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It wasn't a heart attack.
It wasn't even a gunshot. Not pills, either—or a rope. No lethal injection following a lengthy trial. Not a blaze of glory or final showdown or grim defeat. When Light Yagami died, it was in a car accident. Senseless, tragic, and utterly mundane.
Then the Kira murders stopped.
The team fractured, of course. The grief hit them hard, even before the true ramifications set in. Matsuda was the last to accept it; Chief Yagami had to be the one to force him out of his doggedly loyal state of denial.
Light Yagami—beloved son, brother, and friend (to borrow phrasing from the obituary that still sat crumpled on L’s desk)—was not who they had known him to be.
Or rather, he was exactly who L had always known him to be.
Somehow, satisfaction never quite entered the equation. A persistent metallic aftertaste began to plague L that no amount of cake or whipped cream could cover up. He began drinking more coffee, with progressively less sugar, in an attempt to disguise the taste.
Reluctantly, he let go of his plans to test the rules written in the notebook. He already had the answer; false rules written by a man who could no longer work to uphold their validity. The shinigami Rem seemed to relax when he made the announcement, which he halfheartedly filed away as evidence for a case that was rapidly unraveling before his eyes.
Misa, of course, was guilty of being the second Kira. There was simply no way around it, and no one, not even Matsuda, had tried to refute it. The woman herself, with red-rimmed eyes and dead expression, spoke very little. It was as if a light had gone out inside her—but maybe that particular turn of phrase was in poor taste.
No one quite seemed to know what to do with her. Righteous assertions regarding the necessity of the death penalty felt suddenly unmoored, even gauche, when faced with the reality before them.
Kira was dead. It was tempting to let that be the end of it.
In the end, L sent the others home. They would reconvene in a week, and Misa would stay at the task force headquarters until a decision could be reached about her fate. Privately, L and Watari agreed that Misa would likely be a danger to herself in the coming weeks. She would need to be monitored closely.
The phone rang at 3:19am, and L picked it up on the first ring.
“Misa is requesting to come see you,” Watari informed him. Neither of them particularly needed the social niceties of a ‘hello.’
“Requesting,” L repeated blankly, somehow not finding it within himself to add a questioning lilt to the word.
“It may be more accurate to say she is yelling her intentions at the elevator doors. She is also carrying two bottles of wine, one of them half-empty.”
“I see.” L chewed his lip in thought. “And I suppose this can't wait until morning.”
“I believe she is likely to injure herself if this keeps up,” Watari confirmed. “Would you like me to tell her you will meet her in her suite?”
The thought of sitting on those couches with just her and the absence between them felt ghoulish, even to him. “No,” he said slowly. “She can come up here.”
The footsteps outside his door were, therefore, entirely expected. The polite knock, on the other hand, was somewhat of a surprise.
“Come in,” he called, and the door cracked open.
Misa stood in the doorway, wine bottles in both hands, barefaced in pajamas and low pigtails, and looked suddenly unsure of herself. “Hey,” she said quietly.
“You wanted something?” L asked, careful to keep his voice merely neutral, rather than the flat and reportedly ‘uninviting’ tone it wanted to remain in.
He watched her look around, taking in the room. There was very little in the way of decorations. Watari hired cleaning staff who kept dirty clothes from piling up in the corners, which was the only ‘decor’ L was known to employ. L himself sat on his bed, and he saw her eyes linger on the second twin-sized bed at its side. Not much had changed in the room, in the flurry of activity that had followed after they captured the death note from Higuchi.
He thought he saw the exact moment she came to the conclusion that this room, too, was too full of ghosts for her liking.
“Come to the roof with me,” she said, the words sudden and desperate. She held up the wine bottles like a peace offering, but her words contradicted it. “If you don't drink one of these, I’m going to drink them both by myself, and neither of us will like that.”
L's head cocked slightly. “Is this meant to be an invitation or a hostage negotiation?”
She shrugged. Like him, she seemed to be operating on a limited capacity for niceties. “Whichever one works.”
He watched her for another moment before unfolding himself off the bed. “Lead the way.”
On the long, silent elevator ride, the only words they exchanged were, “You should know that I will stop you if you try to jump.”
And a faux-bright, “Then you’d better hope I don't take you down with me.”
The roof was not particularly glamorous. The most exciting things present were the currently unoccupied helicopter pad and the hulking air conditioning systems. L followed a half-step behind Misa, interested to see how close to the roof’s edge she would go.
Very close. A fence encircled the area, and Misa did not hesitate or slow down in the slightest as she leaned right against it and peered over the edge.
When L came to lean alongside her, she deftly twisted off the cap of the unopened bottle and handed him the drink without looking away from the skyline. He wondered if Watari had determined that a corkscrew was too close to a weapon for his liking and pondered, vaguely amused, about the rationale behind denying Misa access to sharp objects while providing her with alcohol.
There was a notable absence of wineglasses, so he took a swig straight from the bottle. It was cloyingly sweet on his tongue, and with an odd clang of recognition, he realized they had similar taste in wine.
She followed suit, then asked in a curiously flat voice, “Have you ever lost someone, Ryuzaki?”
“We all,” he began, but she interrupted.
“Before this.”
He followed her gaze, but the Tokyo skyline held nothing for him. “What are you hoping to hear from me? That this is my first loss, and Light will forever be a formative part of my memory?”
“You are such an asshole, do you know that?” she threw at him, her head snapping in his direction. “I’m asking if you even know what it's like to love someone. If you have any idea—,” her voice broke before she could finish.
They fell into silence again, this time staring at each other. It was becoming a pattern. They had never really spoken, he realized, without some form of mediary present. The absence between them was loud, even at this hour. Maybe especially at this hour.
“It would be cruel of me,” he said eventually, “to pretend I know what you're going through, even if I have lost loved ones before.” It tasted ever so slightly of a lie; he’d stolen the words from what he remembered of the first time he’d met Watari. He himself had never been good at this sort of thing.
Misa looked away first. “As if you’ve ever cared about cruelty,” she said, and now it was the memory of confinement and interrogation that hung loud in the air. She tipped up her bottle and took a deep drink.
L did the same. When in Rome. “I find it interesting,” he commented, “that my own cruelty ranks so high, when you disregard Light’s entirely.”
She shot him a poisonous glare. “Light was never cruel to me.”
And L—he couldn't help it. He laughed. One sharp, surprised bark of a laugh slipped out from between his lips.
Misa scowled at him, but it lacked practice. “I mean it. I, he,” she struggled for words before huffing in annoyance. “Okay, look, you're already certain I’m the second Kira, right? And that Light is—was, Kira.”
“The evidence is remarkably clear at this point, yes.”
“And there's nothing I can say or do to change that. It’s over.”
“Correct,” L agreed, curious as to where this was going.
If anything, she seemed freed by the confirmation. “Great. Then what the hell are you talking about? What cruelty?” Anger began to animate her for the first time. “Do you think I’m an idiot? That I don't know exactly what kind of man he was?”
This conversation, this candor, was what he had been hungering for for months. At last, the ability to lay all the cards on the table. Somehow, it wasn’t how he’d imagined it.
“You sacrificed half your life for him, and it made you a useful tool,” L told her, with none of the meager gentleness he usually tried to summon up for victims. “He pretended to love you to keep you in line. His affections were so steeped in lies that he forgot about the relationship entirely when he gave up his memories. He used you.”
“I used him.” Misa’s words were sharp and brittle as glass. “I forced him into a relationship to keep him close. I gave up half my life to find him. God,” she choked, her anger crumpling like paper as tears welled up in her eyes, and she swiped at them to no real effect. “I won’t be able to find him this time. I asked Rem. I can't bring him back, even if I give up the rest of my years.”
L watched and felt no urge to comfort her. “He meant that much to you.”
Misa laughed wetly, but he could still hear the spite in it. “Don't pretend you don't get it. You're a wreck.”
“Am I?” he asked, his eyes wandering absently to inspect the label on his wine. 14% ABV, how interesting.
“You're drinking with me on the roof!” she accused. “And yesterday, you sat in a chair like a normal human being.”
L was silent.
Triumph shone in her red-rimmed eyes. “You didn’t even notice, did you? Matsuda looked like he was going to cry.”
Now L grimaced. If even Matsuda had noticed…
“You wanted so badly to catch Kira,” she jeered. “Well he's dead, and you will never be able to say you beat him. How’s it feel?”
“Wretched,” he answered lightly, still keeping his eyes on the label. If Misa was looking for an argument, she wouldn't get one. But given that she was putting pretense aside… he was willing to reciprocate that much. “Sometimes I think I can hear him, laughing at me.”
“Good,” she said with vicious satisfaction. “He would be.”
It was true. They both took a drink.
“The trouble is, I can't help but think he would hate this too,” L said, once again gazing at the skyline. “Even ignoring everything else. This is too… anticlimactic.”
“Disappointing,” she echoed. “I think he would have even preferred losing, over,” she gestured vaguely at the city below, “this.”
“Cheers,” he said with a slight twist of irony, “I guess we can all drink to that.”
She glanced at him sideways, eyes narrowed. He couldn't help but enjoy this version of Misa; without the veneer of syrupy-sweet cuteness, he found he quite liked the raw, bitter acidity of her. “Shouldn't you just be glad Kira has been stopped?”
“I should, shouldn't I.” He kicked his foot lightly against the railing, feeling the metal’s vibration in his elbows. “Have you ever felt that there was a difference between what you know to be true, and what you feel to be true?”
“Not particularly.”
He gave her a look.
“Yeah, fine,” she admitted. “All the time. Like, I know bangs are going out of fashion, even though they still feel super cute to me. And I’m supposed to feel guilty about all the Kira stuff, but I really don’t. And I,” her words faltered, but she breathed sharply and soldiered on, “I know that Light…, but…”
“It doesn't feel like he's really gone,” L finished for her.
Something in Misa seemed to crumple upon hearing the words. “God,” she whispered, barely above the sounds of the city below, “it’s happening all over again, isn’t it? I can't do it again. I can't keep losing people. Especially not him.”
“You mean your parents,” L observed.
There was a momentary pause of surprise, and then anger twisted her face. “God, you are such a fucking creep!” she shouted in the night air, hitting her fist against the fence. It rattled alarmingly. “This is why nobody likes you, you know! You stalk us, you learn everything you can just to use it against us, you never give us a moment of peace, and then you just—throw it out into the open, because you don't even have the grace to be ashamed of yourself!”
L considered these points carefully, if only because he knew the lack of reaction would infuriate her. “Guilty on all counts.” In the moment before she could continue yelling at him, he added, “And yet it wasn't enough to catch you two, was it?”
Misa was breathing heavily, flushed with anger and drink, but she stayed silent for several long moments. When she finally spoke, it was tightly constrained. “Whatever weird, psychosexual, cat and mouse foreplay thing you two had going on, I hope it haunts you for the rest of your life. I hope you never find closure. I hope this case ruins you, and you never get an ounce of satisfaction from your work again.”
The words washed over him like a wave over sand, uncontested. “Yes,” L agreed. “I think that's what he would want, too.”
Misa snarled in disgust and turned away. Her bottle ran empty on the next pull, and dissatisfaction only soured her mood further.
L’s bottle still had more to give, probably because she had started before him, and he considered gifting the rest to her. Then he drank from it again and elected not to. The world was pleasantly blurry around him, and his mind was blessedly… well, not empty, but quiet. An ambulance passed by below with its lights blaring, the sound echoing strangely this high up, and they waited in silence until it was out of sight.
He broke the pause by asking, “Do I need to be concerned about you continuing his legacy?”
It was the main point of contention in the debate over what should be done about Misa Amane, and he had to admit he was stuck.
He explained, “I find myself caught between two hypotheses. One is that you have always cared more about the man than the ideology. But the other is that you care enough about the man to continue his ideology after death.”
Misa sighed and leaned her folded arms against the railing. The anger had passed, and it left her looking simply tired. “Does it matter? I won't be alive to cause trouble much longer.”
“Is that what you think?”
She turned to look at him like he was an idiot. Apparently, she would always have energy for that. “What, are you going to let me go with a swat on the butt and a good scolding? Give me a free pass for all the murders which, by the way, I still don't regret? Oh, but I’m just a girl!” she mimicked in a high falsetto. “I couldn't have possibly known what I was doing!”
L decided to forego the conversation on criminal gender equality. “I find myself growing tired of death. Don't you?”
Her expression didn't change.
“Ah. Yes, I suppose you are the wrong person to ask.”
Her eyes shifted back to the city, and her chin came down to rest on her folded arms. Quietly, voice muffled, she said, “Rem will probably kill you if you decide to kill me. I told her not to, but I don't think she'll listen.”
L was beginning to recall why he generally avoided intoxicants. His thoughts after receiving this information came frustratingly slow and out of order.
New data point: the connection between Misa Amane and Rem the shinigami was stronger than previously anticipated. (‘I asked Rem,’ she’d said, and he hadn't flagged it as a sign.)
New conclusion: this was why Light had refrained from killing her. This was also how Misa was able to force the relationship; she'd had a gun to his head the whole time.
Confirmed suspicion: Misa Amane wanted to die. This was not a surprise.
There was an obvious first question, at least to him. “Why hasn't she killed me already?”
He half-expected the wall of secrecy to reemerge, but Misa answered without hesitation or sentiment. “She'll die. If she kills to extend the life of a human, she'll die. Ryuk would never have done it for Light, but Rem would do it for me.”
Light truly had been on the cusp of winning their game, hadn't he? Finally, contrarily, L felt the faintest glimmer of the satisfaction he usually got from his cases. At last, he was getting answers.
It was soured, of course, by the knowledge that L hadn’t really won. The fate Light had planned for him had been avoided, not by deduction or skill, but by sheer, dumb, random chance.
L, dead. Watari along with him, most likely. And Rem, the one piece Light had no hope of removing from the board, the one staying his hand unacceptably away from the biggest thorn in his side, would remove herself in one fell swoop. Light, L thought with a sense of stunned, reluctantly impressed awe, truly was a monster. Bravo.
Aloud, he said, “I see.” He needed to collect himself, but instead he tipped up his bottle to take three deep gulps. The irony threatened to overtake him: Rem would bargain for Misa’s life, and L must bargain for his own. Misa did not intend to bargain on her own behalf. And Light, of course, could speak for no one and nothing.
He wondered briefly what Light’s father would do. Soichiro Yagami was a pillar of morality, unflinching and inflexible. Would he die just to see justice enacted? Or would he think of his remaining family and choose lenience? Somehow, he couldn't quite imagine it.
“Misa,” he said slowly, and it felt odd to address her so directly, “it strikes me that I don't actually know what you want. Aside from the impossible.”
She scowled and halfheartedly swiped at her eyes. “Oh, only aside from that. What kind of question is that, Ryuzaki?”
“The question of a man trying to make the least abhorrent choice in abhorrent circumstances.”
She humphed and stewed in thought, gazing with narrowed eyes at one of the few stars visible through the city lights. “Nothing,” she decided eventually, and she’d thought long enough that L knew it was the truth. “Without Light, without Kira, there's nothing. The life I imagined for myself is gone. I can't go back to being Misa Misa. There’s no one and nothing.” She turned her gaze back to him. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”
He met her eyes levelly. “It's generally what I expected, yes.”
Her gaze slid away. “Hooray.”
“I wonder,” he said, not minding that she did not bother to look over, “if you would be interested in a deal. Now that the Kira case is resolved, my own dissatisfaction notwithstanding, Watari and I will be leaving soon. In Kira’s absence, the world is about to become very… interesting. In the interest of appeasing Rem, I would like you to come with us.”
Pursed lips were followed gradually by furrowed brows, then a slow bloom into full and utter confusion. “What?”
L felt a smile tugging at his lips. The idea was beginning to grow on him already. “Your role would be as my colleague and occasional agent on the ground. You would not be confined to your room, and you would not be placed under any higher level of surveillance than anyone else in my vicinity. However, you would not be free to leave. This option exists as an alternative to lifetime imprisonment for your crimes, and I will ensure it is so, even if Rem kills me in an attempt to free you.”
“That's insane,” she told him, her tiredness seeming to melt gradually off her shoulders. She even stood up fully to face him. She was eyeing him like he was a snake in the grass at her feet, searching his eyes for the catch. Funny, how he could learn so much about Light from his absence.
He had considered, in the vague way one considered many impossible things in the dead of night when sleep evaded, the possibility of one day offering such a deal to Light. He had never quite anticipated what Misa’s role would be, in that hypothetical world.
Part of him wanted to chuckle at the irony. He was sure that in Misa’s idle daydreams of inevitable victory, L was not the man who asked her to spend the rest of her life with him.
“I don't expect your answer tonight,” he told her, and began walking back to the building. “We can discuss it after we’ve both slept.”
She trailed after him to the door like a lost duckling, which was good—it meant she wasn't planning to jump.
“You’ll hate it,” Misa was saying, still looking at him like he’d lost his mind. “You hate me.”
“Oh, I’m sure we'll both come to hate it,” he replied, feeling almost—giddy. Revitalized. He vowed to never drink again. “But how else are you going to keep him alive?”
He held open the door.
She stared at him. He met her gaze. The choice was no choice at all; he could see the recognition in her eyes.
She stepped through the doorway.