Disclaimer: I own nothing. No simpler way to put it than that.
It was amazing the impact such a short sentence could have on a group of people listening to it. For someone as young and as bright as Misa to say something such as that was absolutely insane. It made no sense to the team whatsoever. Everyone stared at the image of Misa on the computer screen in absolute shock. At least, almost everyone did. Katherine glared at the image.
"Good lord," she said under her breath, shaking her head. "No sense has come to her…"
"What's that mean?" Aizawa asked suspiciously.
"Kira obviously has no way of telling if we've talked to her when she's in this state," Katherine said, "so he couldn't kill her if she said anything, seeing as he wouldn't know, and yet she insists on not saying anything."
"Unless she knows Kira is watching her."
Katherine rolled her eyes. "I'm not getting into this again."
"Kill me," Misa repeated. "Please! Kill me."
"You know," Aizawa said quietly to Yagami and Matsuda, "I heard those two saying she hasn't even drank water for the past three days that she's been in custody."
"Wow," Matsuda said, "she has to be to her breaking point."
"What are you doing?" They looked over as Katherine was pushing L away from the computer.
"Misa Amane," Katherine said into the microphone, "can you hear me?"
"Yes…" she said. "Please, I'm begging you… just kill me…"
"You will have to live until you start talking," she said. "Do you admit to being the second Kira? Before you answer, take into consideration that we have a lot of evidence –"
"I don't care about the second Kira! I can't take this anymore. I just want to die. It's better than having to live like this. Please, kill me now. Please! Kill me now! Come on!"
Rem, who had been standing next to her the entire time in silent disbelief, suddenly looked as though she had realized something. It took Katherine only a moment to understand what Rem had just realized.
"M… Misa… you want me to…?"
"Please…"
"If you die, it will be at the fault of Light Yagami. I should kill him as well."
"Just kill me. I was supposed to die then, anyway."
"Then…?" Katherine said to herself quietly, backing up from the microphone.
"I'll be happy if I die now. Please… just kill me while I'm still young and pretty."
"'The human followed by a Shinigami will suffer great misfortune...' If I hadn't given you the notebook, then…. I am sorry, Misa."
"Just do it!" Misa yelled.
"Misa…" Rem said. "You can give up your Death Note."
"Just kill me…"
"If you give up your Death Note, you will forget all of this, except your love for Light Yagami. That's all you care about, isn't it?"
"Yes…"
"Do you want to give up your Death Note?"
"Please…"
"Good. You will fall asleep. You will not remember what happened or why you were chained here, but you will still remember Light Yagami. Goodbye Misa."
Rem spread out her wings and flew up through the ceiling. Misa's head tilted down and her limbs went limp.
"Watari," L said into the microphone, "is she alive?"
"Yes," replied an electronic voice. "According to the monitors, she is. She appears to have only fainted."
L had seen both sides of the interaction. The rest of the investigation team hadn't, so there would have been turmoil if he hadn't made sure she was still alive. The air in the room seemed to thin out from the tense atmosphere that Misa's suggestion of death had brought to them. Katherine was glad Rem had the sense to have her forfeit the Death Note rather than kill her. Even though she absolutely despised Misa at the moment, she couldn't let go of the fact that Misa was basically her friend.
"Is he sure she's alive?" Matsuda said. "It seemed like Kira was controlling her actions, for her to have been acting like that."
Katherine laughed. "Mattie," she said, "how would you be acting if you were refused food and water for three days straight?"
"Uhh…"
She laughed again. "Thought so."
Katherine sat in front of the computer late into that night, pondering over where Rem could have flown off to. She hoped that Rem would go kill Light, even though Misa had told her not to. If not kill Light, at least strangle Ryuk. She would have liked to have strangled someone at that moment. The Kira case was really beginning to piss her off. If Misa hadn't forfeited the note, then she might have eventually snitched on Light. It would have taken some convincing, but no one could stand weeks and weeks without food or water. She definitely would have snitched on him after a while. Now she really had no idea who Kira or the second Kira was. That was just plain annoying. To top it all off, the lack of movement on Misa's side of the camera made things just as boring as they were annoying.
"No movement?"
Katherine jumped at the sudden voice next to her. She crossed her arms.
"If you keep sneaking up on people, I swear I'll shave your head the next time you fall asleep," she said irritably to L as he sat down and looked at the camera as well.
"I think I'll make a note not to sleep anymore."
Katherine shot a glare over at him that was more a reaction to her lack of sleep than overall annoyance. Without flinching as most people would have, he offered her a cup of coffee. She sighed, took the cup, and gave a mumbled "Thanks," looking back at Misa on the computer screen.
"Is there any way to wake her up?" Katherine wondered aloud, shaking her head. "It won't do any good whatsoever to keep her now, especially if she's just going to sleep for the rest of the time. It should be mildly amusing once she wakes up."
"Why would you say that?"
"I guarentee she'll think she was kidnapped by a stalker. I'd be willing to put money on it, even."
"She will probably to be easier to make talk, so this will be just as important to the case as it is 'amusing,'" L said. "She won't know what's going on, so she'll probably be a lot more talkative. If fact, she will probably admit to knowing Light Yagami. She also might admit to being in Aoyama on the twenty-second, although she won't know why she was there."
"Yes, but they won't care even if she admits to knowing Light Yagami," Katherine said through gritted teeth, "which is absolutely annoying."
"Particularly for a suspect," L said. "Two of them still believe you could be Kira."
"Yagami-san still thinks so?" she said. "I thought it was just Aizawa-san. Oh well. At least Mattie's still on my side."
"But Matsuda-san is an idiot."
"You people really need to quit calling my brother an idiot."
"But he is."
"No he's not, and," Katherine said, "since you're saying that he is an idiot because he doesn't suspect me, should I assume that this means you also suspect me?"
"No. I was merely pointing out that Matsuda-san is an idiot."
"What percentage are the chances of me being Kira?"
"Zero. You have no Death Note, therefore it is impossible for you to kill someone with one."
"I could have torn out pages."
"That's very unlikely, but it is quite possible. So, three percent."
"Hey! You did that on purpose!"
"If you don't want to be suspected, don't point things out."
"You tricked me into pointing it out."
"Did I?"
"I wouldn't have pointed it out if I were Kira."
"If you were Kira, then you might have pointed it out with the purpose of trying to confuse me by pointing it out."
"Ah-hah!" she said, nodding. "See, I'm not that smart."
"Yes you are. You're just good at acting like you're not."
"But the Shinigami following Light-kun around said that he was Kira."
"Then there is a zero percent chance you are Kira and a three percent chance that you could be helping him."
She looked at him and shook her head. She then looked back at the computer screen.
"You don't suspect me," she said certainly.
"How do you know that?"
"It's quite simple, really," she said. "Do you look at me as a friend?"
L thought for a moment. He had never been asked such a question. Therefore, he had never particularly had to worry about answering it. Was this some sort of strange trick question? Maybe she was on Kira's side. Or maybe she was asking so she could make another completely pointless point to her side of this argument, even though he wasn't particularly arguing. It still seemed unlikely that she was working for Kira, for some reason, even though she did make a good point in saying she could have torn pages out of the Death Note she'd given him. He still didn't think she had… or was it just that he didn't want to think she had? But then, why would he not want to think she had? It was all rather confusing. She was definitely just as good at being confusing as Kira had been early on in the case…. She obviously wasn't Kira with what that Shinigami following Light had said, but maybe she was working for him. That still didn't seem likely, for some reason. It seemed unlikely that she could act as hostile towards Light as she did if she was working with him at all, but besides that, she just didn't seem like she could be an ally of Kira. Why? He couldn't figure that much out. If his mind was this set on trying not to see her as a suspect, then maybe he did look at her as a friend.
"… Yes."
"Then you don't suspect me," she said simply. All that thinking just for that…? She really was confusing. "Of course, you apparently look at Light-kun as a friend, and you suspect him, so that just blows that theory away…."
"I don't look at him as a friend. I said that for the purpose of confusing him."
"Oh. Well, then," she said airily, "I don't want any liars for friends. Especially not people who lie about considering people as friends."
"It was your idea."
"I'm really wondering when people are going to start learning that it's a terribly bad idea to listen to me."
Confusing… L thought, looking at her as she watched to computer screen boredly. That's definitely the only word for it.
As L began going back into his normal think-mode, a small buzzing noise distracted him. Katherine looked down at her pocket, then pulled her cell phone out. She held it by its antenna, then groaned miserably.
"Shiiit," she said, falling backwards onto the floor. She put her feet on the table next to the laptop as she flipped her phone open.
"Oi," she said, suddenly speaking in English. "It's been bloody ages, what in 'ell are you calling for now? 'Zat so? 'Ow'd you find that out?"
It was strange how she'd been speaking in English her whole life, but her English vocabulary was much less proper than her Japanese. This was probably because she hadn't slept in a while… and also most likely because her best friends for years were crooks, but that was unimportant. L knew as well as she probably did that crooks weren't always extremely bad people just because they were crooks. They always made good spies and negotiators, and a lot of them were much easier to work with on cases than law officials.
"Now why're you fecking calling me about it? Yes, I'm hostile. I 'aven't slept in four days. Or three. Maybe five. I'm loosing count. What day is it? Hmm. Thursday. I'm not sure what day it was when I last slept, so that doesn't help me much. Because I felt like it, that's why I asked. Let me go now. I'm supervising. The second Kira. Yes, really. Now go to sleep and stop researching pointless things, it's 1:30 in the fecking morning. Right. Good night. Or good morning, whatever."
She snapped her phone shut and sat quickly back up.
"Did she do anything?" she asked hurriedly, looking at Misa.
"No."
"Damn…" she said with a sigh of disinterest.
"I thought you had been planning on firing your spies."
"Eh?" She looked over. "Ah. I tried, but they refused to be fired. I'm not sure what happened there, but I'm not overly worried about it."
"Did they find anything out?"
"Nothing relevant to the Kira case," she said. "But Don seemed to think that them finding my real parents would be interesting to me." She downed the rest of her coffee in one large gulp, and then laughed. "Bloody idiot."
If she had any feeling about it, she was obviously hiding it well. If he was her friend, he should ask her about it, shouldn't he? This friend business was also very confusing. Maybe he was just thinking too much about it. Thinking too much had never been a bad thing before, but now it was just giving him a headache. Maybe it was a bad thing sometimes. It definitely didn't seem like he needed to over-think this, as the more he did, the more confused he got. He really didn't like being confused.
"Was it interesting?" L asked.
"Well," she said, laughing, "interesting is one word for it. My dad would have been about thirty when I was born. My mom would have been about fourteen. They were both meth addicts. She managed to stop for a good eight months, then I was born. As they couldn't be bothered to use her money for anything other than drugs, they dropped me, and I was then sent to the nearest orphanage, where I eventually made friends with the local deviants who broke me out of the joint, bless their hearts. I may have turned into a murderer were it not for them."
"Huh. It's a surprise you weren't sent to the one I grew up in," L said.
Then he realized exactly what he'd said.
Obviously, too much thinking wasn't a bad thing. If he had kept with too much thinking, he wouldn't have ended up making any mention of his past.
"Eh?"
And now came the questioning. How could he have managed to slip up on something that important?
"Nothing," he said quickly.
She almost started to ask him about it, but she managed to stop herself – he hadn't meant to say anything, so questioning him about it wouldn't have been particularly kind of her. He definitely considered her a friend, however. His lack of thought at that statement showed that. To keep his identity secret, L never talked about his past, and he never slipped up about it. Everyone knew that, which was why no one knew anything about him. She did already know his real name, but she wasn't sure he was even supposed to talk about his past. He had already risked his life by revealing his real name. Now he was risking his name by saying something about who he really was. Of course, everyone knew that L would never reveal anything about who he was. Now, it seemed 'everyone' was very mistaken. She knew his real name was L Lawliet and that he used to live in an orphanage, and that talking about it made him extremely nervous, since he was now anxiously biting his thumbnail.
She laughed. "Don't worry," she said, "I'm not going to ask."
He looked at her. Reverse psychology…? That would have been completely childish. It didn't seem like it, however. Then, there was that "seem" word again. It didn't seem like she was trying to make him talk by not trying to make him talk. It had seemed like too much thinking wasn't necessary at the time. It didn't seem like she could possibly be working with Kira. That word was really starting to get on his nerves. He knew that was exactly what was confusing him so much, and that she was confusing because that word really seemed – and there it was again – to apply to her personality. As she was particularly hard to read with all of the acting she did, the only thing that he could do was make assumptions, so she would seem to be a lot of things.
"Are you alright?"
"Hmm?"
"Thinking too hard can cause brain aneurysms, you know."
"Can it?"
"I don't know, I'm not a neurosurgeon." She waited a moment, as though waiting for some kind of reply, then continued. "I wasn't trying to use reverse psychology or anything. That would just be childish."
And now she can read minds… L thought to himself. This is just weird. Maybe she's not doing this reverse psychology thing on purpose. That wouldn't be as childish.
"Are you sure you're not involuntarily using reverse psychology?"
"I… wouldn't know it if I was," she said slowly. "So… no. I'm not sure I'm not. But if I'm not doing it on purpose, then it isn't as childish, right?"
"… Right."
She laughed. "You sound confused."
He sighed and shook his head, but didn't answer. Quite content with and amused by the fact that she had just managed to confuse the greatest detective in the world without even trying to, she looked back at the computer screen, smiling to herself. She'd have to do that more often. He was awfully cute when he was confused.
L, however, wasn't content or amused with it at all. He was still very perplexed. Could she read minds, or were their trains of thought really that similar? It seemed unlikely that she could read minds, but there was that damned seem word creeping up into his thoughts again. He strummed his fingers on his kneecap, trying very hard to understand what in the world was going on. It was giving him a headache again. However, not thinking was out of the question. He'd have to practice being halfway between not thinking and thinking too much, as he wasn't entirely sure how that was supposed to work. He couldn't keep blurting things out about his past that he wasn't supposed to mention, though… that wasn't a good thing at all.
