On Saturday, Ryuzaki does battle with his hair.
He hasn't brushed it in a few days—you're pretty sure he forgot—and now he's paying for it. His hair is too thick and wild to let go like that, not exactly curly, but wavy with the faint suggestion of curls. This, he explains, is the problem.
It really does seem to be. You'd only gotten your hair brushed every few days in confinement, and it had never turned into quite this matted mess.
"Seriously Ryuzaki," you groan, "how do you manage to forget a thing like this?"
He picks at the end of a small section of hair with his comb, deeply intent. "I don't know," he says. "It just slipped my mind."
He manages another inch and then continues on, with a sad expression.
At this rate you'll never make it out of bed.
So, mentally giving up your entire morning (afternoon, whatever) you lie back onto the covers and sigh.
When he reaches the section in the back he has even more trouble, and finally flops sadly across you with his face on your stomach. "Light-kun," he complains piteously, his voice muffled against your shirt, "I am in despair."
"You're almost done, Ryuzaki," you say, glancing down at him.
He holds out his left hand into the air, his comb, dangling between two fingers, tangled up with a couple of strands of broken-off hair that have tied themselves in knots around the bone tines. "I can't make it," he says. He lets his hand fall limply back to the covers and then turns to look at you with his wide dark eyes.
It shouldn't surprise you that he knows about theater, because Ryuzaki really knows how to make a scene.
You roll your eyes and grab the comb from him, pulling off the bits of hair and sticking them onto your bedside table before sitting up and leaning over him. "You better not complain if this hurts," you warn, running the comb through the ends.
"Light-kun, it hurts," Ryuzaki says drily, and you catch the edge of his small grin as you pull the comb through a small section, carefully working at the knots.
Really, you wouldn't put it past him to have 'forgotten' to brush his hair on purpose, just to lead into this situation.
…On the other hand, you also wouldn't put it past him to have actually forgotten.
Either way, Ryuzaki's quite clearly enjoying watching you struggle with this, and there's no way you're going to let this get the best of you. One way or another, you will get his hair combed.
As you work to pick apart the tangled mess, Ryuzaki says, "I suppose it was troublesome to get locked up for two months."
You laugh shortly. "That's one word for it."
"Misa-san had a movie she meant to watch… did you have plans too, Light-kun?"
"Not really," you say.
"Really?" Ryuzaki says. "I find that hard to believe. Unless, for some reason, you intended to be locked up…?"
"I told you from the beginning, Ryuzaki," you say. "I was always prepared to do what it took to prove I wasn't Kira. That doesn't mean I 'intended to be locked up.'" You put down the comb, and work your fingers through a particularly sturdy knot, trying to loosen it, then pick up the comb again. "I just didn't have plans because…" you shrug. "It was my first year of university. I wanted to focus on my studies and on capturing Kira. When, exactly, was I supposed to find time for other plans in that?"
"Perhaps you're right," Ryuzaki says thoughtfully. "Before that, then. Before Kira. What were your plans?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well," Ryuzaki says, "surely the Kira case derailed something for you. What were your intentions before he came along?"
"You know what they were."
"Do I?"
"I wanted to become a detective."
"Is that what Kira did for you…?"
"What are you implying, Ryuzaki?"
"Perhaps you were bored, too."
You catch your breath. Stare sightlessly down at the hair held between your fingers while those words echo in your ears and you recall the window of your balcony at home, and the way, sometimes, in the late afternoon, the sun would strike through the gathering shadows. You had been bored for so long before the Kira case came along. Ryuzaki's head is half-tilted away from you. His slow, even breaths warm your skin, and for a second you feel struck by something undefineable.
Instead of answering, you pick the comb through his hair, piece by piece.
He closes his eyes; his long, dark eyelashes striking a line across his pale skin. If you could choose any way to describe him, it would be as someone whose spirit was barely contained within his body, as if when he had been made the proportions had come out all wrong, a limitless thing bound. No wonder he found himself craving godhood like a drug. What can the living world give him that could ever measure up—?
"I did," you say at last, hoarsely. You clear your throat and continue, almost to the end, slowing the motion of the comb through his hair into something almost soft. "I did have a plan, actually. I was going to watch the transit of Venus across the sun."
"The 8th of June," Ryuzaki murmurs.
"Yeah," you say. From where you are, you should have been able to see the first half of it, until the sun set with the journey still in progress. You'd signed up for the astronomy club and had never quite made it to any meetings, but you'd meant to for this one. It would be the first time such a thing occurred since the 6th of December, 1882. A century ago.
You'd spent the day wondering if you would ever see the sun again.
"I'm sure someone's made a recording of it," Ryuzaki says.
"You knew what day it was—you didn't watch?"
He shrugs. "I had suspects to oversee."
"I wonder how many things people miss by such a small margin," you muse.
"If there's a percentage on that one, it would have to be infinite."
"There's no such thing, Ryuzaki."
"Not if you count just one universe."
"Do you really believe there's more than just this…? Isn't that like the occult, too weird to be believed?"
"Aren't all beliefs, by definition, weird? Anything we can prove no longer requires belief at all."
"I guess so."
I believe you're Kira. Your hand, on the comb, stills. If—when—I prove it… it will no longer be a game of wits, a secret held between the two of you. It will be an unalterable fact; something visible to anyone. You will, in essence, kill a god.
/
The task force has been busy for days, searching for a murderer that, right now, is napping on the main floor of headquarters, curled with his knees to his chest, face smushed into the couch cushions.
"I mean, the pattern is different," Matsuda says. "Don't you think? Kira's been killing less since…" he casts a half-apologetic look your way and then says, "I mean…"
"Don't tell me you believe his 'theory' about the killing powers moving around," Aizawa says.
"No!" Matsuda says. He leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. "No, I think Ryuzaki's reaching… but Kira is acting differently than he used to, right?"
"It's true," your father says gruffly. "Kira has been killing less since the fifteen day break at the beginning of June. And he hasn't been taunting the investigators since then either. It's possible something happened during that time that put him on his guard, something we don't know about…"
"Maybe it is a new Kira," Mogi says quietly. He gives your father a steady look. "I know we don't want to consider it, but a change in pattern…"
"If it was a new Kira, the old one would still be around," Aizawa says. "We'd see an overlap."
"Unless he took the place of the original Kira."
"Mogi," Soichiro says. "Is this what you really believe?"
Mogi sighs. "I don't know, Chief. For what it's worth, Light-kun, I don't necessarily think the first Kira was you."
"But you believe Ryuzaki's theory?" you say. "You think he's right that the killing power moves around?"
"I believe it's possible," Mogi says. "The Kiras did speak of 'sharing their powers.'"
"Right," you say quietly.
"But if that was true… we'd be talking about possession, right?" Matsuda says.
"Not necessarily," Aizawa says.
"Well," your father says. He stares down at the graphs in his hand and clears his throat. "It's something to keep in mind, of course."
"I'm sorry," Mogi says.
"No, it's good that someone takes that viewpoint," Soichiro says. "I need someone to make sure I'm not missing important evidence." He gives Mogi a solid smile and adds, "I would be a fool if I didn't take into account the opinion of someone who can beat me at mahjong."
Mogi smiles.
"There's got to be something else we've missed," Aizawa mutters, and stands up. "Matsuda, can you show me that trick with the computer again?"
"Oh, yeah!" Matsuda jumps up. They walk off and, after another moment, Soichiro sighs and stands up too.
"I could use to brush up on that as well," he says. "Light, do you need any other files?"
You glance down at the boxes at your feet filled with crisp printouts. "No, this is good for now. Thanks."
His footsteps trail away after the others.
"So, you and my dad have been friends for a while," you say casually, as Mogi looks in the direction your father had gone. "He never mentioned you."
Mogi glances at you and then says, in his quiet, steady voice, "I worked under the Chief for some time, but we didn't know each other until confinement."
"Ah." You nod, and then glance down at the files in your hands. "The two of you took security duty together, then?" you say, a tinge of bitterness entering your casual words. "Took turns on the cameras when I was locked up?"
Mogi's eyes widen. "Oh—no. That was generally Ryuzaki's job. I saw some, but…"
"Oh." You try to busy yourself with sorting, cursing how blatantly obvious it was that you'd been fishing for information. It had just been easier, somehow, to assume everyone had seen it all, every sordid detail, than to have to wonder what fragmentary glimpses each member of the task force might have gotten of your confinement.
"Your father wasn't watching you," Mogi adds carefully. Your shoulders tense.
"Is that so?" You try to sound unconcerned.
"Did no one ever tell you?" Mogi says, still giving you that careful look. "He asked to be confined the moment you were. He vowed not to set foot out of a cell until you were cleared. And he kept that vow, until the execution stunt…"
"W-what?" Your voice sounds oddly small.
"He kept his phone so he could remain in contact with the outside world, and I visited him every day," Mogi says.
You rest your elbows on your knees. Wrap your hands around your forearms. Try to breathe past the void in your throat. "He… did that?" Once again, you see the deepened lines around your father's mouth, the streaks of gray in his hair, the occasional, haunted look in his usually-bright eyes.
You run a hand through your hair, trying to reign in the shaking of your breath. "No one told me," you say at last, very quiet. "I never knew."
/
"There's a full moon tonight."
It's the 31st; the last day of August. You're down in the first basement, because both of you had been too restless to sit in front of the monitors.
"Yeah?" you ask. You're putting away your tennis racquet, still a little gleeful that in your game against the wall you'd beaten Ryuzaki by a narrow margin. Ryuzaki tosses the ball back in with the others and says, "we should check it out. It's not exactly the transit of Venus but I'm sure it would still be fulfilling."
You check your watch; it's already 12:30. "Sure, all right," you say. If Ryuzaki wants to open the curtains and stare at the moon you don't have a problem with that. You get into the elevator, and Ryuzaki presses the very highest button.
The top floor? you think, a little thrown. Well, I guess you would get the best view from there.
All you know about it is that that's Watari's floor—you've never been to it. When the doors open you look out into a vast, open walkway; to one side, windows look out onto a night glittering with the lights of the city, like a nebula laying itself over the earth. The moon, high above, is as round and shining as a silver coin.
You follow Ryuzaki out into the walkway, your footsteps echoing in the wide space; and force yourself to breathe easily. This isn't so bad. True, the openness at your back feels like a swallowing nothing in the dark, and the cascade of the city goes on dizzyingly, but there is still, as ever, a fascination held in that watchful moon, that purity that only celestial objects hold.
Even when Ryuzaki speaks, his voice is hushed. "Beautiful."
"Yeah," you say, standing beside him, pressing your left wrist unobtrusively against your leg until the ache of the handcuff biting into your wrist steadies you.
"Do you want to see it from outside?" Ryuzaki asks.
"Huh?" you glance over at him, confused. Leave the building…? I thought he was totally against that…?
"The roof," Ryuzaki explains. "At the end of this hallway there are stairs," he gestures.
You stare ahead into the dark, unlit expanse. The glitter of the windows lays out a path traveling forward.
I could just say no, you think. We already have a good view where we are. There's no need. But all of a sudden it's become palpable—the fact that you haven't stepped foot outside in three months. Even when you travelled from hotel to hotel, you got into the limo from the parking garage underground. The thought of a summer breeze strikes you with an ache, and even as a hollow, knotted feeling rises in your stomach you find yourself saying, "yeah. I'd like that, Ryuzaki."
He walks forward, and you follow close beside him, moving incrementally further away from the elevators and into the walkway. The space seems hollower, and more vast, with every footstep, but the chain clinks familiarly beside you, a tether in the abyss.
There are stairs. Not just any but a wide stairwell reminiscent of a museum or an airport, as though it needed to hold space for a crowd; they are almost indistinguishable in the dark. It takes a minute to climb up all of them, and then you're in a space even higher up, enclosed by floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over the grey roof. One of those windows is actually a door, and when Ryuzaki presses his palm to the scanner beside it, the door hisses open, letting in a shock of unfiltered air.
There's a hint of nausea squirming through your insides, and a buzzing traveling through your limbs. You've stepped backwards without thinking, and Ryuzaki glances over at you.
"Are you all right, Light-kun?"
"Of course I am," you say, your voice steady. You step quickly past him, walking outside, onto the concrete roof. The wind—! Yes, it's here. For a moment you're still encompassed by girders and an aluminum roof above; then you walk forward and see—so is the sky, vast and all-encompassing overhead. You've made the mistake of looking for the moon and the sheer space of it all hits you like a tide, pushing the breath out of your lungs. Ryuzaki has followed you out, and you can vaguely hear the door closing behind you.
He's stepping further out onto the roof. And because of the chain, you find yourself tugged along step after step, while a sick feeling coats your tongue. I'm fine, this is nothing, you think. We'll just stand out here for a few minutes and then go back inside. It's no big deal. It's no big deal… your foot catches on a metal grating and you stop, look down; you can't see what's beneath you but you feel the sudden presence of that space not only above but below. For a second you think you're actually going to be sick, but instead you're just standing, stopping—even Ryuzaki tugging at the chain can't get you to go any further.
"Light-kun?" he asks again, carefully.
The grating under your shoes. You want to move back, feel the solidity of concrete, but the damage has already been done, there is space under you too. There is so much openness it's drowning you, and you can't even speak. You've lost all control of your breathing, but you can't even figure out how to catch it again; fast and short, you try to pull in something you can't find. Your hands are trembling, the chain clanking madly and there's so much space—so much of it—you can feel the infinite expanse of the universe always moving, moving outwards, so much larger even than the galaxy that holds this star you call the sun, the moon only an atom. None of it can be encompassed by you; none of it is within the span of your control. You can't move; in fact, there are tears passing down your face but you don't know how and you can't breathe but you're still screaming in fits and starts; not out of terror but out of a horrible anger, and you can't—you can't—
It's nothing, I should be able to—
I want to—
It's too open on all sides, the walls are gone; you want to crawl back into your cell and let the bulbs turn off—
Ryuzaki reaches out for you gingerly, and you grab onto his arm, dragging in heaving gulps of air; you're screaming, angry and wordless, shaking against him, your hands digging into his arms. I'm making an utter fool of myself, I have to stop you think—which is great and all if only you could figure out how—the walls are gone and you're going to disappear, going to be lost, dissolved and swept away by the entirety of the pitiless world—
He's walking back towards the doors, and you stumble with him, half-dragged backward, out from under the sky, back through the scaffolding, until he presses his hand to the scanner beside the door. The door slides open and you're inside, shaking wildly and making an inarticulate noise of indecipherable feeling, and you want to—you want to—
Crumble everything to pieces, reverse the big bang, compress everything into inertness just so you don't have to be, don't have to live with this anymore.
Ryuzaki pulls you away from the windows, into the top of the stairwell and even though it descends like a well into the darkness there's a wall, and you collapse to the floor against the wall. You haven't let go of him and instead of pulling away he straddles you, facing you, so close you can feel every line of his body on either side and his eyes catch yours, hook them, reel them in. He says nothing, and neither do you.
For a long time, you feel yourself unspooling by increments, or coming back into your body; shaking but clear-headed; still angry.
You'd like to speak sooner than you can, but the words get all tangled up in your shaking breath and the remnants of your sobs. It's only, finally, in the stillness afterward that you say, thick with venom, "is this what you wanted, L?"
"Light-kun," Ryuzaki says softly.
You lean your head back; it thuds dully against the wall. You barely feel it.
You could tell him you hated him. It would change nothing.
/
You don't speak as you walk back toward the elevator or go back down to your floor. Or as you go inside the apartment. Ryuzaki's moving towards the bathroom when you shake your head. "Let's just go to bed," you say, quietly. Your voice is hoarse. He changes direction, and you crawl into bed without having changed your clothes or brushed your teeth. He turns, this way and that, trying to get settled with the sheets around him, and you let your eyes trace the corners of the ceiling and blink back a sudden wave of tired grief.
"You broke me," you whisper.
"Light-kun—"
"Don't act like it was an accident."
It. Going up to see the moon?
Getting handcuffed together?
Getting locked in solitary?
Being framed for crimes you didn't commit?
Pick one.
"It wasn't an accident," Ryuzaki says. He reaches out. Gently rubs his fingers across your shoulder. "You're the Kira suspect, Light-kun. You know this. You always knew this."
"Sometimes I don't want to be," you admit; the whisper harsh and loud in the stillness.
He says nothing. Just keeps his hand, warm, against your shoulder.
"Tell me you wanted it, at least," you say. "Tell me this is what you wanted. L…"
"What do you want me to say?" Ryuzaki says quietly.
Something. Anything that will make this seem like just another move in the game, and not like you've lost a piece of your very soul.
But you can't speak. So at last, Ryuzaki says slowly, "anyone should want to feel sorry, for putting you through something like this. But I don't."
"I know."
His fingers brush carefully over the fabric of your shirt. "From the moment I first saw you, Light-kun, I thought you were too perfect. Perhaps that's why I wanted you to be Kira. Because 'perfect Yagami Light' is one thing… but Kira is like me. And so I like you more now that you're broken, because you're more like me."
"And I thought I was supposed to be the narcissist," you say wryly.
.
.
.