November 22nd
L is dead.
Light saw him die, saw the light seep out of his eyes, felt him go so limp in his arms. He'd checked his pulse. He'd felt that pulse disappear. Light was holding him when he died, and he definitely died. He was confirmed dead seventeen days ago, and he's been buried. He's not coming back. Six feet deep where Light can never reach him. He'll join him there one day, or maybe he'll just dig up the body and keep it for his personal amusement. What could be more humiliating than having your skeleton used as a prop? It would be pointless because L wouldn't be alive to feel humiliated, but it's the principle that counts.
L is dead, definitely dead, so dead it hurts - which is why Light doesn't expect to see a silhouette at the top of the old Task Force headquarters.
The rain is coming down with thick sheets and blurring his vision to the point that even the headlights on cars are distorted, and the colours are simply scattered into the wind. Logically, it should be far too dark for him to see anyone up there, and the angle isn't right either, and nobody would be up there at this time of night, surely? But when he looks again, the figure's still there, leaning over the railings.
His family's expecting him home soon for dinner. He'd told them he was just taking a walk to clear his mind. They had just looked at him with a strange kind of pity in their eyes. They've been doing that a lot these days, but a god doesn't need pity. A god doesn't need a family. A god doesn't need to have dinner.
There's nobody alive to stop him breaking in.
So he breaks in, and while he's picking the little bits of glass out of his hands, his feet are working on their own. There must have been some kind of burglar alarm while the investigation was being held here, but he assumes someone's turned it off in the last few days. Maybe the figure on the roof. It doesn't matter. He keeps walking.
He half-expects to find himself up on the roof when he stops thinking, but instead he stops outside the room they had shared. He's fairly sure everything was cleared out of there, every scrap of DNA that could be used to find out L's identity. He looks in anyway.
It's pure, white, clean; there's not a single trace of L's existence. Just like L would have wanted it. He closes the door quietly and takes a deep breath. The hallway smells of nothing, and the air he's gulping down doesn't even taste slightly of sugar. It tastes wrong and it's choking him. Everything is wrong. L's not here. It's wrong. Everything is wrong and he needs to get out of here because he thinks he might choke on the lump in his throat and wouldn't that be funny, a God dying from choking on his own tears?
It would be funny but it isn't going to happen.
He takes the stairs up to the roof and is flooded by memories before he can open the door. It's been seventeen days. Seventeen days since he died. Light pushes against the door lightly, then collapses against it. He could turn back now. He's sure dinner won't have gotten cold yet.
L's body was cold.
It was cold outside seventeen days ago and the wind was roaring and the rain was screaming in his ears. The weather's even worse today. It's even worse today because L's not here. It's worse every day.
He stares at the stairwell and contemplates throwing himself down it. If he died, would Kira be suspected, or would he be suspected of being Kira? Would it be a fast death, or would he be left there, crumpled, his blood draining away and just slowly fading until someone found the body?
Light stays there for a little while until his legs feel like they're capable of holding him up and his lungs don't feel like burning up and he doesn't feel quite so much like dying. He still feels a lot like dying and he's not sure if that's because death is a major subject in his mind these days or if he genuinely wants to die. If he did die he'd want it to be dignified. Not like this. Not cowering by a door because he's too scared to open it and face the fact that he didn't see L up here and it was just a sleep-starved hallucination.
He's not sure how long it takes him to open the door, but the sky's gone a few shades darker, and constellations are beginning to peek from behind the clouds. The rain's calmed to a drizzle now, though he can still hear the wind howling. He can feel the building shaking slightly. He'd be shaking too if there was that much rain pummelling him.
There's a figure there, leaning over the railings, with a white shirt and blue jeans and bare feet.
Light's going to throw up. His victory is draining out of him. He failed. And L knows – he must know – who tried to kill him. There's no way to argue him out of this one. L's name is in the Death Note. L should be dead. Why isn't he dead? The world is spinning and the moon is too bright to be real and he's shaking and why isn't he dead why isn't he dead he should be dead
Light's got a piece of paper folded up in his hand. It isn't part of the Death Note, because L's name is written on it, and if it was part of the Death Note then L would not be just standing there.
L is not dead, and Kira has not won, and the weight of his failure crashes down on him harder than the strongest gusts of wind.
"You're alive." It hurts to speak.
L turns around, regards him with those flat black eyes. He looks alive. Like a ghost, but he's always looked like a ghost, like he might slip away if Light didn't claw him back. "What did you expect me to be?" His voice hasn't changed. Of course it hasn't. It's only been seventeen days.
"Rem killed you."
"Obviously not."
Light reaches out to make sure that L is alive, solid, real. He expects his hand to just go straight through, but instead it makes contact with L's hair. He brushes that hair back. It's real. How is it real, how is anything real? "How is this real?" he says helplessly. "How are you still alive? How can you be real?"
"It doesn't matter." L is staring past him, and Light wants to grab his shoulders and force him to look his god in the eye and tell him why he's alive, because how can he be alive, how can this be possible? "What does matter is that you keep this a secret. Nobody can know about this. Even you weren't supposed to know."
"You want me to lie to other people about you being dead?" Killing thousands of people is okay, because those people deserve it. Lying? That's totally not okay, but he does it anyway. A god's allowed to lie for the good of his subjects. If he tells nobody about L being alive, they'll be more motivated to solve the case than ever, and that could lead to mistakes. "Okay."
"Thank you, Light-kun."
"Anything for a friend, Ryuzaki."
"If I'm your friend, why did you try to kill me?" His eyes are pure black, but he doesn't look angry, he just looks vaguely uninterested in the whole situation. His skin is so pale he looks like a corpse. He should be dead he should be dead he should be dead
"I think you'll find it was Rem who tried to kill you."
"So we're still friends?"
"If you still want to be." Light still hasn't got his mind back. He's not sure how rational this is. L is his enemy and he needs to keep him close. Maybe if he keeps him close he can kill him once and for all, get the job finished.
It makes sense in a way. L is justice, Light is justice. Justice doesn't die, and so neither can they. It's an awfully illogical argument but it makes everything so simple that Light can't help but like it.
He hasn't seen Rem for days. She must still be alive if L is. He's going to kill her, if he can figure out how. She deserves death for betraying him. Everyone deserves to die.
"You should go home. Your mother's spent ages cooking dinner for you," L says. He turns around and leans over the railings again.
"And what are you going to do? Watari's dead, he can't sort things out for you any more."
"Did I ever give the impression that I couldn't sort things out for myself?"
"I'm sorry for assuming that." He looks down, hands clasped together, painting a picture of a very apologetic teenage boy. When he looks up L is gone. Perhaps he was never there in the first place.
His hand tightens around the crumpled scrap of paper. L is dead.
December 25th
Near's made a habit of being small. Small, fragile, easy to break, but she's never going to break, which is quite a relief.
She broke her arm once, falling out of a tree where she'd been looking for bird nests. Maybe it wasn't the fall that broke it. Maybe it was the fact B had been playing particularly roughly with her afterwards. It's one of her first memories, lying on her back and plucking feathers from woodpeckers, ignoring her own pain in order to inflict it on the birds. B had taught her that you had to snap their necks after taking out the feathers, or the birds wouldn't feel any of it. He'd tucked a few feathers behind her ear and she'd smeared blood on his nose. It had been June. She had been seven years old. She'd had to wear a cast for six weeks.
She hasn't been broken since, and she doesn't plan to be.
The Rubik's cube she got this morning for Christmas is already broken, because Matt just stepped on it. "We need to leave," he says. He's not got a cigarette in his mouth, which means he must be somewhat serious about this. Matt is hardly ever serious, unless he's defending Mello.
Near stares at the cube snapped into colourful pieces under his foot. She could put it back together so easily, probably without even looking at it, and then solve it with her eyes still closed. She twists a strand of snow-white hair between two fingers. "Why?"
"Mello's out there. He's been out there for weeks. It's – he's – we should find him." He takes out his lighter and flicks it on, studies the flame, flicks it off again. "He might not be safe." On and off. Near knows he only plays with his lighter this much if he's bored or if he's on the edge of breaking down. The tension in his face tells her he isn't bored.
"I don't see why that's our problem," she says emotionlessly, as if she doesn't care. She does, but caring isn't going to change anything. She always knew she was going to win this. She always knew he was going to run. He's going to die soon. Caring is just going to break her, and she doesn't really want to be broken.
Matt growls. He curls his hand into a fist around his lighter. "That crazy murderer guy. Apparently he escaped last week. Mello's in danger."
It's then that Near looks up, her eyes wide and bright. Crazy murderers sound exciting. Leaving here... doesn't quite sound so exciting. She's fully aware she'd die in less than a week without anyone to care for her, and the house does a good job of that. Matt doesn't even seem to take care of himself, so he probably won't be able to keep her alive.
Still. There's only one crazy murderer guy she can think of who might want to kill Mello, and she misses breaking woodpeckers' necks with him. "If you're going, I'm coming with you."
It turns out he's already got a plan, which is good, because Near can't come up with plans quite that quickly, and she has no idea how to get around in the outside world. Here is safe, and so she doesn't leave, but Matt's always disappearing to buy cigarettes. He knows much more about the outside world than she does, and he also knows how to sneak out without Roger noticing straight away.
Matt's already stolen two backpacks; "Only bring important stuff," he tells her, "I have no idea how long we're going to be looking for him."
Near fills her bag with toys. She doesn't bring clothes or toiletries, or even food. Just toys.