title: the greyhounds of heaven
author: mssrlawliet/llark
rating: T
word count: ~2.5k
summary: in which L finds a death note, a shinigami enjoys several vodka tonics, and misa amane is fabulous, as usual.
author's notes: primarily gen, with a hint of L/Misa. enjoy!
The Greyhounds of Heaven
L finds the death note in blue trunk, beneath a crumbling wedding dress and a handwritten note that reads, "I'm sorry."
The attic has a steepled roof, and a clutch of silver pigeons coo in the rafters. L sneezes a lungful of dust from his chest, and wipes the book's cover with his sleeve. His fingers are stiff and end in brick-red knuckles, tucked beneath the cuff of a flannel shirt. It is late fall. L had come to rifle for winter clothes in the fortress of cardboard boxes. A racoon watches from behind a toppled, blank-faced mannequin.
He opens the notebook, and a yellowed photograph of a man in horn-rimmed glasses slips from behind the inside cover. There is a name written in blue ink on the first page, Quentin Thorpe. The final 'e' ends in a runny streak, as if its author had let the pen drag across the page, reluctant to pull away.
The human whose name is written in this note shall die, L reads. He cracks a peppermint between his molars and puts the book in his satchel, between Wammy's mildewed undershirts. Wammy collects antiques relating to the estate's history, and L thinks he may find the notebook interesting. However, an enormous creature with an ape-like body and a dog skull for a head intercepts him before he can reach Wammy's quarters on the first floor.
"Hey, you found it!" it says, while L struggles to lift himself from the carpet. The tendons in his elbow have gone slack, and his arm gives a useless flop against the floor. One of the older girls — Linda, L thinks — watches from the hallway's opposite end, a hand fisted in her paisley skirt.
"Wha-what are you?" L says. His voice dips on the second syllable, with an odd hiss of dry suction.
"That notebook is mine," the creature says, at the same time a surprised "Huh?" pops from Linda's mouth. She follows it with a sigh, retreating the opposite way down the hall, as if she has finally had enough of the insanity so prevalent amongst Wammy's male residents.
"I'm a shinigami. That's my notebook. I've been looking for it for ages," the creature explains, in a delighted tone L does not expect to hear from the skull of a dog. There is a shifting, multi-colored cloud of color somewhere behind its eye sockets.
"Are you going to kill me?" L asks, trying to steady his hand enough to search through the knapsack.
"Not right now. Once I get the notebook, it's very likely. Why aren't you wearing shoes? That's unsanitary, you know."
L glances at the clump of lint between his toes, but does not give the shinigami the notebook.
The shinigami rides two seats over on the flight to Tokyo, enjoying a vodka tonic with lime. The liquid sloshes out of its jaw, leaving splotches on the violet swathe of fabric around its torso. In the week it has followed him, L has learned a number of facts.
The creature's name is Mouja, and despite her androgynous appearance, she is apparently female. She is fond of stray cats, vodka, and British sitcoms. She has wandered Wammy's for nearly forty years, and has read through most of the slimmer volumes in the library. She can quote Nabokov at length, but seems mystified by any mention of human sexuality, giggling softly into her hairy palm.
"If you're not going to give the notebook back, you should at least write in it. You're so boring," Mouja says, and yawns. Her teeth are damp and reflective in the airplane's fluorescent lights. L's sees his own image — black, blue, and white — stretched across her canine. "You'd think for a secret multi-millionaire detective, you'd be more interesting."
"I ordered you that drink, didn't I?"
"Yes, and thanks. But aren't you tempted? Even a little bit?"
L shrugs, and presses his forehead against the window to watch landing lights flicker beneath ice on the wing. "Of course, but forgive me about being wary about using a cursed object lost by a death god."
"I didn't lose it," Mouja says in a strange tone, and presses him no farther.
L is hired by a Tokyo studio with a habit of misplacing its actresses. They've lost four in the past few months, despite increased security on shoots, and over three million yen on private detectives. L has reviewed the case files himself, and come to no conclusions, other than the corporation is more concerned with its public image than the lives of the young women it's employed.
L arranges to visit a set himself, posing as a British journalist. A press pass dangles from a lanyard around his neck. The movie is a science fiction romance called New World, and they are filming in a black room with spiral galaxies projected on the ceiling. There is a diamond of fabric missing from the chest of the lead actress's space suit. L doodles crude eyes on his notepad while Mouja trails behind him, sipping from a red cup she picked up at the concession table.
"Hey! Hey, there's Rem! She's my best friend. Rem, get over here!" Mouja calls, just as L thinks he's memorized the wavering, human cycles of the set. The director frames shots between the rectangle formed by his thumbs and index fingers. Misa Amane checks her eyeliner in a compact. Her manager, a tall man in square glasses, barks into his cell phone.
Mouja engages in a one-sided conversation with an invisible entity. Her teeth clack against one another. She occasionally gestures towards L with an apologetic look, and then laughs like a raven, prophesying from a streetlamp.
"Oh, he's the worst," Mouja says into the air, "He uses the note as a coaster for milkshakes. At least he lets me drink."
L solves the case the moment he sees Misa Amane turn and glance briefly towards the empty space beside his shinigami. Misa's earrings catch the stage lights, and prismatic streaks appear briefly on the asphalt. For a moment, L's sees her mouth droop into a self-aware frown, but the expression is gone a moment later when a stylist appears coat her hair in platinum gel.
L feels like he's swallowed a hand grenade.
"Mouja," L says, "Can I talk to you for a moment?"
Misa Amane contacts L first.
Watari arranges for them to meet in the lobby of the Teito Hotel. L is immensely fond of hotel lobbies. The lacquered black furniture reminds him of open coffins. Two American sailors on shore leave argue over the weather report. Somewhere above, Watari watches with a clear line of sight and a high-powered rifle. L, on impulse, had ripped a page from his death note while dressing, and he can feel it squirming and twisting in his pocket, like a rat trapped in a dog's jaws.
Mouja picks up a cap she finds discarded on a chaise lounge. The opalescent light behind her eye sockets pulses in shades of pink and green.
"This is a terrible idea, not that I care. Rem will probably kill you, if Misa doesn't first. At least, I get my death note back. Everyone's happy."
"I won't be happy."
"You'll be dead. You won't know the difference," Mouja says, while a tourist points at the floating hat, spinning beneath a chandelier.
Misa appears a moment later, in a lace dress and paramilitary boots. She wears a rabbit skull on a long silver chain. L had not expected her to arrive alone, but he searches the space over her left shoulder for the silhouette of a shinigami, sending ripples through the air around it.
"Amane-san," he says, bowing his head, but not standing. She takes a moment to assess the thin denim over his kneecaps, the ink stain on his thumb, and the grey dust packed beneath his right toenail.
"You're L?" she asks, leaning her umbrella against the armchair. Misa sits, and digs a soft pack of cigarettes from her purse. She beats it twice against her thigh and removes one, but doesn't light it. L notes the bump of a writing callus on her index finger.
"My manager hates these. He says it's ruining my voice. I'm trying to quit," she explains, "I just like holding one. Isn't that strange? Do you smoke?"
"I'm an associate of L's. And, no, thank you."
"I wasn't offering."
They sit in silence, listening to glasses click in the hotel bar. Amane adjusts the hem of her dress. For a moment, L's eyes are pulled towards the deep shadow that forms between her thighs. There is a blue rose tattooed on her wrist.
"So, are you going to let me see her?"
"Let you see who?"
"Your shinigami," she says. Misa opens her purse again. She removes a tube of violet lipstick, and dismantles it with a clockwise twist. Inside, is a rolled piece of bone-white paper. She holds it out to L. "Go ahead."
L does. A second being materializes behind Misa, while L struggles not to react. It looms over them like the idol of an ancient tribe, assembled from the bones of a prehistoric mammal. One eye is concealed by a diagonal bandage, but the other is the gold and fixed on L. For a moment, he is reminded of a distant childhood fear — fire spreading across the hillsides, swallowing houses and leafless trees.
He tears a corner off his own page and hands it to Misa, who gives a delighted gasp when she catches sight of Mouja, dressed in a growing collection of ponchos and scarves she's found in the lobby.
"Oh, she's adorable! And look, you gave her a hat."
"Adorable! She called me adorable, L, did you hear? I don't think you've ever complimented me before," Mouja says, popping her knuckles, one by one.
Rem seems less pleased by the situation, and points a gaunt finger at L. It has finally begun raining in the window behind them, and city lights are stretched into shimmering, neon streaks. "Tell him, Misa."
"Oh. Well. It's actually rather embarrassing. I know who's responsible for the missing girls. And, I know what you're thinking. It's not me. I'm not that petty, for god's sake. I was just going to kill him and be done with it, but he has — files — about me. Hidden on a laptop somewhere," Misa says, and then pauses to allow an arguing couple to make their way from the bar to the elevator.
"It's alright," L says, once the elevator doors have closed and the couple has been zipped away to the upper floors. L spares a half-second to contemplate Misa's split ends, and the scent of her plum blossom hand cream. "I know you're not responsible. Not directly, at least. The real culprit is your manager. Teru Mikami."
"It was too easy," Mouja says, watching lies about Teru Mikami scroll by on the evening news. L has to agree. The story is familiar. A beautiful young actress, adored by a god of death. An ambitious manager, who discovers her ability to kill with a face and a name. A secret arrest, and an even-more-secret prison. There is something tremulous and suppressed in L's stomach, that wishes someone else had picked up the notebook meant for Misa. Someone who understood its power, someone —
Huh, L thinks.
The apartment is lime green and starkly furnished. Mouja lounges on the couch, in a bathrobe embroidered with the hotel's monogram, sipping from a tumbler she's chipped twice with her canines. L is sure he's seen her swallow several pebbles of glass already.
"The illegal surveillance helped," L admits, and plays his hand, two queens.
"Two aces, I win. Will you write in the death note now? Misa would write in the notebook. She would probably say something nice to me too."
"No. I'm actually not entirely sure what to do about her," L says, gathering the playing cards into a ridged pile. They are warped from ten years of the grease on his fingertips, and smell faintly of England, hand sanitizer, and fruit jellies.
"Rem will kill you if you try to arrest her."
"Yes, she made that very clear," L says, passing out cards once more. He cares little whether or not Amane kills the stray criminal now and again, but there is something whispering, something in the wheeze of air pushed forcefully from the vents, that tells him a great potential has been left unfulfilled.
He thinks of the death note in a locked safe beneath his desk. He thinks of a wedding dress in an attic, eaten by moth larvae, and a single name, smudged by tears.
"You said you didn't lose the notebook?" L asks, because Mouja is swaying like a life preserver, seized by a rip tide. She is talkative at odd moments, when the lights in her eye sockets gather into something nebulous and otherworldly. Her fingers curl into themselves, and L understands the gesture, because it is human. It means Mouja's mind is prowling through the shifting, dreamy territory of the past.
"It really doesn't matter anymore," she says, and refuses to mention it again.
They take another plane to another place.
"The greyhounds of heaven," Mouja quotes, watching clouds roll across the wing.
"What does that mean?" L asks, distracted. He has just woken from a dream in which he was standing on the roof of a dark skyscraper, waiting for someone in the rain. In the dream, bells had echoed through the low clouds, shattering each droplet.
"Nothing," Mouja says. Her voice is muffled by the metallic drone of the airplane.
L doesn't get the notebook out for several weeks, and only after an encrypted phone call to Misa Amane, in which he asks, more politely than he means to, that she stop killing his criminals before they have a chance to be tried. She's filming in Malaysia, and the connection is patchy. She sounds hollow, like a recording of herself played back on crumbling technology. There is a dog barking in the static distance.
"Sorry," she says, "Don't be mad, I got the cases all mixed up. Director is calling, have to go. Kisses!"
L frowns at the phone, the screen lit in emergency-red. Mouja is hovering in place above the balcony, and the death note is wrapped in a linen cloth in his safe. L punches in the code and opens the book to its first page, where the fate of Quentin Thorpe was determined by dark blue ink. There is a pen on the desk, but L doesn't reach for it.
L hears Mouja's fur bristling behind him, but doesn't turn.
After a long moment, Mouja says, "You know, I really thought you were about to be interesting."
"I'm sorry to disappoint you."
"Believe me, I'm used to it."
L eventually puts the notebook back, and reaches for the jar of hard candies on his desk. He chooses a licorice by accident, and spits it into his palm. In the apartment, computers thrum, a cell phone vibrates against a wooden table, and a stray cat bellows mournfully through the window.
"You like it," Mouja says, eventually, and with a subtle confidence that L has never heard from her before. "You don't want to use it, but you like having it. And you like knowing that you could write in it at any moment, but you won't. At least, you think you won't."
"You're wrong," L lies, and closes the door to the safe with his big toe.