Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

One day, her older brother came home from a long day of school, and Yagami Sayu knew something was different.

She watched him make his way up the stairs, technically present but his mind elsewhere. At the time, Sayu had thought very little of it, and had gone back to playing video games. Light was an intense guy, and took himself very seriously. No doubt his future was on his mind.

A few days later, he was still different, but something had further changed. He seemed more confident, in control, less preoccupied – at the same time, thinner, and slightly ill. Sayu carefully watched him, when she was sure he wasn't paying her any attention (not that he normally did these days, unless she made sure of it), and she eventually arrived at the conclusion that this wasn't about school, as most things in Light's life were.

~

Light was the oldest child, the one always at a stage that their parents were unsure about. And so the Yagamis put a great deal of pressure on him to be the very best he could be and perform perfectly, which he did. Thus, they were assured they were raising him right.

Sayu was the youngest child, the one going through the stages that Light had already passed through – they knew what to do with her, and they felt relaxed enough to give her freer reign than they had given Light. Sayu, the baby of the family, flourished and ran wild where Light had been rigidly contained, pruned and cut into a specific mold, for fear of letting him take the wrong shape.

Sayu had always thought it was very silly of them, to think that all geniuses would act and present themselves as Light did – they were all so different in personality, after all, and there was such variety in the world, in their upbringings, that they surely would all be different. She didn't want to go so far as to say that she was proof of that, but she wouldn't be surprised if that turned out to be a correct assumption.

She didn't care about school, not like Light had to – she got good enough grades to make sure she didn't get in trouble, but it really wasn't the most important thing in her life. Light had been taught to value all the things their parents did, which were societal concepts: like justice, academics, prestige and honor. At the age in which Light was being praised for his genius openly in class, rigorously made to memorize assigned texts, to challenge and prove himself constantly, Sayu was allowed to run off and be herself, stagger through the park, get bored playing with other children, and wander her way to the library to read Nietzsche, Kant, Suzuki, Lovecraft, Poe, textbooks about quantum physics and philosophy, treatises on religion, and instructions on how identify the components of stars from the colors in their light.

Why, when the universe was so big, so full of beauty, and so incomprehensible, would she give a damn about her own intelligence relative to that of billions of other, equally tiny humans? Life was short, after all – too short to worry about petty little things like politics or crime or academic success. Flowers were blooming, the sun was shining, and who knew if any of them would be around to enjoy these things tomorrow, so why not enjoy them today?

If her parents knew how smart she really was, they would try to turn her into Light – and Light, whether he himself knew it or not, was miserable.

And so she carefully kept her intelligence a secret, hidden and locked away from the rest of the world, even though deep down she wanted to scream the truth from the rooftops, and tell the world that it was useless to keep wasting their lives away with pointless worry.

~

Thus, when this new development in her brother's demeanor came to her attention, Sayu excitedly realized that Light must have found something more worth his time than school and pleasing their parents. She resolved that whatever it was, she would find out. Her brother had found a reason for existing that he wasn't telling Mom and Dad about, and she wanted to know. Maybe, finally, she would be able to share her thoughts with him – lift him above the inanity, the base and dull human structures that they had drilled into his mind, and together they would soar in the stratosphere, discussing concepts like destiny and kindness like the intangible things they were.

Sayu was a happy person, but it was lonely in her world full of poetry, bright colors and strange, wonderful ideas. If she could share the space in her mind with someone, anyone, that would be the day she knew herself to be truly happy.

So one day, while Light was out, she searched his room. Sayu knew all about his many safeguards – from the pencil lead to the door handle, she carefully bypassed them all, down to the last millimeter. He would never know she was there.

She discovered the false bottom to the drawer when she saw the pinhole on the underside (she'd taken them out of the desk, looking for carefully-hidden documents pinned to the back of the drawer – she had several journals hidden in her own room, written in code and carefully concealed in this way). Guessing at what the pinhole was for, she compared several items on his desk to the hole's size, until she realized that it was just the right size for an unscrewed ink cartridge. When she decided she had found the right pen, Sayu used it to lift the false bottom.

The first thing she noticed was not the script on the front of the book (her English being a little rusty), but the mechanism he used to hide and protect it. The wires, the bag of fluid...

She sniffed the plug in the opening. Gasoline. She hesitated before taking the notebook out.

Light was willing to risk both his own and his family's lives to keep this secret. Whatever this was, he thought it was more important than anything else. What are you up to, big brother?

Sayu rolled up her sleeve, copied the words on the front cover and the following pages onto her arm with a marker, and then opened the rest of the notebook.

Inside, thankfully, was Japanese. There was a long list of names – none Sayu recognized. The next six after the first one seemed to be variations on the same name, and all had the words 'car accident' after them. The rest were alone. After the third new name, the writing became quicker, more scrawled and close together, as if Light had become more sure of what he was writing down. Sayu took note of as many details as she could, noting especially the name furiously scrawled across one page in English. It was odd, she felt like she'd seen it before...

And then she shut the notebook, and put it away exactly as Light had left it. His bedroom looked untouched when she closed the door (leaving the door handle in precisely the position Light always did, replacing the paper and the pencil lead). Her mother was busy in her home office, and her long sleeve hid the notes she had taken.

Sayu wouldn't tell her parents about the gasoline – indeed, she planned from the beginning not to tell them anything about what she found. She came from a family that kept secrets from each other, whether the rest of them knew that or not, and she could keep hers better than anyone.

Besides, it didn't really matter. Nothing really mattered, unless Sayu chose to assign meaning to it. That was the beautiful thing about her semi-solipsistic philosophy – it didn't obligate her to care.

Late that night, computer muted and translation software on the screen, Sayu decoded the English words in the book.

Death Note

The human whose name is written in this note shall die.

Sayu might have thought Light had made the book himself, in English to keep their parents from reading it – he was a very resentful person, after all – but for the fact that it was on black paper, with white ink, and not in Light's handwriting.

Written, somehow, on black paper, with white ink. Not paint, the way most supposed 'white pens' were - it had clearly sunk and soaked into the page, leaving no indentations, neither bleaching the paper nor fading, but staying exactly the same. A chilling thought by itself. And even if he had made the book, and it was really nothing more than something to exercise frustration on, why did he hide it such a risky manner?

This note will not take effect unless the writer has the person's face in their mind when writing his/her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected.

If the cause of death is written within 40 seconds of writing the person's name, it will happen.

What if someone wrote the name, and then, within 40 seconds, someone else wrote the cause of death? Would that count? And what if the cause of death was written first? Sayu knew now that Light hadn't made this – there were too many loopholes; if he'd come up with the rules, he would've made them clearer. So whose invention was this? Someone on the internet? Was this a trend going around that Sayu was unaware of?

If the cause of death is not specified, the person will simply die of a heart attack.

Well, that was a silly default to have. Not everyone was in danger of heart attacks – most people who had heart attacks already had weak hearts. Wouldn't it be simpler if they just died of the nearest potential accident? Those were far more common than heart attacks – and less suspicious, if the subject was healthy. This had to be a joke notebook going around – whoever had made it hadn't had the slightest idea what they were doing.

And yet – Light had hidden it in such a dangerous way... What could explain that?

After writing the cause of death, details of the death should be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

There was something she was missing here, Sayu was sure of it. But she took a wet towel and washed off her notes, deleted the translation, and went to bed. She would sleep on it – tomorrow, she might remember what it was.

~

Kira. Of course.

At lunch, one of her friends had doodled Lind L. Tailor's name in their notebook, in English and Katakana. Sayu had only heard the name on television while she was in another room, just before Kira killed him – she had rushed in to see what was happening, and the screen had already cut to L's real announcement.

Sayu had hoped that Light had found something true and beautiful, a hobby that would truly challenge and delight his intellect, distract him from the ills of society that plagued him and their father. But no, he had found something much worse, something that would only take the false idea of justice and twist it to hurt himself and others.

This notebook could have been an intriguing mystery, something to investigate with science, an experiment Sayu would have been all too happy to participate in, but Light (Kira) only seemed interested in using it as a tool for vigilante execution. It was no wonder that her brother had begun to look sick.

When she went home that day, and saw a tall, dark, frightening figure floating behind her brother, her heart almost stopped, then started beating like her life was in danger.

Sayu had quickly looked away, but made it look casual, like she was looking down to kick off her shoes. Light was acting normal – she had better act normal too. Whatever it was, it might not want anyone to see it. Knowing what Light had in his desk, that it worked... Sayu had no desire to risk incurring the wrath of a supernatural being.

(She did, of course, consider that she might be hallucinating. But such things either tended to run in families, or be triggered by something else, like immediate trauma or hallucinogens. The former were both untrue in her case, and the latter seemed highly unlikely. Besides, this was too coincidental, after having just discovered Light's secret – and Sayu wasn't such a rigid thinker as to deny the possible existence of spirits.)

The real question was, how could she see it? Sayu observed it carefully in her peripheral vision, always making sure to be focusing on something else as she and Light set the table.

It had enormous feathered wings, but it didn't seem to be using them much, only making the apparently minimal effort it took for it to float, seemingly not displacing any air as it did so. Its face was almost human-like, but its expression was perfectly blank as it surveyed the room, scratching its side. If it were human, Sayu would have interpreted its body language as bored.

At some point as they were eating (while Sayu kept stealing glances at the monster), it began to chuckle.

She hadn't even recognized it as laughter at first – it had taken every ounce of her self-control to keep from reacting when she heard it. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Light jump - very, very slightly. So he could see it too.

"Funny," it said, its voice like the wind lifting dust across a field. And then it became quiet again.

Light was tense for the rest of the meal. Sayu could practically feel his mind racing, trying to analyze what it meant by that.

How much did he know about the creature? If it could speak, did it speak to him? How long had he been seeing it? When had it come to him, started following him?

Was Light in danger?

~

It wasn't long before she saw it again.

Sayu was completing her homework before bed (she preferred to rest after school, relax with books, manga and other distractions, then do her homework at night. It took minimal effort to get average grades, and she knew how to cover up the bags under her eyes). Only her desk lamp was on, and her room was dark.

It was hard to focus, knowing the creature might still be in the house. Was it with Light? How could he sleep if it was? Was he asleep? Did the creature sleep? What was it?

"Hi," said a hoarse, hollow voice above her head.

Sayu stifled a screech – and looked up.

Chapter Text

Above her, there was a pale, inhuman face, sticking out of the ceiling. Its smile was full of terribly sharp teeth. Sayu swallowed, willing her pulse to calm itself. “Hello.”

The face began to lower itself from the ceiling, a neck, shoulders and wings following. Sayu stood up out of her chair and backed up a ways as the creature descended and finally crossed its legs, floating upside-down and looking at her with eerie yellow eyes.

“You can see me. You shouldn't be able to see me.”

Its voice was deep, and alien – there were no layers to it, like they did in the movies to make it sound strange, but it was more chilling than anything Sayu could have imagined. “You must know about the Death Note, then?”

Sayu could only nod, her voice caught somewhere in her throat. The creature continued, its tone turning curious – an oddly human touch. “How? Your brother took a lot of precautions to keep it hidden. Even I was impressed. Are you a family of geniuses?”

Sayu managed to find her voice again, though barely. “Something like that,” she rasped.

There was a pause, and they carefully studied one another. Her eyes glanced over his jewelry, the clothes sewn into his skin – was it all real, she wondered, or an illusion to cover up something malevolent and incomprehensible?

He (for it was easier for Sayu to think of this being as masculine) broke the silence. “What are you going to do, now that you know Light is Kira?” The creature's eyes flashed scarlet as he leaned forward, unnervingly focused; Sayu could see herself reflected in his pupils.

“Nothing,” she said, her voice much calmer than she felt. “I'm sad Light thinks he has an obligation to kill people, which is an unpleasant business, but otherwise I don't care.” And wasn't it strangely freeing, to say that? That she cared about her brother's mental health, and other people's lives meant nothing to her? The human right to life was just a social construct, after all, the only real consequences for murder being the grief and anger of loved ones, and the guilt of the person who committed the so-called crime. It took a toll on the soul, if such a thing existed, and Sayu didn't want that for Light.

The creature was silent as he slowly turned himself upright to look at her properly. “Interesting,” he said. Sayu hoped that was a good thing.

“I suppose Light was right, about humans hiding their real selves from each other.” The creature cocked his head to the side. “My name is Ryuk.”

“You are, ah, 'Mister' Ryuk?” Sayu asked, recalling a little of what she had learned about gendered English honorifics.

“I suppose. I don't have a family name – I'm just, well, Ryuk.”

“It is...interesting, to meet you then, Ryuk-san.” Sayu couldn't bring herself to honestly say it was a pleasure. “May I ask why you're following my brother?”

“Oh.” He tilted his head. “Well, I have to now. You see, the Death Note was once mine, until I sent it to the human realm. Now it is his, because he was the one to pick it up. I must follow him until the day he dies.”

Seeing Sayu's expression, Ryuk seemed to realize this wasn't a helpful explanation. “I'm a shinigami,” he added, equally unhelpfully.

Sayu sighed and shakily sat back down. He didn't seem to be an imminent threat for now, though it would probably be unwise to discount all danger. And she had questions. “Is there maybe a beginning you could start from? What a shinigami actually is, what a 'Death Note' is, where you come from?”

~

In the end, the full story that he gave her wasn't much in the way of a real explanation. After he left (once she wrung a promise out of him to return and talk to her later), Sayu was left in bed, staring up at the ceiling, mind racing and fully in the knowledge that she would be getting no sleep whatsoever that night.

Were shinigami an alien race? Were the Death Notes advanced technology or just magic? How did they work? How long had the shinigami been living parasitically off the human race? There were too many questions which bore looking into – she had to dig out a notebook and write them all down as they came to her (in code, as it always was with things she couldn't afford her parents knowing about) and by the time she stopped to rest, her hand ached.

Too many questions, most of them about this supernatural occurrence – but as well, she still worried about Light. Should she stop him? Out of duty to her brother, if not to society? It might end up being against his will, and Sayu's complicated and atypical sense of morality only complicated matters. She almost envied Light for his simplified view of ethics – to him, it really was that easy to make a decision about the 'right' thing to do.

She would never personally kill someone, unless they were threatening the safety or happiness of her or someone she loved. The potential for self-torture was too great. It might be easy for Light, she supposed, considering he didn't seem to view the people he was killing as innocent, but did it really matter if they were or not? They were as human as he was, as anyone they knew or went to school with. Would he kill his own family, if he found out one of them had committed murder? That kind of betrayal was unthinkable to Sayu - she did not judge the ones she loved, and would take their secrets to the grave.

Too much, too many thoughts flying through her head, too late at night to be dealing with them; more than ever, Sayu wished she had someone she could talk to about all this, someone closer than just a friend, someone at her level of intellectual and emotional distance from others, someone to reflect her view of the universe off of to see if any of it made sense.

She wondered if Light ever felt this kind of loneliness, or if he was satisfied, even proud of the fact that he was so unique.

As arrogant as that perception sounded, she almost hoped the latter were the case. The former was so crushing and dreadful she could hardly stand it at times.

Sayu, having just confirmed that there was an afterlife, wondered if maybe she could just wash her hands of these earthly concerns once and for all. What were the qualifications for getting into Heaven? Somehow, she doubted Ryuk knew, and Sayu suspected she might not even meet them. Besides, there were just too many questions... God, why her? Why Light?

She turned over and shut off her desk lamp, trying and failing to banish her thoughts and get to sleep. Things always seemed better in the morning, but that was only the case if she was rested.

Chapter Text

It was the weekend. Sayu was reading a fluffy manga in hopes of clearing her head, and Ryuk came floating down through the ceiling.

Chapter Text

During dinner that night, Light made a dangerous, awful, arrogant, selfish mistake.

A news bulletin came on while they were listening to music, announcing that Interpol was sending fifteen-hundred agents to Japan to aid in the Kira case. Considering Light was mainly attacking in Japan, Sayu doubted Interpol would actually consider it such a high priority. A crack team, out of obligation, perhaps, but fifteen-hundred? She would have put a little asterisk next to the word 'agents.'

But then Light couldn't just say nothing about it and maintain a low profile, nooooooo, he just had to make a remark.

“Interpol is so stupid.”

Sayu couldn't help it. “What?” she blurted out in her disbelief. You know about the cameras, idiot! Now is not the time to show off!

Her brother shrugged. “What's the point if they announce it like this? If they're going to send in all those detectives, they should just keep quiet about it and let them work in secret.” Shut up, Light, shut up shut up shut up! You're going to get yourself arrested!

Her silent pleas did nothing, and Light continued to dig his own grave. “Those FBI agents were here on a top-secret mission, and look what still happened to them!” Aaaaaand he was drawing attention to his own handiwork. It was like the smug bastard had a death wish! “If Kira knows about these guys, he's going to get them, too, for sure.”

All Sayu wanted to do was shake him, pound her fists against his chest and scream Whatareyoudoingstopitstopitnow but instead, she kept a tight grip on herself and her impulses, and used all her willpower and strength to give the vapid, inane response that was expected of her: “Oh, yeah, you're right! Smart as ever, Light.”

(Oh, how dearly she wished Ryuk were here. He might've understood how hard it was for her to say that with a straight face, even if his laughter tipped Light off.)

But Light wasn't finished. “That's why I bet it isn't even true. This is just a ruse to put pressure on Kira.”

Oh, how Sayu wished he had stopped there (stopped earlier, even). But he had to put another nail in his coffin.

“But, it's pretty obvious,” he said with a goddamn smirk, “so I bet Kira's figured that out, too.”

Are. You. SERIOUS?!

Calling that move obvious, when here he was, practically jumping around in his underpants with red paint and a target on his forehead, shouting 'I'm Kira, I'm Kira!'?! The audacity! The idiocy! If he weren't her brother, and making a horrendously terrible mistake by all but daring L to put him on the top of his suspect list, Sayu just might have admired how ballsy he would have to be to say that, knowing he was being listened to.

When Light was done eating and incriminating himself, and he grabbed a bag of potato chips to take up to his room, Sayu made a dig at him getting fat, and it deeply frustrated her that it was the closest she could get to beating the shit out of him for being such a moronic, thoughtless, cocky, selfish, arrogant dick.

~

Ryuk came to visit her in her room a few days later, while she was listening to music. She casually slung the headphones around her neck and slid her sketchpad towards her.

“The cameras are gone, but Light still thinks there might be wires.” Sayu noticed he had an armful of apples, and he was munching on them as he sat down on the edge of the bed next to her. “I have a question.”

Seeing as there were no cameras to watch her now, and she could dispose of the notes the same way she disposed of the pictures, Sayu wrote down her answers. Ask away.

“I know what Light does, with his smarts,” Wasting them, presumably. (Sayu was still mad about the news bulletin.) “but what do you do? There has to be something – you act like you're average, but you must have some kind of outlet, or you'd probably waste away from boredom.”

I read philosophy, mostly. Keep up to date with science. Conduct experiments and write anonymous papers when my family can't see. These days? Wondering about shinigami and the Death Note.

“Like what?”

There's enough holes in the Death Note's rules to drive a barge through. Are there other rules that aren't written down?

Ryuk shrugged. “Probably? I wrote down all the ones I could remember, but I could have forgotten some.”

So not all the Notes had the rules written down – Ryuk had done that for whoever was going to use his. How old are you? How long have you been using the Note? What's the earliest thing you can remember? Earliest period in human history?

Ryuk scratched his head in surprise. “You know, Light never even thought to ask me that. He's got a pretty one-track mind, that guy. Uh, I don't know, I also don't know, and the earliest thing I can remember is using the note on some old guy hunting with a spear. I don't remember when that was, sorry – shinigami mostly don't keep track of stuff like that. The first time I really remember us paying attention was during World War One or Two, I think. Some shinigami were panicking, because there were humans dying too fast for us to harvest lifespan. They thought you guys might go extinct.”

So you only depend on humans for your life? There aren't any other species? Can you use your Death Notes on each other?

“Yes, no, and no. Shinigami can't kill each other, only the Death King can do that.”

Who is the Death King? What happens if a shinigami runs out of lifespan? Are there beings other than humans and shingami?

“You sure have a lot of questions. Why haven't you asked any of this before?”

That sounded like a deflection to Sayu. I've kind of been digesting the fact that Heaven and Hell are real. Also, well, Kira. She didn't want to write anything too incriminating of Light, just in case. Are there any other beings?

“Erm,” Ryuk squirmed. Sayu suspected he was often embarrassed by his own ignorance, no doubt the result of a culture that dismissed curiosity and intellectual engagement. “Well, I don't know – if there are, they aren't really our bag. The only two worlds I know of are ours and yours. There might be a few of the others who know, but if they do, they don't tell anyone.”

And the Death King?

“He's uh, well,” Ryuk scratched his head. “I'm honestly not sure how to describe him. He's the one who basically rules us – we go to him for disputes, he gives us our Death Notes, he punishes us when we go against the laws. He's been there for as long as I can remember. No one ever explained to me why he's in charge, and I never really thought to ask.”

Does he have a real name? Do you know where he gets the Death Notes?

“I don't think so. I think he's the one who makes them – I can't think of where else he would get them. Some of the others think he created our world, too.”

Every answer brought more questions, but she focused on the ones that had been driving her crazy. Do you think your world might've been different at some point? More alive?

This left Ryuk silent for a few moments.

“I...” he began hesitantly. “I don't think so, somehow. But, it's kind of strange, isn't it? A dead world. You'd think a world that's dead would've been alive at some point. Somehow I don't think it ever was, though. Less like it was alive, and then it died, and more like it didn't exist, and then somehow it did. Like time doesn't touch it.”

He was silent, and completely still for some time after this. She supposed he must be thinking, but Sayu felt chills, seeing him so unmoving like this. Nothing alive on Earth could sit that still, not even plants. For a solid few seconds, Ryuk seemed to be a fixed point in space, immovable and untouchable.

Just like the world he came from.

“I suppose,” he said softly, breaking his long silence, “that's why I find your world so fun to watch. Things change so fast here. Everything moves and flows from one moment to the next, so fast. It breathes like it's a living thing itself. Compared to a still, lifeless husk like home – like me,” Ryuk held his palms out and spread his spindly fingers to indicate everything around them, “It's – it's like comparing existence and nonexistence. Apples and, uh, dust.”

She was caught on those words, 'like me,' on him likening himself to the world he came from, and before she could process it Sayu found herself speaking. “But -” she caught herself just in time. Shocked at her own lack of caution, she clapped a hand over her own mouth as she hastily started scribbling onto the paper. Ryuk looked surprised too, though as always there was some other, unidentifiable emotion lingering behind his eyes.

But you're not lifeless! You chose to come here! You chose not to lay about doing nothing! You chose curiosity over complacency! You're not dead, none of you are. Any one of you could come over to this world if they chose, all shinigami have it in their power to defy the Death King. The problem is that not enough of you think to choose something different to what already you know. Humans and shinigami face the same problem – we're too comfortable with the familiar and too afraid of the unknown.

Ryuk stared at the paper, and then stared at her, leaning in so close that Sayu was suddenly very aware of the details of his presence – his big, big birdlike eyes, his sharp, predatory maw, how he didn't breathe or give off heat, how his feathers made his shoulders seem wider than they really were, how his earrings only seemed to obey gravity when he wanted them to –

“You're fascinating,” he murmured, bringing up a spindly black finger (God, how his claws looked so long and sharp and dangerous) and tapping the top of her forehead. “So many wonderful secrets and keen observations hidden away up in that little head of yours, and nobody has any idea. How has no one ever wondered if there's more than what you tell them you are? More than what you show them?”

As she stared up at him, his enormous hand dwarfing her supposedly keen little head, Sayu desperately wanted to whisper: You're the one who's fascinating.

Chapter Text

Light's first few days as a university student were apparently far more eventful than he let on.

Ryuk had confirmed there were no hidden microphones, which came as a relief to Sayu, but according to an excited and invested shinigami, L was closer on Light's tail than ever before. The detective had come to To-Oh himself, under the name Hideki Ryuga (which Sayu, as a fan, found grossly insulting to the star himself) and was trying to provoke Light into making a mistake.

“I'll bet my entire Sailor Moon collection that he won't last a day,” Sayu stated grimly as she tossed Ryuk a Golden Delicious apple out of her bag. She wondered if this made her an enabler, but there didn't seem to be any bad side effects to the apples themselves. “Light loves to brag, he can't help himself. It's like a compulsion.”

“I dunno,” Ryuk said thoughtfully as he bit the apple in half, swallowing a massive amount in one gulp. “He seems pretty good at keeping his cool so far. Maybe he's learned something?”

“Maybe, but he's attracted the full, personal attention of L. Light's an attention whore and a narcissist, he'd probably be giggling with glee well before now if he didn't think it was beneath him. It's more than just him making mistakes in covering his tracks, he wants people to follow his trail of breadcrumbs so he can feel clever and admired. If he really didn't want to be caught, he wouldn't have created this whole persona in the first place.”

“Yeah, I kinda got that impression from him already,” Ryuk commented, slurping the juice from the exposed side of the apple with his pointed tongue. Sayu mentally measured it until he pulled it back in his mouth with the apple. As wide as my hand, and nearly fifty centimeters long, at least. It should barely fit in his head, assuming it doesn't purposefully defy physics somehow. “He's gonna be bored if he wins. Whether he knows it or not, he'd probably have more fun trying to play mind games with L while incarcerated than he would in a world where Kira reigns supreme.”

Bile rose in Sayu's throat. “That's if they let him live.”

Ryuk was lost in his own thoughts, ignoring the complicated feelings she clearly had about this. “Either way, I'm going to be the one that eventually kills him, but I'd rather he doesn't prolong it in such a way that it gets stale. I sure hope he doesn't end up going in a boring direction; if the game ends so early I'll be -”

“Leave.”

Sayu wasn't sure what part of what he'd said had loosened her tongue, but she was clutching her covers in her hands, her knuckles white, tears gathering hot behind her eyes, her throat dry and her stomach churning.

Ryuk looked down at her in surprise, eyes glinting from red to a surprised, owlish yellow. “What?”

“Just go. I don't want to talk to you right now.” Her hands were trembling as she stared up at him, trying to hold back the crying fit that was sure to come. “Maybe not for another few days.”

Sayu couldn't tell what he was thinking from his face, seemingly blank as it always was, but he silently obeyed, retreating awkwardly upward to the ceiling, and he floated away just like a balloon.

With him gone, she buried her face in a nearby pillow and let the tears flow. She was careful to keep her sobs quiet as she clutched it to her, until she had no more crying left in her.

Sayu turned back over, laying on her side, staring out the window at the sunset turning the sky a bloody red. Too readily, she could see the inevitability of her brother's death playing out before her mind's eye. All it would take would be a few, swift strokes of a bone-white pen held in slender black fingers, and Light would vanish.

She'd already known Ryuk wasn't human, couldn't understand some fundamental human ideas, like familial attachment or the fear of death, but it was startling to receive a reminder of it this way. A reminder that for all that she liked him, for all they had in common, there was such a large gap between her understanding of feelings and his. As scientifically rigorous as she tried to be, there were things about being human that she took for granted, that Ryuk had never experienced or perhaps even observed.

Sayu felt her temptations tugging her in several different directions, and she closed her eyes as she focused on naming and categorizing them. The first told her she wanted to push Ryuk away and never see him again, but that was an impossible desire to fulfill. The second wanted to ply him for all the knowledge she could get, try to stall or prevent Light's death sentence.

But would it be enough? Enough to put off just one of the consequences of her brother's actions? Enough to keep him safe from the supernatural terror that now dwelt in her home, yet remain unable as always to shield him from the judgment of L, the police, and the world? Enough to stay the hand of the reaper, but not his own, as he plunged further into this madness, into his self-absorbed delusion? Would it be enough to truly be her brother's keeper?

No, Sayu knew, had always known, that it wouldn't. She regretted refusing to see how powerless her situation was until now. She rose, swinging her bare legs to dangle over the side of her bed.

Her third and final want was to make Ryuk understand, somehow, how his and Light's game was affecting her, and sort things out for herself if it turned out he just wasn't as invested in her friendship as he was in being entertained by Light's deranged ambitions. This seemed like the most realistic goal, given that she wasn't sure if saving him was even possible, and trying to ignore Ryuk for the rest of time would make her life difficult, and she would lose the one person she'd ever really gotten close to. And after all, weren't you supposed to be honest with friends?

(Not that she'd ever really obeyed that maxim with her human friends, but this was different situation, which required different tactics.)

A knock sounded at her door, and her mother's muffled voice came through. “Sayu, dinner's ready. I've made hotpot.”

Sayu quickly wiped her tears away, checking her eyes in the mirror to make sure they weren't too red. “Isn't it way too early for hotpot? It's almost summer,” she called out.

She heard her mother huff through the door. “Well you clearly haven't been outside, then, it's freezing.” Her voice faded as she moved away from the door to the stairs.

“Okay, I'll be right down!” Sayu answered, slipping off the bed to stand. She checked herself in the mirror one last time, and headed downstairs.

~

The very next day, her father had a heart attack.

Her mother hadn't called the school, had waited for Sayu to come home, and told her about it then. Seeing her expression, Mom had hurried to put her arms on Sayu's shoulders and reassure her. “He's fine, Sayu, he's just fine! The doctor says its just stress – he's going to be on bed rest for a while in the hospital, but you can take the day off school tomorrow and come visit him. We didn't want to alarm you or pull you out of school today for no reason.”

She had collapsed and sobbed into her mother's shoulder, clutching her sweater tightly. Mom had hugged her back, rocking her back and forth with soft assurances that everything was going to be all right.

If it wasn't one thing, it was another. In that instant, Sayu had truly dreaded the worst, that Light had truly murdered Dad, just because he was in the way or maybe just because he could – but it was fine, Dad was fine, Light was fine, nothing was wrong.

Except for the fact that her father had just had a heart attack from the stress of trying to catch the mass-murdering serial killer living under his own roof. Somehow, that didn't exactly inspire optimism.

~

As Sayu sat at her desk, trying and failing to focus on her homework, a voice softly called out from one of the corners of her ceiling, “Sayu?”

She looked up, and there was Ryuk, warily peering down at her. “Is it okay to talk to you now?”

Sayu took a deep breath and leaned back in her chair, rolling it back as she did. “Yeah. Come on down.”

He floated down, sitting crosslegged on top of her desk. “L and Light went to visit your dad in the hospital.” There was no apology, nor did Sayu truly expect one. Ryuk probably wasn't even sure what he had done wrong.

“I didn't even hear Light come home. How did he react to the news?”

“...He was pretty shocked. The three of them had a discussion about Kira – L still thinks Light is a suspect, but your brother said he was willing to go under some kind of house arrest to prove his innocence.”

“Sounds like he's got some dramatic scheme in mind. Did L take him up on it?”

“No, he says there's no need right now.” Ryuk paused. “He seems to like playing mind games with Light, too. Light offered his own profile of Kira to try and throw L off the scent, and L picked out you as an example fitting that profile.”

“L accused me?” Sayu was surprised more than anything else – given the detective's high opinion of her brother, she wasn't sure whether to take such a suspicion as flattering or insulting.

“I think he did it more to bother Light than anything else. It worked, too – Light flipped his lid at him for saying that in front of your dad in his condition. None of them actually think you'd be capable of it – your dad said if you had the power to kill like Kira, you'd probably have done it to someone you didn't like, and then cried about it.”

Now that stung, hearing that her father thought she would do such a thing, even if he thought she'd regret it. He'd probably meant it as a joke, but jokes meant a great deal more than the one telling them often thought. Did it make it better, or worse, knowing that he wasn't necessarily wrong, even if it wouldn't quite be the way he pictured it?

“What was the profile Light came up with?”

“Eh? Oh, he said it would have be an idealistic, purehearted wealthy child.” Sayu snorted. “Yeah, I know, but neither of them argued that you weren't.”

“Well, it just goes to show that they don't know me that well anymore.” She stretched, and to avoid the sorrowful line of thinking she was about to go down, she added, “What does Light think of you disappearing now and then?”

Ryuk shrugged. “He thinks I just go around spying on you guys. I think he's glad to be rid of me sometimes – he enjoys having a witness around when he's got a plan, but when he's just writing names or doing ordinary stuff, he prefers privacy. I like that I don't have to tail him that closely – I'd get pretty bored.”

“I find it strange that he dismisses you so much, considering what you are. I would've thought he'd be more wary of your movements.”

“He knows I'm not in this to interfere in any way.”

“And he trusts that?”

Ryuk stood, looming over her. Sayu, completely enveloped in his shadow, started in surprise. “And you don't?”

She raised her gaze to meet his blood-red orbs. “I do. But I'm not so foolish as you think that you're incapable of taking action. You do meet with me without him knowing, don't you?”

For a moment, he was as still as stone. Then, he moved, sitting back down on the floor to be eye-level with her. “Kyeh-heh,” he chuckled. “You've got a point.”

Chapter Text

A few days later, Sayu witnessed yet another catastrophe of her brother's making.

It was sometime around 5:50. School had let out for the day, and Sayu had gone with Mom to visit Dad in the hospital.

Though Dad was patiently cooperating with the nurses, it was clear that by now, he was itching to get back to work, and being on forced bed-rest was driving him crazy. Right now, he was fidgeting with his empty water cup while impatiently flipping through channels on the little hospital television, and Sayu knew if he were standing, he would be tapping his foot, just like she did whenever she was waiting for something boring to finally be over.

Aside from the health scare, Mom seemed to be glad that something had finally gotten her husband to lie down for a few days. She sat on Dad's right side with a serene expression as she read a medical journal and sipped her tea.

Sayu, meanwhile, sat at her Dad's left, at the small plastic table that came with the room, with a can of coffee from the vending machine, doing her homework with a pencil that had a cute strawberry-shaped eraser on its end. He was insistent that her time there be spent doing more than just sitting around with him, and she mustn't neglect her schoolwork. Sayu was inclined to humor him, since he seemed to think her very average grades were in danger of falling through the basement (and he'd just had a heart attack from another source of stress).

At some point, Dad's finger happened to land on a channel called Sakura TV – Sayu knew it was typically a purveyor of celebrity gossip and other such tabloid tripe. It was good for when nothing better was on, all your friends were busy, and you were sick of your video games. Otherwise? It was trash, plain and simple.

But this time was different.

The first thing that came out of the speakers when Dad happened to flip to Sakura TV was “It was, without a shadow of a doubt, sent by Kira!”

And this caught the attention of all three of them. Mom gasped, Dad's eyes widened as he muttered, “The hell...” and Sayu found her herself clutching her strawberry-eraser pencil with white knuckles, her worksheets crumpling under her other hand.

The announcer continued, “The first tape announced the time and date of death for Machiba Seiichi and Seiji, who were arrested the other day. Exactly as predicted, the two brothers died yesterday at 7 PM of heart attacks. Who besides Kira is capable of carrying out something like this? From this fact, we have concluded that the sender of these videos was none other than Kira.”

“That's fairly slim evidence,” Dad said as he fidgeted with the remote. “Some nutjob could've just gotten lucky.” But he was still tense, and so was Mom as she clutched and wrinkled the medical journal in her hands.

Sayu herself was frozen, and couldn't bring herself to so much as speak. Her heart was racing, pounding like a massive taiko drum in her chest, tsunami-like waves of terror crashing over her, drowning her, filling her stomach with bile and sick dread. Light, big brother, what in God's name have you done?

“The envelope we received contained instructions from Kira telling us to air this, the second video, at exactly 5:59 PM today.” The screen showed a clip of someone holding a tape before the camera, marked with the numeral 2, before cutting back to the announcer, holding the same tape up in his own hands. “We have not viewed this video ourselves, but Kira's instructions state that it foretells yet another death, and contains a message to people all over the world.”

“Then why send it to them? Why not a major news network? Why would Kira send such a message via a celebrity gossip channel, of all things?” Dad was clenching his fists in his covers. “Is it just because they've been drumming him up? Is he so vain as to reward them for the flattery? Or is this supposed to be a punishment?”

Ryuk had told her that Light sometimes looked to pro-Kira media sources for inspiration, and to gloat. Neither of Dad's hypotheses seemed like him, but if the stakes had been lower, Sayu could see him sending a message to Sakura so he could bask in his own superiority.

It was hard to fathom him taking such a big risk as to contact the public personally, but with all the risks he'd taken lately, all the slip-ups he'd been indulging in – it was possible. It was definitely possible that he had decided this was a worthwhile effort.

And that thought made her feel cold to the bone.

This had to be fixed, and fast. She couldn't do it herself. The secrets had to come out, the family had to work together – at this point, there was no telling what Light would do to her if he found out his sister had given him away, but this had to stop, it had to, this had finally gone too far. Mom wouldn't give Light away – she would do absolutely anything to protect her children, even if one was a murderer, just like - But Dad? What would he do? A lot of Light's calculating ruthlessness came from him – if he found out his son was truly Kira, would he keep the secret, stay his execution, work with Mom and Sayu to stop his killing spree and get him discreet psychological counseling? Or would he freely hand him over to L, toss his own son to the wolves? Sayu desperately wanted to believe the former, but the realist in her could vividly see the latter happening far, far too easily –

“The time is 5:59 PM. You are now going to see Kira's video.”

Mom and Dad both sat up, straight as iron rods and tense as coiled springs. Mom's gaze avoided the TV at all costs; she clutched at her pearl necklace as her eyes darted around the corners of the room. Dad's focus was intense, narrowed and aimed solely at the screen.

The camera showed the TV setup in the studio, as the announcer's assistant slid the tape into the VCR. The lump in Sayu's throat swelled.

The other screen flickered to life. In English, written in Gothic calligraphy, was the name Kira. A second passed, and then a machine-scrambled voice spoke.

“I am Kira.”

Sayu's pencil snapped in her hand with a loud CRACK. Mom noticed, a gasp and exclamation quickly drawn from her, and Sayu had to collect her wits and shakily open her hand as her mother took the pencil shards away, fearing a splinter. Dad hadn't moved at all – he was as still as a statue, and Sayu could barely tell that he was still breathing.

So far, at least as much as she could tell, it was identical to the announcement that L. had made. Would Light do this like L had, in order to mock him? Would he have wanted to stand out, be different? The fuzz in Sayu's brain was keeping her from thinking, she was trapped in choking fog – now, she felt like she didn't know her brother at all.

“If this video is aired at exactly 5:59 PM on April 18^th, it is now 5:59 and 38, 39, 40 seconds.

“Please switch channels to Taiyo TV. The news anchor, Hibima Kazuhiko, will die of a heart attack at precisely 6 PM.”

Dad quickly switched, and Sayu could see the sweat beading on his forehead as he watched Hibima thank his coworker for talking about the traffic. Mom, her eyes downcast, handed her strawberry eraser back to Sayu, clearly understanding that with these circumstances, homework would be forgotten.

On Taiyo TV, the clock struck six. Hibima Kazuhiko's eyes widened as he clutched at his chest, and there were cries of alarm from the anchors at his side as he slumped over in his seat.

This was the first time in her life that Sayu had ever actually seen someone die.

She had known about the other famous deaths, of course, watched the footage afterward with her friends at school, when the teachers weren't watching. But she'd never been around to see it really happen, right in front of her.

Because of Light.

Sayu grabbed the trash bin next to her, ducked under the table, and threw up.

“Sayu!” This had gotten Dad's attention, and he tried to swing himself off the bed, but Mom pushed him back down with a shake of her head, and knelt on the floor to rub Sayu's back.

As she knelt on the linoleum floor, shaking and staring at her own vomit, Sayu was barely aware of Dad hesitantly switching the channel back to Sakura.

“Hibima-san has consistently referred to Kira as 'evil' in his news reports. This was his punishment.”

At hearing this, Sayu stood up, gently pushing her mother away despite her protest.

She stared at the screen, at the gothic font, at the piece of paper that was being filmed, at the timestamp. Tiny details leaped to her notice in an instant - white noise at the edges of the recording, no indication of edits or cuts in the audio, a voice scrambler that any child might have bought with their allowance...

The fog in her mind seemed to have lifted, her engines now roaring at full capacity, gathering evidence and coming to conclusions at top speed.

The speaker had referred to Kira in the third person. Light was proud of his accomplishments, and he certainly considered becoming Kira an accomplishment. He would've reveled in saying that he was Kira, that he was the one punishing the wicked. If he was making an announcement under that title, he would never have talked about himself as though Kira were another person, not even by accident. He would've listened to the recording, done another take where the mistake was corrected. Furthermore, Light wouldn't have put such little effort into the videos: Light had access to higher quality cameras than this, editing and more advanced audio software, not to mention the fact he knew better than to do anything that the police could eventually find a way to trace back to him, and this method of terrorism was so, so very traceable.

This wasn't Light.

This was someone else. A copycat.

A copycat who admired Light's M.O.

A copycat who had a Death Note.

Sayu's blood ran cold once again as the speaker's voice continued.

“But one demonstration alone does not serve as absolute proof. I will present you with another.”

Light was a minimalist – he would've considered the death of one non-criminal more than enough. This person... Sayu could only think that they must enjoy this. Light was many awful things, but a sadist? As much as he might live for this kind of power trip, even as far gone as he was, even just watching as a spectator, there was no way he could condone this.

She hoped. After all, who even really knew what Light was capable of anymore?

“My next target is a commentator who has also condemned me repeatedly. He is scheduled to appear live on air at this time...”

Sayu's gaze was drawn by the pulse in her father's straining temple, and her eyes widened at his expression. In all her life, she had never, ever seen Dad so angry. No, not just angry – he was enraged, incandescently furious. Did Light know that he had this effect on his own father?

She felt Mom press something into her hand. “I got this from one of the nurses, its for your throat,” she told her softly. “Are you sure you're alright? We can go, your father will understand.”

Sayu shook her head. “No Mom, I'm fine, I'll be okay.” She sat back down on the bed, at Dad's side. Looking at what Mom had given her, she saw it was an antacid tablet, and Sayu popped it in her mouth and chewed, the chalky taste smoothly washing away the bile.

“I trust that you now believe that I really am Kira. Please, listen to me carefully. I do not want to kill innocent people.”

Mom, who had returned to her seat, quietly scoffed as she attempted to go back to reading her medical journal.

“I hate evil and love justice. I do not consider the police my enemies, but my allies in my fight against evil.”

If it were possible for humans to physically spit fire, her father would've engulfed the TV in flames.

“My aim is to rid the world of evil, and create a just society. If all of you will join me in this mission, it can be easily accomplished. If you do not try to capture me, no innocent people will die.”

“He's trying to hold the whole fucking world hostage,” Dad growled. Sayu jumped as Mom hastily scolded him for his language in front of Sayu. In her whole life, she had also never, ever heard Dad swear.

“And even if you do not agree with me, if you refrain from publicizing your views in the media or in public, you will be spared.”

Terrorism, this definitely qualified as terrorism. Sayu very much hoped her brother wouldn't be inspired by this, that he still believed in freedom of speech – he wanted to be a god, not a dictator, so such tactics were theoretically beneath him; he wouldn't stoop this low, right? (As flexible as Sayu's morals were, she was still fundamentally opposed to dictatorships on principle.) “And then, simply wait. In a short time, the world will be changed for the better. I'm sure you will all agree. I can do it. I can change the world, and make it a place inhabited only by good, kind-hearted people.”

This sadistic terrorist seemed... oddly naive. Sayu certainly expected some radical idealism, but naivete? What kind of person could kill dissidents so easily and still retain that kind of innocence? Were they mentally ill? Developmentally challenged?

Mom, apparently having finally had enough of this upsetting news, pressed the power button on the TV. “We shouldn't be watching this,” she said firmly. “Sayu's already been upset by it, and it'll only make your condition worse, Soichiro. You need to rest, and our daughter shouldn't have to see such awful things.”

Before Sayu could try to protest, Dad looked at her gently, before leveling a stern, noble gaze at Mom. “You're right, Sayu shouldn't have to see this. But Sachiko,” and here he took a breath, “I am the head of the task force charged with arresting Kira.”

Mom seemed more aggrieved than surprised at this admission, and she held Dad's gaze for a moment or two, biting her lip. He was still fierce, defiant, filled with fire and conviction, and as Sayu saw Mom nod slightly, and turn painfully to switch the TV back on, she realized just why Mom had fallen in love with him.

“- A world with no place for evil.” Mom stood up.

“Come on, Sayu. You don't have to stay and see this.”

Sayu shook her head. “I'll be fine. I can handle it.”

Mom looked down at her with watery eyes, and hugged her, pressing Sayu's head into her chest. “I wish you and Light hadn't been forced to grow up so, so fast,” she whispered into her daughter's ear, and Sayu felt a lump form in her throat again. But that was your fault, Mom.

A nurse ducked his head in the room as Mom left to use the restroom, apparently hearing Kira's broadcast from outside. “There's live footage of what's going on outside Sakura TV, on Channel 49!” Dad quickly thanked him, and switched over.

“-reported to have collapsed in front of Sakura TV!” The screen showed a man in a suit slumped on the ground in front of a set of glass doors.

Dad's eyes widened. “Ukita!” he uttered in a horrified voice.

The camera zoomed in, apparently on the body of one of Dad's subordinates. Sayu slipped her hand into Dad's, giving it a squeeze. He wasn't usually one for holding hands, but he seemed to need it, as he squeezed hers back tightly. “We are reporting live from in front of Sakura TV. For safety reasons, I cannot stand in front of the camera, but what you are seeing here is live coverage! We urge our viewers to remain calm, and to stay away from Sakura TV – it is very dangerous right now to approach.” Whoever was behind this had to have seen him, at the very least. They might have taken the bargain that Ryuk had told her about, for a shinigami's eyes – Dad would've been extremely careful with the real names of those he was working with.

As the paramedics arrived to carry Ukita's body away, Dad released her hand, swinging his legs down from the bed, and stood up, snatching a suit from the bag Mom had brought.

“What are you doing? Are you crazy, Dad?” Sayu exclaimed with wide eyes.

“Maybe,” he said, rummaging through his other clothes, and he pulled a gun out of the inner pocket of one of his jackets. “But something needs to be done.”

Sayu stood hastily, chasing after him as he closed the bathroom door to change. “But that doesn't mean you have to do it!” she shouted through the door, a strange anger and bitterness rising in her chest. “Call your coworkers, send someone who doesn't have kids! You can't abandon us to make yourself a martyr!”

He opened the door, and Sayu found herself shamefully silent as he delivered a stern glare down at her. Dad's expression softened only a little, and he placed his hands on her shoulders. “You know better, Sayu. I love you all. But this is a war, and they need me to lead them on the front lines.” And with that, he was gone, rushing down the hall to the protests of the nurses and orderlies.

And Sayu was left standing alone.

Mom returned from the restroom to see Sayu's stricken face. “I couldn't stop him, Mom,” she whispered hoarsely.

She wrapped her arms around Sayu again. “It's alright. I don't think I would've been able to stop him either.” Sayu knew her mother's lips were probably trembling as she clutched her tighter and said, “Damn that stubborn man! Why does he think he always has to be a hero?”

Over Mom's shoulder, Sayu could see the TV screen. The TV was muted now, but the camera had turned to show an armored car, driving towards Sakura's doors, gathering speed. Her stomach plummeted. Well, I know where Light gets his reckless attitude from. She had never even heard of Dad pulling a stunt like this, though she felt fairly certain he must have done it quite often in his youth, given how ready he'd been.

The armored car crashed through the glass walls, and Sayu carefully switched off the TV from the remote, before Mom could see.

All they could do now anyway, was pray.

~

Mom took Sayu out to get dinner, and then straight home so she could get to bed in time, but planned herself to return to the hospital to wait for Dad to get back. Judging from her thunderous expression, Sayu guessed that if Dad came back unscathed, he was in for a lot of trouble from Mom.

Light was up in his room. Sayu had no idea how he must be taking this news, but she was sure Ryuk would come tell her later. She flopped down on her bed and heaved a big, deep sigh.

Their family all kept secrets. Sayu kept her intelligence, her many varied interests, and anonymous writing career a secret, Dad had the classified secrets of the Japanese police force, Light was an active serial killer, and Sayu knew there were skeletons in Mom's closet as well, that she had tried very hard to leave behind in her hometown in Okayama.

There were many times when Sayu wished things were different, that their family didn't keep secrets – or at least, if they kept secrets, they at least kept secrets together, and not apart.

What a team they would've made! The Yagami family could've taken the world by storm. If they had ever just been able to confide in each other, if Sayu had been able to tell their parents not to put pressure on them, if Dad's personal code had been a little more flexible for his family, if Mom were more honest with herself about her past, if Light had ever been able to tell one of them how he felt about the world, about himself -

It wouldn't have turned out this way, and none of these hideous tragedies would have happened.

How useless it was, dwelling on this. There had to be a better way of distracting herself from the possibility of something horrible happening to her dad, of whatever consequences of his reckless behavior came back to bite him.

Light really did take after Dad in the worst way, didn't he?

Sayu stretched, and stood up to go to her desk. It was past 10, around the time she usually did her homework. Unfortunately, it had probably ended up in the trash at the hospital – she would have to settle for drawing, and probably apologize and ask her teacher for extra credit.

All her teachers had taught Light before, and Sayu didn't like the looks of disdain she got from them every time she turned in a less-than-perfect assignment. She couldn't actually tell them that the feeling was mutual, so she refused to put actual effort into anything they gave her, even the stuff she might've found interesting. She was a little too advanced for anything they gave her anyway – and why solve equations herself, when she could foist them off on someone who actually liked mindless, boring busywork like that, like her big brother? She'd spoken online with experts in many of the scientific fields she was peripherally interested in, and they'd confirmed that much of what they taught in high school wasn't even applicable in the actual work; it would only be a waste of her time.

A third of the way through her first semester of high school, Sayu had realized just how phenomenally bored she was, and decided if she couldn't put passion into schoolwork, she would put passion into extra-curricular activities. Her family knew she wasn't a complete sloth – she had to have something to show them in her everyday life. So, at her school, she had joined the Poetry Club and the Art Club - and at her neighborhood's community center, she had joined a series of ice skating classes. Sayu had thought about ballet or another dance class, but that was so middle school, and she wanted to challenge herself. She wasn't insanely good at it like Light was at tennis, but Sayu wasn't quite a novice anymore either. And she was always on the hunt for more interesting things to do.

Sayu wondered sometimes if Light resented this choice. Before she'd started doing so many activities, they'd always walked home from school together; in middle school, she'd waited for him to come from the high school to pick her up, and she would tell him about what she'd done, what was new, and he'd give her advice on how to deal with teachers and problems with student drama. It was some of the only time they had left together, since Light's new high school friends didn't really want to hang out with his little sister. When she'd decided to do more after school, he'd started walking home after tennis practice alone. He'd never come to see a single one of her art shows, poetry recitals, or skating demonstrations, only spending his free time studying. Sayu was used to it now, but it still stung.

Ryuk came floating through the wall, interrupting her musings. “Did you see the news?”

Sayu swung her chair around to face him. “Yeah.”

“It wasn't us!” Ryuk was quick to defend himself, throwing up his hands. Sayu felt surprised and a little impressed that he had predicted she might be upset. “It's someone else, pretending to be Kira.”

“I know, I kind of figured it was too sloppy to be Light.”

Ryuk's shoulders slumped in relief as he flopped onto her bed. His face might not be particularly expressive, but his body language said everything anyway. “Light was pissed at first, but after a while he got really quiet, and then he started cackling when that police guy died. I don't know what's even going on anymore.”

Sayu's heart sank. Light couldn't possibly be thinking of going along with this? Of killing reporters who were against him?

Of course he would, an ugly little voice deep inside her whispered. There's a poison in him now, and it's spreading, its killing the brother you knew and loved.

“I don't even know any other shinigami who might do what I did,” Ryuk continued, and Sayu forced herself to listen attentively, shutting out the ugly little voice. “Maybe Gelus, but he's not bored like I am, he finds the human world pretty entertaining as it is. Maybe he saw what I was doing and wanted to join in the fun?”

“Who's Gelus? A friend of yours?” asked Sayu, eager to distract herself.

“I guess. I don't really have friends, at least not among shinigami. I haven't actually seen him in years – I'm not actually sure what he'd be up to now. He likes watching human girls, or at least, he did in the 80s.”

That sounded – well, pretty creepy, but Sayu was warmed by Ryuk's possible reference to her as a human friend. Maybe he meant Light, but she hoped he meant her. “What do other shinigami look like? Do they all look like you?”

Ryuk shook his head. “No, not at all. I mean, a lot of us look kinda similar to human corpses? There's a few of us that don't look like anything remotely human, or look like giant grubs or insects, but most of us have the same number of limbs. We all have wings, too, but those don't look alike either.” Ryuk's shadowy wings were currently put away in whatever strange pocket dimension they stayed in when he wasn't using them, and Sayu asked if other shinigami could do that as well. “Yeah, everyone. And not everyone's the same size,” he added, “Gelus is kinda smaller than most – he's about the same size as you, and he looks like a mummy.”

“Do you know any others?”

“Hm.” Ryuk scratched his head. “There's Rem, she hangs out with and looks kinda like Gelus, but bigger and with hair. There's Armonia Justin, he's the Death King's assistant, a pain in the ass, and he makes us say his full name whenever we address him in person. He looks like a gilded skeleton covered in tacky jewelry. There's Sidoh – I stole his Death Note so I could give it out – and he's, well, kind of a dweeb. I'd feel sorry for him if he wasn't so annoying, but anyway, he looks like a big fat larva wrapped in bandages. Gukku's kind of a buddy of mine I guess, but he gambles a lot, and we're not super close. He looks like a giant goat carcass with prayer beads. Oh! And Nu, of course. She's pretty much second only to the King himself. She's just a giant mound of eyes, or at least that's all I've ever seen of her. She's pretty reclusive, she can't stand noise – if you go visit her, you can't make noise, ever, not even accidentally. I could probably tell you about a few others, but those are the ones I know, pretty much.”

“There's a lot of variety in names.”

“Yeah, sometimes the Death King will name us, but most just pick whatever they think sounds cool.”

“Did you pick your name?”

“Me? Everyone else came up with it, 'cause of how I laugh. I tried going by other names a few times, but Ryuk kinda stuck, and I guess it's not so bad as names go.”

“What about your parents?”

If Ryuk could blink in surprise, he probably would have. As it was, he just cocked his head to the side and scratched his scalp. “Parents?”

“You said shinigami can die, so there has to be a place where new shinigami come from. Aren't there new shinigami?”

“Oh!” Ryuk considered this for a few moments. “Well, yeah, but we don't reproduce like that. We don't even have genitals.” (A wave of embarrassment came over Sayu, and she squirmed a little, but thankfully Ryuk didn't seem to notice.) “Gender is kind of a human idea that we just sort of ended up adopting, I think. Another thing that's pretty much up to preference. And relationships of that kind are forbidden – no clue why, since we're not even capable of that anyway, but the Old Man's laws are kind of all over the place. Maybe he meant for us to have kids at first, and decided against it. Nu might know...”

Curious to get to the bottom of this mystery (and finding herself eager to divert the conversation away from sexual relations) Sayu pressed on, hoping she wasn't still blushing. “Then where do new shinigami come from? How were you born?”

Ryuk went still, and stared into space for a few seconds. Then, slowly, he spoke again. “I don't really remember. No one really talks about it, either. I'm pretty sure the Death King makes us, somehow, but as far I know for certain, at least in my experience, is that at first, we aren't, and then, we just sort of are. Like I think I told you before, my earliest memories don't really involve me learning anything new, I just sort of already knew everything I needed to know – at least, what I thought I needed to know. Does that make sense?”

Sayu frowned, and leaned back in her chair, rubbing her eyes with her palms, and Ryuk, seeing that she was about to be deep in thought, pulled out an apple and started munching.

The shinigami world was presided over by a godlike being, a god of death gods, who created, destroyed, and inflicted suffering based on whims. It made Light's ambitions seem almost funny by comparison, but comparison wasn't a productive way of thinking about these issues.

Big-picture wise, whatever Light did just didn't matter, and Sayu shouldn't even have to care – the world, the way people behaved, would still always be the same, no matter how many revolutions or innovations or crazy megalomaniacal dictators did their best to change it. But on the small scale, from Sayu's view as an individual, living in Japan, with her brother on the loose with a weapon of mass destruction, she was deeply scared. She was scared for herself, for her family, for people she knew – and of course, for her brother, both for what he was doing to himself and the consequences of this killing spree he'd decided to go on.

Light was driving an out-of-control train, taking it off the rails, and insisting that he still knew what he was doing.

How Sayu wished they could confide in each other! Her heart ached thinking of all the things she wished she could say to him, tell him about what she thought. When they were younger, they were still as different as could be, but they knew they could lean on each other. They had never leaned on one another for anything like this before, but it would've made confessing her intelligence so much easier; perhaps, she even could have convinced him to rein himself in.

Was this her fault? Had her need to stretch her wings pushed Light away? Without his sister to lean on, had he gone into whatever rabbit hole had led him to believe wholesale slaughter would do anything to make the world a better place to live? That made him fail to realize how, if he could just hear himself speak, the ambition of becoming a fucking god sounded absolutely, incredibly, mind-blowingly nuts?

Logically, Sayu knew that blaming herself was useless, that this was all in the past and couldn't be corrected, and she should focus on finding a way to fix this before it got any worse, before Light completely lost his mind. Logically, she knew this.

But the human brain isn't as logical an organ as it likes to pretend.

My brother's sanity, my father's life, my mother's fear – my fault. My brother, my fault. My fault.

My Dad could be dead, right now, right now, my fault. My Fault, My Brother, My Fault.

My mother could be finding out she's a widow, could be dead soon - my fault. MY Fault, MY Brother, MY Fault.

Thousands of people are dead, people I don't know, people I could know, people I could've known, people that people I know could've known - all my fault. MY FAULT -

Her fearful spiral was interrupted by Ryuk, poking her in the side with one of his bony fingers. “Hey, I just remembered something.”

Sayu slowly pried her palms from her eyes to turn and look at Ryuk.

He cocked his head for a moment before continuing, so she supposed her expression must have been strange. “A long time ago, there was this one guy who went around saying he was something else before he was a shinigami. He couldn't remember what it was, so most of us ignored it and left it alone. I don't remember his name, if he had one, but he was so wrapped up in trying to find out who or what he was and how he became a shinigami, he eventually forgot to keep harvesting lifespan and wasted away. I think the Old Man tried to warn him off it, but I guess it didn't really work.”

“If he couldn't remember, why was he so sure?” Sayu asked wearily, plopping herself onto the bed to sit next to Ryuk.

Ryuk scratched his head again. “I don't actually remember what his proof was,” he admitted, “but no one ever really found anything to argue with it. Sorry, like I said, it was a long time ago.”

Before Sayu could do more than wonder if he had just spoken to see if she was alright, the front door opened downstairs, meaning Mom was home.Sayu could hear Light's door down the hall open shortly after, his footsteps going to the stairs. He would want to check in, of course, but Sayu had gotten express instructions to go to bed and stay in bed, and if she showed herself to be still awake, then given how she'd reacted today, Mom would worry. And Mom had enough to worry about, both their parents did.

Ryuk stood. “Light'll probably expect me to follow him right now, I'll see you tomorrow,” he said in a low voice, and then he began to float to the door.

Sayu had a sudden urge to beg him to stay. She remembered the whirlpool of tortured thoughts, waiting for when she was alone in her own mind, and knew that the last thing she wanted right now was to be alone. Ryuk was the only one who she might be able to trust if she told him, even if he didn't totally understand what she was going through. Every time they talked, he got a little less cold, a little less detached – still alien, still a god of death, but to her, a friendlier face than her own brother's. She was closer to Ryuk than she had been to anyone else in her whole life, Sayu realized.

She opened her mouth to ask him to stay with her, but the request died in her throat and her jaws clenched shut. For the life of her, Sayu couldn't put a name or a source to what she was afraid of, but she stopped all the same, leaving whatever it was that she wanted from him trapped, unspoken and undetermined.

Ryuk passed through the door. She was left alone, in an empty room, in her own mind.

Chapter Text

It started just two days after the terrorist broadcast and her subsequent mental breakdown, and it began with a shampoo bottle.

She had stopped by the store on her way home from school, with a texted grocery list from Mom. Sayu had just gotten her allowance – she could find a little something to bring home to treat herself, perhaps some chocolate to share with friends, new hairclips, a cute top...

But Sayu was heading through the hygiene aisle, picking up deodorant and soap, when something else caught her eye.

She wasn't out of shampoo yet, by any means, but she found herself stopping in front of it anyway, staring down at the sketched illustration of apple slices on the label. The plastic bottle was clear, the shampoo inside a golden cider yellow, and the cap a springtime green. It was a little too sweet, a touch immature, clearly geared towards girls Sayu's age. As nice as it was, she would've ignored it in favor of something cheaper, usually. But somehow, though it had nothing to do with the morbid, deathly world she was so fascinated by, it reminded her of shinigami.

No, not shinigami, Sayu realized as the bottle was scanned at the cash register minutes later; it reminded her of Ryuk.

Why would she do this? Why had she felt so drawn to something that he would like? She wasn't thinking of it as a gift – he didn't need to bathe, and she had clearly gotten it for herself. It didn't make sense. But all the same, she had done it.

~

The next day, at school, hanging out with her friends in the girls' bathroom, this question occurred to her again as she adjusted her yellow headband in the mirror. Sayu had used the shampoo the night before, and now she smelled like apples. On a whim, she'd picked the headband to match the scent that morning.

“Tanaka Tetsuo! Really? He's such a dork, though!”

To her left, giggling (one from amusement and the other from embarrassment), were Sasaki Yui and Nakajima Akane, the girls Sayu was friends with in the Art Club. Akane was blushing and wearing a pair of plush cat ears, which was unusual, but looked pretty cute.

“Well, yeah, but he's so gorgeous! And he draws those beautiful landscapes, and you wouldn't think so, but he's such a gentleman!” Akane adjusted the cat ears on her head self-consciously. “Don't judge me for wanting him to think I'm cute~ Sayu did the same thing when she had a crush on Sato in middle school! Right, Sayu?”

“Wearing cat ears isn't the same thing as pretending to be interested in swords,” Sayu replied, as she absently stared into the mirror.

“Hah! See, it's weird!” Yui teased, and Akane swatted at her as she laughed.

The three of them went about the rest of their day together, but Sayu was quieter than usual, preoccupied, her attention for other things very forced. A very big, obvious thought had sprung up in the back of her conscious mind like a soap bubble, and she found herself desperate to ignore it, to not realize what it meant and pretend she had no idea what was going on. She very intentionally, very carefully, pushed it away. If she deliberately didn't understand it, it wouldn't be true.

But that wasn't how it worked, and she knew it.

~

Laying awake that night with nothing to distract her, the knowledge that she was trying to suppress rose to the surface, and the bubble concealing it popped.

Sayu had a crush on Ryuk.

Hmm.

Well then.

As she stared up at her bedroom ceiling, she idly wondered if at any point in her life before now, she could've anticipated this.

Probably not.

The biggest problem with this, of course, was that Ryuk wasn't human.

According to him, the very concept of romantic relationships was alien to his species, and it was also, counterintuitively, forbidden on pain of torture and death. He was the specter of mortality haunting her brother, the serial killer, and she was a closet genius, informally diagnosed sociopath, and self-ascribed existential nihilist currently struggling with a moral crisis. And to top it all off, Sayu was a teenager, who had been on a date exactly once, and Ryuk was a supernatural entity who had been around to witness World War One. There couldn't possibly be more barriers to her expressing her feelings, and by all accounts, it was probably for the best that she carried on as normal, and pretended they didn't even exist.

Sayu remembered her crush on her classmate, Sato, in middle school. She had never had any clue what he went on and on about when he nerded out about sabers and rapiers and fencing techniques, never felt inclined in the slightest to do any research on it herself, but he had been so cute, and so breathtaking when he was passionately expressing himself – her heart had beat so so fast, and she had wanted to do anything, absolutely anything that would make him notice me, please please notice me, look at me, come near me, hold me, compliment me, see me, notice me -

Ryuk wasn't cute, not in the sense that she had ever heard her friends talk about boys. But breathtaking? Absolutely. A mystery, a wonder, a marvel in his quiet cleverness, a bridge between her and the unknown, someone so different and so exactly like her in many many ways – constantly underestimated and undermined by others, but utterly unique and so, so bright and insightful. He shone like a star, and didn't seem to see his own radiance.

He didn't see himself the way she saw him. Sayu wasn't sure that anyone saw him the way she saw him.

But why him? Why the ink-black angel of death that had descended from the sky to haunt her? Why not literally anyone else? Her taste in crushes had always baffled her, and this was new territory in so, so many ways.

Was it because he was the first person to meet her in person and recognize, even praise her brilliance? The first to truly understand her in a way that even she herself couldn't? She could see how that might endear and enamor him to her, but he was still, by every culture's definition, a monster. So why did she feel this rush, this attraction, this want to have him look at me, look at me like you look at apples, look at me like I'm the thing you adore most about this world, reach out and touch me, smell me, hold my small face in your giant hands, let me lean against your wings, let me put my head on your chest and listen for a heartbeat that'll never start, put your hand on my throat and feel my living pulse -

And Sayu awoke with a start to her alarm the next morning, feeling a little flushed.

~

Somehow she found herself washing her hair with the apple shampoo again. She tried to tell herself it was just to use it up, since she'd already bought it, but she'd had very little practice lying to herself, and it showed. She tied it up with a red elastic band.

It was a normal day at school, and an equally normal time at her club meetings. Today there was some open rink time at the community center, and Sayu thought it would be good to get some practice in.

She called her mother and left her a message, telling her where she'd be, and a short bus ride later, she was standing at the entrance to Tsumetai Skating Rink. Sayu kept her skates in her locker there, and with a short change in the locker room into a pair of leggings and a sweater, she was ready.

The air was cold, of course – the rink was surprisingly empty, except for a couple of moms and their child on the opposite side, teaching the little one how to skate. Sayu resolved to stay on her end of the rink unless they came up to talk – it had been a while since she'd had some alone time for this, and skating practice often helped her think.

A quick jog, a few stretches, and then she was finally ready.

After lacing on her skates, Sayu kicked off into the rink, a cold wind breezing past her face, and as if by magic, all her worries seemed to melt away, flowing freely away from her mind. Her thoughts were replaced with the memory of her practice list, the very concepts of death and doom lost in movements she ought to have been doing more often.

(Reasonably speaking, she ought to have had a spotter, but a public place like this was never deserted enough for Sayu to consider it worth it. If she hurt herself, she was hardly alone.)

Breathe in. Lean forward. Push. Glide. Stand. Breathe out.

Even if Ryuk returned her feelings, the risk of discovery was too great. Any change in their behaviors wouldn't go unnoticed by Light.

Breathe in. Lean forward. Push. Glide. Stand. Breathe out.

And it was highly unlikely he could even return her feelings anyway. She was a teenager. A human teenager, with a silly crush on someone far too old for her. Far too powerful. Far too frightening.

Breathe in. Lean forward. Push. Glide. Stand. Breathe out.

No, she couldn't, she wouldn't say anything. It might drive him away, and then where would she be? Alone again. Forced to watch the terrible, tragic farce her brother's life had become play out until Ryuk decided he'd had enough. Her heart broken. There was nowhere else it could go if she let this keep going. Heartbreak was the only thing this situation could possibly bring her. How pointless.

Breathe in. Lean forward. Breathe out. Push. Breathe in. Glide. Stand. Breathe out.

Chapter Text

Sayu had missed the broadcast that the second Kira had supposedly sent in reply to L while she was practicing – not that she had particularly wanted to, but having to hear of it after the fact was irritating, as Ryuk couldn't give her the full picture, and her mother hadn't recorded it. The gist of it seemed to be that the police had refused to work with them, and they had issued threats in return. But there was something else to worry about.

Light had confided in Ryuk that he planned to try to 'use' the other Kira to kill L and act as a scapegoat. To a point, this actually kindled some hope in Sayu – the authorities by and large seemed too scared of Kira to fight him without L, and if Light succeeded in either one of these things, it would mean her brother was all the safer. Her real fear, was, as always, that Light would do something arrogant and stupid, which was almost a given at this point.

She lay awake that night, smelling apples, grim thoughts churning in her head.

~

Another day, another broadcast, another reason to strangle Light in his sleep before he got himself executed.

A new video, this time higher quality. The background was full of sparkles, playing off the double meaning of the name. “I am Kira. The true Kira. The creator of the video shown on Sakura TV is a fake.”

For God's sake. Sayu prayed this was another copycat.

“At this time, I will show leniency to the person claiming to be me, by assuming he only did so in an attempt to help me achieve my goals.”

It sounded like Light. It sounded far too much like Light. Her older brother was giving her gray hairs before she was even twenty.

“However, killing and threatening the lives of innocent police officers goes against my will. It only causes chaos, and interferes with my desire for people to understand my purpose.”

Sayu snorted. Like killing FBI agents didn't cause any chaos.

“If the person who claims to be me sympathizes with my goals, and wishes to assist me, then I ask that they first try to understand my will. If they do not heed my warning and continue to act in this manner, I will be forced to pass judgment on them.”

This was its own form of terrorism, but at least this time it was targeted at the copycat. That didn't mean Sayu was happy.

~

“So, uh, that whole thing was actually L's idea.”

She blinked. “Say what now?”

“Yeah, he recruited Light to help him 'catch Kira.' They're staging messages from the real Kira to get at the second one, and Light thinks L is gonna try and use this to see what Light's gonna do and if he can get dirt on him – it's gotten really complicated really fast.”

Sayu rubbed her temples. “Far more complicated than it needs to be, at least. Showoffs.”

“Light seems really pleased.”

She threw her hands in the air. “Of course he is! He's gotten to make his first public announcement as Kira with the seal of approval from L. He must think it's his birthday.”

If only he would stop treating this like a game. Light may never have had much of a childhood, but why couldn't he see that there was so much more to this than just him and L playing cat and mouse? Why did he have to have a child's selfishness?

~

“It's official, the second Kira has the eyes,” Ryuk said as he sniffed an apple pastry she'd gotten him from a bakery down the street after school.

It had become their latest habit for Ryuk to come report to Sayu after Light's meetings with L. She appreciated it, even if all they seemed to talk about these days was Light and his dumbass decisions. It was all she could really bring herself to talk to him about without verging into dangerous territory, feelings-wise. “He wants to meet with Light. He mentioned 'showing each other their shinigamis' as a way of confirming identities, and L flipped the fuck out.”

“L did? But as far as he knows, shinigami are myths...”

“Yeah, but Light mentioned shinigami in his secret message to L.” Sayu threw her head down onto her desk with a thunk. “Don't worry, he covered it up by suggesting that it was just a way of referencing the power to kill. L seemed to buy it. Still seemed kinda freaked out at the idea, though.”

Sayu lifted her head up with a sigh. “Be glad you don't have siblings, Ryuk, they drive you crazy.”

~

One night, Light and Ryuk returned home, and Mom asked where Light had been disappearing to.

“I have a girlfriend now, Mom.” Light's face and voice were too confident for that to be the truth. Ryuk's chuckle confirmed it, even if Sayu hadn't known where they'd been going all this time.

“Whoa, what? Light has a girlfriend? How?” Sayu mocked over her bag of chips.

“Oh come on now, I'm eighteen years old and a university student, of course I do.” Light began heading upstairs, and Sayu rolled her eyes where he couldn't see. “Good luck to you too, on that front, Sayu,” he added in a teasing voice.

A blush rushed unbidden to her face. “I – but – I don't need any luck for that yet!” The fact he'd unknowingly said it front of her crush made it so much worse.

“Aren't you going to have dinner, Light?”

“No thanks, I ate at the hotel.”

Ah, a chance to divert it back on him! “Oooh, a hotel, how scandalous!”

Up in her room after dinner, Sayu groaned into her pillow.

It had almost been like when they were younger again, playfully teasing each other about nothing. Almost made it easy to forget that everything had changed.

“He's looking for the second Kira in Aoyama on the 22^nd.” Sayu jumped as Ryuk came floating through the wall. “Sorry.”

Sayu waved it aside. “It's fine. So he's meeting them?”

“Not meeting them, apparently he doesn't want them to know its him.”

“Shocking, he's finally making a smart decision for once.”

~

There was apparently no luck in Aoyama, or the other place L suspected the second Kira might be, but the copycat claimed to have found Kira anyway.

The police were on TV during dinner, offering to reward the second Kira for turning the original in. Sayu hoped that the second Kira didn't actually know. They certainly didn't seem smart enough, and Tokyo was an awfully big city...

~

The doorbell rang. Sayu went to answer it.

A bottle-blond beauty in a skimpy lolita-goth getup was on the other side, and Sayu felt very ugly by contrast, answering the door in her pajamas. Who goes out this late, to a suburban neighborhood, dressed like that? And how the hell does she pull that look off without looking like an idiot?

The unfairly gorgeous girl bowed politely. “Good evening, my name is Amane Misa. I'm sorry to disturb you, but Light left his important notebook at school, so I brought it...”

Sayu was frozen for exactly one second...

Her walls snapped back up, and she mentally slapped a mask onto her face. She didn't exist.

Yagami Sayu was answering the door for a friend of her big brother's. He'd left his notebook at school, his friend was here to return it.

“Oh, just a moment!” Sayu called to Light up the stairs. “Light! Your friend is here to drop off your notebook!”

Light came down swiftly, and stared at the woman, going out to the front porch and shutting the door behind him without saying a single word.

Sayu let out a shaky breath.

That had to be the second Kira. The mention of the notebook might have been a coincidence, but Light's reaction on seeing the stranger confirmed it. That was no friend from school.

After about a minute, they both entered the house together. Sayu wasn't sure why she hadn't run away up to her room yet – perhaps she was fascinated by the train wreck her brother's life had become. Maybe she had been afraid that that would be the last time she ever saw Light alive.

Light nodded to Mom. “Mom, she came all this way, could you please bring some tea up to my room?”

Mom had a strange expression on her face herself. “Sure. Welcome to our home.”

Sayu found herself and Mom staring at the two of them as they went upstairs. Something in Mom's eyes while they did so was... wrong.

This whole situation, the second Kira, Light inviting her in, that horrible expression on Mom's face - she couldn't stand it, she had to defuse the tension somehow. “Hey...” she whispered, “Do you think that's Light's girlfriend? I can see her panties...”

Mom shook her head and scoffed, but there was the ghost of a smile on her face as she left to go prepare the tea. The alien look in her eyes was gone. “Of course not, Sayu – and that's not funny! Don't be so rude.”

~

Sayu had no desire to risk eavesdropping, so when Light, Ryuk, and Misa finally emerged from her brother's room at 11:30, she had no idea what the subject of their conversation had been.

“She seems nice enough,” Mom muttered as she washed the teacups more vigorously than necessary. “Even if she does dress like... That.”

Sayu couldn't bring herself to say anything. It says so much about how little our family knows one another, she thought, that neither Mom nor Light can suspect each other of being murderers.

~

At one in the morning, when her room was dark, Ryuk came to see her again.

He didn't say anything at first, just stood in the corner like a ghost in a horror movie. “Ryuk?” Sayu prompted as she sat up. “What happened?”

Ryuk slowly sat down on the floor. “Learned some interesting stuff, that's all.”

“Like what?” He was clearly lost in thought, unnaturally still, like he always was when he was thinking. Most humans would fidget, but he never moved. Just stared at nothing the whole time. Sometimes he stared at her instead – was it weird that she found that more palatable?

“That girl, Misa, she has her own shinigami. Her name's Rem.”

Her. Something about that put a lump in Sayu's throat. Don't be foolish! Romance is forbidden, and they can't feel things like that anyway – there's no reason be jealous!

“Rem said that she loves Misa. That if Light tried to kill Misa, she'd kill him.” He curled his hand into a loose fist. “Never occurred to me that a shinigami could care that much. To kill for a human.”

Sayu swallowed. The lump remained, but she suspected it was for different reasons now. “You've never felt anything that strong?”

Ryuk didn't answer for a few moments.

“No.” And he didn't say anything after that.

She swallowed again. Still there. “Um. How did she find him?” Her throat was hoarse, her voice quiet. He would think it was about Light, and the second Kira. Misa. It wouldn't be untrue, either.

“The eyes. Apparently, humans who've made the deal can't see the lifespans of humans who own Death Notes. She spotted him in the crowd.”

Her throat was so dry. Why didn't Sayu keep water bottles or juice in her room? “Just the owners?”

“If just touching it affected you, she would've said something to Light. She's obsessed with him.”

The lump was slowly easing away. Ryuk seemed more relaxed as well, talking about something they were more removed from. Or, at least, something Ryuk was more removed from. “Like stalker-obsessed?”

“I don't know enough about human feelings to have a real opinion, but she said she was in love with him. With Kira. Told him she'll do whatever he tells her to, that she doesn't care if he's just using her.”

The lump came back with a vengeance, and a bitter taste entered her mouth. “And is he? Going to use her, I mean.” The girl was mentally disturbed at the very least, Sayu could think of nothing else that explained her behavior. If Light was willing to take advantage of a vulnerable woman's feelings, he'd clearly changed much, much more than she'd thought.

Ryuk was quiet, shifting. “Are you sure you want to know the answer to that?”

A short, barking laugh erupted unbidden from Sayu's chest. He'd certainly learned fast enough. “Well, that tells me exactly what the answer is, doesn't it?” She crossed her arms, looking down at her feet. Good God, Light. “Well, at least she has a protector. Let's hope Rem starts with giving her good advice.”

“She is a shinigami, I wouldn't count on it,” Ryuk muttered.

“A shinigami who loves her. I think that makes the situation a little different, doesn't it?”

He was silent another moment more. “Maybe you're right.”

His face was a blank mask, and Sayu wished, desperately, to know what he was really thinking. Her throat was too dry to ask. She should definitely start keeping apple juice in her room.

Chapter Text

The next morning, when Light came down for breakfast, he asked Mom and Sayu to keep Misa a secret from Dad.

Mom's face was guarded, and without pausing to let her mother establish the tone of the interaction, Sayu answered. “Sure thing. Dad's too stubborn, he won't get it.”

The guarded look relaxed. “Yes, yes we will.”

“Not just with Dad, though, with everyone – she's an up and coming model, she's not allowed to have a boyfriend.” Light's expression was impeccably bashful, slightly pleased. If Sayu weren't staying on her toes, she'd have thought he meant it earnestly.

“Oh, no wonder she was so cute.” Was that the truth, or just an excuse Light was making up? Ryuk had skimmed over enough of the details of last night's conversation that Sayu couldn't be sure. “I'll keep your secret for five thousand yen,” she added with a grin, and Mom smacked her lightly with a newspaper and a smile. (Good, levity seemed to keep her grounded) Light made that little smile that had never seemed fake before, and the joke even startled a laugh out of Ryuk.

For a few minutes that morning, Sayu could pretend nothing was wrong.

~

The very next day, Misa came back.

Unable to meet with Ryuk for very long in the meantime, Sayu had done some research of her own, ostensibly just looking into her brother's new girlfriend. It turned out she had previously featured in several magazines her school friends subscribed to, and had a very successful modeling career. According to several blogs run by her superfans, her parents had died in a burglary when she was a child. That did seem like a suitable motive enough to join Kira; Sayu could see that kind of resentment and trauma leading her down a similar path, if she had been in such a position.

Nevertheless, when Misa came to visit again that evening, Sayu made only vapid small talk with her, complimenting her looks and her clothes, and making her the same promise she made to Light about their relationship.

Under it all, Sayu was watching Light and Misa like a hawk. Her brother was tense, a mild smile plastered on his face. Not a desired visit, then. Another data point towards Misa being a stalker. Misa looked and spoke and moved like there was nothing but air in her empty, cavernous skull - but her eyes, every so often, would glint that same curious red that Sayu sometimes saw behind Ryuk's pupils, and the beautiful, vapid girl would look into empty space like she saw something there.

(Sayu made a mental note to be more careful to not look directly at Ryuk in front of Light, after the supposed couple had gone upstairs. )

Misa had come out smiling and blushing, and Light looked relieved to see the back of her. Behind his back, Sayu gestured to Ryuk to come talk to her upstairs. Midnight, she mouthed. Ryuk couldn't respond, obviously, but she knew he understood.

~

“We haven't gotten to speak in a while.”

“Yeah...” Ryuk scratched the top of his head. Something about his behavior was more stilted now – part of Sayu was eager to see it as him feeling nervous around her, but the crashing hand of realism came down as always to remind her it was far more likely he was put off by the presence of another shinigami. “A lot's been happening. You know, the other day, L said Light was his first ever friend.”

Sayu's train of thought slammed into a brick wall at MACH 8. “He what?”

“Yeah! He said he really doesn't want Light to turn out to be Kira, because he's the first friend he's ever had.”

Her brain rapidly went through the five stages of grief before circling back to denial. “That – no – that's absurd! Light's his prime suspect!”

“I know, real twist, right?” Ryuk said with all the excitement of someone discussing their favorite soap opera. “And Light's planning to have Rem kill L tomorrow!”

This was a lot. No, scratch that, this was too much. “Wait, wait wait wait – the other day you said Rem wanted to kill Light, right? That she was jealous of him? Why is she willing to kill for him all of a sudden? Explain things in the right order!”

Ryuk sat down, pulling out an apple. He had once told Sayu he appreciated being allowed to eat in her room, that Light was usually too much of a neat freak to risk drops of juice on the carpet. “Okay okay, sheesh. Basically, the logic he used on her was like this – she wants Misa to be happy. And Misa's in love with Light. She can only be happy with him. If L catches either of them, that's the end of Misa's happiness. So, Rem agrees to kill L. He set up a way to get in contact with them so he can tell her when he wants L dead. He just decided, like, right now, that he's going to kill L tomorrow.”

“And I take it he didn't explain his reasoning.”

“I, uh, I didn't really ask. Probably should've. Today was kind of - a lot to process, and again, it was like, right now, and I had to pretend I went to watch a movie at the neighbor's to come meet you.”

Ryuk swallowed the core, taking the time to lick every last drop of the juice from his coal-black lips and pick the peel out from between his pearly, shark-like teeth. It felt like a torturous eternity and disappointingly short at the same time. “It may not sound complicated on the surface, but there was that thing with Light being L's friend, and then they had another circular logic double-reacharound debate about how Kira would behave, and then Misa 'randomly' showed up because she couldn't wait to see him again.”

Another point towards Misa being a stalker. “I suppose all this happening on the same day is kind of weird,” Sayu agreed. “Misa being in the mix seems to have complicated things. The more players, the faster the game goes.”

Ryuk looked at her quietly for a moment. “You seem pretty calm about this. You don't think he's taking a big risk?”

Her lips quirked upward, and she couldn't stop herself from smiling. “Ryuk~ I thought you didn't understand human emotions!”

Ryuk looked very startled, and she laughed. “Seriously though, I do think he's taking a big risk. But you know what I've realized? If I freak out over every stupid decision he makes now, I'm going to be freaking out over every single decision for as long as this whole Kira fiasco goes on. It's his life he's playing with. I can only sit back and watch him ruin it,” Sayu concluded bitterly. “Stoic philosophy states that you shouldn't make yourself suffer over things you can't control.”

And the only way forward is through acceptance of the inevitable. Light is going to push his luck. He is going to cross lines I can't even imagine yet. He is going to get himself killed. Better to do as Ryuk does: not dwell on it, and enjoy the now.

“You're never going to tell him that you know?”

“What would be the point? He's stubborn, like Dad. He wouldn't take my opinions into account. All it would do is wound his ego, realizing he's not the only genius in the family and that I successfully kept it from him for all these years. He's better off focusing on L, without distractions that'll force him to make more mistakes.”

“L, who admits that he's biased in Light's favor?” Ryuk asked, cocking his head curiously.

Sayu blinked rapidly. “Oh, wow, I'd forgotten about that, like, immediately. Yeah, that should help him.”

It actually did put her mind somewhat at ease, even if she had never actually met L. Best not get too comfortable. It could be a ploy, and who knows how the guy treats his supposed 'friends.' Ugh, sheesh, this whole stupid situation is making me buy into the whole 'I know that you know that I know that you know' bullshit!

Unexpectedly, a yawn came up, opening Sayu's mouth against her will. “I guess I'll find out if my brother kills his enemy or himself tomorrow. Either way, I need to sleep.” Sayu stood up, stretching her arms. “Goodnight, Ryuk.”

“...Goodnight.”

If she had only known about the chaos that was to come, perhaps Sayu would've tried to prepare herself better.

~

That day was one she had promised to hang out with her friends at the mall. Yui and Akane, along with a friend of theirs from the class that took English before them (Sayu couldn't remember the girl's name) had all met up at the bus station, and started walking together to the mall, chatting and catching up. Despite her best efforts and the serene declaration she had made the previous night, Sayu couldn't get her mind off what was supposed to happen today.

L might die. That didn't guarantee her brother's safety – he had made himself involved in the case, he could be drawing even more attention to himself.

The four schoolgirls crossed the street together, pressed in on all sides by crowds, but holding hands to keep track of each other.

Far above, a billboard screen. Breaking news.

Teen model Amane Misa arrested on suspicion of being the Second Kira.

Sayu found herself being dragged the last ten feet by a frustrated Akane. “Sayu-chan, what the hell? We almost lost you!”

“I -” She couldn't deal with this and her friends at the same time. L probably knew Misa was Light's 'girlfriend' if she was arrested – her behavior wouldn't be too suspicious. “Guys, I – I gotta go. I'm sorry – something's happened.”

“Sayu!”

And she ran.

That would have consequences, she knew. Akane and Yui probably wouldn't speak to her for a few days. But Sayu couldn't help herself, this was, finally, too much, and she had to – she didn't know what she had to do, only that she had to do something.

Sayu took out her phone, and started calling Light.

“Hello, this is Yagami Light's phone. Please leave a message.”

She swallowed. He would be wondering why Sayu called him if she didn't leave a message. What had she been meaning to say to him, anyway?

“Hey Light -” too casual, more serious “I don't know if you've seen the news...” too distant and vague “I'm, uh, - are you alright? I mean, of course not, but -”

What the hell was she doing? Sayu hung up, groaned, and sank down to sit on her butt in front of a drugstore.

This was pointless. This whole situation was a massive pile of shit, just one turd after another. She was so sick of feeling useless and disconnected from something so important to her life, to her family. Ryuk viewed the whole thing as one big show put on for his benefit, and he had more control over the situation than she did and she was sick sicksicksickSICK of helplessly watching while her whole world burned!

Sayu kicked a nearby pebble as hard as she could, ricocheting it off the curb and onto the street. The feeling of the stinging sensation, even through her shoe, brought some awareness and calm back. She breathed. In. Out.

No one would take her seriously as she was now. Her deception had kept her safe and sane for her whole life. It was now the one thing holding her back from doing damage control and keeping her loved ones from danger. Not that Light would ever have been grateful for the intervention of his little sister on his behalf, openly a genius or not.

She could, perhaps, take on an alias, help from afar. But the idea of trying to enter as some mysterious third party with hidden motivations didn't seem like it would engender trust in Light. Sayu took another breath.

What happened to not making yourself suffer over things you can't control? The theory was sound, it made sense to Sayu, but it seemed like the reality was much harder to put into practice.

She stood up.

Where was she supposed to go? She could try to find her friends and rejoin them before confusion turned into resentment, but Sayu couldn't think of anything she would want less. She could try to go home, but home was... home had a mass murderer and another psychopath of a slightly different breed. She loved them both, but she didn't want to be there either, not when she was like this. Not when she was truly vulnerable. And Ryuk was stuck with Light, where the action was.

There was really only one place she could go, to safely be alone with her thoughts.

The ice rink was closed for the day, but Sayu didn't feel like letting that stop her. She climbed the fence to reach the back entrance, and one rewiring of a keypad later, she was inside.

This was probably the dumbest, most reckless thing she'd ever done, Sayu admitted to herself as she made her way to her locker in the dark. The rink didn't have a very robust security system, but it would still be obvious someone had broken in. The security guard was snoring on a cot in his office, having apparently taken a Valium when he started his shift, and his laziness and idiocy was her gain, hopefully. She should have an hour or so, at least.

A few minutes later, sitting on the edge of the darkened rink, putting on her skates, it occurred to Sayu that, breaking and entering aside, skating in the dark was pretty dangerous, especially without a spotter and with no one knowing where she was.

She didn't care. The pain of a broken bone, hypothermia, consequences following actions – ideas felt foggy and incorporeal in her head. Sayu couldn't think – she needed to feel the bite of chilly air, hear the cut of blades across ice.

Besides, she knew this rink like the back of her hand, she didn't think she was likely to fall. Sayu hadn't practiced crossovers in a while, either. She kicked off, eyes closed, and could feel a deep peace settling over her.

After she got out to the middle of the rink, she attempted a camel spin. Sayu could tell the angle of her leg was off, but she wasn't practicing for a performance, so that was fine. She tried again. Better.

Basic upright spins. The hair she had forgotten to tie up flew into her face, and Sayu felt dizzy, a sense of euphoria climbing in her chest. It had been so long since she'd done something like this, taken a risk just to get away from real life – the adrenaline of the thrill and the exercise mingled in her blood and doused her bones in a cold shock, like dunking herself in a snowbank.

Sayu laughed, the sound coming out high and giggly and echoing around the massive space. She was alone in her own head, with no killers and no lurking specters of death, alone and alive and comfortable and free -

A bright flash glared straight into her eyes. Sayu gasped in shock, the sudden change in her night vision driving sparks into her head like a migraine.

She skidded against the momentum of her spin, skates scraping against the ice, but couldn't stop herself in time. Sayu slipped, landing hard on her shoulder onto the unyielding, frigid ice. A hiss of agony escaped from between her teeth.

“Hands in the air,” a voice called out from one of the rink entrances.

Sayu hastily flipped onto her back, the melting ice quickly soaking her jacket. Standing in the space where she had entered, stood two police officers, one with his hand on his hip as he shone the flashlight at her.

“Hands in the air,” The one standing in front called out again. “Just skate over here, nice and slow. We don't want any trouble, now, and I'm sure you don't either, kid. Running is only going to make this worse for you.”

Still grimacing in pain, Sayu reluctantly got to her knees, and tried to raise her arms. Pain immediately shot through the shoulder she'd landed on, and she cried out.

“Are you alright?”

Deep breath. “I – I think I dislocated my shoulder.” Sayu took another deep breath, and continued to hold up her arms.

Well. This wasn't her proudest moment.