FicWad

As Ryuk slid along the subway car, he was stuck by how insanely fast they’d gotten since he’d last been in the human world-this one, at least, had to be three times faster. The top of the car had nothing resembling a handle on it, and when they’d landed on it, the wind had started blasting them backward…Ryuk managed to just barely get a hold on a seam in the metal with his fingernails. Rem was holding onto the same seam, but with only one hand; the other one was still clutching the wound on her cheek. The one hand wasn’t enough; she was starting to lose her grip…
“Dammit, there’s no way I’m going to attack a hunter to save you, just to let you fly off a subway car and get caught again…” Ryuk thought as he took a hand off the seam, wrapped an arm around Rem, and replaced his hand as quickly as possible.
The car shot through the underground tunnel like a bullet; it only took a few minutes for it to reach its next station and stop. Ryuk took his arm off Rem and made to jump down from the car before he remembered he couldn’t just jump down into a crowd of humans with all that tape on his wing; which, by the way, was pretty sore from doing all that flying…flying through…stuff…oh, crap, the tape! He’d flown through a whole bunch of walls without even thinking of it…!
Ryuk’s head shot around to look at his wing, expecting to see it gushing sand, but while it had been hidden under all that tape, it had healed. Well, not exactly-there was a massive white scar running down his wing, with no feathers growing on it, and that scar was throbbing painfully from the flying, but at least he wasn’t spraying sand everywhere.
“All right! Look at that, Rem…I’m not crippled anymore!” Ryuk cheered as he jumped down onto the platform. “No more carting me around everywhere…”
Rem didn’t answer. She had yet to take her hand off her cheek. She climbed down the side of the train one-handed, and started to walk away.
“Hey…where are you going?”
Ryuk followed Rem as she walked out of the subway station and into an abandoned alley, where she took out a roll of duct tape and tore a piece off, sticking it to her own cheek.
“Right…so humans wouldn’t see duct tape floating in midair…you kept that?” Ryuk asked as he hopped up to sit on a garbage can.
Rem finally spoke, but she refused to look at him. “I thought it might prove useful again.”
“Geez, Rem, you think of everything. That was pretty brilliant, coming up with that subway thing on the spot…”
Rem shook her head. “I didn’t come up with it on the spot. The entire time we’ve been down here, I’ve done almost nothing but think up ways to escape the hunters if they catch up. They seem to be working so far, but I wouldn’t call them brilliant. They simply take advantage of our knowledge of the human world, and the hunters’ lack of it.”
“If they’re working, then they’re brilliant enough…”
“Be quiet. I don’t want to talk to you, and I’m sure you understand why.”
“…You’re still mad about Light and Misa…? You’re not going to attack me again, are you?”
“…I suppose not. I can’t, after you just saved my life…but that doesn’t mean I forgive you.”
“Look, I guess I kind of explained it badly…sorry about that. I didn’t just randomly kill Light one day for no good reason, you know. Yeah, he did have free reign for a little while as both L and Kira, but he didn’t stay unopposed. L actually had these two successors, Near and Mello…one of them used the United States government to start this Special P-something for Kira, and the other one joined the mafia and used them to get a hold of the notebook…it’s kind of a long story, but the important thing is that Light got caught. He was either gonna be put in prison for the rest of his life or get executed anyway, so I didn’t see the point in letting him live any longer. Heck, I might’ve done him a favour, killing him then-saved him a lot of suffering.”
Rem scoffed. “He got caught, so you killed him, eh? Did it occur to you to let Light Yagami figure out a way to save himself?”
“Yeah. It did occur to me. His brilliant plan turned out to be begging me to kill everyone for him.”
Rem said nothing. She stood there like a statue, still not looking at him.
“Look, if it makes you feel better, I’m sorry Misa had to die. I know I didn’t feel it as hard as you must have when your human died, but I still thought it kinda sucked when I had to kill Light. He was good for a laugh or two.”
More silence.
“Really. I’m sorry.”
Rem let out a sigh as she finally turned to face him again.
“So, Light was defeated…backed into a corner, so to speak…”
“Yep. Believe me, if you’d seen him grovelling, you’d have known that he had nothing left.”
Rem couldn’t look Ryuk in the eye. She spoke to the ground in front of him. “…I’m…sorry I lost control like that. I...shouldn’t have said the things I said…”
Ryuk shrugged. “You were upset. It happens.”
“Still…that was unacceptable, what I did…it’s just… I couldn’t think…Misa, dead…I’ve never been so…”
“You’re telling me. Seriously, it’s okay.”
“Thank you for saving me from the hunters. I didn’t expect you to do that, after what you said before…why did you do it?”
Ryuk grimaced. “Don’t mention it.”
“Don’t be modest; you took on Kinddara, for heaven’s sake. Why did you do it?”
“I’m not being modest. Really, don’t mention it. I mean it. Don’t ever mention it again to anyone, or else. Got it?”
It came out a bit more threatening than Ryuk intended; Rem looked slightly taken aback…
“I didn’t mean…look, you’re always saying you don’t know why you saved me, and now I don’t know why I saved you. We’ve both saved each other’s life once…let’s just call it even and forget about it, okay?”
“All right.” Rem winced after she finished talking, and put a hand to her cheek.
Ryuk looked up at his somewhat healed wing, then back at the fresh bandage on Rem’s face. “You know,” he said, “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say they were trying to bring us back to the shinigami realm one grain at a time.”
It took a few seconds for Rem’s face to crack a smile…it took longer than a few seconds for Ryuk to realize that the sounds coming out of Rem’s mouth were giggles.
Ryuk started laughing along with her. “Well, well! You actually can laugh…I never would’ve guessed. So it’s black humour that does it for you, huh?”
More laughter, as Rem looked at him both exasperated and amused…there was yet another odd thing about her. Instead of the harsh, braying barks he’d heard from most shinigami, her laughter was oddly musical.
“Don’t overdo it now, Rem. If this is the first time you’ve used those muscles, you might sprain something.”
“Oh, be quiet…”

It wasn’t until Daril got back to the theatre that she noticed the slash on her wrist, because by then she wasn’t in fight or flight mode, and it was starting to hurt. She supposed she must’ve got it when the knife flew out of Kinddara’s hand…how she hadn’t noticed before that she hadn’t completely dodged it, she didn’t know. It was the strangest and most unpleasant sensation she’d ever felt, and it made her a little bit ill, watching sand drip out from inside her arm…she didn’t know what the silvery stuff on the wall was, but it had been on Ryuk’s wing before. She tore a strip of it off and stuck it to her own wrist. It did nothing for the pain, but it stopped the sand coming out. Useful stuff…kind of pretty, too, with its shiny shade of grey. She’d have to figure out where to find it in the human world, after they found out where the hell Sidoh went. He might need it after she caught up with him.
“Why ain’t we just flying out the wall?” Kinddara said as Daril went through the emergency exit of the theatre.
“If the silver stuff stuck to the wall when Ryuk went through it, it’ll stick to the wall if I go through it. Sidoh ran off this way. Follow me.”
As they flew, scanning the ground for Sidoh, Daril said, “Kinddara…you still haven’t told me where you got that knife.”
Kinddara grunted. “Took it offa Sidoh.”
“You stole it from him?”
“Naw, I just told him I’d eat his guts if he didn’t hand it over.”
Daril wanted to explode; to scream at Kinddara with all the fury she felt at everything that was going on, but she forced herself to stay silent. If she let herself go now, she wouldn’t be able to get herself back, and that wouldn’t do when they finally found Sidoh. As much as she wanted to punch his face in, the King had said that she needed to keep the team motivated and moving forward, and taking it out on Sidoh would only destroy the fragile sliver of confidence she’d managed to build up in him. She had to take her own advice here, the one she had to tell Kinddara several times a day-control yourself. Funny how that worked, really-just when Kinddara started proving useful, Sidoh ran away in the middle of a fight. Either one behaved, or the other did…she just couldn’t have it both ways, could she?
She spotted Sidoh down below, huddled on the sidewalk beneath the awning of a building. When she landed in front of him, her exasperation only grew as she saw how much he was trembling and the wide-eyed look of terror on his face.
Daril snatched the knife out of Kinddara’s hand, paying no attention to the enraged snarl that resulted.
“Don’t let her take stuff from you!” she shouted as she shoved the knife back into Sidoh’s hands. Sidoh recoiled, whimpering as he clutched the knife that had been forced into his grasp.
Too much-Daril wasn’t as in control of herself as she’d thought. Control…control…she tried to force her infuriation to the back of her mind.
“You ran away in the middle of a fight. Why?” she asked, quieter, calmer.
“Didn’t you see!? It was a ghost! Ryuk came back from the dead and attacked Kinddara! His ghost!!”
“That wasn’t a ghost, you…!” Daril started to raise her voice, but stopped, closed her eyes, took a deep breath in, let it out, breathed in again…Sidoh couldn’t help but wonder what she’d been about to call him.
She opened her eyes. “There’s no such thing as ghosts, Sidoh. Ryuk was alive the whole time. Rem lied.”
Oh…that made sense…well, now Sidoh just felt silly.
Daril seemed much calmer now… she wasn’t angry anymore, but Sidoh thought the disappointment in her voice was even worse.
“We could have used your help back there, Sidoh. They got away, and I…”-Daril held up her wrist-“got hurt. This is what I was talking about when I said you needed more confidence. When we catch up to Ryuk and Rem, we need your help to bring them in. You won’t let us down next time, right?”
Sidoh wanted to say something, to apologize; but he couldn’t think of a good way to say it. That was when he heard flapping above him; he looked up and saw a winged figure coming towards them. Daril and Kinddara couldn’t see or hear it yet, but they did look in the direction Sidoh was suddenly staring with great interest, where a shinigami gradually appeared and landed on a lamp post above them.
“About damn time…” it grumbled. “Do you have any idea how long it took me to find you?”
“Deridovely?” said Sidoh.
“What are you doing here?” Daril asked.
“I’m supposed to tell you some stuff the old geezer wants you to know.”