Hi...well, I'm Zahra and this is the first time I am putting up a story...So to those who will read this, thanks for reading and please review because I will be eternally grateful for the encouragement and all kinds of criticism will be positively taken...Thanks...and well, happy reading...

Disclaimer: I do not own Deathnote!

My Protector

I always thought of my grandmother as an enigma. She was one of the most amazing yet frustratingly annoying persons I knew. It takes a lot to either amaze me or annoy me, never mind both. But she managed to do it with ease. The woman had so many different sides to her. She was beautiful. Even at her age, her face held a timeless beauty, a glow that was almost fey-like. Her eyes always blazed with a fire that never burnt out. I always believed that those slate-gray eyes of her's spoke more than her lips did. And she said the same thing about my chocolate brown eyes. Apparently, all the Ravenhart women had eyes that were far more expressive than the words that they spoke. Sometimes though, I felt that her eyes contradicted her actions too.

She was quite old, but she had barely any wrinkles on that regal face of her's. Her beautiful hair was long and always pinned back; was once pitch black like mine, but now it was a beautiful shiny silver. Sometimes when she muses over her past with my grandfather, she says how my grandfather liked to compare the color of her hair to the feather of a raven. He called her his Raven. I had never met my grandfather, he had died long before I was born, but I did have memories of him. Stories that my grandmother told me and my imagination that brought them alive. I could confidently say that I loved the man my grandfather was. I was proud of him.

I have very little memory of my mother and my father as well. I was told they died in a car accident when I was barely fourteen months old. I was raised by my grandmother, Morganna Ravenhart and my godfather. Both my grandmother and my godfather made sure though that I knew almost everything about my parents though. I am told that I look exactly like my mother and have my father's eyes. I, according to them, am an interesting mix of my parents.

My grandmother though, she always said that you have to behave differently with different people. To others, she was arrogant, shrewd, rude, ruthless, regal, dominating and very cold. But with her family, she was quite different. She was fiercely protective, quirky, humorous, caring in her own strange way and she was controlling in a sense too. She always said she had a lot to teach me, but she would never teach me anything. And that was the lesson itself. I was supposed to learn from everything around me and through my experiences.

Sometimes I could convince myself that I knew her well enough, but whenever I thought that for even the slightest second she managed to contradict me. There was so much about my grandmother that I didn't know about. She has too many secrets, mild harmless secrets and dangerous secrets with enough potential to ruin many people's lives. So in a way there were some secrets that I was better left without knowing, but there were some which were only mine to discover. My grandmother believed that everyone had their own paths to follow. Destiny had written something for everyone and anyone. And for me, she always said, destiny had written great things.

My grandmother was very eccentric. Sure she owned and led one of the biggest business empires in the world, and she was one of the most influential and powerful women in the world, but the truth was that my grandmother was kind of barmy. The woman could rip apart the biggest of corporate heads with just her cold eyes and sharp words and come up with the most brilliant of business strategies in minutes, but at the same time she would talk about demons and ghosts, superstitions and card readings. She would talk about the different auras and essences that different people had. She said she could see the past, present and the future of almost anyone she wanted. She talked about many things which I always thought never existed. And I always told my grandmother that she was crazy and to stop making me believe that she was a witch or something. She only used to smile that slightly crazy but mostly mysterious smile of her's at me.

Actually I only openly denied what I already knew. I believed that it would always be for the best if I was kept at a need to know basis. Truthfully, I kind of did believe that there was something not normal about my grandmother. My grandmother and I lived in England almost all my life. In the country side. In a huge mansion. A mansion that was filled with almost all the luxuries that life could offer. But there was a slight catch. Strange things happened in the Ravenhart mansion. Very strange things indeed. One could hear noises and voices. Voices that did not belong to any human present in the mansion and noises made by things which were unidentifiable. Things would be moved from their correct places to places where they did not belong. Sometimes certain items levitated themselves too. Sometimes the paintings in the houses came alive and moved. And at other times the statues changed positions. These things were normal at the Ravenhart mansion. I have seen them all happening since I was a baby. Whatever did make them happen never seemed to scare me or harm me though. They sort of followed me around the huge mansion. Made sure I was never alone and always looked after. In a way they made me feel safe. My grandmother, my godfather and our butler always told me that nothing in the Ravenhart mansion would ever hurt the mistress of the mansion. My grandmother was the current mistress of the mansion and I was supposed to be the mistress-to-be. So none of it ever bothered me. But they did bother every new person who would enter the Ravenhart mansion. So we had only a few staff members at the mansion. Only the most trusted of maids and servants worked there. When I was young though, I always laughed at how fast some maids could run and how loud the gardeners could scream when they saw some things floating in mid-air. It was quite entertaining to a six year old.

My grandmother always knew things. She just knew certain things that one would think that no one could possibly know. If I ever asked her how she knew it, she would either say that she saw it in a dream or a vision or she would say that someone told her. My grandmother had a room I rarely ever entered in my life. I called it her 'Witchy Room'. That was where she kept her odd antiques and those even odder books and the oddest of ingredients she experimented with. She drew things too. Sometimes a few visions she claimed she had but rarely ever showed them to me. She kept them in folders with her magic books. But what always intrigued me were the strange symbols and patterns that she sometimes drew on certain objects and on the floor.

I never asked her about any of these things though. There was a part of me that always told me that I had to accept whatever was around me and not question it. But truthfully I wanted to remain ignorant of my grandmother's rather eccentric life in the Witchy Room. But I do remember my grandmother once telling me that even if I did ask her about all of those strange books and her activities in that room, she would not tell me anything clearly. She said if I wanted to know more and learn more about any of it, she wouldn't teach me. I had to learn by myself. Which meant blindly entering that strange room and going through all those things. So I didn't even consider that option. Ever.

I was sent to the best of private schools in England. But soon enough my godfather and my grandmother found out a small problem. I was smarter than all of those children in the school combined. The other kids never liked me much and even if they did they were scared of the strange things that happened around me. The teachers never saw but some of the children did. Apparently, some of the things in the Ravenhart mansion decided to follow me to my school to keep an eye on me. My grandmother said that certain spirits were too protective of me because I was so young. She claimed to our butler, Gilbert that as I would grow older the spirits would trust me enough to take care of myself. My godfather though, he never liked to hear any of these spirits nonsense from my grandmother. So he just said that I was too smart for the schools. I was too smart even for the advanced classes. In a way it was true, but Gilbert said my godfather liked to deny certain things that happened. I agreed with Gilbert, my godfather, Victor did seem to look the other way when there was a vase floating beside his head or just pretend to notice look at a painting that was dancing. So whenever Victor was around I humored his odd behavior and stayed aloof about the "flying objects and bizarre sounds" around us.

So Victor decided that I was to be home tutored. I did not complain. I liked to study at home, it gave me more time to learn. And I did not need to bother myself with those ignorant and rather foolish kids from school. They really were quite the bullies and so very immature. The home tutors were some of the bests and thankfully though the unknown things of the Ravenhart mansion never bothered my tutors when they came about. My grandmother said that the spirits want me to be smart and learn, so they left my teachers alone. So I learned everything that my tutors had to teach me. Math, Literature, History, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, French, Spanish, German, Russian, Latin, Japanese, Italian, anything and everything. I was trained to be the head of the Ravenhart business. I was taken to the board meetings and the new factories and the new projects and all the new offices all over the world since I was fifteen. Victor and my grandmother explained me everything and had taught me well. I was the heiress to Ravenhart Pharmaceuticals and Ravenhart Technologies.

Since I was fifteen I was almost like an assistant to Victor. Sometimes I felt like they insisted more on the fact that I learn to have proper skills to become a leader than an actual heiress to a business empire. In a way I was happy about this fact too. I didn't want to be that heiress, I was just happy to learn whatever Victor taught me and all I did was to see that slight glint of pride in his eyes when he looked at me. Nobody knew though that the tiny girl who followed Victor around and was supposedly rumored to be his niece or apprentice or something was actually the girl who would own everything with the name Ravenhart on it. I was very well protected from the world's eyes. Victor made sure of that.

I was also taught to defend myself if needed be. Victor demanded that I was trained right. When I turned seven my training in kick-boxing started and I was also taught how to wield a sword and a staff. I was taught how to shoot too. Surprisingly though Gilbert was the one who taught me how to wield a sword and the staff. Grandmother taught me how to shoot with the impressive collection of guns she had. Victor handled my martial arts training. While Gilbert insisted I be honorable during a fight, Victor demanded for me to be ruthless and to fight dirty if needed be. That was one of the most famous topics of debate between Gilbert and Victor. Well, if you could call yelling and breaking into fist-fights debates.

By the time I turned nineteen, I was helping Victor and my grandmother run Ravenhart Pharmaceuticals and Ravenhart Technologies. For a month now, my grandmother has been telling me that she didn't have enough time anymore and even though initially I did not believe her, but soon enough the heavy dread in the pit of my stomach and the hollowness I felt in my heart told me that I was starting to believe her. But then why would she say that when she looked so healthy.

I always told my grandmother that she was a scheming imp of a woman. And that morning when I woke up in bed she confirmed that statement of mine. I opened my eyes to see him. There was a man on my bed, sitting in a peculiar way and staring at me with those odd eyes of his. He was wearing a full sleeved white t-shirt with a pair of well-worn blue jeans. He was bare-foot and sitting on the very toes of his feet in an odd crouched way. He had unusually pale skin. Almost ghostly white. His face was kind of impassive. But those eyes of his were hauntingly familiar. Why, I didn't know. They were black and they looked me over and over again as if memorizing every inch of me, but at the same time I could literally feel the gears in his head turning as he calculated something about me. A part of me wanted to ask him if he suffered from insomnia, because he had the hugest and the darkest dark circles under his eyes. On someone else that might have looked awful and somewhat creepy, but on him they looked perfect. As if they belonged there. They gave his face a certain character. In a way they made him kind of adorable. And besides, his eyes weren't blood-shot, so the dark circles did not look terrible at all. His hair, that mop of a black hair on his head had to be the messiest hair I had ever seen. Those locks of pitch black hair were kind of long and falling all over his face and eyes. His hair looked clean and kind of soft; I had this overwhelming urge to run my hands along it actually. Or at least pet his head. He had a straight nose and thin pale lips. His fingers were pale, long and thin, kind of spidery. One of those fingers was tracing his lips as he stared at me.

I should have screamed, or used the gun in bed-side table to blow a hole through his head. Or I could have beaten him to an inch of his life. But I didn't do any of that. I didn't because something in me told me I shouldn't do any of that. So I asked him, my voice falling completely impassive to my ears, "Who are you?"

He blinked once and replied in that smooth voice of his, "I am L."

I looked at him with narrowed eyes as I tried to figure out exactly who he was, or what he was for that matter. I mean, who called themselves 'L'? Was it some sort of nickname or what? Was he trying to be all mysterious by hiding his real name? Or did he really need to hide his name for reasons that I didn't know about? What was it? So, I asked again, "L, why are you here?"

He blinked once again and replied in a voice that could only be described as curious, "I was summoned here to protect you by your grandmother, Miss Iris."

As soon as the word 'summoned' hit my ear, I knew exactly what he was and why he was there; and also why he had that strange name. But right at that moment all I wanted to do was shake that conniving grandmother of mine and force her to tell me what she had planned. So I stared at him with cold eyes and asked him, "Do you know what you are, L?"

L cocked his head to the side and replied back in that same curious voice, "I had died. Your grandmother said she has summoned me. She has summoned my spirit to protect you, Miss Iris."

I gritted my teeth as I stared at this man before me. There was no way in hell was I going to be stuck with a spirit. A spirit whom I could see and talk to. A spirit who was here to protect me. Protect me from something I knew nothing about while my grandmother knew everything about. The woman was at it again with her secrets and her schemes.

While I was busy ranting at my grandmother in my head, the man, L was busy staring at me. The next thing he said kind of confirmed me that not only was my grandmother not the only barmy person in the mansion but that having this L as a protector would be a very…bizarre…experience. He said in the most matter-of-fact voice ever, "Your eyes look like chocolate truffles."

I tried my best to maintain a very blank face at that. And then I mimicked his voice and replied back, "And you, L look like a panda with those eyes of yours, but you don't find me commenting on them, now do you?"

He blinked twice and looked at me with those glittering black eyes of his. Damn, I might have compared him to a panda, but there was nothing panda like about him. Those obsidian eyes of his were too intense to be compared to a panda. Pandas didn't look at you with eyes that made your stomach feel uneasy. I could feel my cheeks heat up a little and my heart thudding loudly against my chest as I felt his eyes trying to calculate everything there was about me. Just to avoid looking at him, I started running my hand through my hair as I looked down at my lap. He really seemed like a person who would calculate everything about someone. That was when I finally noticed that I was still in my nightwear. That is, my tight camisole and my short shorts. I immediately clutched my bed sheet and pulled it over my chest trying to cover myself in front of this stranger. But I knew it was too late, he had already seen what he had to during the past minutes I was busy observing him. I wasn't used to people looking at me in revealing clothing. Nobody except Victor, Gilbert and my grandmother saw me in my nightwear. I felt my cheeks flush deep red and I cursed my pale complexion. Damn it, I wore the camisole without a bra on, and that meant L saw more than an eyeful.

But something as trivial as that wouldn't set me back. Nothing would. I looked at him and told him in a voice that was only best described as commanding, "L, please stay where you are and excuse me for fifteen minutes. I shall be back after I freshen up. We have much to talk about."

He was still staring at me, making me fidget a bit and replied in that deep voice of his, "I have nowhere else to go anyways, Miss Iris."

I gave him that same smirk I always gave Victor before I would verbally emasculate one of our pig-headed corporate heads at the company. And then I replied back softly, "Good. Then after I return you and I shall figure this…thing out and then we will raise hell for my dearest grandmother."

I think I surprised him with my evil smirk and the mean streak that I had. But Gilbert always called that my feisty side. Apparently, I looked too innocent to be as feisty as I actually was. He took in a sharp breath and blinked a few times. And then he was staring at me again with those intense eyes of his, tracing his lips with those pale long fingers of his. I gave him a short nod and was on my way to my bathroom. I had much to figure out and I knew that it was going to be a very long day.