Sola Fide, a death note fanfic

Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note.

Summary: Naomi Misora gives L the lead he needs advance the Kira investigation to an arrested suspect and a possible conclusion. But in a world without eyes, he and Light Yagami are left guessing in a game that has no need for sanity. L/Light

Warnings: torture, questionable consent

Sola Fide

"Post tenebras spero lucem."

"Yagami-kun." The voice, scrambled to the point of mechanical perversion, fills the room sharply. "It's time you started talking, don't you think?"

Light does not know where he is, not the place and not even what the room looks like because the blindfold has been resting over his eyes for what must have been days by now. Restrained in a straightjacket and strapped tightly to an upward apparatus that forces him to stand but denies him any movement, he had told Light that these were safety precautions but the true intent was one of the few things that had been made quite obvious even considering his current ability to reason. Without being allowed food, water or sleep that he can remember since his arrival, his is lethargic and he can hardly piece together a coherent thought otherwise.

It seems much more difficult as of recent to fully comprehend what is going on, and the only thing he knows is the thing that has been smothering him since the capture – he has been arrested as Kira.

"Yagami-kun," the voice starts again, even computerized it sounds more firm. "At this point, your silence is masochism."

Squirming slightly against the leather restraints, he tightens his lips. When he was first abducted and brought to this place (had to be the FBI, he thinks numbly, even after he got rid of those agents, because the NPA would never do this to him with his father in charge), he had proclaimed loud denials of guilt. He had spoken vehemently for the human rights that were being violated, he told them that he wanted a lawyer. This was illegal, he had reassured himself and his captor fiercely. It had to be, and since his arresters branched from Interpol, they couldn't break the law for long and not even for Kira.

But it did not take long for Light to understand that in a place that kept the world blindfolded, anything was going to happen and no one who would object needed to know.

Now he does not trust himself to speak at all. His mind is unhinging, and he is frightened of what he might say if he opens his mouth. He is falling into the dangerous position where he wants him. The desperation for mercy is only rivaled by the desperation to evade execution and that is the threat that he must repeatedly remind himself of. If he allows those words to escape him, he will be damned.

Death is exactly what L promised him during their first confrontation, and Light every reason to assume that L had no reason not to deliver.

However, Light has deducted that L cannot afford to kill him yet. L has absolutely nothing except a theory and a suspect, and as much as the mechanical voice declares that he already knows that Light is Kira so he would best cooperate, he knows that there is no proof, L has no proof, only at most a few tattered pieces of evidence and probably no other leads. He cannot convict Light, and Light has no doubt about this because what L is looking for isn't a confession – it is how Kira can kill.

Without knowledge of the Death Note, L cannot win.

"Yagami-kun, I have all the time in the world to wait for you," this computer, this L says. "This should indicate just how committed I am to bringing you to justice."

Light bows his head downward, trying to relax in a comfortable position but any way he does it, the leather strap around his neck digs into his chin and he tries to balance between discomfort and exerting the least amount of necessary energy.

"Hey, buddy, aren't you getting bored there?" Ryuk, entertained, calls from in front of him. "I don't really like that I can't have an apple here, but I'm learning so many interesting things about humans. For example..."

There is a hesitation and Light raises his head as though he might have better ability to see what the Shinigami is doing. The silence is unnerving, and then suddenly, a clawed finger advances right through the thick blinder and scrapes against the top of Light's eyelid. In surprise, Light grunts and shakes his head to the side to get rid of Ryuk and fights the temptation to curse at him – something that would look more than peculiar to the video cameras that he has no doubt are trained on him. Without a fight, the Shinigami retreats.

"I learned that you are keeping your eyes open even though you can't see. What's the point, anyway?"'

"You must be getting tired," L tries more. "Tell me how you're feeling."

"Whacha gonna do, Light?"

The voices are swallowing him and he wants to scream at them to shut the hell up. But words don't come out of his cracked lips, instead his tightens them so hard that they might bleed. He can't see their faces just like he can't see anything so it all blends together like a realm of nothingness. He's going crazy – he can't think, and he needs to think, and more than anything he needs to know what L is thinking.

When Naomi Misora contacted L, L had at first nearly dismissed her. It wasn't protocol for L to accept calls directly, everything generally went through Watari first for safety precautions, and at this time in the Kira investigation L preferred to have calls from Japan fed right to the Japanese police even before that. But this specific woman had insisted that she speak to L directly and that if he knew her name, he would allow her to speak. After a moment of thought, he had then recalled that she was the excellent FBI agent that had acted as his proxy during the Los Angeles Straw Doll case several years prior. Misora had claimed to have important information regarding the Kira case, and trusting her judgment, L had spoken with her directly through a voice-altering and untraceable cell phone.

The three and a half minute phone call had been the turning point of the Kira case.

Twelve FBI agents had recently been killed by Kira, all stationed in Japan by L with the intent of tailing Japanese police officers who L had reason to believe were connected to the murderer. Misora was in Tokyo with her fiancee, an active FBI agent by the name of Raye Penber. Before his death he had been involved in a bus jacking. Not a terribly rare occurrence in Tokyo, but what had been curious, evidently, was that the gunman, a criminal, had suddenly had a hallucination and ran out into the streets, getting hit by a car and dying instantly. It had been a lucky break for Raye Penber, who didn't want to risk exposing his identification by taking out his own gun and subduing the man, but Penber had mentioned to Misora that he had shown his FBI card to someone on the bus. Soon after, Penber and the other agents all died of heart attacks.

Which had lead Misora to the conclusion that Kira had not only been on that bus but had been the person that her late fiancee had shown his identification to – the one responsible for the bus hijacker's death, providing that Kira is able to kill in ways other than heart attacks.

Working off of the conclusion that Kira indeed bears connection to the NPA, the one who was Kira could only be the person that Penber had been tailing that day. A seventeen year old high school senior by the name of Light Yagami, son of Chief Soichiro Yagami. L had long since profiled Kira as an adolescent with too much time on his or her hands, and upon discovering that Light was the teenage genius prodigy of Tokyo, L had employed a secret force to arrest him quietly on his way to school and bring him here.

There isn't really a doubt in L's mind at this point. He doesn't take his eyes off of the computer monitors, and his hand only leaves the microphone when he needs another sugar cube for his coffee. They do not allow Light to sleep but L isn't sleeping either. There is too much to deduce and dreams are a distraction.

"I'm back," Watari says from behind him. "Has anything happened?"

"Nothing worth noting," L answers without altering his gaze. "Did you make the arrangements?"

"It's taken care of," he affirms. "When shall we proceed?"

L watches Light shift in the straps, looking exhausted, and he replies, "Immediately."

Light doesn't realize that he was asleep until he opens his eyes.

When he wakes up, his head is clearer. The ache of sleep deprivation has cleared up, but that in turn leaves his newly-revived rationality terrified. He is laying on the ground, completely unbound. Though it is a relief to feel his arms and legs spread and uncramp, there is the heightened sense of knowing something must be wrong. L does not seem the type to show him mercy, instead, he is the person who will persist until he has everything that he wants.

Those words, a sweet surrender.

(A sweet surrender is a death note. An autographed confession, and no more - forever.)

Light sits up and rubs his eyes, looking with his eyes for the first time in days. It takes several minutes for his eyes to finally adjust, for this cell that he is in is brightly lit. When he is finally remedied of his blindness, he notices something else - a tall glass of clear liquid (water, he hopes) and a tray of food, sparse though it may be.

Lifting himself up with sore limbs, he crawls over to the sustenance and grabs the water. Now that sleeping isn't his priority, he is fully aware of his dusty-dry throat and he immediately gulps down the water. Only after it is safely passed his cracked lips does he wonder stupidly if it was drugged. Once he has consumed a section of the bread loaf he discerns that this is unlikely, for L has the power to drug him without tricking him into it.

When the plate and the glass are completely empty, he crawls back to the wall and wonders if he should have been so hasty after all, because surely L is still planning something.

A short amount of time later, there is the sound of clicking at the lock of the door. A shiver of apprehension trickles down his spine and Light tenses, scrambling to his wobbly feet so that whatever comes at him, he can at least be standing with some dignity.

What happens is almost picture-book irony. The Caucasian man that enters is a head higher than the adolescent is, and weighs probably twice as much or more. The muscles that protrude on his arms look about the size of Light's torso, and the intimidation this man carries in structure is equal only to how he portrays it on his unshaven, yellow-toothed smiling face.

Is this L?

"Yagami-kun, meet Joseph Anderson," L's voice rings through the intercom system, denying the previous suspicion. "He was arrested in Texas five years ago for the murder of his wife and the man she was having an affair with. Court has scheduled him for lethal injection today, but he agreed to participate in your interrogation in exchange for a delay in sentence."

Light's mouth goes dry as he stares at the man approaching him. He gulps, but the saliva that runs down his throat has all the consistency of sand.

"You don't want to speak, alright. I will be accommodating and we shall compromise. Joseph Anderson is instructed to kill you. Since you are going to receive the death penalty anyway, it is fine if he succeeds."

Panicked, Light retreated a few steps until he found himself in the corner of the cell, no where left to go.

"Judging by your silence, you value your life. Will you be able to kill him first, I wonder?"

So that was it.

J-O-S-E-P-H A-N-D-E-R-S-O-N. An easy English name, Light can spell that without asking - but there is no Death Note to pass judgment. This, the knowledge he has withheld from L, the reason that his captor doesn't know that Light himself is not the weapon but the notebook is, that Light cannot end lives at will. The less that L knows the longer he will keep Light alive.

Or so he had thought. Now his heart races and he thinks he might die now after all.

The burly man has reached him, and he grins in a way that releases a huff of putrid breath. "Hello, sunshine," he says in drawling English.

Light wastes no time. He brings his knee upward with the intention of smashing the attacker in the groin. A weak spot, he had read about in books, if you don't have muscular advantage you should attack the weaknesses. Eyes, joints, anything that causes pain easily.

But the man, it's as though he's expected it, as though he got into fights every day while in prison. Probably did. He catches Light's leg and the beating begins.

Joseph is in no hurry, Light realizes weakly. He's trying to hurt Light, twisting and pulling and bruising and cracking until the youth's head is a mess of blood and shaky confusion. He convulses and he needs to vomit, but nothing comes out, it sits prickling like acid at his throat. The blood instead is what exerts itself from his mouth. A tooth is loose, his tongue and lips are a raw mess.

When a heavy boot stamps on his ribs, he finally shouts. The voice is hoarse and wracked, a bleeding sound like everything else about him.

"L! I can't do it!"

He hopes it is ambiguous enough not to be a confession if he denies it later, but all he really wants is the opportunity to be around later.

"Then you die now."

And Joseph's fist smashes into his eyes.

If Light had been thinking at an optimum level, he would have definitely caught L's bluff. As he wakes up now he thinks - briefly - that he is dead and has come to the Nothingness that Ryuk promised him. As a desperate sort of logic harnesses his crumbling mind, he deducts the explanation of another blindfold hiding his sight. Even the cloth on his eyes seems far-off, like he is watching his own lifeless body.

It is the pain that really reminds him of mortality.

Though he lays down on something that might be a mattress if only it wasn't so hard, the bruises send a stinging wave of pain down his back. Everything aches. He lifts his hands to his face after realizing that they were not tethered to his sides in the straight jacket, but their movements are halted nonetheless. Handcuffs, he deduces. Each wrist is handcuffed to the side of the bed, and his ankles are also chained down.

There is the sound of a door opening.

A pair of feet step across the floor, closer and closer. Light forces himself to sit up, gritting his teeth against the pain and jerking his head in the direction of the sound. His heart begins to thump wildly and he silently whispers to himself that they won't kill him. Yet. Intentionally or not, his captor made this quite clear, and Light has to use this to his advantage. No matter who is stepping closer to him now.

"Yagami-kun."

The voice makes Light freeze all over, his throat constricts and his hands sweat. It couldn't be– a low rumbling sound, the chords of a young man. It couldn't really be–

"I am L. I don't usually reveal myself like this, but according to every theory that I've come up with, hearing my voice isn't going to help you kill me."

Light simply turns his head toward the voice, too dumbfounded to put his own thoughts into any kind of word. L I am L I am L and you are Kira and here we are at last.

"Hmm…" The wielder of the tone is studying him, analyzing him so intensely it is tangible in the atmosphere. Eyes, for surely L has eyes, they rip into him but Light, he can't see. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine," he snaps out through a scratchy throat.

An amused pause follows. "Is that so? So my predictions were off. I assumed you would feel unwell after being beaten until rendered unconscious."

"You only wanted to see if I would kill him," Light voices, trying to regain the composure that his enemy wants to confiscate. "Because you want the method of killing more than anything."

"Correct."

"Because sinning deserves punishment."

"Yes."

"But it's okay if you do it."

"That's how you've justified yourself."

"So essentially, you admit to being just like Kira."

"So essentially, you admit to being Kira."

"No…" Light clenches his fists, feeling his body shake as he turns his head away. Though he is blind he knows that this person is watching him, studying him. And he must look like a mess right now - it doesn't take eyesight to realize how battered his body is.

Only gods can endure mortality, and weakness is a mortal sin.

"You know," the faceless voice says suddenly, as though in response to Light's thoughts. Had he said something out loud? "I'm not doing this because I want to. Obviously I'd prefer your cooperation, not just because I require the information but also because I don't really like doing this sort of thing…"

Light takes a breath. "No one would say that I wasn't speaking objectively when I suggest that Kira has every right in the world to want to kill a person like you."

"Like me?" There was an exaggerated rising intonation in the words. "I imagine you do want to kill me right now," he adds to try to bait a confession.

"You're a criminal. If there's a thing you want you do whatever you want to take it."

"I'm not a criminal," L disagrees. "I work within the law."

"This is not within the law."

"I am the Law." And then, the man, he has jumped up on the bed behind where Light is sitting. Light goes rigid as he hears a breathing coming at his head level, close.

L is for Law.

Even behind the blindfold, suddenly everything is hazy and red. The scent of his worst enemy, the man who he has never seen, it fills the air that he is breathing. The fingertips that brush against his skin, outlining his bruises almost gently, almost curiously, flicker an unintentional static electricity against his thin shirt. L, this L is so close that Light can feel his soft hair against his cheek as he murmurs into Kira's ears.

"You..."

The chills turn into a flushing heat, wordless for a moment. Everything that was dead inside of him has resurrected and it shakes, feelings that do not had names in any language clenching - and when it explodes, it takes the form of laughter. It falls out of him, the raw sound scraping painfully against his lungs and weeping out of the first smile he has made since arrest.

"Who do you think you are, L?"

Between this pair, one of them is the revolution, one of them is Lucifer. Only one can play the role of God, and that is the one who wins. Light begins to understand just how L's thinking works, and in the darkness he draws a face.

The face that he vows to obliterate, if only he can find a way to see it without his eyes.

"I don't think it's wise to continue like this," Watari chides as he stands by L. They watch the Kira-accused through the bulletproof glass of his cell wall. Interrogation is deliberate voyeurism, no matter how righteously it is conducted, for always are the interrogators watching what the condemned cannot see. Watari has seen this before, he has brought suspects in for L and he has always been on this side of the looking glass.

But now Watari is watching L, who gapes silently as though he sees what mortal men cannot. And the bound prisoner, Light, watches a wall with a curved expression that shares this enlightenment, only, he's the blindfolded one.

It takes a minute before L answers, who evidently has a list of priorities in his brain that do not include his detective partner. L's teeth gnash down on his thumb. "There is no reason why I can't keep him," he says distractedly.

Watari clears his throat. "NPA Chief Yagami will need confirmation on his son. If you plan to execute him, I will send word to his father and tell him his son is dead."

"Of course I plan to execute him," L answers. "But I can't until I have everything I want."

"You don't even have a confession yet," Watari reminds with gentle rigidity.

But L isn't paying attention anymore. Yagami has stirred, and that is enough for the detective to completely shut out his older comrade. L's forehead is pressed against the glass, palms fixated as though they are holding the very image of Kira in tact, if they let go the painting will shatter to pieces.

"I could have you executed right now," L announces, but not entirely because he wants to frighten the Yagami boy – not when they both know that L isn't going to eliminate his greatest lead to the cryptic answers that he so longingly desires – but curiously so. He simply wants to know the reaction, he simply wants to know Light Yagami.

(And how better to know someone than to know them in the reflection of death?)

"Then we are different," comes the answer. Tired and quiet, like a swan who has had his wings caught in a trap too long, but still he forces himself to sit up and look at death, at L. Even underneath the smooth cloth that blinds his eyes, he seems to pick his nemesis apart, tearing at his face until he can see the brain that eludes him. "I don't have the ability to execute you."

L, he puts a fingertip to his lip and he thinks that this isn't a lie. Those soft, dry words feel too close to the truth, too close to enlightenment. They fit like a link to a puzzle. Though of course Kira needs a name and a face to kill, both which Light does not have, there is something else there, or a lot of something elses, that L is surely approaching.

Deftly, he steps up onto the bed and crouches at Light's feet. A moment is taken to study Light's body, how it tenses up and fidgets at the prospect of his executioner so helplessly near. "Would you, if you could?"

"I am not a killer."

"Everybody is a killer, under the right circumstances," L dismisses. He leans closer, nibbling on a fingernail. "Please assume the hypothetical situation that you are, in fact, Kira. Would you kill me?"

Light actually laughs at that. This is the first time that L's video cameras will record such a thing, even if the sound is thin and weary. "Your methods of interrogation are retrogressing if you need my participation in a game of pretend to acquire evidence against me."

Now it is L's lips quirking into a smile. "Are you avoiding this question because you're reluctant to say 'yes', or afraid to say 'no'?"

"I'd kill you in a heartbeat."

"It would take forty heartbeats," Ryuk offers in what he must think is a helpful manner. "If you wrote this guy's name in a Death Note, then he wouldn't die for forty seconds. Remember?"

Lights knows this already, and he wants to strangle the damned Shinigami for all the good it would do. He wants to scream and snap that he isn't going to tell L that he would kill him in 'forty heartbeats', and besides, if he had opportunity, he would just kill him with his bare hands. Why Ryuk is so happy, Light can't tell. Perhaps he found a stash of apples, or perhaps the violence of what is going on is enough to sedate him.

"Yes... Yagami-kun has every reason to wish my death," L ponders.

"What if I killed him for you?" the Death God muses, his voice rumbling as close as L's. Ryuk is behind Light, perhaps standing at the head of the bed he is tethered to. "I'm not gonna, but what if I did? You'd sure love me, wouldn't you?"

If L dies now then I'll be the only one to blame.

"Or..." Ryuk says in a way that isn't quite a taunt – for a Shinigami is too selfish to taunt. It is nothing but the creature's own morbid curiosity that puts to words the amusement he feels. "Or I could write your name in my notebook now, and kill you."

Death in front of him, death behind him, Light is surrounded by momento mori. But he will not die, he knows he won't die until he has fulfilled a purpose to the executioners and he intends to leave them wanting. So his response is a smile, not because he is happy but because he needs to make them both wonder, make them both obsess over what he might be thinking.

What is he thinking? He needs to know what he is thinking, but he can't see his eyes. Eyes, the window to the soul, they are barricaded.

It is driving him mad.

Persuasion is a game, and a game is game until people get hurt. But if persuasion is pain, then where is the game?

"You don't have any proof," Light says when he regains consciousness on what feels like the same place that L has met him in before. He knows that L is here, too, but that's all he knows and he's the one who needs to know more. "I bet that just kills you, doesn't it?"

"I have proof," L answers lightly from in front of him. There was a shift in the bed and Light felt the warmth of a foot against his knee. It felt as though this man had stepped on the bed next to his leg, crouched on two feet. "I have you."

"A conclusion isn't an answer until you've solved the problem."

There was a gentle exhale of breath and Light turned his face pointedly toward the voice, wondering if this was L's smile. "There have been no new murders since your incarceration, Yagami-kun."

That wasn't true. Yes there have, there have. Light is surprised at how easily these incriminating words want to slip off of his tongue and destroy what L says. He doesn't know how long he has been here but he had been deliberately assigning times of death for criminals for up to twenty-one days in advance – the maximum time-frame of the Death Note. Therefore, even without the notebook, he had a grace period of about three weeks before his disappearance would indicate his guilt. And even then, the evidence was inconclusive.

"Are you surprised?" L asked, and Light knew he was leaning forward because the zephyr of his voice brushed against his face. L, the Lucifer, the Challenger, he is so near and Light thinks he will go insane if he hasn't already.

"I don't know anything about it!" the seventeen year old snaps in a desperate attempt to rekindle his own spirit. Then, more weakly, "Just let me go.."

"Actually, I lied." It was calm and smooth, a lion cornering his prey and faced only with the obstacle of how to best rip out his victim's throat. "The heart attacks haven't stopped yet."

"Then it can't be me."

"What's curious though is how you are not only able to kill, but you can also control the time that the victim dies. On the 12th of December last year, even though you were in school or sleeping, you were able to kill a criminal every hour on the hour. Which means you can plan the murder in advance."

Forcing his face into apathy, Light regrets. He had made that move after the police had reported that Kira might be a high school student. It hadn't been an attempt to disprove the theory but confirm his connection to the Japanese police, so that L would be forced to investigate, so that the Japanese police would lose trust in him. Eventually, Light should have been able to lure L out like a rabbit.

And here he is.

"None of the deaths are fresh criminals," L continued musingly. Closer, closer, the warmth of voice against Kira's nose. "Their names and faces were all broadcast on television news or the Internet all before your capture."

It's conclusive. Of course it's inconclusive. Light knows this, reminds himself of this, and he knows that L must know this.

"But how, Light?" The informal use of his first name is holds a desire like, like lust. "How do you do it?"

L is right here, this man, this cipher, this tangible presence of an intangible malediction. Right before his face like a mortal, but with wrists chained to the metal sides of the bed Light cannot touch him. He cannot see him. Like a God, L is unfathomable and L is a threat. L is before him and is watching.

But the truth is, L cannot see Light either.

When Light dips his head downward, his pursuer cups a hand under his chin and raises it again. The skin is cool but it beats with a pulse. The hand lingers, keeping his face as though they might peer into one another's eyes and find the answers that they would both kill for.

"Just confess to me," L murmurs. "Just tell me that you are Kira..."

Just confess to me. Just tell me your name.

The irony of it, Light supposes, is that they don't know and they are so close but they might be dead before they find the truth. The blindness is self-inflicted, self-loathing. Light wants L's mind and L wants his mind and the only difference is that Light is a prisoner and a god, and he only knows himself. He knows that he is bound and that he cannot free himself with his hatred or frustrations. He cannot fight L, and he cannot rip his face to shreds until he finally finds the pulsing brain that has alluded him.

He cannot know L. Not like that.

L's face is at the precise place that he had deduced through the whispers of motion. His mouth is where the clues of breath had brought him. Light had lunged forward with enough force to push them together, and L, being startled, had parted his lips. His mouth is warm like Light had hoped it would be, it is warm and human and oh, so mortal as he forces his tongue in. The chains do not even strain, even as Light kisses into L's gasp, because he does not have far to reach.

The detective remains impassive, perhaps due to his surprise, for a few seconds. With his hand still curled into Light's cheek there is a stillness that Light does not yet know how to interpret. Certainly they have passed the allotment of time that could be directly contributed to Light catching L off guard, and now Light can only guess that perhaps L is actively allowing the kiss.

Yet it isn't much longer before Light is losing his breath, and accelerated heart rate has made him dizzy. The strength he had initially put into the action has dwindled. When the kiss has become limp, L pushes Light's face off of him, and Light takes breath after breath.

"Why did you do that?" L asks strangely after a moment of what must have been dedicated to staring at him.

"It's a strange thing to do," Light agrees. He feels light headed and decides to lay down on the hard mattress under him, resolving not to answer any questions about this or any other of his actions but instead to listen to what his nemesis has to say.

L is unsatisfied. "It's a unique thing to do. Why did you do it?"

And, interestingly enough, when Light remains entirely silent, L very soon removes himself from the bed. The detective tries one more time but in an acted casual tone that sounds utterly false, as if this detective mastermind is trying to let him know that he certainly did not and could not make him uncomfortable. Then there is the soft sound of footsteps – L carries himself lightly on his feet – and the heavy sound of a door – perhaps about ten feet away, Light was definitely in some kind of cell – as it scrapes closed.

Light wonders to himself if L isn't an awkward person behind the glamor of his title.

'Enhanced interrogation methods', as is the allegedly politically correct or at least the delicate terminology used to describe these techniques, has never bothered L extraordinarily. He has implemented them often and always achieved his desired results. It would be particularly irrational to abandon plans for pesky feelings of guilt, not when the suspects that L brings in are never suspects because L is never wrong. Also, considering the ferocity of the crimes, as L will only take on the most cruel of criminal cases, he doesn't see the point in worrying because these people generally deserve what's coming to them – deserve it a thousand times over. This should far from suggest, however, that L takes any kind of perverse pleasure out of his actions, in contrast, he is somewhere much closer to apathy. The only joy he derives out of the business is the satisfaction of solving the puzzles that no one else dares to try.

All factors considered do not offer an explanation for the sudden unhappiness that plagues him as he watches Joseph Anderson continue another session of enhanced interrogation on his computer monitors. It cannot be that L feels guilt, certainly not guilt – Kira's murders are the result of an evil power in the hands of an immature young man who, bored with his own mundane life chose the path of remorseless vigilantism. Light Yagami deserves the death penalty and Interpol deserves to know the true nature of Kira's power so that they may prevent such a tragedy in the future.

But L, he grits his teeth and clenches his hands around his knees as Anderson punches Light across his jaw, leaving the teenager's lips wracked with blood – those lips that touched his own – and uttering a cry.

"Watari," L suddenly calls, breaking away from the morbid mesmerization that the ugly occurrence has instilled in him. He accesses Watari through intercom, as his partner is outside of Light's cell.

Since Watari is carefully observing the interrogation to ensure all safety precautions are met and Anderson doesn't take things too far, it takes the old man a moment to fumble out his communicator. When he does, he has to delay for another moment as Anderson hits Light in the stomach. "Yes, what is it?"

L gnaws at his thumbnail as he watches the same scene, sinking teeth further into his own skin as Light winces. "Please terminate this session. Yagami is aware that we won't kill him and is aware that we want him to demonstrate the power. It didn't work before."

"My understanding is that we were acting upon the hypothesis that the boy either saw through the mock execution or was still impeded by exhaustion," Watari responds, though he is reaching for his second communication device that connects with Anderson's.

"He could have been impeded by a number of things," L reasons back, wondering very vaguely if he is being practical or has made a decision and is simply acting irrationally stubborn. "If it is a stressful environment that results in inability, then we would be most efficient in letting him tell us how he does it and testing the method later."

Watari has no objections, as in these cases he generally respects L's judgment. L stays still to watch and listen as the old man proceeds to discuss the change in plan with the Texan. Anderson concedes after a foul-mouthed complaint that makes L eager to return him to his United States prison. Light is handcuffed with wrists behind his back, ankles lashed together with a leather belt and blindfolded, a tightened strap around the back of his head and under his chin for security. Anderson is dismissed and Watari goes in to examine the damage inflicted upon the suspect. The goal has never been to break bones and they definitely do not want head injury, and L has already decided that Anderson was a poor choice in interrogator.

When the American criminal is also safely secured (for L doesn't dare to let even a man on death row see his face) L rides the lift down and punches through a fortress of security codes until he meets Watari outside of Light's cell. Watari has a wet rag and hydrogen peroxide, but assures L that the worst damage is really only bruises and a scrape.

L enters the cell and shuts the door behind him. Light is laying on the floor and L assumes initially that he has fallen asleep already. But Light tilts his head in the direction of the door and, after a brief struggle with his restraints and wounds, sits up. For a few minutes, Light sits and L stands, and it is as if there is a wall, a barrier between them that blocks them from anything except the knowledge that he is here.

"L?" Light finally calls, breaking the silence in the tired word.

Frowning, L tucks his hands in his pockets and strides forward, eventually depositing himself in a comfortable perch in front of the seventeen year old. "You are impressive, Yagami-kun, to have known it was me."

"You always stand there and watch me before you speak," Light explains almost patiently. "Everyone else gets straight to business, don't they."

This answer arouses a number of reactions in L's brain. For one, he feels exposed even around this adolescent who has never once laid eyes on him, and another, he is intrigued. He inches closer to Light and leans forward, studying the parts of his face that aren't concealed by the blindfold. "You are getting to know me pretty well."

Light's cracked lips curve upright, not exactly forming a smile but acting as a facial representation of the irony that clouds the pair. L tries to imagine what the rest of Light's face must look like right now, taking pieces from his own video cameras and from pictures he has acquired, but the result feels oddly detached.

"Does that scare you, L?" he inquires softly in a voice both weary and calculating.

Surprised, he asks, "Why do you say that?"

"Because you don't want anyone to know you." Light's assertion isn't met with an answer, and the adolescent basks in this small victory, and goes on. "It compromises your own safety. Especially if I am Kira."

Shifting a bit, L listlessly points out, "You are Kira, Yagami-kun, let's not speak in the hypothetical."

"Kira scares you, too," the youth suggests. Again, he takes the following silence as a confirmation, and his face softens. The gentle expression is the last thing that L had anticipated, a show of empathy and sympathy that makes him want to believe that all of his ruthlessness is condensed in his hidden eyes. "Kira scares you because you like to know and understand things, and it makes you uncomfortable to be met with a mystery."

L plays with the tattered edge of his jeans as he listens intently to what his suspect is saying. "That's a curious thing to say. You are aware that I'm a detective, so naturally, aren't I well adjusted to mysteries?"

"It gives you the biggest high in the world to tear a mystery apart and reduce it to terms you yourself can comprehend," Light supposed. "So what is natural is that you go after Kira, even knowing that he might kill you, because the possibility of victory is just too desirable."

The detective's face lifts from the fabric around his ankle and halts at this adolescent's face with his own mouth open. Then, quite quickly thereafter he says, "I didn't bring you here so you could talk about me. We're here to talk about you."

Light laughs, at least, it sort of sounds like a small laugh, exhaled through a painful breath but it didn't lack a mild amusement. "You don't have to get defensive, since I was only guessing. Was I that close to home?"

"If you like guessing games, then I would like to take a turn," L annunciates, clearing his throat and his mind. "Instead of why I am L, how about why you are Kira? I've looked very extensively into the files collected about you, and it is very clear that you are a highly intelligent young man. However, I have to ask myself why such a bright guy would do something so stupid and quite frankly dangerous, at risk of being arrested, as you know very well by now..."

This doesn't induce any kind of reaction from Light. The youth, if anything, looks as though he wasn't paying attention, though it is difficult to determine for certain, considering his lips and nose were all there was to judge by.

"However, I am not making the assumption that teenage boys always act to the best of their intelligence," he continues regardless. "In fact, I am willing to suppose that you may have become Kira solely due to the inherent thrill-seeking behavior that your age group often demonstrates. Your father is police chief. I know him, and he is a very noble man – perhaps you thought to replicate your father's heroism as well. But more than anything..."

L crawls closer to Light, and when Light hears the noise right beside him he turns to meet it. L studies his face very closely for these next words:

"More than anything, you are too brilliant for the life that you were living, and knowing this, you decided to do something grand and let the whole world fall to your feet. No, it is very clear why you would become Kira, and what I'm more interested in is-"

"But your reasoning is flawed," Light interrupts. "The profile you just described applies to most high school students, right down to the arrogance, idealism and want of excitement. At this point, however, my primary concern is to do well on the placement exams and get into a good university. That is, prior to being kidnapped, tortured, and threatened with execution."

"If those were your primary concerns, perhaps you should have joined the tennis team again in your free time instead of mass murder. The latter isn't something that would do well as an extracurricular on your school records."

"Listen to me," the younger snaps, leaning forward. "I'm not Kira. I don't know what's going on out there, but Kira is going to keep killing-"

"How?"

"I don't know!" It's desperate – too desperate, perhaps. The proclamation breaks from strain, and, intentionally or not, causing Light to sound frightened. Of course, Kira or not, Light has every reason to be frightened. It is L's job right now to induce exactly that reaction. But as if in an effort to spoil what leverage L has taken, Light comes back with a, "Does my dad know what you're doing here?"

"No," L answers bluntly after a hasty debate over truth and necessity. "For the confidentiality of my work, there are not many people who know you're here at all. Of course, your execution will be recorded and sent to every policing agency in the world so that everyone will understand that this alleged god is nothing but mortal."

Light turns away, disturbed.

"You can't expect mercy after what you've done. Though perhaps..." L speaks slowly, attempting to plan his own words very meticulously but finding them leave him on their own accord. He brushes a hand to the side of Light's cheek to tilt his head back in his own direction, where he can see it and study its every quiver. "...If you cooperate, then you can allocute and plea bargain."

"...To who? You?"

"Yes," L contends, closing in. He had earlier resolved to keep a distance from Light since his earlier actions, but that has become an impossibility. Everything in this youth that he is forced to detach from is irrelevant as he feels the breath in Light's throat, oxygenating his brain that would one day soon submit to him. One moment soon, perhaps, at any given moment. A victory that was already close enough to touch.

"I'm not going to call myself Kira when I'm not," Light suddenly scoffs. "Besides, I think you are above else a liar who should never be trusted."

L had determined his reaction in result to an unimportant response from Light. When L kisses Light, the boy's lips taste like sandpaper from the extreme dehydration. Curiously, L licks his tongue against them, moisturizing them but simultaneously absorbing the coppery taste of blood where skin had broken from the earlier beating.

It is, in a sense, another form of interrogation that demands an answer that doesn't come in words.

And the way that L kisses, so fiercely as if this technique of investigation was his idea in the first place, Light wonders if he hasn't gotten himself in too deep. But there's nothing else he can do, nothing else he wants to do. He had not been expecting anything, he dove straight into a mystery, but the important thing is to keep himself from going insane by remaining passive.

Or maybe he is already insane.

"I do not support this, Lawliet," Watari articulates firmly. Watari always watches everything on the cameras and L never sees a reason to prevent his detective partner from doing so. The old man knew how these cases went, but granted, even L admits that this is much different from any case ever before. "These interactions are not only inappropriate but counterproductive to our investigation."

"It's interesting," L answers without concern but with honesty. "I am learning more about who Light Yagami is every time."

"The boundaries that separate you from the prisoner are being trod upon," the old man continues to chide. "Are you sure that you're still the interrogator?"

Are you sure that you're still the interrogator?

L hears the words repeatedly as he goes down to Light again, they beat in his head like a war drum. But the rhythm of them is just too loud and he stops paying attention to the words, or maybe he doesn't want to, but either way he doesn't think that he can possibly lose now.

They suck wordless confessions from the mouths of one another, but their eyes never see. To kiss someone who you cannot see, who you cannot see the soul in their irises – it is making love to an idea. And when the idea is the one who promises your death, perhaps you are making love to a suicide.

Light thinks sometimes that he can collect a hazy understanding of time through L's visits, for no one will so much as tell him the date let alone the time of day and his own biological clock has long since been thrown off (at least, he assumes). But no matter how fastidiously he attempts to count the time in between L's visits he never gets a constant result. There is no schedule, the truth is that L's life revolves around Light's in the same way that Light's is revolving around him.

There is also no way of knowing why exactly L is participating in this. Initially, Light had made the move partly to confuse L, partly to humiliate him and partly because there was nothing else he could do. But now there is something that he needs and he craves when he touches L, something like rationality, something like reality in a world that isn't real.

Sometimes, perhaps, it is better to grab onto something when you are blind, even if it's your death sentence, than to be trapped in the darkness all alone.

L, he always starts with an interrogation that may or may not be a pretext to what he really wants (Light doesn't know). "Why do you kill them with heart attacks?"

Light, when L is close and whispering, turns his face to silence his adversary, and L never complains. He murmurs encouragements for confessions, he murmurs challenges to kill him, he calls him Kira. But he kisses and caresses, and Light reciprocates and maybe when you can't see it's impossible to tell that their love for each other is actually a hatred that grows every hour that they don't get what they want.

"Ah!" Light cries out as L's hands dig into some tender bruise.

L readjusts. "I'm sorry."

He might mean it too, mean it just for that short moment because he hadn't intended to hurt him as he gently pulls down Light's pants. Light's heart pounds and he wonders if he shouldn't tell L to stop – he doesn't know if L would listen but he thinks so – but he needs it too badly to forget some things and remember others.

And his heart keeps beating, so fast that he wonders sometimes if he won't be the one who dies from a heart attack.

"Stop! Just stop!"

"He is a criminal and he can only be stopped by his death. Isn't that Kira's reasoning?"

There is no mercy today, and it hurts more every time. He cowers, covering his head, but he doesn't have the strength anymore to maintain any kind of defensive position. Like the threat of night-time at dusk, gradually he is losing like this, he is losing everything and he doesn't know how to stop it.

"Please," he chokes.

"Kill him. It is self-defense, you can kill him."

But Light can't, and it's really a good thing that he can't but he wants to, he wants to give in because he is reaching his breaking point and if L doesn't come to him in person then he just might fall to pieces. He prays to the gods for help even though he doesn't really have faith in them, but Kira is the only god he believes in and Kira isn't going to save him now.

"L, I've just been contacted about something very important," Watari announces, entering the room with a newspaper in his hands. "Yesterday, fourteen new criminals died, and all of them committed their crimes after we incarcerated Light Yagami. Ten of them had no criminal records at all prior to their recent convictions."

L drops his tea. The burning liquid falls to the ground in a smash of ceramic pieces and gathers around the wheels of his swivel chair. Lumps of still-hardened sugar stick up in the floor tiles, surrounded by a mess of English herbs. He turns away from the computer monitor to stare at Watari.

"Nine of them were in prison at the time and their deaths were accurately recorded by the faculty. The others were reported after being found but detectives on the scene concluded that they must have happened around the same time as the others." Watari sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "It is not possible for Light Yagami to have committed these crimes, as he has had no access to any criminal news."

"Ah... a... second Kira."

"Or the same," Watari disagrees firmly. "I do not think it's rational to assume any more that the boy is definitely guilty."

"He is guilty," L argues, feeling a heated frustration. "There is not a doubt in my head and I've not been wrong before."

In a response, Watari tosses the Japanese newspaper he had been holding at L's lap. It lands, crinkled, on top of L's knees and by instinct he catches it from falling with his thumbs and forefingers on either hand. The front page spells Kira's name in large katakana in all the headlines, like it usually has as the more controversial papers read lists of the reported dead.

"If you want to solve this case then we need to go back to Tokyo and work with the Japanese police again," Watari reasons.

"Yes..." L agrees, thinking furiously.

"If you would like to keep Light incarcerated, it can be arranged. But what I am advising is that you discontinue this as your top priority."

"Go away, please," he responds. "I need to think."

L knows that if more killings have started then it can't be Light. The fourteen new killings have all occurred in Japan, which may not necessarily conclude but certainly suggest that this second Kira is also based in the same country. There is the possibility that this power is acquired in Japan or perhaps even Tokyo, if it is indeed acquired. There is the possibility even that Light was not directly controlling the killings, or wasn't acting alone.

There are infinite possibilities, L realizes, there is an infinity out there and he is nowhere. He knows nothing, and he hasn't accomplished a thing unless he can solve the case.

After this much time and in these conditions, it seems that Light is reaching his breaking point. When L opens the door to his cell, Light won't even sit up to meet him. He knows who it is, Light without fail always knows when it's him. But now he is pale with pallor and purple with bruise and red with traces of blood, and when L strides to meet him without any pity he seems to know that, too.

L pulls him up to a sitting position and Light groans. "Light Yagami, tell me now. Are you Kira?"

"N-no," he answers tiredly, as though he were sleeping. Maybe he was, maybe he still is or maybe he always is half asleep these days.

But L cannot afford patience now. "Are you Kira?!"

"Let go of me.."

"I want to know if you are Kira!"

"No!"

L, he can't tell if Light is lying. There is no way of knowing if he is lying, because L is the blind one. The only truths he can extract are from the eyes.

His hands press into Light's cheeks, sliding them upward. His fingertips brush against the edge of the thick blindfold, and then, as quickly as his heart is beating, he unbuckles the straps of the device.

"What..."

For a second, the blindfold is held in place only by L's nimble fingers. L swallows, and then lets it drop, clattering against the floor.

L's own eyes widen with a surge of electricity as Light's narrow. Here is the entirety of Light Yagami's face for the first time in reality, but his eyes – the color of sweetened coffee – they are filled with tears. It is the burst of light against his eyes when they have been kept mostly in the dark for so long, they have grown overly sensitive and they shut tightly on their own accord. The pain drips down his face like tears, and he immediately attempts to rub them away with his shoulder.

He needs to see Light's eyes, and he knows that Light wants to see his face, so he shortens this delay by wiping the tears away himself with a finger sliding under each eyelash. But Light's eyes stay closed, as though enough unbearable light was sinking through his eyelashes. L waits a few moments, waiting and waiting and waiting to see Kira, but Light's eyes remain closed.

"Look at me, Light-kun," L murmurs, now holding Light closer by the back of his neck and using his first name alone for the first time. "Light-kun, please open your eyes and tell me that you are not the killer."

Light leans forward, collapsing against L's chest. The movement is so natural that L easily puts a hand around his back, holding him while also tipping his chin upward to look at him in the face. L cannot tear his eyes off of the softly angled curves, the picture in the flesh, this boy who took the lives of hundreds before he even completed grade school. It's beautiful in a twisted way, but the face is sleeping, dormant, dead until the eyes open.

They do not open.

"Light-kun," L repeats. "Please open your eyes."

Let me see the truth of you. Don't let it be a mystery any longer...

But they are closed, they stay closed. Light shakes his head, both denying the command and trying to rid himself of L's hand, and when he does, he hides his face in L's neck.

L keeps still, realizing only now that he is holding Kira in some perverse game of pretend-love with the threat of death still lingering in the air for both of them. Maybe it's love, he thinks ironically, maybe it's love that Kira uses to kill, a love that is seventeen years old and blind and innocent and so, so corrupt, the kind of thing that adults grow out of. And, like a double-edged sword, perhaps all the people who love this Light Yagami will be dead or grieving at Kira's reign, a joke of an answer from those who dared not to show their faces.

"Is the light still too bright?" he finally asks, softly.

"Put the blindfold back on," Light directs dully. "I am not going to look at you."

He hears L catch his breath, he knows he has surprised him. But still, stubbornly, Light sinks his eyes into L's shoulder, and he has made up his mind.

"Wanting to look at me now doesn't mean you're Kira," L says in a strange tone, the same strange tone he had used when Light had kissed him. Light, he's learned to think in tones, he's learned to anticipate through tones, and this is what he wants now. "It's natural to want to see the face of the person who has deliberately made you suffer."

Light wants to open his eyes, oh God he wants to open his eyes more than anything. Even if not to look at L's face, the thing he wants the most, but just to look at the color of this cell that has housed him, the size, the door, some kind of reassurance that he hasn't been spirited away to some fairy world like in the children's tales. But if he opens them once just to peer he might not be able to resist stealing glances, and surely the video cameras will watch absolutely every move he makes.

He isn't sure that he is thinking rationally, but he thinks he is.

"Put the blindfold back on," Light commands again but more softly this time. "I do not want to look at you."

L tenses. It's such an odd thing, Light feels, but L is tensing like a human.

"Because justice is blind?" the detective asks ruefully. He pulls Light's face back but covers the closed eyes with the palm of his hand, imitating the obstruction that had kept them always apart.

"Because..." Light starts, wishing that he could read the very fingerprints of identity that are as close as his eyes can see if only he would open them. He pauses, realizing he is throwing away a chance on the mere guess that it will benefit him in the end – because what does he know, what can he possibly know in the darkness. But this is no longer about knowing. Knowing is a sin that will kill him. What he needs is faith – faith that he will one day yet have the chance to see this man that has become his life.

"Because if I see your face now, you will never dare to let me go."

And L doesn't answer in words. His hand instead slowly falls down from Light's eyes, covering his nose and at last covering his mouth as though he wishes to suffocate or silence him. The palm then falls and his fingers curl at Light's bottom lip, parting it and willing him to say something, anything, but Light remains silent.

Finally L stands up. Light hears this movement, but it's another undetermined amount of time before the man actually begins to retreat. He is watching, observing, calculating, and trying so despairingly to comprehend the answers that he has been denied. But he will not be satisfied, Light has made certain of it.

One day, he thinks, he should like to see L's face. On this day when they meet eyes, either Kira or L will be sentenced to die. But Light imagines, as he lays back down on the concrete, that on their final meeting, L will be the one who has to close his eyes.

Ryuk chuckles when they are left alone, or as alone as Light assumes that this place will let him be. The Shinigami towers over him, and he can almost feel the shadow that won't be cast to the normal human eye. Ryuk's sharp hand falls on Light's face in a manner identical to L, but it is not warm like L's is and it is not alive like L's is.

"I can see his name and face and lifespan, Light. Isn't that interesting?" He removes his hand away from Light's face and then, like the punchline to some joke, he adds, "I can see yours, too!"

The Shinigami laughs and laughs, and the laughter echoes off the concrete walls.

"After darkness, I hope for light."

-fin-

Author's Notes:

1. Sola Fide: "By faith alone"

2. This fic was started a long time ago, last summer, I think. I was making a list of all the times Light was pretty dang close to losing if not for sheer dumb luck, and running into Naomi Misora was probably the luckiest break that he had. Naomi Misora did have the information that would lead to L pinpointing Light as Kira, and so this was originally exploring what might have happened.

3. The new Kira at the end, for anyone who was confused, is Misa Amane.

Thanks for reading!