The Grave of Alistair Ipswich
Fandom: Death Note
Pairings: Mainly LightxL (with mentions of L/Deneuve, L/A)
Rating: R
Summary: Post-series AU. L and Light canoodle. L tells a ghost story. Beyond Birthday is a bastard, and A is both dead and not.
AN: This may be the start of a longer work?!
The Grave of Alistair Ipswich
"I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as if with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us anymore." ~ Franz Kafka, The Castle
• • • •
They electrocute Dolores Moreno on a Friday. L and Light watch from a laptop screen, sun-dazed and fanning themselves with travel brochures procured from the hotel lobby. It is late October, but the heat has not yet broken in Guadalajara. They have an air conditioning unit that putters and coughs like a steamboat, but it is too weak to cool the vast floor plan of their suite. Light, only recently recovered from a bout of yellow fever procured in the Côte d'Ivoire, spends most of his time fixed in front of the box fan in their window.
"I hate this," he says, voice staccato. On the screen, a man in a black jumpsuit checks Moreno's pulse, moving aside a strand of her waist-length hair. "When can we leave?"
"Soon," L says. He is reluctant to tell Light about the case reports Watari had e-mailed him this morning. They have been in Mexico for six weeks, chasing the head of the largest cartel in Jalisco. Moreno's capture had caused the collapse of a Central American bank, disgraced the head of the Jalisciense police force, and ruptured the power structure of all methamphetamine trafficking in northern Mexico. All in all, it had been fun, and Dolores had been an appropriately attractive villain, with black hair and delicate kitten heels.
Light closes the laptop and staggers to the bed, where he lays with his forearm pulled over his eyes. For a moment, L's wrist follows, as if they are still attached to one another. It's a habit he's not been able to break, even after two years of ricocheting across the globe together, by plane and powerboat and once, by rusting station wagon.
L plucks a sugar skull from the tin Watari has brought from the city market. It is October 31st, he is 27, and tomorrow is El Dio de los Muertos. On the streets below their window, a densely packed crowd moves as if in slow motion. They carry damp shopping bags, full of sweetbreads and hard candy, food for the dead.
L thinks of Beyond Birthday, and A, and poor Alistair Ipswich, lost somewhere without his index finger.
"What would you like to do?" L asks. Following cases, it has become customary for Light to trail behind him at a museum or cathedral, thirsty and bored, a foreigner in all places. Since he'd managed to hack into L's encrypted files eight months ago, Light has seemed absent from their terse conversations, prone to headaches and drunk often. There had been aspects of Light's case L had never intended for him to learn.
The longer Kira slept, the better.
Light is twisting the cap off a miniature rum bottle when he says, "Come here."
L does, uncurling his spine, which is thin and knobby like a greyhound's. Light slips a hand into the hollow of L's waist. It is too hot to touch properly, and they keep at a forearm's length. L does not like the thought of this old hotel in the heat, dry and densely packed, liable to burst into flames at any moment.
"You're unusually melodramatic," L says.
"It's the weather. It makes everything seem tragic. I'm going to miss Dolores."
They use English out of habit. That had been L's own doing. After leaving Japan, he had shed any traces of the country clinging to them. Light speaks with the transcontinental softness of an American, educated aboard.
"You should light a candle for her. It's All Hallows' Eve, you know."
Light drinks three-quarters of the rum in one swallow and then offers the bottle to L, who declines. Light finishes it himself and scoots closer. He smells like the mildewed soap in the hotel shower. It's been two months since Light had a haircut, but even his dishevelment seems deliberate. He looks handsome and self-possessed in the slanted light from the window.
"Tell me something," he says, nipping at the soft flesh between L's thumb and forefinger.
"Tell you what?"
"I don't know, anything. Tell me a story. Make it a good one, with plenty of betrayal and intrigue. Femme fatales, vast sums of money, multi-national crime syndicates, this sort of thing. "
It is not an entirely unusual request. L rarely keeps notes, and Light had been frustrated by the patchiness of his old case files. L has taken to filling in the blanks himself, voice synced to the tempo of their fingertips on a keyboard. And he is a decent storyteller, if judging by Mello's pious attention to his anecdotes on rare visits to Wammy's.
"I have something more appropriate. A ghost story."
"I hate ghost stories."
"I suspected that. But you may find this one interesting for other reasons."
Light doesn't answer right away. L does not know how much Light remembers of the eight months in which he'd shared his bedroom with a god of death, but L has rarely heard him mention it. Neither one of them is comfortable speaking of the supernatural implications of the Kira case.
"Fine," Light says, "Tell your damn story."
A ribbon of sandalwood smoke drifts in through their window. L suspects that evening mass has begun in the chapel on the next block. There are fireworks popping in the distance, and what sounds like bricks, tumbling onto the street. A woman prays to La Santa Muerte in a deep, buoyant voice.
"It was a dark and stormy night."
"Whatever you do, don't start it like that."
"But it was," L says, remembering.
• • • •
It was a dark and stormy night.
In late April, this was not unexpected. Wammy's had been built over the skeleton of an abandoned sanatorium, and the roof hums with the weight of water gathering between the shingles. L's room smells like pigeon droppings and formaldehyde. Most nights, loons weep and weep in the pond beneath his window, but tonight there are only thunderclaps, approaching from the west.
L has been at Wammy's for five years. The institution is still in its formative stage, and he is one of only four (three, he has to keep reminding himself, three) children present. Some days, he can wander the grounds for hours before seeing another person. L has learned to move across the floors silently, memorizing the places where moisture has warped the oak panels. The maids and nurses are wary of him, and make a habit of checking the cabinets and corners of a room for his huddled frame before speaking openly between themselves.
L spends most of his time alone, reading or browsing the internet on the PowerPC in Roger's office. He occasionally travels with Wammy to Britain's fading colonial strongholds in Africa and India, but is too nervous to venture with him into the choked city streets, preferring the dark space of a hotel office.
A great, shapeless flash of lightning spreads across his room. The electricity failed two hours ago, but Roger had brought him a tray of tealight candles. Shadows dart across his walls like animals.
"Law-li-et," he hears from a crack in his door, though L is certain it had been locked a moment ago. Beyond always mispronounces his name, but L is reticent to correct him, unsure of how he acquired it in the first place. "What are you doing? Can I come in?"
"No."
They both fall silent for a moment, waiting for a wave of thunder to crest and pass. L splays his fingers across his nightstand, searching for his pocketknife. The last time Beyond had picked his lock in the middle of the night, L had ended up with a black eye and fourteen stitches.
"I was just talking to A."
For a moment, L feels like there is an insect scrambling up his throat. A memory rises unbidden, of he and A huddled together in the crypt beneath the chapel. L counts four ticks from the grandfather clock down the hall before answering.
"A is dead, Beyond. Go to sleep."
"He wants to talk to you."
"Go away."
Beyond pushes the door the rest of the way open. A slice of dim yellow light spreads into the room. L finally palms the pocketknife, his gaze locked on the silhouette in his doorway. Beyond looks like he was grown in a shell, an invertebrate, curled and tense. He'd once licked the inner curve of L's ear, and his breath had smelled like stomach acid and strawberries.
"He says you should meet him in the chapel. He says you need to return what you stole from him. He also said to ask you, 'Why is a raven like a writing desk?'"
• • • •
"A writing desk?" Light asks, opening a second bottle of rum. This time L takes a sip, wincing, and leans over Light to reach the empty tin of sugar skulls. He licks his thumb and flattens it into the crumbs. They dissolve too quickly in his mouth, and for a moment, L feels a curious blankness, like he has just entered a room and forgotten the reason why.
"The Mad Hatter? Alice in Wonderland? Your cultural education is severely lacking, you know."
Light snatches L's hand away, and kisses him squarely in the palm. "I'm sorry I'm not intimately familiar with the ramblings of a mad Englishman."
"You'd be surprised how much of my life has been shaped by the ramblings of mad Englishmen. Beyond was obsessed with nonsense. He liked riddles with no answer, stories with unreliable narrators. Now, be quiet and stop interrupting my flow."
• • • •
A had dense blonde hair, and thick calluses on his thumbs from practicing boating knots with hemp cord. He was less interested in academic work than in exploring the lowland forests surrounding the orphanage, or pressing Wammy for stories about his years as a sailor along the East African coast. A was prone to melancholic fits, and often lingered on the balcony late into the night, squinting towards the west as though he could see the crest of the ocean over the hilltops.
He was a romantic in all ways, and even his suicide had been executed with certain theatricality and an impeccable hangman's knot.
L does not go to the chapel, so A calls him instead.
It happens on the landline in the reading room of Wammy's west wing. The mantle clock above the fireplace reads 4:44. L and Beyond are perched on identical claw-footed stools, having their scalps rooted through by an Irish nursemaid, who curses them both with frightening creativity.
"Louse-ridden ingrates," she says, yanking at a knot in Beyond's hair, "Perverse mongrels, the both of you."
She has good reason to be upset. Two months ago, Beyond had bitten off the tip of her left pinkie finger. It is still wrapped tightly in gauze, and her green veins are plump and pulsing. Beyond, heavily medicated, sways and stares without blinking. His eyes are the color of industrial waste.
The nurse deems Beyond clear of lice and moves on to L, which allows Beyond to stumble off his stool and rush for the phone when it begins ringing.
She presses her fingernails into L's scalp, and he feels an odd tremor travel through his spine. Later in life, his time at Wammy's will be remembered as a series of physical ailments; mosquito bites, sunburn, rugburn, the nasal crawl of pollen and bookbinding-glue. Wammy's makes L itch.
"Yes, yes," Beyond says into the phone. "He's here, but I don't think he wants to speak to you. I tried to explain it to him. He just says you're dead."
"That boy is fucking crazy," the nurse mutters.
Beyond's conversation continues for several moments. He nods and gives a muffled grunt of agreement before finally holding the phone out to L.
"It's for you," he says, and then looks to the nurse. "It's private."
She rolls her eyes and crosses herself, retreating from the reading room with a clattering tray of medical equipment. L wishes she hadn't left. Beyond is capable of taking more than fingertips, and L resents being the current target of his interpersonal experiments.
"Answer it," Beyond insists, pressing the receiver into L's palm. He knows that L's curiosity overrides his more rational tendencies. L can never resist prying his fingers into a box and opening it, even when that box is labeled DANGER.
"Hello?" L says, dumbly.
"You didn't come to meet me."
A has the rounded accent of Northumberland. L was once very fond of it.
"No," L says, "Beyond and his games, you know. They rarely end well. Especially not for you."
Beyond grins and shrugs, toes curled into the room's arterial red carpeting.
L tries not to think of A's body, swinging slowly from the rafters. Sometime during the process, A had kicked off both his sneakers. L had found one, upside down beneath an armchair, but the other had never been recovered.
"Beyond has his reasons. I understand them much more now. Go to the crypt, L. Do you remember what you stole from me? It doesn't belong to you. It never really belonged to me, either. You should put it back."
L opens his mouth, but is not sure what to say once he does. Before Roger had packed and disposed of A's personal items, L had broken into his room and stolen the narrow cigar box containing A's favorite artifact. In a sense, L feels entitled to it. He and A had acquired it together, after all.
Beyond looks hunchbacked and hydrocephalic, fists clenched in an empty chokehold. The medication affects his motor reflexes, and there is drool pooling at the corners of his mouth.
"Beware the Jabberwock," A says, and the line goes dead.
• • • •
Light Yagami is L's third love affair. The second had been with Agnes Deneuve and had lasted approximately four days, ending when she'd aimed a snub-nosed pistol at his forehead and stolen the last six francs in his wallet.
In retrospect, Deneuve had been the nicest one.
"This is the worst story I've ever heard," Light says.
The sun has dipped beneath the skyline and it is finally cool enough to scoot together, knocking elbows and kneecaps uncomfortably. Light hooks his fingers around L's belt loops and drags him closer. The neon sign from the pharmacy across the street casts their room in flickering mint-green light.
Windows have never before distracted L. This is a new phase in his life.
"Yes. Hand me those chocolates, will you?"
Light does. L feels Light's torso flexing against him, and something twitches in his abdomen.
In many ways, L prefers this Light — rude and impatient and indulgent — to the one he knew in Tokyo. Light has two realms inside of him; the one in which he currently inhabits and another hidden in dense fog. There is no longer a bridge connecting them, but L is always waiting for the moment when Light will find a way to bolt across the chasm.
"You're telling me all this for some vague, arcane reason only to be revealed later, aren't you?" Light says, watching L eat with a wince.
L thinks of the case files, tucked in the encrypted corner of his inbox. There are four men dead in Boston, each whose body was found accompanied by a straw doll. Beyond has always preferred America to Europe, being fond of neon, brightly colored foods, and the constant sonic chatter of advertising.
"Why would you say that?"
"Because you wouldn't even sneeze by accident. Also, I've known how to hack into your private e-mail folder for weeks."
L forces a chocolate truffle into Light's mouth his index finger.
"I will address this when you are not stretched provocatively across a hotel bed. Now, be quiet. I'm trying to impart some important information here."
• • • •
The third living child at Wammy's is C — a girl of fourteen, with thick arched eyebrows and a plump mouth. She is possibly of North African descent, but has never spoken of her past before the orphanage. L sees so little of C, he is often taken aback to find her tangled in the upper branches of an oak tree or deftly picking at leftovers in the kitchen after dark. Ten years later, she will be killed in the crossfire of a Bosnian arms deal, and that is all L knows of her.
"I wouldn't go if I were you," she tells him, staring down from a window above the vegetable garden. It is the first time L has caught a glimpse of her in weeks. He had been on his way to the chapel, but paused to watch a hedgehog rooting through the soil. L is very fond of hedgehogs.
"I can handle Beyond," L says.
Wammy has been in south London for two days, negotiating a real estate deal. This morning, L had picked the lock to his study and stolen a combat knife, which is tucked into his waistband.
"Not Beyond. There's something else in the chapel. I've been hearing organ music in the night. Just yesterday, four crows flew into the rose window and died. You can go look for yourself," C says. Her white linen dress fills with air and for a moment, she looks like an Edwardian ghost, hovering above him. She doesn't question the cigar box tucked beneath L's arm.
L is an atheist. He does not know how Beyond was able to pull off the call from A, but most of L's theories fill him with a sense of existential dread.
"I'll pray for you," C says, which is her favorite joke. She disappears behind the curtains.
The chapel and churchyard are remnants from Wammy's earlier incarnation as a sanatorium. There had been a vast tuberculosis epidemic in Winchester at the turn of the century, and the graves are arranged in dense clusters, overtaken by peat moss. L has spent many hours in the churchyard, picking grey nettles from the hem of his jeans. He likes to note the age of the deceased and apply it to his own lifespan. Six years left, eleven — L is sometimes paralyzed with the quiet terror of uncertainty.
The chapel was once white, and has a lightning-battered steeple that leans too far left. While it is not expressly forbidden for them to explore the building, L has mostly avoided it out of Darwinistic sensibility. The walls have filled with a hundred years of English rain, and the chapel is bloated and cracking.
The single time he'd entered had been with A, and L isn't entirely certain what had happened then. It is the sort of memory that digs its nails into his brain and drags him close, no matter how many times L tries to creep away.
• • • •
"You had a really fucking weird childhood," Light says, breathe rearranging fine hairs along the slope of L's stomach. He dips his tongue into L's bellybutton, and L has to clench his jaw to keep from squirming. It tickles.
L briefly panics as he tumbles back, forgetting there is a bed to break his fall.
"Mm. It was actually rather typical for England."
It is nearly eleven. In an hour, the villagers will carry a statue of La Santa Muerte through the narrow streets, weaving through dismantled cars and orange traffic cones and the occasional unpaired rubber sandal. Most will walk, but some will crawl, knees cracked open by the cobblestones. L wonders if they should venture onto the balcony to watch, but Light is nipping at his hipbone, and the dead will still be so tomorrow.
• • • •
A had been wearing one of Wammy'a naval coats on the night they'd broken into the crypt. He had smelled like damp wool, and grave dust, and the Indian Ocean. Years later, L will still remember the way A's kiss had made him gag. He will remember the scratch of A's bandages against his forearms. He will remember the way A had swayed drunkenly and muttered, "You are part of my dream, of course, and I am a part of your dream too."
L has to tear away vines growing over the chapel door. By the time he pushes it open, there are splinters deeply embedded in his palms and fingertips. One of them will take years to work its way out, finally emerging from a bit of puckered skin on his left thumb as L sleeps against Kira in Tokyo, Japan.
The chapel is vast and dark. Particles of dust hang suspended in the multi-colored light streaming in from the rose window. The pews are empty, aside from crumbling artifacts left by the sick and the dying of a century past. A child's glove, missing an index finger. A yellowed bible, open to Revelations.
"Hello?" L whispers.
A field mouse retreats into the darkness beneath the altar. The chapel is dedicated to St. George. In the main niche, he is mounted upon horseback, plunging a spear into a dragon with the barbell-shaped pupils of a goat. His face is veiled by a layer of grey cobwebs.
"A is glad you came. He was worried about you," Beyond says, eventually. He is sitting on the ledge of a column in the west transept, smoking one of Roger's cigarettes. After another mouthful, he crushes it against his knee, tobacco spilling onto his jeans like the guts of a caterpillar. "It's important to me that you understand I was not responsible for what happened to A. A really wasn't, either. It was just his numbers. They'd run out."
"Go away, Beyond."
"I will. There's just one more thing he wanted me to tell you."
"And what's that?" L says, tired of staring at Beyond's vacant black eyes.
"The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday — but never jam to-day."
"Go away, Beyond," L repeats.
This time, he does.
• • • •
"Finish your story and then we'll go chase him down," Light mutters into the white skin of L's inner thigh.
"That might be more difficult than you expect. You already killed him once, you know."
Light pauses. L rarely speaks of Light's past as Kira, and never so flippantly.
L is suddenly afraid that Light is going to bite him and tries to shift. Light's hands are locked around his hips. They are silent, for a moment. A pair of headlights passes across their room, and then it is dark again.
"What did you steal from A?" Light asks, in place of what wants to say.
"More than I knew."
• • • •
L will not be afraid of the dead until later in life, when they start coming back.
The crypt makes him nervous for other reasons; toxic black mold clogs up the corners, and any misplaced hand could bring a wall crumbling down on him. There are only four graves, three of which have lost their inscriptions to time. The last reads Alistair Ipswich, which A had occasionally used as an alias, when one had suited him.
The slab over Ipswich's grave is still askew. It had taken he and A's combined strength to move it once, and they had never bothered to push it back completely. It's not the sort of thing L would have done on his own, but A's presence had sometimes made him feel disconnected from the world, like his head was a helium balloon, untethered by gravity.
"Hi. Hello," L says, into the steady rain of grey dust from the ceiling. The floor of the crypt is damp. L's sneakers sink steadily into the ground. He feels heavy and stupid, and he fully expects Beyond to slide out from behind a pillar at any moment, rocking with empty laughter.
L sets the cigar box on the grave and opens it. Inside, rests a familiar column of bones — distal, middle, proximal phalanx. All that is left of the index finger once attached to Alistair Ipswich.
("Souvenir," A had explained, kissing L on the forehead, then pausing to pull one of L's hairs out of his mouth.)
L braces himself against the wall of the crypt, and uses his right shoulder to heave the slab over several inches. L's life has been spent hovering over keyboards and reading in dim rooms. He has poor upper body strength, arrhythmias in his heart. By the time L is done, his vision is obscured by shimmering, colorless patches.
It takes him a moment, breathing into his cupped palms, before he is able to look down into the open grave and realize that Alistair Ipswich is missing. And not just in the metaphysical sense.
The grave is empty. Or, at least, mostly empty.
L's hands hover uselessly at his sides. This is a development he had not expected, and his muscles are seized with adrenaline. Eventually, he manages to move his arm, reaching into the grave and removing the straw doll that has replaced Ipswich's skeleton.
• • • •
"It was a wara ningyo doll," Light says, curled into an embryonic pose against L's hip. There are occasions when Light looks so human that L feels his mouth suddenly run dry. His fingers tug the tawny hairs at the base of Light's neck.
"Yes. Beyond's way of letting me know that I'd been had. "
"But how did he get rid of the skeleton? And how did he manage the call from A?"
L lets the silence stretch out for too long. It is late now, and the streets below are empty. A car alarm howls in the distance, and L taps his fingers to its rhythm against the curve of Light's jaw. Light presses the sole of his foot into L's calf.
"I don't know. I wouldn't have believed it until after the Kira case, but its possible that Beyond is something more than human. Or maybe something less. If he wants to play a new game, then I'm happy to oblige him. He is holding less cards than he thinks."
Light grins, without bothering to hide his anticipation. For an instant, L thinks he sees something of Kira worming its way through Light's pupil, but then it is gone. There is only His Light, yawning, tousled half-tucked into the bed sheets.
"The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame," L recites, hooking an arm around Light's waist and pulling their torsos together. It is Light who finishes aligning them into perfect parallel forms, touching eyebrows, and nose tips, and sternums.
"What does that mean?" Light says, pushing their hipbones together.
L kisses him to keep from answering.
• • • •
L entombs Alistair Ipswich's index finger, and then searches the grounds for Beyond. L finds him crouched in front of the television in his bedroom, spooning jam into his mouth with his index and middle finger. When L breaks Beyond's nose, it is unclear how much of the red spilled onto his shirt is blood and how much is strawberry preserve. Beyond clutches his face, and the cartoons on the television fill the room with chemical blue light.
It is Roger that stops L from going any farther. He drags L by the forearm into his office, where L remains locked until Wammy returns from London that evening. There are no lectures or punishments for either of them. Wammy's House is, after all, primarily a social experiment.
L will be gone from Wammy's within six months, and the next time he sees Beyond, it will be through a security camera in Los Angeles. The LABB murders are quickly resolved and uninspiring. In a way, L is disappointed that Beyond has become just another madman.
L lingers in California for several days after, in a rental home on the Palos Verdes Hills. L is not particular fond of the ocean, and the suppressed seismic energy of the Pacific coast makes him anxious. At night, a beam from the lighthouse sweeps across his living room in steady cycles. Seabirds scream in the updraft overhead.
It is Wammy who brings him the envelope, found slipped amongst the junk mail delivered to the house each day. It is slim and unmarked, aside from the home's address. The handwriting is uncontrolled and slanted to the left. Wammy must recognize it as easily as L does. A, with his pea coats and wool hats and love of the wine-dark sea, had always been Wammy's favorite.
L opens it alone, and reads the message twice before tearing it into thin strips. He drops them one by one into the fireplace, and the ink hisses and pops as it burns. Afterwards, L watches an overcast sunrise and tries not to think of an empty grave, nestled beneath a crumbling church in the country of his birth.
"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.
Signed,
A.I.
Fin (?)