A/N: Okay, so from now on I'm going to be putting author's notes at the beginning.

For those of you who don't get why Takada didn't start the fire, remember: the Death Note can only kill one person. If the way they die causes the death of another, then the person will die of a heart attack instead. If Takada had started a fire, there could have been an explosion, killing both Mello and Allison.

Let it be known that, when Allison rode back on her motorcycle, she was pulled over by the authorities and given a ticket for not wearing a helmet. I don't support helmet-less motorcycle-ing. Drive safely, children. Thank you for reading this public service announcement.

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Allison

"Allison!"

"Birdie!" I said, taken aback when she tackled me in a hug, her arms wrapping around me. "What's this about?"

"You could have died, bonehead!" she said angrily.

"I realize it was raining, but it wasn't that dan—"

"—Jeepers!" Birdie cried in obvious annoyance. "Don't start with any of that crud! I know you went to help Mello!"

"What?" I said, genuinely surprised. I decided to use that evident shock to my advantage. "What are you on about, Birdie? Help Mello with what?"

"You... you really don't know?" she said. "But you went to see Matt a few days ago... Matt didn't tell you?"

"Tell me what, Birdie?" I said. "I asked Matt if Mello had anything planned, and Matt told me that he didn't."

"Oh," she said, taking her arms off of me and then pretending to dust off her sweatshirt in an attempt to avoid eye contact. "Well, um... Allison, Mello kidnapped Takada, and—and he had Matt help. The three of them... they all died, Allison. That's why I... why I thought you were dead, too."

"Dead?" I said. "They're all... dead?"

Birdie nodded solemnly, and I dropped to my knees and cried. I had held in my sorrow when Matt died, forced to keep myself together in that serious situation. I had hid my feelings when I returned to the headquarters, but now that façade shattered. All of that sadness and anger suddenly came rushing through me and went into my tears. Anger and sorrow towards Matt and Mello. Neither of them would be here to see how this all ended.

Patience

I touched Birdie's shoulder, and when she looked back at me, I gestured with my head to the door, urging her to leave Allison and me alone. After Birdie had left, I put my hand out to help Allison up and the two of us walked out of the room and headed to the now empty room where Misa Amane and Kanzo Mogi had been kept. They had been sent to the Teito Hotel earlier that day.

"You could have gotten yourself killed," I told her as I sat down in a chair.

"What are you talking about?" she said as she laid back on a couch, tears running down her face as she silently mourned. She was truly upset, that much I knew, but that didn't mean she didn't do it. "I wasn't there, Patience."

"No, you definitely were," I said, "or else you wouldn't have been hiding the fact that you were in touch with Matt from me when both Birdie and Near knew." I'd figured that last part out on my own. "Not to mention the fact that you saw Mello and never said anything even though I told you when I saw him. I know you, Allison."

"Yes, I did go to Mello," she admitted, sitting upright, her cheeks red with anger, "and I tried to stop him myself, but it didn't make a damn difference. He's dead, Matt's dead, and I'm alive, so the rest, it doesn't matter. Congratulations, Patience, you're as perfect as always.
"Yes, you know me! Just like you know everyone and everything else, Patience! Yet you act as ignorant as ever, and you don't appreciate a damn thing you have! Instead, you're stuck in the past, trying to find a woman who didn't even want you in the first place, when there are a million things you could do with your gift instead."

I wasn't going to bother reminding myself to be patient. At this point, I was done with patience.

"You're one to talk!" I said. "This isn't about my mother anymore! It's about finding out whatever twisted reasoning everyone had to hide my past from me, because I deserve to know. Just like how you deserve to forget about Mello and move on with your life.
"It may have taken years, but I'm not living in the past anymore. I'm looking there so I can have a starting point for the future. That's not you, though. You've been holding onto the past, and you've been looking for the Mello you knew because you can't face the facts, Allison! Mello didn't die tonight." I could tell she had been lying about Mello being killed because of Kira, but that wasn't the only thing I was talking about. The anger in my voice seemed to have dissipated after getting all that out; I just wanted her to hear the truth now. "The Mello you know died a long time ago.
"I could always tell, you know, and I wasn't the only one. Lacey even figured it out, eventually, and so did Matt and Joy, and no doubt May was aware of it, too. The only people who never realized it were you and Mello."

"Realized what?" she said. She played dumb, but we both knew the truth. I could see a challenge in her eyes, as if she were silently daring me to say what we both knew came next.

"That you're in love with him, Allison."

She stared at me with a mixture of sorrow, anger, and confusion. She had known what I was going to say, but for some reason, when I said it, it was almost as though she had only just realized.

"And it's okay, Allison," I told her. "It's okay if you love him, but you need to remember: Mello has changed."

"We've all changed, Patience," she said, now calm. She didn't bother denying anything. It was as though, now that she had heard it from me, she could no longer refute it. "You should know that. Look at you, look at me, look at Birdie, Lacey, and Joy."

"And look at Near," I said. I could tell that I had lost her. "Even in little ways, he has changed, Allison. You're right; everyone changes, some in small ways, like Near, and some in bigger ways, like Birdie, but Mello... I haven't seen that much of him. We've only met once since the day he left, but I think he's changed even more, Allison. I think he's changed into a different person; he's not the Mello we once knew."

"You can't really mean that, Patience," she said. "You of all people should know that he's still the same person."

Why? Why me of all people? Then I remembered what Mello had done the moment he'd seen me after nearly five years: he had pulled down my sweatband to see if I was still cutting myself. I remembered the picture of us all that he had kept with him for so many years.

But shadowing over all of that was that day several months back. People dropping dead, clutching at their chests. How Birdie had been standing there helplessly, yet as bravely as ever, as she did her best to hide her abject horror. I could see the fear in her eyes and the tears she was holding back. I remembered Ratt's blank face as he lifted the gun to his head. How I had grabbed Birdie and held her close to me so that she wouldn't have to see what I saw, but she still had to smell it. That sharp, coppery smell of blood that filled the room with its stench. I remembered how, after that day, Birdie would wake up in a cold sweat in the night, panicking after having had an awful nightmare. How she would insist that it had simply been something she ate or some other excuse and would always refuse to go back to Wammy's whenever I brought up the topic. How I would slip into her bed without any protests and hold her until she fell asleep.

"He might be the same person, Allison," I said warily, "but the changes... he's changed in ways a lot bigger than how Birdie and I have changed. He's changed, and he can't go back."

"Well, Kira killed him," she lied, "so I guess it doesn't really matter."

"Yeah," I said, going along with her story for the moment, "I guess not."

Then I left the room, shutting the door carefully behind me as I headed back to the room Near was in.

"How's Gevanni doing?" I inquired.

"He's hard at work," Near told me. "Occasionally checking in; things are going smoothly."

"That's a nice change of pace," I said with a sigh, "and Birdie?"

"Set up in the Teito Hotel with Kanzo Mogi and Misa Amane, where she will remain safe," he assured me.

I nodded. Birdie may have gotten her way so far, the fact that she was a child often acting as a shield from danger. There was no way in hell any of us would let her come to the Yellow Box Warehouse, though. Child or not, if Kira won, he wouldn't allow for any survivors.

"Did you inform Allison of the new plan?" Near asked me.

"No," I admitted, "no, I did not."

Allison

"You win, Lacey," I muttered to myself as I reached into my bag. "I've been owned."

Well, Lacey basically always won. She'd win tournaments, she'd win medals, she'd win sports, she would win the strategic exercises we used to do at Wammy's to help us predict a person's next move. She had even won herself a cute boyfriend. Lacey had always lost to me when it came to arguments, though. Except now, apparently. I always thought I'd won because Lacey would give up. I now realized that was simply because she knew I would never admit defeat even though, in reality, she had beaten me every single time.

Feeling the worn leather, I pulled the journal out of my bag and looked it over. Brown but lightened and wrinkled from exposure to light over time. Some tears here and there from years of abuse and pages yellowed and wrinkled with age, some of them even singed at the edges from what must have been flames. Though beaten, the book as a whole was in relatively good shape, none of the pages falling out, the cover still covering them all to make sure the elements couldn't harm them. I took off the strap that held it together, and I flipped through the pages.

The entire thing was filled out, the words all spelled correctly and carefully written, with only the occasional smudge. Some of the ink was black, some blue, some red, indicating that the writer had gone through multiple pens in the process of filling out the journal. At some points, the writing got a little messy, likely the result of a tired hand. Then, it was neat again, indicating that a break must have been taken. I recognized the handwriting, of course. Smooth cursive with unnecessary flourishes on the ending letters of words and not bothering to dot many of the "i"s.

Then, I closed the book and reopened it to the beginning. I read the first few paragraphs, and once I had gotten further into his writing, my eyes widened as I digested Mello's words:

I am your narrator, your navigator, your storyteller. For anyone else but those two, my identity may be of no interest, but I am the old world's runner-up, the best dresser that died like a dog, Mihael Keehl. I once called myself Mello and was addressed by that name, but that was a long time ago. Good memories and nightmares.

"Did you know?" I wondered aloud, as if Mello were there with me. "Did you know, you dumbarse? Did you plan on dying from the start?"

I was still angered, but I kept reading, knowing that shouting at nothing would get me nowhere. Reading this, however... well, it might not do anything, but at least I would know. At least I would have a better idea of what had been going on in that son of a bitch's head while he was doing it all.

Patience

I hate waiting. I've always hated waiting. That day seemed like the longest wait I've ever been put through, though in reality it wasn't even two hours. We just stood there, originally waiting thirty minutes to see if anyone would drop dead from a heart attack, and after that, we waited some more for Mikami to show up. It didn't take that long for the door to creak open, but we did nothing, much to the distress of the Task Force. They all just barely calmed down when Near told them it was all part of the plan. I could feel Allison's ice cold glare on me, even though I couldn't see it; she had only been informed of the plan just before the Task Force had arrived, and she was still sore that I hadn't informed her of it earlier. I was too busy staring at Light to really notice, though. So readable. Did the Task Force really not find it suspicious that he hadn't even blinked when we all realized that our names were being written in the Death Note?

It was a long forty seconds, Near and Light looking at each other, gazes locked, and each of them with a slight smile on their face. The Task Force, with the exception of Light, stood nervously. Even Lidner, Gevanni, and Rester seemed nervous, sweat on their brows as they anxiously awaited the forty second mark. Allison clutched at the rosary she wore around her neck, mouthing a prayer. I was still impatient, drumming my fingers on my thigh as we all waited. Despite whatever comfort I gained from knowing that I would live through all of this, it didn't change the fact that these were the longest forty seconds of my life. Forty seconds isn't a long time, but I knew that once they passed by, I would be waiting even more for the explanations and overall confrontation to end. For me to see my name. If this worked, I would be able to see my name, the name I was oblivious of and that I could only find out through Mikami, who possessed the Shinigami Eyes. My eyes turned to Mikami, whose gaze was fixed on his watch. In the quiet of the warehouse, I was able to pick up the ticking of his watch, and I silently counted along with him.

"Thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine."

"I win, Near," Light said with a toothy grin.

Everyone, even Gevanni, Rester, Lidner, and Allison, was in a panic. Matsuda covered his ears, as though it would cancel out the inevitable screams of death that would come, but none came.

"Forty," I thought at the same time that Mikami spoke the final number aloud.

Everyone stood there expectantly, as though they believed our deaths had just been delayed.

"We, we're not dead," Matsuda breathed, taking his hands off of his head and looking at them as if to confirm that he retained all his senses. "It's already been about a minute, and we're not dead!"

"I've been telling you that nobody would die," Near said.

"Why?" Mikami asked, his hand holding the pen trembling as his eyes moved from the notebook to Light. "Why won't they die? G-God... I—I did as you told me!"

"Rester, Gevanni," Near said, snapping the two out of their stupors, "get Mikami."

"G-God!" Mikami cried as Gevanni and Rester detained him, dropping the notebook as the handcuffs clicked onto his wrists.

"Gevanni, the notebook," Near instructed. Gevanni retrieved the notebook and handed it to Near, who then showed the Task Force the page of the notebook which had our names on it. "See for yourselves.
"The first six names are unmistakably the real names of the SPK members. And the only name that is missing from this list is Yagami Light. Mikami called you 'God' and said he did as you told him to. This proves it."

"A... a trap!" Light exclaimed. "This is a trap! Near set this whole thing up to frame me! It's impossible that nobody's dead even after their names are written in the notebook. That proves this is a trap!"

"What?" said Matsuda.

Light was desperate now, grasping at straws. How disappointing.

"But I told you that nobody would die because I replaced the pages," Near reminded him.

"W-well... y-you!" Light stammered. "It... it can't be... it's impossible... This is a setup. I don't know this man!"

Mikami blanched. His face was hollow, and finally, he bowed his head in despair when he realized what was going on. When he realized that his god had left him.

"Light," said Aizawa, grabbing Yagami by the shoulder as he attempted to walk away. "It's too late. Near wins. A second ago, you said, 'I win.' That's as good a confession as any."

"Light," said Matsuda. His grief weighing on him, he collapsed to his knees, unable to hold up the burden of his sorrows. "Why?"

The only sound was the tap, tap of Mogi's shoes on the concrete floor, which then stopped when he was in front of Light, and was replaced with the click of handcuffs being undone.

"S-stop it!" Light shouted, slapping Mogi's hand away and running away towards the closed garage door. "S-stop!" In his franticness, he tripped over himself and fell to the filthy ground, quickly picking himself up and getting to the door, clawing at it in an attempt to escape as he looked back at us all.

"Yagami Light... L... Kira... you lose," Near stated. "You claimed your victory a moment ago. And to tell you the truth, you might have actually won, and I might have lost.
"You had Mikami use a fake notebook and had him carry it around in front of us so we'd believe that it was the real thing. You even went so far as to suspect that I would replace the pages in the fake notebook, so that I wouldn't die even if my name was written in it. Things turned out exactly as you had expected, and we replaced the pages in the fake notebook.
"That indeed was the plan I had in mind as well. I replaced the pages of the notebook that happened to be a fake, and you had Mikami bring the real notebook out for the first time to kill all of us. That was your plan.
"But when I said, 'I replaced the pages in the notebook,' I meant in the real one as well. Meaning that I tampered with both the fake and the real notebook. I replaced only a part of the fake notebook, and I replaced the pages of the real notebook completely.
"This is the real notebook," Near said, pulling it out of his shirt. "Gevanni did it overnight. Whether he was able to replace all of it or not was the key to the plan. He did replace a part of the fake notebook with ease, but it was quite difficult to make a forged copy of the entire real one. Gevanni promised me, however, that it could be done. He used the same pen that Mikami used, copied Mikami's handwriting to perfection, and even made a perfect copy of the cover in addition to the interior pages.
"Since I had already touched this notebook beforehand, I could see the Shinigami from the moment you entered the warehouse.
"Shinigami-san, nice to meet you. I'm Near."

The Shinigami cackled in amusement. "Nice to meet you," it said in kind. "I'm Ryuk."

"Ryuk, until today, I always believed that Shinigami had skulls for faces and carry sickles," Near admitted.

"Well, there are ones like that, too," Ryuk said, chuckling.

"I looked through this notebook and found some pages that were clipped out," Near explained. "Can it be that people die even if you write names on pages that have been cut out?"

"Yeah, they'll die," the Shinigami confirmed.

The look of anguish on Lights face at that moment... He felt betrayed, but even he had to have realized that something as elusive as death takes no sides.

"Even pieces are effective," Near marveled. "I'm sure there must have been many uses for that. I can't even begin to think of how many people were killed and deceived because of that.
"Yagami Light, you are Kira."