The original title of this fic was supposed to be Personal Demon(Friend)s, but the title bar didn't support parentheses.
"I just don't understand how someone can dislike a holiday so much!"
"I do not dislike Christmas, Light. I hate Christmas." L turned from the towering highly decorated evergreen in the investigation room. The rest of the team had gone to bed. He left Light rambling about holiday spirit and decorations and the like.
In the quiet solitude of his nineteenth replicated bedroom, a familiar air settled around him; one he did not care for at all. This was the air of mid-December. It would be snowing heavily in England. Heavy enough to make the roads icy so a car taking a turn would lose control and break through the rail and be sent careening into the icy river below. Heavy enough to freeze said river, making it impossible for the couple with the spoiled son who requested a last minute gift to break the ice and escape hypothermia, drowning, and ultimately, death. It was snowing almost that hard in Japan. Not that that had anything to do with L's not liking Christmas. That was hardly a reason not to enjoy a time of year. What would weather conditions decide, after all, but one's wardrobe? And L's wardrobe was always the same, with very few variations, so that just proved the snow had nothing to do with him.
He once had a girlfriend in New York. At sixteen, Watari placed him there so he would be accustomed to American customs, language, and the serenity of anonymity in a large city. She was an early admissions student at NYU like himself. For the holiday season, she applied to be an elf at the mall. The girl, who went by the name Emily, would walk around the mall on her days off dressed in her red and green outfit, talking to the children. Emily would discreetly take their photo and write their name down so she could give the list to 'Santa'. Then, when they would go see him, 'Santa' would greet them by name, making him that much more impressive. Emily had failed to meet L at the food court several times because of this selfless act. He thought that people who engaged themselves in such activities did so for selfish reasons. She, however, did not. Once, he had gotten up from the table in the corner where they always sat and shuffled to the center of the mall. There, behind 'Santa''s chair, was a table that held the elves' nametags. In the top right hand corner was one marked MLE. L, not worried much as she had forgotten her nametag before, headed to the west entrance.
"Marin, which way did Emily start off tonight?" A younger Spanish man looked over.
"Hey Laclos. Em hasn't shown yet. What?" L's eyes widened. It was seven. Most children's bedtimes are eight to eight-thirty. L hurried out the door in to the wet rainy streets. It was December nineteenth at two-thirty a.m. when a wet, shivering, snowy L came across Emily. She had been beaten to death and unskillfully disfigured. L had taken on the case personally to discover some paranoid parent had stalked her, thinking Emily had planned to kidnap their child for ransom. Watari had not protested his actions. He returned to England shortly after.
"Of course, L had managed to solve her case, so his dear, selfless Emily's death could not add to his loathing of the holiday season. Besides, it was a decade ago. December itself is not a dismal month. November is the month, statistically, when the most suicides occur. In Japan, November is even considered unlucky because its birth flower, the chrysanthemum, is a symbol for death. October was a good month. Despite his birthday or Halloween ,which just so happened to be the same day, the crime rate was not high. Only very interesting crimes happened in October. The ghosts and ghouls and monsters were all so fake and unreal. Christmas ghosts were terrible things because they were once alive. They're far too real. I belong on Halloween. L thought, as if Halloween were an island adrift in a sea of wishes and deaths and debts and regrets. No, it wasn't Christmas's month that depressed him. It was Christmas's ghosts that did the trick. The ones that nibbled gently on his fear and sadness and dread the rest of the year to remind him they'd be back come next December. He'd remember every tragedy and misfortune from the month every year previously. His lost friends (December 15th, 1997: BB said he hated me.), murdered protectors (December 23rd, 1987: My German Shepard Vormund was shot by mistaken identity.), cleared-up misconceptions (December 11th, 1993: Serial killer went free on defense-tampered evidence. There's no real justice.).
For the first year in his life, L truly, down to the ache he could not warm, did not want to live to see another Christmas after tomorrow. Christmas Eve was almost over, and L would have Kira within the new year. But once December came around, he wished that the ghosts would stop following him. Perhaps they would be laid to rest once he was. Maybe see the Ghosts of Halloween once more, they could ferry him to his afterlife, where the calendar stops with October and ends with November, the little demon children could play with him all year long, laughing and having fun with unreal friends he only saw in his too-short sleep. The trees would whisper and new structures would creak….But there were no new structures on Halloween. It would be such a comfort, the Halloween horror, and L could finally be at peace.
If only there was not another Christmas.
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Kira would see to that.
I'm gonna thank ElvenTea and Arnold the Pygmy Puff. They reviewed on On Spiders and Milkshakes. So....thanks?
The summary is a song by MU330 called Ghosts of Christmas:
You're not alone not alone as you feel
She gets so depressed around Christmas late December
Is the time to remember all the people who've left her
She's more in tune with Halloween
Do you know what I mean cuz all the ghosts
They're all fake and the ghosts of Christmas too real
to take Christmas dinner we say grace
we hold our hands and we stare at our plates
What's the secret to forget
How do we start to accept?
It's obviously been edited.