Chapter Text
Loss. That is what Light felt most acutely. Like something had been stolen from him, ripped away. A chasm carved into his chest, his arm yanked from his body, leaving only a grotesque stump to weep tears of red.
But he felt none of the emptiness that should follow. No completeness of nothingness. There was something inside of him - something Light was sure was new, that he was not born with, for it felt grown into. Like the wound of him had been filled in with salt, or that a severed limb had been replaced with a paltry facsimile - not a proper prosthetic but something that was meant to function the same way, like a wooden carving or one forged from metal. It was enough to get by, but not enough to erase the fact that he had been damaged. In fact, it's haphazard design made that painful, irrefutable fact all the more obvious.
His arm dragged heavier under the weight of the chain. Which was ridiculous, purely psychological, as realistically, this chain was rather light. Not cheaply made, Light was sure, but it wasn’t overly cumbersome; it didn’t hinder him in any real way. It was a nuisance. A bother. A constant reminder of just how far he had fallen.
And it just kept pulling him deeper under, someplace far past hell.
Silently, Light followed Ryuzaki up to their shared bedroom. What he assumed would be their shared bedroom - there wouldn’t be any other way to live unless Ryuzaki wanted to feed the chain through some hole in the wall and have them pressed up against it all night long, robbed of mobility. Light highly doubted it.
Light was free to move as he pleased, so long as he stayed within Ryuzaki’s orbit, all six feet of it. Light resented it; he had accepted it, but that did not mean he could not resent. This pretense of freedom couldn’t even be swallowed by the others, least of all him. And even though Light understood without question where Ryuzaki was coming from and would have suggested the same were he the one playing the part of detective, it didn’t mean Light didn’t also recognize Ryuzaki was killing two birds with one stone. This was a statement. A preemptive move towards the victory Ryuzaki was so desperate to secure.
Light was Ryuzaki’s. Light would belong to Ryuzaki until his innocence came in person to pay the price for his soul. This was a glimpse into a future that Ryuzaki thought to be inevitable.
They were both equally chained, but make no mistake, Ryuzaki was the one leading. Ryuzaki was the one entirely in control.
Like Light was a damn dog, leashed by his owner for his unruliness. Unable to be trusted or left on his own for fear he’d rip up the room or piss on the rug. Like he was seconds away from going rabid, Ryuzaki’s hawk-like eyes just waiting for the first hint of froth to appear at his mouth so he could be vindicated for clicking off the safety and putting him down.
Their difference in power was made even more apparent by Ryuzaki leading him. Light would have tried to get ahead, or even maintain pace, but he didn’t know where the room was, didn’t know where anything in this behemoth of a building was, really. He was a lost soul, blindly navigating a labyrinth, stumbling unsteadily through these long, twisting halls. Helpless, utterly helpless. This was surely another part of Ryuzaki’s grand design.
Ryuzaki had made it quite clear that Light was not to leave his side until he was sure that he was not Kira. Light had a feeling that it would be a long time. It was the longest he'd been away from home in years, and never had he felt quite so hopeless before.
But this was all ultimately temporary. Light had to remind himself that it was only temporary.
He knew he was not Kira. He knew he could not be Kira.
The trouble was, he was the only one certain of this, the only one who grasped this as an ineffable fact. No one else could see what he saw - only his eyes, as desaturated and light-starved as they were, could see the truth, the bare bones of it, could see his own conscience, blameless, as spotless as snow.
No one had ever understood him. Not really.
Though even though he had never been understood, there had always been a decent enough perception of him, the idea of Yagami Light as close to the truth as one could get. No one had ever thought him capable of such hideous, unforgivable acts, anyway.
If anyone were to understand him, Light would have thought it might be Ryuzaki.
But Ryuzaki was a dog with a bone. A bloodhound on a mission, his nose eager for the stench of copper. And, unfortunately for Light, he was the one who was bleeding. He could not remember how the wound had been made. He did not know.
But Kira would be caught, eventually. He was not a god, nor a monster, just a misguided man, fallible as they all were.
Soon, there would be a new scent, a new trail of blood to follow.
There had to be.
Light was not Kira, after all. He knew this. He must always remember this.
He could never forget this.
The air between them was thick with tension, almost suffocation-worthy. Light had to remind himself to breathe. Neither of them dared to shatter the silence with sound. Given the tension that almost spoke of something ominous, Light half expected the floor to creak under him, but the building was new, so all that was heard were muffled footsteps. Muffled footsteps and tight breathing, and the quietness borne of only true musing. They were both thinking, both calculating. But only one of their lives was held by a thread.
Ryuzaki had nothing to fear from Light.
While Light, on the other hand, still felt the reverberations of a gunshot pulsing like a hemorrhaging wound within his skull he could not reach.
It was funny. It was funny, in the way horrible things weren’t, that Light felt an aching, unrelenting pain where the bullet would have hit. As if there were a single black hole in the middle of his forehead and grey matter was squirming out, running in dull, pink tears down his face. Every time a hand came up to rub at his forehead out of this misguided fear, Light sighed at himself - his skin was wholly undamaged. He could not say the same for his mind, fighting against the fever of sick dread he felt had infested him.
His eyes burned with that fever and were gritty with exhaustion, but utterly dry. Light refused to cry. He did not cry - and he especially would not cry over something like this. Nothing had even happened.
Though the temptation to sink back into that terror and paralyzing desperation lurked in the shadows of his vision. How could he begin to understand it, the fear that his own father had been about to execute him?
But Light didn’t begrudge his father. He wouldn’t. This was all Ryuzaki’s fault. His father was a good man, and he’d been pushed to his limits, robbed of sleep and peace of mind at the thought that his son could be a monster in disguise. He loved Light. His father had been forced to desperate straits, willing to do anything to set his son free.
Still, Light couldn’t help but think that surely, there must have been another way.
How had his father painted his countenance in such ugly colors? How had the hatred and sorrow burning in his eyes been so convincing?
If Light really were Kira, would there have been a real bullet waiting in that chamber?
Biting a bloodless mark into his lip, Light blinked the thought away. It didn’t bear thinking about. And the most ruthless part of himself whispered that it made sense, it was a brilliant ploy, and Light had no doubt a killer as remorseless, as brutal and uncompromising as Kira would have fallen for it. Were he Kira, he would have deserved-
But did anyone really deserve to feel as if their own father would unflinchingly throw them down into hell?
Light’s head spun. This train of thought led to a dead end, or rather, an unfathomable abyss in which answers were ambiguous and too big to grasp. Kira was a murderer, certainly, and though killing him would save so many lives, the one who pulled the trigger would still have blood on their hands. And the only lives they would be saving were the lives of criminals, anyway. Was it ever just, to take the grim reaper’s scythe into your own hands?
Who could ever hold such a potent, poisonous power?
Should it really be Ryuzaki? Ryuzaki wasn’t a good guy. Ryuzaki happened to be on the right side of justice, but it did not make him a paragon of morality.
Light saw how far Ryuzaki would go to win. Not just willingly, but eagerly.
In the detective’s shadowed, sleepless eyes, Light was an obstacle. Collateral damage. A means to an end. He either was Kira or he wasn’t, and if by some slim chance he wasn’t, Ryuzaki was certain he knew Kira who was, was involved on some level. All paths that led to Kira started at Light’s feet; that is what Ryuzaki thought he knew. This is how he would conduct his investigation.
Light had told his father Ryuzaki wouldn’t recklessly execute him, not without sufficient evidence - but what Light hadn’t said was he knew Ryuzaki would not kill him, not without the unwavering certainty that his death would mean something. So long as Kira remained an elusive, shadowed spectre, Light would be allowed to breathe. Ryuzaki would not kill Light unless he knew his blood would mix with Kira’s.
Ryuzaki had spared Light, but it was not a mercy.
It was pragmatic. A decisive move in this cruel chess game.
Light lived, but not by virtue of his innocence.
It was like Ryuzaki knew something he didn’t. And since Ryuzaki knew everything, Light thought through the numbness that had taken over his body, moving him on autopilot, was a small blessing.
Because Ryuzaki, who had never been wrong before, was wrong about him. That is what Light had to believe.
“What is Light-kun thinking about?”
The sound of Ryuzaki’s voice tore Light from his thoughts, and though outwardly he was a serene, undisturbed pond, he couldn’t ignore the way his heart jumped in his chest.
Light looked up, catching Ryuzaki’s inquisitive stare, which seemed to carve through him as easily as a scalpel would flesh. The glare from the fluorescents cut his irises like sharp, dark shards of glass. “I’m too tired to think.” Light shrugged listlessly. Of course, Ryuzaki would be greedy enough to want to excavate Light’s mind, the last place kept safe, and held the most sacred.
Well, Ryuzaki could dissect him, could strip the flesh from his bones, but Light could be clever, and he would be careful. The eyes were the windows to the soul but no one ever said curtains couldn’t be hung.
It wasn’t that Light had anything to hide; rather, he was justifiably wary that anything he said could be twisted and distorted to fit the truth. Ryuzaki had already made his mind up about him. Right now, Light was like an animal eyeing a trap decorated with delicious, sumptuous food, a feast too good to be found in the dead of winter.
“Really?” Ryuzaki asked, because Ryuzaki never believed anything Light said. “I wouldn’t have thought that.”
Light didn’t ask what Ryuzaki was thinking. It would be an insinuation, an accusation, yet another provocation and Light truly was tired, he didn’t want to have to form some thorny retort he’d cut his own hands on in the process.
He’d save his teeth for the battlefield. For when Ryuzaki questioned his story, his soul, over and over again, until it felt like the words had formed into claws sunk deep into his skull, slowly tightening, slowly crushing.
Admittedly, from an outsider’s perspective, it looked suspicious. But Light knew he never killed anyone; he just knew that. No fugue state or temporary lapse of sanity could erase a cold-blooded kill, there was simply no possible way Light could have forgotten thousands of murders.
Despite what he had said at the beginning of his confinement. Light wasn’t even sure why he had said that now. Why he had even allowed a shred of himself to be convinced that Ryuzaki knew more about him than he himself did.
Ryuzaki was smart, but he wasn’t omnipresent. He didn’t know everything.
He didn’t know Light at all.
It was a mere coincidence that Light lived in the Kanto region when Lind L. Tailor had died. If you wanted to blame Light for the crime of living in a city where a murder was committed, every single person on this planet would be condemned. Sure, he had watched the broadcast, staring in abject shock when the man had suddenly choked, slumped over and died. But Light hadn’t done anything that would have led to his death, had he? No, that was impossible. Murder was a purposeful act. Passionate, no matter how you looked at it. Light still wasn’t even sure how Kira killed his victims without being present, how was that even possible?
It was another coincidence that the FBI agent who had been following him had died. Eleven other agents who weren’t following him had died as well. Kira could be one of those suspects, why didn’t Ryuzaki even consider that? Light hadn’t even known he was being followed; he wasn’t omnipresent either.
Sure, Light had felt a shadow trailing behind him that was not his own. Seen, just out of his peripheral, a dark silhouette ducking just out of sight. Heard footsteps that followed at a pace too measured to be natural, an echo beneath his own.
But Light had had many experiences with girls who took their flirtations a bit too far, their affections tipping over the border into something darker. Secret admirer and stalker a bit too synonymous for his tastes. Still, it was relatively harmless, only really irritating. Light hadn’t thought much of it.
And to that point….
Amane Misa was the final nail in his coffin. The thorn in his side. Light couldn’t deny it, his association with Misa did look quite bad. Since her DNA had been found on tapes sent by the second Kira, it made complete sense that Ryuzaki suspected her. But that didn’t mean Light was her cohort. The only thing he was guilty of was not clarifying the exact perimeters of their relationship. Sure, yes, shame on him - Light had a bad habit of people pleasing, dating girls until they grew bored of his lack of interest. It was dishonest, certainly, but Light hadn’t been raised to make girls cry. It was a valuable life lesson, really. Don’t chase someone who doesn’t want to be caught.
Light had been casually dating Misa solely because the girl was insistent. He was ‘dating’ half of the girls in his university - he could scarcely keep track of them all. He hadn’t known that Misa liked or supported Kira. Surely, she hadn’t brought it up because she knew Light would denounce her ‘god’.’
The only logical conclusion Light could draw was that he had been framed. Of course, it didn’t matter if he was the only one who believed this. Insisting upon this theory only made him sound paranoid, or worse - even guiltier. But Ryuzaki was a detective. He was a faithless man, believing only what he could touch, what he could see. If presented with tangible evidence, he’d have no choice but to concede.
Ryuzaki would not believe anything he did not see with his own two eyes. Light just had to make him see.
But first, Light had to tear the veil away from his own eyes.
Could Misa be framing him? It did seem very likely that Misa was the second Kira, considering the DNA smeared all over those daming tapes was louder than any confession. Maybe Misa knew who the first Kira was and was doing this to protect them. Maybe they had simply selected Light as a scapegoat, knowing it would be easy to pin the suspicious events on him, a case of being in the wrong places at all the wrong times. Bad luck was what this was.
Though it was possible Misa was being framed herself. She certainly didn’t seem smart enough to be able to pull off such an elaborate scheme. But who would want to frame both of them? Light didn’t exactly have an abundance of enemies - not that he was aware of. In addition to his birthright, the bright son of a police chief, he had carefully cultivated a persona that was likeable and well-respected. Never before had he met someone who disliked him. Who would?
Was someone framing Misa, and he was simply collateral damage?
But why frame an idol? An idol who was in support of your so-called ‘holy’ mission?
Could Misa be caught up in some inane pop star rivalry? That seemed too ridiculous to be true and would be tragic if it was.
Light sighed quietly underbreath. In the end, this was all conjecture. It was depressing him, and amounted to nothing more than a migraine pulsing hot and savage beneath his temples.
As Ryuzaki unlocked a door, bleached white and utterly nondescript, Light hesitated. He really didn’t want to be alone in a room with this man. One who had convinced his father to point a gun at his head. A man who had lied to him for weeks, leading him to the very edge of hopeless despair. Light had no idea what Ryuzaki was capable of. He was snared by the side of who was, for all intents and purposes, a stranger. An unpredictable one at that.
Light had thought he understood Ryuzaki, somewhat.
Now he knew he did not understand the man at all.
Ryuzaki noticed Light’s hesitation, because he was always watching him it seemed, and shot him a narrow glare. He then tugged on the chain, harshly, which almost sent Light stumbling. Luckily, he caught himself in time, but the graceless movement made his eye twitch.
Scowling, he glared up at Ryuzaki’s pale, watchful face. “I’m not a dog, you know.” Light snapped.
“Light-kun was making no indication that he would be moving at all,” Ryuzaki drawled. “I would very much like to get back to working if you don’t mind.”
Light stalked into the room without a backward glance. He would not admit Ryuzaki’s outward cruelty was somewhat soothing, something he could categorize and understand.
“If you don’t like waiting for me, you shouldn’t have chained yourself to me,” Light muttered, glancing around disinterestedly at the room. It was drab in a very ostensibly rich person way, in the sense that it seems decorated for photos, pretty to look at, but entirely foreign to live in. But no one lives here, Light supposes, not really. This is a transitory place.
It’s raining outside. Light can hear it, fierce and unrelenting against the window panes, yet unseen, shielded by the thick, dark-red curtains drawn across. Hotel-quality. Probably made out of some abhorrent material like polyester.
The walls were bone-white, asylum white. Maybe Ryuzaki really was trying to drive him mad. And - Light’s stomach twisted at the confirmation - there was only one bed. It was king-sized, at least. That would have to be enough.
“I would not have had to resort to such extreme measures if Light-kun were not such a masterful liar,” Ryuzaki said, eyes glinting in the low light. Light gazed at the beige carpet beneath his feet in contempt. “If you only confessed, you could save everyone the trouble.”
“I’m not confessing to something I didn’t do,” Light retorted.
“I never asked that of you,” Ryuzaki replied, the snide shit. Haha, word games, how hysterical.
“Then why am I here?”
Ryuzaki glanced at him through his lashes. “You are here to prove my theory correct." Then he flicked on a light, and Light winced against the sudden bright glow. “Or, to prove yours correct. Whichever comes first, I suppose.”
“I’m guilty until proven innocent?” Light couldn’t help but ask, the question purely rhetorical. But Ryuzaki never could stand to leave a question unanswered, and he could stand even less to let one of Light’s challenges go unmet.
“Not in the eyes of the law.”
“You are the law.”
“That isn’t true.”
“Oh, yeah?” Light asked, a hard edge to his voice. “Because if you had the final say, I’d be dead.” Not a question.
Ryuzaki didn’t bother to deny it.
“I am sorry,” Ryuzaki said, suddenly. “If I frightened you today.”
It took Light a moment to grasp the true meaning of Ryuzaki’s words. When he did, the weight of them sunk deep into the marrow of his bones, ice cold. The fury that filled him was incandescent, it could burn him to ash if he let it. It burned hot and hurtful through his veins, blackening his screaming nerves. Ryuzaki was sorry? He was sorry?
Ryuzaki had not frightened him. He had damaged him irrevocably. He wasn’t sorry at all.
“I don’t need an apology.” Light’s voice was as cold and dark as a winter’s night, stiff like a corpse’s curled fingers. He couldn’t absolve Ryuzaki, couldn’t throw out any paltry, superficial words, it’s fine, I understand. Ryuzaki would know he was lying. Ryuzaki would call him out on it.
“I didn’t think so,” Ryuzaki said. “Still, I thought the sentiment might be nice.”
“Do you care about nice?” Light couldn’t help but ask. He really didn’t think Ryuzaki did. “The investigation is all that matters. I understand that. That’s why I’m here.”
Ryuzaki’s eyes map the room, bored and pitch-black. Light wonders if he had any say on the decor, if he’s even seen it before now - he guesses no.
“You said you’d do whatever it took to catch Kira?” Ryuzaki asks.
“I meant it,” Light said.
“I don’t doubt that,” Ryuzaki laughed, and the sound nearly startled Light. The sound was derisive, yet strangely joyful. Ryuzaki was having fun, pulling off Light’s wings. Looking at him strangely, so strangely, like he was an abomination of nature who never should have been born.
Then Ryuzaki said, leaning closer, too close, breath hot against Light’s neck.
“Light-kun needn’t when it is just the two of us. I know who you are.”
Light’s shoulder involuntarily lifted as he all but flinched away. And there went the game of chicken. He could practically see the victory sparkling in Ryuzaki’s eyes like silver, a silver bullet, the cutting edge of a silver blade.
“You don’t know anything about me, Ryuzaki.” Light tried his hardest not to snap, but it came out sharp, anyhow. “Not any more than I’ve told you. Not any more than anyone else knows.”
“We both know that isn’t true,” Ryuzaki said, seemingly finished arguing - or at least, giving the pretense that he was - before wandering into the bathroom. Light was helpless but to follow.
“You think I’m capable of murder,” Light reminded him. “You don’t know me at all.”
“Oh, Light-kun,” Ryuzaki sounded as if he were holding back another laugh. He sounded as if he were talking to a naive child. “Everyone is capable of murder.”
“That sounds like a justification a serial killer would make,” Light scoffed. “Sure, everyone might be capable of physically holding a knife. A gun. But not everyone has the stomach for taking a life. Not everyone would kill if given the choice.”
“That’s rather optimistic,” Ryuzaki said lightly. The way his tongue handled that word, optimistic, made it more than clear it was a flimsy placeholder for foolish.
“It’s a fact. The world isn’t full of murderers.”
“No, perhaps not.” Ryuzaki looked up at him through the mirror. Even though this building was brand new, the lights seemed to flicker for a moment, casting his face in dark lines of shadow. “Or perhaps they simply haven’t been awakened.”
Light could argue his point further. Could point out that not everyone was a ticking time bomb. Not everyone was rotten. But honestly, why bother? Every inch of his body was screaming with exhaustion. Listless eyes took in the pathetic state of the bathroom counter. Light was bereft of most of his toiletries, he blanched when he couldn’t detect so much as toothpaste.
“Ryuzaki…?” Light limply gestured towards the lack of basic hygiene products present. When all Ryuzaki returned him was a blank stare, Light sighed loud enough that he felt it in his teeth. “Don’t you have any face wash? Moisturizer? I need toothpaste, at the very least.”
Ryuzaki opened up a drawer and handed Light a plain, beige toothbrush, still wrapped in plastic at least. “Here.”
Light waited for more, and Ryuzaki, acting as if it was some great burden, ever so benevolently handed Light a tube of toothpaste. “There’s face wash on the counter as well,” Ryuzaki said, in the kind of long-suffering voice martyrs use. “I know which kind Light-kun likes. You’re welcome.”
“Wow. Thank you,” Light said, not bothering to disguise the sarcasm. “However could you have gotten that information? From illegally spying on me, maybe?”
Ryuzaki’s only response was deathly silence, which unsettled Light and led him to quickly brush his teeth. He decided to take out his aggression on his gums, and by the end of the task, he was bleeding. Salty blood dripped down his porcelain teeth onto his chin, sanguine against bone white, unsettling him worse. He looked absolutely deranged.
“Light-kun’s gums are bleeding.” Ryuzaki, the genius, stated the obvious.
“Aren’t you going to brush your teeth?” Light asked after he rinsed. So what if he was spitting out the salt of his blood? At least his mouth was clean.
“I left my toothbrush in my last hotel suite. I’ll have Watari bring me a new one tomorrow,” Ryuzaki said, and then had the nerve to look offended when Light’s expression turned incredulous. “I do brush my teeth, Light-kun.”
How very convincing.
"Your mouth is going to taste disgusting in the morning."
"If I never go to sleep, there will be no 'morning.' The clock will simply turn forward another hour." Ryuzaki said, his tone a bit like a professor who'd begun lecturing to a bunch of greenhorn students, like this was all very reasonable and Light was the stupid one for having failed to grasp it.
Light had no conceivable rebuttal to this.
Their nighttime routine commenced in silence. The little Light could do was clean his face. It was meant to be cleansing, but Light felt anything but clean. He felt like he could strip the flesh from his bones and still feel as if he were covered in some invisible sin.
He was a ghastly sight to behold in the mirror. He had to avert his eyes, not simply for vanity’s sake, but because it twisted his stomach to see a face that was so like his own but so devitalized, almost sickly, wan, staring back with haunted, shadowed eyes.
Light turned away from his reflection with a sneer.
He’d be back to normal. Eventually. He’d reclaim his face someday.
Ryuzaki was a shadow behind him, his footsteps whisper-soft, nearly soundless. Light wondered if he was being unnerving on purpose. A comfortable suspect’s lips can loosen, but a suspect plagued with paranoia will exorcize the ghosts of their secrets in a desperate attempt to be freed.
Light stopped at the foot of the king-sized bed. Dread turned his stomach for what he knew would come next.
Ryuzaki stalked up to him like a jungle cat on the prowl. Light refused to take a step back, unwilling to give away how much L truly affected him. “There are no cameras in this room, you know. Whatever is said here will be kept in complete secrecy.”
Ryuzaki must have thought he was stupid. Must have thought he was the stupidest person in the world.
But no, Ryuzaki didn’t think Light was stupid; Light knew that, that was the point.
Ryuzaki thought he was desperate. For connection. For understanding. For a shoulder to lean on. A companion to rest with through this long, lonely night.
Fuck that.
Ryuzaki wanted him to let his guard down. Ryuzaki wanted him bared, flayed alive like prey. Ryuzaki wanted his confession, and he would go to any lengths to get it. Light couldn’t believe a word Ryuzaki said, yet Ryuzaki’s word was all he had. In the end, it was a pointless sentiment. A Schrodinger’s cat. Whether or not there were cameras, it didn’t matter much either way.
Either there were hidden cameras in this room, or they were absent for a far more nefarious purpose.
Light wasn’t safe; that was the only truth he currently had.
That, and he wasn’t Kira.
He couldn’t be.
“No cameras?” Light said flippantly. “So you could, hypothetically, kill me and say it was in self-defense?” It was half a joke, more a question that echoed ever since a gun had been pointed at his head.
Ryuzaki cocked his head, mirth in his eyes. Slowly, yet quicker than Light could finch, he brought up a hand to cup Light’s jaw and forced Light to look him directly in his sleep-deprived eyes. “Light-kun is projecting, I see. I would never kill you.”
Light clenched his jaw to the point of pain. He couldn’t help it, red clouded the corners of his vision. “Then what would it make you if I were shot?”
Ryuzaki’s smile disappeared in a blink, as if it had never been there at all. “You weren’t. You were never in any danger.”
But Light hadn’t known that.
His racing heart, his wide eyes, his faltering breaths and the black, animal panic that had overtaken his mind had been clueless, knowing nothing as more real as as bullet that was seconds away from burying itself inside his skull.
How does one forget the taste of death?
“But if I had been,” Light wouldn’t let this go. “If you had convinced my father to shoot me, guilty or not, what would that make you?”
Ryuzaki didn’t look at him, climbing into bed, but rather than arrange his long limbs into his bizarre signature pose, he simply crawled beneath the covers and laid against the headboard, opening up his laptop and scowling as it presumably loaded. “You think you’re clever, don’t you?”
“And you’re deflecting,” Light retorted.
“If you had been shot, Kira would’ve been effectively stopped.” Ryuzaki smiled, before it faded into a frown upon seeing Light’s angry expression. “Too soon?”
“I love how you can lob any accusation you’d like at me, but you can’t even answer a hypothetical question.”
“Because you already know the answer,” Ryuzaki sighed. He waved a lazy hand, eyes darting down to his screen. “It would be murder, no matter for the sake of justice or in the name of the law. I would be charged as a co-conspirator to first-degree murder. But the Japanese police wouldn’t care. Interpol wouldn’t care. I would face no punishment, no repercussions.”
Light bit his tongue. Ryuzaki propped a pillow against the headboard, making a thoughtful sound. “Though I would be terribly dissatisfied with taking the easy way out and leaving a mystery forever unsolved. Perhaps that would be the worst kind of punishment for the likes of me.”
Light swallowed the taste of bile that had crept up his throat. “You have a strange definition of ‘punishment.” A scoff, and there was a smile in Ryuzaki's voice when he spoke again, a vindictive, cruel thing.
“I do have to say, I really don’t believe I could ever convince Yagami-san to shoot his son. He’d want it done by the books.”
Hm. Something else Ryuzaki didn’t seem to know.
It made sense. His father had been turned away from the camera. Only Light had seen the horror, the fury, the steely, bone-deep resignation yet determination, the guilt that had already formed.
“I know you are Kira, Light,” Ryuzaki said. He sounded so sure about this that not even a token protest could crawl to Light’s tongue. “I just don’t know how you came to earn his name.”
Light had nothing to say to that.
Though he had something to say, to ask, rather - and how humiliating that he had been reduced to this, a thing full of pleas and unanswered needs - and Light had a feeling he wouldn’t like Ryuzaki’s answer. “Ryuzaki?”
Dark eyes looked up at him from even darker lashes. “You can call me L when we’re alone.”
Light wouldn’t. That posed the threat of familiarity, of friendship, which was a farce Light didn’t know why he’d ever gone along with, even if only to be polite. Ryuzaki wasn’t his friend, and L most certainly wasn't. He was his jailer. His yearning executioner. “How am I supposed to get dressed?”
Ryuzaki looked up from his laptop screen properly, only to cock his head in bemusement. “Surely, at your grown age, this isn’t something I need to explain to you.”
Light’s fingers flexed into tight fists. “How do I take my shirt off when I’m handcuffed to you?”
Ryuzaki sighed, long-sufferingly. “Oh, that. Can’t you sleep in what you’re wearing?”
“....No?” Light looked down at his button-up, his grey woollen trousers. Ryuzaki was truly insufferable. “I’m not wearing my day clothes to bed. And I can’t sleep in these pants, they’ll wrinkle.”
“Heaven forbid,” Ryuzaki murmured, earning a glare from Light he didn’t notice or didn’t care to notice. Ryuzaki waved a flippant hand, focus returning to his brightly lit screen. “Well, Light is one of the foremost students of Japan, a bright young man. I have full confidence in him that he will figure it out.”
“Are you serious?” Light asked, fully fed up. “You can’t throw me a bone?”
“Light is a dog now?”
Light was shaking from anger. Fuck Ryuzaki. Fuck Ryuzaki. The bastard couldn’t make anything easy for him, could he? This didn’t help his investigation in any way, this was for his own petty entertainment and to humiliate Light, who had already been thoroughly debased.
Light snuck a furtive glance at Ryuzaki, who, by all appearances, was completely and utterly focused on whatever was on his laptop. Light knew better. He was being watched, even when Ryuzaki’s eyes weren’t seemingly on him. He was always being watched. So, he turned around with all of the dignity he could muster and, spine straight, snapped the button of his trousers. He slowly pulled them down, feeling cool, conditioned air prick at his newly-bared skin, raising the hairs there.
“Do you have a change of clothes I can wear?” Light asked through gritted teeth, glaring a hole into the wall.
“Hm. In the dresser,” Ryuzaki replied absentmindedly. Light found it easily enough - and found that it was further than the chain would reach, if Ryuzaki were to stay in his place beside the headboard.
Light wanted to scream. But he’d wanted to scream all day. And hadn’t, kept swallowing it down, even as it clawed at his throat. He had a feeling that, were he to begin now, he would never stop.
Light’s heart, already an unsteady, volatile thing, lurched, sickeningly coming unmoored and falling from his chest, as Ryuzaki suddenly grasped his arm from behind.
“What are you doing?” Light hissed, jumping backwards and yanking his arm away with more force than was needed. Ryuzaki wasn’t holding him tightly. Still, it felt as if his arm had almost been torn from his body. Like lightning had struck him, and he was now trembling again, consumed by the aftershocks.
“Do you not want me to uncuff you?”
“I was doing it myself.” But Light still relented, sleep’s pull too strong, his mind wrung dry after a day - long days and nights, fifty to be exact - of unending torment. Ryuzaki said nothing further, proving that all he really wanted was to throw around his power a bit more. Eyes raised heavenward, Light prayed to gods he wasn’t sure he believed in.
He had to get through this. Somehow, he had to survive L and his madness if only to make it out of this nightmare alive. Whether or not he emerged in pieces. Even if it did mean being docile, he supposed he could fake it for the time being.
Light was adept at crafting masks, after all.
“Don’t look,” Light said, having turned his back to Ryuzaki, his button-up shrugged to the floor and the white long-sleeve beneath peeled from both his arms and hanging limply around his neck, doing ultimately nothing to protect his modesty. Ryuzaki snorted behind him.
“Shy, Light-kun?”
“Shut up,” Light’s voice was a bundle of frayed threads, worn ragged and prickling. “Maybe I just don’t want you to see the I am Kira tattoo on my ribcage.”
Then whisper-soft fingers landed on his sides, turning him around, and some choked noise of indignation got stuck in Light’s throat and came out sounding pitiful as he was manhandled - manhandled - like some sort of doll, or some hapless, crusty-eyed small dog women kept in their purses.
“Don’t touch me.” Light’s voice was low, dangerous, though not because he believed he had any threat to give, it had been reduced to a mere rasp of shock and outrage. Ryuzaki’s dark, void-like eyes roamed over his body, over every acre and plane, the lines of his ribs, the protrusion of his hipbones, the paths of muscle, the scar he had on his breastbone from playing in the woods as a child. Ryuzaki’s eyes found particular interest in that place. His eyes were claws that sank deep into Light’s heart.
His scrutiny felt like being flayed alive. It felt like being judged by god. Light’s skin prickled and his stomach roiled - his heart, he was sure, had stopped beating. Maybe this was how Kira killed his victims. Taking them in at their most vulnerable and qualifying them into mere objects that were either satisfactory or disappointing, defective and ill-formed.
Ryuzaki’s touch, though light, seared through his skin. Light was positive that, though no visible mark would be left, he now had an indelible imprint of Ryuzaki’s fingers on his bones.
“Or what?” Ryuzaki asked, his dark, deep eyes glinting. “Kira-kun doesn’t like to be touched?”
“It’s basic human decency to respect a boundary.”
“I’m not a very decent person, Light-kun.”
“Obviously,” Light muttered, crossing his arms over his chest.
“And since we will be chained together for the foreseeable future, I fail to see what sort of boundaries you expect to uphold.”
Light swallowed the hopelessness that relentlessly tried to pull him into its embrace. “What are you even looking for?”
“I cannot leave any stone unturned,” Ryuzaki said gravely. “Though I wouldn’t have pegged you as the type of person to get a tattoo on his ribcage.” It took Light a moment to gather his meaning, frazzled as he was, and once he did, his blood could have burned through his skin with how hotly rage flew through his veins.
“I forgot,” Light spat caustically, ripping himself away. “Never make a joke around an autistic cadaver.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a very funny joke.”
“Maybe you don’t have a sense of humor.” Light stormed over to the dresser, dressing quickly, robotically, feeling as if he were seconds away from shaking out of his own skin. Feeling as if he had been defiled, somehow. Desecrated.
But it was ridiculous to think that way. Light changed in front of people all the time, back at school, in the locker rooms. This was no different. Well, it was, but only if one squinted and chose to see it that way. This was not some Stockholm syndrome, locked in a tower, BDSM fantasy. This was a nightmare. A nightmare Light just had to wake up from, so long as he found the mirror to hold up to Kira’s own identity rather than his own.
Light slowly walked back over, knowing he had to. His eyes chose anywhere else to look, landing on the one star shining between the curtains that hadn’t been closed all the way. The rain had ceased, and the clouds had parted to reveal this speck of light, glinting almost mockingly. It was free, high in the sky, where it could never be captured. Then Light realized with a start that the only reason he could see that star was because it was already dead. Maybe that was the only way to truly be free.
No, don’t think like that.
“I wouldn’t say I don’t have a sense of humor,” Ryuzaki mused, as Light wearily climbed into bed, trying desperately not to look at him, even though every instinct within him screamed not to turn his back on Ryuzaki. Out of his peripheral, he caught an abnormality sitting stark on L's face - a pair of glasses - and he nearly did a double take. Ryuzaki wore glasses? It made sense, considering how closely, how unblinkingly, he stared at his laptop screen, fixed there nearly twenty-four hours away. But it was uncanny to see the proof of it undisguised on his face. It felt like something Light shouldn't be seeing. A certain kind of weakness. Proof of humanity. “It is funny," Ryuzaki continued blithely. "That out of the two of us, you clearly despise me more than Amane, however, I am the first to share your bed.”
All Light could think to say to that, before burying himself deep in the sheets, sounded half-hearted even to his own ears. “It’s your bed.”
And the last thing he saw was Ryuzaki, his strange smile that wasn’t a smile at all on his lips. “So it is.”
Light’s eyes fell, the world descending into darkness.
And his demons came out to play.
Light was tense as he lay next to Ryuzaki, cold as ice, stiff as a state that not not seen the sun in a millennium - or maybe he wished he was, for that would make him impervious to being touched, leave him safe to be seen surface-level only. He turned onto his side, back facing Ryuzaki, and then the fine hairs on the back of his nape prickled. His spine trembled. Never show your back to your enemy. He rolled onto his stomach, as if shielding his soft underbelly, making a point. He lay on the very edge of the bed. With the slightest movement, he could fall, and fall, and perhaps never stop.
This night was not going to pass comfortably.
And he doesn’t have tablets, either. More added insult to weeping, infected injury. Light closes his eyes and tries not to sigh despondently, tries not to give himself away. He thinks of asking Ryuzaki if Watari has sleeping pills, but he doesn’t. Ryuzaki would probably call him a junkie and then raise his percentage five percent.
The chain is quite tight around his wrist, but Light doesn’t care. He hates this, he hates sleeping in strange beds. He misses his soft cotton bedsheets that smell like lavender. He misses the soft sounds that come from living in a suburban area. He misses tightly wrapping himself inside of his comforter that he’s had since he was a mere child. He misses normalcy. He misses his life.
He misses having control and having his perfect routine to get him through the day. He misses being certain about his life, misses the confidence that used to exude from Light Yagami. How has he fallen so far from grace?
It seems one day, he was a college student who possessed a fathomless, bright future, on his way to becoming a highly respected detective, his father’s protégé, his proudest achievement. And now here he lies, a pitiful hostage next to a stranger. A stranger who orchestrated a fatal break in the relationship between him and his father.
What was once pride had warped into disappointment and hideous suspicion. Light didn’t know if it was salvageable. If this damage was irrevocable.
Did his father really believe in Light’s innocence so little? Yes, Light could justify the act. He could coldly, clinically analyze the situation, all its twisted, ugly variables, and absolve his father of any blame.
But secretly, shamefully, Light craved comfort. He desires absolution for himself.
But there is nothing comforting in this desolate room, nothing along with this ominous presence that is seated besides him.
Light pulls the blankets tighter around him, as if he could disappear inside of them. He misses his mother. Light loved his parents, but he’d always instinctively drawn closer to his mother. She would have never pretended to kill me, Light bitterly thought, she wouldn’t have abided it, not for a moment even considered it. Yet even that thought is filled with doubts. Would Ryuzaki’s silver tongue have swayed her? Could it have?
Light had always felt as if his mother had loved him more than his father. Sachiko had been the one who was the most affectionate, offering an endless outpouring of tenderness and undisguised care. She was the parent who always asked about his school day, and actually cared about the answer. She had always been there for advice, and her encouraging words had burrowed deep into Ligt’s heart, a well from which he had thirstily drank in confinement.
Everyone liked Yagami Light, but his mother loved him.
If his mother found out, God forbid - Light didn’t think he could handle it. Didn’t know if he could survive it. His mother’s shock. Her disappointment. Her newfound wariness that would surely come if she found out Light was a suspect.
Most of all, what Light wanted most was for someone to reassure him that, without a doubt, that he could never be Kira.
Stupidly, he wished that person would be Ryuzaki.
Light felt as if he were willingly lying down with wolves. A lamb baring its neck for teeth. He felt strangely defanged, though when he ran his tongue over his teeth, he could not find the empty space.
Logically, Light knew no harm would come to him. Not so long as Kira remained free, and Ryuzaki could not pin his crimes on Light.
But Light’s imagination had always been a wild thing.
The thought was like a parasite that wormed its way deeper and deeper into his brain. He could fall asleep and wake up with a pillow pressed to his face. A blade ripping open his throat. Hands around his neck. A needle under his tongue, a syringe filled with nothing but air.
Light glared at the blackness huddled behind his eyelids.
He attempted to meditate, to picture a wide-open field under a stretching, cloudless sky, but no matter how hard he tried, the clouds were dark like bruises and the cawing of crows disrupted whatever tranquility he hoped to find.
And there Ryuzaki was. There Ryuzaki always was.
Light bit his cheek so hard that he thought he tasted blood. Silence, though once his saving grace, was now an unceasing, maddening torture, a reminder of his own powerlessness, his weakness. Proof of how easily everything could be taken away from him. He had everything in the world, and yet nothing at all.
Not a sound was made in the desolate darkness of the room, and that only made Light’s heart race faster. He knew it was only Ryuzaki beside him, but the man had the uncanny ability to fade seamlessly into the shadows. Just like a monster.
When had Light become so paranoid? This afternoon surely hadn’t affected him this much, had it? He couldn’t lose his mind now. Ryuzaki would surely take advantage of it. And the thought that he, perfect Yagami Light, the brightest student in Japan, could be reduced to insanity? That was enough to fill his veins with ice.
Light, attempting to ignore the sick swirl of emotions in his stomach, recited a mantra dully to himself, the words of most importance. Light couldn’t trust Ryuzaki. Not a thing he did, nor a word from his lying lips.
Only then would he have truly lost it all.