"I notice that Light-kun never did come up with something he was wrong about," Ryuzaki says casually, as you take the elevator back down to the main floor.
"Well, when I do come up with something, you'll be the first to know," you say. Ryuzaki just gives you a long-suffering look.
It's not that you're trying to come across as some kind of person who can't admit he's wrong. You're perfectly capable of doing something like that; you just can't think of any examples. It's probably just that you were lucky enough never to have some kind of traumatic experience like Misa's or Ryuzaki's that impressed upon them how wrong they were.
The doors open, and you walk down the steps into the main room and over to the computer monitors. There's the Kira list to go back to, which you do at once, only paying half a mind to it as you scroll through the news. The news: as always, it's the same things day in and day out, deaths and injustices. But even these lose their edge when appearing in such numbers over and over again. When plagues start, even ones sent by gods, there is terror across the globe; people die, others search for rituals to protect them; scientists search for cures, journalists search for answers, detectives search for crimes. After a short time, however, the talk begins to grow numb to the realities of even such an overturning as this. "Kira" becomes just another word for a natural phenomenon, just as "tsunami" might be. People prepare for it, deal with it, talk about it, and forget about it. And, quietly, the death toll rises. Every war, every natural disaster, every horror perpetrated by man becomes in history yet another thing that's already happened, a concept that, once it comes to exist in the world, like Pandora's box, cannot be un-conceived. There will never be a version of this reality in which Kira hasn't stampled his mark.
"This reality." You shake your head, dully amused. Ryuzaki and his belief in multiverses is a bad influence on you; there is no other reality than this. To think otherwise is to do nothing but believe in fairy-stories.
But it's true that, even for you, the burning palpable sense of injustice which the existence of Kira had first seemed to epitomize has eased. Perhaps it's because it had seemed so arbitrary, and then so pointed. What he had done to your father, and to yourself… in confinement you had thought deeply on the injustices shown your family. You'd used it as fuel to keep yourself going. But now… is there anything, really, that you can't overlook?
You pause on the list of names. Criminals, deaths, deaths become words, names become mere symbols pixelated on the screen, all meaning lost.
"What did you mean?" you say, quietly. "That you weren't capable of caring that someone dies? Is it because of your work? Of how much you've already seen?" You turn your chair slightly towards his; speak almost under your breath, but are still aware that anyone in the task force could potentially overhear.
Ryuzaki glances over at you, drags his chair closer and you've clicked out of the secret list you've built with one keystroke, leaving only the official list behind when he looks over at it thoughtfully. "Too many names for you, Yagami-kun?" he asks.
"No…"
"It's perfectly natural," he says. "No one can be expected to care about such inconceivable scope. At some point, the mind simply refuses to process anymore."
With your finger, you tap against the desk, 'didn't you say that I wasn't the type to care even in the first place?'
'Didn't you agree with me?' Ryuzaki taps back.
"Yes, I see what you mean," you say.
"But it's true that, when you've seen so many times the same kind of crimes… well, it's hard to keep your mind open to possibilities. Not because you reject it, but because you think, 'ah, this is what I've seen before'—and sometimes you miss things because of it. It takes continual effort to try to remind yourself of what you don't know."
"Staring too long at a problem until it becomes overly familiar…?"
"Yes, exactly. And, speaking of that," Ryuzaki leans over you and closes the database. "There's no need to stare at a case that's making no headway."
In reaching across you to the computer he's moved closer than you usually are in public, and your chairs, almost bumped against each other, don't roll away. For a second you've even forgotten the necessity of it, since having him beside you is more natural than the alternative; and in this close space each observation you make seems quite magnified: as though through the details of skin you'll somehow see beneath it to the actual turnings of his mind, that elusive foe of yours. I don't care that you're Kira. The sentence is on the tip of your tongue and quite unspeakable. It doesn't matter to me; I'm not sure it ever has.
Footsteps pass by; your father's, you can tell, even before you catch a glimpse of him, turning your head.
Ryuzaki leans back in his own seat and twirls idly round in a slow circle, the rolling wheels of the chair spinning him out in ever-widening rotations.
"Light. Your visit with Amane is over?" Soichiro says.
"Yeah tōsan, it went great."
Over by the couches, Matsuda and Mogi are quietly pretending they hadn't been watching the entire thing while Aizawa stares at a print-out list with a look of boiling frustration.
"Chief, I've never stopped caring about the Kira case," he says, standing up. Soichiro looks over at him.
"I've never doubted that, Aizawa," Soichiro answers. "What is it?"
Aizawa doesn't say anything; but you know suddenly that it's taking every effort he has not to start shouting about Ryuzaki's many downfalls.
"It's been a hard day," Mogi says at last.
"Yeah," Matsuda says. "I've been looking and looking over the names but honestly I haven't found a single lead!"
"Neither have I," Soichiro admits heavily. "But the most important thing is just to keep trying. Aizawa, why don't you show me what you were working on. Matsuda, Mogi—come, let's look at this together." He spreads the pages out on the table and starts asking Aizawa measured questions.
When you were fifteen you'd spent the hours between the end of school and the beginning of evening cram school in the police headquarters. You'd gone through file cabinets, you'd followed your father to some of his less important meetings. When he'd introduced you proudly as "my son, Light," you'd known how much the small moments of pouring through cases and talking over ideas had meant, not only to you, but to him too. That's where your most precious memories of your father have always lived: in the halls of his work, in the way he interacted with his men; in the theories you would trade back and forth about the difficulties of one crime or another. Sometimes, when you were very young, you'd woken up at five to the sound of the shower and known he was getting ready for the day, that he would do great things that would help others in immeasurable ways. The sound had lulled you for minutes at a time, a reminder; and you would slip back into sleep reassured.
It's strange to be reminded of that, all of a sudden. Even stranger still to realize that, though you could go over and join the group, it wouldn't be anything like how it once was. It's not that he's changed, and there is some reassurance in that still. If anything, it's merely that your paths have diverged so far that even if you were to stand beside him, the power of every unspoken piece of your own life would suddenly be too much to bridge.
When you draw your eyes away from the group, you find Ryuzaki watching you with something in his aspect that tells you he's aware of the dissonance of your own thoughts; and he makes a small, questioning tug on the chain, tilting his head toward the stairs. You nod, and the two of you walk up, your footsteps quiet on the glass.
/
The door swings shut behind you as you step into your apartment; you take your phone from your pocket and hand it idly to Ryuzaki. As he sits it on the table you say, "you asked me if I wanted this, Ryuzaki."
"Yes, I did," Ryuzaki says, walking through the main room and pausing by the kitchen before you step inside. He follows after. "And Light-kun couldn't answer me."
"Tea?" you ask.
"Sure."
You walk over to the cabinet, bring out a can of green tea and a teapot while Ryuzaki fills the kettle with water.
"That was when I was a prisoner," you say after a moment. The water hisses softly on the flame; you measure out a spoonful of curled leaves and place it in a small wire strainer, fitted to the rim of the clay teapot; then another spoonful. It smells bright and grassy, like freshness.
"And now that you aren't a prisoner?" Ryuzaki asks.
"I do want this." You look at him head-on, speak without any hesitance.
He glances over at you slowly; then back at the teapot. You're close enough that without moving you can reach to his hand, and you do.
"Do you think you'll be more convincing this way?" Ryuzaki says, glancing at where you've twined your fingers against his.
"I'm not trying to be convincing," you say. "It's not my job to convince you of anything, right?" you tease, and he smiles slightly. The tea is beginning to boil, and when the kettle whistles you take it off the stove, pour it over the leaves, which uncurl and float against the bubbling surface; steam rises warm into your face. You put the kettle down, place the lid on the teapot and Ryuzaki turns over the timer. The sand slowly falls, measuring out the correct time to steep. You lean back against the counter, watching Ryuzaki watching the sand; he's holding the timer in his palm and has a look as though his concentrated attention might in some sense help gravity along.
"Light-kun said the movie meant the strength in weakness," Ryuzaki says.
"You don't see the evidence?" you ask.
"I see the evidence," Ryuzaki says. "What I'm unsure about is the conclusion."
You snag the tea-timer from his hand, and he gives you a disappointed look. Placing it on the counter, you step closer to him, rest your hand on his shoulder. He sighs, and you step back. You turn your attention to the sand in the timer until it's fallen, take the strainer with tea out of the pot, and then bring the teapot over to the table while Ryuzaki carries two simple rounded teacups and you sit down across from him; as always the chain sits across the wooden surface, since to have it hanging underneath the table would mean leaving very little room for your hands to move. A thin silver line, it crosses the smooth-grained surface.
You place your fingers against the lid of the pot so it doesn't fall off as you pour the hot liquid into first Ryuzaki's cup, then your own; and he turns his cup slightly as though to watch the way the reflections in it ripple with the changing of the water. You take a small sip, hold your cup between your hands.
"It's true, though," you say quietly. "You yourself showed me that, Ryuzaki."
He glances up at you, and you find yourself hooked by the dark whirlpools of his eyes.
"What do you mean, Light-kun?"
"I was never weak until I met you," you admit. "I didn't know anything of it. How could I appreciate something I had never known?"
"Did I make you weak, Light-kun?"
"Are you going to deny it?" you ask, struck by sudden humor; and he must see something in your tone; the barely-hidden laugh behind the quirk of your lips.
"I suppose I did," he says. "You were too captivating a prisoner not to play with, so…"
"So," you say. "And now you think me incapable of learning what you yourself taught me."
"No, it's not that," Ryuzaki says musingly. "It's just that sometimes I wonder what it is I did teach you."
"Ryuzaki," you say. "I know where we are. I know Kira might never be caught. That's what this is all about, right? The stalemate. Of course I want to catch him, but if that's impossible… why bother staring at the same case without any headway, right? I want to move on to something new as much as you do. There's no fun to be had in remaining stuck like this; in having Kira set me at odds with you when instead we could be working together."
"On what?"
"On whatever you want," you say. "It's the rest of our lives, isn't it?"
"Yes," Ryuzaki says. "That does seem likely."
He doesn't say anything more, and you drink your tea in silence, frustrated at Ryuzaki's continual inability to understand your genuine desires. You don't know what else you can do to convince him. Nighttime epiphanies may have changed your entire outlook on life, but to him, it's as though nothing had happened; and how can you even begin to convey that you aren't playing games anymore—not when it comes to this?
"I don't want someone else to be able to create the meaning for my own life," you say at last, putting your cup down. "Being with you—why are you so convinced I can only ever see it as prison?"
"I think you can see it however you choose to," Ryuzaki says. "I've never doubted your ability to make yourself believe anything you put your mind to believing."
"Then what's the issue?" you ask.
"If you believe something only because you're compelled…"
"Don't go over this again, please," you groan. "It won't be any better of an argument now than it was before. You've never compelled me on what to think."
"Not overtly," Ryuzaki admits.
"What—then you're saying you have, subvertly?"
"Of course," Ryuzaki says. "It wouldn't be feasible to live with a prisoner who's so aware of his indignities that all he can think of is killing you, you know. It makes more sense to foster goodwill."
"Okay, sure," you say. "I understand that. So why are you backing off, then? If you've gotten exactly what you've wanted up till now? Why change your mind?"
Ryuzaki shrugs. "Because I got what I wanted," he says. "There's nothing surprising about it. Therefore, in the back of my mind… I always wonder."
"What?" you press. "What do you wonder?"
For a long time Ryuzaki doesn't answer. Then, at last, he says, "who you would've been if I hadn't changed you."
You blink at him, startled. "I mean… I'd be the same kid you spied on during the beginning of the Kira investigation. I'd be living my life, not doing anything particularly interesting… graduating college, joining the NPA, you know this. What's so special about it?"
Ryuzaki merely shrugs.
"Do you like me less, now that I'm who you wanted me to be?" you ask. "Are you bored? Or are you just that contrary?"
"Is that something that often happens to Light-kun?" Ryuzaki says. "Getting bored of people, once they become what he wants them to be?"
"Sure," you say. "I mean… there's no challenge then, right?" you shrug uneasily, and look away from him. "I know it's not a surprise to you. You have enough familiarity with my profile to guess that."
"Yes," Ryuzaki says. "I suppose I just wanted to hear you say it."
"Well, I've said it," you say. "Your turn, Ryuzaki. What's your problem?"
"Do I only have one?" Ryuzaki says in mock-surprise.
"No, but I'm willing to overlook the others for the sake of brevity," you say with pointed sarcasm. "Come on. You've heard all my reasoning but you haven't given me any of yours. What's wrong with me deciding to choose this life, when either way it won't change what happens? Or is that it… if I choose it, if I'm not a prisoner, there's no need for me to suffer? Are you afraid you'll have no reason to play games with me anymore?"
"I don't need a reason to play games, Light-kun," Ryuzaki says.
"Well, neither do I," you say. "Look, we work well as allies. We have the same interests and to be honest, we're both way smarter than most people we'll ever meet. Logically, it makes no sense not to take advantage of that." You spread your hands out, look at him openly. "Even if things had been different, I'd probably have been looking for someone like you to match wits against. And I think you have to say the same, if you're being honest."
"Yes," Ryuzaki says. "I have."
He looks away from you for a minute, and turns his cup in a slow circle; it's barely been touched. "I said you were my first friend… I wasn't lying. Not entirely. But there were others, as you know."
"The people who died?" you ask. "The ones you aren't capable of missing?"
Ryuzaki huffs a laugh. "Yes, those," he says. He pauses. Finally continues, in a low voice, "what would happen, Light-kun, if the same happened to you?"
"If I died?" you ask.
"Worse things than death happen to the people I play games with, Light-kun," Ryuzaki says.
"If I went crazy?" you hazard a guess. Something about the sudden, tense line of his shoulders tells you you've hit something. "Well… I mean… yeah, I guess I can't promise anything," you say. "I'd like to, but I doubt it would be convincing to you. But either way, we're stuck together. Either way, you're going to be playing games with me and I'm going to be playing games with you; I think we have to admit that. As long as we're in any contact at all, that'll be the case. So why let Kira control us? Why let this case be it?"
"I don't want to," Ryuzaki says. "It shouldn't be the end for you. I just don't know what else to do," he says, and shrugs; jingling the chain a little. You take hold of the metal with both hands, pull his right hand onto the table and press it flat, your own hands over his palm.
"I don't need assurance," you say. You catch his eyes, stare into his, pouring all your determination and your fury into your expression and the force of your hands holding him down. "I don't need assurance," you say again. "And I don't need anything from you. You've said you don't need me to be perfect; well, I don't need you to be in control. I don't need you to have all the cards and I don't need you to do the right thing. Neither of us care about morals, do we? So as long as we're having fun, who cares? This is what I want, Ryuzaki. It's not what I wanted before but it's what I want now. And if you don't think I believe it yet, you have to know I'll spend the rest of my life making myself believe it."
"Light-kun," Ryuzaki says. He bites his lip; suddenly there's a bright spot of blood. His voice is low. "You're saying very dangerous things."
"I don't care. Do you?"
"No," Ryuzaki says. "But I wanted to warn you. In the interests of fair play."
"Okay," you say. "I've been warned. What now?"
"When you think of being weak, how does that look to you?"
"However you want it to look."
Without looking away from you, Ryuzaki says, "lie down on the table."
You let go of his hands and pick up your cup to move it, but he takes it from your hands. "I'll take care of that part," he says.
You nod, and lean back until you're on your back on the table; still watching him as he puts your cup and his, and the teapot, on his seat and climbs up to kneel beside you.
"What does this mean to you, Light?" he asks.
"Whatever you want it to mean," you say again, and he reaches down to the seat beside him and takes his cup in his hand, dipping his fingers in it. He pushes your shirt up, baring the skin of your stomach, and swirls his fingers in a slow circle; the barest brush of fingertips skimming, leaving behind a stroke of wet, as though he were painting in water.
"What does this mean to you, Light," he says again.
"Whatever you want it to mean."
He dips his fingers in his teacup, brings it back to draw a long stroke down the plane of your stomach, skirting your belly button and traveling softly above your hips. "I want it to mean," he says, "whatever you want it to mean. Where are we then, hm?"
"A paradox," you say promptly.
"A paradox," L echoes. "What kind of paradox? A falsidical paradox?"
"No."
He dips his fingers into his cup again, slides his wet fingers up your fingers and wrists. "A veridical paradox, then."
"Maybe."
"No? Hm. Then perhaps an antimony."
"I'm surprised you didn't bring up a dialetheia."
"True and false at the same time," L says. "Is that what you make of this?"
"If I say yes, I'm afraid you won't believe me," you say, and he looks up to see your smile.
"I can believe you and not believe you at the same time," he says. "No contradiction in terms." He dips his fingers again, and makes a slow, graceful loop across your collarbone.
It's the deftest, slightest touch; warm for an instant and then cool as his fingers move on. He brushes your bangs aside, makes a swirling pattern across your forehead, the lightest pressure, and you shiver.
"Good?"
"Mm."
He leans close, breathes out against the space he left behind, the water on your skin warming. You close your eyes, and he traces his way down your neck; soft, warm, cool. You relax. For a while that is all that happens: slow, lingering touches, and his breath. You float on the sensation; sensual without being sexual, and are dimly amazed that such a thing is even possible—touch, so closely, without obligations. You find yourself unwinding by degrees, and if you were on a more comfortable surface you almost think you might fall asleep. At some point, strangely, you feel as though you are asleep… though you never cease being conscious of your body, which heats at the points of contact between you. You don't know where he will go next, and it doesn't matter; languorous, you let every thought enter your mind without sequence, stay as long as it will, and depart. At last, he stops his aimless movements, brings his touch to your hands and more vigorously slides his palms against them.
"Light," he says quietly. "How are you doing?"
"Mm."
He continues for a while and speaks again. "Light…"
"Yes, L?"
"Would you open your eyes for me?"
You do, blinking a little at the brightness inside the room. "Is it over already?" you ask.
L chuckles. "Light, it's been nearly an hour. I wasn't sure you'd appreciate me using up even more of your time."
"I wouldn't've minded," you say.
"Well, that's good to know, but I've used up all the tea."
"All of it?"
"Well, also I drank some."
You grin. L takes hold of your arm to steady you as you sit up, and all of a sudden you're a little grateful he didn't take more of your time; lying on such a hard surface actually has been a bit uncomfortable, though you only notice now.
You check your watch—it's nearly twelve thirty. "I think I could go to sleep right now," you admit.
"We can do that, if you want," Ryuzaki says.
"Yeah, might as well," you say, yawning. "I mean, we'd probably go to bed in an hour or so anyway."
So you get ready for bed, unfortunately losing some of the nice drifting feeling along the way and almost more awake once you slide under the covers than you'd been before. But you still feel incredibly relaxed, and instead of staying on your side of the bed you move until you're close enough to Ryuzaki to touch; to rest your hand on his chest and feel the movement of his lungs, steady; and his beating heart.
.
.
.