Jesus replied, "The one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me. The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him."

♕♕♕

As L stared at the cameras that pointed to the NPA detention center, just a few blocks from his headquarters, he was convinced he would set a new wakefulness record. There was nothing that could persuade him to lie down and doze, nothing. He was hungry for the truth as if he were a starving man, and these cameras would stop the gnawing pain in his stomach.

The crumpled-up note was still in his pants pocket, although he'd showered and changed clothes twice. He wouldn't show it to the task force yet – that would have to wait until he found out the truth. But given the writing style and the context clues he could gather, it was almost definitely penned by Light to Misa. Of that, he was sure.

His eyes flickered to Misa. She was dressed in an all-white prison garment, and her tiny frame huddled against the wall beyond the monitor's screen. Unlike the last time he'd confined her on suspicion of being the Second Kira, she was free to move about her cell and stripped of her blindfold.

Aizawa and Ide had begrudgingly agreed to wear facial masks in her presence. L was reasonably sure she'd lost the power to see others' names during the memory erasure, but if his hypothesis was correct, who knew if that was still the case?

Yet something was distinctly wrong about blindfolding her and tying her against a metal bed again. He couldn't explain it, but in part, he had a deep reverence for Light's intelligence and did not want to disgrace his enemies in such a base way.

Or, perhaps, he was trying to atone for his sins.

Vaguely, L heard the task force members whisper from behind him. "Has he moved from his chair since those two were confined?" Matsuda murmured.

"No," Chief Yagami replied. "Ryuzaki-san," he intoned. "We're ready."

L turned around to meet the two men. "Oh..." He checked the time on the monitor. "Yes, right. I suppose we should be going." He rose from his chair, surrendering it to Mogi, who had promised to stay behind and watch Light and Misa's confinement.

L crammed his feet into worn sneakers. The feeling in his chest grew heavier. Those two would remain in their jail cells when all this was over. And just as before, with Kimiko, Near, Ursa, A, and B...L would have to leave his friends behind again.

♙♙♙

Soichiro Yagami, formerly Chief of the NPA, took a deep breath as the limousine Watari was driving arrived at the NPA detention center. L had said he was not permitted to visit Light in prison. Though he understood why the detective had said such a thing, it still made Soichiro's stomach ache.

After reviewing the packet, he had wept all his tears the night before. There was, indeed, a good chance that the thirteen-day rule was false. And if so, that would mean his firstborn, Light Yagami, was the killer he'd been trying to catch all this time.

L looked ahead, not speaking. Soichiro appreciated him for that.

They left the limousine and entered the NPA detention center, silently walking down the halls. Not even Matsuda uttered a peep; the young man, too, seemed brokenhearted at the possibility of Light being Kira. But they had no choice. This was the only way to uncover the truth.

As they entered an interrogation room, Soichiro found his hands were sweaty around the briefcase that held the Death Note. The plain, nondescript room had only a metal table and two chairs, both bolted tightly to the floor. Occupying one of these chairs was a young man with raven hair, dark eyes, and a grieving expression.

Without asking, L commandeered the other seat. "Ton-san," he said, his voice gentle as he addressed the man. "Thank you for agreeing to this. I am L."

Okono Ton looked at L as if he were a god. "No," he said, his voice equally quiet and meek. "Thank you. I am honored to die if it means this case will come to a close." Soichiro gazed upon the criminal, dressed in an orange jumpsuit and looking for all the world like he was downright content.

According to the report he'd read the night before, Ton had been arrested for several charges of larceny and theft, not to mention murdering his two infant sisters. Per the papers, he had been convicted of slicing their stomachs open to retrieve several high-price, stolen fish hooks they had swallowed – each worth several thousand dollars. A hoarder and a selfish fraud, he had been disgraced publicly and sentenced to die on death row. But the man in front of him didn't look dangerous. He looked more terrified of them.

L spoke in a low voice to Ton. "Now, we're going to get this over with quickly. Manabu will enter the room and write your name down in a moment. The cause of death will be a heart attack, and you will die. That is all you have to do for this experiment, and you will have atoned for your crimes."

"Th...thank you." Ton was on the verge of tears. "I promise, I won't let this go to waste. Thank you..." He gripped L's hands. "Thank you for letting me pay..."

L stared at their entwined hands for a moment, face as blank as ever, before letting go. "Now, Watari? Would you please bring in Manabu for this experiment?"

The old man responded in the affirmative. After about ten minutes, Watari brought in a bald, older man with a double chin and a handlebar mustache, and L traded seats with him. Manabu was unaware of his true identity – to him, L was simply Ryuzaki – and given Ton's current disposition, it was unlikely he would reveal that information.

"Mr. Yagami, if you would?" L asked. Soichiro looked at the two criminals, who were opposites. Whereas Manabu fit the profile of the jaded, hardened scoundrels Soichiro often apprehended, there was a certain softness to Ton that spoke of a man who'd made impulsive decisions in youth and sorely regretted it. And in a way, Ton reminded Soichiro of his son.

He nodded to L, taking out the notebook and handing a pen to Manabu. The older man looked at Ton with an expression of mock pity. "If you weren't such a wuss, I'd almost feel sorry for ya. Oh well," he said with a shrug, turning to the notebook. "I'll get out of this if L's hypothesis is correct."

"Just get it over with. Just send me home." Ton's voice shook. "Send me home to Niwa and Kuni, Mani!"

Manabu's smile grew wider. "Gladly." And with that, he penned the characters とんおこの – Okono Ton – onto the page.

Soichiro checked his watch. It took forty seconds for the Death Note to take effect, according to the rules in the notebook that L was sure were real. Each tick was a heartbeat. Each second was a year.

Okono Ton gagged, gripping his chest tightly. His face turned beat-red, and in a matter of moments, sweat caked his face. He let out a strangled cry as he fell from his chair, and his head made a sickening crack against the metal floor. A few seconds passed before his body slackened.

L crossed the room, squatting to check the man's pulse. Then he made a slicing motion across his own neck.

Dead.

"So the notebook is real," Matsuda stammered – the first words he'd uttered since they'd arrived here, which was unlike him. "But we still don't know about the thirteen-day rule."

"That is correct," L said softly, not moving from where he sat. With all the tenderness of a child, he closed Ton's eyes, bowing his head in respect for the man. "Manabu."

"Yeah?"

L stood. "Yagami and Matsuda will closely monitor you. As discussed before our visit, if you survive for a full two weeks starting now, your sentence will be life imprisonment rather than death."

Manabu didn't move. "Always trading lives, arent'cha?" A shrug. "Eh. No matter – didn't really wanna die a hero anyway."

"Do not say those words just yet," L said. "We are not certain of the thirteen-day rule." But Soichiro could tell L was fibbing. The young man was convinced the thirteen-day rule was false. And unfortunately, through it all, Soichiro had no choice but to agree.

Oh, Light.

♙♙♙

On the second day of the thirteen-day trial, Touta Matsuda met Ide and Aizawa at the NPA detention center. L had put the three of them in charge of watching over Manabu, and while Matsuda didn't exactly like the man, he did want to make L and the chief proud. So he and the others stayed in the same room as the one L had administered the test to, playing card games and trying not to think that the man in the orange jumpsuit could die in twelve days.

"So, Manabu-san," Matsuda said, trying to be polite despite the man's garish appearance, "um...what did you end up getting convicted of?"

"Matsuda," Aizawa growled, "didn't you read the report L gave you?"

"Uh..." Matsuda felt his cheeks burn. He tried hard to be an upstanding task force member, but some days it felt like his brain was a sieve, and all the critical information was falling through. Was this how everyone else felt constantly?

"No biggie," Manabu replied as he played a card. "I was arrested for offin' a guy who pissed me off outside the gas station I worked at."

"O-oh." Matsuda wasn't sure how to respond. "I see."

Manabu flashed a crooked-tooth grin at Matsuda. "I see you're pretty ruffled over that. Ain't a big deal. I've been on my best behavior since I ended up in this place."

"Thanks for volunteering to help," Aizawa said; his veneer of kindness was much thinner than Matsuda's, and Ide hadn't spoken at all since they'd arrived - typical of him.

"No need to thank me. I just wanted to avoid dyin'."

"I guess I can't blame you for that," Matsuda murmured. "If I were in your situation, I probably would have done the same thing." He looked over to the tile where Ton's body had been after he'd died. "Were you...um...close with Ton-san?"

"Nah," Manabu said. "He was a crazy one, though. Wept all through the night and screamed that he wanted to die for killin' his sisters. If you ask me, that's the only reason he volunteered. I wanted to live, and he wanted to die. Simple as that."

So it wasn't that noble after all. Did L victimize a suicidal man for his purposes? Matsuda played an ace of spades. He had been conflicted over L's brutal methods and cut corners, but not even L was that heartless, was he?

"Wasn't too late for him, either," Manabu grunted. "He could've gone out with honor, but nah. Can't have that."

Matsuda bit his lip. Poor Ton. What sorts of things were going through his mind? And why was he so willing to die?

But for some reason, he felt L may have known that Ton was suicidal. Or perhaps he had a different interpretation of Ton's reasoning. Matsuda wondered why he would agree to go for this criminal out of all the others - L was so careful, so thorough...

Or maybe, Matsuda thought, he wasn't trying to kill a suicidal man. Perhaps he let Ton do that because it was Ton's choice. He remembered the sorrowful look in L's eyes as he stared at Light, confined once more. Sweat had beaded on L's forehead, and he'd dabbed his forehead with a towel, but never moved, slept, or ate.

L wanted the truth that badly. To him, nothing else mattered but whether Light, his co-investigator, was Kira.

And his hunger was so much more personal than anyone else on the task force realized.

~~~

Did you know...

- I debated with myself about whether it was in-character for Matsuda to make such an astute observation about L. However, I actually think he's quite emotionally intelligent, despite being a klutz.

- Developing Ton was very difficult. I had a hard time picturing a person as gentle as he is doing something so horrible to his sisters.

Tell me what you think...

- Was Ton a noble man? Why or why not?

- How might L change through discovering once and for all that Light is Kira?