I was born free…
The woman's hands were there to pick up the toddler as soon as she'd fallen down, hitting her head against the coffee table. "Shh, shh" the mother cooed before realizing the child wasn't crying or upset at all. The same calm demeanor as always was etched into the girl's small face. The mother's eyebrows knitted together in confusion momentarily, but the child wriggled out of her mother's arms and tottered over to the bookshelf.
...
A man laughed, pushing the back of the small boy in front of him. "Faster, daddy!" The boy urged, breath sending out clouds in the harsh winter cold. His wish was complied, and the boy flew higher into the frigid grey sky, uncaring that a red mitten leapt from his pocket and into a pile of snow at the base of the swing set. The father shook his head, a smile still on his face as he bent to retrieve the boy's fallen item.
Until I learned I have something called a 'gift'…
A much older man than the ones that worked in St. Mary's orphanage approached her, and her heart dropped in fear. "Young lady, did you read all those books yourself?" The old man asked in a kind voice, she had learned not to trust kindness. It was always a lie to mask someone's true intention.
"No." The girl stated, her voice unable to shake from the nervousness she was feeling internally.
The man raised his eyebrows in surprise. "No?" He questioned, his few facial ticks displaying his true disappointment.
She was confused, "You're discontent, but why... Whenever I tell someone, they send me away." The girl said quietly, looking down at the psychology book she'd stolen from one of the college orphanage volunteers.
...
The boy was nearly in his preteens, and Scotland yard had already been bested by his skills. The older man hovering above him ruffled the haphazard black hair happily, causing the boy to look up at him. "May I have some more cake now?" he questioned, wide owl-like eyes pinned eagerly to the old man's face.
"I don't see why not," the old man stated. "Although, you really must finish your meal first"
The boy's expression soured, "I feel compelled to remind you of my recent achievement, and that I should have some more cake on the grounds of celebration" the boy stated.
The old man looked surprised, then chuckled warmly. "I suppose just this once won't do any harm" the old man consented, shuffling over to the dessert tray.
Then, gravity began to weigh me down…
"R?" The man asked again, pointing at the blackboard.
The pre-teen girl stares directly at him. "That is not my name" she says evenly, even though the teacher is red in the face from their argument.
"R, when you came to this institution, you consented to a change of name as well as surrendering to us all of your records. Your name is R. Headmaster has told me so himself" the teacher said, exhausted by the repeated discussion brought up by the girl.
"My name is Robin" she stated, tucking a piece of her short blonde hair behind her ear.
The teacher sighs, she can tell it's from frustration and smiles in her head: It is a gesture she cannot yet perform externally. "I don't want to have to send you to Headmaster Whammy's office again" the teacher says, using a scare tactic she had long become accustomed to.
Robin looked around at the rest of the empty classroom, of the seven students and counting in the institution, she was the only one who wanted to take abnormal psychology. It's a shame no one is here to see her handiwork. "Then simply call me by my proper alias and you will not have to" she states.
The teacher rubs a hand over his face. A transparent sign of his breaking point. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted, Robin thinks to herself. "To the Headmaster's office, now!" the man roars at her.
She gets up from her seat without a qualm, already playing out Mr. Whammy's usual rhetoric in her head. "How many times must I tell you, Robin, the teachers are not for you to perform psych experiments on"
...
Another phone rings out shrilly, adding to the already noisy room.
The barely-teen boy glares at the mess of ringing phones before him and picks up the nearest one. "20 innocent people were killed due to your miscalculations!" The voice on the other end blares immediately.
The boy is taken aback, unsure of what to say to quell the voice of the French prime minister. 20 civilians had been riding the train he specifically told the prime minister to section off, while the official had not seen it fit then, it hardly seemed fair to blame the boy now.
"How can you just sit there and not say a thing?" The phone blared. "Are you even listening, L?"
With distaste, he dropped the phone back into it's cradle, hanging up the call. It was an untactful response that Mr. Whammy had chastised him for repeatedly, but he could care less about the ramifications for the time being.
The rest of the nest of ringing phones doesn't appeal to L, and he looks at the devices bleakly amongst the paperwork and files scattered on the table. Begrudgingly, he picks up another receiver which informs him in a British accent. "A serial killer has been targeting families in London…"
L is immediately alert, taking down notes and requesting case files be sent to his encrypted email. He digs through the mess of papers to find the serial criminal profiling manual he commonly references.
It's only when he looks up and remembers the rest of the ringing phones that his spirit once again drops. Where is Mr. Whammy when I need him? …Fulfilling his role as scolding Headmaster, no doubt.
I saw so many things, things that I wish I could erase…
"A, I picked up an apple from the kitchen for you," the teen girl says to her roommate as she opens the door. Were she capable of it, she would have rose her eyebrows at the darkness in the room. "It's peculiar to sit in the dark so" Robin commented before flicking the light switch on.
Surprise was the first thing to cross her mind, followed by fear and pain as she stared at the corpse swinging from the fan, a leather belt around her neck. The array of emotions didn't play across her placid face, but Robin found herself rooted to the ground in a typical symptom of shock.
She heard footsteps at the end of the hall, a monitor making their nightly rounds. Robin wanted to cry out, but found herself unable to do so as the woman approached her with flashlight in hand. "Young lady, what on earth are you doing standing in the hall after curfew?" the woman asked as she approached, ready to dole out a punishment. However, the words die on the monitor's lips as soon as she sees the figure swinging in the room beyond Robin.
The monitor shrieked so loud that Robin jumped, but the woman paid no heed as she shoved past the teenager into the room. "I brought her an apple" Robin muttered uselessly as the monitor quickly got Adeline down from the fan, unbuckling the belt and tossing it on the floor.
"I can't find a pulse!" the monitor wailed, turning back to Robin. "Run, get help!" the woman ordered before giving Adeline CPR. Robin hesitated before walking down the hall, her feet felt like lead. She wondered why the monitor's eyes had been so wide upon seeing Adeline. Robin chalked it up to another puzzling emotional expression, and navigated the staircase directly to Mr. Whammy's office.
She knocked on the door tentatively, the old man that answered was groggy but immediately alert upon spotting her at his door. "I brought her an apple" Robin stated calmly as she started to get dizzy. "I don't think she's going to eat it, though" Robin mumbled before fainting on the rug.
...
It was his first real mission. Since reaching the legal age of adulthood, L had been adamant about playing an active role in a case. His argument seemed reasonable enough, after all, his eyes could discover clues where simple police officers could not.
However, this was not supposed to happen, the plan was not supposed to go awry. There wasn't supposed to be any real danger. "Judging by the surveillance tapes, The assailant is a Caucasian female in a nurse uniform. She was last seen on the corner of 32nd and 5th after abducting the infant from the hospital"
L ignored any further transmissions from the headset as he came to a dead stop at the mouth of the alley. Horrible wailing screams that had been blocked out by the street traffic were clearly audible in the alleyway he'd ducked in to take as a shortcut. Almost against his will, the detective took a step further to examine the source coming from behind a nearby dumpster. The figure was hunched over, long black hair messily escaping from a once orderly bun. The plain white nurse's uniform was stained a bright red.
His headset crackled to life again. "L? L? Is there something wrong? Come in, over" the speaker questioned him, but he was too occupied with the horror before him. Another scream rang through the air, followed by a sickening snap that made him shake uncontrollably.
In a haze, he pushed the transmission button on the side of his headset with one hand. "S-s-she's… devouring the baby alive" L said in shock, feeling his stomach turn threateningly. "She…" L stammered, wincing as the infant finally fell silent in the woman's hands. He finally remembered to remove his hand from the transmission button as he placed both shaking hands on his handgun.
The woman turned, face splattered with red and grinning like a federal animal. "P-police!" he shouted in what he hoped was an intimidating way, "Don't move or I'll shoot!" L ordered. The woman took no regard of his words, but simply lunged. L pulled the trigger. The woman slumped limply to the ground.
They haunt me when lights flee a room, they've blessed me with these circles under my eyes…
Robin kicked at the arms holding her captive, lashing out with her fists when she could. At that moment, she wished more than anything that she was capable of screaming. These people wanted to kill her, she knew. They wanted her put on death row for what A did, Robin tried to tell them it wasn't her fault. She was pleading with them, but no one believed her. People were sneering and laughing at her as other arms fought to hold her in place.
"If you didn't do it, why don't you sound sorry? Why cant you cry?" the voices mocked her and she suddenly jolted awake. The plain white sheets were haphazardly wound around her, restricting her movement, and it took awhile for her to unwind herself. As soon as she was done, she flicked on the light switch and immediately felt calmed. It seemed stupid for an 18-year-old living on her own to be scared of the dark.
...
The 20-year-old man was hunched over the computer, looking over the international cases again, surfing for anything new. It's what he did when he couldn't sleep, the insomnia that came with his job always kept him awake. He raised his brows as a description caught his eye; deep quizzical murders with puzzles no one else could solve. It was a case begging for his expertise. After reading the file, he regretted it as a ghost from his past immediately popped up in his head; Beyond Birthday.
The obsessive boy had left the institution many years ago, had disappeared together with another student. Now, L was almost sure of it, B was coming back to haunt him. No, not haunt, taunt. B craved L's attention, and at the same time wanted to best L and be praised. It was a vicious thing, what the institution had done to B. L felt a hint of sadness for the man before he resumed gathering information on the case, it was still work and needed to be dealt with either way.
So I've got my quirks, I'm doing things you don't like…
She was nervous, but for once thankful of the calm façade that her restricted prosody awarded her. Her Asperger-related symptoms could occasionally work to her advantage. "And now, I present Mrs. Robin Steele!" the announcer said from the podium, smiling at her from where she was standing offstage. Clapping echoed through the auditorium where her lecture series was taking place as she emerged from behind the curtain, notebook in hand. The black heels she was wearing in order to look professional only furthered her wobbly clumsiness problem, but thankfully Robin remained upright as she walked.
"Good morning" she started, speaking into the mike as she reached the podium. "I'm here to talk to you about-60% of people living in the united states believe aliens to be in existence" Robin blurted, immediately covering her mouth afterwards. She should have expected her symptoms would act up when she's nervous, that was typical. Only three more hours of the seminar, too.
...
"I will not consent to work for you if my contracted demands are not met" L stated evenly into the phone. The American governor sighed heavily and L cradled the phone in one hand as he constructed the sugar-cube pyramid with the other. Watari, as L had taken to calling him lately, no longer felt the need to badger him about his hunched posture. Something he was currently guilty of, sitting curled in the office desk chair. The silence on the line was beginning to discern L, he really did want to work on B's case, but if he wavered in his demands, people in the future wouldn't think them so important. L chewed on his thumb.
"I simply do not understand the importance of a limitless amount to spend on sweets. If you intend to bring your children along with you-" L dropped the phone in his shock. If he weren't upset that he'd just wreaked his own sugar cube sculpture, L might have laughed at the suggestion. Children? Him? Surely that thought alone was absurd. Besides, the children of the institution were practically classified as his own biological ones.
No one fully understands or cares…
Robin had been shocked when she ran into B, the same boy she had fled the institution alongside. It seemed pure coincidence that they were both in the same LA hotel, using the same stairs, at the same time. But of course, as she would come to realize later, her best friend had planned it all along. Beyond Birthday had turned out to play her for the ultimate fool, pitting her against L for his own selfish needs. Even so, she still loved the boy he had been back when they were children.
...
L frowned at his laptop screen at his headquarters in London when R declined to help him. It hadn't been foreseen at all that R would refuse. And in such a forceful manner, too. He knew that R was B's childhood best friend, he knew that she would know the most about him. Coupled with that and her extensive psychological success since leaving the institution, she had been the ideal candidate for the case. Oh well. The case would be solved without her, anyway.
I'm on my own, beside myself…
The day of Beyond Birthday's wake was rainy and muggy. It was a private affair, Robin had been the one to arrange it herself. She'd sent invitations all along the institution's mail line, but she was left standing at the memorial site alone. It was expected, B was a criminal after all. And, for many of her colleagues, it meant he was the enemy.
...
L hesitated as he stepped out of the car, perhaps he should have taken Watari's advice about the shoes. The mud of the Whammy garden grinded between his toes and under his feet as he made his way toward the lone figure dressed in black. She was holding an umbrella. She looked much stronger than she'd been at the hospital.
Until the day… You were by my side…
"B" Robin said quietly to the ornate urn full of ashes in her hands. "You'll always be my best friend" she finished, placing the urn in the specially-built stone alcove among the soggy poppy patch. You're laying him to rest, but you don't even know if those ashes are truly his-The nasty voice in her head is thankfully cut off when she jumps suddenly at the voice behind her.
...
"He'll always be my rival" L said from behind her, making R visibly jump. His eyes quickly flickered from her figure to the serial killer's memorial; and the urn where the only remains of the 404 condo fire rested. "However, I wouldn't have preferred it that way" L added as his gaze returned to her. Their eyes met in silence.
A/N: These are little snippets of Robin and L's lives before the Kira case, side by side, as they grew up (L is 2 years older than Robin). I thought it would be a good introduction for those readers who didn't read "The Catalyst". However, I highly recommend reading that story first if you'd like to get a better idea of Robin's character and her relationship with L proceeding the Kira case; very important. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this story. Reviews and crit are very very welcome! -Luv, Cart