesitantly.

"No," L groans. "I'm going to sleep. I don't care what you do."

T shrugs.

"Okay!" he says brightly, apparently returning to his normal version of reality, which L presumes is filled with bunny rabbits and smiling daffodils. He flops down beside L without preamble.

"You don't really think it's this easy, do you?" Rae asks nastily.

"Mm," L says, exhausted. It's getting hard for him to even attempt to fall asleep. His own mind keeps jolting him awake before Rae does.

It's a clever tactic, he'll give the Shinigami that much.

He hears T snoring next to him, and he's overwhelmed with jealousy.

This isn't fair, I didn't ask for this. I need to be the best, I am the best, I can't stop being the best. I'll be useless. I wind up useless. This isn't fair.

I can't LOSE.

...I wonder if this is what hell feels like, Mello.

He drifts slowly.

Rae pokes him.

An hour later, Matsuda shakes L, even though he's not asleep.

"What is wrong with you?" he asks, wide-eyed. "You just keep jerking awake. Like, every few minutes!"

"Ah," L replies. "Yes."

T doesn't look right. He has too many eyes, and he's shouting so loudly L can't think. The room lurches around him, making him feel sick. He grabs onto the edge of the bed and presses his head against, willing things back to normal.

It's just in his head. It's all in his head.

He's not sure how he makes it back to his own room, or what excuse he gave T. He's pretty sure that Rae carried him part of the way, and just thinking about that makes his skin crawl. He collapses on the floor, and it takes him seven tries to successfully push the door shut with his foot.

Rae hovers over him, a looming menace. He covers his face with his hands. There are things, monsters, predators, lurking in the periphery of his vision. He knows they're not real.

He knows.

Another two days crawl by, and he doesn't even try to go to bed. He can't hold his head up on his own, he drops teacups and pens and everything else he tries to hold on to. The others are starting to whisper. He locks himself in his room on the third night, just to get away from them. Every noise bothers him. Light bothers him, haha. Night time taunts him. His furniture seems distorted, and the world is going too fast. He finds his bed mostly by trial and error.

"What do I have to do," L says finally, "to get you to stop this?"

The Shinigami touches his hair.

L wants to throw up.

"Just get rid of Dakis," it says quietly. "That's all you need to do."

L touches the notebook lying beside him. It's such a small thing. It weighs less than an apple, than a handful of sand. He still doesn't really understand why it works.

There's a pencil lying next to it. Rae seems to be able to magic writing implements out of thin air whenever it needs to.

The world would be a better place if Dakis were dead. He knows.

He can barely remember who he was a week ago. He's just a shell, empty, clinging to the current case because that's all his addled mind can remember clearly.

"I can't," he snarls. "I need sleep."

Rae shrugs.

"What a pity," it says unsympathetically.

L stares at the ceiling. There's a fan up there, and he knows intellectually that he hasn't turned it on, but it starts to spin anyway.

He's motionless, pinned to the bed. He knows his body well enough to understand what he's going through. He writes Dakis' name with his finger on the pillowcase. It's her fault. He wants to see her suffer the way he suffers.

Maybe a heart attack is too fast, too gentle.

The Shinigami nudges the note towards him.

"You don't need to worry about this any more," it says. "I don't know why you're protecting her."

L stares at the note.

"You're human," Rae tells him. "You can't let this go on."

Yes. He's human. He's human, and everyone expects him not to be. He isn't. He's not human, he's amazing. They tell him he's amazing. He doesn't feel. He doesn't have emotions. He works and works and works, and he's brilliant. He's justice. He's what they believe in. Everyone expects him to be justice.

He's doing this for them, for all of the thousands of people in the world who aren't quite sure what is right and what's wrong. Who want to sleep safe in their beds at night. Who watch the news on television and read the papers in the morning waiting to see what he's done.

Thousands.

Fuck them, L thinks darkly. Thousands of people want him to suffer this so that they can say 'now there is a good man'. Well, fuck them.

He is human.

L picks up the pencil. The end is chewed, and the paint is flaking off it. There are stale crumbs in his bed, and a woman out there ordering people to be tortured, and he needs to sleep because he's dying.

No one has any right to blame him. He's human.

Human...

What is human?

L stands up abruptly. His blood pressure drops and he almost topples over, but he grabs the Shinigami by its ugly collarbones and hangs on.

"I won't," he enunciates clearly, voice dark and angry. "I will not. I will not. I will not!"

Rae wrenches out of his grip, impossibly strong, and he falls on his back on the bed, useless. The sheets seem to envelope him, strangle him, demons everywhere. He can't think. But he knows.

"Do you understand?" he asks. "I don't care what you say. This is not right."

"You're not right."

The Shinigami glares at him balefully, eyes burning cherry red, blood red. What does it know? What does it know about people? What does it know about suffering? Heir to the king, it sits on a pedestal high above humanity and never looks down.

"This is all your fault," he says.

"You sicken me," Rae sneers, voice angry. "And you call yourself a human?"

There's a knock, a steady tap-tap-tap, driving him mad, inside his own skull. Somebody says something, but it's distorted beyond recognition. There's no one else in the room. He can feel his own systems shutting down.

Nothing matters.

"I am human!" L shouts. "I am human! I am human! She is human! I will not, I will not, I will not!"

The distorted voice starts up again, maybe from outside his room. Maybe no one else can hear it. His vision goes suddenly, no warning, but he's still conscious. He breathes hard, imagines he can feel his own chest rattling.

It won't take long.

"So," he rasps. "What will you do?"

Rae is silent.

"I told you I was immune to torture," he continues, speaking to nothing. Maybe there's no-one there. "So what will you do?"

"You deserve to die," Rae says, with so much venom that it hurts to hear.

"But will you let me die?" L asks. He's falling asleep, maybe. H can't help it any more. "If I die, you'll get to be with someone else. But...but if I die, then you never got to break me."

He turns his face into his pillow. His skin feels too tight, everything against it hurts.

"I don't think you'll let me die," L says. "I think you'll want to watch me break."

And he drifts, waiting to be woken up. It won't take long. A few more hours without sleep, and he'll be finished.

If he's wrong.

The ceiling is white.

L stares at it. He's vaguely aware that he's not in his own bed, and he suspects he's not in his own room, either. Beyond that, he feels absolutely euphoric, ridiculously good. He flexes his fingers underneath unfamiliar covers.

"I've been sleeping," he says, amazed.

"For almost three days straight, in fact," M tells him. "Everyone's been worried."

L turns his head. M looks the same as ever, lank green hair and impossibly thin, but in that second, L sees that he is beautiful.

Did Mello ever see this? he wonders absurdly. He's always been curious as to whether everything M suffered was in vain.

It's in vain now, of course.

M takes his hand awkwardly.

"What happened, L?"

What happened? He scans the room. His Shinigami is nowhere to be found. He realises with a moment of well-concealed panic that the notebook is no longer strapped to his chest.

He looks back at M.

If they'd found a notebook, M would be screaming at him by now. Any of the others might try and catch him out, but M would throttle him immediately. His hatred for all things death note and Shinigami is absolute, and violent.

"I don't know," L lies. "I had trouble sleeping for a few nights. And then I became so dysfunctional that I couldn't fall asleep even though I was exhausted."

"L? Oh, thank goodness!"

N appears with T at the other side of the bed. L is pretty sure he's actually in Watari's room.

"You were crazy," M says. "You were shouting at something in your room."

"I did start to hallucinate, I remember that much," L says. N grabs his other hand, holding tightly, and M seems relieved for a reason to let go.

"You were unconscious by the time Mail busted the lock," T tells him. "But Watari sedated you anyway."

"I see," L says. Rae let them break into the room, and he let L sleep. That means he made exactly the choice L predicted.

"Could you try to remember not to call people by their names?" M hisses at him. "Matsuda!"

"Sorry, sorry. It's just, I've been so worried about L, and..."

"Don't fight, please," N says. "L is fine. We're all going to be fine. Right?"

L nods at her.

"I made an error in calculating how much my own body could stand," he tells her. "Naturally, now that I'm aware of it, it won't happen again."

"It's the Dakis case," she says knowingly. "It's exhausting everyone."

"Oh, yes," L says, rearranging his legs underneath him so he can squat comfortably. "How many more victims have there been?"

"Two more," T says dutifully. "Businessmen. Twins."

L raises his eyebrows.

"When?"

"Reported about an hour after we knocked you out," N says.

"And nothing since then?" L asks. It's not Dakis' style to stop for so long.

N exchanges a glance with M over his head, as if he's not going to notice.

"What is it?"

"She hung herself," M says matter-of-factly. "About twelve hours after those men went missing."

L stares at him.

"Are we certain of this?"

"I went to see the body myself," R says from the door. "It's her, all right. They're happy to write it off as a suicide. I'm not so sure, but where do we even go from here?"

"And would it be worth it?" L touches his chin. "No, why would she kill herself? That's absurd. It doesn't make sense at all."

"Unless she knew we were on the case, and she got so worried she just gave up!" T said brightly.

"I think you need to leave the room now," M tells him.

"But..."

"I think we all need to leave the room," N tells them. "L, get some more sleep."

"Yes," L agrees. Sleep will be nice.

Predictably, Rae appears as soon as he is alone.

"I see you have chosen to break me," L says, smiling a little.

"You'll wish I hadn't," Rae vows malevolently. L can see he's clutching the notebook.

"You hid this from the others?"

"Of course. I don't want them interfering, that might give you an advantage."

The Shinigami doesn't settle on the edge of his bed as he expects. It stays standing, a good few metres away from the bed. He doesn't know why, but he's grateful for the distance.

"And you were the one who killed Dakis?"

Rae glares at him.

"What are you talking about? I told you I couldn't use this. I'm not even capable of opening it right now. That's the rules."

"I wonder how she died," L muses. "You've heard, I imagine? Fascinating stuff."

"It has to be a murder," Rae tells him.

"Yes," L says. "But how? And why? Who found her?"

"You should just be grateful there's justice in the world other than you," the death god tells him. "Or we'd all be in a lot of trouble."

"I am grateful for that, actually," L says. There are a lot of good police officers in the world, and he admires some of them very much. "If you don't mind, I'd like to get a little more sleep."

He watches its face carefully.

"Of course," Rae snarls. "If you don't mind, I'd rather not be in the same room as you right now."

And then it smiles.

"I'm going to sit outside and...plan."

"Of course," L says.

He knows Rae will be planning a new way to break him. Fine. If nothing else, Rae's presence will make him stronger. No harm in that.

He curls up in bed, stupidly comfortable. He's in his own jeans and shirt still, and he's happy to rest up and wait for some new case to present itself.

When he rolls over, something rustles faintly. If he weren't so familiar with the clothes he's wearing, he wouldn't even have picked up on it.

Still, it definitely shouldn't be there. He doesn't put things in his pockets, it decreases his perceptive powers by point one percent. Point four if its cloudy outside.

L reaches down carefully and extracts a tiny piece of torn paper from the left pocket of his jeans. It's folded carefully in half. On the outside, one letter has been written.

L

Strange. No one other than his team can get in or out of the hotel room without being noticed, and this handwriting does not belong to any of them. Intrigued, he opens the note.

I am the one who killed Dakis. We need to talk. Come alone to Roxbury Park, 1050 Creek Street, London, on Tuesday 29th of November at three o'clock. Rae has a meeting on at this time. Do not tell him about this note.

L reads it five times, then tears it up into forty-five pieces and deposits all of them into the wastepaper bin under the bed.

Someone knows about Rae? Someone who got into this high-security hotel floor and left a message in his pocket without being seen? Someone who murdered Dakis?

They're dangerous, then. They're dangerous to him, and they know too much, and they're trying to get him alone. He is absolutely certain of two things. One is that he definitely shouldn't go and meet this person.

And the other thing is, he's absolutely got to meet them.

No leads appear on Dakis' death, as L expects. Rae reverts to suggesting every criminal under the sun and calling him evil when he doesn't murder them. They fly back to London on the fifteenth of May, at L's request.

They take on a reasonably minor case, an arsonist who probably works alone, and L immerses himself in it for the next two weeks, trying not to do or say anything that will raise Rae's suspicion.

Who can Rae possibly be going to meet with, anyway? Another Shinigami? The king? Or is the person who wrote the note simply lying? They clearly know about Rae's existence, but that's no guarantee the rest of the note was truthful.

And how do they know? Either they had touched his death note, or.

Or perhaps they have a note of their own. Or perhaps Rae has told someone, in an effort to make things difficult for him. The problem is, L doesn't know enough about the Shinigami world or its rules to figure out what Rae's next move might be.

The twenty-eighth rolls around, and L is still trying to decipher the meaning behind the arsonist's movements.

"A church in South Benfleet, a park in Newbury, a store in St Albans, and three homes in London. All on different days. Why?"

Rae leans over him, as if it's going to help him with the case. L pushes it out of the way.

"You know that the note will still work even if I'm not around, right?" it asks L.

"I had imagined as much," L informs it around another spoonful of strawberry ice-cream. "Why are you telling me this?"

"I've told you before. I'm not particularly fond of your company. But I'd hate to see you miss a chance just because I've gotten sick of you."

"I understand," L says.

So...the Shinigami is leaving soon, after all. Interesting.

Roxbury Park is a good few kilometres from where he's staying. It's still close to the centre of London, but it's also out of the way. Tall trees line all four sides of the park, casting shadows and hiding him from view of the road. There was a series of assaults here five years ago, and since then, no-one really uses the place.

It's a good place to meet if you don't want anyone to know you're meeting.

It's a good place to murder someone, too.

But he feels good. The grass is cool under his feet, and a whole three hours without Rae around has done wonders for his mood. The Shinigami left without a word of explanation around lunchtime, and L hasn't heard from it since.

He's fine with that.

There's a picnic area in one corner. The chairs and tables have been vandalised recently, judging by how bright appearance of the graffiti paint. One leg is missing, and the whole thing wobbles when he sits down.

Watari knows roughly where he'll be, and he still has his belt on. He's not completely stupid.

Another few cars rush past. L takes a lollipop out of his pocket and sticks it in his mouth. The death note is strapped safely to his chest, although he knows he's taking a risk by bringing it out here, to someone who probably knows exactly what it is.

They're cut off completely. If this person wants to hurt him, they'd have a chance. Not a good chance, but a chance. L shifts a little on the table. They'll either come through the trees right next to him, or across the park. The side of the park he has his back to is at the bottom of a steep hill, a twelve-foot wall of rock.

He checks over his shoulder. Nothing.

Before he'd left, N told him to be careful. Nothing unusual about that. She always says that. No one suspects anything will happen to him here. Its probably for the best.

He doesn't hear any footsteps, but he's suddenly aware of someone behind him.

Scaled twelve feet of rock just to get the jump on me, L thinks absently. Interesting.

"Detective L?"

He doesn't reply. The voice is quiet, and worryingly familiar.

"You're very brave to come out here and meet me all on your own," the voice continues. "Especially since I'm the one who killed you."

tbc