Aizawa drives Light to Misa's hotel. He rides up with Light in the lift, goes to the door of the suite, uses the keycard for him. By then, Light is far gone enough to let him.

Misa is there, of course, waiting for him. She always is: there's no escape from her. But someone must have called ahead, because she's not sitting around in her nightwear, in the elaborate cascades of ruffles, frills and PVC that she mixes and matches to try and entice him—as if it could make a difference. She's sombrely dressed, fully covered, her hands clasped in front of her. Her eyes are red with crying, fit to match Light's own—a sharp sting across his corneas, a band of pressure round his head, all quite unfamiliar and unlike him. And pulled back into herself, solicitous and anxious to fix him (fix something, fix anything, fix the world), she'd asked the deadly question. "Light? Is there anything I can do? Please?"

I just want to forget. I don't want to think. I never want to think again. And very slowly, he advances on her.

He terrifies Misa, that night; he's cruel, like an animal; he sobs and screams and laughs like a hyena, and tears at her hair; he's never been like this with her. Impatient, he only partially unwraps her; the flimsy fabric of her underwear is shredded beneath his fingers. He's like a stranger; it's a side of him she's never seen, as if he's sprung into three dimensions, and there are whole planes, edges, surfaces that she had no idea existed.

His hands always end up in her hair, as if he doesn't want to touch her anywhere else: it makes Misa feel as if she's holy, and Light doesn't want to defile her. She never lets herself think of it any other way. His hipbones are sharp, and he's rough: they hurt her, and later she'll be bruised, but she chokes down her cries. If this is what Light needs to do to her tonight, then it's what Misa wants, too, and she welcomes all of it. Even as he's rambling, sobbing and laughing under his breath—you're disgusting, look at yourself, I hate you—she's looking up at him, frozen and frightened and childishly adoring, and reassuring herself, like a mantra: I love you, I love you, I love you. Anything.

He's working himself into a fever pitch with his words, into a frenzy. And as he finally loses all control, dives off the edge, whatever analogy you like—although there are no metaphors now, no plots, no patterns: no dead parents, who can never be shown the error of their ways. Just him, and her, and so little conscious thought that he can't even be grateful for the silence. Except for his screaming, as if he's coming blood—like the blood on Misa's back, where his fingernails have torn her.

Afterwards, he turns his back, and finally falls asleep—perchance to dream.

* * *

It's a night for first times, and this is the first time Light hasn't gone to the shower afterwards: his story is that he doesn't like to dirty the sheets, and Misa believes every word. Still dutiful, though, she creeps silent to the bathroom to clean herself before she sleeps—and if she can't quite meet her own eyes in the mirror, if there are tears in them, if she's shocked and stunned and scared by the trickling blood, and the rising bruises, and the sting in her scalp where Light tore at her hair, she'll never tell anyone. She's such a good girl.

Misa finds herself not wanting to return to the bed, not wanting to be any closer to Light than the bathroom and its locking door. But she tells herself he's not himself, that he's shocked, grieving, furious, and needs someone to take it all out on (and it should be her, it should, of course it should). So she does return, in the end, climbing back into her torn underwear.