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The Sugar Cube Fort	By : sashocirrione Category: Death Note > Het-Male/Female Views: 2334 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note, and I do not make any money from these writings.

Chapter List
- 17
- 18
- 19
CHAPTER 18: SEEING NU
Ryuk lifted his pen from the page and said, "What's the deal, Ryuzaki?"
L said, "I want Light to give up ownership right now. If he does that, I want you to give him more time, another day at least. If he refuses, kill him immediately."
Light was looking a bit scared now, but he was desperately trying to keep it under control.
Ryuk said, "You know I'm loose ever since you burned Misa's death note. I could get my own apples."
L said, "Yes, but they would be normal apples. I can get you a rare breed of apples that have been bred for extreme juiciness, apples of a sort that you won't find in any ordinary market or inside people's homes."
"Interesting," Ryuk said, "Light, what do you say?"
Light looked at the camera and said, "Now is the time to take my deal. Don't you want your dreams to come true, to have so much power to control people and events?"
Ryuk put his pen to the paper and started writing. Light screamed, "No!" and for the first time, his face showed extreme panic.
L said, "Give it up, Light."
Ryuk paused and said, "I've written your name. You'll die in forty seconds unless I write a cause."
L said, "You promised a painless death!"
Ryuk chuckled and said, "Okay, okay, I've got it."
Ryuk started writing again, and Light's face was a blind mask of panic. Light choked out, "Twenty-three days. Please! You're my friend, Ryuk, not his."
Ryuk said, "No. Give up your memories. Forty more seconds until the cause kicks in."
Fury and panic warred on Light's face. He wasn't trying to control his expression in the least now. He let out a couple of choked cries, then said, "Bastard!"
A few more seconds went by, and Light bowed his head in defeat. He said, "Rem, I give up ownership of the death note."
Ryuk was standing there just grinning like crazy. He wasn't writing details of death. L gave him an angry glare and started toward him, but Ryuk simply flipped his death note around and held it open so L could read it. Light's name was not in it. The last entry said, "Apples, apples, apples, apples."
Ryuk said, "It's a good thing I can't make plants go extinct by writing in this thing."
Light was pressed up against the bars of his cell, panting, his face flushed, his eyes looking confused, darting from side to side. As they moved, they only rested on L, flitting past both shinigami blindly.
Ryuk said, "You know, it was kind of nice to hear him call me his friend. If he hadn't always been so intent on trying to control me or ignore me, perhaps it would even be true."
Light said, "Ryuzaki? I'm... I'm confused. My heart is beating so fast. I think... I think I thought you were coming down here to kill me, but I can't remember why I thought that. Are you... are you taking me to my execution?"
L said, "No. I'm here to tell you that you'll be let go as soon as I make a few arrangements. You've been cleared of all Kira suspicions."
"But," Light said, "I don't know why, but I confessed, didn't I? Something was wrong with me at the time, because I'm not Kira, but... with everything that's happened, I don't know how you think I'm innocent. I even threatened to kill everyone and I..."
Light's eyes became downcast and an intensely red blush started at his neckline and moved up his entire face. "I... offered... those things... if people would kill and let me go."
L said, "Your father doesn't know of those offers. He will be happier if he never found out. You've been cleared because of reasons that are now classified. You are no longer a member of the investigation team, so you don't have the security clearance to be allowed access to that information. You were really too young for such a job, and you've been through enough."
Light said, "But, I want to catch Kira! I can't stand by, after everything he's done to me and my father. How could I just return to college after all this!"
L said, "Light, the decision has already been made, and it is final. Besides, do you think you could ever work alongside those people again after what you said today?"
Light's blush got even deeper and he whispered, "I guess not. I'm sorry, Ryuzaki."
L started to turn away, but Light said, "Wait!"
As L turned back expectantly, Light said, "I... I just need to know. You letting me go now, it's not because of... um... what I said to you, is it?"
L said, "No, I did not kill the others, and no, I'm not about to drag you away and make you my sex slave. As for Misa... I'm not interested in airheaded girls like her."
Then L left that little hallway, going out into the main hallway. As soon as the door closed behind him, he got out his cellphone and said, "Watari? I need those special apples. Yes. At least five bushels if you can get that many. And, make arrangements for transporting Light and his father home. Can you tell Chief Yagami the news? Excellent work. Okay."
He put the phone away, then turned to Ryuk and said, "How long does Light have?"
Ryuk said, "He'll die tomorrow night. But, he's not allowed to leave the building until those apples get here and prove to be every bit as good as you promised, or I'll kill him."
L nodded and said, "Very well, Ryuk. It should be about an hour, maybe less. Rem, I want you to take the notebook back to the shinigami realm as soon as possible. It is too much of a hazard to have around."
Rem nodded, grew out her wings, and went up through the ceiling, quickly finding the death note on a table in the main investigation room. As soon as she picked it up, she could feel the difference. It was no longer a part of the human world. Then she flew out and up, circling the building, gaining altitude. Soon she was high enough to see the city spread out beneath her, everything looking so tiny, so many lights, so much movement. Climbing more and more, exerting herself with hard flapping, she came at last to the level of the clouds. Just a bit further. She rose just high enough to see a cloud entirely underneath her, though more were still above her.
She flew higher toward them, and then suddenly it happened, the same thing that happened whenever a shinigami flew high enough in the human world. There was a disorienting moment where gravity suddenly flipped, she was falling upward, and the cloudscape was replaced by a gigantic ominous gray vortex enclosing her. The walls of the vortex looked like they were woven together from ragged bits of storm clouds, and there was a slight movement in those walls, like a tornado in slow motion. Rem let herself fall for a bit. After all, shinigami can't be injured by falls. Then, when she neared the bottom, she flapped her wings and glided in for a perfect landing on the top of the winding stone stairway that functioned as the launching-off point for shinigami traveling to the human world.
Rem descended the stairway into a cave, emerged, and then took to the air again, seeking out one of the places where shinigami tended to congregate. At the first place, a huge structure kind of like a rotting, half-collapsed building frame made of interlocking bones and chains, she found five shinigami, and all of them had flyers from Sidoh describing his plight. Flyers! Sidoh was full of surprises. But none of the shinigami there knew where Sidoh might be.
Then Rem decided to check the rock that Sidoh liked to sit on. She flew across a vast desert landscape under the ever-present low-hanging bank of gray fog, what passed as a sky in her world. Soon she saw Sidoh's rock, and he was sitting there. It was an excellent vantage point for looking across a wide valley filled with rocks like pillars twisted at torturous angles, surrounding a series of bowl-like depressions like dry lakes that were connected by long giant cracks running through the bedrock, each a few meters wide. Amongst the sand and bare rock, a few stunted trees and bushes grew, their wood gnarled, their branches twisted, and very few leaves on them.
Rem landed next to Sidoh and held out his death note. She said, "I brought this. Midora said it was probably yours."
Several of Sidoh's insect-like arms emerged from the folds of his long cloak and took the death note from Rem. He clacked his beak several times in excitement, caressing the book with his arms. He opened it and leafed through it. Then he said, "Thank you so much, Rem. I'm glad my flyers worked. Why did Ryuk need so much lifespan? And, why did he write fake rules in it?"
Rem said, "A human wrote those names, so Ryuk didn't gain any lifespan from them. The rules were written for the amusement of a human, but it ended badly. The human will die soon."
Sidoh said, "I have wanted to visit the human world and find Ryuk, but last time I went there, it was so scary. I was hoping someone else would solve my problem. You and Midora are kind to help me. Can I do anything for you, Rem?"
Rem thought. Sidoh was one of the older shinigami, so he'd seen a lot and he might know something about the crack in L's name. But, Sidoh was easily bullied by others and might let out the secret. Then, curious shinigami might use viewing portals to spy on Rem and see the human with the crack, and word could eventually get back to the king. Most shinigami rules were enforced automatically, without anyone needing to know you'd broken a rule. If you broke a rule that had death as a punishment, you'd simply die on the spot. The king was completely unpredictable, but he could get angry about bent rules. He might do something. Perhaps he would even hurt L. No, Rem needed the help of an old shinigami, but someone more dependable than Sidoh.
Rem said, "I only ask that you do not watch me when I'm in the human world."
"Oh," Sidoh said, "I can do that. Nobody's interested in the human world anyway, except you and Ryuk. There's been some talk about you and Ryuk being so weird, but I think Midora is the only one who bothered to do anything to find out about it. Even moving around within this world is so much trouble. It is hard to imagine how Midora found the willpower to go visit you."
Rem was satisfied. Yes, even with the gossip that was currently circulating and stirring up interest, shinigami were passive beings by nature and quite averse to watching the human world. Midora had probably completely satisfied her curiosity and exhausted herself, and the story she told the others would tend to quell their curiosity too. Ryuk would keep quiet about L's crack. In his own way, he was a rule-bender and a rebel, or he'd never have gotten a second death note, and he didn't want other rebel shinigami to get punished or killed. It might be many years until any shinigami other than Ryuk decided to watch Rem and happened to notice L's crack, and even then, it would take yet more years for word to filter back to the king, and the king might do absolutely nothing about it. But, there was still the problem of what the crack meant, of whether Rem was hurting L.
Rem knew her best option. It was Nu, the oldest shinigami other than the king. She would be more likely to know than Sidoh, and Rem had exactly the right bribe for her. Rem spread her wings and jumped into the air, gliding low, following the contours of the valley. Nu would be easy to find. She'd been in the same place for a thousand years. That was her pattern. She rarely killed humans, but when she did, she loaded up on a lot of lifespan all at once so she wouldn't need to move for a long time. She would go to a viewing portal, find a place with many humans, and take lives with "accidental death" written as a cause and a time of death a couple weeks into the future. Then, a tremendous misfortune would strike that area at the designated time: a tsunami, or an earthquake, or a landslide, or a particularly widespread wildfire. Nu never specified what kind of accidental death, but if a large enough number of humans were to die accidentally in the same area all at once, the law of probability would attract a likely cause.
Rem landed very gently next to Nu, trying to make no sound as her feet settled onto the sand. Nu hated sound bitterly, and even with the juicy bribe Rem had for her, Nu might become too antagonized to be helpful if Rem made sound. Nu was a pillar-shaped lump of flesh protruding from the sand, covered with monstrous eyes. Rem had never seen Nu in the process of moving, but she'd heard from others that at the bottom of her pillar, Nu had four tiny stumpy legs, like turtle legs, and that, like all shinigami, she could form wings and fly. They were vast, powerful wings, completely covered with eyes.
There was only one way to communicate with Nu without making her angry. Rem got out her death note and wrote, "I would like to ask for your help. I will tell you a story about immense regret I've suffered in return."
That was Nu's favorite thing. She loved it when others regretted something and she found out about it. Rem was sure Nu would be interested. Sure enough, one of the eyes near the ground began to sink backwards into Nu's body, and then suddenly disappeared with a gulping sound, leaving an empty eyehole. A dozen long, thin tendrils, sticky and narrow like frog's tongues, emerged from the eye socket and began digging in the sand near Nu, soon pulling up her death note and a pen. Nu wrote, "I am interested. What help do you need? Please be careful your pen doesn't make scratching noises."
Rem wrote, "When a human develops a crack that circulates through their name and lifespan, what does that mean? In particular, I need to know if it is harmful for the human and whether there is any way to reverse the process."
Nu wrote, "I have this information. Please tell me your tale of regret."
Rem wrote out the story of her time with Misa, of course not using any names since that would kill the people involved. She left out most things relating to L, particularly since they were happier, and concentrated on the worst things about her relationship with Misa, particularly the immense regret that she'd given a death note to Misa and that she'd ever done the eye trade with Misa. Rem dwelled on her sadness that she'd never found a way to help Misa much, except by betraying her at the end.
Even then, it was perhaps a case of too little, too late. Rem knew she should have found a way to force Misa to get help for her mental illness before she ever met Light. At least then, Misa would have had 14 years left. Now, Misa only had seven years, and, even if her mind was healed, it would probably take three or four years for therapy to get her to that point and she'd never be allowed to check out of the insane asylum anyway. Rem concentrated on the angst and regret, which wasn't at all difficult because the story of her relationship with Misa really was that way.
When Rem finished, a noise came from Nu, like a cross between a reptile's hiss and the sound of things frying in a pan. It was Nu's purr. Nu must be very pleased indeed in order to actually make a sound herself. Nu began writing furiously in her death note, and then showed what she'd written to Rem. It said, "This means a shinigami has bent the rule about sex between shinigami and humans. From your story, I assume it is you and the small human with black hair, and that you are in love with him. I do not know much about these cracks, but I do know that the process is irreversible once it starts. There is no way to stop it or cause it to slow or to speed up. However, the effects take long enough that the human may run out of lifespan without noticing them."
Rem wrote, "What are those effects?"
Nu wrote, "I do not remember. It seems, when I try to recall what I was told, that the effects were not harmful. I am very pleased. I will not betray your secret."
With that, Nu buried her death note and pen in the sand beside her once more. The long, wet tendrils rubbed against each other to dislodge sticking grains of sand, then withdrew into the eye socket. With a small slurping sound, the eye emerged from the depths of its hole, rotated a bit, and then finished settling into the socket. Everything was as before.
Rem flew away as quietly as she could, then, once she was a bit further from Nu, went back to heavy flapping, speeding through the air toward the portal to the human world. Rem was happy. Whatever she was doing to L, it sounded like it wasn't a bad thing. And, since any damage there might be had already been done and was irreversible, there was absolutely no reason to be celibate. Although, back when Nu had last seen humans, a thousand years ago and more, their usual lifespans had been very short. Those effects might be coming along before that many years. Rem hoped they would be good, and that L would not mind them.
When Rem arrived back in the investigation center, she was surprised to see Light still there. Had it really been less than an hour? But, no, he was free, he was just refusing to leave. Soichiro, Light and L were in an argument about two different things at once. Light still wanted a complete explanation of why he had been cleared, and Soichiro and L were still insisting that Light didn't have enough security clearance to access that information. Rem didn't blame them. It would be very difficult to come up with a good story that incorporated everything Light remembered and also cleared him of being Kira. If Light had been less intelligent, they might have tried that route, but Light was just too good at working things out. It was best to simply deny him the information rather than making up a story that would be sure to get punched full of holes.
The other thing they were arguing about was whether L should go home with Light on the family visit. L was trying to insist that he needed to stay with the investigation, but Light kept talking about how grateful he was that L had worked so hard to clear his name, and how they'd become such good friends but L never did anything social, and Light felt like he owed it to L, to show him a good time in a social atmosphere. After all, the Kira killings had stopped and L never rested at all, so he must need some kind of vacation and right now was the perfect time. It would be a grand celebration of Light and Misa being let free, and L ought to be there with his only friend. During the argument, Soichiro kept looking at the clock nervously.
Finally, L said, "If I do go home with you now, will you stop asking about the classified information you are not allowed to receive?"
Light thought for a few moments and said, "Yes."
Then the three of them were being ushered out of the building and at last getting into Watari's car. Rem trailed along, but both Soichiro and L made a point of not looking at her. A different vehicle held Light's stuff, which had already been packed and would be unloaded at his home without him needing to do anything. The whole purpose of this visit was for Light to not waste his last hours alive. Rem kept looking at Light, almost in disbelief, as she observed his behavior. This was so strange. Light was almost like a different person, though he did still have some of his arrogance, belligerence and other distinctive Kira-like personality traits. Yet, everything was subdued. His eyes were innocent and wide, his words were gentler, and it did not feel as if he were calculating all the time.
Just as Watari began to pull out of the underground parking garage, Ryuk flew down and landed on the car's roof. He said, "I wouldn't miss this. It's the last chance to see these two doing their thing. Though, it won't be the same without Light's memories."
When the two vehicles pulled up in front of the Yagami house, Light and Soichiro got out immediately and began approaching the front door, but it burst open before they could get there and Sayu ran out, squealing. She said, "Big brother!" and pounced on Light, wrapping him in a warm hug.
Sachiko Yagami came to the open front door and stood in the doorway smiling, her hands clasped in front of her, her eyes shining with love and concern as she looked at her husband. She walked toward him then, slowly and almost tiredly. When she reached him, her brow furrowed in concern as she looked him up and down. She sighed in a motherly way and said, "Dear, you look like you've aged five years in the last week. I'm sorry you had to work so much."
Soichiro gave her a quick peck on the cheek and then, suddenly overwhelmed by emotion, drew her in for a tight hug. Unseen by Sachiko, a tear trickled from one eye, but Soichiro quickly wiped it away. Aizawa and Matsuda were walking past, carrying Light's things. Aizawa looked pissed and averted his eyes from everyone else, but Matsuda caught Light's gaze as he went by, quickly turning beet red. He must be thinking of all the sexual things Light had offered to do to him. Matsuda coughed, looked away and hurried on.
Sayu drew back from her hug and said, "Light, so, this means Dad forgave you for moving in with Misa and you're on speaking terms again? Since you're moving back here, does that mean you dumped her? Or, did she dump you?"
Light said, "Things are complicated with Misa. I'm still her boyfriend, but I might break up with her soon."
Sayu said, "Oh, I shouldn't have asked. I'm sorry."
Her gaze moved to L, standing off to the side in his usual slouch, wearing shoes for once, with the untied laces trailing along the ground.
"Oh, who's this?" Sayu said.
Light opened his mouth, but before Light could say anything, Sayu said, "Oh wait! I can recognize him from your description. This is your best friend from college, Hideki Ryuga, right? You finally coaxed him into a visit?"
L said, "Actually, my real name causes problems. I prefer to be called 'Ryuzaki'."
L nibbled on his thumb and looked nervously off to the side.
Sayu said, "I'm sure Light told you Hideki Ryuga is my favorite pop star! But you're nothing like him. You're so funny-looking!"
L dropped into a crouch and wrapped his arms around his knees. Sayu said, "Oh, look how shy he is! Don't worry, Ryuzaki, I think you're really cute in your own special way!"
Sayu leaned over and rubbed the top of L's head as if she were petting a dog.
L said, "I'm much too old for you, plus I already have a girlfriend."
Light glanced at L quizzically. Sayu crouched down so her face was at the same level as L's, but a couple of feet away. She said, "Tell me! What is she like?"
L looked up at Rem, who was standing behind Sayu, and said, "She's older than me, and taller."
Sayu said, "Oh, I wish she was here right now. You really should bring her next time! What does she look like?"
L shifted his feet uncomfortably and said, "I'm shy."
"Oh yeah," Sayu said, "I almost forgot. Light said you were a real paranoid recluse. He couldn't get you to go to a single party or say hardly anything about yourself. But, don't worry. You'll be safe and happy here."
Aizawa and Matsuda were going past in their third trip, laden down with yet more of Light's stuff. Sachiko said, "Let's not stand out here talking. I have a wonderful supper prepared inside."
Everyone went to the door, with L and Sachiko at the end of the line. Just as L was about to step inside, Sachiko stopped him. The door closed, leaving them alone on the front steps, and Sachiko said, "Ryuzaki, when you visited my husband in the hospital after his heart attack, you were part of the Kira investigation. Now you turn out to be the same man who has been friends with my son for so long. I know Light has always wanted to join the Kira investigation team. Tell me the truth, is Light part of the investigation?"
"He was," L said, "but he no longer has that job. It was my error to let someone so young join the team. I am the real reason your son dropped out of college. I am sorry."
Sachiko nodded, then opened the door, and the two of them went inside.
A/N (Author's Note):
Light still has a plan, even though he's memory-less.
And he's tormenting L. L isn't used to dealing with social things, especially in painful circumstances.
- 17
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The Sugar Cube Fort