A/N: I've always loved Linda. She's actually very interesting,if you examine what we see of her in detail. I own a Linda roleplay blog on Tumblr (I'm called artylinda, shameless advertisement) and I wanted to get my muse back. So I wrote a weird little AU.

Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note. I wish I did.

Linda was a girl alone, relatively speaking. Which was strange, because she was one of the most social people she knew. She had a ton of friends, and they were all so interesting, and so bright, and so kind to her, each in their own way.
They just weren't there.
Not to everyone else, anyway. Linda thought that it was because their intelligence was too high for everyone else around them, so something had happened to make them not there to the other people. Or that everyone else was fake and these people were real, and she was one of them and just stuck in this world, trying to get out, and they were here to help her as visions. She had a number of theories, each one more drastic than the next. But it was anything- anything- to say that they weren't imaginary friends. Which would mean she hadn't grown up. And Linda had grown up.
It had started with the boy. She had started to draw him because she loved drawing wavy hair. And from the hair had come a pair of eyes, and from the eyes had come a face, and with a face, a name: Near.
More had come after that, much, much more. Near had needed a friend, so she'd drawn one for him. But Near and Mello had not got on, not one little bit. So she'd drawn someone else, but Matt was best friends with Mello straight away. She'd drawn a spiky haired, panda eyed man, but he was too old to be a 'friend' as of such, and only created more tension between Mello and Near, due to rivalry. Light arrived, but he was, again, too old, and Near had not liked him at all. In fact, at times he even joined forces with Mello to go to every opportunity to annoy Light.
Then, storylines developed. Mello ran away. Matt followed. Near was alone. She felt a pang in her heart when L died, and another when Matt and Mello followed him. She even cried when Light, the 'villein' of the piece, died.
Near was alone. She had created this beautiful world for this beautiful boy, and now he was alone.
It wasn't as if he'd had any friends, anyway.
Linda began to cry. She'd be walking along, and then it would hit her that both her and Near were alone, and she'd sink to her knees and sob. It was the exact reason why she had built this world in the first place, so she wouldn't be alone. It wasn't as if her parents talked to her, and she didn't have any friends outside the ones she had created. Her escapism plan had backfired.
But the thing was this: when she had first built her little world, she had been thirteen. Now she was seventeen. It had gone on too long.
But one day, she came home and everything was strangely... silent. It was as if the world around her was holding its breath. Waiting for something to happen.
She walked up the stairs, and found her door slightly ajar. There was a white light peeking through the crack, and she was amazed; none of the lights in her room did that. She opened her door, to see a boy sitting on her bed. One of his knees was raised, and the other hung down the front of the bed. His hair was pure white, too white to be compared to the snow, if she were to use that cliche. His eyes were dark grey, like a brewing storm, and now they were fixed on her. "You are Linda, correct?"
It was Near. Her own creation was sitting in front of her, talking to her. Her knees felt weak and she somehow managed to force the words out. "Yeah, I'm Linda."
Near smiled, and as he did so, Linda felt impossibly happy. "Good." was all the white haired boy said.
"W-What are you doing here... in my house..." Linda asked timidly.
"I got lonely." Near said quietly. "As I'm sure you would in my position. I wanted to meet my creator, and so I came to meet her."
Nobody questioned why, all of a sudden, Linda was walking around the school with a strange new boy calling himself Near. Linda was strange, and there was no doubt that her friends were strange, too.
When Linda heard people saying things like this, she smiled.
If they knew.
If they only knew.