Matt was being led down a hallway that reminded him of something straight out of Alice and Wonderland any minute expecting to see a tuxedoed white rabbit skittering by proclaiming his tardiness. It just seemed right when every other door was checkered, stripped, warped, rusted, dripping, rotting. A single unbroken chain of light bulbs hung swaying from the residual movement that tremored the walls up to the ceiling.

It was as if all of a sudden someone gave the universal 'scramble' order and he had an idea why. For the last week, the horde of doctors that swarmed Misa Amane had been keeping their distance the same way animals avoid their own ailing kin. Another kind of death pervaded The Dolphin now.

“Wait here.” one of his escort said uselessly, holding Matt's upper arm so firmly he could feel that familiar tingle of bruising veins. They led him inside a black and red tinted room, the ceiling draped in sheer black material, a goth mosquito net. A wide, plush canopy bed took up most of the room, the sheets black with purple stars dotting them—posters of idols and framed articles and photos of a pretty young woman with blond hair and two tiny pig-tails filled up most of the wall space.

“Leave him alone with me, please.” a strained voice from the bed commanded. Matt's escorts gave each other a doubtful look but complied, locking the door behind them. It smelled like sugar and alcohol, a collection of open perfume bottles enforcing their presence from a shadowed shelf somewhere out of Matt's line of sight.

“Come here.” Misa Amane ordered. The closer Matt got to the bed, the more obvious it became just how bad off she was—what should have been the healthy silhouette of a thriving twenty- six year old under the dark coverlet was barely disernable, as if everything below her torso had withered. “What's you're name?”

“Matt,” he said, still keeping a respectable distance from the bed, “I thought you knew.”

“No one tells me anything,” Misa grumbled, “but I do know...I know you took care of that Takada woman. You helped Mello.”

Matt wondered if 'helped' was really the right word for it, now that the cards were down. Ever since waking up in the hospital and learning of Mello's 'death' he'd had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that wouldn't go away. In the hospital he'd chalked it all up to the adrenaline high of a near-death experience or straight denial and a shit load of repressed survivor's guilt. After all, he'd spent the better part of his year in jail dialing the cell phone number of a dead man and gotten an answer.

“Just one more bug up your ass you and your cult have about me?”

Misa let out a giggle that, although painful, still managed to sound somewhat innocent.

“That won't get you in trouble with me. I hated that witch. Tell me...did she suffer when she died?”

“Did she what?”

“Suffer!” Misa cried, shifting her diminished form under the covers like a much older woman and continuing calmly, “I want to know how she died. Every detail.”

Matt shook his head slowly, impassionate.

“I wouldn't know,” he replied, pulling a partially crushed cigarette out of his jean pocket just for the comfort of having one in his mouth, “Takada's watchdogs wasted me before I could meet up with Mello.”

“You have an imagination, right? Make something up. Lie. Here.” Misa groped for a lighter next an incense burner by the bed and tossed it at Matt. He nodded his thanks, lit up, taking a long drag and regarding Misa through bored, mildly disbelieving eyes.

“Lie?”

“It's not like it matters. I'm dying, and I bet you lied to Mello all the time.”

Matt didn't feel like denying her that truth.

“Near the end, yeah.”

“And you can't extend me the same courtesy?”

“Not that I can't. I just don't like playing into people's sick fantasies. I'm not the world's fucking heel, you know.” It was a thought that had dominated Matt's existence for as long as he could remember. First Mello, then Near and now Misa Amane wanted him to bend to her every whim. Fuck it.

Amane coughed violently and pulled a dark red cloth to her mouth, dabbing at a dribble of clear and crimson fluid. Her body shook more than it should have, little waves of motion shivering over the sheets.

“I'll tell you something first then, not a lie, something important. You'll tell me then?”

“Maybe.”

She seemed to draw in on herself, forcing her lips through the exposition:

“Father Raku doesn't have the shinigami's eyes,” she said, “ he killed it before it could make the offer.” Matt almost felt bad thinking that he'd figured that out for himself, when he and Ruki learned that the cult collected both names and photographs. The first relatively concrete assumption Near had been able to make about this cult was that there was either no shinigami involvement at all or strictly limited involvement. Nonetheless, the news that he'd managed to kill the shinigami was new.

“How did he kill it?”

Misa shook her head, “...Only so many ways. Rem and Ryuk were pretty guarded about them, but, if a shinigami uses their Death Note to lengthen the life of a human on purpose, they will die. Tell me about Takada.”

Matt sighed, taking the cigarette from his mouth and flicking the ashes to the dark, water-stained floor. “Sorry, I'm finding what you have to say a lot more interesting.”

“Well fuck you then!” Misa screeched, making herself cough up a bloody wad of phlegm. She moaned pitifully and clutched at the cloth in her hands, obstinately refusing to wipe the blood away this time. An old, rather buried urge resurfaced in Matt as he remembered Mello's agonizing recovery from the building collapse in Los Angeles, which had been more like dying and being reborn. He put the cigarette out on the wall and strode over to the bed, dabbing lightly at Misa's chin with the cloth he took from her hand. She was weeping.

“I don't care if you lie, it's all anyone's ever done anyway. Even Light...it was his job to beat Near dammit! He was so confident...everyone was so fucking confident Kira would win.”

Matt felt a pang of rather unintentional mutual pity. Mello had been confident too, even if it was all sugar-coated optimism. He remembered the last thing Mello said to him before Takada's guards penned him in: 'Once this is over, let's go find some dive in Nagano and get shit-faced.' Click, and the line was dead.

“Isn't it enough to know that Takada's dead? I mean, you both used the death note, so it's not like you can point fingers in the after-life if that's what you're after.” Matt said, enjoying the manic smile and painful giggle that seeped past Misa's lips. It was such a 'Mello' thing to say.

“You're...trying to stop Father Raku right?” Misa said, the flickering synapses in her brain too taxed to keep up with Matt's wit.

“Yeah, that's the idea.”

“Good. He...isn't a good Kira. He told me I could see Light-sama again, but he lied, and he doesn't deserve to go where Light is...”

Matt nodded, not quite following but understanding that whatever Misa was about to say next was going to be big and worth committing to memory.

“Once I die, Father Raku is going to call out all the Kira supporters and challenge the government. My funeral will be the rally cry. I don't want that. Too many of the people Kira wanted to save will be killed...Kira never wanted that, he punished Demegawa for it.”

Well, shit. Matt was far from being surprised, but hearing his suspicions voiced and confirmed was more than a little creepy—he'd heard his guards talking about the riots in Paris, the aftermath of which shut the city down for weeks afterward. He tried imagining that on a national scale, even a small nation like Japan and the thought was just too big for him, too big for Near, for Mello, for the memory of L...and it was beginning to happen right in front of him. Inches in front of him.

“I'm still not telling you anything about Takada.” Matt said, the bitter, vindictive, self-righteous parts of him hoping those would be the last words Misa Amane ever heard. He was almost right, watching as Amane's eyes peered past any perceivable light or dark, a look that Matt wished he didn't recognize. She smiled.

“Final--

She barely finished the word, her lips still parted, eyes fixed intently on the ceiling. Matt was consumed for about five seconds with the urge to attempt resuscitation, knowing what the withered form on the bed meant, knowing that it symbolized in every possible way the beginning of the end. Once the urge passed, he reached out, passing a hand over Amane's eyes to close them. The touch of her flesh was strange, a mix of warm and cool, more like a firming plaster cast than flesh.

“Finally,” Matt finished for her, resuming his lean against the wall as his guards returned. No matter what Amane's death meant for the cult, to Matt, it was only a matter of time before Mello would come for him. If he couldn't bring himself to believe that, then lying to Amane shouldn't have been an issue.