I'm actually posting this in late July, but anyway: in late June, I wrote a fic for dn_contest, and I actually won the popular vote. The theme was alternate ownership of the Death Note, and what grabbed me was what might have happened if it had gone to Soichiro rather than his son Light.

Title: Choices
Author: Eru-dition
Rating: PG-13
Pairings/Characters: Soichiro
Warnings: Allusions to sex and violent death; nothing too explicit
Word Count: 2440
Note: Thanks to everyone who encouraged me, and to darkluna who has given me feedback as this was in progress.





The man is no longer young.

In fact, he's approaching middle age, possessing the sort of appearance best described as "distinguished." Although he is masculine, he has an air of thoughtfulness about him; someone steady, someone you can rely on, someone whose decisions are well-considered, someone who is rarely late. It is obvious that he loves his wife, his children, his country, his fellow man. You will see him, his suit and glasses and watch, and you will think, Here is a man who does the right thing. The world could use more like him.

Each morning, he takes the train from his home to his workplace; the exceptions are the mornings when he has spent the night in his office, or worse, in the field. He'll spend the first few hours of daylight wrapping everything up, making sure the paperwork is finished and correct, or overseeing Aizawa and Ide's interrogation of their suspect. He knows they all look to him for guidance. He does the best he can, always putting at least as much of himself into his work as he has to give. His wife clucks at him when he puts in a little more than that, but his team's conviction record is unparalleled.

Last night was spent at home, though. He has no compelling case. An ICPO conference is coming soon, to be held in conjunction with the Summit, and he is prepared to travel, but just now he's enjoying the lull. Each day when they aren't investigating the skinning of a man in Osaka or the serial rapes of seven-to-ten-year-old girls in Gunma Prefecture is a good one. His cases don't disturb him -- he sleeps at night, his appetite is good -- but he has never been able to completely desensitize himself, never been able to put a stopper in the flow of his sympathy for the innocent victims of crime. Although he is aware that it isn't perfect, he still cares deeply about justice.

The morning air is crisp, autumnal, and he thinks he will bring a chestnut cream cake home with him tonight, for Sachiko and Sayu and Light to enjoy. No... Soichiro's darlings will eat some, giggling about their weight, but Light will make some excuse and go to his room to study. He's a conscientious student who is preparing for his university entrance exams, and he lacks a sweet tooth.

When the notebook hits the pavement, Soichiro hears it like the flapping of wings and a shallow thud, wondering if a bird has dropped dead from the sky. None of the other commuters seem to take much notice of it. He looks around, behind him, and sees a black notebook lying face-down on the sidewalk about three meters back. Without hesitation or a close look at it, he walks back to it and stoops to pick it up.

He looks around, up ahead where he had been walking, to see if anyone might have dropped it, but no one is laden in a way that suggests they might have lost track of a simple school notebook. That being the case, he looks up; no window is open on the facade of the building above him.

There is no better explanation than the ridiculous one: the notebook seems to have fallen from the sky. Still not looking at it -- he means to be on time, after all -- he tucks it under his arm, then hurries the rest of his way to his office.

Once he arrives, he forgets the notebook for a while, in a round of dealing with his coffee, necessary messages, helping his new young subordinate settle in, and so on. It's mid-morning before he notices it again, face-down on his desk. His intention is to look inside it, to see if the owner's name and address are written in it; if so, he will slip it into an envelope and ship it off to them this afternoon.

Death Note, the cover says, in English, and he frowns at it. There hadn't been any teenagers around when he found it. He flips the cover open, to try to find information about the owner. There's no name anywhere on it. The pages appear to be blank; the only thing in the notebook is a list of rules, also in English, beginning with, The human whose name is written in this note shall die.

Perverse, he thinks, but kids can be like this, petty and angry and immature.

He sets the book on his desk, again, then sits back, giving it a narrow look. I should probably take it back to where I found it, he thinks. That would be the best way to get it back to its rightful owner. They might be looking for it there... it's possible that I shouldn't even have picked it up.

After a few minutes, he opens the book again, reading down the list of rules.

Something about what's written there pulls at him. He doesn't know if it's the banality of the instructions, the ease and simplicity with which the victim is supposed to die, or the fact that something like this exists at all... a sick joke? An ethical test? Proof to the person who picks it up, once and for all, of whether or not they are a good person?

Teenagers.... He wonders what his own children would do if they found such a thing. Sayu, he thinks, might write the name of an especially disliked classmate, then cry about it whether or not the notebook has the powers that have been claimed for it, but Light... Light, both serious and charming, kind to everyone he knows?

Soichiro is sure that Light would discard it immediately.


*****


Before he goes home that night, he slips the notebook into an empty file, then buries the file in his desk drawer.

The chestnut cream cake is appreciated, and as predicted, Light eats none of it, excusing himself to his room to study. Soichiro reads in the living room while Sachiko and Sayu watch some drama on television. When the time for sleep comes, and Sachiko snuggles up to him in bed with her soft body and clean face, he surprises her with a passionate kiss, rolling her over onto her back. He loses himself a little in the act that follows; she seems surprised, but also pleased.

A few days pass, and the notebook is never far from his mind. When the time comes to attend the ICPO meeting, he locks his desk drawer for the trip, taking the only key with him. The meeting itself is uneventful -- L sends word that a new criminal syndicate seems to be rising in the Los Angeles area, with ties to China, something for them to keep an eye on but which will certainly never require action from his own team -- and when he returns to the office, the notebook is just where he'd left it.

He supposes that the reason he's held onto it, instead of taking it back to where he found it, or throwing it away, is that a small part of him wonders if it's real. Testing it, though, would be unacceptable. For the time being, he's committed to inaction, to thinking about it with vague discomfiture.

If it's a fake, it's harmless. If it is real, he has to dispose of it, destroy it to a molecular level. He thinks of the people who would die if such a thing fell into the wrong hands: someone with malicious intent, or, worse -- he thinks back to the subway attacks eight years earlier -- someone who thinks they are righteous. He thinks of his wife, his children, the people he sees every day, cherry blossoms and falling maple leaves and snow in Hokkaido.

One night, two and a half weeks after picking up the notebook, he finds himself alone in the office quite late. They'd collared a murderer that day; now, he has to finish the interminable paperwork. His subordinates leave one by one, spilling out into the dark evening; he's sent them on their way, telling them he'll wrap things up. He's always surprised by how still the office becomes when most of its workers have left it behind for the night, how the silence becomes a sound in itself.

It's broken by the flapping of wings, and a rasping voice.

"Listen, Yagami... if I could die of boredom, I wouldn't be here right now. What are you trying to do to me?"

Soichiro stiffens. The voice is coming from close behind him, and he has the sense of someone looming. "I don't know who you are, or how you got in here -- is this a practical joke?"

He doesn't turn his head to look; it's possible that it would be better not to see the face of whoever has gained access to his office. A large shadow, irregular in shape, is cast on his desk, and his tone softens. "If you tell me what you want, and then leave, I'll do whatever I can to help you." His concern rests in surviving the next few minutes.

His visitor lopes around to the other side of the desk, hunched posture and bandy outsized limbs and grinning, masklike face. He puts his hands flat on the front edge, then leans over, to put his eyes more on a level with those of his unwilling host. Soichiro feels himself tremble a little; a trickle of perspiration runs down the back of his neck, caught by his immaculate shirt.

"I want to know why you haven't used it yet. A cop like you... seems like the kind of thing you'd be all over. Don't you want to stop the bad guys? Make 'em pay? Isn't that what you humans are like?"

Soichiro is taken aback at this, and at first, he isn't sure what the creature might be alluding to. After a moment's thought, he answers in a weary voice, "I do stop the bad guys. They pay. I don't understand what you're talking about; would you please explain it to me?"

The creature laughs, a cascading cackle. "You got a notebook in your drawer there, yeah? A Death Note? I dropped it, you picked it up. It's yours, but you're just letting it sit there."

There's another thoughtful pause, during which Soichiro suspects that his time has run out -- vanilla ice cream with matcha powder, Sachiko smiling at him in a bright yukata, the scent of his own father's favorite tobacco, holding Light for the first time after his birth -- before he finally says, "There's nothing else I could do with it except to destroy it. You can kill me, but I can't see that any good would come from trying to use the thing. If it worked, you'd be a murderer; if it didn't, you'd know that you could be."

He receives a long, surprised look, and a small sound of annoyance. "I should kill you now for being so boring, but it isn't worth it. Just give it back, all right?"

Soichiro is still. Then, his jaw sets, and he replies, "No."

"No?"

"What will you do with it if I give it back to you?"

"I'll take it back to the Shinigami Realm with me."

Shinigami. He watches the creature, with its fixed, shark-toothed grin, recognizing that it looks as silly as it is threatening. If the shinigami plans to kill him, its mind is made up already, he thinks; he has nothing to lose.

"I don't think you will. You mentioned boredom... I think you're planning to give it to someone else, hoping they'll use it. Isn't that right?"

The shinigami shrugs. "Yeah, that's about right."

Without saying anything, Soichiro opens his desk drawer, digging under the other files until he comes to the folder that holds the notebook. He sets it on the surface of the desk. "I have a few things to finish, while I decide."

The shinigami does not ask what decision he's trying to make; it simply watches him while he finishes the paperwork. Then, he prepares to leave for the night: overcoat, briefcase, and two file folders.

The one containing the paperwork is left at the Deputy Director's office, and afterward, Soichiro takes the other folder, the one he wants to hold at arm's length, or bury in a concrete vault, down to the basement of the building, to the boiler room. Because the NPA is not in the habit of burning evidence, it takes him a few minutes to find a furnace door, a few minutes during which he wonders if it would be better to find transients in the park and ask if he can burn this over their metal-barrel fire. As he searches, the shinigami trails after him, its feet dragging in the air just above the ground. "Don't worry," it says, "no one else can see me, Yagami."

He opens the small, heavy door that hides an inferno, but as he reaches out to toss the folder in, he hesitates. It's true that there are rare instances in which his team is relatively sure of the identity of a killer, but freedom comes on a technicality, or they have to wait for one last murder to be sure, and Soichiro always finds himself frustrated at the inability to prevent the loss of life -- all loss of life, any loss of life. He has thought, once or twice in the past few weeks, that if the notebook works as promised, he could close this particular loophole.

Then, he would be a murderer too: just as bad as the people he's dedicated his life to stopping. He drops the folder into the furnace, closing the door to watch it burn.

There's another aggrieved, disappointed sigh from the shinigami, who is gone as soon as the pages have curled and turned black.

It doesn't take long for the entire notebook to be consumed. When it's eradicated, Soichiro stands for a time, staring into the flames, thinking of life and death and his own choices. He finds that he is relatively certain that this choice was a good one, and he supposes that relative certainty is all anyone ever has.

He leaves the building, stepping out into a Tokyo evening of exceptional crispness and clarity, with bright lights against a dark blue velvet sky, and as he rushes for his train, he feels lighter than he can remember.

He will be home soon.

--

Note: I wrote this in 4 hours, the night it was due, and didn't really do a second draft or anything, though I did have Ellie reading it as I wrote it. I feel like it's a good start, but could use slightly more detail.