Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note, or Raito would not have been smirking when he held L in his arms in Volume 7. I mean really.
Pre-Note- Author drabbles:
The inside of L's head remains to this day a mystery to me, but one night after finishing the manga I was sitting before my computer and this came out. More than any definition of L in the manga (which is all I have read, I have not watched the anime series, read the novel or yet seen any of the films) it is more a simple, as the title puts it, procrastination on his character. I am not really happy with it as I find it somehow too simple and even containing too many human aspects to truly be L's thoughts. However, I did have fun writing it and, in all honesty, this little idea wouldn't leave me alone. I also realise that the whole Raito-talking-in-his-sleep idea has been done many a time before but, in all honesty, I used it here simply for L to bounce some ideas off of and sort through his thoughts. Okay, well, enough about all that anyway, I hope you enjoy.
Procrastination
Perhaps it was the sheer novelty of the idea that spurred me.
The thought drifted through my mind as I stared deeply into the computer screen, looking past the glass and the light and focusing somewhere beyond. The flesh of my thumb bunched and scraped under my teeth, tingling.
No. I decided against the idea almost instantly. Novelty has never appealed to me. Far too transient and superficial. Why waste time on something you know will end in the very near future? I preferred something long term, with prospects. No, it was not the novelty that drew me. Something else then.
There was of course the fact that he was the prime suspect in this case, therefore any fascination on my part was entirely justified. However, any logical course of thought stemming from this evidence would point strongly to the negative of why I would be friends with Yagami Raito. In that line of reasoning my actions seemed highly irrational. Keeping him close by was plausible in terms of the case, but not in terms of a normal relationship.
Then, curiosity perhaps? A very strong suspect, possibly the most likely candidate I had come across yet. My curiosity has always been insatiable, to the downfall of many. A mystery unsolved rests in my consciousness like a physical thing. I can stand in front of it and look at it from all angles, decipher its hidden meanings, its origins. Its mere presence is soothing. So once I have dealt with one, I must of course find another. I've never before had someone to interact with on the level that Raito and I do, it is an interesting experience.
Was that it then? Somehow, despite knowing my own nature, I found this explanation despicably shallow. I felt my forehead crease lightly and released my thumb. The air conditioning found the wet skin and pooled around it, cooling. Slowly I placed my hand upon my knee, fingers digging lightly into the fabric. Still something wrong, something out of place. I let the minimal frown loosen and resumed my blank expression. The computer continued to hum.
So, what was curiosity when it wasn't curiosity? Philosophically morbid questions have never suited me, yet still the puzzle of it drew me in. I am interested in Raito, I find him intriguing, not only his intellect but his physical prowess are on a par with my own and that excites countless possibilities. All things I have already considered. Most likely others would question this situation differently, perhaps focusing on aspects which were common to other similar situations. In other words, what would someone else do in my place? A useless query. For one, I can never truthfully know the answer, and for the other, I know of no one else alive whose thought processes work anywhere near the level of my own and therefore the comparison becomes defunct.
Wait, I must correct myself. I never knew of anyone else whose thought processes work anywhere near the level of my own. Of course, this was another piece of my puzzle which I had considered, but not yet analysed. Was it the feeling of equality with him then? All of my days at the orphanage had passed in silent obscurity, as have my days as an adult. In fact since my eighteenth birthday my isolation has only grown. Watari is my only real companion, but to an unfortunate yet entirely ineluctable extent, he knows his place. The subtle hierarchy of two.
My fingers began to itch against the worn denim. I stretched and let my left hand wonder mindlessly to the corner of the desk to pile the strewn sugar cubes there. The right continued to finger the mouse morosely, the screen flickering back into life. The bright light glinted on the surface of the handcuff on my wrist, trailing off into the darkness of the room. The images before me scattered against my eyes, absorbing them subconsciously.
An equal. The very sound of it was both absurd and tantalizing simultaneously. It was a starkly fascinating concept, something that I had not come across in my long years since birth. Of course in my chosen profession I have pitted my mental capabilities against many gifted criminals, and some have come close to being what I would call an equal. Some far closer than others but none ever attained the title, far from it, and none would ever come close to the mystery that was Yagami Raito. He was something...new.
Something new and available. Something new and strangely reciprocating. Something new because he thought like I did without having to try. He was seemingly perfect, like the first slice from a gateaux on fine china. Ostensibly flawless. Others would probably use another image, perhaps something more refined, but metaphors can only relate to its creators experiences of course. But then, my fondness for sweets is a purely physical want. That thought somehow did not sit well as a comparison. Was that was how I viewed this situation, as something purely physical? Everything about that conclusion seemed off centre. I could feel the itch of the frown threatening to return. The sugar cubes wobbled precariously out of the corner of my eye. My hand quickly moved to correct them while I continued to scan the words before me with a lacklustre sense of duty. Ah, something else new. Was it related in some way? My feelings towards a case, I had decided at a young age, were never to be compromised by anything else. Was I feeling so strongly about this situation that I felt it necessary to distract my practiced role and focus on it instead, something which was not entirely relevant? I say not entirely, only because it is relevant if it is affecting me to the point that I cannot function at my usual capacity.
Simply focusing on this situation, if correctly calculated, had drained my reasoning ability by thirteen percent. The frown retuned without further conjecture, as if purely by its own will. My finger stilled on the mouse, setting the screen to blank blue as yet another link to the Yotsuba group's financial outgoings for the past six months loaded number by number, name by name.
Summarise, I need to put things into order. I'm curious then, but not only that. There is something else there, related to my sudden and inexplicable discovery of an equal, a rival. There were feelings lurking there, I could sense it if not wholly define it. Was it some form of longing? No, that follows no course of logical reasoning, I have never longed for either an equal or a rival other than to battle, not to befriend. But wait, I seemed to have somehow shunted myself off track. I am going about this in the wrong manner, incorrectly. I have to work the other way, start with the problem in hand before conjecturing on the workings of what it could be. The road I was on led to mistakes and fallacies, fed by lack of fact based evidence.
What was bothering me? As I silently scanned the words appearing on the screen, I allowed my mind to also scan my memories since my first meeting with Raito. There were several instances of note, some more than others, but one stood out quite clearly. I knew why of course.
"Not satisfied unless you're Kira...? Yes...that may be true...I have just realized something, I wanted Raito-kun to be Kira."
I had lied to him. There was no real logic behind my unease at this conclusion, I had lied many times since meeting him. Each lie was not for malicious reasons, instead they were more akin to perfectly crafted barbs, something to gauge a reaction or implant a thought that would in time give rise to further evidence if executed correctly. And, of course, all of these lies were only, more accurately, half truths. The only other use for them was entertainment value of course, in seeing Raito's enigmatic reactions.
But then, sincerely, it was only a lie when taking into account your point of view. I had at one point or another wanted Raito to be Kira simply because I had him in a place that I have never had the chance to keep my prey before. Supervised twenty four hours a day by myself and a team of trained policemen. Who would not wish for such, almost unbelievable, good fortune? The fact that Raito had offered himself initially for incarceration only tainted the victory slightly. I was entirely satisfied by the outcome as I had already taken into account the likelihood of him doing so and correctly decided that he would. On one hand it was the safest place to keep a mass murderer and on the other, more indulgent side it was a gold mine for observational opportunities. To probe a mind with the capability to possibly be Kira and stage the events that Kira had staged was too much of an opportunity to pass up. Of course it has become more of a game now between us, one which I have easily become accustomed to and am now eighty nine percent sure I am leading. Of course, our differences are what give me my advantage to an extent. Raito is gifted of course, that is obvious, but he is also ruled primarily by his emotions and his pride, no matter how much he would deny it. It is endlessly fascinating to watch emotions play across that expressive face, to watch him try to hold them back. And he does, Raito is an impressive actor, disturbingly so. He fools his own family into thinking whatever he wants as easily as he breathes in and out. But not me, I know what to look for, simply because I myself am also a master of the same deception.
I still believe that he thinks he's hidden the subtler of his tells from me; the way that his left index fingertip pushes against whatever surface it is resting on while he is lost deep in thought, or the slight tensing of his shoulders when he's upset even as he smiles gloriously and fools all in the audience but me. Or the one that is impossible to hide, though I'm fairly sure that no one in the task force, or even Raito's own father, has noticed it. The darkness, not anger but darkness, that seeps into his eyes when I update him on by how many percent I am sure that he is Kira.
I rolled my eyes up towards the black ceiling while the page finished loading, popping a sugar cube into my mouth to melt while contemplating this last thought. It was odd that the latter mentioned tell is gone now. I am still unsure as to why. Now when I tell him blankly that my suspicion has been raised another so many percent the emotion that seeps into his gaze is not the dark maw of a killing intent hidden behind faux frustration, but the stark aggravation of a seemingly helpless being. It is almost believable, no, more than almost, it is believable. Back in the cell, with his narrowed eyes staring at the bars, he'd spoken of his pride like a condemned man. Then his eyes had changed, and no one noticed but me.
"Zoom in or whatever and look into my eyes! Are these the eyes of someone who is lying?!"
And they weren't. Something was very wrong. But what? What had happened? Now look at me, I've lost my train of thought again. This is worse than I had anticipated, far worse.
"Raito-kun is my first friend"
There, the epicentre of this problem. Friend. My true estimation of Raito being the first Kira is now at seventy four percent, not that I had yet informed him of this. Friend. These do not connect logically. I would not be friends with Kira, Kira is a homicidal megalomaniac who believes themselves not only righteous but also incorruptible. Of course total power corrupts totally. Kira, since their birth, had free reign over life and death before I threw down my gauntlet and set the challenge. Even if Raito had been your normal, everyday sociopath before acting upon his own ideals and killing criminals worldwide, such things change a mind, twist it and corrupt it into something dark, fanatical. All of the evidence I have gathered over my life as L has shown this to be an almost inescapable fact. Kira truly believes that they are a god, fit to rule only over the righteous and the pure. However, in the end the philosophy is not important. Procrastinating on the reasoning behind Kira's killings will get us no closer to Kira simply because they are not stupid enough to let a death single them out. In the end all it comes down to is the fact that Kira must be stopped...and the most likely scenario is that Raito is Kira.
But this moment I spoke of, in his cell, has for lack of a better word changed my estimation. Given me a new theory that, despite its implications and its unlikelihood of being correct, somehow seems more plausible to me than believing that Raito is a good enough actor to fool me so completely into thinking he is earnest every time he looks into my eyes and fervently tells me that we will catch Kira. That split second, his gaze most definitely altered as he sat in his cell and proclaimed his innocence. A turning point, I could call it that. His behaviour has since mutated into something else, something almost pure in its intentions, something I had never sensed in my dealings with Raito before that moment. And thus, along with all of the other extensive evidence I have gathered since his incarceration to support this theory...
...an even more likely situation is that Raito is Kira and does not know it.
With the seemingly preternatural power that Kira possesses, it is not an unlikely jump to presume that Kira could willingly suppress their own memories to make themselves abjectly anonymous and thus 'innocent'. Is this where the true dilemma has stemmed from? My inability to separate my want to be friends with Raito and my need to bring Kira to justice? No, again this theory proves false. I have no problem with incarcerating and dealing with Raito if it is true that he is the first Kira. And yet still, somewhere, there is an irrational need in me to want.
Want Raito not to be Kira. I refuse to let it affect my calculation of the possibility of his being Kira, but still...it is there.
I have only ever incarcerated myself within a case I find interesting, something I have thought would be enjoyably exigent to solve. A personal challenge. It just happens to be ineluctable that mysteries that I find interesting are, in the main, high profile and mostly globe spanning. As I understand, L has become synonymous with Justice, even though my intentions are not pure when selecting what I will and will not work on. In comparison Kira and I are in some ways similar; we are both stubborn to a fault, both highly intellectual, we both play dirty if it means winning and we both hate to lose above all else. The Kira case became nothing but a battle of wills and egos since I became involved, but that does not matter to me. I know my wants and my limits, and I know that at the core of it all I do not do this for justice's sake. I am a selfish creature of habit, and I am more than capable of making sacrifices along the way as long as it ends in the result I have chosen. This is where, in the end, I feel we are subtly different. I also believe Kira to be working purely for their own agenda, their ego of course playing a large part in what they are doing as can be shown by the deification of Kira as a symbol. But justice, Kira believes what they are doing is right, fundamentally, unconditionally, they believe that Kira is Justice.
Conclude, pull everything together. Everything else in this puzzle is solved. All of the other pieces have been slotted into place, fitting perfectly together to form a smooth, flawless conclusion. Apart from one. Yagami Raito was in himself a perfectly crafted puzzle piece, one which had been slowly, very slowly, turning to slot into his designated space and end this once and for all. But now...now I needed to track back over my own footsteps, this change was forcing me to stop and think. Kira knows that I will not act until I am one hundred percent sure that I am right in my suspicions, and the only way to be one hundred percent sure is to have evidence supporting your claim, solid, indisputable evidence. That which I had till recently believed would soon be in my grasp, now seemed like it would never come.
I stopped piling the sugar cubes. I realised that I had somehow managed to find myself inexplicably, subconsciously, on a website displaying the illustrated instructions for the construction of a large black forest gateaux, feeds ten to twelve. I blinked. I believed that it was trying to tell me something.
The digital clock read five twenty two in the morning. I realised suddenly just how light it had become as I shut off the monitor. The sky was still black at the peak, yet bleached into pale blue near the horizon. I stood and stretched my arms up, feeling more drained than I would admit to anyone but myself. I needed a half hour nap, but not in the chair, I think this called for a mattress. The chain clinked softly as I stretched my legs and padded softly over to the king sized bed three feet away. When I reached the edge a soft sigh escaped its sole occupant and...I stopped. I stood in the semi darkness, stray beams of light slanting in through the partially closed curtains, and looked down at him.
Raito was asleep, lying on his back with the duvet down around his abdomen. His night shirt was rumpled and open to his sternum, displaying his flawless tanned skin. His face was utterly relaxed, mouth slightly open as he breathes in, a soft sound, and releases, slightly louder. His eyelids fluttered, dreaming. I wondered for a few seconds what it might be about before abandoning it as useless conjecture. The vague illumination showed up the abrasions sitting dully on the knuckles of his right hand, and the now light bruises on his cheek and below his lip. I felt my right hand lift limply to prod at the matching bruises on my face from our rather unhealthy fight yesterday afternoon. The chain moved smoothly against the cotton of the duvet, pulling slightly at the cuff around Raito's left wrist.
"No, I didn't."
I froze. I found that somehow I couldn't take my eyes from his lips. They were flexing, breath hissing lightly, as if trying to speak again but finding it too hard to form a sentence. He was speaking in his sleep? I ignored the slight shock and focused on recalling everything I could about our time together. Not once in the months we'd been here had I seen or heard any evidence of Raito having such a habit. The possibilities of hearing something useful were high, just as high as hearing something entirely useless and misleading. There was also the small possibility that Raito was not asleep, and sought to misinform me with feigned confessions and information. However, delving into the facts, falsehoods and riddles of the psyche was supposedly my forte, and I have enough faith in my abilities to believe I could tell the truth from the lies. I blinked slowly, eyes trailing over every detail of Raito's now slightly pained features until his face relaxed once more. I found that I was holding my breath in the silence and began to breathe shallowly.
"Not possible," murmured, a movement of the head to the left, back again, a bunching of the hands and twitching of the eyes, "I can't...no sense..."
Too vague, could relate to a number of things, far too many to even begin an estimation. I pondered as Raito continued twitching slightly. A thought came to me. I had read of events where a person could communicate though still asleep, if in the right frame of sleep. Somewhere between REM and waking as I understood it. Apparently something such as a slight movement or noise can trigger its occurrence, not enough to wake them but enough to stir into a state where the conscious and the subconscious are effectively both in control of the mind. Of course any psychiatrist worth his pay check would tell you this was ridiculous, but then I have never put much stock in psychiatrists who can be measured solely by their income.
I watched detachedly as Raito ran his tongue over his lips. Well, as unlikely and untested as this technique was, 'nothing ventured, nothing gained' as the painfully obvious saying went. I switched my weight from my left to my right foot and placed my unchained left hand into my jeans pocket for warmth.
"What makes no sense Ratio-kun?" I whispered softly.
His eyes scrunched shut and then relaxed again. I watched and waited. The silence weighed out, longer than the maximum I had approximated I should wait for a reply. The theory held no truth then, or perhaps the conditions were simply incorrect. It was as I removed my hand from my pocket again in preparation for moving away that he finally spoke.
"I can't be," he said simply, quietly, his tone heavy with resolve.
"Can't be what?" I asked, taking the chance presented.
"Kira."
"And why not?" I was instantly suspicious that this was the first subject to present itself and wondered if Raito really was awake; but then, admittedly, I could also understand that Kira would be plaguing Raito's mind even as he slept.
"Would...remember," a frown accompanied this, almost petulant and he was quiet for twenty seconds or so, "and would never...never kill."
"A fair assessment," I felt my thumb reach my teeth again and pulled at the skin distractedly, eyes rolling up to the ceiling as I thought about the bizarre situation I had found myself in; yes, the being that slept before me, the Raito he had morphed into, I truly believed that he would find it next to impossible to kill a human being himself. However, reasoning it as beneficial to society in general, I was sure he could...
"But..." Raito interrupted my thoughts and the hesitation was tangible even through his breathy tone.
"What, Raito-kun?"
"Worried," he said with no hint of resignation, just simple murmured fact.
"By what?"
"We're similar, yet different."
"Who?"
"Kira and I," the fact that I had seen parallels in comparing myself to Kira were not lost on me and I found myself urging him silently to continue so I could compare results.
"Oh?" yet somehow this was suddenly too easy, I felt the inexplicable urge to shake Raito awake and stop him spoiling this game we were playing; I ignored my childish nature and continued "In what way?"
"Morally."
"That is how you are alike and dislike? On both counts?"
"Yes."
"Elaborate."
Silence greeted my request. For the thirty seconds it spanned I believed that I had either asked too much of him considering the state he was in, or he really was faking this entire scenario and felt that he had said enough. When he did start talking again I found myself more attentive to his words than I had been to the information I had been gathering on Yotsuba since he had gone to sleep. That irony was not lost on me either.
"I do not feel that the deaths of these criminals are wholly wrong...and yet I do not believe that mass homicide is the right choice," such an articulate answer, I thought, for someone who was only semi-conscious.
"How do you feel about Kira then?" I asked in return.
"Kira must be stopped."
Somewhere inside, something seemed to feel slightly lighter. I couldn't stop the small flicker at the edge of my mouth that could have been a smile. I felt angry at my loss of control and ignored that small, irrational part of myself that simply would not accept that I wanted Raito to be Kira.
"Then why are you worried?" I asked, focusing on the task at hand.
"Because I think that I might be Kira."
I widened my eyes, even though I knew that no one could see my reaction. An admission? Was he really awake? Or was this simply a fear coming to the surface due to my constant reasoning that 'Raito-kun is Kira'? Could it be that it is affecting his dreams? But no, this technically wasn't a dream.
"How could this be Raito-kun?" I pressed.
"When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
I couldn't stop the smile this time. Surely only Raito would quote Arthur Conan Doyle in his sleep.
"Very astute of you," I said back.
Somewhere inside I felt that something tighten. My hand raised to my mouth instinctively as I mulled over this information. My body was being wholly unhelpful tonight, reacting to the slightest change in my mood. I stood at Raito's side and stared out of the window on the opposite wall, through and out into the pre-dawn sky. Nothing more was forthcoming, as if he had reached some sort of conclusion and felt that nothing more needed to be said. Considering his last words, the slight unease in me simply began to grow. The broken silence was deafening, perhaps because I had not noticed the blood pumping in my ears before we had started talking. Somewhere that little illogical part of my mind was telling me categorically that this did not matter, none of this conversation mattered, because it did not want Raito to be Kira. The other more substantial part was almost giddy with the thought that I had finally caught him out. I frowned once more, releasing my thumb.
When I looked back down I could see Raito's mouth moving, slowly but surely forming words. But I could not hear them. I stared for two more seconds, and then made a snap decision, opted for taking the risk and softly folded my legs to rest my knees on the cool carpet. Raito's visage did not change as I knelt and put my face level with his own. I watched him from this new angle for a moment, observing the shadows on his delicate lips moving back and forth as he mumbled into the air. Slowly I leaned forwards, resting my right hand on my knees as I pulled my hair back with my left hand and placed my ear as close as I could to Raito's lips without disturbing him.
"Can't be though, not possible, but I am, and I'm not, but I can't remember and no I wouldn't, why would I, makes no sense and makes too much sense and everything fits but I don't fit and Ryuuzaki..."
He hesitated, breath hitching slightly, and the silence again only highlighted the rhythm of my pulse.
"...can't have that, can't let that, don't tell him you're worried, but he'll figure it out anyway and then he'll know, know that you are and that you aren't Kira and everything will be for nothing because..."
He stopped. I waited for a whole agonising thirty seconds before a soft whine and a half snore deflated from Raito's lips and I closed my eyes in frustration. I found the urge to take Raito by the shoulders and shake him until he finished his sentence quite strong. However, not overriding.
Thankfully.
I still needed my sleep after all.
AN: Oh well, hope you liked it and please leave a review, even if you didn't!
Maiko