Flashback(?): don't let memory play games with your mind
It's a normal day. Somewhere in the mansion, people are always sleeping. Light is not one of them.
Waking in the dark - eyes twitching open, a little crusted, just as they always do. The pale outline of the corridor's lights around the door. A faint, strangled noise: exasperated disappointment. She doesn't need to reach up, or down, to know she's still female, that the place hasn't taken pity on her overnight: her body's different enough that she just knows. A warmth, almost: things touching that shouldn't, and vice versa. It's tiresome. She wishes it would be over, that she could go back to how things were, just a few days ago.
The morning routine is still out-of-the-ordinary: not so much uncurling herself out of bed, flicking on the light and tucking the sheets back into flat neatness (old-fashioned sheets and blankets on the metal frame, the mattress heavier than it ought to be as she forms hospital corners). No, it's the sight of herself in the mirror as she peels off the black casual clothes she sleeps in - an old habit she's maintained, partly for warmth, partly in case she finds herself sleepwalking again. Or in case someone visits her unexpectedly in the night.
The mirror isn't really a mirror - it's doors. The doors of the wardrobe, fronted with silvered glass, taking up most of the wall. Since coming to the mansion, she - he - is mostly broken of the old habit, of watching his reflection as he dressed and undressed, of staring, entranced, into its eyes, of offering it knowing little smiles. Of whispering to it: telling it secrets, all the things he couldn't share with a living soul. There are just too many bad reflections around, too many copies of him that aren't him, that never could be: too many sleep-deprived hallucinations, twitches of his reflection's face in the mirror: too much of a deterioration in his own appearance, as he shrinks down, becomes paler, sicker, bleaker. Lost.
As a woman, all of this is multiplied. She doesn't feel strange, dissonant, out-of-place in her own body - but having her old confidant not look how he should, that disturbs her, nagging and disappointing.
Showered and dried and dressed - buttons on the wrong side, zippers instead of buttons in awkward places, cardigans instead of jackets, at least the place hasn't had the temerity to present her with a skirt yet - Light listens at her door for a few moments, before unlocking it, stepping out, and locking it behind her: heading off down the corridor, sketchbook swinging at her side. For a couple of days, she's left it behind - but enough people have called her identity correctly, by now, for it not to be worth it, any longer. Something about her movement seems wrong, without the little book there: as if she's unbalanced. As if something essential is missing.
The kitchen door's in front of her. There's the usual jaundiced assessment of it - will you be yourself, today? will the place trick you? where will it put you, and what will you be? - before she steps inside. Then it's all gone: the sketchbook tumbles to the floor, unnoticed, unremarked, unheard, unneeded. And she - is a he, again. But not the same one he usually is, the one who's wasting down to nothing in his insistently elegant casual clothes: who watches, with an eerie, fixed stare, from corners, from doors, who's trying harder and harder to close down while bursting out at the seams. The one who still believes he can win, somehow, anyhow.
No, the Light who's standing there now, the one with the formal grey suit and the pained glare, knows he can win. I'm surrounded by idiots, who won't listen to reason. As if they'd understand.
Then he remembers his watch, and its deadly secret: the little piece of paper. If I can kill him here, then... Calm down. Think. I just need the time and opportunity to kill him... Panic, rising like water, bubbling under his nose, his mouth. It isn't over yet.
Detached, Light begins to weave his web of deceits and assumptions and twisted truths. "Near. You first thought the fake notebook made by Mikami was the real one, and replaced the pages in it. And Mikami had the fake notebook that you made. In other words-" and his glance flicks down, to stare Near out "-both notebooks turned out to be fake, when both sides believed them to be real. And the mistake made by both sides was that they didn't test the notebook to see if it was real or not." He won't let himself think about the implications of that.
Pacing back and forth, he illustrates with his hands, unlocked at last. Free. Himself. "So, how can you be sure that the notebooks here are real? The notebook you have with you right now-" the two of them, open on the floor, page after page, line after line of intricate, identical writing. One night? How can he have done all that in one night? It's impossible. "-and the notebook Aizawa brought down from the Japanese investigation headquarters. Are they real?" Staring out from beneath his hair, Light's eyes are intense, inhuman: lizardlike.
One step after another, an actor on the stage: every movement calculated, every inch of distance, every wave of a hand. "You already see Ryuk, so let's just say that the notebook you have is real." His lips begin to curl upward into a faint smirk, superior, self-satisfied, already victorious: the trap is in his voice, soft and assured and utterly confident. The centre of the web, sticky filaments radiating outward. "But the notebook Aizawa has was kept at headquarters, where I had access to it. I could have switched it." Step. Step. "And if I switched it, then I'm the only one who knows its whereabouts..."
And Light knows, he knows that this won't save him. He's already confessed: first to try and swing the little people - even one would do: definitely it was nothing to do with the elastic snap that had rocked him as he was exposed. Now he's playing for time, just to put distance between. "If you really want to defeat Kira, then you should write my name or Mikami's name in Aizawa's notebook, to see if that notebook is real." That's it. He's laid the trap, made his case. Near is L's disciple: L, with his insistence on the need for evidence, the thing that tripped him up over and over, that led him to his death. He can't kill me, not without proof. Not without knowing the notebook is real. Not with the original still out there.
Near finally speaks, low, contemptuous. "Yagami Light... Kira..." - and every time he says that name, it's spat, as if it will contaminate him - "I have no plans to kill you."
It's like a steel door shutting behind him: Light can't quite keep the contempt off his face - that Near, like L, doesn't have the guts to do what should be done. To see an obvious threat, a clear danger, and wipe it out. There's shock, too, and relief, that he's not going to be killed out of hand. But he isn't thinking about those.
All cold disgust, Near continues. There's nothing like triumph in his face: Light can't understand it. "I really don't care if the notebook is real or not anymore. From the very beginning, my goal was to capture Kira. All I want is for everything to become clear and for Kira to be captured. You're as good as arrested now, and I'll confiscate the notebook Mr Aizawa has. That is enough for now." Kneeling on the floor, with the notebooks, with his toys scattered, with Gevanni standing over him with the gun, as if Light might rush him.
Light just stares sideways, over Matsuda's bowed head: as if Near isn't even important enough to face head-on. He's evaded the handcuffs once, so far, but he can already feel them: that conscious reminder of L, who'd as good as appeared before him as he broke free, threw himself against the wall. Cornered. Incompetents, he thinks, mocking, reassuring himself. I would never have let me escape that way. And further back, he's wondering - for now? What does that mean? What will they do to me, to find out where the other notebook is, or if it exists at all?
Near is still talking. "And I will not announce Kira's arrest or the existence of the notebook to the public. I believe that everybody here can keep that secret." A deep breath. "I'll take full responsibility for confining you, Kira, somewhere where you won't be seen or heard by anybody, ever again."
Those last words hit Light like a cannonball: like a cell door closing on him forever. The threat of it: the promise of it: the water rushing up over his head. I knew it! Near has no intention of testing the notebook, or killing me here. And yet... The cell door cracks open: a thin beam of light.
For a split-second, there's a tiny sliver of smile.
"As for the notebook-" Near is still talking, one hand resting on the ground. "-the two rules that were written on the back cover - the 13-day rule and the rule about how everyone who touched the notebook will die if the notebook is burnt - were probably added by you later." A glance up to Ryuk, who's just standing there, behind Light, as always, utterly useless. "I think the shinigami, Ryuk, might tell me if these rules are true or not. And even tell me if the notebook is real or not, after I capture you."
Ryuk looks across, unblinking as ever - as if he's surprised to be addressed, as if he isn't part of the proceedings. "Huh? Well, sure. Why not."
Having confirmed that detail, Near looks back to Light, with his own unblinking, dead, L eyes. "Even if I don't find out if the rules and notebook are real or not, I'll just lock it up so that it will never fall into anyone's hands again. The most important thing right now, Kira, is to capture you."
The promise of a lifetime in prison, the panicked instinct screaming at him to run - it reminds him of the cell, the one so long ago, the one he put himself in, the one L put him in. The one he remembers spending seven days in - the one he knows he was in longer, another forty-three days. Near. He's got no intention of killing me - at least that's clear. Then as long as I can kill Near... I'll trick the others, starting with the story about Aizawa's notebook being a fake...
That's it: all he needs, now, all he can hope for. He might not come out of this warehouse the god of the new world, but at the very least he's going to see Near dead at his feet. That would still be a win, something to take with him into the future, no matter what happens: tangible proof that Light's the better man. The scrap inside my watch. I just saw Near's name - I should have time to write just that. He can see it already: the watch open, the little scrap of paper, the name written there in his angular romaji script. Once it's down, it can't be taken back. That's all I need to do. If I make the right moves, they won't notice me opening the watch. But it'll be impossible to write his name down without being noticed. So I'm going to have to write his name down as fast as I can. Nate River. Two seconds... no, one second... He's not letting his hands form fists, or tense: he's reaching out for that place where he's relaxed, secret, certain enough of what he's doing that he can't fail. I can do it!
"Well, whether it's real or fake," Light replies, easily, deceptively casual, spreading his hands, flexing his fingers, "don't you think it's a good idea just to take a look at it?" Another step. This should be far enough to write the name, before anybody can get to me. As if there's nothing to it, as he's done three times already, pacing and explaining and elaborating, as if teaching children, he draws his hands back in: settles one on the winder of his watch. His words are meaningless, now: just a distraction. "If that notebook is real..." Click. Click. Click. "...or fake!" Click.
The secret panel slides out with a snap! Light is abruptly silent, snatching his pen from his breast pocket. As he begins to scribble, frantic, one of the SPK people - Rester? - yells a warning. "He's got a note in his watch!"
I just need to kill him! That's it, that's all! Nothing else matters, it doesn't matter if I make it out of here or not as long as I see him dead-
Then, there's pain, as something tears thin flesh and shatters bone. The pen skitters off into the far distance, as Light's wrist explodes, and the side of his hand bursts outwards, and he falls forward. The squeak of pain is muffled, surprised: what just happened to me? Instinct tells him to grab: to stop the bleeding, the agony, any way he can. There's a noise like a firecracker going off behind him, then, but he's too horrified to hear it: gasping for breath, he can't see, and his mind's a blank. He feels as if he might vomit: bile and acid all over the warehouse floor, and who'd clean that up?
Aizawa's voice, thunderstruck, addressing Matsuda. It's all Light needs. Resting one hand - his left - on the floor (because it's no option at all, to touch his bleeding, broken hand to the ground - pressure and pain and dirt and infection). "M-Matsuda..?" Finally able to drag himself upwards, to look behind him, to see what the hell has gone wrong this time, he sees the older man shaking there, pointing the handgun. Furious. Wet with tears.
But two can play at that game: Light is incandescent with his frustrated rage, and his outrage at Matsuda's idiocy, and his pain (and his fear - oh, god, the damage - what will I do if they can't repair it?): he can't keep the screech inside. "You idiot..! Who do you think you're shooting, Matsuda?! Don't fuck with me!" He's still pressing down: little jets of blood from the wound, the hole punched right through, dripping down his fingers and on to the floor - and oddly, finds himself wondering where his pen is, exactly how dirty it's going to be. "If you're going to shoot someone, shoot the others! What are you doing?!"
Irrational, unthinking, almost out of his mind with the pain, the shock, the frustrated betrayal, Light abruptly changes tack: grabs for anything that sounds remotely convincing. "Matsuda..! I thought you were the only person who understood me. Kira is righteous! Kira is needed!" It's all so very obvious, isn't it? What the right thing to do is? The thing that will save him? "Shoot! Shoot Near, the SPK members, Aizawa and the others!"
Matsuda isn't beginning to buy it. After a few seconds' broken pause, he demands answers. "Wh-what was it all for? The chie - no, deputy director... Deputy Director Yagami... He was your father..." Shaking, stepping closer. "What did your father die for..?"
Light can't believe he's brought it up: that he doesn't begin to understand. Matsuda, who should have been the one who went to his grave that day - that he'd dare to name him - to trample on Light's sacrifice like that ... "Dad? Are you talking about Yagami Soichiro?" How dare you, how dare you... that fool... Panting, squeaking, laughing bitterly, he continues: he can't help but see the irony of it. He wants to tear down Matsuda's naive vision of the world, to crack it into a million pieces and hurl it at his feet. To make him see exactly what happens, when people aren't prepared to do what's necessary, to see that the greater good is more important than any one person's principles. And of course Light should define it: he's the one, the one with the gift and the vision to choose, for everyone. "That's right, Matsuda. Overly earnest people with a strong sense of justice like him always end up the loser." And it's not his father Light's thinking of, but himself - everything he's given up, everything he's done, worked for, and now it's all tumbling around him because of a bunch of hopeless, insignificant fools. "Do you want a world where people like him are always made fools of?" His breath is heaving, stuttering out in gasps: his blood is dripping to the floor, slick beneath his remaining hand. How can this be happening to him?
Tears still leaking, Matsuda retorts, "You drove your father to his death, and now you're trying to change the subject by telling me that he was made a fool..."
Light can see it, he thinks: the doubt in his face. There have to be doubts, don't there? Matsuda may not have known Light, but he was beginning to know Kira: he's always been the one closest to understanding, to having an open mind, to knowing what it was all for. Rather than collapse to the floor and let them take him, Light forces himself to stare into Matsuda's face and not at the gun, forces words out, thick and choking, that taste like blood, where he's bitten himself, where his breath is on fire: words have always been his friends, they're what he's always used to save himself. "A society, a world where people like my father will never have to be made a fool... Yagami Soichiro died to create that. I'm telling you to kill the others so that his death was not in vain! Can't you understand me?"
Do as I tell you. Do as I tell you. Light gives the orders, Matsuda obeys them. Always, he's been the one who fell deepest into the traps, the one who was easiest to manipulate, because he wanted to believe so badly.
Now, in the end, there's nothing but that disbelieving stare, a strangled noise like a rusting brake.
The blood is still dripping. Something about it reminds Light of the helicopter, as if it was yesterday - the seat next to L, and the screaming triumph that somehow he'd kept inside, the needle pricks that he hadn't even felt as he wrote Higuchi down, playing innocent, playing passive, compliant, obedient...
(and somewhere, so long ago as to be unrecognisable, a tiny boy with a friendly plastic helicopter, bobbing it along furniture and up walls, and thinking, "One day, I'll fly like that, just like that.")
Without even thinking, he touches his finger to the paper. An R. An I. Aizawa and Ide crying a warning, somewhere.
A V. An E.
Light isn't thrown backwards: he falls. An impact in his shoulder, like a bomb. Then, quick behind, another of those firecracker sounds. Someone is screaming. Another impact, his stomach, this time: another report. Now Light knows what's happening, reacts enough, drags himself far enough out of his shock to scream, wrenched up and out of him as if he's being gutted through his throat. The pain is paralysing, unimaginable: he can't breathe, he can't see, it's like nothing he's ever conceived. The bloody scrap of paper tumbles to the ground, while Light tries to remember how to move, how to think. His heart beats in the wounds, the blood pumping out, welling up into his throat and mouth, metallic, warm and wet and secret and every drop so, so precious.
The shock is overwhelming: he doesn't hear Matsuda step forward, doesn't hear the furious hiss of "I have to kill him. I've got to kill him!": doesn't hear Aizawa and Ide trying to reason with him. He doesn't register anything, in fact, until the gun is at his chin, clicking - and then it's a dreadful animal terror, the end of everything so close he can touch it: he freezes in place, manages to hold his breath as if he might be able to hide, if he just keeps still enough - except the blood is still pumping, soaking the ground beneath him, shattered bone scraping over itself as he shivers. And the odd thought that filters up is - not my face, don't do that, not there, they'll still have to identify me. Sharp stabs of pain in his cheek, his ear, his hair: flying glass? Another firecracker: no, another gunshot. Looking sideways, Light can see the pit in the concrete floor, where the bullet went off just centimetres from his head. Chips and shards of rubble and shrapnel thrown in all directions. He stares, disbelieving, frozen, silent: somewhere in all that, he's managed to wet himself with fear. It's warm, like the blood. Then, he twists, trying to move, to get up - to get away, anywhere, anywhere, to get help from anyone-
Anyone.
Now, finally, he touches his ruined hand to the floor: tries to push upwards with it, without the bone grating too badly. You understood. You should know what to do. You should be able to do something, do your job! He doesn't remember the arrest, doesn't see the handcuffs, the helplessness. "Mikami! What are you doing? Help me write their names down. Kill them!" Still levering himself upwards, shattered bone threatening to push through the skin as it takes his weight. "Kill them... that's your job... what are you doing?!"
Standing in the rubble of his own world - his god dying at his feet, giving impossible orders and demands, himself already condemned - Mikami whimpers. "Don't you see? How could I write their names down ... in a situation like this ... and with a fake notebook..." And it all comes together for him, then, in that one furious denial of "You're not God!"
Light is - strangely disappointed, and unsurprised: sour, and bitter. But to be abandoned, ignored like that, at the last moment-? Idiot. Why doesn't he see- and all the things he can't articulate, any longer, washing over him - that this isn't his fault, shouldn't be his problem, it doesn't mean he was wrong, that right and wrong don't come into it, just who's lucky, or not - that this is all Mikami's fault, for some reason he can't quite remember, any more, but which he knows is there-
Mikami is still disowning Light - shrieking about him being scum, probably responsible for everything back to the bombing of Hiroshima - but Light isn't listening: can't care. Still folded on the ground - his legs won't obey him either, won't carry him - Light spits his own rejection, all he can call up, all the other man is worth to him: "Bastard!" Blood and froth drip from his mouth, tasting of iron. Surely there has to be a way out of this? There always has been...
Aizawa, who's been eyeing the little scrap with disbelief and disgust - the neat, incriminating, off-the-cuff characters spelling out, with hideous precision, exactly how much Light valued Takada - addresses the taskforce. They move in.
Light won't have it.
Footsteps approaching, like death. Like cold, seeping right through him: like blood draining out of him. I'm going to die, right here on this floor. And, finally cornered, a rat in a trap, chewing at its own leg to free itself, the panic wells up, overwriting his reason: overcoming him, as they've been waiting to do for so long. Just as they've threatened to do before, when events don't follow Light's carefully laid plans. He screams, not as if it can hold them off, but as if he can't not scream. "Stop it! Don't come near me!" Fingers against the floor - the pain doesn't matter, the blood's irrelevant, he just has to get away, to save himself any way he can. Wounds scraping on filthy concrete, fingernails snapping back like celery - it should hurt, it does hurt, but it doesn't matter. Gasping for breath as if the sea's closed over him, as if all he can find is water, burning, scalding. There's not enough air in the room, and every breath is ripped out of him, heaving, sobbing, more of his life snatched away. He can't see, any more - or he isn't paying attention, for thinking of the other people who should be here, who should leap in front of him, to save him. He reaches around for names, desperate, terrified. "M-Misa... where's Misa?! Misa, kill them, kill all of them..."
Near - strangely sad and hollow, he sounds, and what is there he has to be sad about? - replies. "Misa Amane is at the Teito Hotel right now."
"Hotel?" It's a wheeze, more than anything else, scraping around the floor as Light is. "What is that idiot doing at a hotel at a time like this?" Because he doesn't remember that she gave up the notebook, wiped her memory a second time: the things she's done for him, over and over. "Takada... where's Takada..?" Flailing, around and around, eyes rolled up into the top of his head. Thinking shouldn't be this hard - there shouldn't be this layer blocking everything he tries to do: not cotton-wool, not a blanket, nothing soft or warming. Barbed wire around him. Pins and needles - paresthesia, somehow the word is there - numbness, as his extremities begin to shut down. Fingers and toes, arms and legs. All of him, closing off. "Kill them... write their names down..."
As the task force look on, silenced with horror and disgust - because Light isn't going anywhere now, and there are no words for this - Near gives that subdued response again, the bare facts of the case. "Takada Kiyomi is dead."
"Dead?!" It cascades upwards, cracking, as if he can't believe it. As if Light didn't push her into the fire with his own hand. "S-somebody... anybody..."
It hurts. What am I going to do?
The insistent, rapid pulse in the places he was shot, in his wrist, his shoulder and his stomach, is weakening: a pale, rapid flutter all through him as he writhes on the floor. A weird impulse to lick up the blood from the concrete, to get it back inside him, any way he can. Because this can't be happening to him, can it? He's Kira, isn't he? Surely there must be someone who can help him, save him? The whole world knows who he is, the whole world loves him, even if they don't know his name. "Somebody kill these guys..."
Aizawa begins to approach, again. "Light, it's over. Take it easy, or you're going to bleed to death."
Light shrieks, blind and clawing and convulsing, beginning to draw up into himself. "D-don't come near me! K-kill them. Somebody kill them for me..." Nails scraping against the concrete floor, staring into nothingness, he pushes himself forward, frantic to escape: a couple of centimetres, a couple more. Pressure on greasy, unfeeling fingertips, scraping them raw. Maybe eventually he'll get out of the door? Maybe someone out there will hear him, help him, defend him, be there for him?
...but something is already there, in front of him. Someone. He focuses, eyes down and centred: something that shouldn't be this hard, like moving, like breathing, speaking, keeping everything important inside and not outside (because he's leaving a trail, like a slug, a wet, dark trail behind and before him, where the floor isn't quite even: thick red rivulets leading him on). Boots. Sharp, cruel black boots. Above Light, Ryuk is grinning, white-eyed. An angel of death. Smiling like light. Or like Light, who knows this is it - Ryuk will help him, because he's got no interest in defeating Kira, because Light is the single most interesting person in the world, because he's got no choice - because Ryuk does what Light says, and always has. A god? - some god, so easily diverted, with apples and games and tricks, with his weird, bright eyes and his frozen, slashed smile.
Just now, Light thinks he might be the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.
His terror cracks into a crazy hope, a glimmer of victory: the hand that points behind him, at the task force and the SPK and Near, still trails blood. "I know! Ryuk, you can write their names down into your notebook!" Eyes wide and wicked, tears mixing the red into streaks, he begs. "Write it, Ryuk! Hurry!!" Behind him, there's a drag of leather and cloth, metallic clicking and snapping, as the rest of the agents finally draw their useless weapons.
It's then that Near's voice penetrates: that dull monotone from the far side of the warehouse. "Don't worry. If that shinigami is willing to write our names down when asked, then that's all Kira had to do from the start. So it means that Ryuk does not assist Kira in those ways." Aizawa and Ide look to Near, startled, as does Light: how can you be so confident? you don't know anything about this. The truth of it is stunning - Ryuk never has killed anybody, just on Light's say-so...
No. It can't end like this. I won't let it. "P-please, Ryuk..." He manages to lift himself up a little way, reaching, grasping - and he never has touched Ryuk, he realises, nor has Ryuk touched him. "You're all I've got left to rely on! Please write the names down!"
Ryuk stares down at him, unblinking - those white eyes, like twin moons in his face. A heartbeat. Two. Three. Except for Light, now, it's more like a dozen, each one driving more blood out of him, each twitching, jerky motion spilling his life onto the floor. Then - a flip of the notebook, out of its holster - Light has never seen Ryuk draw his notebook before, and he notices it has "Death Note" scrawled on the cover, just like the original - and a pen is produced from a wing, ornate, elaborate with skulls. "Sure... I'll write it."
Light doesn't see the tension on Near's face, but he does hear the cries of the task force. It spreads across his face like wine, like the blood that's smearing it top to bottom - a greedy, selfish, knowing triumph, a certainty of how he's going to come out on top after all. I knew I could count on you, Ryuk! I knew you'd have to do what I told you, in the end! There's no way you can beat me, Near.
Half-a-dozen handguns unload into the shinigami at once. The bullets shiver through him as if he's not even there: into the wall, throwing more shrapnel back. Some of it hits Light, but he doesn't care. It's that moment in the helicopter again, the time he saw L fall to the ground, dead at his feet - perhaps this isn't exactly as planned, but it's close enough, yes, close enough for Light to take it: once again, he's gone right into defeat, dared it, baited it, stared it closer than ever, this time, and still turned it around and come out on top-
As Ryuk explains the details, the ones Light already knew, he stares at the rest of them and bursts out laughing - mocking, hating, and validated, yes. It's the shock and fear on their faces, the way they can't believe the sight of their own failure. There's no trace of a sob in it this time. It's cracked, coruscating, gloating, well past the edge of madness: wheezed in, choked out through blood and froth, each peal a jerk of pain in his shattered shoulder and bleeding lung. He's right down in the playground again - that boy who never had to care about coming out on top, because he always did: who was so smart, who chose his fights so well, that he never needed to try. That he never had to risk cracking his perfect little façade. Lying there in his own blood, his hair clotting to black, he laughs like a wounded hyena, and crows his vicious elation for the last time. "So much for you, Near! You should have killed me right away. But now that Ryuk's decided to write your names down, nobody can stop him! It's too late, you're all going to die!"
"No, Light." It's Ryuk, scratching away at his notebook. "The one who's going to die ... is you."
Light's head jerks around, glory to defeat in zero seconds flat. His mind fades to white with the shock of it - except, no, he has to be able to do something. Anything. Now, or never. "Ryuk, you... you..." You idiot. You fool. Another tear escapes, spilling out of Light like his life is spilling over the floor, over his fingers. It's the only thing that can lift him from the ground: he manages to get to his feet, the pain forgotten. "Stop it!" Throwing himself forward - maybe he can snatch the book? the pen? maybe he can beg hard enough that Ryuk will just change his mind? - he goes straight through onto the floor, like the bullets. Ryuk isn't ready to be touched just yet.
Looking behind him, he carries on with his explanation. "No matter how I look at it, you've lost, Light. I was kind of expecting to see you get out of this one, but if I'm your last resort ... you really are done for." Scritch. Scratch. The last character down on the page. And Light can't get up: everything went into that last leap upwards. Winded, gasping with pain, all he can do is lie there and let it happen.
"You've eased my boredom for quite a long time, haven't you?" asks the shinigami. "It was a lot of fun." And, in his hands - his talons? - he holds out the book.
The name "Yagami Light" is written there. Three kanji, Light's kanji. Loose, squiggly, but instantly recognisable: good enough, or bad enough. Light written down on the familiar paper, just like - how many others? He doesn't even know, not since Misa took over. Three hundred thousand, perhaps? Light screeches - it's nothing like the way he'd usually speak. It's a sob, high-pitched, unrecognisable, frothing. Crying. Begging. "A-am I going to die?! I'm going to die?"
"That's right," Ryuk croons. "In forty seconds, you'll have a heart attack. It's already been decided upon." One claw is tapping on the page - the page he's still holding out, with the impossibility written down on it.
"I-I'm going to die." For a moment, Light almost sounds as if he believes it, as the tears spill down his face, unfamiliar, distant: if he was aware enough to think about it, he'd think it was like being someone else. Ironic, since he's more himself now than he's ever been: literally at death's door, all the masks and lies and deceits reduced to one simple, perfect truth. Summoning up the last of his strength, he tries to drag himself a little closer. The splintered bones of his wrist, his hand, lacerate the skin, catch and pull against the floor, unimportant now. "N-n-no... I don't want to die." As if it should make a difference - as if what Light wants is the only thing in the world.
The hysteria's sudden, unaccepting, terrified. He screams again, claws his way up Ryuk's leg, bleeding, shredded fingers digging into unforgiving leather and metal, shaking him. Trying to force him to see it, the obviousness of it. "I don't want to die, damn it! Stop it! I don't want to die!"
Ryuk looks down, disbelieving, cold and utterly unflappable - how the situations have reversed themselves - as Light crumples there on his knees, begging, pleading. As if he should realise how obvious it all is. "You sound so undignified. It's not like you, Light. I told you in the very beginning that I would be the one writing your name in the notebook when you die. That is the rule between the shinigami who brings the notebook into the human realm and the first human who picks up the notebook." It's all so clear and sensible to him - as if Light's life is nothing, as if he's not a person. As if he's nothing more than a means to an end.
Just like all the people Light put down in the notebook.
"If they put you in prison, who knows when you'll die? I don't want to just lie around waiting for you to die, so it's all over. You should die right here."
"N-no!" Gasping. Sobbing. Demented. The last threads of his sanity seeping out of him, mixing with the dark pools on the floor. It's not in him to accept responsibility, and right to the end, he's going to beg for a way out. "I don't want to die! I don't want to go to prison either! Do something! I know there's a way out of it, Ryuk!"
Ryuk's cut-open face gapes wide, wider, as he looks down at the crumbling, distraught wreck at his feet. "Once a name is written down in the death note, you can't do anything about it. You more than anybody else here should know that." His eyes are glowing, white and yellow. "Goodbye, Yagami Light."
Light's eyes are so wide, now, that they might just fall out of his head. They're swollen, red: they'd sting, if he was paying attention. His thoughts aren't tangled, tangled doesn't begin to describe it: they're crashing into each other, leaking, incontinent like the holes shredded through his stomach and shoulder, like the ruin of his writing hand. Frenzied. Somewhere he registers them watching him, as if his writhing is his last performance, an entertainment - Matsuda clambering to his feet, broken and grieving, Near inscrutable as always - but it doesn't signify. There's only one thing that matters-
-and it's about to be gone. Forever. I'm going to die in a few more seconds! No, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die-
It's all he can think: his one desire. Nothing else matters. He doesn't care if he spends his life in jail, any longer - whether he wins or loses - just as long as he lives. And he remembers Ryuk's veiled threat - don't think that any human who's used the notebook can go to heaven or hell - how he'd seen the truth, countered the threat. How he'd been so pleased with himself for being the only one who knew that little secret, the one so many would die to know. That he'd spotted the clumsy attempts at flattery. Death is equal.
Feeling his life tick down, second by second, long beyond control, beyond arguments or rationality, beyond madness, now - it all bursts out into a scream, piercing, echoing off the ceiling, as Light pleads for the one thing anyone truly wants. "I don't want to die! I don't want to go!"
Then something else hits him - it's like a fist hitting his breastbone, or a sledgehammer. He falls to the floor: his skull cracks sharply against the concrete, but he doesn't notice. His whole body rocks and shakes. Crushing, paralysing pressure, now, all through his chest, down his left arm: things bouncing against each other inside him, things that shouldn't be moving that way at all. The thready pulse in his bullet wounds trails off to a flicker: the burning, starved pain spreading right through his body as what blood is left sloshes to a halt...
... and it's all so clear, suddenly: all of it spread out behind him. All of it pointless.
Worthless. Wasted.
For nothing.
He whispers to himself, shivering, shaking, trembling. "S-shit."
Then he's gone.
Twenty-five minutes later - right to the second - Light opens her eyes. She's female again - perhaps she was all along, the room's effect only in her head? - but barely notices: she can't find it in her to care. The room is, thankfully, still empty: the watching eyes are all gone, gone, gone. Only the walls, and the floor, and the horror of it: the dull, lingering pain, the helplessness of it. She's still lying back where she fell, staring: the plain wall upside-down behind her, hands dropped back around her face as if to shield it, legs crumpled against each other. Like paper, crumpled into a ball, thrown to the floor. Worthless. Disposable.
This is the second time this has happened to her - to him - the second time she's died, and woken up, and found herself in hell. It's worse than the dreams: it's the repetition of it. How it's been played out of her like a yo-yo string, for some child's amusement-
And the rooms, they repeat. How many more times is this going to happen?
Light can't help it: the scream rips from her throat, prolonged, loud and violent, cracked and shaking, and it's five months in the mansion, it's the frustrated fury of the defenceless, it's pain and anguish and shock, it's feeling on display, an ant beneath a magnifying glass, as if someone has torn out her secrets, torn off her clothes and her skin just for the pleasure of seeing her gather them back around her, shreds of wool and silk and tissue and blood. She finds herself drawing up into a ball, hands and knees hiding her face, foetal, rocking: it's the position she assumes when she sleeps, in the mansion's cold and damp, conserving as much warmth as she can. Something about it is comforting, and despite the likelihood of someone walking in and finding her, seeing her, watching her, she can't stop just yet.
Just one more minute, then I'll get up. One more minute.
It's more than an hour before she makes her way out of the room, outwardly composed but off-key inside. A cracked bell, in the ruin of a fallen tower. And rather than risk any of the doors, she heads for her aerie, her haven, the top of the stairs.
Her sketchbook remains on the floor of the death room, where she let it fall.
[[OOC: Backdated to the early morning of the 28th. Obviously, most of this is even more impressively Not Mine than usual - I've just reframed it a bit. Also, if anyone happens into the death room soon and finds stalky's sketchbook, he'd probably like it returned.
Thanks to chilichoc for giving this a once-over.]]
Waking in the dark - eyes twitching open, a little crusted, just as they always do. The pale outline of the corridor's lights around the door. A faint, strangled noise: exasperated disappointment. She doesn't need to reach up, or down, to know she's still female, that the place hasn't taken pity on her overnight: her body's different enough that she just knows. A warmth, almost: things touching that shouldn't, and vice versa. It's tiresome. She wishes it would be over, that she could go back to how things were, just a few days ago.
The morning routine is still out-of-the-ordinary: not so much uncurling herself out of bed, flicking on the light and tucking the sheets back into flat neatness (old-fashioned sheets and blankets on the metal frame, the mattress heavier than it ought to be as she forms hospital corners). No, it's the sight of herself in the mirror as she peels off the black casual clothes she sleeps in - an old habit she's maintained, partly for warmth, partly in case she finds herself sleepwalking again. Or in case someone visits her unexpectedly in the night.
The mirror isn't really a mirror - it's doors. The doors of the wardrobe, fronted with silvered glass, taking up most of the wall. Since coming to the mansion, she - he - is mostly broken of the old habit, of watching his reflection as he dressed and undressed, of staring, entranced, into its eyes, of offering it knowing little smiles. Of whispering to it: telling it secrets, all the things he couldn't share with a living soul. There are just too many bad reflections around, too many copies of him that aren't him, that never could be: too many sleep-deprived hallucinations, twitches of his reflection's face in the mirror: too much of a deterioration in his own appearance, as he shrinks down, becomes paler, sicker, bleaker. Lost.
As a woman, all of this is multiplied. She doesn't feel strange, dissonant, out-of-place in her own body - but having her old confidant not look how he should, that disturbs her, nagging and disappointing.
Showered and dried and dressed - buttons on the wrong side, zippers instead of buttons in awkward places, cardigans instead of jackets, at least the place hasn't had the temerity to present her with a skirt yet - Light listens at her door for a few moments, before unlocking it, stepping out, and locking it behind her: heading off down the corridor, sketchbook swinging at her side. For a couple of days, she's left it behind - but enough people have called her identity correctly, by now, for it not to be worth it, any longer. Something about her movement seems wrong, without the little book there: as if she's unbalanced. As if something essential is missing.
The kitchen door's in front of her. There's the usual jaundiced assessment of it - will you be yourself, today? will the place trick you? where will it put you, and what will you be? - before she steps inside. Then it's all gone: the sketchbook tumbles to the floor, unnoticed, unremarked, unheard, unneeded. And she - is a he, again. But not the same one he usually is, the one who's wasting down to nothing in his insistently elegant casual clothes: who watches, with an eerie, fixed stare, from corners, from doors, who's trying harder and harder to close down while bursting out at the seams. The one who still believes he can win, somehow, anyhow.
No, the Light who's standing there now, the one with the formal grey suit and the pained glare, knows he can win. I'm surrounded by idiots, who won't listen to reason. As if they'd understand.
Then he remembers his watch, and its deadly secret: the little piece of paper. If I can kill him here, then... Calm down. Think. I just need the time and opportunity to kill him... Panic, rising like water, bubbling under his nose, his mouth. It isn't over yet.
Detached, Light begins to weave his web of deceits and assumptions and twisted truths. "Near. You first thought the fake notebook made by Mikami was the real one, and replaced the pages in it. And Mikami had the fake notebook that you made. In other words-" and his glance flicks down, to stare Near out "-both notebooks turned out to be fake, when both sides believed them to be real. And the mistake made by both sides was that they didn't test the notebook to see if it was real or not." He won't let himself think about the implications of that.
Pacing back and forth, he illustrates with his hands, unlocked at last. Free. Himself. "So, how can you be sure that the notebooks here are real? The notebook you have with you right now-" the two of them, open on the floor, page after page, line after line of intricate, identical writing. One night? How can he have done all that in one night? It's impossible. "-and the notebook Aizawa brought down from the Japanese investigation headquarters. Are they real?" Staring out from beneath his hair, Light's eyes are intense, inhuman: lizardlike.
One step after another, an actor on the stage: every movement calculated, every inch of distance, every wave of a hand. "You already see Ryuk, so let's just say that the notebook you have is real." His lips begin to curl upward into a faint smirk, superior, self-satisfied, already victorious: the trap is in his voice, soft and assured and utterly confident. The centre of the web, sticky filaments radiating outward. "But the notebook Aizawa has was kept at headquarters, where I had access to it. I could have switched it." Step. Step. "And if I switched it, then I'm the only one who knows its whereabouts..."
And Light knows, he knows that this won't save him. He's already confessed: first to try and swing the little people - even one would do: definitely it was nothing to do with the elastic snap that had rocked him as he was exposed. Now he's playing for time, just to put distance between. "If you really want to defeat Kira, then you should write my name or Mikami's name in Aizawa's notebook, to see if that notebook is real." That's it. He's laid the trap, made his case. Near is L's disciple: L, with his insistence on the need for evidence, the thing that tripped him up over and over, that led him to his death. He can't kill me, not without proof. Not without knowing the notebook is real. Not with the original still out there.
Near finally speaks, low, contemptuous. "Yagami Light... Kira..." - and every time he says that name, it's spat, as if it will contaminate him - "I have no plans to kill you."
It's like a steel door shutting behind him: Light can't quite keep the contempt off his face - that Near, like L, doesn't have the guts to do what should be done. To see an obvious threat, a clear danger, and wipe it out. There's shock, too, and relief, that he's not going to be killed out of hand. But he isn't thinking about those.
All cold disgust, Near continues. There's nothing like triumph in his face: Light can't understand it. "I really don't care if the notebook is real or not anymore. From the very beginning, my goal was to capture Kira. All I want is for everything to become clear and for Kira to be captured. You're as good as arrested now, and I'll confiscate the notebook Mr Aizawa has. That is enough for now." Kneeling on the floor, with the notebooks, with his toys scattered, with Gevanni standing over him with the gun, as if Light might rush him.
Light just stares sideways, over Matsuda's bowed head: as if Near isn't even important enough to face head-on. He's evaded the handcuffs once, so far, but he can already feel them: that conscious reminder of L, who'd as good as appeared before him as he broke free, threw himself against the wall. Cornered. Incompetents, he thinks, mocking, reassuring himself. I would never have let me escape that way. And further back, he's wondering - for now? What does that mean? What will they do to me, to find out where the other notebook is, or if it exists at all?
Near is still talking. "And I will not announce Kira's arrest or the existence of the notebook to the public. I believe that everybody here can keep that secret." A deep breath. "I'll take full responsibility for confining you, Kira, somewhere where you won't be seen or heard by anybody, ever again."
Those last words hit Light like a cannonball: like a cell door closing on him forever. The threat of it: the promise of it: the water rushing up over his head. I knew it! Near has no intention of testing the notebook, or killing me here. And yet... The cell door cracks open: a thin beam of light.
For a split-second, there's a tiny sliver of smile.
"As for the notebook-" Near is still talking, one hand resting on the ground. "-the two rules that were written on the back cover - the 13-day rule and the rule about how everyone who touched the notebook will die if the notebook is burnt - were probably added by you later." A glance up to Ryuk, who's just standing there, behind Light, as always, utterly useless. "I think the shinigami, Ryuk, might tell me if these rules are true or not. And even tell me if the notebook is real or not, after I capture you."
Ryuk looks across, unblinking as ever - as if he's surprised to be addressed, as if he isn't part of the proceedings. "Huh? Well, sure. Why not."
Having confirmed that detail, Near looks back to Light, with his own unblinking, dead, L eyes. "Even if I don't find out if the rules and notebook are real or not, I'll just lock it up so that it will never fall into anyone's hands again. The most important thing right now, Kira, is to capture you."
The promise of a lifetime in prison, the panicked instinct screaming at him to run - it reminds him of the cell, the one so long ago, the one he put himself in, the one L put him in. The one he remembers spending seven days in - the one he knows he was in longer, another forty-three days. Near. He's got no intention of killing me - at least that's clear. Then as long as I can kill Near... I'll trick the others, starting with the story about Aizawa's notebook being a fake...
That's it: all he needs, now, all he can hope for. He might not come out of this warehouse the god of the new world, but at the very least he's going to see Near dead at his feet. That would still be a win, something to take with him into the future, no matter what happens: tangible proof that Light's the better man. The scrap inside my watch. I just saw Near's name - I should have time to write just that. He can see it already: the watch open, the little scrap of paper, the name written there in his angular romaji script. Once it's down, it can't be taken back. That's all I need to do. If I make the right moves, they won't notice me opening the watch. But it'll be impossible to write his name down without being noticed. So I'm going to have to write his name down as fast as I can. Nate River. Two seconds... no, one second... He's not letting his hands form fists, or tense: he's reaching out for that place where he's relaxed, secret, certain enough of what he's doing that he can't fail. I can do it!
"Well, whether it's real or fake," Light replies, easily, deceptively casual, spreading his hands, flexing his fingers, "don't you think it's a good idea just to take a look at it?" Another step. This should be far enough to write the name, before anybody can get to me. As if there's nothing to it, as he's done three times already, pacing and explaining and elaborating, as if teaching children, he draws his hands back in: settles one on the winder of his watch. His words are meaningless, now: just a distraction. "If that notebook is real..." Click. Click. Click. "...or fake!" Click.
The secret panel slides out with a snap! Light is abruptly silent, snatching his pen from his breast pocket. As he begins to scribble, frantic, one of the SPK people - Rester? - yells a warning. "He's got a note in his watch!"
I just need to kill him! That's it, that's all! Nothing else matters, it doesn't matter if I make it out of here or not as long as I see him dead-
Then, there's pain, as something tears thin flesh and shatters bone. The pen skitters off into the far distance, as Light's wrist explodes, and the side of his hand bursts outwards, and he falls forward. The squeak of pain is muffled, surprised: what just happened to me? Instinct tells him to grab: to stop the bleeding, the agony, any way he can. There's a noise like a firecracker going off behind him, then, but he's too horrified to hear it: gasping for breath, he can't see, and his mind's a blank. He feels as if he might vomit: bile and acid all over the warehouse floor, and who'd clean that up?
Aizawa's voice, thunderstruck, addressing Matsuda. It's all Light needs. Resting one hand - his left - on the floor (because it's no option at all, to touch his bleeding, broken hand to the ground - pressure and pain and dirt and infection). "M-Matsuda..?" Finally able to drag himself upwards, to look behind him, to see what the hell has gone wrong this time, he sees the older man shaking there, pointing the handgun. Furious. Wet with tears.
But two can play at that game: Light is incandescent with his frustrated rage, and his outrage at Matsuda's idiocy, and his pain (and his fear - oh, god, the damage - what will I do if they can't repair it?): he can't keep the screech inside. "You idiot..! Who do you think you're shooting, Matsuda?! Don't fuck with me!" He's still pressing down: little jets of blood from the wound, the hole punched right through, dripping down his fingers and on to the floor - and oddly, finds himself wondering where his pen is, exactly how dirty it's going to be. "If you're going to shoot someone, shoot the others! What are you doing?!"
Irrational, unthinking, almost out of his mind with the pain, the shock, the frustrated betrayal, Light abruptly changes tack: grabs for anything that sounds remotely convincing. "Matsuda..! I thought you were the only person who understood me. Kira is righteous! Kira is needed!" It's all so very obvious, isn't it? What the right thing to do is? The thing that will save him? "Shoot! Shoot Near, the SPK members, Aizawa and the others!"
Matsuda isn't beginning to buy it. After a few seconds' broken pause, he demands answers. "Wh-what was it all for? The chie - no, deputy director... Deputy Director Yagami... He was your father..." Shaking, stepping closer. "What did your father die for..?"
Light can't believe he's brought it up: that he doesn't begin to understand. Matsuda, who should have been the one who went to his grave that day - that he'd dare to name him - to trample on Light's sacrifice like that ... "Dad? Are you talking about Yagami Soichiro?" How dare you, how dare you... that fool... Panting, squeaking, laughing bitterly, he continues: he can't help but see the irony of it. He wants to tear down Matsuda's naive vision of the world, to crack it into a million pieces and hurl it at his feet. To make him see exactly what happens, when people aren't prepared to do what's necessary, to see that the greater good is more important than any one person's principles. And of course Light should define it: he's the one, the one with the gift and the vision to choose, for everyone. "That's right, Matsuda. Overly earnest people with a strong sense of justice like him always end up the loser." And it's not his father Light's thinking of, but himself - everything he's given up, everything he's done, worked for, and now it's all tumbling around him because of a bunch of hopeless, insignificant fools. "Do you want a world where people like him are always made fools of?" His breath is heaving, stuttering out in gasps: his blood is dripping to the floor, slick beneath his remaining hand. How can this be happening to him?
Tears still leaking, Matsuda retorts, "You drove your father to his death, and now you're trying to change the subject by telling me that he was made a fool..."
Light can see it, he thinks: the doubt in his face. There have to be doubts, don't there? Matsuda may not have known Light, but he was beginning to know Kira: he's always been the one closest to understanding, to having an open mind, to knowing what it was all for. Rather than collapse to the floor and let them take him, Light forces himself to stare into Matsuda's face and not at the gun, forces words out, thick and choking, that taste like blood, where he's bitten himself, where his breath is on fire: words have always been his friends, they're what he's always used to save himself. "A society, a world where people like my father will never have to be made a fool... Yagami Soichiro died to create that. I'm telling you to kill the others so that his death was not in vain! Can't you understand me?"
Do as I tell you. Do as I tell you. Light gives the orders, Matsuda obeys them. Always, he's been the one who fell deepest into the traps, the one who was easiest to manipulate, because he wanted to believe so badly.
Now, in the end, there's nothing but that disbelieving stare, a strangled noise like a rusting brake.
The blood is still dripping. Something about it reminds Light of the helicopter, as if it was yesterday - the seat next to L, and the screaming triumph that somehow he'd kept inside, the needle pricks that he hadn't even felt as he wrote Higuchi down, playing innocent, playing passive, compliant, obedient...
(and somewhere, so long ago as to be unrecognisable, a tiny boy with a friendly plastic helicopter, bobbing it along furniture and up walls, and thinking, "One day, I'll fly like that, just like that.")
Without even thinking, he touches his finger to the paper. An R. An I. Aizawa and Ide crying a warning, somewhere.
A V. An E.
Light isn't thrown backwards: he falls. An impact in his shoulder, like a bomb. Then, quick behind, another of those firecracker sounds. Someone is screaming. Another impact, his stomach, this time: another report. Now Light knows what's happening, reacts enough, drags himself far enough out of his shock to scream, wrenched up and out of him as if he's being gutted through his throat. The pain is paralysing, unimaginable: he can't breathe, he can't see, it's like nothing he's ever conceived. The bloody scrap of paper tumbles to the ground, while Light tries to remember how to move, how to think. His heart beats in the wounds, the blood pumping out, welling up into his throat and mouth, metallic, warm and wet and secret and every drop so, so precious.
The shock is overwhelming: he doesn't hear Matsuda step forward, doesn't hear the furious hiss of "I have to kill him. I've got to kill him!": doesn't hear Aizawa and Ide trying to reason with him. He doesn't register anything, in fact, until the gun is at his chin, clicking - and then it's a dreadful animal terror, the end of everything so close he can touch it: he freezes in place, manages to hold his breath as if he might be able to hide, if he just keeps still enough - except the blood is still pumping, soaking the ground beneath him, shattered bone scraping over itself as he shivers. And the odd thought that filters up is - not my face, don't do that, not there, they'll still have to identify me. Sharp stabs of pain in his cheek, his ear, his hair: flying glass? Another firecracker: no, another gunshot. Looking sideways, Light can see the pit in the concrete floor, where the bullet went off just centimetres from his head. Chips and shards of rubble and shrapnel thrown in all directions. He stares, disbelieving, frozen, silent: somewhere in all that, he's managed to wet himself with fear. It's warm, like the blood. Then, he twists, trying to move, to get up - to get away, anywhere, anywhere, to get help from anyone-
Anyone.
Now, finally, he touches his ruined hand to the floor: tries to push upwards with it, without the bone grating too badly. You understood. You should know what to do. You should be able to do something, do your job! He doesn't remember the arrest, doesn't see the handcuffs, the helplessness. "Mikami! What are you doing? Help me write their names down. Kill them!" Still levering himself upwards, shattered bone threatening to push through the skin as it takes his weight. "Kill them... that's your job... what are you doing?!"
Standing in the rubble of his own world - his god dying at his feet, giving impossible orders and demands, himself already condemned - Mikami whimpers. "Don't you see? How could I write their names down ... in a situation like this ... and with a fake notebook..." And it all comes together for him, then, in that one furious denial of "You're not God!"
Light is - strangely disappointed, and unsurprised: sour, and bitter. But to be abandoned, ignored like that, at the last moment-? Idiot. Why doesn't he see- and all the things he can't articulate, any longer, washing over him - that this isn't his fault, shouldn't be his problem, it doesn't mean he was wrong, that right and wrong don't come into it, just who's lucky, or not - that this is all Mikami's fault, for some reason he can't quite remember, any more, but which he knows is there-
Mikami is still disowning Light - shrieking about him being scum, probably responsible for everything back to the bombing of Hiroshima - but Light isn't listening: can't care. Still folded on the ground - his legs won't obey him either, won't carry him - Light spits his own rejection, all he can call up, all the other man is worth to him: "Bastard!" Blood and froth drip from his mouth, tasting of iron. Surely there has to be a way out of this? There always has been...
Aizawa, who's been eyeing the little scrap with disbelief and disgust - the neat, incriminating, off-the-cuff characters spelling out, with hideous precision, exactly how much Light valued Takada - addresses the taskforce. They move in.
Light won't have it.
Footsteps approaching, like death. Like cold, seeping right through him: like blood draining out of him. I'm going to die, right here on this floor. And, finally cornered, a rat in a trap, chewing at its own leg to free itself, the panic wells up, overwriting his reason: overcoming him, as they've been waiting to do for so long. Just as they've threatened to do before, when events don't follow Light's carefully laid plans. He screams, not as if it can hold them off, but as if he can't not scream. "Stop it! Don't come near me!" Fingers against the floor - the pain doesn't matter, the blood's irrelevant, he just has to get away, to save himself any way he can. Wounds scraping on filthy concrete, fingernails snapping back like celery - it should hurt, it does hurt, but it doesn't matter. Gasping for breath as if the sea's closed over him, as if all he can find is water, burning, scalding. There's not enough air in the room, and every breath is ripped out of him, heaving, sobbing, more of his life snatched away. He can't see, any more - or he isn't paying attention, for thinking of the other people who should be here, who should leap in front of him, to save him. He reaches around for names, desperate, terrified. "M-Misa... where's Misa?! Misa, kill them, kill all of them..."
Near - strangely sad and hollow, he sounds, and what is there he has to be sad about? - replies. "Misa Amane is at the Teito Hotel right now."
"Hotel?" It's a wheeze, more than anything else, scraping around the floor as Light is. "What is that idiot doing at a hotel at a time like this?" Because he doesn't remember that she gave up the notebook, wiped her memory a second time: the things she's done for him, over and over. "Takada... where's Takada..?" Flailing, around and around, eyes rolled up into the top of his head. Thinking shouldn't be this hard - there shouldn't be this layer blocking everything he tries to do: not cotton-wool, not a blanket, nothing soft or warming. Barbed wire around him. Pins and needles - paresthesia, somehow the word is there - numbness, as his extremities begin to shut down. Fingers and toes, arms and legs. All of him, closing off. "Kill them... write their names down..."
As the task force look on, silenced with horror and disgust - because Light isn't going anywhere now, and there are no words for this - Near gives that subdued response again, the bare facts of the case. "Takada Kiyomi is dead."
"Dead?!" It cascades upwards, cracking, as if he can't believe it. As if Light didn't push her into the fire with his own hand. "S-somebody... anybody..."
It hurts. What am I going to do?
The insistent, rapid pulse in the places he was shot, in his wrist, his shoulder and his stomach, is weakening: a pale, rapid flutter all through him as he writhes on the floor. A weird impulse to lick up the blood from the concrete, to get it back inside him, any way he can. Because this can't be happening to him, can it? He's Kira, isn't he? Surely there must be someone who can help him, save him? The whole world knows who he is, the whole world loves him, even if they don't know his name. "Somebody kill these guys..."
Aizawa begins to approach, again. "Light, it's over. Take it easy, or you're going to bleed to death."
Light shrieks, blind and clawing and convulsing, beginning to draw up into himself. "D-don't come near me! K-kill them. Somebody kill them for me..." Nails scraping against the concrete floor, staring into nothingness, he pushes himself forward, frantic to escape: a couple of centimetres, a couple more. Pressure on greasy, unfeeling fingertips, scraping them raw. Maybe eventually he'll get out of the door? Maybe someone out there will hear him, help him, defend him, be there for him?
...but something is already there, in front of him. Someone. He focuses, eyes down and centred: something that shouldn't be this hard, like moving, like breathing, speaking, keeping everything important inside and not outside (because he's leaving a trail, like a slug, a wet, dark trail behind and before him, where the floor isn't quite even: thick red rivulets leading him on). Boots. Sharp, cruel black boots. Above Light, Ryuk is grinning, white-eyed. An angel of death. Smiling like light. Or like Light, who knows this is it - Ryuk will help him, because he's got no interest in defeating Kira, because Light is the single most interesting person in the world, because he's got no choice - because Ryuk does what Light says, and always has. A god? - some god, so easily diverted, with apples and games and tricks, with his weird, bright eyes and his frozen, slashed smile.
Just now, Light thinks he might be the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.
His terror cracks into a crazy hope, a glimmer of victory: the hand that points behind him, at the task force and the SPK and Near, still trails blood. "I know! Ryuk, you can write their names down into your notebook!" Eyes wide and wicked, tears mixing the red into streaks, he begs. "Write it, Ryuk! Hurry!!" Behind him, there's a drag of leather and cloth, metallic clicking and snapping, as the rest of the agents finally draw their useless weapons.
It's then that Near's voice penetrates: that dull monotone from the far side of the warehouse. "Don't worry. If that shinigami is willing to write our names down when asked, then that's all Kira had to do from the start. So it means that Ryuk does not assist Kira in those ways." Aizawa and Ide look to Near, startled, as does Light: how can you be so confident? you don't know anything about this. The truth of it is stunning - Ryuk never has killed anybody, just on Light's say-so...
No. It can't end like this. I won't let it. "P-please, Ryuk..." He manages to lift himself up a little way, reaching, grasping - and he never has touched Ryuk, he realises, nor has Ryuk touched him. "You're all I've got left to rely on! Please write the names down!"
Ryuk stares down at him, unblinking - those white eyes, like twin moons in his face. A heartbeat. Two. Three. Except for Light, now, it's more like a dozen, each one driving more blood out of him, each twitching, jerky motion spilling his life onto the floor. Then - a flip of the notebook, out of its holster - Light has never seen Ryuk draw his notebook before, and he notices it has "Death Note" scrawled on the cover, just like the original - and a pen is produced from a wing, ornate, elaborate with skulls. "Sure... I'll write it."
Light doesn't see the tension on Near's face, but he does hear the cries of the task force. It spreads across his face like wine, like the blood that's smearing it top to bottom - a greedy, selfish, knowing triumph, a certainty of how he's going to come out on top after all. I knew I could count on you, Ryuk! I knew you'd have to do what I told you, in the end! There's no way you can beat me, Near.
Half-a-dozen handguns unload into the shinigami at once. The bullets shiver through him as if he's not even there: into the wall, throwing more shrapnel back. Some of it hits Light, but he doesn't care. It's that moment in the helicopter again, the time he saw L fall to the ground, dead at his feet - perhaps this isn't exactly as planned, but it's close enough, yes, close enough for Light to take it: once again, he's gone right into defeat, dared it, baited it, stared it closer than ever, this time, and still turned it around and come out on top-
As Ryuk explains the details, the ones Light already knew, he stares at the rest of them and bursts out laughing - mocking, hating, and validated, yes. It's the shock and fear on their faces, the way they can't believe the sight of their own failure. There's no trace of a sob in it this time. It's cracked, coruscating, gloating, well past the edge of madness: wheezed in, choked out through blood and froth, each peal a jerk of pain in his shattered shoulder and bleeding lung. He's right down in the playground again - that boy who never had to care about coming out on top, because he always did: who was so smart, who chose his fights so well, that he never needed to try. That he never had to risk cracking his perfect little façade. Lying there in his own blood, his hair clotting to black, he laughs like a wounded hyena, and crows his vicious elation for the last time. "So much for you, Near! You should have killed me right away. But now that Ryuk's decided to write your names down, nobody can stop him! It's too late, you're all going to die!"
"No, Light." It's Ryuk, scratching away at his notebook. "The one who's going to die ... is you."
Light's head jerks around, glory to defeat in zero seconds flat. His mind fades to white with the shock of it - except, no, he has to be able to do something. Anything. Now, or never. "Ryuk, you... you..." You idiot. You fool. Another tear escapes, spilling out of Light like his life is spilling over the floor, over his fingers. It's the only thing that can lift him from the ground: he manages to get to his feet, the pain forgotten. "Stop it!" Throwing himself forward - maybe he can snatch the book? the pen? maybe he can beg hard enough that Ryuk will just change his mind? - he goes straight through onto the floor, like the bullets. Ryuk isn't ready to be touched just yet.
Looking behind him, he carries on with his explanation. "No matter how I look at it, you've lost, Light. I was kind of expecting to see you get out of this one, but if I'm your last resort ... you really are done for." Scritch. Scratch. The last character down on the page. And Light can't get up: everything went into that last leap upwards. Winded, gasping with pain, all he can do is lie there and let it happen.
"You've eased my boredom for quite a long time, haven't you?" asks the shinigami. "It was a lot of fun." And, in his hands - his talons? - he holds out the book.
The name "Yagami Light" is written there. Three kanji, Light's kanji. Loose, squiggly, but instantly recognisable: good enough, or bad enough. Light written down on the familiar paper, just like - how many others? He doesn't even know, not since Misa took over. Three hundred thousand, perhaps? Light screeches - it's nothing like the way he'd usually speak. It's a sob, high-pitched, unrecognisable, frothing. Crying. Begging. "A-am I going to die?! I'm going to die?"
"That's right," Ryuk croons. "In forty seconds, you'll have a heart attack. It's already been decided upon." One claw is tapping on the page - the page he's still holding out, with the impossibility written down on it.
"I-I'm going to die." For a moment, Light almost sounds as if he believes it, as the tears spill down his face, unfamiliar, distant: if he was aware enough to think about it, he'd think it was like being someone else. Ironic, since he's more himself now than he's ever been: literally at death's door, all the masks and lies and deceits reduced to one simple, perfect truth. Summoning up the last of his strength, he tries to drag himself a little closer. The splintered bones of his wrist, his hand, lacerate the skin, catch and pull against the floor, unimportant now. "N-n-no... I don't want to die." As if it should make a difference - as if what Light wants is the only thing in the world.
The hysteria's sudden, unaccepting, terrified. He screams again, claws his way up Ryuk's leg, bleeding, shredded fingers digging into unforgiving leather and metal, shaking him. Trying to force him to see it, the obviousness of it. "I don't want to die, damn it! Stop it! I don't want to die!"
Ryuk looks down, disbelieving, cold and utterly unflappable - how the situations have reversed themselves - as Light crumples there on his knees, begging, pleading. As if he should realise how obvious it all is. "You sound so undignified. It's not like you, Light. I told you in the very beginning that I would be the one writing your name in the notebook when you die. That is the rule between the shinigami who brings the notebook into the human realm and the first human who picks up the notebook." It's all so clear and sensible to him - as if Light's life is nothing, as if he's not a person. As if he's nothing more than a means to an end.
Just like all the people Light put down in the notebook.
"If they put you in prison, who knows when you'll die? I don't want to just lie around waiting for you to die, so it's all over. You should die right here."
"N-no!" Gasping. Sobbing. Demented. The last threads of his sanity seeping out of him, mixing with the dark pools on the floor. It's not in him to accept responsibility, and right to the end, he's going to beg for a way out. "I don't want to die! I don't want to go to prison either! Do something! I know there's a way out of it, Ryuk!"
Ryuk's cut-open face gapes wide, wider, as he looks down at the crumbling, distraught wreck at his feet. "Once a name is written down in the death note, you can't do anything about it. You more than anybody else here should know that." His eyes are glowing, white and yellow. "Goodbye, Yagami Light."
Light's eyes are so wide, now, that they might just fall out of his head. They're swollen, red: they'd sting, if he was paying attention. His thoughts aren't tangled, tangled doesn't begin to describe it: they're crashing into each other, leaking, incontinent like the holes shredded through his stomach and shoulder, like the ruin of his writing hand. Frenzied. Somewhere he registers them watching him, as if his writhing is his last performance, an entertainment - Matsuda clambering to his feet, broken and grieving, Near inscrutable as always - but it doesn't signify. There's only one thing that matters-
-and it's about to be gone. Forever. I'm going to die in a few more seconds! No, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die-
It's all he can think: his one desire. Nothing else matters. He doesn't care if he spends his life in jail, any longer - whether he wins or loses - just as long as he lives. And he remembers Ryuk's veiled threat - don't think that any human who's used the notebook can go to heaven or hell - how he'd seen the truth, countered the threat. How he'd been so pleased with himself for being the only one who knew that little secret, the one so many would die to know. That he'd spotted the clumsy attempts at flattery. Death is equal.
Feeling his life tick down, second by second, long beyond control, beyond arguments or rationality, beyond madness, now - it all bursts out into a scream, piercing, echoing off the ceiling, as Light pleads for the one thing anyone truly wants. "I don't want to die! I don't want to go!"
Then something else hits him - it's like a fist hitting his breastbone, or a sledgehammer. He falls to the floor: his skull cracks sharply against the concrete, but he doesn't notice. His whole body rocks and shakes. Crushing, paralysing pressure, now, all through his chest, down his left arm: things bouncing against each other inside him, things that shouldn't be moving that way at all. The thready pulse in his bullet wounds trails off to a flicker: the burning, starved pain spreading right through his body as what blood is left sloshes to a halt...
... and it's all so clear, suddenly: all of it spread out behind him. All of it pointless.
Worthless. Wasted.
For nothing.
He whispers to himself, shivering, shaking, trembling. "S-shit."
Then he's gone.
Twenty-five minutes later - right to the second - Light opens her eyes. She's female again - perhaps she was all along, the room's effect only in her head? - but barely notices: she can't find it in her to care. The room is, thankfully, still empty: the watching eyes are all gone, gone, gone. Only the walls, and the floor, and the horror of it: the dull, lingering pain, the helplessness of it. She's still lying back where she fell, staring: the plain wall upside-down behind her, hands dropped back around her face as if to shield it, legs crumpled against each other. Like paper, crumpled into a ball, thrown to the floor. Worthless. Disposable.
This is the second time this has happened to her - to him - the second time she's died, and woken up, and found herself in hell. It's worse than the dreams: it's the repetition of it. How it's been played out of her like a yo-yo string, for some child's amusement-
And the rooms, they repeat. How many more times is this going to happen?
Light can't help it: the scream rips from her throat, prolonged, loud and violent, cracked and shaking, and it's five months in the mansion, it's the frustrated fury of the defenceless, it's pain and anguish and shock, it's feeling on display, an ant beneath a magnifying glass, as if someone has torn out her secrets, torn off her clothes and her skin just for the pleasure of seeing her gather them back around her, shreds of wool and silk and tissue and blood. She finds herself drawing up into a ball, hands and knees hiding her face, foetal, rocking: it's the position she assumes when she sleeps, in the mansion's cold and damp, conserving as much warmth as she can. Something about it is comforting, and despite the likelihood of someone walking in and finding her, seeing her, watching her, she can't stop just yet.
Just one more minute, then I'll get up. One more minute.
It's more than an hour before she makes her way out of the room, outwardly composed but off-key inside. A cracked bell, in the ruin of a fallen tower. And rather than risk any of the doors, she heads for her aerie, her haven, the top of the stairs.
Her sketchbook remains on the floor of the death room, where she let it fall.
[[OOC: Backdated to the early morning of the 28th. Obviously, most of this is even more impressively Not Mine than usual - I've just reframed it a bit. Also, if anyone happens into the death room soon and finds stalky's sketchbook, he'd probably like it returned.
Thanks to chilichoc for giving this a once-over.]]