Chapter One:
"A Horrific Past"

Light had no idea where he was, but it felt breezy and cold, and the walls were grimy, with a concrete finish, rough to the touch. Some dirt came off on his hand and he brushed it onto his pant leg.

As he walked, dark and spooky as it was, he felt a sense of anxiety. He turned a corner, and found himself in a larger area with wall to wall hanging chains with hooks. Immediately, he thought of a slaughter house, where beef was processed, animals skinned and later send to a butcher. But the lightning was so dim, that it was very difficult to see. Then something sloshed at his feet, a liquid of some kind. Was it water? He didn't know.

He continued forward, pushing away the chains and hooks, ignoring a voice in the back of his mind to turn back, and headed onwards, towards a slit of light in the distance that shone between a set of double doors. He stopped a couple of times when he felt he was stepping on something gummy and wet, but he refused to touch his feet to see what it might be.

He heard something heavy slam down on a table and then the sound of a clever coming down and cutting into meat and bone. It sounded like someone was cutting beef into smaller pieces. And being in a slaughter house—god knows why Light was even here—it stood to reason. And he pressed an eye through the slit, but something was blocking his way, a rubber barrier.

There were windows in the doors, but up higher. His father said he hadn't had a growth spurt in a while, but his father assured him one would be coming soon if the genetics of his family had anything to say about it. Every male member of the Yagami family was tall, minus those who married into the family—his mother included.

Someone was speaking, but he could only hear a muffled voice through the thick doors, so he tried to swing one open, and pushed harder than he wanted. The doors were not locked. He knew he probably shouldn't be here, and he also wondered for a second time why he was even here at all. Oddly enough, he couldn't remember how he got here in the first place. His mind was a complete blank.

He stumbled in and saw a very large man, his back turned, wearing a white butcher's apron, cutting up some sort of meat. He was covered in blood. His hands, clothes, even his face. In a slaughter house, this was not abnormal, and Light wasn't afraid, although he was a little taken aback by the horrific sight. The table was a little high for him to see over, but when he stretched on tip toe behind the man, he gasped out loud, and loud enough for the butcher to hear him.

The man stopped what he was doing, twisted around. He grabbed Light by his shirt collar and yanked forward. The man was stoutish with thinning hair. And the man tossed Light to a back wall and demanded to know how he got here. Light said he remembered being left in another room, but he had found the door unlocked and wandered out.

The man muttered something to himself angrily, then shouted to someone out of sight. This someone else rushed into the room. It was a boy, the same age as Light.

The man cursed the boy, and said he was instructed to watch "the Yagami boy". He wasn't supposed to see any of this until it was "his turn"—whatever that meant, Light thought.

Light took in the rest to the room. There were shelves and buckets of reddish liquid, and what looked like body parts stored haphazardly within, as if just tossed around, even hanging on hooks—Light gasped again—and dissembled heads were placed on higher shelves, as if they were prized trophies. And they weren't adults!

This was not an animal slaughter house, but something else! He had seen some "restricted" films late at night in his room without his parents permission, and each time, they scared him, and he was unable to sleep that night. He even once thought a monster was under his bed, but it turned out to be an old stuff toy. When his parents found out that he had watched one of those movies, they took the television out of his room.

The other boy reached for Light, and Light bumped back into a wall to avoid the other's grasp— shocked at what he had just seen, but unable to verbalize it—and the reverberation must have caused something to rock slightly, because something fell over, an object, and it bounced when it landed, then rolled around like a toy tipsy top, eventually situating itself between Light's feet.

And when he saw the boy's head in its grotesque, discoloured state—

He screamed.

Light Yagami awoke with a start and fell backwards in his chair.

He hit the floor, but luckily he had the inclination to turn at the very last second and roll. Unfortunately, the chair rolled with him and became entangled underneath him, and he momentarily panicked, waving his arms and body about, as if trying to avoid something.

"No!" he screamed.

"Light!" came a voice.

Light's eyes opened wide, but he didn't immediately register where he was, but then things became clear—he in the epicentre of the Kira Task Force headquarters in L's newly constructed building in the heart of Kanto. His heart felt like was going a mile a minute and he felt sweat across his forehead under his hair. He wasn't sure what had just happened. His father helped him off the floor with a hand and it suddenly occurred to him that he, at some point, he had fallen asleep.

"Light, son—are you okay?" Soichiro asked.

Matsuda took the chair away. "If it didn't look serious, that would have been comical," he said. "What happened? Did you fall asleep at your station?"

Light felt his cheeks flush abashed. "I must have," he said. "Sorry about that. We've been working so hard to catch Kira, that I must have been worked myself to the point of exhaustion."

L took a quick scan of the chair to see if the leg had snapped or a wheel had broken away to make it happen. When nothing was found, he then returned his attention back to Light. "A sleep at your desk, such a naughty boy, Light. Tsk, tsk." L tried to make a jab, but it was too dry.

"I'm sorry, Ryuzaki," Light said, sitting back down. Light felt his lower back. "Ow."

"Looks like you were having yourself one heck of a dream, Light," he said. "I was watching you for a good three minutes. You seemed to have be in a very deep state of REM, your eyelids were fluttering, his head back, and you were muttering under your breath."

"What was I saying?" Light asked, lifting an eye brow. Putting a hand under his hair, felt the sweat, then ruffled his head slightly to dry it. He brushed back a few stray hairs that had fallen over his eyes. But he knew he was in need of a haircut.

"Your voice was so low it was almost incomprehensible, but I can read lips." L put a finger to his own lips in retrospect. "You were saying something to the tone of 'Don't, don't; what have you done? They're all—' I couldn't catch the next word. "I think it was either 'red' or 'dead'." But then you murmured something else, perhaps something you overhead. Something to the venue of… 'Asper'?"

Soichiro Yagami gasped, and it was heard by all. "Jasper! Oh my god!" Everyone turned to hm. He looked like he had just seen a ghost, his face ashen. He put a hand to his mouth in a moment of disbelief. "After all this time…"

"Chief? What's the matter?" Matsuda said, then brought a chair for his old boss to sit. But Soichiro refused to take it.

Light jumped back up and put his hands out to steady his father. Soichiro shook his head, as the colour began to fill back in his face. "Dad, what's wrong?"

"Are you okay, Mr. Yagami?" L asked. "First Light tips out his chair and now you nearly faint. I heard the flu was going around, but…Some refer to me as one of the greatest detectives in the world, but without all the pieces to a puzzle even I can't solve a case. You nearly collapsed after you heard that name. Who is this Jasper?"

Soichiro turned to Light. "Light, why did you dream about him?"

"Who, Dad? I have no idea who he is?"

"So, you don't remember what happened?"

"Dad, it was just a dream. Although, I can recall the vivid image of 'chains'."

L raised his right arm, the arm that was handcuffed and attached to a lengthy iron looped chain shared by Light, an agreement they had for Light to work with the Kira Task Force, and for L to keep an eye on him—suspected of being the notorious serial killer.

"It's funny how dreams derive," the detective said. "They can manifest our desires, or our greatest fears, into a dream-like state. They can even take something from life and exaggerate it to extraordinary, abstract proportions. I don't know what you dreamt about, Light, but what I can tell you is dreaming of 'chains' means you're feeling trapped, and it may be your mind's way of expressing your frustration about this situation." L emphasized the handcuffs.

"But I don't feel frustrated with the situation, Ryuzaki." Light looked at his own handcuff. "I actually feel reassured that you trust me to work with you on the Kira Case."

L gave him a look of disbelief. "I'm not so sure." He got back into a chair and crouched in it, and mused for a moment. He once said that if he didn't sit this way, his cognitive thinking would be reduced by roughly forty percent. "I've read a few books on dream analysis and I can give you a detail list of what 'chains' could mean for you. But I'll save that for another time. I'll give you a short explanation instead. First, let me ask you: Are you a Jungian or a Freudian? Because they both have different interpretations on dream imaginary. Or we could just jump to the standard reason: It's all your mother's fault."

Light clenched a fist. "How dare you! What does my Mother have to do with my dream?"

Soichiro Yagami shared his son's anger. "Yes, Ryuzaki! Explain yourself. That is ridiculous!"

L put up a hand. "Calm yourselves," he said. "I always find it fascinating that people are so quick to act defensively even in the face of pure logic, especially when it goes against their principles, and attacks their loved ones. The subconscious mind has a way to bring things to the surface with a sudden trigger. It can be anything from mere remembrance, or what we've seen during the day—even a taste, sound, or smell. Matsuda said he had a dream he was eating mounds of hotdogs the other day, some might say dreaming of hotdogs are repressed homoerotic feelings."

"Ryuzaki!" Matsuda protested. Mogi snickered. Matsuda turned to him with a frown.

"Like a repressed memory?" Light questioned, ignoring Matsuda's outburst. Soichiro wiped his face with a hand of sweat. Light noticed it.

"Exactly, and I know a surefire method to bring out repressed memories. Perhaps we should dwell into a little hypnotic session. It may also give promise to see if you have had any other repressed 'memories' of, say, another life—or consciousness?"

"Another life or consciousness? You still think I'm Kira? How many times do we have to go through this, Ryuzaki? I'm not Kira!"

L pouted. "So you claim, or forgotten, but that's neither here nor there now. Hypnotism isn't legal in court anyway, so even if we did awaken any old memories, it wouldn't hold salt. Regardless, we can see about this dream of yours. I can do it right now. Does anyone have a pocket watch?"

Light dropped back into his chair, upset, and crossing his arms. "I'm not letting you rummage through my head looking for things that are not there, Ryuzaki. That's invasive, even if you find something, it's almost certainly distorted, or untrue." He gave a sideways, almost embarrassed look towards his father. "And I don't tell my parents everything."

L smiled thinly. "I can attest to that. You were quite clever hiding all those dirty magazines in cut out book covers in your room. Not even Watari found them when he was installing the cameras in your home during those two weeks we were watching you. By the way, curious question: Do you prefer blondes or brunettes?" Light frowned. "Oh, let's get back to your dream. Ae chains all you remember?"

Light nodded, and he momentarily looked over at his father, who seemed to let out a sigh. Did his father know something about his dream, or was not telling him something insignificant about it that could reveal its possible origin? Even the smallest detail could help him decipher its meaning. But before he could dwell further into that thinking, L continued.

"People who blurt out names in a dream often know that person on a certain level—as to say, more than just in passing. And the memory of that lost person or knowledge of them is so traumatic that it sometimes causes a psychosomatic response like PTSD. So, to forget that person is the only way to move on, blocking out the pain of that person. Do you have no idea who this Jasper-person is, Light? Could he be an old friend from school? An important acquittance? Someone who meant something special to you at some point in your life?"

"I'm telling you, Ryuzaki, I don't know."

Soichiro Yagami sighed. "Stop it, just stop it, please. No more Ryuzaki," He took the chair Matsuda provided earlier and sat down with a tiresome drop, putting his hands to his face. "I can't handle it anymore. I knew this day would come eventually, that it would bubble up to the surface—the child psychiatrist told me so. Old memories often do without warning, and like Ryuzaki said, with triggers. I don't know what triggered it, but now that it's come to the surface, you need to know."

"Dad, what's going on? What old memories?"

Soichiro dropped his hands. "Light, you may not remember, but I do," he said with an even deeper sigh. "I think it's time I tell you something that I thought you'd forgotten, that your mother and I hoped you'd never remember, and it happened a long time ago when you were ten year's old. With this dream, you'll come to remember things that I hoped were long buried. And it is best to learn things it from me, so they're not so shocking."

The entire task force now surrounded Soichiro, even the W from Watari was now up on one of the screens, as if to say, he was listening in. Nothing within the control hub mattered at that moment, even if it did relate to Kira—data scrolled across a multitude on screens without a care.

Soichiro Yagami continued. "We took you to see a therapist, after a child psychiatrist, twice a week." Light opened his mouth to interrupt, but Soichiro put up a hand to quiet him. "And then, we stopped going, because I saw it wasn't affecting you any longer. We seemed to have delivered you from the worst of it. You went on with life, playing, and even laughing. Your Mother and I hoped you had forgotten about it, even repressed it on your own. But then, whatever the trigger was, you started having nightmares, and screaming in your sleep afterward. I don't know, and I think maybe this whole situation with Kira may have brought back those awful memories, too…the stress of it."

Light looked at his father with concern. "Dad, what have I forgotten? Please tell me."

Soichiro Yagami took a moment. He looked like he was experiencing a conflict in morality in trying to keep something very important to himself, as if he was treating it like classified information of the highest order—or a parent trying to protect his child from a horrific past.

L halted him. "I think you should tell me first, Mr. Yagami. With the Kira case, and the potential of a double-personality—" he knew Light would protest that part "—exposing information of a sensitive nature may cause unwanted consequences."

"No, Ryuzaki, I want to hear what my Dad has to say. Go on, Dad," Light insisted.

His father took another moment, then nodded. "Jasper Yuta is his full name, and he's the son of a mass murderer who kidnapped and slaughtered nearly a dozen children over a two year period, we learned—nine years ago. And if it wasn't for the NPA, and their quick response, you Light, would've been the thirteenth victim."

To be continued...