AUTHOR'S NOTES:
This work is essentially a canon-divergence conclusion to the story described in 'burn this city' and 'the sword & the pen', but it's not necessary per se to read those in order to enjoy this. The writing is meant to be loose enough that it can be "canon with reader's favourite 'L-and-Light-fall-in-love-during-Yotsuba fic", although a few subtle references will be understood better if all three are read :)
(If you want more silly work commentary, check out the work on Ao3. I'm just going to keep it brief here, though).
Reviews and comments of all sorts are very much appreciated! Thanks for checking this out!
It's a summer evening with a blood moon. The scent of wildflowers is sweet on the air (like caramel). The moon is a rich amber (reminding him of a damnable pair of eyes) as the eclipse passes over. The lack of murders in the town is killing him. But slowly. Just enough to make him beg for it.
He's left himself in a sleepy, plain town just north of Sudbury. He's always found America distasteful, Canada being its drearier (normally less murderous) cousin. Not so much since two months ago, when a body had been found on the shore of the local lake, dead from a long-(thought)-gone strain of smallpox. The entire city had been put under quarantine for a week, but nothing. Not a single patient. This is the kind of case that attracts ghosts.
Eraldo Coil has been on the case for just over a week, and he's seven-percent certain of one of his suspects. There's another that's a two percent, and that uncertainty is simply unacceptable. (that's what he would have said, by another name). L Lawliet keeps his appearance a few years older than his twenty-seven years these days. With the careful white in his hair, shabby jacket he has donned over the white shirt on his slight frame, he could be anywhere from age thirty-two to fifty. Here, they know him as William Eru, or Mr. Eru.
At one point he enjoyed doing fieldwork. Soon after, he discarded this idea. And now? It disguises him, even to himself. He took a job as a busboy at a greasy spoon diner in town. At first it was to watch suspects for the case, but he's since kept it up, despite the lack of leads. The boredom keeps him numb (can't remember what it's like, not wanting numbness).
He wipes clean a splotch of ketchup (blood-like) on the edge of a Heinz label. His coworker, Noelle, a wisp of a girl with intense brown eyes and otherwise Nordic appearance smiles at him while mopping (something in her smiles remind him of a hungry ghost, but then, most things remind him of Light these days).
"All done for the day, Mr. Eru?"
"Yes, I suppose so," he allows his voice to quaver, "I think I will return to my puzzles."
"Oh? More Cryptic Crosswords? Or math?"
"Mathematics. Here, take a look." Noelle had joined the kitchen only a few days after him, which pricked L's suspicions for a moment (instincts dulled from trying so many days not to feel), "It's just a number theory problem."
She gazes at the question with interest. He watches the solution (which he has long since known) tick over her brown eyes. Yes, she certainly knows. He baits, "I've looked at this particular function, but I'm finding the number of solutions a bit tricky."
"Oh, well you might consider the congruence of the discriminant…" she says absently before catching his eye.
"That's very astute. I thought you said you weren't much for mathematics?" At one point, catching a protegee unprotected like this brought an eager flash to L's mind.
She very nearly glares at him, ugly (as unwilling to lose as Near, perhaps), "I like number theory. My…uncle walked me through some of it."
"You must have the soul of a mathematician."
L gazes out the window, to the second (potentially related?) mystery in the town of Capreol. The local lake had grown thick with a white silt, velvety and almost indiscernible from the water. The local teens would crawl out looking like ghosts in the flickering light of the summer campfires. It was something of a point of derision for the locals, but something deep in L's instincts believed it to be related.
"On a different note," L pushes the pen between his lips, scrutinizing her with the look he would have given Near or Mello when posing them a question about a case (not that they would know it behind the L-covered smoke screen), "What do you make of the recent state of Marish Lake?"
"Oh, you mean The Porridge?" Noelle makes a slight face when she said it, "Yes, I suppose that is a bit of a mystery. I might blame it on peculiar erosion."
"Oh yes, but why now? There's no obvious cause."
She arranges her features in a puzzled expression, "I don't know. It's very odd."
"Theorize."
"I'm not sure that I can." he senses fear skipping in her eyes, but a kind confidence and the glint of a challenge. Yes, well. I'm sure she wasn't taught to make this easy.
L sighs. If Wammy was going to keep tabs on him with such obvious plants, they might as well be of some use. "I was just curious then. I'll see you at the late shift tomorrow."
"Good night, Mr. Eru!"
"Good night, Noelle." the door jingles as he enters the cool night air. L glances back at her with a kind of resigned depression. It used to be much simpler not to be found. But despite the fact that he'd given Wammy a hard look, told him with perfect coldness that he wanted to be alone, that heneeded to have no one near him (no one touching him no one caring for him nothing to feel), he knew that he couldn't hide from everything. (Knew but it didn't stop him trying. There had to be a more permanent solution). Certain people had gotten under his skin (and perhaps he'd gotten under theirs), and it was difficult to shake them off. Difficult like the chain of a case two years cold that never broke free.
It's only two blocks down to the rickety, shack-like house he's set up camp in. It suits his character, and L has always had a weakness for pathetic fallacy. It caused a smile on his lips a week ago, and now? Now he thought perhaps it suited him personally (suited the character he was far too comfortable in the skin of). The house consists of three rooms, a drafty central room, a modest kitchen, and an upstairs bedroom much like an attic. L spends most of his time in the central room, hunched on the couch. The number of times he's slept in a bed in the past two years can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
From the fridge he gathers a bowl of sugar cubes and strawberries. He gathers himself up around his laptop, lights a single candle to cast ghost-shadows around the room. With a flicker of his fingers he navigates through the Deep Web to arrive at the Qnetwork. The forums provide a live feed of every police agency, news agency, government-controlled surveillance in every major country in the world, and a few more that the major countries wanted watched.
L taps his fingers on a leather-bound copy of The Grimm Fairy Tales. He hadn't been lying (L never lied to Wammy), when he had said he wanted to get away, do some reading. The truth of the matter was he couldn't stay away. He perches on the couch side, and flashes past feed after feed, searching, leaving small comments that would take the police miles in their investigation, faster one after the other, knowing the way people move, the way people hurt each other. Yes. He knows it all too well, and has for far too long.
May 22, 2006
L.
It's been two years now. Not ready. If I knew your name I would still write it at the top of every letter. Maybe I'd even keep writing the letters, long after you died. They might keep me alive.
Life's hell without you, but I suppose it's always been that way.
Light.
The centrifuge sends the contents of the test tubes on the last tilt-a-whirl cycle. Light Yagami carefully extracts the samples, filtering the suspension back and forth between his fingers. The polymerase chain reaction should be ready for tomorrow. That will make his client happy. Every time he gets contract work for something forensic, he wonders if it's a grey-eyed detective reaching out a pale hand for his. God, he misses those hands. It's enough to make him want to hole up in his apartment and write in his Death Note till his fingers can't take it anymore.
This is why he keeps the work. This is why he keeps his distance.
Light hunches over the samples, which will be ready for PCR analysis tomorrow. In all likelihood, this is for the New York Gonzo murder case. Prominent politician found dead of asphyxiation in New York apartment. Police have not provided details, but theories have been swirling about his controversial proposals regarding climate, his history in government science, his fictional secret mistress, etc. etc.
A part of Light that's never fully died wonders what it would be like to strangle someone, and his thoughts inexorably flit to L's gorgeous neck. Squeezing it, kissing it, leaving his fingerprints as marks there. He shuts the kit harder than normal.
Light cleans up the lab bench with meticulous care. His colleagues have since long gone home, on a summer Friday night. His cell phone rings as he packs up.
"Hello?"
"Hey, big brother!"
"Hello Sayu," Light manages to muster some enthusiasm, "How is school going?"
"Oh, good, yeah. Well, okay. I miss having you to help me work on my homework," he can almost hear her biting her lip, "How is the lab work?"
"Quiet," he says tersely.
"Oh yeah? No interesting murder cases?"
"It's mostly biology, Sayu. Genetics," Light hasn't bothered with his perfect mask since he started rereading the names in his Death Note every other night. The decision hadn't gone well with his family, who believed they had lost their son. The son they never had.
"Will you visit soon? I think Dad wants to see you."
"No. Not yet. And if he wants to see me, nothing is stopping him."
"Okay. Should I visit you?"
"Just…focus on school Sayu." He pulls his jacket over his neck.
"Okay. Love you, Light."
"Bye." He hangs up, leaving the silence of the lab behind.
As he's done on every Friday sunset for two years, Light slips into an alleyway on his walk home, the low sun casting a long shadow behind him. He succumbs to the urge to imagine a person next to him, a low chuckle, the scent of cherry cake. Once a week, it's healthy. Once a week, he also thinks about killing that person, if they're still alive. For as long as that symmetry exists, doesn't shift, he will stay where he is. His feet carry him to the base of the city radio tower. Checking his watch to note when security will arrive, he slips in the back door with ease.
It's funny, how he can get the ghost of L's memory to stand with him up here. Funny since while he was Kira, he was captivated by the image of L on this tower, himself opposite. Staring down. Waiting for the other to fall. He certainly hadn't planning on crossing the distance, hadn't thought that a mere month of memories could change so much about his divine certainty in Kira. God, there was so much that he'd realized he had never known.
"But here you are." L's ghost whispers, and yes, as much as it has cost him, as much as he is still bloody and broken, angry and murderous, he is here, honest, clean.
It's every week here he also thinks about falling, but L always stops him. Light wonders when he will stop resenting L for it, and start to be grateful. That will be the day he makes contact again.
"Quite the sunset tonight, isn't it?" Light starts upward to a voice that is decisively not in his head, someone else with him for the first time. The man is tall and skinny, dressed in only a vest and looking like a two-bit mafia pimp. His golden hair is neat at his jawline, hid hands, wrapped around a bar of chocolate.
"Oh my god," Light breathes out his surprise, "you could kill someone like that. Who the hell are you?"
"If I said 'security'-"
"I wouldn't believe you for a second." Light lets the anger show in his voice.
"How about if I said, someone else here to live?"
"You think I'm here to die?"
"Well I know what this looks like," and damn if the stranger wasn't perceptive. Light tried to mask over his tells, but he can still feel ghost-L fading gaze on him. He's always been vulnerable here.
"I come up here every week," Light isn't sure why he's giving this stranger his honesty, but there's something about the intensity of his scrutiny that reminds him of L. Just another thing to add to that damn list.
"Sounds like there's a story there."
"Not one I'm interested in telling."
"That's fair."
"I'm assuming you're not up here to watch the sunset."
"I'm surprised no one else has spotted you up here."
"People aren't really that observant," There's a bitterness in that, and the other man laughs.
"You're not wrong." They fall into silence. It's comfortable, actually. The young man seems to have an instinct not to push it. Light hasn't felt comfortable with another human in two years.
"Hey," the other man gives him a gentle smile after a moment, "My name's Mello."
"Light." they shake hands for a moment. Mello can't be more than eighteen. Light is suddenly curious, "what brings you up here?"
"Apart from stopping potential suicides?" Light flinches, and he can tell Mello notices, "Just enjoying the sunset."
"Well, you don't have to worry about me," Light's voice is cold. He's said too much, "I was just leaving."
"I should get going too," Mello's eyes meet his, "My boyfriend wanted me home early."
Light's face makes a complicated expression as his heart twists, "Yeah, I've got to go home to my girlfriend as well," That's a lie. Every lie that Light manages causes his stomach to churn against memory.
They walk down the staircase in silence. Mello taps him on the shoulder at the base of the stairs, "Hey. This might be your thing, coming here every week, but if it ever gets bad for you, or you need someone to talk to...well, people tell me I'm good at that sort of thing."
"You?" Light gives him a skeptical look, but he can sense in his heart that the man isn't wrong, "I'm fine. But I appreciate it."
"Here's my number. Just call anytime, Light. And maybe we can hang out, under less…strange circumstances."
"Right," Light takes the card, neatly printed Garamond text on heavy ink.
"I'm sure whatever you're looking for in the sunset is out there."
Light is surprised that he doesn't want to strangle this man. He looks Mello in the eye and says, "Thank you."
It occurs to Light later that evening, as he prepares dinner in his Spartan apartment, that's the first time he's thanked someone in two years. As he stirs the minestrone soup, he is hit by a sudden wave of sweet melancholy. I wish I could thank him again. He waits for the poisonous wave ofanger that follows, but nothing comes. Spooning his soup into a porcelain bowl, he sits down at the desk. From the hidden drawer underneath the keyboard, he slips out the Death Note. Removing his pen, he writes.
L,
I wanted to thank you. For-
He stops, staring at the words. They seem insufficient. He flips through two years worth of letters in the Death Note, all full of vitriolic kindness and amorous fury. Some days he barely writes at all. Some days he writes twice a day. Some days he just writes the letter L, over and over, trying to burn black eyes out of his mind. Some days, he cries.
But today, the words don't come easily. They're stuck in his throat, can't make it to the pen. His fingers track to his watch,I think...today might be the day. It's funny. He'd always imagined it differently, that he'd wake up and just know in one tantalizing flash of the certainty he had before. He feels no different.
Kira has been inactive for almost two years now. Light hasn't killed since he wrote Kyosuke Higuchi in the Death Note, in his own blood. He kept it in his watch as a reminder of the sin that is so easy. Of the blood-price paid to protect his greatest lie. He is no better than Higuchi. But a choice was made.
He clicks the watch twice. The face opens to reveal a piece of the Death Note, with a phone number scrawled in spidery, almost illegible handwriting. So many times he had stared at that number, held himself back from dropping it off the radio tower, tearing it up, burning it. As if it isn't burned into my memory.
Light imagines L, alone on the radio tower, hunched and watching the city. His raven hair brilliant against the sunset, one finger pressed against his lip, waiting for a Kira that never returned. He suddenly wants so badly to stand there with him. With shaking hands, he pulls out his phone and dials. It rings, once and only once.
"Hello," the voice on the other line is modulated through L's usual filter. Light forgets to breathe, almost considers hanging up. But he's come too far now.
"L? This is Light."
"I'm sorry, but this is not L."
A wash of ice shivers down his spine, "What?"
"L is no longer with us. This is N." Light's throat suddenly closes up, there isn't nearly enough oxygen, "Did you have information for us?"
He hangs up the phone without a word. Words don't come, he simply feels, in a rush of anger, gorgeous memories drawing ink pictures over his mind, bleeding into his throat, thick with emotion. How dare he. How dare he fucking die without my word, how dare he leave me with this fucking mess that I'm in because of him.
Light is walking blind now, sprinting across streets with barely a glance at traffic. Reckless. He doesn't know if he's running back to the tower to scream or fly, but he has to see L again, if only in the ghost of memory. If someone killed him...the murderous part of Light latches on the pages and pages of stopped hearts in the Death Note, or perhaps, one intimately detailed, exquisitely painful death. Retribution.
The summer sky is dark when he arrives, breathless but not bothering to take in air. The streetlamps cast ghastly shadows like Shinigami, and he almost believes that Ryuk is behind him. Not a single ghost.
He fumbles at the heavy tower door when a shadow crosses over him.
"Light. Don't panic. L isn't dead."
Light is unable to stifle the terrified sob that rips from his throat. He breathes in and out, trying to prevent the panic from taking over. "Who the hell are you?"
Light looks up, and he's face to face with Mello. The man gives him a bracing gaze. "I'm sorry that it happened this way. I truly didn't mean for all of this. I knew you could help. "
Light can't think, too many words, questions are whirling through him. His knuckles grip white. He barely resists the urge to break Mello's jaw.
"Who. Are. You." Light levels him with the terrifying glare of murder.
"I worked with L. I'm one of his successors," Mello's voice is calm, but it wavers on his last words, "We need you to find him."
L. L. L. LLLLLLLLL.
November 5, 2004.
I want your name so I can write it over and over again. I would give you death in flawless detail.
Thank god I don't have it because I know I would and then I'd burn the world because you wouldn't be in it.
You understand me and I never asked for that. I never wanted to know I was rotten with the world.
I fucking hate you.
