Fandom: Death Note
Pairing: LxLight
Word Count: ~1000
Summary: In which L Lawliet is scattered across the possibility space.
A/N: I've been so busy lately, but this little drabble has been bugging me incessantly, so I gave myself two hours today to jot it down. A nod to the themes of Bioshock Infinite, but in no way a crossover. Apologies in advance for the fluff. It was entirely unintentional.
Constants and Variables
This network of times, which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time. We do not exist in the majority of these times; in some you exist, and not I; in others I, and not you; in others, both of us. – Jorge Luis Borges
i.
Each world waits behind the next like a pack of starving dogs in a pen.
L opens the latches anyway, feeling tremulous and unanchored, like a traveler who has lost his passport. He sticks to the cool, dry days of late autumn in Tokyo.
The air is dense with the dander of last spring's hatchlings, falling from their nests. Ruts and dents appear on newly bared branches. L prefers the constants, and resists frantic contemplation of each variable shaping this particular time and place.
L waits in the courtyard of Daikoku Private Academy, where — in every world —a death note tumbles from the sky and falls against the frosted grass. L picks it up, and several potential futures collapse without great ceremony. Only the starlings chatter a eulogy for Kira, as L searches for Light Yagami's face behind a windowpane.
ii.
There was a being from another world, and she and L died together. This, L is sure of, although how he was scattered remains a point of great speculation. He remembers old lessons on quantum entanglement, and wonders if he and the shinigami's souls were somehow dragged together and flung across the universe.
L sits cross-legged on a bench at Hamarikyu Gardens and watches a version of Light read a textbook on a checkered blanket. Sayu Yagami kicks away a duck rooting its beak through her purse. Triangles of sunlight move across her dark hair. Although Light does not look up from his reading, he smiles when Sayu laughs.
There are many universes in which Light Yagami becomes head of the Japanese police force and has two daughters with Kiyomi Takada, but an equal number in which he swallows too many pills and drowns in a bathtub at the age of thirty-five.
Some rare worlds fill L with strange, cosmic joy. In one, Light is smothered in the crib by his mother's cat. In another, Light becomes a cult leader and drinks cyanide alongside two hundred followers during the Leonid meteor shower. Once, Light is struck by lightning and killed on the evening before his college entrance exams. L had watched Light's clothes ignite from a bus stop across the street. It does not occur to L to mourn him. There are so many other Lights in so many other worlds.
Light swats a bee from Sayu's shoulder and L imagines an infinite number of forking paths, spreading from the center of Light's chest.
iii.
"Are you speaking to me?" L asks, because one of the Lights has never approached him before. It is winter and L has lingered in this world for too long. The windows of the café have been lashed by snow. Even sounds seem too exhausted to travel the distance to an ear. Cars glide silently along the frozen streets.
"Hideki? From the entrance ceremony? Your disappearance has been the subject of much discussion, you know. The current theory is that you are the heir to a vast fortune and have been kidnapped by the Yakuza."
L flounders for a moment, struggling to recall which universe he is in and if he has been here before. This Light has translucent fingernails and deep ditches above each collarbone. His watch — a constant in every incarnation — is stopped at 1:28. Light seems to teeter in place, as if he cannot decide upon his center of gravity.
"Ah. That makes me sound quite interesting. Please don't dispel the rumor," L says.
"If you buy me a drink," Light says and sits, pushing aside L's ziggurat of empty plates.
Later, Light blows L in a dorm room with a broken radiator, the both of them shivering, ears numb. Light's fingers knead against L's inner thigh as they had once, in another Tokyo, before Kira had arrived and reduced them both to possibilities.
L comes in Light's mouth, feeling both pleased and disgusted, and flees the universe when Light gets up to turn the kettle on.
iv.
L does not sleep, but the murky space between worlds is made of dreaming.
"I suppose I should be flattered. You have the ability to manipulate time and space, and you use it to stalk me," says a Kira, whom L suspects is the same one that had stroked his hair as he died.
"I'm erasing you from existence. Perhaps I just like playing the hero."
"You are literally one of the worst people I have ever met."
"I said playing the hero, not being the hero. There is a difference."
Feeling petulant, L wanders into a universe from which he has not yet retrieved the death note, and watchesMisa Amane projected across a screen in Times Square. A group of women in pulpit robes answer the call to prayer, their voices charged with atmospheric electricity.
The lights of police helicopters burn overhead like constellations.
v.
"What do you mean you're not my L?" asks the Light with the jagged collarbones, and the drinking problem, and the broken watch. He lives in an apartment by the train tracks, and the constant motion in the windows gives the illusion that the building is in free fall.
"I really can't explain. I only want you to know that you should be flattered. I could be eating sorbet with Marie Antoinette at the French court right now."
"A powdered wig would suit you," Light says, searching for the button of L's jeans in the dark. L suspects Light's power has been shut off for several days. His face and hands glow, like a spirit able to manifest only its most essential parts. L links their toes together.
"Actually, I was thinking of staying for a while. Not in this apartment, though, this place is disgusting. How do you feel about high-paying jobs that require complete anonymity and a disregard for one's personal safety?" L says.
Light's hands envelop L's ribcage. L thinks of the bells that toll for them in a thousand other worlds, but here, there are only wine bottles rattling on the nightstand.
"Only if I get a good codename," Light says, and has said, and will say.
They press their bodies together in darkness that is like a universe, freshly born.
Fin.