Week #57 - Caught on Tape
[Title] The Right to Remain Silent
[Rating] R, I think, for death
[Warnings] Character death. AU where Raito won. Written in a tearing hurry after an idea had at 4 a.m., so apologies if it makes no sense for some reason I haven't worked out yet
[Characters] Sayu, Matsuda, mention of Raito and Sachiko, brief mention of OC Kira supporters and haters
[Word Count] 2942
The hood over Sayu's head smells dusty, and the stench of other people's sweat crawls into her mouth. Other people's fear. She's trying not to notice it by now, though - they shoved the stupid thing over her head when they first took her and it hasn't been off since. The material's thick. No pinpoints of light to stare at. Or perhaps they just haven't let her out of the dark.
She's trying not to move, not to wriggle, not to draw attention to herself. She learnt that the last time. Trying not to think of how her wrists are aching from the handcuffs or how she's getting pins and needles from sitting still or how she kind of needs to go to the bathroom. Trying not to think. There's a person on either side of her, each holding her upper arm. They're not being really rough. Earlier, someone kicked her, and spat on her, and other people shouted in her face, through the cloth, that she was a traitor and an enemy of Lord Kira and would get what was coming to her. She let the tears ooze from her eyes, but gritted her teeth and caught the sobs in her throat. (She's got better at that since Los Angeles.) She didn't bother arguing. She'd been caught meeting with others and spreading hate speech about Kira. When they'd burst in, Akira, whom she'd met in her 20th-century poetry class, had just begun some horribly incriminating sentence like it isn't that there is no crime, it's that there is only Kira's crime! and thumping the table and the thumps had been echoed by the crashes as the invaders broke down the door.
There'd been screaming and sobbing and some people had started saying they hadn't meant it and others had yelled that this was what exactly what they'd been talking about and Sayu had found herself just watching, just watching as if none of this mattered, standing with her hands behind her back as if she were ready for them to cuff her and take her away. Someone had hit her and then she'd stumbled, fallen, tasted blood, and heard Akira yelling Not Sayu, for fuck's sake, leave her alone! Because people thought that because of Los Angeles, she should have earned a pain-free life forever after.
It wasn't nice to be sarcastic about it. Not everyone would've chosen to care about someone else when they were about to be dragged away and murdered.
She can hear the crowds, outside. The hands on her arms are tensed, slightly sweaty, as if they're holding her to comfort her, as if they're all of them about to go out and do a three-person balancing act on stage, as if they're all in this together -
No. No, she's not going to start being stupid, not like that, she went quiet after Los Angeles because she didn't know how to stop being so stupid -
She can hear the crowds outside but she can't hear anyone else speaking backstage. Is she the only one, then? It's usually only one person, unless you get a husband-and-wife team who schemed to destroy Kira or committed some really horrible crime or something else where you need two people. They wouldn't get much by sending her out with Akira or someone like that. She wasn't even a particularly active member of the group; she never knew what to say. You don't, when you're trying not to show that you know more than you're telling. Okay, she doesn't want to think about that part at all. The others aren't here so that means they're probably all dead, taken off to have their heart attacks in private. She wonders why they chose her to be different. Perhaps she has a good victim's face.
She's going to end up thinking about Raito. She can feel it.
She grits her teeth and she would clench her fists if she didn't think it would give away that she's starting to panic (and if she really panics, she'll go quiet and then they'll have to drag her or carry her out and when they let go she'll sink to the ground as if she's dead already and she'll go down in what little history she's going to get as Sayu Yagami, that girl who couldn't even stand up and face her death and she doesn't know why that bothers her more than the actual death part but somehow it does - perhaps because it'll make Mum sad, it always makes Mum sad when she goes quiet -)
She isn't going to think about Raito yet.
(She may not have to worry about this for more than a few seconds. In the dark she's lost all track of time. They like to whip the crowd into a frenzy first but it certainly sounds loud enough from here.)
She is going to think about someone else.
Matsuda had had the really-not-an-honour-at-all of being the first. Sayu still doesn't understand it all. She is pretty sure that the other police officers who were trying to catch Kira died ages ago, before the actual Kira laws were passed or anything. When Kira was still a ruler through TV. So she had assumed that Matsuda was dead. She'd assumed it right up until the May day when that dumb soap Tonight, At The Same Place had been interrupted by breaking news that the last of the sinners who had schemed to destroy Lord Kira in L's name had been hunted down and was now about to pay for his crimes!
They always kept you hooded. It's symbolic. They tear off the darkness, and Kira can see your true face. He doesn't even need your name. Not that he won't already know Sayu's, but damn it this thought wasn't meant to be about her. Anyway. There had been a multitude of camera shots from different points in the studio audience (this was when they still did it in studios rather than outside in public spaces) of a hooded man being held between two TV officials, and then they wrenched off the hood and Matsuda was blinking, eyes wide and terrified in the lights. Sayu hadn't realised she'd made any noise, but Mum had rushed in from the kitchen and by the time she'd realised what was going on, they were already shouting denunciations. Sayu doesn't remember it properly (she'd gone quiet again for a week afterwards). Matsuda very pale, his face grubby and spotted with bruises; wearing the same suit he'd worn that time he came to dinner with them, only it too was grimy now. She'd been thinking we have to stop them, they don't realise it's Matsuda-san, they think it's someone else, just over and over again, and she might have said it except that then one camera zoomed in on Matsuda's face.
He looked resigned, that was all. As if he'd expected everything to be terrible and now it was and he wasn't even surprised. He stared at the crowd screaming for his blood and the show host declaiming No, Lord Kira must take this man's life himself! and he just watched and Sayu wondered if he was trying to pretend he was somewhere else. And she realised that they did know what they were doing and it was him they were meant to be killing because otherwise he'd be looking angry or scared, he wouldn't be looking like he'd expected this -
The people holding on to him had stepped away and he was standing all alone. Sayu didn't want him to be standing alone. She'd wanted to kneel down in front of the TV and put her hand out to the figure on the screen like it would help but the quietness was already creeping up her body and she was only watching -
For about five seconds, nothing happened.
Sayu blinks, grits her teeth again, wonders why she began this thought when she knew how it would end, but it doesn't help.
Matsuda had cried out, a jagged cry like he hadn't wanted to make a sound but it had hurt too much to keep quiet. And his head had fallen back and then he'd dropped to his knees. Then he'd gone still. A camera had run its gaze over him, right up close, and you could see, you could see he was dead. A few faint twitches and then nothing else. A few shots of people in the audience, smiling or crying with joy. An aerial view; he'd looked crumpled, small, untidy, as if he couldn't even die neatly.
Then the cheering had begun.
The hands on her arms tighten, and then they pull her to her feet. Oh god. So it's happening now, it's going to happen for real, she's trying to walk but they're going too fast for her (probably on purpose), she mustn't go quiet, she mustn't -
She thinks, she thinks that perhaps Raito managed to convince Matsuda that Lord Kira was okay after all. She doesn't know how or why, because Matsuda had spent years trying to catch Kira, but it's an explanation that she quite likes. Matsuda had thought things were going to be all right. Raito could be very reassuring, after all. Matsuda had thought things were going to be all right and then, perhaps, he'd decided all at once that he couldn't go on, or perhaps someone had framed him and it had all happened within twenty-four hours, like it has for Sayu. She likes that. She doesn't want to think of him being kept in the dark and yelled at for months on end until they decided to get rid of him. She wants it to be that him and her brother stayed friends right til the end.
Now she's thinking of Raito.
The crowd is getting louder.
She'd known Raito was Kira. She'd known it all the time she'd sat in meetings listening to people call him a monster. She'd never said anything. Never told anyone that she could tell them where Kira was and when to stab him in his sleep. Never joined in when they argued about his childhood or his ideologies. She'd started going to the events because of Matsuda, because she knew what it was like to be kept in the dark and scared and no one giving a damn and it was either that or go quiet and never speak again. But she'd kept her mouth shut because of Raito, because Raito was still her brother and after all, weren't the people he was killing the type of people she should hate, given Los Angeles?
She feels the rush of air as a door is pushed open, and then they're outside - the air's cold - and the crowd roars around her and quiet, quiet, she's scared, she's so scared, she just doesn't want to die -
They shove her forward a bit and then they grab her to make her stand still.
There's a shriek of microphone feedback, and then the speech starts. It's the usual stuff. She's ungrateful, one of the new breed of young person who thinks they know better than the generous god who protects them. She has been found to be one of those who disseminate anti-Kira propaganda and perpetuate anti-Kira behaviours such as drug-taking and casual violence. She is a lost soul and a tumour eating away at the heart of Japan. For the good of the country, she must be judged and eliminated.
It's the same thing they say to everyone. At least Matsuda had got some individuality in his send-off. A criminal supporter, assisting the hated enemy L to try and destroy their beloved Kira. That kind of stuff. Matsuda actually did something worthwhile. But then, Sayu figures he didn't know Raito was Kira for most of his foul and depraved Kira-hating career. That probably helped him to be more wholehearted about it.
What if she actually throws up, or wets herself, or has hysterics? Would that be worse than going quiet? Perhaps it doesn't matter. A lot of people cry or beg. Some scream defiance until the end, but Sayu wonders now if they're plants or fakes, because she feels so sick and horrible it's taking all her courage to stay standing upright.
They wrench off the hood. Rough hands horribly near her face, and then cold air on her skin, and the bright white light of the sky -
There's so many people. She didn't realise you got this many. People as far as the eye can see and every single one of them hating her. She doesn't know what she did to earn this. After Los Angeles she wondered if that was payback for being jealous of Raito or not helping out with the housework, but she's older now. She thinks that really, things just happen. The deserving don't always live, and the bad guys don't always die.
Now that is an anti-Kira thought.
And, and the worst of it is, there's no clue as to when it'll hit, there's no rope tightening around her neck or switch to flick, she just has to wait until it comes through the air to find her -
Oh, now she can pray and beg and believe that Raito might spare her. Raito's her brother, he loves her, he told her he'd never let anyone hurt her, she doesn't want to die, oh god, she just wants to be left alone -
(Matsuda probably thought this too. He probably thought Raito was quite fond of him. Thinking about Matsuda still helps a little, even now. If he could face it, can't she? Can't she be brave? She isn't sure if she believes in life after death, but she imagines Matsuda watching her, feeling sorry for her, understanding, like she watched him, anyway.)
One of the men is asking her if she's got anything to say for herself. Waving a microphone in her face. The sky burns in his eyes. He's not that much older than her. He's looking at her like she's dirt.
She could say it. She could say it, Kira is Raito Yagami, my brother. People like Akira, watching now, would hear. They'd be able to find him, her brilliant brother with his unusual name. Heck, it might even save her skin, they might want to check first before they offer up a member of Kira's family to the sacrifice.
She opens her mouth.
Kira is my brother. The brother who ruffled her hair to annoy her and taught her how to ride a bike and spent hours talking to her about which university to go to, the brother who'd always beaten her in swimming races and bought her Hideki Ryuga CDs for her birthday and, and damn it, she can't, she can't, it's not fair, why can't she hate, why does she just always go quiet?
Everyone's watching. At home, Mum will be watching, they have the TV on a lot these days. Mum will lose both of them and maybe Sayu only wants to say it because then finally Raito won't be so perfect any more.
Which is just mean.
"Mum, I'm sorry," she chokes out. She's crying hard now. Going to die with red eyes and nose running and she can't even wipe her eyes, but really it could be worse. "I love you..."
Mummy please help me please tell me what to do
She closes her eyes.
(Matsuda must have had that choice, too. Right? It makes her feel a bit better, thinking that they evidently thought the same. Just didn't want any more people hurt. Well, perhaps. Matsuda might have had his own unworthier motivations as well.)
Raito's perfect, so Raito can choose whether to spare her in turn.
***
The girl with the long dark hair stands still, blinking back the tears, until suddenly her mouth falls open a little, and she collapses. There are no screams. She's dead before she hits the ground.
There are a few disappointed mumbles, but then someone cheers, and the sound is taken up until the entire crowd is roaring, as if the girl's done something that no one else could do.
Written carefully in a notebook are the words Sayu Yagami dies painlessly of massive heart failure at 10.25 a.m. The handwriting is perfectly steady.
[Rating] R, I think, for death
[Warnings] Character death. AU where Raito won. Written in a tearing hurry after an idea had at 4 a.m., so apologies if it makes no sense for some reason I haven't worked out yet
[Characters] Sayu, Matsuda, mention of Raito and Sachiko, brief mention of OC Kira supporters and haters
[Word Count] 2942
The hood over Sayu's head smells dusty, and the stench of other people's sweat crawls into her mouth. Other people's fear. She's trying not to notice it by now, though - they shoved the stupid thing over her head when they first took her and it hasn't been off since. The material's thick. No pinpoints of light to stare at. Or perhaps they just haven't let her out of the dark.
She's trying not to move, not to wriggle, not to draw attention to herself. She learnt that the last time. Trying not to think of how her wrists are aching from the handcuffs or how she's getting pins and needles from sitting still or how she kind of needs to go to the bathroom. Trying not to think. There's a person on either side of her, each holding her upper arm. They're not being really rough. Earlier, someone kicked her, and spat on her, and other people shouted in her face, through the cloth, that she was a traitor and an enemy of Lord Kira and would get what was coming to her. She let the tears ooze from her eyes, but gritted her teeth and caught the sobs in her throat. (She's got better at that since Los Angeles.) She didn't bother arguing. She'd been caught meeting with others and spreading hate speech about Kira. When they'd burst in, Akira, whom she'd met in her 20th-century poetry class, had just begun some horribly incriminating sentence like it isn't that there is no crime, it's that there is only Kira's crime! and thumping the table and the thumps had been echoed by the crashes as the invaders broke down the door.
There'd been screaming and sobbing and some people had started saying they hadn't meant it and others had yelled that this was what exactly what they'd been talking about and Sayu had found herself just watching, just watching as if none of this mattered, standing with her hands behind her back as if she were ready for them to cuff her and take her away. Someone had hit her and then she'd stumbled, fallen, tasted blood, and heard Akira yelling Not Sayu, for fuck's sake, leave her alone! Because people thought that because of Los Angeles, she should have earned a pain-free life forever after.
It wasn't nice to be sarcastic about it. Not everyone would've chosen to care about someone else when they were about to be dragged away and murdered.
She can hear the crowds, outside. The hands on her arms are tensed, slightly sweaty, as if they're holding her to comfort her, as if they're all of them about to go out and do a three-person balancing act on stage, as if they're all in this together -
No. No, she's not going to start being stupid, not like that, she went quiet after Los Angeles because she didn't know how to stop being so stupid -
She can hear the crowds outside but she can't hear anyone else speaking backstage. Is she the only one, then? It's usually only one person, unless you get a husband-and-wife team who schemed to destroy Kira or committed some really horrible crime or something else where you need two people. They wouldn't get much by sending her out with Akira or someone like that. She wasn't even a particularly active member of the group; she never knew what to say. You don't, when you're trying not to show that you know more than you're telling. Okay, she doesn't want to think about that part at all. The others aren't here so that means they're probably all dead, taken off to have their heart attacks in private. She wonders why they chose her to be different. Perhaps she has a good victim's face.
She's going to end up thinking about Raito. She can feel it.
She grits her teeth and she would clench her fists if she didn't think it would give away that she's starting to panic (and if she really panics, she'll go quiet and then they'll have to drag her or carry her out and when they let go she'll sink to the ground as if she's dead already and she'll go down in what little history she's going to get as Sayu Yagami, that girl who couldn't even stand up and face her death and she doesn't know why that bothers her more than the actual death part but somehow it does - perhaps because it'll make Mum sad, it always makes Mum sad when she goes quiet -)
She isn't going to think about Raito yet.
(She may not have to worry about this for more than a few seconds. In the dark she's lost all track of time. They like to whip the crowd into a frenzy first but it certainly sounds loud enough from here.)
She is going to think about someone else.
Matsuda had had the really-not-an-honour-at-all of being the first. Sayu still doesn't understand it all. She is pretty sure that the other police officers who were trying to catch Kira died ages ago, before the actual Kira laws were passed or anything. When Kira was still a ruler through TV. So she had assumed that Matsuda was dead. She'd assumed it right up until the May day when that dumb soap Tonight, At The Same Place had been interrupted by breaking news that the last of the sinners who had schemed to destroy Lord Kira in L's name had been hunted down and was now about to pay for his crimes!
They always kept you hooded. It's symbolic. They tear off the darkness, and Kira can see your true face. He doesn't even need your name. Not that he won't already know Sayu's, but damn it this thought wasn't meant to be about her. Anyway. There had been a multitude of camera shots from different points in the studio audience (this was when they still did it in studios rather than outside in public spaces) of a hooded man being held between two TV officials, and then they wrenched off the hood and Matsuda was blinking, eyes wide and terrified in the lights. Sayu hadn't realised she'd made any noise, but Mum had rushed in from the kitchen and by the time she'd realised what was going on, they were already shouting denunciations. Sayu doesn't remember it properly (she'd gone quiet again for a week afterwards). Matsuda very pale, his face grubby and spotted with bruises; wearing the same suit he'd worn that time he came to dinner with them, only it too was grimy now. She'd been thinking we have to stop them, they don't realise it's Matsuda-san, they think it's someone else, just over and over again, and she might have said it except that then one camera zoomed in on Matsuda's face.
He looked resigned, that was all. As if he'd expected everything to be terrible and now it was and he wasn't even surprised. He stared at the crowd screaming for his blood and the show host declaiming No, Lord Kira must take this man's life himself! and he just watched and Sayu wondered if he was trying to pretend he was somewhere else. And she realised that they did know what they were doing and it was him they were meant to be killing because otherwise he'd be looking angry or scared, he wouldn't be looking like he'd expected this -
The people holding on to him had stepped away and he was standing all alone. Sayu didn't want him to be standing alone. She'd wanted to kneel down in front of the TV and put her hand out to the figure on the screen like it would help but the quietness was already creeping up her body and she was only watching -
For about five seconds, nothing happened.
Sayu blinks, grits her teeth again, wonders why she began this thought when she knew how it would end, but it doesn't help.
Matsuda had cried out, a jagged cry like he hadn't wanted to make a sound but it had hurt too much to keep quiet. And his head had fallen back and then he'd dropped to his knees. Then he'd gone still. A camera had run its gaze over him, right up close, and you could see, you could see he was dead. A few faint twitches and then nothing else. A few shots of people in the audience, smiling or crying with joy. An aerial view; he'd looked crumpled, small, untidy, as if he couldn't even die neatly.
Then the cheering had begun.
The hands on her arms tighten, and then they pull her to her feet. Oh god. So it's happening now, it's going to happen for real, she's trying to walk but they're going too fast for her (probably on purpose), she mustn't go quiet, she mustn't -
She thinks, she thinks that perhaps Raito managed to convince Matsuda that Lord Kira was okay after all. She doesn't know how or why, because Matsuda had spent years trying to catch Kira, but it's an explanation that she quite likes. Matsuda had thought things were going to be all right. Raito could be very reassuring, after all. Matsuda had thought things were going to be all right and then, perhaps, he'd decided all at once that he couldn't go on, or perhaps someone had framed him and it had all happened within twenty-four hours, like it has for Sayu. She likes that. She doesn't want to think of him being kept in the dark and yelled at for months on end until they decided to get rid of him. She wants it to be that him and her brother stayed friends right til the end.
Now she's thinking of Raito.
The crowd is getting louder.
She'd known Raito was Kira. She'd known it all the time she'd sat in meetings listening to people call him a monster. She'd never said anything. Never told anyone that she could tell them where Kira was and when to stab him in his sleep. Never joined in when they argued about his childhood or his ideologies. She'd started going to the events because of Matsuda, because she knew what it was like to be kept in the dark and scared and no one giving a damn and it was either that or go quiet and never speak again. But she'd kept her mouth shut because of Raito, because Raito was still her brother and after all, weren't the people he was killing the type of people she should hate, given Los Angeles?
She feels the rush of air as a door is pushed open, and then they're outside - the air's cold - and the crowd roars around her and quiet, quiet, she's scared, she's so scared, she just doesn't want to die -
They shove her forward a bit and then they grab her to make her stand still.
There's a shriek of microphone feedback, and then the speech starts. It's the usual stuff. She's ungrateful, one of the new breed of young person who thinks they know better than the generous god who protects them. She has been found to be one of those who disseminate anti-Kira propaganda and perpetuate anti-Kira behaviours such as drug-taking and casual violence. She is a lost soul and a tumour eating away at the heart of Japan. For the good of the country, she must be judged and eliminated.
It's the same thing they say to everyone. At least Matsuda had got some individuality in his send-off. A criminal supporter, assisting the hated enemy L to try and destroy their beloved Kira. That kind of stuff. Matsuda actually did something worthwhile. But then, Sayu figures he didn't know Raito was Kira for most of his foul and depraved Kira-hating career. That probably helped him to be more wholehearted about it.
What if she actually throws up, or wets herself, or has hysterics? Would that be worse than going quiet? Perhaps it doesn't matter. A lot of people cry or beg. Some scream defiance until the end, but Sayu wonders now if they're plants or fakes, because she feels so sick and horrible it's taking all her courage to stay standing upright.
They wrench off the hood. Rough hands horribly near her face, and then cold air on her skin, and the bright white light of the sky -
There's so many people. She didn't realise you got this many. People as far as the eye can see and every single one of them hating her. She doesn't know what she did to earn this. After Los Angeles she wondered if that was payback for being jealous of Raito or not helping out with the housework, but she's older now. She thinks that really, things just happen. The deserving don't always live, and the bad guys don't always die.
Now that is an anti-Kira thought.
And, and the worst of it is, there's no clue as to when it'll hit, there's no rope tightening around her neck or switch to flick, she just has to wait until it comes through the air to find her -
Oh, now she can pray and beg and believe that Raito might spare her. Raito's her brother, he loves her, he told her he'd never let anyone hurt her, she doesn't want to die, oh god, she just wants to be left alone -
(Matsuda probably thought this too. He probably thought Raito was quite fond of him. Thinking about Matsuda still helps a little, even now. If he could face it, can't she? Can't she be brave? She isn't sure if she believes in life after death, but she imagines Matsuda watching her, feeling sorry for her, understanding, like she watched him, anyway.)
One of the men is asking her if she's got anything to say for herself. Waving a microphone in her face. The sky burns in his eyes. He's not that much older than her. He's looking at her like she's dirt.
She could say it. She could say it, Kira is Raito Yagami, my brother. People like Akira, watching now, would hear. They'd be able to find him, her brilliant brother with his unusual name. Heck, it might even save her skin, they might want to check first before they offer up a member of Kira's family to the sacrifice.
She opens her mouth.
Kira is my brother. The brother who ruffled her hair to annoy her and taught her how to ride a bike and spent hours talking to her about which university to go to, the brother who'd always beaten her in swimming races and bought her Hideki Ryuga CDs for her birthday and, and damn it, she can't, she can't, it's not fair, why can't she hate, why does she just always go quiet?
Everyone's watching. At home, Mum will be watching, they have the TV on a lot these days. Mum will lose both of them and maybe Sayu only wants to say it because then finally Raito won't be so perfect any more.
Which is just mean.
"Mum, I'm sorry," she chokes out. She's crying hard now. Going to die with red eyes and nose running and she can't even wipe her eyes, but really it could be worse. "I love you..."
Mummy please help me please tell me what to do
She closes her eyes.
(Matsuda must have had that choice, too. Right? It makes her feel a bit better, thinking that they evidently thought the same. Just didn't want any more people hurt. Well, perhaps. Matsuda might have had his own unworthier motivations as well.)
Raito's perfect, so Raito can choose whether to spare her in turn.
***
The girl with the long dark hair stands still, blinking back the tears, until suddenly her mouth falls open a little, and she collapses. There are no screams. She's dead before she hits the ground.
There are a few disappointed mumbles, but then someone cheers, and the sound is taken up until the entire crowd is roaring, as if the girl's done something that no one else could do.
Written carefully in a notebook are the words Sayu Yagami dies painlessly of massive heart failure at 10.25 a.m. The handwriting is perfectly steady.