Patience

Day in and day out, it was exactly the same. Gevanni would observe Mikami and his notebook. Rester would help Near sort through everything. Lidner remained undercover as Takada's bodyguard. Birdie stayed with Misa and Mogi, talking with Misa and therefore allowing Mogi a moment's rest. Light would continue to meet with Takada. Mikami would go about his daily routine. Allison would continuously check her phone, sometimes texting someone back, and never willing to tell me whom she was texting. Day after day, the clock ticked by, and I would help out where I could. Then, finally, a date was set. Near and L would finally meet face-to-face.

"No matter how you look at it, not everyone will be walking out of it alive," I said as we walked towards the room where Birdie, Misa, and Mogi were.

"How is that?" Allison asked. "If Kira loses, won't he be taken into custody?"

"Probably," I said in agreement, "but I'm sure he'd rather die than have that happen."

"I guess," she admitted. "...Patience?"

"Huh?" I noticed that she had stopped walking, so I did the same. "What is it?"

"What do you think?" she asked. "Do you think that Amane... that she killed May?"

I was silent for a minute before I spoke up. "The odds that Misa Amane is Kira are slim to none," I assured her.

"Patience!" Allison said angrily, running up and grabbing my shoulder to stop me from walking away. "That isn't an answer, and you know it! Tell me."

I sighed but relented. "We don't know much about the Death Note or how it works." She was about to object to my lack of an answer, but I gave her a look that told her I wasn't done yet. "I didn't tell Birdie, but the person who asked for someone to call an ambulance when May died was definitely a Japanese woman. The Japanese woman knew May's name, and the first thing she did when she got to May wasn't check on her, but hang up May's cellphone.
"I would say without a doubt that Amane did it-everything points to her, but when she talked to Birdie about May... You could hear the pain in her voice; she wasn't acting. She seemed to genuinely care about May."

"You're right," Allison said, "she definitely wasn't acting. I saw her guest star in an episode of Hideki Ryuga's last show; she's not that good of an actress."

I nodded but looked at Allison gravely, a warning in my eyes. "She cared about May," I agreed, "but that doesn't mean she didn't do it."

Allison nodded solemnly, and I could tell whatever hope she'd had that Misa was innocent was now almost, if not completely, gone.

"Should we tell her?" Allison asked.

I didn't have to ask who "she" was.

"It depends," I said, "either Misa did it because May was getting too close, or she didn't and was just a friend of May's.
"Either way, she definitely cared about May, and that connection is important to Birdie. I don't have to tell you how much it means to her. I'm pretty certain that Amane did it, but on the slim chance she didn't, do we want to risk it? Even if she did do it, would you want to tell Birdie? For her, it would be like losing May all over again."

"Either genuine happiness or happiness based on a lie," Allison said with a dry laugh, "and if we tell her, there's only one result. I'm willing to take that chance, Patience. Maybe it's wrong of me, but I'd rather have Birdie be living a happy lie than living in misery."

I shrugged. "I don't think there is a right or wrong here, Allison," I said. "In any of this."

"Not even in Kira killing people?" Allison said skeptically.

I shook my head. "Not even that. If it was that black and white, then people wouldn't be so torn on the issue. There would be a majority and a minority. In this case, the majority actually supports Kira."

"Thanks to fear and the corruption of the media," she argued. "They're practically indoctrinating their viewers."

"Yeah," I said, "so if you take that out, imagine what it was like in the beginning. Things were more evenly divided; there was no majority. If there isn't a majority, then there isn't a definite right or wrong."

"Have you ever heard of An Enemy of the People?" she asked.

I raised an eyebrow and shook my head in response.

"It's a Norwegian play—En folkefiende—about a man who tries to warn everyone in town that the water of the springs they make money off of is poisoned," she explained. "No one believed him, but he was right. 'The majority is never right until it does right.'"

"Unlike your play, Allison," I began, "there isn't anyone writing this. There's no underlying message to convince us that one party is right." I heard her phone beeping, and she pulled it out to check her notification. "And who knows? Maybe he was wrong; maybe the water was never poisoned in the first place."

Allison

I frowned at Patience's comment. I couldn't understand her outlook on the world, or rather, her apparent lack thereof. At least with Joy, I knew her opinion: a bunch of pro-murdering, Kira-praising shite.

That thought rang in the back of my head as I pulled out my cellphone. I had gotten a new text from Matt.

go to corner store i met you at last time. need to talk in person.

"I have to go," I said, quickly looking up from my phone.

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"I'm surprised he even let you back in," I said as I approached Matt in the convenience store. He was smoking a fag and playing one of his handheld video games.

"He almost didn't," Matt muttered.

I waited. "You plan on telling me why I'm here?"

"Just got to beat this," he said, "then I'll save it."

"I thought you said you gave me your favorite video game," I pointed out.

"I did," he said, "but that doesn't mean I won't play something else to pass the time. I've already beaten this five times, but—"

I stepped forward, snatched the game out of his hands, and closed the upper screen.

"You bitch," he said half-jokingly.

I rolled my eyes. "Priorities, Matt. Priorities."

He was silent.

"What's the matter?" I asked him.

He took the fag out of his mouth and blew out a puff of smoke. I quickly grabbed a magazine and started fanning it out. "You'll set off the smoke detector that way, you twit.
"Come on, let's go outside. There's practically no one out on the streets at this time of day. Everyone's at work or something."

Matt shrugged, then nodded. I gestured for him to follow, and he paid for another pack of fags on his way out. The man at the register had looked at him suspiciously, as if he'd suspected Matt would drop another lit fag and set the store on fire.

"Feel free to tell me what you brought me here for at any time," I said casually as the two of us walked side-by-side down the empty streets.

He sighed, taking the fag out of his mouth and puffing a cloud of smoke. "You have a day."

"A day?" I said. "For what?" I stopped walking when I realized what he meant. "What's that nutter got planned?"

"It's a long story," he said.

"Fortunately for us, you have roughly twenty-four hours to tell it to me," I told him, putting my hands on my hips and staring at him determinedly.

"Where should I start?" he wondered.

"The beginning, m'dear," I suggested with a grin. "That would be preferable."

Patience

I was with Near in the main room of the SPK's makeshift headquarters. It was the quietest place there, the only sound the little tapping of Near moving his toys around. I sat in a chair, flipping through the pages of the English version of the script of the play Allison had told me about. It hadn't taken me very long to read, and I silently wondered if Allison had seen or read the play in it's original Norwegian version. Probably.

One part of the play had stuck with me. It wasn't the climax, or the big twist at the end. It was much simpler than that.

Towards the end of the play, the main character, the doctor who tested the spring waters for poison, is confronted by his father-in-law, who asks if he had any doubts. He assured his father-in-law that he didn't, but his father-in-law kept pushing. Perhaps the water was only poisoned in that one section he'd tested. Maybe a cure could have been made. The tests could have been wrong. The people who came to the springs to be healed and left with different illnesses could have contracted those illnesses by chance; maybe food poisoning, which the doctor had not bothered to look into.

The doctor tells him that the chances for all of that are extremely low, but it was obvious by the way the doctor spoke that even he was beginning to have his doubts.

We never find out if it's actually poisoned. It's suggested that it's true, but the doctor, who had originally been so certain, eventually came to doubt his belief, even if just a little. Such a small chance. The majority of the town, as Allison had said, had been against him even though it's supposed to be obvious that the doctor is right, and that the chance of shutting down the springs should be taken. Such a small percentage of the people agreed with him. Such a small percentage despite the little, but legitimate, evidence which was provided.

That Mikami would risk calling out to the Shinigami in public, even if all alone, was strange to me. It seemed so insignificant, so unlikely to actually have any meaning. The probability that my suspicions were right was low, but I couldn't help but get this feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was off.

I set the script down on a table. There was nothing I could do about it. If I did nothing and ended up being right, we would all die. If I was wrong and tried to do something, I would end up getting us all killed. Just like the doctor had his family.

It was a bittersweet feeling. On one hand, if Near was right and we had the real notebook, after Mikami tried to write our names down I would be able to find out my real name. With the same powers as the Second Kira—as Misa—he had the ability to find out anyone's real name. Hopefully, even if they didn't know themselves.

"Do you know your real name?" I asked Near even though we hadn't been talking.

"Yes," he said, "but knowing makes no difference. Knowing who my parents are, knowing what my real name is. None of it matters. I know who I am."

I smirked. "It makes no difference to you," I said, "but for me... I have no clue who I am."

"You're Patience," he said simply.

"That isn't very much to go on," I countered.

"Perhaps not for you," he said, "but for everyone else, it's plenty.
"It's like with the Japanese Task Force. Those idiots blindly following 'L' have been looking for Kira for years, and he's been right under their noses the entire time, steering them away from the truth."

"Are you calling me an idiot?" I wasn't offended by the comment, as he no doubt could tell, but I didn't see how it was helping.

"No," he said, "I'm saying that it's right in front of you, Patience. You just have to find it yourself; hearing it from someone else won't mean anything."

"Why's that?" I inquired.

"Because they might know you," he began, "but the only person who knows who you really are is yourself."

"Well," I said, picking up the script and leaning back in my chair to read it again, "maybe my name can help me find out. That is, assuming we all live to see February."

I heard a small laugh from Near; no, not really a laugh. It was more of a small noise, like a "huh," to indicate his amusement. It was a rare thing for him to do. For some reason, whenever I heard it, I couldn't help but smile.

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A/N: Short chapter. Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeal with it. The length of the next chapter will probably make up for it... probably.

As for the odd insertion of An Enemy of the People, it's a play that I actually once performed in school. For some reason, it came to mind as I was writing this (I can't totally recall why), and I guess I thought it might be fitting to add it. Allison's fluency with languages and interest in their cultures and histories would give her a broader knowledge of such arts, anyway.