"Good work today, Yagami," said Rester. "Near couldn't find any tells in those fake reports you made up, so you've got nothing to fix."

"Is that praise or a dismissal?" Light asked.

"Both. The second batch of files will go out tomorrow morning. Unless you have some other reason to hang around—"

"I don't." Still smiling, Light switched his monitor off. "Has he gotten any response on the first batch?"

"They confirmed receipt of the files and sent proof that Tsukikawa is still alive. Beyond that, we've heard nothing."

"That's unfortunate."

"They've given us no sign that they're suspicious, at least."

"That doesn't mean they aren't. A statement would tell us something. Silence could mean anything at all."

"Near said the same thing. The real test is going to be Monday; we knew that when we began. Until then, try not to read into it too much."

Too late. For three days, Light had tried to forget the stakes of failure. For three days, he had thought of little else. However much Near might doubt it, I don't want to need plan B. For my family's sake and the hostage's, if not mine. "I still haven't touched much of Roger's library. Believe me, I've got much better things to read."

"That's the spirit. Let's get you back to it, then."

Light fell into step behind Rester, tracing the familiar route to his glorified cell. As they turned a corner, both men paused in surprise. Light's mother sat in a kitchen chair outside his doorway, her hands fidgeting nervously in her lap. At the sight of her son, she rose from her seat and smiled.

Oh, no.

"Hello, Light," Mrs. Yagami said. "I'm sorry to bother you."

"You're not a bother. Have you been sitting here all day?"

"Only since lunch. I didn't want to intrude while you were working, and I wasn't sure when you would come back." She worried her lip. "I know you're probably tired, but—may I talk to you, please? I promise, I won't stay long."

I shouldn't have made her beg. Shame twisted like a knife in Light's chest, but he pasted on a winning smile. "Don't be ridiculous, Mom. We can talk as long as you like."

Rester gave him a look of approval. "I'll leave him in your capable hands, Mrs. Yagami. He can show you how to buzz me when you're ready to leave the room."

"Actually, could I take Mom up on the roof? I don't know what the weather's like, but I'd like to show her around."

"I think that's a fine idea," said Rester. "I'll leave the door propped so you can get back in without one of us waiting around to help you."

"I'd appreciate that." Steeling himself, Light took his mother's hand. "Come on. There's something up there I think you'd like to see."

"Do you like it?" Light asked.

His mother gaped at the verdant greenhouse, her brown eyes round with delight. "Did you make this?"

"No. Near had it built a few years ago. He claimed it was a birthday present, but I think it was his way of telling me I should spend more time in the sun."

"It's very generous of him."

"It is. I appreciate it." Was that a rebuke, or just an observation? "Come on. There's a spot to sit further back."

He led her to a table and sat, masking his discomfort with a smile. His mother sat almost shyly, as if afraid she might scare him away. "Thank you for bringing me here."

"It's a nicer spot to talk than in my rooms. Not that there's anything wrong with my rooms. It took Near a few years to warm up to me, but he's more sentimental than he lets on. Considering the circumstances, he's been more than fair."

"He speaks very highly of you."

"How often have you talked to him?"

"Since I came here? Just once, so far." Her face fell. "I think I offended him."

"No, you didn't. He's easy to fluster, that's all."

His mother looked unconvinced. "I can tell he's shy."

"Shy?" Light nearly laughed. "He's a last time he talked to anyone besides me and his team face to face was four years ago. I've seen more sunlight than he has, and I'm—"

Don't say it.

Her eyes watched him, soft and pitying, and Light's amusement died at once. Suppressing a grimace, he scratched his scarred cheek. "The point is, Near told me what you said to him. I promise, he isn't upset."

"He told you?" Her voice rose in pitch, and she covered her mouth with her hands. "Oh, no."

"I'm not upset, either. Really. Compared to all the real things I have to be embarrassed about, a little misconception doesn't bother me at all."

"So that's not why you—?" She stopped herself, flustered, and began again. "I'm sorry, Light. I know I shouldn't have talked to him about you, and it wasn't fair of me to corner you like this. I only thought—he was worried about you, too. I understand if you don't want to talk to me, but—"

"No. That's not true." A vast, guilty sea churns in Light Yagami's gut, and the rotting shipwrecks of his promises churn with it. "I'm the one who should apologize. I want to. I just don't know where to begin."

"You don't owe me any apologies. You're alive. That's all I want." She reached across the table, taking his damaged hand in both of hers. "I just want to know that you're all right."

Yes, Light almost said, but the lie stuck to his tongue like a burr. Uneasy, he looked down at his mother's hands. "I don't know how to answer that."

"You can tell me. It's all right. Your guards aren't here, Light. Only me."

Only you. Her thumb traced his scars as she spoke, and her eyes asked the question her mouth would not. Steeling himself, Light pulled his hand from her grip and held it up to show her. "I got this when I was arrested. I tried to murder Near, and one of the Task Force stopped me."

"Who?"

"It doesn't matter. We've made peace since then. Even worked another case together, if you can believe it."

His mother smiled. "I can believe it. L told me you've worked with him on a lot of cases, too."

"I have. He didn't speak to me at all for a while after bringing me here—and honestly, I didn't have any more desire to talk to him. I was stuck in a cage and miserable. It was easier to blame him for everything than myself."

"What changed your mind?"

"A man who used to work for him, Roger. He convinced me that unless I gave Near a reason to respect me, I'd be stuck in an underground cell for the rest of my life. I couldn't really argue with that logic—but I certainly tried."

"He sounds like a patient man."

"He was. You would have liked him." Setting aside the familiar twinge of loss, Light shifted back to safer ground. "In any case, it worked. After that first case, Near moved me to my current rooms and made me a permanent part of the team. He's been something like a friend to me ever since."

"Something like?"

"As much as he can be, under the circumstances. We meet up to come here or play Go or watch old movies, but at the end of the day, he has keys and I don't. I don't blame him for that anymore, but—well. It just is."

Mercifully, his mother didn't press any further. "Old movies?"

"Before Kira. There's too high of a chance that I'll get mentioned in anything newer. It ruins my enjoyment every time."

"Sayu told me something similar. It happens less now than it used to, at least."

"I can imagine. It might be for the best that Near didn't give me a TV for a while."

"It wasn't only on TV. After you died, it was all anyone could talk about. What really happened, whether it was justified, whether Kira was ever coming back. That was the hardest part for Sayu, I think. For the first few months, she hardly ever left the house."

Light sucked a breath through his teeth. "She didn't tell me that."

"I'm not surprised. She was a grieving mess after we lost you—and on top of that, she was angry. There were vigils for Kira, memorials, people mourning in the streets, but the news reports never mentioned you. She didn't want any strangers to see her crying. She was too afraid they would think she was mourning for him."

And now she knows that she was. "How is she holding up now?"

Light's mother hesitated. "She's struggling," she admitted. "This kidnapping, flying to America, you—that's a lot of old wounds to open at once."

For her and me both. "I hope I didn't make it worse."

"Maybe a little. But right now, I think she's more angry at L than at you."

"At L? Why?"

"I don't know. He argued with her about something. She wouldn't talk about it to me, but—"

"I think I can guess." Damn it, Near. "I'll talk to him."

"I'm not sure that would help. I think it's best if you stay out of it for now."

"I said I would talk to him, not Sayu. I talk to him all the time. The fact she'd rather not talk to me doesn't mean she should have to put up with—" Light's mother watched him with a strange, sad smile, and he killed his rant at once. "What is it?"

"Nothing. I was just thinking—you look so different, but you sound exactly the same. As if she's still a teenager, and you're warning her admirers away."

Light forced himself to smile back. "I don't think she would see it that way."

"She'll come around, Light. She just needs time."

"If she wants to hate me, she has the right."

"She doesn't hate you. Not really. She's had to take in a lot this past week, and she has more of your father's stubbornness than either of you ever noticed, but she never holds a grudge forever. She still loves you. All it's going to take is time."

Time. His mother's words echoed in the hollow of his chest, and his thoughts rose up to mock him. As if wasting more of her time will fix this. As if anything can. "Time isn't going to give her back all the time she lost with Dad."

"That wasn't your fault."

"She thinks it was. She's not wrong, either. He took a risk he should never have taken because he felt responsible for Mello's actions, when I knew the whole time that the one most responsible was me." Light's throat constricted as he spoke, his voice one misstep shy of cracking. "He shortened his life on purpose, out of guilt, and I let him do it. Not for his sake. Not because we had no choice. For me. Because I hoped if he used Kira's power, he'd come around to thinking like me."

"Did you tell him to do that?"

"No. I asked someone else, but Dad insisted—"

"Then it wasn't your fault. Trust me, Light. Once Sayu calms down, she'll see that, too."

"And then what? For the last six years of Dad's life, she barely got to see him, and I saw him every day—and whatever you want to think about Dad's death, that part is entirely my fault. More time isn't going to give her that time with Dad back—or undo what else Mello did to her, either. I know that. I promised I would do a lot of things, and I failed at every one. If I were her, I'd never forgive me at all."

If I were you, he didn't say, but he meant it all the same. His mother's eyes pierced him like bullets, sharp and sad and silent. Despairing, Light turned to watch the fountain trickle, wearing the silence like a suit of lead.

"It was hard for me to do it, at first," his mother said at last. "It felt—well, wrong, somehow, to judge you differently than I would have judged anyone else. But then I remembered how young you were when everything started, how scared and confused you must have been. I don't know how Kira's power works, but I know you. If you were Kira, something else was pushing you to do it. You would never hurt anyone like that on your own."

If only that were true. "Mom—"

"It doesn't matter to me that you're Kira. It only matters that you're alive. Whatever else you are, you're still my son. Do you understand that? My son. I will always put you first."

"That's easy for you to say now; you only just found out I'm alive. Once you sit with what you know a bit longer—"

"I already knew it, Light."

A thick, choking knot of dread congealed in Light Yagami's throat. "That I was alive, or—?"

"That you were Kira." A husky hush fell over her voice, as if she were closing a door between them. "I've known for a very long time."

"How?"

"Little things. I didn't put it together at first. You were always so confident, and then out of nowhere, I'd never seen you so stressed. You lost weight, you kept locking your door, I heard you shouting in your room…I knew you had exams coming up, but it just wasn't like you at all. I thought you might be worried over the Kira case, given your father, but you'd been acting strange before he ever said a word. Then suddenly, during all that fuss about a second Kira, you took up with a fashion model and asked me to keep it a secret from Dad. As near as I could tell, you had nothing in common—I couldn't see why you liked her at all. I'd have understood if it was solely because she was pretty, but you never looked at her that way at all. I know how men's heads turn when a woman like that walks in. Yours never did. I couldn't make any sense of it at all."

Her words tumbled out like feathers, but they landed like blocks of stone. Pinned beneath their weight, Light said nothing, unable to meet her eyes. Unable to think. Unable to breathe.

But the words tumbled on.

"If you'd called to tell me you had been kicked out, I might have believed it, but your father was never any good at telling me lies. It didn't even make sense. However angry you might be at your father, you would have at least called to tell me you were all right. You would have asked me for your things, at least. But you never did. You vanished, and Soichiro stopped coming home, and all he would say was that it was for the case. I didn't want to put the clues together. Really, I didn't. Then one day, Sayu told me that Misa had vanished the same day you had, too. And once I knew that…"

You knew.

With difficulty, Light found his voice at last. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"Who could I tell? The police? Your father? You? I didn't know what your father would do. I knew what the police would. And once you came back—what could I even say to you? You had cleared yourself of suspicion somehow. All I had was a hunch. What if I accused you of such a monstrous thing, and I was wrong? How could you have ever faced me again, knowing I'd believed it? Or worse—what might you have done if I was right? I couldn't risk tearing up our family. If I'd been smarter, more like you, then maybe—maybe—" She drew a shaky breath. "When they told me you'd died to kill Kira, that's when I finally knew for sure. I failed you, and your father, and Sayu. I'll never forgive myself for that."

Ever so gently, her hand rose to Light's scarred cheek, and his skin burned beneath her touch. Stop, he wanted to scream. Don't say it. Please. But he couldn't. Unable to move, unable to breathe, he stared at her with wide, horrified eyes.

"It's too late to make amends to your father," she whispered, "but I can't bear to lose you, too. I should have done more to help you. I know that. But please—forgive me, Light. I just didn't know what to do."

Forgive me, Light.

He opened his mouth to respond, and his scarred lungs clenched like a fist. Her hand flinched back as he doubled over, coughing like a man about to die.

"Light? Are you—?"

"Fine. I'm fine." With effort, he straightened and put his undamaged hand over hers. "Of course I forgive you, Mom."

Sachiko Yagami's face relaxed, her eyes brimming with relief. "I love you."

"I know. I love you, too."

"Once everything gets sorted out, I'll be here as often as I can. I know it won't make up for the time I've missed, but—"

"No." His voice tumbled out too fast, too sharp. He smiled and tried again. "No need to push yourself. Just come when it's convenient. I told you, Near's taking good care of me here."

"Even so, I don't like the sound of that cough. Have you had it looked at? If L can build you a greenhouse, there must be some way you could see a doctor."

"I already have. Relax, Mom. I'm fine to do most things, and I've got oxygen in my room for when things get difficult. I should have brought it with when we came up here, but I guess I've still got more pride than I should."

Just as he expected, she leapt at the bait. "Do you want me to get it for you?"

"I wouldn't ask you to do that."

"I don't mind. I should have been here to take care of you sooner; I'm not giving up the chance to baby you now."

"Well, if you insist…" A wide, practiced smile split his face, and he gave his mother's hand a squeeze. "Don't go all the way back yourself, all right? There's an intercom at the bottom of the stairs. Call Rester. He knows where to look."

Light's mother rose from her chair gratefully, and Kira stood to escort her out. As she descended toward the kitchen, he slid the doorstop from the door, pushed it quietly shut, and re-stopped it from the other side.

"Light? What are you doing?"

A cool wind ruffled Kira's hair, but he barely felt the chill. Turning his back on his mother's voice, he walked away across the roof.

the roof.