Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note.
A/N: Total AU. This story is vaguely inspired by the Dostoevsky novella The Eternal Husband, but don't look for any similarities because I haven't even finished reading it.
Fashions in Illness
Introduction
Light was humiliated. How could she have done this to him? How could she have carried on an affair right under his nose all this time? How could Misa have outwitted him?
Perhaps the time had passed for this anger. They had been divorced for two months, and their love had long expired, if it had ever been fresh to begin with. No, he wasn't jealous. He was merely offended.
He sat in the room they had shared, digging through an old box of love letters he'd found buried in the closet. They were all from the same person: a man who had signed them only with the letter L. There were no return addresses. The dates at the tops of the letters stretched over the past three years. Three years!
This had been going on longer than their marriage! Was she still seeing him? Had she left him for this man, and not had the decency to tell him? Light was fuming. He stomped over to the phone and dialed Misa's cell number. He took a few deep, calming breaths as it rang.
"Hello?" Said her shrill, high-pitched voice.
"Are you still seeing L?" Light demanded, not bothering with a greeting. Misa gasped, a cutesy little hiccup.
"How did you know about him?" She asked.
"I just found a box of his letters to you. This is really disgusting, you know that?" Light said.
"How dare you read my letters? Those are personal!"
"Indeed, they're very personal." Light said, and he began to read aloud the one in front of him. "…Misa, I wish I could be there with you, inside you, feeling your hot, tight-"
"Shut up!" Misa shouted. Light laughed bitterly.
"Was he the reason you left?"
"No. I'm not even with him anymore." Misa said coldly. Light rolled his eyes at her feeble denial.
"Don't be ridiculous. Why else would you have left?"
"If you must know, it's because you were a jerk, you treated me badly, you clearly had no respect for me whatsoever, and you're so fucking full of yourself! And I know I'm not the smartest person in the world, but I'm also not the dumbest, and Lawliet didn't treat me like I was!" Misa hung up the phone when her rant was over, and Light was a little surprised.
She had never said any of this during the divorce proceedings. Light had never even thought about her motives for leaving him, he'd only thought about how it would affect him. His esteem for her went up, but not by much. Still, he'd found out another thing he'd wanted to know.
L's name was Lawliet. Now he could track him down. Now he could get his revenge on the man who had helped Misa trick him, for he had no doubt in his mind that Misa hadn't deceived him on her own. This man must have told her what to do in order to avoid detection.
Light salvaged his ego by telling himself this. Misa had not outsmarted him. He would decide how embarrassed he was when he met Lawliet and assessed his intelligence.
Light sighed and undressed for bed, then slipped in between the silk sheets. In the morning, he would find Lawliet, and he would make him pay.
.
To probably be continued...
A/N: Review and tell me if you want me to continue this story.