Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note.
If Light were to consider all the things he wanted to ask the man he ended up being, quite literally, attached to, the answers could consist of only a single word and still fill an entire book.
Not a pamphlet, either. An actual, decently-sized book.
And then the teenager would read it, get to the end, flip the cover back, and suddenly remember he forgot something.
It wouldn't be a bad read, either. For on the train, or something.
However, much to his annoyance, Light knew he would forever have to be satisfied with assumptions and deductions. L would never give him anything he could want to know. Not just because of suspecting him as Kira, but more because L was, simply, his self. The man's mask had been worn for so long, it was impossible to think that he would be willing to take it off, or even would be able to take it off. Friendship didn't mean a thing, and trust was just an excuse to pry; using both of which would only significantly increase the detective's suspicions of the brunette being a mass-homicidal psychopath with a God-complex who was intent on murdering him. Obviously.
But, still.
It was infuriating.
L was infuriating.
It was best to forget about it all. Forget all the questions, pretending they never occurred in his mind. Acting ignorant wasn't something the teenager was used to, but he hardly had a choice.
And yet, every single day, he considered taking the risk and just asking him.
No preparations. No excuses of why he wanted to know, or why he cared ("...Because... we're friends, or something, I guess?"). Just straight up asking, taking the bull by the horns and screwing the consequences of his unwanted curiosity, requesting an answer he didn't really deserve to know.
"How did you get those burns?"
But he knew he would never ask.
Asking would be far too easy. Asking was like cheating; the mystery of the burn-marks that covered that awkward frame was not one to be solved by a simple matter of a few words and promises of such, in these circumstances, artificial things such as friendship and trust. Mere curiosity would never be a good enough reason to suddenly, after a life-time of wearing it, tear off the mask and rip down the walls that protected (hid) the insomniac from his unseen dangers.
And so, every single day, Light would wonder to himself. The other questions would be forgotten and replaced, all boring compared to this puzzle that faced him every time they undressed. Faced, accepted, but never solved. No clues, no help, no indication of result. Just the same question every day: "How did you get those burns?"
He would taunt himself with it. What if there wasn't such a big mystery over it, after all? What if when the question was asked, L would laugh and say he clumsily fell into a fireplace when he was a child, or something equally as embarrassing? "You never mentioned it, so I never said anything." The discomfort they both felt about the burns could be one-sided, or even fabricated. Though nothing could convince Light that the detective didn't have Dishabiliophobia, perhaps the fear was caused by the presence of another human, and not the revealing of something he had to hide?
No.
No, of course L wouldn't be that simple. He would never be that convenient. He was a liar (and a good one, at that), and any tales of accidents spoken with light-heartedness and indifference to the matter would be entirely made of shit. Even with his best attempts to hide it, the look in the man's eyes said more than enough to prove that the burns on his body weren't something to be spoken of without consequence. He could back away and stare into the bathroom tiles on the wall as much as he pleased, but the marks were the cracks in his perfect fortress that could never be fully concealed; only breaking him more, never healing, clawing at his flaws with each unintentional glance towards the retched mirror.
"Are you afraid of mirrors? Or do you fear your own reflection? Why?"
Because the disguise is flawed? Oh-so-magnificent L, underneath it all, held reminders of his burdens- reminders of his humanity. "Is it bad to be human? Does not being a robot make you a failure?"
"Are your burns a result of you realising that you are human?"
"Or did you realise you are human because of your burns?"
The questions would roll in Light's head, over and over, different ways of achieving the same answer that all would achieve as little as the first; being blunt was no different than sugar-coating it all. How frustratingly ironic.
But it was all he would ever have. Bumbling questions in his head, refusing to be swept under the carpet of the boy's mind. A painful curiosity that (even though he was aware would slaughter the metaphorical cat,) would never be satisfied. It was easy to pretend to himself that he had every intention of asking, one day. Soon, as the two geniuses became genuine friends, and not this forced partnership that was nothing but a result of a mass-serial-killer and a detective with no form of social understandings. When they really trusted each other, speaking words with no hidden agendas nor tests of honesty. When the time was right.
But the time was never going to be right.
Of course it wouldn't.
That wasn't how it worked. Not with L. Not with Light.
Not with Kira.
Things just wouldn't fix themselves like in novels read to children to soothe their minds of the filth that was called the outside world; a fact the duo was equally aware of.
And yet, pretending made the eternal curiosity so much more bearable.
One day, Light Yagami would ask L, the man whose failure he had unintentionally witnessed every day of his chained confinement, why his body was cursed with reminders of a fire that burned just as strongly in his memory as the day it bit and gnawed at his skin.
And then he would get his answer.
I'm so sorry for this monstrosity.
Thank you very much for reading.