L stared into the camera he knew connected to Watari's observation room. He knew what this meant.
"Watari?" He kicked into autopilot; he heard what the team said and reacted to it but internally he was lost. He felt helpless, like the child left alone at the hospital decades before. But he wasn't that child anymore, Watari had seen to that. Watari had always taken care of him and seen that almost all of his demands were seen to. Almost, it was hard to know if there had been time-
As the pain flared in his chest he pictured her face. As he fell from his chair he saw her reading a book, her attempting to mix too-thick cake batter by hand. She was laughing, she was smiling, she was frustrated, excited, angry, confused, and goofy. Her face flashed before his eyes a thousand times as he fell, and he wondered if she knew.
He was finding it hard to catch his breath. He landed in someone's arms, looked up. Yagami Raito. He heard the bells again, saw the stained glass and the crying children, their images flickered intermittently with the Yagami's face, but the bells rang continually. Slowly, his adversary grinned and L knew that he had he had been right, but more importantly he knew that he had lost. Yagami Raito was Kira, and Kira had just seen to L's death. His next move would be to wait for the taskforce to persuade him into the position of L to stave off worldwide panic and chaos. Yagami knew that, and L knew that, and it was too late to change any of it. It was too late for him, he would have to have faith that his successors would eventually win. He had never been a strong believer in faith, though considering the evidence he had now the idea of a higher power was far from absurd.
As L closed his eyes he allowed himself to think of her again. He could almost hear her voice. Maybe there would be a version of her waiting for him in the afterlife.