Work Text:
Matsuda has too much time on his hands, so much that it seems to stretch endlessly before him. The midafternoon light streams through a crack in the office-issued blinds he never manages to close properly, even months after his return to the NPA. It glares off of his computer screen, rendering the file he is supposed to be combing through for evidence illegible. Not that it matters—he stopped pretending to be interested in the new case days ago.
Matsuda’s attention is instead occupied by the clock on the opposite wall. His eyes trace the second hand as he finds himself counting to forty, not for the first time. It’s a habit he can’t quite bring himself to shake.
Four, five, six…
He mentally repeats the digits.
Eleven, twelve, thirteen…
The minutes seem to stretch for eternity in these moments.
Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven…
He wonders if it feels the same when you know your life will be over by the end of it. He wonders about L, about Light.
Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine…
At forty he holds his breath. When his heart continues to beat, steady as ever, he lets it go and begins again.
The ticking of the clock echoes throughout the room. His first day back it nearly drove him insane. The Kira task-force headquarters were never so silent. He could always count on the low grumble of the Chief’s voice to fill the space, or the rattle of a chain connecting a pair of young detectives in desk chairs. Even Light’s apartment was never so dull, especially when Misa would drop in to say hi.
As oblivious as he is assumed to be, Matsuda is acutely aware of what his new team thinks of him. He hears their whispers at the water cooler as he pours himself another yet another cup of burnt coffee to get him through the mind-numbing tedium of his day-to-day life. He feels like a zoo animal, like an exhibit. Their eyes track his movements and they murmur animatedly to each other behind their hands.
“I can’t believe he’s the one who finally brought Kira down—”
“I heard he worked with L for years before he vanished at the close of the Kira case—”
“Jeez, he’s really changed, huh? I wonder what happened to him after everything—”
He’s been zoned out long enough that he realises it’s already five o’clock and his coworkers are all packing up beside him. That was another thing he had to adjust to. No more sleepless nights tailing leads or tying up loose ends. Well, his nights are sleepless anyway, just for different reasons. Reasons involving a warehouse, gunshots, and a bone chilling wail that plays on a loop.
He packs the few belongings he brings to work into his briefcase and starts for the door. It’s a smooth, brown leather case with smart brass buckles, nothing Matsuda would have ever picked out for himself. It was a gift from the Chief for his thirtieth birthday, something about “looking the part of the officer he is,” he can’t quite remember. Light had smiled knowingly at him as he opened it, confiding in Matsuda that he had been the one to choose the case.
“You wouldn’t want anything Dad would have picked out. Trust me, he has no sense for these kinds of things.” Light laughed then, easy and carefree. At the time, it filled Matsuda with warmth, a feeling like family. Is this what it’s like to have a brother? A father? He had never had something like that before.
Matsuda tries to recall Light in that moment, but the memory has been superimposed with another. Light’s smile is shaded with cruelty, his eyes crazed. The laughter ringing in Matsuda’s ears is manic, a sound he only ever heard once but can never forget.
He keeps his eyes down so as to not catch the gaze of the portraits that line the hallway at the entrance of the building, but it’s no use. Even without shinigami eyes, the weight of Light’s stare pulls him forward.
He pauses to read the plaque he’s looked at everyday since it was carved.
Yagami Light
Head of the Kira Taskforce
Member of the Intelligence and Information Bureau
February 28, 1989 - January 28, 2013
Killed in action during the capture of Kira.
---
Matsuda often takes long walks through the city. It started during his time on the task force as a way to clear his head and escape L and Light’s near constant bickering. In these moments he feels lighter. He becomes somebody new, just another face in the crowd. Matsuda has never been special anyway, never seen as a star student or a standout detective. It gives him some peace to know that he can just slip away unnoticed, to be tugged along by the human current.
Tonight however, he has a set destination. The throngs of Tokyoites thin as he reaches the suburbs, dragging himself out of the low tide. The weight settles in his chest again as he reaches the Yagami residence. He glances up towards Light’s window out of habit, despite it being years since he would have seen the tell-tale glow of his desk lamp, indicating Light was hard at work studying for exams, or maybe even—
The front door opens before Matsuda can even knock, and he startles as a hand grabs him by his forearm. Sayu pulls him forward and down to where she can fully wrap her arms around his shoulders. Matsuda winces as his knees knock awkwardly into the bars of her wheelchair, but hugs her back just as hard.
When he pulls away, Sayu smiles up at him softly, her eyes warm with welcome. Matsuda wants to say something to her, but his throat constricts. Words elude him. Her smile becomes sympathetic, as if she should be the one comforting him. If only she knew what Matsuda had done. If only they both knew.
Sachiko is toiling away over her pots and pans on the stove when Matsuda enters the Yagami’s kitchen, trailing after Sayu as she retakes her place at the dining table. The chair normally positioned at her seat has been placed at the head of the table, between two that will continue to remain empty.
Sayu’s textbooks sit open around a notebook filled with her messy scrawl. She doesn’t have the same neat, looping handwriting that Light was always praised for, but Matsuda likes it. She told him once that Light said her handwriting suited her, that it was charming. Matsuda agreed, and he pictured a teenage Light ruffling little Sayu’s hair as he said so.
Sachiko bustles over to lay out the meal and Matsuda sets the table for her. She squeezes his arm once with a small smile before darting back to the stove top. The Chief’s death had been hard, but Light’s death took an unimaginable toll on her. She seemed lost most days, stuck in a trance. Cooking seemed to be one of the only ways to break her stupor, to give her something to focus on other than her loss. Sayu said having Matsuda around helped a lot, like she still had a son to take care of.
Matsuda wonders how Sachiko would have taken the news about Light. About Kira. Neither she nor Sayu knew, Matsuda fought for that at least. He begged and pleaded with the bureau not to release Kira’s identity. He was surprised to find that Near supported him, but not out of sympathy.
“Light Yagami cannot become a martyr.” The young boy had blinked languidly up at Matsuda like he was an idiot, and he was instantly transported to another room, another time when all Matsuda wanted was to not fuck up the case again. “Pro-Kira sentiment is already at an all-time high. The death of Kira will be a difficult enough subject to broach to the public without an added face to the name.”
From there, the NPA released a statement that Kira had been captured and killed, and that his identity was a matter of national security. Light Yagami became just another casualty in a long book of names, and Matsuda Touta was the one to deliver the news to Sayu and Sachiko alongside a falsely earned medal of honor.
The medal sits upon the mantle between two photos of Light, its green ribbon in stark contrast with the mahogany panels. The first photo is from his welcome address at To-Oh. If Matsuda squints he swears that he can just make out a blurred figure with wild hair and terrible posture in the background. The second is of Light’s graduation from the National Police Academy. His eyes are steeled with a resolve that back then gave Matsuda hope. Hope that they could catch Kira as a team, even without L. Now, Matsuda understands the true intent behind those eyes.
His train of thought is interrupted by a soft hand covering his own, and he looks up to see Sachiko following his gaze towards the mantel. She hums softly to herself, before removing her hand and sitting across from Sayu at the table.
Matsuda swallows his guilt and eats dinner with the family he’s utterly destroyed.
___
After he helps Sachiko clear the table, Sayu asks Matsuda to stay back for a few minutes to help her with her homework. He can’t believe she’s in university now. Where was the little girl who hid behind her father the first time they met? The teenager who giggled about J-pop idols and Misa-Misa’s latest photoshoot?
Sayu wants to be a detective. She hasn’t told Sachiko yet and she begs for Matsuda to keep it a secret. She says she wants to be like her father, to be like Light. She wants to make the world a better place.
“You don’t have to be a detective to do that,” he tries. “Sayu, you have a choice.”
She shakes her head and fixes him with the same intense stare boring into him from across the family room. “Somebody has to do it. There is no other way.”
The words ring eerily familiar to Matsuda, and he fights back a wave of nausea.
So he helps her with her homework as best as he can. He barely scraped through the academy’s training, and he hopes to whatever God there is that his experience in the field is enough to supplement his deficits. Either way, he knows that Light could do way better. Matsuda was never meant to be an older brother, after all.
___
Matsuda and Aizawa get lunch together every Thursday afternoon. Matsuda always buys his lunch from whatever street-food stand he comes across. Occasionally Aizawa joins him, but more often than not Eriko packs him something she hopes Aizawa will share.
They don’t talk about it. Not about Kira. Not about the task force. Not about the Chief or L or Misa or Light. Matsuda can’t decide if that’s for better or for worse. What’s left unsaid hangs above their heads like an avalanche, every “how’s it going?” is a loaded question.
But Aizawa talks about Eriko and Yumi and little Daiki who just took his first steps. Aizawa smiles as he recounts his son’s wobbles towards his sister and Matsuda can’t help but mirror it. Aizawa teases him about not having a girl after all these years, and Matsuda flushes and stutters, changing the topic while Aizawa laughs at his expense. Life feels normal like this. He and Aizawa have a closer relationship than they ever did before. Matsuda hates the reason why.
They go their separate ways when their lunch hour ends, but Matsuda can’t quite bring himself to return to the NPA headquarters. He walks aimlessly until his feet begin to beat a familiar path. A florist catches his attention and he pauses before ducking in. He emerges with a measly handful of what he thinks are chrysanthemums, white petals shedding under his touch.
When Matsuda enters the cemetery grounds, he makes his first stop at an unmarked grave. The cross looms before him, casting him in shadows as he lays down a single flower. He’s the only person who comes to visit L now. Light used to, Matsuda knows. He came to visit once only to find Light kneeling where he stands now. Light was silent, staring intently up at the center of the cross as if envisioning the man who died on it, the man who might not even be buried beneath his feet. Matsuda left quickly then, not wanting to intrude and feeling uneasy about the whole scene.
Now, Matsuda ducks his head in a small bow. He wishes he had saved a piece of his dessert from lunch, or that he at least stopped by a bakery. L would much prefer sweets as an offering to flowers.
As he crosses the cemetery to the Yagami family plot, Matsuda finds it ironic that, after everything, L and Light managed to end up in the same place. The untouchable detective and a boy with more power than he ever had a right to, dead and buried in a shared pit. Matsuda wonders how many of the bodies in this cemetery were put here by the two of them. He wonders if they’ll be used to torture eachother in hell.
A pair of twin graves rise parallel to one another in the newest section of the Yagami plot. The perfect father and his perfect son, lying beside one another for eternity. Matsuda again feels the sting of betrayal, the red-hot anger flooding through his blood stream, enough to make him pull the trigger in that dank warehouse where his life turned on its head.
It fizzles out just as quickly as it begins. Matsuda doesn’t have the energy for anger. He loosens his fist from where he has the flowers clenched in his grip, stems limp from the press of his fingers. He places one on each grave and straightens up, giving a single nod. He turns away with one flower left, and makes his way uphill to a bench under a sakura tree.
Matsuda learned of Misa’s death through the television. He watched completely numb as the newscasters detailed her plummet from a Tokyo high-rise. He imagines she must have looked like a bird in one of her long dresses. He hopes it felt like flying.
He doesn’t know where they buried her. She had no family to speak of, and Light was already dead. Matsuda feels the breeze in his hair and lifts a handful of chrysanthemum petals to be taken by the wind for Misa.
---
Matsuda doesn’t go back to work that afternoon. He wanders and tries not to think.
He counts his footsteps like a death march: one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. What he’s walking towards, he’s not so sure. Sometimes it feels like he’s being watched. His skin pricks with paranoia and he can almost hear the beat of dark wings behind him. But Matsuda’s misery is seemingly not enough to cull the presence’s boredom, as eventually he feels himself settle back into solitude.
Isn’t that how it’s always been, though? Matsuda’s used to the loneliness, of being swept aside when he’s not of use, of slipping between groups of people like he’s invisible. He’s had his world ripped out from underneath him before, but he managed to find his footing then and he can find a way to do it again. Matsuda is nothing if not resilient. An optimist to his core, he’s managed to make it this far.
As the sun sets on Tokyo, the moon rises and fills Matsuda’s vision. The sliver of it winks at him against the dark void of the sky before being obscured by clouds. With that, Matsuda turns in the direction of his apartment and resumes his steady pace: an unclaimed pawn in a new world.