Sequel to Sins of the Father and Aftermath (which I know isn't quite done yet, but still stands well enough to bridge to this one I think). I've been poking and prodding away at this ever since I was working on SotF and I'm sick of looking at it. So here it is. Title reference is from 1 Corinthians 13:11-12.

"You're doing it again. Calling me a child."

"When you get to be my age, Near, everyone looks like a child. I may break myself of the habit by the time you get to be forty or so."

"Forty? That seems excessive."

"Yes, well. I fully intend to be around a long while yet, nagging you to eat your breakfast and remember your hat when you go out in the cold."

"...I suppose…I can tolerate that. If I must."

Part 1

New Year's Day, 2031

"L, are you ready?"

Near blinks slowly, once, twice. The city is dirty grey, the dark streaks of skyscrapers barely distinguishable to his bare eyes from the streaks of rain on the tinted floor-to-ceiling window. The slotted-cube stacks of buildings might as well be cast from the same stuff as the sky, the lit windows that spangle the black nights now powerless and barely noticeable in the face of the persistent dull drizzle.

He has been spending a lot of time in the last week while not reviewing Tesla's work on their current case or visiting the hospital sitting here at the window, staring down at the alternately rainy and snowy city and thinking. Perhaps sitting and thinking is all he really has, when he sets the mask of L aside. Perhaps it is a normal part of grief. Perhaps it is just part of starting to grow old, though Near thinks he probably started growing old long before he was even an adult.

"Yes," he says finally, turning the motorized chair with the tap of a finger, and whirring across the room to meet Gevanni at the elevator. The older man, who has been serving as Watari since Near convinced Roger (turning the tables and badgering him to consider his health for once) to retire several years back, knows to stand back and let him press the buttons himself. As much as he hated having to take care of such mundane things before he landed himself in the chair, it irritates him when people move to assist him now. The irony is not lost on him that he is probably a good deal more self-sufficient as a rapidly-aging paralytic than he ever was as a fully able young man. He doesn't even require assistance to maneuver himself into the vehicle, though of course the current strong-arm that holds Gevanni's old job has to put the chair into the back.

The hospital is becoming almost as familiar as his headquarters, as they've been coming every day for nearly a month. Near is frankly amazed that the old man has held out this long, promises or no promises.

Tesla has accompanied him to the hospital a few times, but not today. He expects she might be angry when she finds out why he left her at HQ on this particular day, but he doesn't much care.

Near doesn't cater to his emotions very often, but today is the New Year. He thinks he can make an exception.

September 2030

The first day Tesla meets him in person, she asks about the chair.

And that, he thinks, is a good example of why he chose her. Most of the very few people who have both met him since the accident and know he is L have been thrown off by the chair, and so Near has come to expect it. The hastily concealed surprise, the sneaky but persistent examination of his face as they realize it's younger than what they expect from the color of his hair, and try to figure out just how old he is. Then, once they've determined he's not old enough to need the chair due to age alone, the uneasy curiosity and awkwardness under the social stigma against simply asking the obvious question.

It's somewhat amusing to him that people actually seem more taken aback that L is a cripple than they ever were to find that N was a child. If he is completely honest, it must be admitted that he also finds a certain vindictive pleasure in watching others struggle with the social obligations that he usually gets criticized for ignoring.

Well, Roger has always said he has a twisted sense of humor.

"So what happened to you?" the young woman says bluntly the minute Gevanni leaves them.

Her back is to him, where she is crouched down on the paper-covered floor, adding some illegible notation to the strange swooping diagram she is working on. (It was expensive, all that paper—hardly anyone uses it anymore. Of course, L can afford to be eccentric.) He's already got her working on her first case. After all, he was expected to dive right in on day one, so Near doesn't see why his successor should need any time to acclimate to her new situation. No introductory pleasantries, just new rolls of paper and a new block of wood and calligraphy ink and whittling knives and a new case to solve.

"Florence happened," Near answers simply.

He is not used to it, having another person there and speaking to him while he's watching security footage, but Tesla is as abrupt and necessary in her communications as he himself was at her age. That's part of why he chose her. He thinks he understands Roger better now, after having made the choice of his successor—it really did have less to do with grades, and more to do with the fact that he found the person suitable. Part of him wishes there was a way to let Mello know too, but he's learnt not to dwell on it.

And it was time anyway. Too soon it will be the New Year, and he'll be turning forty.

"Who is Florence?"

"Florence is not a person. It was a case."

Tesla frowns a little; she dislikes being wrong. She really is so much like he was. It almost makes him nostalgic. The swirl she is drawing straightens and halts sharply. She wants him to get to the point.

The point (in Near's mind) is much more complex than the blow-by-blow account of the accident that rendered him partially paralyzed, however, and so instead of elaborating he gives her two paper books to read. She's going to be L; she ought to be able to come to her own conclusions without him explaining everything.

The first book is by a man named Mello, and details the account of one of L's messiest cases—a successor gone mad and out on the rampage, caught only after it didn't truly matter anymore. The second is by Near and relates the story of his self-described failure in the case of a kidnapping-turned-murder in Florence, Italy.

While reading them, Tesla wonders if she will someday be expected to produce a narrative of her own mistakes, as a warning to her successor. She hates the idea that she'd need to.

July 2030

"Tesla," Near says with certainty.

He's glanced at the grades and the numbers and official reports, but most of his inquiry has been devoted to going over security camera footage of the House, reading essays and incident reports, interrogating the current manager of the school on the day-to-day goings-on Inside. One advantage he has over the first L in this matter, at least, is that he grew up in the House when it was The House and not just another orphanage, and he knows firsthand that the official reports are worth exactly nothing.

"T?" Gevanni repeats, frowning. He's looking at the official reports. Near entertains a brief mental image of snatching the tablet out of the man's hands and tossing it over his shoulder as though to say to hell with the numbers. He knows very well he can't reach from the chair, though, and he'd rather not look like an ass so he simply affirms,

"Yes."

Gevanni is skeptical, unimpressed. "She's only number four in the rankings."

"Number one would rather go into politics and number three is a borderline sociopath."

"Well, what about number two, Everly? He seems stable enough."

Near shrugs dismissively. "I don't like him."

"L," Gevanni starts, in a tone he usually reserves for times that Near is suggesting they kidnap a witness or something similar.

"I am not going to waste my time dealing with someone I can't stand just because they scored five points higher on a logic test."

"You haven't even met him," Gevanni points out a little too patiently.

"Nor have you. I've watched months of video footage and I've seen how he writes. He whines almost constantly. I choose Tesla and that's final," the third L says calmly, returning the majority of his attention to the black walnut hare he's spent the last three days whittling. It's almost finished, but he has yet to put the final touches on its large, gangly feet.

She's on the tall side for her age, it seems from the videos, lanky and skinny and a bit all over the place in terms of limbs and velocity, and with a frazzle of dark hair that doesn't exactly match the rest of her, like a poorly fitted wig. Overall Tesla strikes Near as a queer mixture of disruptive and reticent, awkward and articulate.

Near doesn't particularly like working with others, but he's getting older, and the last thing he wants is another fiasco like that which marked the last transfer of L's title. He thinks he could learn to work with Tesla. Or, more accurately, he thinks he could train her to work with him. She seems to have the same need to see things with her odd drawings and diagrams, not unlike his toys and models. He dislikes the idea of her getting ink everywhere, which she seems to do, but they'll just have to set boundaries.

If nothing else at least she doesn't whinge on and on like Everly.

"Roger, what do you think?" Gevanni attempts. "Shouldn't this process be a little less…arbitrary?"

The retired Watari, up to this point staying out comfortably of the argument in the safety of his favorite chair, flips down the top of his newspaper and eyes Gevanni testily for a moment before shooting a wry look at Near. "He's L and he has to be able to work with whomever he picks. He's entitled to an arbitrary opinion," Roger wheezes, flipping the newspaper back up.

Near smiles privately to himself, gazing down at the little wooden hare, but it's a sad smile. The old man's ironic commentary has not diminished, but the rasp in his breath is getting audibly worse. There's not much left of him but that dry not-quite-humor, unspoken but determined devotion, and the tweed husk that gives his frail body shape in his recliner.

It's definitely time to find a successor.

"Very well, L," Gevanni says. He's gotten quite good at hiding his resignation. Near assumes rather than actually seeing Roger's smirk, hidden as he is behind the newspaper. "How soon shall I have the House informed?"

"Now is fine," Near says, shaving away a hair-fine sliver of wood.