Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note and make no money off my FFN stories. Surprise!
Note: There are a couple of Japanese characters in this fic. It's okay if your browser doesn't support Japanese characters, though, as the romanization of the words is written in brackets so that everyone knows their meaning.
Also note, this is the reposted version of the fic, with new linebreaks and a few minor edits.
Rated T for minor disturbing imagery and slight adult themes.
L jerked awake from a vivid dream, looking around confusedly for a moment until he saw that he was in the bedroom of the suite he and Light shared in the taskforce headquarters. It was the middle of the night, and but for the sound of his breathing, all was silent. He was sitting in his usual position on the bed, with his back against the headboard, and Light was lying next to him on his front, sleeping head turned towards him, bare upper half visible and the covers caught around his waist from all the tossing and turning he did these days. That had become the norm for him ever since the early stages of his incarceration – quite a contrast, L mused, from the quiet and restful sleeper he knew from the surveillance tapes of Light at home. For the moment, however, Light's personal storm had calmed and he looked relaxed and at peace, and L envied him for it. L himself rarely had nightmares on the rare occasions that he slept, but the dream from which he'd just awoken…it was the kind that unsettled, that stuck in the mind…
L turned away from Light and eyed the curtained window with his head on his knees. After a minute, he got up with a soft rustle of bedclothes and went to open the curtains and sill, faint traffic sounds and a cool night breeze welcoming him to the world. High above the skyscrapers shone the moon near the peak of its nighttime arc, a gibbous that would soon be full, casting a beautiful but eerie glow over L and everything around him. He leaned his arms on the sill and looked down at the streets as the wind blew gently on his hair, and he thought…
In the dream, L had walked down a city street in the darkest part of night, and though the street was unrecognizable L knew, with the certain knowledge of dreams, that he was walking through the streets of Winchester. It was raining, and while L didn't mind rain as such, the cold seeped through the trench coat he wore and froze his bare hands; he turned up his collar and curled further into himself to ward off the chill. A streetlamp appeared before him and he ran to it, taking comfort in the warmth shining down on him and wondering what route to take home.
Suddenly, an incredible burst of white light had exploded somewhere above him, making him flinch. Raising a hand to his eyes he squinted up at what looked like a bright spotlight in the sky, fixed solely on him, but then he'd become aware that the light came from a huge neon billboard on a building near him, and that the light of the sign wasn't white at all, but bright red and glaring, casting everything in the colour of blood. The sign was in Japanese, though whether it said キラ [Kira] or 神 [Kami] L wasn't sure, since it seemed to change from one to the other…
It was still Winchester, L knew, but the tall buildings now curving overhead to enclose him looked like Tokyo at its darkest. And suddenly L knew that Tokyo now bowed under a sign just like this. There would be one in Shanghai, and one in Paris, and Cape Town and New York and other places all over the world, all housing the spirit of Kira; the entire world was Japan now, was Tokyo, was this street.
Suddenly the red light seemed to brighten or intensify, and L saw a huge crowd of people before him, shambling forward half-asleep and never looking at him. All of the taskforce members were there, along with Watari, and trotting along behind them were Aizawa and Ide, the ones who had abandoned the case… and L thought he could see others in the NPA, the Director among them… Roger was there, and with him were Near and Mello, and Matt, and Linda, and other Wammy's kids… L even thought he'd seen Beyond Birthday among them, though he was now dead at Kira's hand… Yes, and there was Ukita, and there were other fallen police officers L had known… the dead FBI agents… Raye Penber… Naomi Misora… and perhaps if L were to search through the crowd, he would even find his own parents… The sound of footsteps on the cobbles was very loud as the crowd sleepwalked by L, but no one made a sound. All resistance to Kira had been crushed now, and the living and the dead were united in silence… Even as the rain suddenly stopped and an oppressive warm humidity swept the scene, L shivered. A thick mist was rising.
The sky was growing lighter now – turning a dingy grey – although the sun was so hidden behind clouds spread from horizon to horizon that L could not begin to guess where in the sky it was. The clouds diffused the light so that it seemed to come from everywhere at once, to radiate from the air and wind, and to come from nowhere at all.
L wanted to speak to the crowd, wake them, make them understand the folly of following Kira. But when he opened his mouth to speak, no sound came out, though he tore his throat in trying. Even the clatter of the death-marchers' feet had fallen silent now, as sound left the world completely. L looked to the sky as if he hoped to find some succor there, even if it were only a return of the cool, familiar rain…but there was none, and there would be none anymore.
L suddenly saw the moon through the grey clouds, shining strong and bright as if it had been there all along, though he hadn't noticed it. But it wasn't setting, as a moon should do in early morning, but rather rising. In this world, L suddenly knew, one would be able to see the moon at any moment of the day or the night, everywhere that one went, and it would always be rising. L looked down again, not wanting to see.
Suddenly the sign above seemed to change, to grow even larger, so that it stretched down to the ground and up to the sky and L had to crane his neck fully back to see the top. KIRA, it proclaimed in Roman letters. Then it seemed to change and expand again in a strange way, like a huge animal taking a breath; the huge neon letters begin to crack and jag outwards, and L raised a protective hand to his head, even though he knew that would not save him when the sign shattered.
But before the end could come, the dream changed and the scene suddenly shifted in a whirl of colour and wind, bringing L to Shibuya Station in Tokyo, where Raye Penber had died… There was no sign of life in the station and no sound of trains, yet a light breeze blew from the tunnel as if one had just passed, and the trash on the tracks whirled around in small eddies, rustling softly. There were words written all along the walls in cheery red – it almost looked like spray paint, but L knew it was blood. Kira, they said. In spiky letters of all sizes, written all over the wall at all angles as if by a thousand different hands, they shouted and whispered Kira.
The scene changed again, and suddenly L saw a room he knew all too well, even in the unnatural dark of the dream. Small and cramped, dirty floorboards and peeling wallpaper drew the eye, and the sounds of city life at its dirtiest could be heard through the open windows… There would be brothels and street-walkers out there, L knew, shady bars and narrow alleys where thugs made dubious exchanges. This was the room he grew up in… before Watari came…
Everything was suffused with a low, greenish glow, like a sunken shipwreck. There was no one in the room with L, no boogeyman waiting in the shadows, and yet it all seemed to pulse with something sinister. It felt contaminated. Monstrous epiphany struck him suddenly, and L looked to the wall – and sure enough, there it was, shining brightly even in the dead dark of the room:
KIRA
The terror that struck L then was unparalleled. Kira knew. Kira saw. Kira had left his mark here so that L would know where he had been, know that he had dived deep into L's soul without L even knowing it, and had seen everything there was to see inside of L Lawliet. Kira knew it all, knew the deepest parts of L, knew his true name…
Everything became confused, and suddenly the dream dissolved into black as the sound was once again sucked from the world, leaving L in complete nothingness…
And then L had woken up, shivering.
Now, L sighed as he contemplated the streets below. He tried not to glance back at Light, but the compulsion grew until he slung an arm off the sill and turned to look at him for a moment. Light looked, as he always did, unbearably beautiful while he slept, particularly in the moonlight for which he was named. Not wanting to dwell on him, L turned back to the city below and tried to bend his mind to other things. He stayed as he was for awhile, enjoying the breeze and the faint city sounds, before finally closing the window and the curtains, padding over to the bed and pulling himself back under the covers with Light. His own spot had long since become cold, but the warmth radiating from his companion soothed him as he curled up on his side, and he felt sleep approaching even as his head hit the pillow. He really was tired, he marveled. He looked at Light under his lashes for a moment, still thinking about the dream, and about silence.
I'll wake him with a loud shout in the morning, he thought suddenly, and the dream's hold on him seemed to break. He hummed, and with that pleasant thought quirking up the corners of his mouth, he closed his eyes and fell once more into the nothingness of sleep.
A/N: Did anyone notice that this is a songfic in disguise? It's based on "The Sound of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel, a truly awesome song and one of my favourites. Earlier drafts of this fic actually incorporated the lyrics in stanzas, like most songfics do, but eventually I decided that the fic was better off without them – "standing on its own merits," and all that. However, "The Sound of Silence" still makes a great soundtrack to this fic, if you care to take a listen… Actually, considering the "silence" theme, it's a great soundtrack to all sorts of L-angst. Anyway, I was originally going to call this fic "The Sound of Silence," but then that got taken by Quiet for her fic :P Then I was going to call it "Silence," but I realized that that was already taken by bahari O_O So I went with the current title. Man, I suck.
If you've read my other fic, "The Apple Never Falls Far from the Tree," you might have noticed that my reference to L's past here doesn't really match up with it, despite the fact that I said it was my own personal canon concerning L's past. In truth, this fic was first drafted months ago, before I ever conceived of "Apple" or tried to think out L's past more fully. The song refers to "subway walls and tenement halls," and the little room is supposed to represent the tenement part of the line. When I think of tenements, I think of the tenement museum in New York that I once visited, which is basically a preserved apartment complex once inhabited by the poor of NYC. After writing "Apple," I thought about changing this fic to make them match, but I liked the story as it was, and anyway I have no responsibility to keep L's past consistent from one fic to another. So here ya go.
In this fic, I mentioned Tokyo's Shibuya Station as the place where Raye Penber died. Canon never mentions what station it was, and I don't think Ohba ever told us. I wouldn't be surprised if the station can be determined by Obata's visuals, but I really wouldn't know, having never been to Tokyo. I just chose Shibuya because that's a name I know and the station's one of the busiest on the Yamanote line.
Cheers!
yellowrose87