Chapter Text
The girl has a bright face, Misa thought. Bright face, meant for smiling. And she does, she smiles, but it’s not how it should be. It is wrong. Something has gone wrong.
There is no halo around her Kira. No divinity, just a sense of tiredness that sometimes burns into mania. She is good at pretending she does not know anything, because all acts work best with a grain of truth. Sayu and her are similar, but Misa-Misa is much more ruthless. Still, brightness. It’s there, enough to act. The ghost of a girl that was and should have still been. Her eyes flicker between the hollowness of a black hole, flat and empty, and the bright, dazzling spectacle of a supernova. There is no divinity here, but the absence of it somehow feels holy. Something has gone wrong, but her Kira is smiling that dark smile of promise, in the exact way she shouldn’t, and Misa-Misa does not care.
This is way better than Light Yagami.
Sayu is not smart. She knows this. She is bright in her own way, in ways her brother isn’t, but she is not, and has never been, smart.
Light is perfect. Her hero, her light. She resents him just as much as she loves him, but she does not hate him even one bit. Her everything, despite not being much to her at all.
I’ll protect you, she promises. Her heart is thumping. She does not want to die, but she is sure, acutely, she will. This will end with her death. She is no God, and she does not want to be. She knows nothing of justice.
She could knock on this door and rush into her perfect big brother’s arms and cry like she wants to, and he would fix everything, because he is perfect. But she doesn’t know what fixing everything even looks like. Killing her? Locking her up? Helping her cover up her crimes? She has no clue what he would do. A part of her thinks, certain and sure, Light will protect me. My big brother will always protect me. But then logic kicks in; her brother is justice, and Sayu Yagami has blood on her hands.
He would never stand with evil. Whatever he decides, to turn her in or help her or even kill her, would become justice. Would become right. And with it, she too would be cast, as either evil or saint.
He would fix this, she thinks, yet again. Insistent, petulant, childish. Maybe she doesn’t want to know. Maybe she doesn’t want this fixed. Maybe she doesn’t want her brother.
She does not knock. The Shinigami laughs.
Entertainment is survival. Sayu is scared. Is her fear entertaining enough? Not on its own.
She needs more of a spectacle.
Selfish, stupid Sayu Yagami. But she does know how to play a crowd, doesn’t she?
Doesn’t she.
The man she kills deserved it. He did, he did. The corner store was cold, the buzz of the lights, artificial and blue, LEDs, hurting her ears, hurting her eyes. Her eyes that were dry, burning. The chill of the can, soda, fizzy, wet with condensation, both calmed her and made her feel sick. She was crouched on her knees and shaking, as the cashier murmured soothing words to her, their hand warm and clammy on her back, rubbing. Kind, maybe, but uncomfortable, unwanted. Sayu tried not to throw up.
The man she killed, right in front of three witnesses, laid on the floor of the corner store with no one the wiser that she was the killer. The cashier’s coworker was saying the same soothing words to his would-be-victim.
I did that, Sayu thought. I saved her.
She heaved. What horrifying mercy.
The Notebook falls on her.
Literally, it just hits her head and for a second she thinks, absurdly, nonsensically, that the sky itself is falling. Like Chicken Little except she isn’t actually that foolish, so she dismisses the thought and thinks, instead, in line with the fable, maybe it was an apple, until she looks down.
And—nope. It’s a notebook. Sleek and black with an ugly font announcing, Death Note. She squints at it because it is in english and she is not the best at that subject (at any subject; that is Light’s job) but once the name clicks, she pales.
Death. Is it a prank? Her heart hammers. Or is it a threat?
She picks it up. Cautiously. Opens it, finds it blank.
Almost blank.
On the inside cover, more English. She squints at it, afraid, unsure, at a crossroads. Squints, until the words make sense, and she is suddenly cold.
Whoever’s name is written in this notebook will die.
All she wanted to do was pick her brother up from school, but now there is a notebook in her hands with death on the cover and murder in it’s pages, that has maybe, somehow, impossibly, fallen from the sky.
This is no heaven.