subversion | [private] there is ice and there is fire.

I doubt that.

You dodged a bullet, kitten.

[This time, he doesn't object to the nickname. His knees draw up beneath his chin, and he's trying not to throw up, or cry, and she can't help but see it. He doesn't feel like he dodged anything.]

Light Yagami.

[She crawls up the last few steps, and takes his chin in her hand.]

You are ten times the human being he will ever be. Do you understand? I admire you, and care for you quite deeply, despite only having known you a short time. I admire you for living through what you have, for your gracefulness and poise, and for your fabulous, fabulous clothes. It makes me sick to think of him, and it makes me sick to think of saying goodbye to you one day.

If you knew the first thing about me, you'd never say that.

[As he pulls away and buries his face, hiding from all the things she sees which aren't there, he wants to claw at himself. How did he screw it up? Because it must have been his fault, it must have been something he did wrong—]

It could have been mine. It should have been mine!

I do know about you. More than you think I do, probably. None of it scares me.

[She doesn't let him push her all the way off.]

Light. That thing brings nothing but pain, and suffering, and death. He's going to kill me, and then Mello, and then Near is going to kill him and Mikami. And your father is dead, and Sayu is catatonic and won't get up, and your mother is taking care of her, alone and he doesn't give a shit about either of them. Misa is probably going to kill herself after he dies, so is Takada. And me.

I don't care, Matt. Do you understand?

[He does. For all that he hates his family (and he does hate them, he tells himself), he doesn't want them dead, or broken. He doesn't want Matt to kill herself, and somewhere he doesn't want Kiyomi hurt, even if she'd been shallow, thoughtless, nothing but an accessory, really...

It's confronting something awful about himself, and it's the loss of something he should never have had, of everything he should have been, and that's what makes the tears spill into his trousers, out of sight.

He's been more humiliated than this, but not often, and just now he can't care.]

That's who I am. That's what I am. I'd kill them all myself to put things right.

[It's the first time that the depth of his hate for what he is can have been clear - and he hasn't said that he'd kill her.]

I don't think anything needs putting right. I don't believe you'd kill anyone. I don't think you should hate yourself, Light, I really don't. You don't understand how horrible he is, and how good you are.

[Chains are dragging him down into the sea, and all of her words are weights on them. He can't control it any longer, he's past that; truth be told, his self-control's always a knife-edge he walks on. The sobs spill over, hysterical, almost silent; each one squeaks and catches in his throat, more tiny, hooked chains shredding him from the inside out. He rocks with the force of them.

He failed, and lost everything he was supposed to be, and has told himself it's a genetic flaw, unavoidable, nobody's fault - and now he's found he was supposed to be more than he can imagine, that there's not more than a hair between him and his alternates. And he would have got it right; he's certain of that.

As for the countless dead, the wrecks of their worlds and their families that trail behind his alternates? They're not real to Light - but he's real to himself. He wasn't defeated in a warehouse, but in a university corridor and a hospital ward, and still wants nothing more than to undo it, all of it, somehow, anyhow.

Eventually, the sobs trail off, but he doesn't speak, or show his face.]

[She has put her arms around him while he was crying, and is resting her cheek against his shoulder, holding him silently while he cries. The sobbing dies down, and she hums softly.]

[He sniffs, emptied, and coughs quietly to himself, and doesn't push her off; he's been washed out to sea, and can't do anything but drift.]

Sorry.

That was a pretty big thing you dealt with. You don't have to be sorry.

[Carefully, and painfully slowly, he reconstructs the egg around him: a shell of personal space, built tiny stitch by tiny stitch.]

I must seem like an idiot to you.

[Half-whispered, and flat; he does to himself, after all.]

No. It's reassuring. You're smart, and you have this thing you struggle with that's a part of yourself, but you're still so-

It makes me feel less like just giving up.

You shouldn't kill yourself over him - well. Maybe that's why he's like that.

[It would be indirectly flattering, but it's still not okay.]

I'm not going to. I'm going to find a way to stay. I don't know how, but I'm going to do it.

I don't know what I want, any more.

[It sounds terribly defeated; he feels beaten on the inside, fists and boots and egg whisks.]

Hey, don't sound so sad, kitten. You'll make me cry.

[As though she wasn't teary eyed, listening to him.]

Did you ever watch the Outer Limits?

I think I missed that one.

[He's still talking into his knees, his arms.]

It was one of those one-episode-one story sci fi shows. There was one of a girl who walked around with her face wrapped all in bandages. The people around her were talking her through the process of getting ready for surgery. They were going to help with her disfigurement.

Is this one of those stories where she decides she likes it after all?

No. It gets to the operation, and the doctors are unwrapping her to see what it is, and everyone in the room flinches, and the camera finally hits her- and she's gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. But everyone else looks at her differently and thinks she's disfigured.

Does it show you what the rest of them are like?

I don't know, I never saw it, I just had someone tell me about the episode. I think it might have been my dad, actually.

[He props himself up a little way, but doesn't raise his head.]

But this is what we were talking about before. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks of us. It only matters what we think of ourselves.

I might get some tea. That would be an idea.

[Confused, and drifting.]

Why don't we go to the kitchen?

[Still resting against his shoulder.]

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