Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

On a perfectly normal day, a black-covered notebook fell from the sky and landed, with a faint clatter, just outside the main building of the NPA.

On a perfectly normal day, Touta Matsuda clocks out of work with the start of a headache and a feeling of deep resignation that this is just gonna be what his life is like, huh?

He likes his job. He really does. Having an actual impact on things, on people, doing his part to make things better, it’s all he ever wanted.

But eventually the lack of progress, the just-barely-not-enough kind of evidence, all the so-close-but-not quite progress into a case, it grates on him. He wishes he could do more. He wishes he could actually make things better instead of just trying to.

But all that’s fine. It has to be. He’s not going to be able to change that anytime soon. He just has to keep going on despite it.

That mental conversation comes to a brief yet juddering halt at the sight of the generic black notebook lying either discarded or forgotten outside the building.

Matsuda stops dead in his path to his car, head tilted, staring at the unassuming little thing.

“Huh,” he says, “Where did that come from?”

A few long moments pass. No one stops to pick it up. No one else is around at all.

“...Well, it’s not like I’ve got anything better to be doing,” Matsuda says, and then walks over. Picking the notebook up, he can see that the front cover landed face down: in a faintly ostentatious font on the front are the words “Death Note.”

Matsuda flips it open and sees a big block of words on the inside cover- he skims it, stuff about names and writing, but it’s all in English and he doesn’t really have the time to parse it at the moment. He was going home. Home sounds really nice right now.

But. Well.

He closes the notebook, turns it over, considers it for a moment, turns it over again.

It’s probably a prank or something, but even if it is, it’s at least an interesting prank. And Matsuda’s nobody important. Can’t hurt to take it home.

So he brushes the dust off, sticks it in his bag, and keeps walking.

-

The drive home is as uninteresting as always. Matsuda hikes up the stairs, throws his bag down on the nearest available surface (in this case, the couch) and then sits down to stare out the window for a while.

This is the usual routine. Gotta get your Thinking About Nothing In Particular time, y’know, because getting it in while you were supposed to be researching the latest sequence killer is a great way to get yelled at.

But after that, he peels himself off the floor and pries his bag open to actually read over the text in that notebook.

He sits back down on the floor (couch has too much stuff on it and he doesn’t feel like getting distracted with finding places to put all that stuff) to crack it open. 

The rules are pretty concise, really: whoever put this (he turns the book over to reread the title) Death Note out in front of the building clearly put a lot of effort into it. Rules for edge cases, wowee!

Though... he doesn’t even know why he’s entertaining the possibility, but what if it did work? What if Matsuda could actually do something with it? What if he could fix things?

He stands up to go find a pen. He knows a couple of criminals that people from the NPA put away, and if they happen to die (unlikely! Very very unlikely!) then it won’t be too much of a loss.

On the way over to one of three locations he’s pretty sure there’s gotta be some pens, he spots the TV remote and flicks the TV on as he passes by. Can’t hurt to have some background noise.

It’s set to some news channel- Matsuda isn’t really paying much attention, too embroiled in his definite goal of Finding His Pen to really notice, but by the time he does find one (black ink, mildly fancy in a ‘has-fake-gold-print-on-it’ kind of way, also he’s got no earthly idea where he got it) the newscast has shifted to-

“Breaking news!” says the newscaster. “There’s been yet another hostage situation! The perpetrator, identified as Kurou Otoharada-” An image of someone (presumably the criminal in question), complete with his name in scrolling text at the bottom, appears. The newscaster goes on, but Matsuda isn’t really paying attention anymore.

He blinks, pen still in hand. The broadcast goes on, saying something about there being eight hostages and several casualties, but all Matsuda can think is ‘huh. Well, I guess this is as good a time as any,’ and he reaches for the Death Note.

It turns out that forty seconds is an extremely long time to wait when you’re counting every one of them.

For a long moment after his count goes past forty, he thinks, oh, it was a prank after all, and then-

“Wait! What’s this? The hostages are coming out!” says the newscaster, the start of a hopeful smile on her face. “This just in: the police are saying that Otoharada suddenly collapsed, and that the hostages are free to go!”

The Note and pen clatter uselessly out of Matsuda’s hands. A startled bark of not-really-laughter flies out of his mouth like a disgruntled crow.

“Holy shit,” he says, to no one in particular, “Holy shit, it worked.”

Matsuda just killed someone. Matsuda. Matsuda, who can’t get any cases done without help. Shrimpy, baby-faced, incompetent Matsuda.

He could change things with this. 

He’s already setting up targets in the safe confines of his skull: corrupt politicians, serial killers, anyone- they could just... be gone. They could simply be no more. He’d do his research, obviously, no use in a new, differently biased judge, but...

He stops, hand over his mouth to try and keep himself from laughing. He could change things. He could make things better. 

The feeling’s intoxicating.

And then he has to sit back down because he’s lightheaded from standing up too fast, but the point still stands! Even if he doesn’t!

The reality of what he did and what that all means sinks in after a few minutes. He shut the TV off after the news that the criminal was dead, leaving his cluttered apartment in ominous silence, and Matsuda realizes that if anyone ever finds out about the Death Note, he is, categorically, extremely fucked.

He’s a murderer. People tend to arrest those. It’s a wild thought to be having, on what’s supposed to be a regular Tuesday afternoon, but Matsuda would be nothing without his ability to think stupid thoughts.

He has to be careful about this. About using it, about hiding it, about making sure that no one ever finds out. Because if someone does, he’s worse than dead.

He goes to bed that night jittery, though with fear or excitement, he’s not sure.

-

The next morning, everything is exactly the same, except, also, nothing is, because Matsuda has a magic notebook that can kill people lying on the half-broken nightstand he has that doubles as a coffee table.

After a long minute of deliberation, he decides to leave it at the apartment. Who knows if anyone’s going to want it back. The inside cover says it’s a death god’s notebook, and after Matsuda killed a guy with it, he’s inclined to believe anything it says. No use questioning the logic. You just have to figure out what the new rules are.

He gets dressed, shrugs on his jacket, and then basically sprints down the stairs, because as it turns out, at some point last night he turned his alarm off and he’s already late to work.

Getting a magic death notebook does not give you the ability to wake up on time on your own, it seems.

He’s tense the whole way there and breaks back into a sprint by the time he actually gets out of his car and to the building (he’s still pretty new, so this is his first time being catastrophically late so far, which is good, because he doesn’t know what he’d do if being late gets into his reputation,) resolutely ignoring the looks from all his coworkers and trying to actually get back on the case he’s being paid to solve.

It’s a slog. It was a slog yesterday, but yesterday he didn’t have the Death Note metaphorically staring holes in the back of his head the whole time, so it’s even more of a slog than usual. His train of thought keeps slipping off the tracks, and he catches himself staring off into the distance more times than he'd like to count.

Overall, his day is not especially good, even by his usual standards, which are not especially high.

He’s been recently relegated to coffee boy, so periodically he has to get up and stare at the rickety old machine splutter and cough its way into qualifying as a dispenser of any sort. It’s distracting to actually solving anything, but he’ll do anything to be useful, so he does it anyway.

Glaring at the coffee machine is at least more palatable than glaring at his coworkers. He has that. At the very least, he has that.

So, sure, he’s more tense and irritable than usual, but no one here really knows him well enough (or really knows him at all) to see that past the smile and the occasional well-placed corny joke. He’ll keep his established place in the ecosystem of the workplace, and life will move on, and he’ll be fine.

He’s finally actually gotten into the groove of working on his latest case when one of the older detectives- Aizawa, Matsuda’s pretty sure his name is- jumpscares him by asking how his day is going.

The pathetic little yeep he makes definitely didn’t go unnoticed, but Matsuda can hopefully write that off as being tense about the murder cases he’s been reading about for the last hour and a half, and not that he’s been tense all day for magic notebook reasons.

“O-oh! Hi, Aizawa!” Matsuda says. No particular reaction! He got the name right! Cheers! “My day’s been fine. Long, maybe, but it seems like that’s every day here!” He gives his best blindingly cheerful smile. No one can tell it’s slightly forced. Hopefully.

Aizawa tiredly smiles back, and says “Sure is. Do you want any coffee?”

“No, I’m good. See you!” Matsuda waves a little as he watches Aizawa leave. Aizawa waves back, heading towards the break room. (Really it’s just where the coffee machine lives. No one has enough spare time in here to take real breaks.)

He huffs a tiny sigh once the other is out of sight, lamenting that he’s going to have to get back into that mysterious and ephemeral groove again, and resigns himself to another day of not getting very much done.

Chapter Text

It’s been a few days since Matsuda got the Death Note, and a couple days or so since he’s actually started using it.

He does his research. In between trying to chip at whatever case they handed him, he’s researching which politicians have done what and what serial killers are out and about and whoever-slash-whatever else he can find and verify a hundred times over. 

He has to be sure, but he can’t exactly ask people about their opinions on it, so he has to be Sure, capitalized, italicized, maybe even trademarked. 100% sure. 200% sure. All the percents.

He doesn’t want this to get away from him, because he knows it very, very easily could. Matsuda doesn’t think he’s better than anyone else, that he can effortlessly pass judgement with no moral repercussions, so he pours himself into making sure that, as far as he can throw it, what he’s doing isn’t at least entirely morally reprehensible. He’s trying.

Maybe he’s trying too hard to justify this, maybe he’s just going to be a murderer and he should try and own up to that even in the confines of his own head, but the thing is that he cares too much to do that. He wants to have some semblance of a feeling like he’s doing something right. Even if he’s just clinging to false hopes. Because false hopes might be all he’s got.

But all the same, he’s still tense and nervous about it. Who wouldn’t be? It’s only normal, but then again, nothing about this is normal by any means. He should probably stop trying so hard.

Well, no, he has to try. To be helpful, to fix things, to try and make someone’s life better. Because, really, who is he if he’s not striving to be helpful? Even if the method, in this case, happens to be magic murder. If that’s what it takes, that's what it takes. Matsuda can’t afford to be picky about the way it happens.

What he’s doing is thinking himself in circles. Matsuda’s familiar with circles. He just needs to move on.

Matsuda slings his bag onto the floor beside the over-cluttered couch, peels off his shoes and his jacket, and shoves aside some various junk to sit on the couch and think about his life choices. He’s got a lot to think about. He sort of always has a lot to think about, except he can’t devote any time to it right now, because then he’ll go back around and around in loops again.

There’s a long moment of silence while Matsuda stares into nothing, head in hands, trying not to think.

Then there’s a noise like the biggest pair of bat wings ever constructed, and a voice that very distinctly belongs to a person says “Heyo.”

Matsuda is not too proud to admit that he shrieked like a little girl. Sue him, he’d been abnormally stressed for days.

What didn’t help at all was that when he spun around to actually see whoever it was that had somehow materialized in his apartment, he was greeted by the sight of a fish-eyed bat.. man... thing.

“Aw, don’t look so happy to see me,” says the fish-eyed bat man thing.

“How are you in my apartment,” is what Matsuda replies with, wheezing, because he just lost all the breath he ever had in his entire body from a combination of screaming a little bit and because holy FUCK there’s a Thing in his House!!

“I’m the shinigami tied to your Death Note,” he says, like that explains anything. “Name’s Ryuk.”

“I- o-okay. Sure.” Matsuda squeaks. “There’s a massive bat-fish man thing in my apartment. Maybe the stress really is getting to me and I’ve gone insane,” He says. He’s really just thinking out loud. He can’t tell if Mr. Bat Man Fish Thing (Ryuk, his name is Ryuk) is offended or not, but that probably doesn’t matter. On account of the probable sudden insanity. “Maybe I’ve actually been in the hospital for a psychotic break this entire time and all this has just been a fabrication my brain made up as I was dying. You never know.”

“Wow, so dour . Lighten up a little,” Ryuk says. He floats over to where Matsuda was keeping the Note. (Which is to say buried under a haphazard pile of crap, because no one comes into his apartment besides him, on account of the fact that he doesn’t really have friends. Also because his apartment, charitably, looks like a train closely followed by a tornado came straight down the middle of it, tap-danced a little, then ran out the back door. Uncharitably, it’s a mess .) 

Ryuk sticks his hand into the pile, rummages around for a bit, and pulls out the Note with next to no fanfare. He cracks it open, flipping through it with all the reverence of a middle schooler and a history textbook so thick it could double as a murder weapon. 

“Huh, you really didn’t write very many names. Were you tryin’ to be subtle about it, or did you just wanna take your time?” His voice is rough and scratchy, like someone throwing rocks at a chalkboard. Matsuda doesn’t know what to think of it, because he’s still reeling from the fact that Some Guy is In His House. Perhaps a magical Some Guy. 

Matsuda needs to stop thinking is what he needs to do, but he doesn’t have the ability to reach into his skull and turn his brain off, no matter how convenient that’d be.

“I was, uh. Trying to do research...?” Matsuda replies. How do you make conversation with the bat thing that shows up in your house, again? Matsuda doesn’t know. Nobody handed him the manual, and he is extremely out of his depth. Come to think of it, he can’t really think of any particular recent instance of him not being out of his depth. Maybe he’s just cursed. Would that make more or less sense than having gone completely insane?

“Ohhhh, so you’re one of those types. Well, I can respect the effort, Matsuda, but, I mean, you could be a god with this thing.” He swivels around, his face split in the unmoving lovechild of a grimace and a cheshire-cat smile. “And unless you were really unsubtle with it, nobody would ever be able to catch you.”

“No, I doubt that...” There’s gotta be somebody out there. Matsuda isn’t particularly talented or smart or really much of anything that one would attribute to their hypothetical ‘perfect magic serial killer.’ Somebody could catch him. Otherwise he’s concerned for the deductive skills of everyone, ever. “-Wait, how did you know my name-!?”

“I know everybody’s name. ‘Cept for when I don’t,” Ryuk says, perfectly uninformative. “You don’t have to worry about it.”

“I mean, if this is all my business now, I kind of do?” Matsuda says. He doesn’t know why he’s questioning this, because really he should have accepted that wondering how any of this worked was a waste of his time a while ago, but then again he’s never been much good at letting things lie.

“Eeehhh... Yeah, I guess!” Ryuk replies, dropping the Note back onto the pile of crap that is its new home. Maybe Matsuda should find a better spot, but again, it’s not like anybody ever comes in here. “Man, this is gonna be fun. You still care . That’s a rarity, y’know.”

“That’s... fun,” Matsuda says, because his ability to carry a conversation fled out the window and splattered against the sidewalk several stories down some minutes ago and he’s trying his best to pick up the pieces. “Are there, uh, any rules about this thing that weren’t detailed on the inside cover?”

“Maybe,” Ryuk says. “Not sure if any of ‘em are actually gonna matter for you, though.”

“I mean, it’s probably better for me to know beforehand? In case it does turn out to be important and you’d end up having to tell me at the last minute?” Matsuda doesn’t know why those were all questions, but the point still stands.

There’s a moment of silence as Ryuk presumably considers this, but it’s a bit hard to tell over the fact that his face doesn’t really emote very much. As far as Matsuda can tell from the five or so minutes they’ve met, anyway, which is probably an extremely biased source.

“Yeah, fair enough,” is what Ryuk’s eventual reply is. “I guess in that case I better tell you about the Eyes, then.”

“The what?” Very intelligent of you, Matsuda.

“Shinigami can see anybody’s name just by looking at their face,” Ryuk continues, ignoring the question. “The difference in how we can do that and not just anybody is in our eyes. You can make a deal with me to get your very own pair, and then you’ll be unstoppable.”

Matsuda blinks. “So what’s the price?”

Ryuk’s ever-present smile widens, just a bit. “Half your lifespan.”

Matsuda blinks again. He’s not really sure what to do with that. “So I give you half my lifespan and I get fancy eyes? How does that work?”

“Yeah, pretty much!” Ryuk laughs. “You don’t have to do anything about the deal right now, though. I’m free to hand ‘em over any time. All that matters is that you want ‘em, and I want to give you ‘em.” He tilts his head. “And, eehhhh.. Shinigami live off stealing other people’s lifespans. When I give you the Eyes, I take half of your remaining time, and when I kill anybody with my Note, I get all the time they had. So you’d be sponsoring me, basically.”

“O-okay. That’s good to know, at least...” Matsuda stops, thinks about it. It’s a decent enough option to have, in case things get absolutely terrible , but he doesn’t really want to resort to it at all. 

He’ll keep it in the back for later. Half his lifespan seems like a lot to hand over for an advantage like that, even if it would make him that much closer to being unstoppable. He doesn’t want to be unstoppable. If no one can get rid of him and he can’t stop himself, terrible things are bound to happen.

Matsuda glances over at the time (11:05! oh god how did it get that late so fast) and decides it is entirely too late to be having philosophical thoughts of that caliber. 

“Uuugghhh, okay, I can think about all that later... It’s late, I gotta go to sleep. I still have work tomorrow.” He can go back to having depressing thoughts about mortality and power tomorrow. Right now he needs to go to bed.

-

Matsuda clocks into work the next day with Ryuk hovering ominously over his shoulder like the world’s worst tutorial buddy. 

No one’s asked about the giant evil-looking bat fish man-thing, so Matsuda figures no one else can see him. (Ryuk told him so, but that didn’t stop Matsuda from having doubts anyway.) This is a very good thing, because Matsuda would have no idea where to even start trying to explain what’s going on with all that.

In other news, people have started to notice what he’s doing with the Death Note. 

They’re calling him “Kira,” and Matsuda has no idea what to do with that. 

He’s browsed some of the fan-sites: people adore him, adore the image of him they’ve built out of the negative space of his actions.

He doesn’t like it, but to pin down anything more specific than that, he’d have to really think on it. He doesn’t want to think on it. The legions of adoring fans chasing after the name they gave him scares him, and he'll leave it at that.

He overhears the other detectives murmuring questions of if Kira is even real, if Kira is truly just, about Kira, who is Kira, everything, anything. It's Kira all the way down.

It’s funny, in a distant kind of way, because none of them know- and will hopefully never know, if Matsuda can keep a secret- that they work with Kira, and he’s the one who scurries around getting everybody coffee all day.

It’s funny, in a distant kind of way, the divinity the public assigned him, when really he’s just.. some guy. Someone who got lucky and found a terrible power and decided he wanted to hopefully make things better with it.

He hasn’t actually gotten rid of very many people with the Death Note, he muses, it’s a wonder that people have been able to put together that it was one force. No, actually, taking a step back it’s pretty obvious. A bunch of famously corrupt politicians and serial killers all drop dead of heart attacks in the span of three days? Sounds like some kind of divine intervention, when you put it like that.

Then Matsuda realizes he’s been staring at the wall for a while now and tries to get back to work.

Ryuk’s mostly kept quiet, because Matsuda can’t talk back and nobody else can even see him. He’s been nudging desk trinkets around and aimlessly floating around. As one does.

He keeps getting the urge to just write down some of these names he finds in the cases they keep handing him and then having to beat that back with a metaphorical broom, because no, murder isn’t suddenly the answer now that it’s more convenient . Even if asserting that makes him a bit of a hypocrite. Matsuda’s prepared to be a hypocrite. It’s not much of a change to his job description.

Matsuda gets up again to go get himself some coffee for once. He doesn’t really like it unless it’s drowning in cream, but he needs to see if the caffeine will do anything for him on the ‘his head feels magnetized to the surface of his desk and it’s only, like, noon, how is he this sleepy already’ front.

There’s a TV set up in the break room, one of the ones they have mounted up in the corner like in hospitals. Matsuda doesn’t pay it any mind usually, because all it usually plays is news, but today there’s something of a crowd.

One of the people in said crowd sees his confused expression and says “We got news up from the heads of NPA! L’s going to make an announcement!” Matsuda doesn’t know who this guy is, but they’ve passed each other’s desks enough that he has at least a vague idea of who he could be. That’s his relationships with almost all his coworkers, really, now that he thinks about it.

“Huh?” Matsuda says, extremely intelligently. “Who’s L?”

“Oh, right, you’re new, you wouldn’t know- L’s the greatest detective in the world. If he picks a case, he always solves it. I wonder if they’ve gotten him to investigate Kira...”

So that’s who they’re sending after him. The greatest detective in the world. Great. Matsuda’s so dead, but that is a problem he will worry about later . He hasn't got the time right now. “And we’re getting an announcement from him?”

“Yep! Crazy, right? Nobody’s ever even seen his face before...”

The TV flickers briefly, then the previous broadcast- something about the weather- cuts out. “We interrupt this program to bring you a live, globally broadcast from Interpol, localization courtesy of Yoshio Anderson,” says a formal voice, perfectly generic, layered over the flat black screen.

Interpol? Wow, that’s new. What could’ve gotten them riled up enough that they’d want to make a global announcement? (Kira, probably, but Matsuda’s been trying not to think of his side hobby as a serial killer during work hours. It makes him feel nauseous if he thinks about it too hard.) 

Matsuda tilts his head and decides to stay and watch. Not like the five minutes this takes out of his day are going to make a monumental difference in that domestic violence case that’s been steadily burning holes in his retinas for the last few hours.

The screen changes again, to an even more formal newscaster desk type-deal, with a black-haired, generically handsome man in a suit at the forefront. There’s a placard with the name “Lind L. Tailor” written in all caps in a flatly tasteful sans serif font on it.

“I am Lind L. Tailor- more commonly known as L- and I am the only person capable of mobilizing police around the world.”

The people around him start murmuring, commenting on the man on the screen’s appearance, on the situation, wondering what this is all about aloud.

“Businessmen, politicians, and criminals alike have all been the target of a vicious killing spree, shaping up to be the most prolific case of mass murder ever achieved.” Lind L. Tailor continues, dub voice as flat and formal as an unpainted office wall. “This monstrous crime must be stopped. The perpetrator, assigned the name ‘Kira’ by the public, will be caught. I guarantee it.”

Something about this strikes Matsuda as a bit off.

They really care that much? No, of course they do, who is he kidding. Maybe it’s just surprising they think he’s worth their time, which honestly says more about Matsuda than it does his power to magically snipe people across the globe. He’s gotten too used to being a wallflower.

Really, this shouldn’t even be as surprising as it is considering Matsuda is one of the guys who tracks down criminals for a living, he should know better than to think they’d ignore him (Kira) but besides that... Matsuda’s probably being stupid again, but is this even L?

If people didn’t know what L looked like, if he was so dedicated to secrecy, why would he hand out a name and a face like this? If he’s the greatest detective that ever lived, wouldn’t he have noticed that every single target of Kira had both of those things visible to the public? That nameplate is glaringly obvious. Front and center. Hard to miss.

Maybe he’s just overthinking it, but Matsuda doesn’t think this is L, the world famous detective-slash-supergenius. It seems way too obvious to be from someone so smart.

Then again, it’s not like he can do anything, not here- he’s got no access to the Note, because he left it at his apartment where nobody but him and Ryuk knew where it was. 

He wouldn’t want to, anyway. Killing any investigators coming after him just seems like a bad idea. Why would he want to attract any attention to himself? What would he get out of making sure that people were afraid to oppose him?

“Kira, if you’re listening... I think I know why you’re doing this. But what you’re doing is truly evil.” continues Lind L. Tailor.

Yeah, I’m aware, says Matsuda, solely in the confines of his own head. (Just because he’s a dummy doesn’t mean he’s stupid enough to say much of anything that doesn’t mean anything out loud.) Doesn’t mean I can afford to stop doing it, though.

Matsuda tilts his head in the other direction, thinking. If this isn’t L, then what would L want out of sending this?

Maybe he was trying to get a reaction out of me. See if he could verify how the Note kills people. Matsuda smiles, just a little bit, small enough people either won’t notice or will think it’s because the man on the TV who is certainly not L said he’ll catch Kira. Well, too bad for you, L. You won’t be getting much of anything out of me right now. 

Really, it seems pretty brazen to throw away someone else’s life for that... Wow, I’m the mass serial killer and I’m the one wondering if that seems unethical or not. Maybe there’s hope for my morals yet.

He doesn’t realize he’s thought his way through the entire broadcast before Ryuk taps him on the shoulder and points back up at the screen.

It’s changed again, gone flat and white with a single calligraphy ‘L’ placed front and center. Matsuda isn’t sure, but he thinks maybe Ryuk is smiling.

“Thank you for letting me run this experiment,” says a modulated voice from the screen. “That will be all. May we meet again, Kira.”

Matsuda blinks.

That has to mean he was right. 

He was right? He was right! Lind L. Tailor was a decoy! 

The people in the crowd make confused remarks, asking questions Matsuda doesn’t really care to hear. None of that really matters right now. He got it right.

“Looks like they’re coming after you, huh, Matsu.” says Ryuk. “This’ll be FUN. Wonder what that last bit means, though...”

Matsuda casts him a glance. Ryuk knows that they can’t really talk basically anywhere but his apartment on account of the fact that talking to thin air is a great way to look completely insane, but Ryuk likes to talk, and Matsuda can’t really grudge him for it.

Matsuda keeps that feeling of accomplishment all the way back to his desk, where it is promptly shot down by the realization that the case he had didn’t solve itself while he was away.

He whacks his face into his keyboard, once, as a treat, and then gets back to work.

-

(Elsewhere, Light Yagami continues his existence as a disillusioned high schooler, none the wiser that he narrowly dodged the first domino in the mile-long chain of his demise.)

Chapter Text

So the Chief decided to bring him (Matsuda! Idiot Matsuda! Of all people! Oh my god why him) along to a super important NPA meeting about-

Well, okay, there’s only one thing it could really be about, because there’s only one thing that anybody wants to be talking about and- 

it’s Kira, the answer is Kira, the answer is probably always going to be Kira at this rate, because the entire universe is conspiring against him.

Everything’s about Kira.

Okay, maybe the meeting isn’t officially about Kira, but it’s what they’re talking about in here, thus it’s what it’s about. 

It would be funny if Matsuda wasn’t, you know, also Kira. 

Even then, it still might be pretty funny, if and only if he sets up a few layers of metaphorical plexiglass in between himself and the situation at hand. Distances himself from the concept and looks at it objectively, a ghost standing ten meters to the left of his own body in the perfect spot to laugh at his own terrible misfortunes.

Can you really distance yourself from ‘the situation at hand’ when you are the situation? There’s probably something to be said about the concept of self there, but Matsuda’s too busy trying not to explode. 

Under the pressure of having to commit to the image of no, i’m not the ultra serial killer, why do you ask, under the pressure of his job as a detective, under the pressure of living up to the frankly kind of bizarre expectations the Chief has for him.

It’s not like they (those expectations, he means) are bad, or too much or any kind of pressure on their own if you really look at it, it’s that the Chief believes in Matsuda, and he cannot for the life of him figure out why.

But all that’s kind of beside the point. Right now is quite firmly ‘sit around listening to people more important than he’ll ever be talk about if Kira is even real and try not to... sit incriminatingly, or whatever’ time.

None of the spy movies ever got across how stressful this all is. Matsuda is not built to be dealing with this day in and day out. How did he even get here, again? He’s still not clear on the details. (He knows how, this is just the only way he’s allowed to complain.)

The room is semi-dimly lit with the usual fluorescent lights that flicker and buzz softly under the voices of the disgruntled officials. The whole thing is cast sort of green, what natural light there could be from outside firmly shut out behind the impenetrable armor that is the curtains. Or are they blinds? Does it matter?

It’s all sort of vaguely dismal if he stops to think about it, so he won’t. Nothing better than ignoring your own problems, am I right?

And of course all of that isn’t even touching on the fact that Ryuk is here. His gangly ominous fish-demon self is just... here. Staring around the room, making commentary on how boring everything is. 

Matsuda does agree, but he’s still trying his best to ignore him. Now is a positively terrible time to accidentally convince the Chief that he’s gone crazy. All times are bad for that, actually, but this one especially. He’s supposed to be at least pretending that he’s paying attention, even if all that’s happening is old men debating on whether it’s more statistically likely that hundreds of people worldwide spontaneously started dropping dead from the same highly improbable heart condition or that somebody supernatural has something to do with it. 

And being kind of ridiculously fearful about it, considering that no matter what the naysayers say, he does his research! He doesn’t just open up the phone book and start tacking down names! They aren’t even respecting the name of the ultra serial killer! This is terrible!

Matsuda can’t believe this is the part that his brain has fixated on, but he didn’t spend so much time doing all of that research to just be reduced down to ‘omnipresent evil entity’!

...It really is that boring, he does have to hand it to Ryuk. But he can’t even complain about it to his local invisible Shinigami, on account of the fact that the Chief is still, y’know, right there.  

Matsuda’s just been keeping quiet. On the whole it’s pretty nice, actually, but trying to balance the genuine and extremely unique boredom that is listening to a crowd of people debate if you exist at all and pretending to be interested in it is a fine, fine line, and Matsuda has no idea what he’s doing.

This has remained true from even before he got his hands on the Note, and has continued after he got the Note, and will probably continue away away into the distance forever until he dies. It’s a fact of life at this point: Matsuda doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he’ll keep going, because he’s got no option other than to at least try to play the part.

If life’s all a stage, Matsuda’s waiting to see how bad a job he can do before they pull him away with one of those canes they use to drag bad comedians behind the curtains.

But other than all that, this situation is honestly going pretty good. Is the bar any higher than a tripping hazard? No, not really, but it does pass that, so Matsuda is satisfied. Somewhat. At least for now. 

He’s as satisfied with the situation as he expected, which is to say ‘not very much, but he hasn’t got any room to complain.’

Unrelated to that, Matsuda is starting to think the way his life is structured leaves no room to complain, all day, every day, with no hope of any space opening up.

That might be an issue, he thinks, but he hasn’t got the time to really think about that, either.

Ryuk taps Matsuda on the shoulder. 

Matsuda does not jump. It takes effort.

“Matsu, buddy,” Ryuk says, “I think things’ve finally gotten interesting.”

Well, isn’t that a good sign.

People around him are murmuring about L- the superdetective, the one Matsuda only heard about because of the broadcast, the broadcast meant to get a reaction out of him. 

So honestly, he probably shouldn’t know who L is, but he does.

The Chief looks over and probably misunderstands Matsuda’s confusion on what is happening for confusion on who is L, and he starts quietly explaining.

“L’s heralded as the greatest detective alive. No one knows what he looks like, or his name, or where he’s from, but every case he’s ever set his sights on is one that ended up solved.” And Matsuda has to deal with that? Great. How did he get here, again?? “I suppose you could call him a trump card, or an ace in the hole. If there’s any hope of catching this ‘Kira’ figure, then we need him.”

“But how are we going to be able to contact L?” Somebody nearby asks.

“L is already involved.”

Matsuda looks over to the front of the room- someone’s come in with a laptop, placed down on one of the tables in the front, but remaining closed. “He has been investigating this case for several days, now,” Watari (presumably so, anyway) continues.

“Watari...” the Chief murmurs, and Matsuda looks back over.

“Watari? Is he Japanese too?”

“No, he’s not with us,” the Chief replies. “Watari is the only person who can contact L, but no one really knows who he is, either.”

Matsuda nods, looking back. Watari is in a thick black trenchcoat and hat, hiding just about everything about him. He’d be generally unremarkable, if not for the fact that everyone else in the room has on suits.

“Quiet,” Watari says. “L will speak now.”

Watari sets a laptop on the little table in front, pulling it open. The screen flickers on to a flat white screen with an elaborate calligraphy L on it- Matsuda thinks he recognizes the font, but can’t remember the name, and anyway it’s not that important.

It’s exactly the same as the one that came just after the broadcast earlier, though, which he’s pretty sure is important.

“Hello,” says a modulated voice. “As of today, I have already been working on this case for several days. There is no doubt in my mind that Kira both exists and can be caught.” Brief pause. “Thus, if Interpol would be inclined to help me, I request that the Japanese police, preferably detectives on the force, help me catch Kira.”

“What? Why Japan?” someone else asks off from Matsuda’s right. Besides that question and L’s modulated voice, the room has fallen dead silent.

“Kira’s behavior shows that they are based in Japan or otherwise receive information from Japan, considering their targets,” L replies evenly. “Unless they have put enough thought into misdirecting possible search by eliminating a majority of corrupt officials as reported by sources in Japan, that is. I calculate only a 1.7% chance this is true, however.”

Oh, okay, so there’s no hope for me, Matsuda thinks, feeling a little lightheaded. I am going to be caught. I am going to be caught. Why couldn’t they have sent a less freakishly good at this detective after me?

“Additionally, I will not state any of my other findings thus far until I have a task force to help me. Understand, of course, that there is a non-zero chance Kira is in this very room. I cannot have information spread unnecessarily.”

Matsuda knows there’s literally no way that comment could be pointed, but all the same, he feels very distinctly like L already knows what he is.

“Now, of course, the test I have already run, with the help of the television channels in Japan, has proved inconclusive. This does not deter me. I already know, for a ninety-nine-percent certain fact...”

Ryuk looks down, rictus grin in place as ever. “Wowee, Matsu. At this rate, I’ll never be bored again!”

“...that Kira will be caught.”

-

So he was right about the trap and the bait, but it didn’t matter anyway, because L is just that good.

Matsuda tries his best to put the general feeling of overwhelming and all-devouring doom aside. He’s got things to be doing, like trying to convince the Chief that he’s completely normal and not so full of general low-level neverending fear he sort of feels like he’s gonna throw up.

But, yeah, besides that, Matsuda’s doing as fine as anybody. Apparently it’s going to take a few days for L to sort through all of the officers who could be on the Kira Task Force and decide which ones he actually wants, so Matsuda gets a few days to stew in all that doom.

There is an obvious answer to this: find a way to eliminate L with the Death Note.

Matsuda has to say, though, he doesn’t actually want to do that. L is catching a magic serial killer. Just because Matsuda is said magic serial killer and also naturally thinks he’s in the right here doesn’t mean he’s immune to moral corruption. 

L is doing something that can’t reasonably be construed as wrong unless Matsuda decides that his actions can’t be reasonably construed as wrong either.

Many philosophical conundrums to be had here instead of actually doing his job. Matsuda doesn’t think it’s much of a raise. Why are morals so complicated? Am I gonna get any sleep tonight?

Other than that, coming as close to face-to-face with L he can imagine being was. Something. Matsuda’s only hope here is that his unimpressive resume doesn’t get him selected for the team dedicated to catching him and he can just continue doing whatever at the pace he was before. His greatest strength here is that he is completely unassuming. People usually forget he’s around if he stays quiet enough.

So. In the event he does get selected for the Task Force, all he has to do is stay quiet and out of the way and do whatever anybody tells him to and nothing more. Actively trying to hinder the investigation seems like a good idea on paper, but if L could figure out he was in Japan by his targets then he’s not willing to take any chances. Being rash and doing reckless things is how he gets caught.

In the event he doesn’t, nothing changes and he can just move on as per usual.

But considering the number of coincidences that’ve happened already to get to this point, he won’t rule out anything. Even though he’s technically got a job to be doing he already spends way too much time going down research rabbit holes and nobody will bat an eye that a guy in the section usually for homicide cases is looking into Kira.

Maybe he should make a code or something, because writing notes anybody can read on the whole Kira thing seems like a supremely bad idea, but he needs to write all of this down somewhere.

Well, he’s got a couple days to brainstorm. Something like a shorthand script? Maybe something that can be disguised as aimless doodling?

He does have a few cheap notecard packs lying around... somewhere in his apartment. He should really clean it out at some point. 

And find an actual place to put the Death Note, considering it’s, y'know, the mother of all incriminating evidence.

Matsuda doesn’t even notice he’s leaning back in his chair considering all of this until the entire arrangement tips over and dumps him unceremoniously on the thinly carpeted floor.

“NOBODY SAW THAT,” he says at volume, righting his chair and brushing what remains of his dignity (read: floor dust) off his pants.

Well, at least nobody’s going to think I’m Kira if I keep that up, Matsuda thinks dryly to himself, and then he actually gets to work like a proper corporate bee.