Re-uploaded, edited, hopefully much better but still by no means perfect. I'd appreciate any comments about flaws and virtues, and I hope you enjoy reading.
Chapter 1: Offer
Hunched over his desk, doodling idly over the thick sheaf of notes before him, the dark-haired detective grabbed a fistful of gummy bears with his left hand and fed them one after another into his mouth, barely registering the flavour, chewing simply for something to do.
"Lawliet-kun?" his partner asked him, sounding slightly irate. L jerked his gummy-filled hand from his mouth and turned to squint through dark-ringed eyes at the agitated man standing before his desk.
"Yes, Aizawa-san?" he said boredly. "Is there something you wanted? I'm very busy." It was a lie. Aizawa knew it was a lie. L knew Aizawa knew. And Aizawa knew L knew he knew. And so forth. But L didn't care. The job was so mind-numbingly dull and repetitive, irking his co-workers was one of the few distractions he was afforded. Along with sweets. Lots of sweets. And cake, when he could get it. He heard Aizawa clear his throat pointedly; he had just sunk into another daydream.
"We've apprehended Aiber," Aizawa said curtly, tossing some more papers on top of L's doodles. "Chief asked if you wanted to go talk to him before he's sent away?"
"I'll do it tomorrow," L replied in a monotone, shuffling the paper to one side in order to locate his gummy bears. He saw Aizawa's lips tighten, and insolently offered the packet under his nose. AIzawa responded with a curt shake of the head.
"Aiber is a high-class con artist," Aizawa said stiffly. "He's being moved to Tokyo West tomorrow."
Tokyo West was the highest security facility in the entire of Japan, reserved only for the particular class of criminals who, for their own safety or for the safety of others, had to be locked up in the most impenetrable, elite and, if such a word could be applied to a detainment facility, prestigious, prison in Japan. The statement got the greatest spark of interest Lawliet had shown in all his five years in the station; the gummy bare paused in mid-air for approximately one second before meeting its gooey end.
"I'll go tomorrow," he repeated. "I could use a field trip."
"Chief won't like it," Aizawa sang under his breath, but he didn't venture any further opinion. Lawliet knew Aizawa didn't care if he got in trouble. He wasn't exactly popular with his co-workers, partly because he employed a certain brand of sarcasm and indifference whenever forced to address them, but mostly because he solved more cases than all four of them put together despite the fact they rarely saw him doing anything but eating sweets and daydreaming. It was a terrible burden, being a genius with nothing more challenging to do than shuffle paperwork about drug dealers and petty thieves all day. Aiber had been the most interesting case for months, yet Lawliet had managed without lifting a finger to arrange a masterful set-up, resulting in the conman falling straight into the hands of the NPA. It was so straightforward, it wasn't even fun.
The Chief may not have liked the way Lawliet did the job, but the job got done, so he rarely commented. If L wanted to disrupt the monotony of his life for once by going out to take a look at the more interesting brand of law breaker in the closest approximation to a criminal petting zoo one could find in Japan, Lawliet doubted he would care. Besides, his next week's caseload was already completed, albeit decorated with coffee-stains and spiral patterns as a result of L's vague wool-gathering of the morning.
Sometimes, L thought, it might be more interesting to be a criminal rather than a detective. At least then you could make your own cases. And what exciting ones he could come up with... whilst he occasionally enjoyed running rings around the police, he got the impression it might be a lot more fun were they not signing your paycheck every month. So much for brand loyalty.
His office hours mercifully over, L went about his equally dull evening routine. He slouched the five streets to his apartment, slouched up the four staircases, kicked open the door, which, as usual, popped out of its frame obediently; he had lost his keys about three days after he had first moved in eight years ago. He headed straight for the fridge, tossing his briefcase somewhere, where he would find it the next morning after about five minutes of apathetic hunting. He took out a half-eaten cream cake, and cut himself a large slice. He poured coffee. He added sugar. He sipped. He added more sugar. He slumped into a chair and wished fervently that he had someone else's life.
Lawliet was twenty-five years old. He had graduated top of his class, and attended the highest ranking university in Japan, where he had aced all his classes and graduated early. He had been accepted with flying colours into the fast-track of the NPA, and had made detective within six months. And he had been bored, disillusioned and depressed since he was about eight, and had realised that he could outsmart all of his teachers without even trying.
Since the age of twelve, his constant refrain had been 'when'. 'When I get to high school'; 'when I get to college'; 'when I join the police'; 'when I get promoted'. Always the next step, he had hoped, would bring him the stimulation he desired, would bring him the challenges he craved. And every time he had been bitterly disappointed. At the age of twenty-one, barely a few months into his chosen career, it had slowly begun to dawn on his exceptional mind that it was never going to happen. His colleagues were as slow and dim-witted as his college classmates had been, as his schoolteachers had been. As everyone, it seemed, who had entered his life and fallen away like wet cake, had been, and ever would be. And just a year ago, his last shred of hope had disappeared into the ether as the one friend who had ever given his life the slightest semblance of colour had died. No, not died, committed suicide. Ever since then, L had been a robot, mechanically going through the motions day after day, seeing no point in anything.
A had been a friend, of sorts. They had met in school, and gone to college together, both aiming for law enforcement careers, although A at the instigation of his parents rather than from personal desire. A had been intelligent. Not in the same league as L, of course, but clever enough to provide some sort of companionship for him, some meagre competition. Perhaps a cockroach, instead of an ant. Possibly even a vaguely amusing puppy. But they had gotten on fairly well, and L had been glad of any little companionship along his dull, lonely route through the turgid backwaters of life.
But then A had found Beyond. Beyond, who was worse than poison for the oversensitive, highly strung man. Beyond, who had challenged somebody who was never meant to be challenged. Beyond had seduced A, and had made his life impossible, flaunting his disrespect for the law before his lover and forcing him again and again to submit to him, to turn a blind eye, to choose him over his hard-won career. Poor A. The pressure had been too much, and he was never up to playing the game. And L, L who had despised Beyond, but who had never been close enough to A to merit intervention, or interested enough to be tempted to intervene, had not bothered to do anything until it was too late, and A's corpse was found hanging from the staircase of his apartment complex. It had killed the last little belief within L's heart that life held anything but monotony, boredom, pain and injustice. His capture of Beyond was not revenge. It wasn't justice. It wasn't even personal. It was automatic. Not a challenge. Not even if he pretended. He simply couldn't find the will to care. So Beyond's imprisonment had been and gone, and with him was locked away any feelings L might once have possessed. A cynical, highly intelligent robot was left in place of the promising young genius. Not that anyone noticed or cared. He got the job done and kept to himself. There was nobody, not even A, to stir him out of his life-long funk or vary the bland, endless evenings. And that was well and good, L thought bitterly, since he had not been there when A had needed him. And at least he drowned his sorrows in sugar, not alcohol.
Maybe he should consider a switch. Alcohol might kill him sooner. Not that he wanted to die, but life was so futile. It must be, if the prospect of visiting the high-security prison was something to be excited about. Not that he was excited. Mildly less bored to tears than usual might be more accurate.
L drove himself to Tokyo West at ten the next morning. No point in getting up too early. Hours spent sleeping were hours not spent wishing life would go faster. Not that L did much sleeping; insomnia had dogged him since the age of fifteen, and although he knew the roots were deeply psychological, there were few things he enjoyed less than the prospect of spilling his turgid soul to a psychiatrist. And L enjoyed very few things at all. No, he just stared at the ceiling and wondered how dark the bags under his eyes would be the next day when he finally pulled himself out of his comfortless bed.
The high stone building reared its ugly head over the horizon, the swaying sakura trees and the tumbling blossoms an ironic contrast to the dark concrete and sightless windows wrapped with bars.
"Aiber," he shot at the man guarding the front, and was taken in through the winding labyrinth of stone corridors – labyrinth to somebody without his IQ, in any case; he could have navigated them with ease. He was brought to a halt outside a cell, luxurious by most standards, consisting of an actual door as opposed to merely bars. A hatch was slid open.
"Aiber. Visitor," the guard said curtly. Not waiting for a reply, he let L enter. The cell was largish, carpeted in dark green, with two twin beds and even a sofa and coffee table, although all the furniture was bolted to the ground. A bookshelf to one side was filled with books. Dozens, hundreds, possibly, heavy volumes, old and new, fiction and non-fiction. A collection which would have taken far more than a day to become so swollen and varied.
"Yours?" he asked the powerfully built blond doubtfully, the man he had caught where nobody else had managed, and still been bored.
"His," Aiber smirked, jerking a thumb to his roommate, whose face was buried in a thick volume, his long legs stretched over one of the beds, clad in orange dungarees, the standard outfit of the gaol. "Jerk does nothing but read. Hasn't said a word to me since I got here last night."
"Perhaps he has nothing to say," L remarked boredly, and was sure he heard a soft snort from behind the volume. He scanned the spine for a title; Milton. What sort of criminal read poetry?
"So you want to ask me where I buried the treasure?" Aiber quipped, flopping onto the sofa, all cock and arrogance. L sighed and his eyes rose heavenwards. He really had nothing to say to the man. He wasn't worth the visit. But there was nothing better to do, so...
"I know where the money is, Aiber-san," he sighed. He watched Aiber's eyes widen before he regained control of his face and hitched up a smirk.
"Oh yeah?" he sneered. "Then why ain't you taken it back? Added it to my list of charges?"
"Because," L said boredly. Aliber snorted.
"You're bluffing. Can't even do it right," he mocked.
"No, I am merely not a monster. My troll-witted colleagues are too slow to ever find it, and I have decided to leave it where it is because it would hardly be any better off in the hands of the fatcats it started with. I don't take candy from children, Aiber-san, and nor am I inclined to retract money from a wife and son who will no longer have the luxury of a father, however absent he was."
It was a shame, really. L could not even take any pleasure in his own brilliance, or the fear and shock which flitted across Aiber's face."
"Y-you won't tell?" he croaked.
"Oh look, a confession," L sighed. "That was foolish, Aiber-san. But no, I won't tell. Where, after all, is the point? It would possibly get you the sympathy of a jury, knowing the money was for your wife and terminally ill son, and a criminal such as yourself deserves no reprieve."
"T-thank you," Aiber stuttered. L grimaced.
"Don't thank me. I didn't do it for you," he said flatly. "The world is rotten enough as it is without detectives doing favours for criminals. I did it purely for my own amusement. The police are so thick-witted they did not manage to piece together the clues, and they never will. They don't deserve to recover the money when it may actually do some good where it is. I am terribly sorry, Aiber-san, for the fate of your son. But not for your fate. After all, you did it for pleasure, yourself not them, didn't you? A man of your skills could have made something of himself."
"Aiber! Exercise time. Yagami, your turn's in an hour," the guard called from outside, depriving L of a response, not that it bothered him what the criminal had to say. Aiber, a broken man with L's few short sentences, got shakily to his feet and left with the guards. Sighing softly to himself, L turned to follow, but a movement caught his eyes, and he turned.
The other occupant of the room, whom he had forgotten completely, was contemplating him with amusement written all over his remarkably handsome features. His honey-brown hair was perfect, against all odds, his complexion flawless, and his sepia eyes glittering with a cool, hard intelligence which sent a shiver of an emotion so rusty L could not place it coursing through his veins. Even his slightly unpleasant smirk was perfect. He hardly looked like a prisoner.
"Can I help you?" L asked sarcastically.
"I hope so," the man said, and his voice was like warm resin. Another shudder of strange feeling followed the first. "You're a detective? Then you must know who I am." It wasn't a question.
"Should I?" L asked blithely, eyes straying up and down the elegant, long-legged figure. He was thinner than was quite healthy, collarbones and cheekbones jutting slightly. So imprisonment had affected him after all. It only added to his striking features.
"Oh, I should hope so," the man laughed softly to himself. "I hold quite a few records within the police, but from your own account that isn't saying much. They are quite useless, ne?"
"They caught you," L pointed out. The man laughed again.
"And it took them long enough," he said smugly. "Eleven years, to be precise, and four nationalities working together, including the FBI."
Eleven years? L frowned slightly. The man was more like a boy. He didn't look a day above twenty. Which would have to have made him nine, at the oldest, at the start of his criminal career.
"What are you in for?" he asked despite himself. He was beginning to recognise this new emotion, curiosity, even if the pulse-racing, heart-thrumming one remained elusive.
"Yagami Light?" the boy tried. "No, perhaps you don't know the name. How about... Kira? Does that name mean more to you?"
"Kira..." L tasted the word. The legend. The God of Justice, as he had been called by some even within the police. The mysterious murderer of criminals, the thief of hearts. Yes. Eleven years sounded about right for his reign. There had been rumours that it was a gang, a number of people within the police itself committing the righteous crimes. Men and women, all ex-cons for whom conclusive evidence was as elusive as winter sunshine in the North Pole, killed with a heart carved on the left side of their chest. The calling card of Kira. But the killings, if he remembered correctly, had ceased almost two years ago.
"You're too young to be Kira," he dismissed.
"Is that right?" Yagami Light mocked. "Perhaps you're just as dim as the rest of them, then."
"How could a seven year old child commit those sorts of crimes?" L asked sceptically.
"I never said I was the first Kira," Light said mysteriously. "And I never told you my age. But I was flawless in what I did. A god, you might say."
"I don't recall you being caught," L said flatly.
"Before your time?" Light teased. "Or beyond your reach? It was all kept very quiet."
"Is there a point to this conversation?" L asked with a sigh.
"Is there a point to anything?" Light asked mockingly. "You barely seem to think so. And I am of similar opinion. I'm dead in two weeks." He mimed a finger across his throat. "They don't take kindly to being duped, the NPA."
"Was that a threat?" L asked interestedly. He couldn't determine whether Yagami was referring to L's trickery in dealing with his superiors, or with his own.
"I heard enough for it to be," Light said casually. "But actually I hoped I might have found a kindred spirit." He leaned forwards conspiratorially, eyes glittering. "I'm too good to waste."
"Are you suggesting I help you out of here?" L asked, highly diverted for the first time in years. "What could I possibly do?"
"I thought you were intelligent," Light sighed. "We could make a great team, you and I. A new justice."
"No," L said flatly.
"You didn't even ask what I had in mind," Light said, mock-hurt.
"I already said I didn't make deals with criminals," L replied stonily.
"Unless it suits your own sense of justice," Light cajoled. "And you and I using our considerable joint intellects to confound the police and beat them at their own game... doesn't that even taste a little sweet to you?"
"I've eaten a lot of sugar in my life," L replied sourly. "It hasn't made it any less bitter."
"Deep," Light smirked. "But you didn't deny it. You're bored. Perhaps, you think life isn't worth living? Then why not take a chance and make it better? Have somebody worth your time...do something worth the effort it takes to get out of bed every morning."
How was this boy so alluring? How did he know what L was thinking, how he felt? Recklessness, curiosity, interest... they were all things L had not felt for so long. Perhaps he did crave something more potent, more challenging, and if this boy was what he claimed, then he himself was a mystery worth the time to unravel. Add an intriguing proposal to form an alliance, and...
"What," L asked cautiously, "Did you have in mind?"