A/N: Wow, I finally finished! (Writing this afterwards Lemme explain the motive behind this. (Besides the fact that NearKAWAII!) In Death Note 13: How to Read, one of the creators states that Aizawa or someone would just tell Sachiko and Sayu that Raito was killed defeating Kira (which, in a way, he was…), and that they'd remember him (falsely) as a hero. I, however, think Near would've gone and told them the truth. Buuuut, that's just my opinion… -- This is the first time I've written Near… it's also probably the most elaborate and powerful piece I've ever done. (I think) Also, I know the guide book says Near is 19, bt I refuse to buy it. He's 13 and will be o forever. nods As for the Mello references… it always struck me tthat Near had a creepy little kid kind of crush on Mello… Who knows. It just seems like it. One last random bit: I had to use Near's response to Raito's Kira speech, "You are just a murderer." To me, that's one of the most powerful lines outside of Lord of the Flies. (xD) But really. I honestly take the ideals into mind seriously, an I'm with Near on Kira. (I know, what a loser I am.) But hey… I'm the only one of my friends that's anti-Kira... oh, wait. CONDOR MAN (3 xD) is with me! Har har, greeeat… Okai. I'll shut up nao. Just PLEASE review! Even if you absolutely HATED it… I just want input. PEASE? puppy dog face Okai. SRS BZNS. I'll go away now.
nendo.
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The boy sitting in the back seat of the car, twirling a lock of silvery hair around his index finger, did not appear to be thirteen. Most guessers would have placed him at somewhere between the ages of seven and nine, based on his seeming lack of substance, and the way his black eyes focused on the two plastic robots held gingerly in his almost translucent fingers. Normally, he'd be dressed in a simple white pajama set. However, today found him wearing a black suit, in which he occasionally squirmed in, his emotionless shield slipping for a fraction of a second to reveal extreme discomfort. His toes curled like caged beasts, trapped in the prison of shiny black shoes, purchased the other day specifically for this occasion. The boy did not find this ensemble particularly necessary in any way, but he thought it advisable to appear somber to the two women who survived Kira, or rather, Yagami Raito.
"There," he said quietly, extending a papery digit in the direction of a medium-sized townhouse. The agent driving nodded curtly and pulled into the small driveway, barely long enough to accommodate even the tiny black vehicle that had just pulled in. "This will do," the boy murmured, setting aside his robots and opening the car door, with some effort. Once again, the stern man inclined his head, eyes never leaving the reclusive and bizarre young detective who had just stepped outside, into the falling twilight. Said boy's feet shook, and he moved forwards uncertainly. It had been a long time since he'd last walked, and he wasn't quite sure his body had yet fully retrieved the correct muscle patterns from the vast depths of his mind. It seemed like an eternity before he reached the door, but he did at last. His hand came up, and he carefully pressed the exact center of the glowing button situated to the door's right. In response, a recorded, almost nasal fake bell sounded, muffled through the wood, but audible nonetheless. He waited a minute or two, the tried again. Still, no footsteps sounded, no lights flickered on, no voices called. Sighing, he slipped a hand into his pant pocket (though in his mind, pants were not supposed to have such wasteful accoutrements) and retrieved a key, the attached tag reading 'Yagami'. He fitted key to lock, and turned. There was a 'chunk' sound as the tumblers fell into place, and the wood moved back a bit, like a cautious prisoner or an unsure girlfriend. With relative ease, he turned the knob and stepped inside. No air whooshed towards him in greeting; the entire house seemed to be dead and still as the black eyes observing it. A rustle of cloth, barely audible, snuck by his ears as he politely removed his shoes in the Japanese custom. Looking up, he saw the teasing flicker of a banana yellow cardigan, worn by someone in the living room. He shuffled forwards, and was only vaguely surprised to see a frail brunette sitting absolutely still, her eyes his twins in lifelessness and lackluster. He cleared his throat. She did not move.
"Hello," he began, unmoving. "Am I correct in assuming that you are Yagami Sayu-san?" The girl said nothing, but he was used to that, being a boy who often conversed with inanimate objects. "I'm here to inform you of some… events that have recently come to pass." Still, not a word. He was unsure if she even breathed. "Is your mother home?" Silence. He mentally shrugged, and plopped down on the floor beside her chair. "My name is Near." said Near, glancing backwards at Sayu briefly. "That is to say, I go by that title. I believe I do have a birth name, but even that may well be incorrect. So I suppose Near is the best thing to call me. Would you like to play with me?" With that, Near reached into the folds of his formal jacket and pulled out a small white box that said simply '1,000' in faded blue letters. Sayu's eyes slowly crawled downwards to where the boy sat. "It's the thousand-piece one, so I figure it'll be fairly easy." He explained, dumping out the pieces onto the carpet and spreading them around. "I like to start with the corners." When the girl said naught still, he craned his head backwards to meet her eyes. She did not look away, but at the same time, did not appear to be seeing him at all. Near shook his head. Mello… He thought, vague remorse flitting about the name. You always claimed that I was the inhuman one. After a pause, he added to himself; Perhaps—no. You were right. He turned away from the girl. No pity squirmed about within his heart, sadness kept its twinging ache well away. The puzzle pieces began to assemble themselves, mustering soldiers in the fading light. Near made no noise as he worked, and neither did Sayu. There was no need. None of the house's lights had been turned on, and Near wondered if the Yagami mother had even paid the bills in recent times. He considered turning on the television in order to test his theory, but ruled that the movement was not worth the time. The house was almost entirely pitch-black when Sayu made a noise. Near turned his head in a sharp but curious manner, a movement refined from a lifetime of detective training.
"Yes?" He asked her calmly, twirling a lock of already ridiculously curly hair around his finger. "Is there something you'd like to say?" The girl opened and closed her mouth a few times, and Near reasoned that she was either incapable of speech or her lips had been glued together by saliva, and she was now attempting to unstick them. It was probably the latter.
"Ah…" Near's attention sharpened. "Ah.. ah…"
"Take your time," the silver-hair chided. "It's pointless to rush, you won't forget what you want to say any sooner."
"Ra… Ra-iiii…" The black eyes widened a bit under shaggy bangs. He knew what the girl was trying to say. "Ra…iii…t-tooo… nii…cha…chaaannn…" Raito-niichan.
"No." He replied quietly. Sayu did not seem to register this.
"Rai…to… ni-niichannnn…?" And now emotions. On one plane of his multi-faceted mind, Near recalled reading that when babies learn basic speech, emotions come before the actual words. Obviously, this was due to the crying, the gurgling, and all other such things. It was interesting to see how during a post-trauma status, Sayu had found words before sentiment. This happened to be one of Near's focuses when a muffled shriek pierced his hearing from outside the house. The Third L hoped it was Yagami Sachiko, and not some random neighbor who had noticed an FBI agent sitting in a car outside the Yagami residence. Another piece was pushed gently into place, and the gears of Near's mind began to turn more quickly; passive to semi-aggressive, ready to compromise for even a situation most would consider impossible. But, sure enough, a light flicked on in the main entryway. The boy turned, and to what he supposed could be described as relief, a middle-aged woman stood there, removing her jacket which was dusted with snow. Stress had aged her far beyond her years, and her once bouncy and lustrous black hair was grey, grey like the ashes of her dead husband, hollow like the urn they'd put him in. When she saw Near sitting with Sayu, however, her eyes grew wide with shock, more from reflex than any actual emotions—Kira, rather, her son, had unwittingly robbed them away. Or perhaps he'd known, and simply gave no care to it?
"You… Who are you, young man? How did you get into my house? What's the meaning of this?" Near sighed and placed yet another white squiggle into the jigsaw field of cardboard snow. Without taking his attention form the puzzle, he replied:
"As I've already explained to your daughter, I am Near. And as of January the twenty-eighth, I am L. I got into your house with a key. My feet were also vital instruments in this feat. No pun intended, of course. I'm here for serious reasons." He allowed the woman a moment to absorb this. And then, a fragment of the unspeakable dawned on her, niggling its way into her mind, a black bar of censorship blocking out what she did not wish to comprehend.
"But… my… my son, Raito, he-he's…L…"
"You'd better sit down, Yagami-san. I hope you aren't prone to fainting." Trembling madly, Sachiko sat on the love seat adjacent from Near and Sayu, who had fallen silent once more at her mother's arrival. "Now. I'm not the type of person who beats around the bush. I could make a very complex preliminary speech to the fact I wish to present to you, but that's a waste of time in my mind. So I'll be abrupt. Your son was Kira." The effect of Near's words hit instantaneously. The woman's trembling crescendoed into a violent, full-body shaking, and her arms reflexively (or perhaps, in a feeble attempt to comfort herself?) came up around her, hands clenching and unclenching. Sayu, however, did not seem to recognize the significance of the four words Near had spoken. She sat oblivious, even to her mother's agonized disbelief. The young detective waited patiently, giving Sachiko time to recover from the verbal and psychological blow. When she did speak, as Near'd predicted, anger was laced deeply into her voice.
"Who- who are you, that you dare come into my house and say that?! How dare you! My boy has been working on that case since it began—AND YOU EXPECT ME TO BELIEVE THAT HE WAS THE MURDERER HIMSELF?!" Near was unfazed by the woman's outburst, and replied calmly;
"I'm not the first to have suspected him- the original L did as well. I simply pinned down the evidence. Please, I know this comes as a severe shock to you. But it is imperative that you believe me." The room seemed to echo with the audibility of Sachiko's confusion and agony. Near waited patiently for her to pick up on the tense he had used when referring to her son, figuring that it would be impolite to outright say 'Raito is dead, by the way'. Or something like that.
"Was." The word spat itself out of Sayu's mouth like a jack-in-the-box springing forth from its six-sided residence. It punched straight in to the metaphorical silence and bounced right back off. "He said 'was'." This attempt broke through.
"Very impressive." Near said with a nod. "It's nice to see that you've recovered enough to catch that." A wail-like sound regurgitated from Sachiko, more like a pitching sound of pure, incomprehensive emotion than a realization, acceptance, or statement of denial. The silver-head clicked the last puzzle piece into place. The teeny whffffp of the cardboard pressing into the carpet seemed to snap the older woman out of her ever so human link in the chain of this sudden weakness, and she began to cry. The tears poured down her cheeks, a gushing stream that carried the final subservience away, only for it to blossom like a plant growing on fast-forward, too fast. The tears fell, and so did the puzzle pieces, upturned and loosed onto the ground, ranks broken for a final and wild attack. Near had no flair for the dramatic, he had simply finished the puzzle at that moment.
"Yes. Your son is dead." Sayu, unsure of what this meant to her until that point, also began to cry, clutching the sides of her head and shaking it back and forth almost but not quite wildly, restrained by her own lost competence for living. Fingers scrabbled through those pretty brown locks, groping, tangling, scraping, and grappling for a hold on the only tangible thing she knew. Near made sure he observed all this humanity as he placed his puzzle pieces back into the bocks with the haphazardly ginger care of a mother whose dead children have been brought to her with little time to bury through the time and tears. But the pieces were orderly in their placement, and as Near closed the lid of the box, that symbol of normality and conformitism, he silently wished-- no, one cannot wish for another, because wishes are nothing but fancies we don't accomplish-- so he decided that it would be good if the Yagami women could place their pieces back into the box of life with relative sanity levels remaining. He stood up shakily, deciding it would be beyond churlish to stay longer and bear witness to this overwhelming sorrow that he wasn't even sure was justified. But then again, Mello had done very bad things. He'd hated Near to the core, but the silver-hair had, in a bizarre, abstract way, cared deeply for not just Mello, but Matt as well, considering them both to be family. Because in Near's mind, families all harbored hate just as much as they showered love. Sometimes it was the other way around. Those were the two categories; no more, no less. Mathematical precision and literary passion, white and black. The world had many facets of emotion and wonder, but to Near they seemed all shades of grey. He did, however, feel regret that innocents were so destroyed by the illusion of justice Kira had cast. Not just these two, but those like Mikami Teru, disenchanted with his kami only to be swept of into the throes of his madness, the perfectly straight-edged walls of his mind's levees broken. His true killer was such, but the boy who stood in the living room was also an instrument in this. However, he'd take that secret to the grave. The grave. He remembered the ornate black rosary that had dangled form Mello's neck, a symbol of religion's foolhardiness, captured in irony and dusted with chocolate. The words came in a low murmur, no more, and again, no less. The only expression of his emotions he could bring forth when Matt and Mello had died, he now gifted onto these two broken wallflowers. He'd read the Bible, yet this was the only verse he considered himself to know. A papery white hand rose, priestly yet atheistic. And he spoke, with a simple wave of said hand to accompany.
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust." He closed his eyes for a moment, wondering if the Shinigami who'd both birthed and destroyed Kira was watching, his huge mouth enlargened further by a mirthful grin. Near took the box and left. Night had finished its fall, but the snow had not. It continued to bring itself down on any and all, regardless of whether they wished it or not. For in the snow's collective mentality, it was there, and it was needed. The snow, Near wondered. Did Kira get his ideals from it, or it from him? The frozen ashes of a night god's cremated philosophy weighted themselves down on Near's slight shoulders, the first and final preaching of Kira echoing silently in their tiny particles, lattices and delicate framework. Near was his words, his sentences, white as the snow but still tainted, if not as much as the illusion of purity Kira had claimed to be. He was the teamwork between himself and a dead man who'd hated him. He was the true successor of justice, he was the last response to the killings; "You are just a murderer.". The agent in the car had dozed off, but the second Near tapped on the ice-encrusted window, he shot up from sleep and helped the boy into the car. As warmth flooded him, he had a slight regret at leaving behind those shoes. His feet were soaked and frigid, and he actually let his discomfort show. Not because of the cold, per se, but that feeling so akin to the feeling from the Yellow Box warehouse. Near was not one for flights of fancy, superstition, or destiny, but he had the feeling that Kira would be inadvertently making his feet wet and cold no longer. He reached into his pocket and retrieved the third and final item he'd brought: the crushed Kira doll, its macabre and over-cheery false innocence distorted even further by its crushing under Near's thumb. The boy pressed a button, and the car window opened. The cold wind rushed in, eager to buffet and redden, the snow pelted sharp bullets like heart attacks. Near ignored it, or rather, defied. With a simple motion, he threw the mutilated puppet into the banks of snow, returning it to its own kind. He pushed the button again, and cut the last thread of Kira. Again, he said:
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust."
FINIS