fandoms: Death Note/Welcome to Night Vale
word count: ~2600
rating: T
summary: A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious detectives attempt to recruit 13-year-old Tamika Flynn for purposes that are Definitely Not Nefarious.
pairing: L/Light
a/n: This takes place in a murky universe somewhere between Parade Day and Old Oak Doors, so minor spoilers ahead. Also, warnings for general silliness. And also, warnings for me always trying to give this pair inexplicable (and vaguely supernatural) pets.
A Song for Stranded Travelers
"I don't think the GPS is working," L says, for the eleventh time. Light watches the display on their navigator switch from a roadmap to the words LEAVE THIS PLACE in an appropriately threatening font. Their car skims the edge of a citrus grove behind barbwire, where fruit falls from the trees contiguously, like plump orange raindrops.
"Oranges don't grow in the desert," L says (again). He reaches for the radio dial, illuminating the dashboard in an esoteric shade of violet (again). In another moment, they pass the billboard proclaiming VOTE HIRAM MCDANIELS (again).
"That is literally a five-headed dragon," L says.
Light briefly considers veering their car into a ditch.
As far as Light can tell, the cycle goes like this:
They swerve out of the pink gas station at the last exit out of Desert Bluffs, avoiding a rattlesnake coiled in the road. The highway curves around the base of a steep mesa and dips into the scrublands. Armadillo skulls and spent casings lay scattered amongst the thicket. They pass a hitchhiker at mile marker 44 — a man in a tan jacket whose face reminds Light of nothing at all.
They keep the windows closed and the air conditioning up mid-way. The car's interior smells of transmission fluid and sour candy. Aside from the line of electrical poles, there is little evidence to indicate civilization. L loses interest in the scenery after the first hour and begins a game of Angry Birds on his phone.
"Are you sure we're going the right way?" L asks, without looking up. On his screen, a trio of blue birds barges through a glass wall. "What? How did that pig not die?"
Light turns on the GPS, which briefly flashes the words TURN BACK NOW FOOLS before locating their position.
"Did you see that?" Light asks. He does this only the first time. In later repetitions of this event, he addresses more pertinent issues, such as, "How do you not remember this?" and "Are we ever going to escape this hell?"
L responds each time with increasing incredulity.
"I think the heat is getting to you, Light-kun. Here, have some Mountain Dew," L says, pushing the straw uncomfortably close to Light's mouth. L's fingers are cold against the back of Light's hand. The bridge of his nose is stained by an incoming sunburn.
"You know, you're right. I don't think the GPS is working," L says a moment later.
And then, "Oranges don't grow in the desert."
And then, "That is literally a five-headed dragon."
And then, they swerve out of the pink gas station at the last exit out of Desert Bluffs, avoiding a rattlesnake coiled in the road.
He's just sensitive to this sort of thing, Light reasons. He spent two years mystically bound to a notebook. His memory has been erased and restored by shinigami. A significant portion of his seventeenth year was spent handcuffed to the hollow-eyed ghoul in the passenger seat. All of that has to account for something.
"That is literally a five-headed dragon," L says, dabbing spilled soda from the vinyl. Light wonders if the insurance covers stains or mileage incurred while caught in a time loop. Any attempt at a detour resets them back to the gas station in Desert Bluffs, and Light has had quite enough of the banner stretched across its awning that suggests they 'Believe in a smiling god!'
Light met a smiling god once. It mostly demanded apples.
"L, I'm going to try something." Light says, pressing his foot to the accelerator. A pebble bounces off the windshield, leaving a fracture in the glass. On the radio, a song ends and the announcer returns, clearing his throat against the microphone. Light feels a tremor in his fillings.
"That is a terrible idea," says the voice.
"You said that the last time," Light snaps, at the same moment he realizes it isn't true. He has never heard the voice on the radio before. Light thinks he would remember. It has the cadence of a whirlpool or a hive of waking bees. L looks from Light to the dashboard with a skeptical frown.
"You're caught in a geographical loop. Don't you remember KNIFE?" the voice says, with exaggerated patience. "Keep the horizon on your left. It's an entirely futile technique, but what else do you have at this point?"
"The radio is talking to you, Light-kun," L points out. "Can I always expect you to be the center of supernatural activity?"
"Both of you, shut up," Light says.
Eventually, Night Vale appears in the distance like a heat mirage.
Their employers rent them a room in a Motel 6 at the end of Route 800. Upon entering, they find a small grey shrew asleep on their pillow. It yawns and tells them, "Turn out the light, would you?"
Light does. He's not about to argue with a shrew.
The room is round, and smells of the pine air fresheners dangling from thumbtacks on the ceiling. There is a framed picture of a lighthouse on their nightstand. It stands in a field of daffodils flattened at a uniform angle, as if assaulted by a gust of wind. For a moment, Light forgets whether lighthouses actually exist or if he has only read about them in novels.
"I'm not sure I like Night Vale," L says, opening a brochure whose cover states I will show you fun in a handful of dust. "Maybe we should order a pizza."
L has been in contact with their current employers for the last three weeks and negotiated a fee that has shocked even Light, who is accustomed to L's seemingly random methods of billing. StrexCorp is inordinately concerned with the whereabouts of 13-year-old Tamika Flynn, and L is inordinately concerned with their concern, and Light is just tired of self-perpetuating cycles.
He watches L scratch an index finger against the shrew's snout, and thinks they are both going to die here. This notion had first occurred to him while speeding past the bullet-riddled sign that read WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE upon their escape from the desert. This town feels like a mousetrap, half-sprung.
"Let's focus on the case," Light says, heaving his laptop on to the bed. The shrew bounces in the aftershock, and sends Light a displeased glance. L switches on the television, but their screen displays only an exact replica of their room, in which Light has been replaced by a dark smear.
"What case?" L asks.
Light wonders why he wasn't expecting that.
Light meets an angel the next day.
For a moment, he believes it is a shinigami. Its head grazes the ceiling of the Moonlite All-Night as it pours coffee over Light's eggs. Aside from the multitude of eyes, its face is devoid of features. Four sets of wings flap idly against its ribcage, disturbing the low cloud of cigarette smoke. It's nametag reads 'Hello, I'm Erika'.
"Cream and sugar?" it asks.
"Yes," L says, without looking up. His attention is locked on Tamika Flynn's school transcripts, which Light has discovered consist of a fourteen-page treatise on the exploitation of the proletariat. A girl's red thumbprint is smeared across the title page.
"You're —" Light says to the angel, while L continues to ignore him. The angel smells of rain-soaked rot on the forest floor. Its fingers fray into black feathers. A grain of translucent dandruff lands on the vein of Light's hand.
"I know what I am. And I know what you are, Kira. The shinigami are not the only ones who Watch. Would you like syrup on your pancakes?"
The angel pours, and syrup overflows onto the linoleum. L scoops it up with his index finger. His foot pushes against a bruise on Light's shinbone.
"Um. Thanks. That's enough," Light says. The angel stares down with twenty-one eyes, varying in shade from leather-boot brown to cheeks-after-champagne pink. Light finds he is tired of questioning universal constants, such as time always moves forward and shrews do not speak and angels definitely do not exist.
"You should leave here," the angel says.
"Do you think Tamika would like England?" L asks. A chunk of powdered donut falls from his mouth.
"You should leave here," the angel repeats, touching the bubble of bone at Light's wrist. "There is a smiling god over Night Vale and he does not like competition."
Light eats his gluten-free pancakes and feels like a dark smear against the glittering red vinyl of the booth.
They listen to the radio while doing surveillance in a black Mercedes Benz, whose license plate spells STRXCRP. The accompanying bumper sticker reads: 'Good things come to those who work! Reach your full productive potential! I take my warmth from your great warmth!'
Earlier, L had forgotten his coffee cup on the roof and now the windshield is blotted with dark patches. The wipers have created long arcs of curdled cream.
"We remind our citizens not to antagonize the phosphorescent fungi growing in the corners of their basements," the voice on the radio tells them. "When provoked, the fungi emit a resonance wave, altering the fabric of space-time in their vicinity. Residents experiencing lost time, reversed time, or apoplexy, are advised to cover their ears and scream for help that will not come. "
"I'm sure a girl like Tamika would want to travel," L says, drinking Light's coffee. L seems less interested in surveillance than he does in the pile of library cards in his lap. Most are tattered and tea-stained. Others have rows of puncture marks, as if handled by clumsy teeth. "She checked out The Sun Also Rises when she was nine. Very advanced reading for that age."
"Is that what this is about? Haven't you hoarded enough children?"
"Tamika once took down a helicopter with a slingshot."
"Okay. Well. That is pretty cool," Light says, and adjusts the focus on his night vision goggles. For a moment, he thinks he catches the movement of a stray dog, tumbling down a distant alley, but it is only a plastic bag.
"You won't take Tamika," Erika says, squeezing Light's hand with too much force. "The town protects her."
While shinigami have easy, predictable natures, Light finds that angels are beyond even his comprehension. He feels as though he is circling the horizon of a black hole, cells are stretched, tugged by the gravity of a being that reflects every angle of the universe. Erika stares and in each eye, Light sees fractures of his life; the rattling leaves of the linden tree outside his bedroom window, a Turkish rug whose pattern he'd traced with his big toe, the pink pads on the feet of his childhood cat, a black notebook, Misa singing a cappella beneath the showerhead, the first blue snow of an English winter, L staring at the lines of his palm beneath a magnifying glass.
Light thinks he may be asleep, but he also thinks he may be in a library. There are shelves and books, although they all seem to be biographies of Helen Hunt. It hardly matters. Light is aware that he is the only thing being read this evening. Something moves in the darkness, but seems to be kept at bay by particles of light springing from the angel's skin.
"Leave here," Erika says, "Or don't. I really don't care. Consider it unfriendly advice."
The thing in the darkness give a hungry rumble, and Light hears claws scuttling across the hardwood floors.
As it turns out, they have stumbled into a war.
Later, in dreams of an empty house, Light will stand at a window and feel the desert forcing its way into his eye sockets and the pores at the tip of his nose. Cecil Palmer's voice will fill the porous spaces of Light's mind. A wide oak door will guard the trail to his heart.
But for now, Light is content to crouch beneath a desk in Night Vale Elementary, while a glowing cloud rains dead rabbits on an army of eyeless beings in business casual dress. The voice leading a war chant over the PA system is the same voice from the radio. Light's blood sloshes in time to its rhythm.
"Why does this sort of thing always happen when you're around?" L hisses. He is belly-down against the floor, protecting the base of his skull with his forearms.
"May I state, for the record, that rabbits have never before rained from a glowing cloud in my presence. May I also state that I do not believe we are going to get paid. Or rather, that there is anyone left to pay us."
A shredded tie skids to a halt against Light's sneaker. It is followed by what are most definitely dental crowns. Light watches Tamika Flynn's bloodstained Converse charge forth into battle.
"I think we're a bit out of our league," Light admits, for the first time in his life.
"Yeah," L agrees, "Let's get out of here. This sun is doing nothing for my complexion."
"What about Tamika?" Light asks.
They watch her sling a pebble directly into the forehead of a withered monster with razor teeth. Blood erupts from its left nostril. Her army — a limping mass of children, who all seems to be missing either eyes or fingers — give a collective call from the gut. They are barefoot, held together by scars, bandages, and bandanas. They stink of hormones and victory.
"Wammy's is too small for her," L says.
Light thinks Mello and Near will never know how lucky they are.
They return to the room for their belongings, and L carefully relocates the shrew before pulling Light onto the bed. L's ribcage shimmers beneath his skin. There are three scabs above his left elbow, forming a triangle. He smells of cooling firewood.
"Don't you think we should get out of here?" Light says, thumbing the hole in L's t-shirt.
A rumble from the distance shakes their bedframe.
"You know, you're right. Let's go now."
They drive with into the yellow dust of the American west. L dangles his feet out of the passenger side window, a horsefly squashed against his left toe. On the radio, Cecil Palmer rhapsodizes about a town that exists in the forgotten margins of the universe.
"Citizens, we head into this evening with uncertainties about the future of our desert community, but here is a list of things that will always be true. The moon will be beautiful, and tomorrow, the sun will be hot. The mysterious lights that pass overhead will remind us how little we truly know about the void. Mountains will continue to not exist. Dogs will never be allowed in the dog park. The Night Vale Harbor and Recreation area will only ever be a mass hallucination."
In the seat next to Light, L is laboriously typing an e-mail to Watari, explaining why they are fleeing the desert with neither a paycheck nor Tamika Flynn. A coyote wails from the scrublands. Light is quite sure the pin-eyes of a shrew are watching from L's half-open backpack.
"A vague, yet menacing, government agency is still very interested in your dinner plans for next Thursday, so would you please speak up into your cellphones. We will always have mysterious detectives that sweep through town, before being scared away by our youngest residents. We will always have heroes. And those multi-winged beings are still definitely not angels.
Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight."
Fin.