Hahahaha, well it's me again and guess what? I have another story. Yes, I am the worst person in the writing world because I start a story, mean to get around to updating and finishing it, but then get struck with a new idea and thus take forever to update my other stories. For this I apologize. Well, I'm trying my hand at and L/OC fic so let me know how I did since I've never done this before. I couldn't come up with a creative chapter title at all. I have no idea how long this story will be so it'll be whoever knows how long before I update again. In the meantime, read some of my other stories to pass the time while I update to appease the angry fans. I don't own Death Note. As always, please read, review, and enjoy.


The Letter L is Brought to You by…

A man stood outside of the bleak orphanage that seemed to be bleeding into the white landscape around it, the color of stone being seeped out into the snow. The bell tower struck ten, tolling long and low, almost like a chant that rose from the church services on Sundays. Everything surrounding the building seemed locked away in another time, a much older time. It was as if the tall iron gates created an impenetrable barrier around it, keeping all the secrets it held inside sealed away along with the past of its inhabitants.

Today would be the last day that the man would step foot in the orphanage again; the last time he would see the place that he had called home for almost ten years. His one bag lay on the ground at his side, collecting snow on its battered brown material.

Goodbye Wammy's house, the fifteen-year-old thought shivering against the cold, blinking as strands of his black hair fell into his eyes.

"Are you ready to go, L?" the graying man beside him asked as he stood beside a sleek car, its engine purring softly like a content cat. Flecks of white stained its perfect body only to melt from the heat of the engine radiating off it.

"Yes, Watari, I am," L replied, turning his heavy black eyes on the old man then let them shift over to the surrounding landscape. With his wore tennis shoes crunching in the settled layer of snow under his feet, L, hunched over in his usual sullen posture, he made his way over to Watari and climbed into the warm car. He remained silent, listening to the sounds of the car as Watari pulled away from the orphanage.

The world rushed by in a blur of colors, but L stared at his hands, his nails bitten to stubs as he sat crouched in the seat, hunched over like an old man. After having examined the cuticles of his fingernails thoroughly his black eyes went to the window, his tired expression staring back at him. Everything he was seeing was going to change. So he would be on a plane heading to America, going to San Francisco to help out with an unsolved murder investigation. The idea of such an odd puzzle such as the "Jack Ripper Again" case, as they called it, intrigued him a bit.

Unable to stand his feet being confined in his tight shoes, L kicked them off, letting them fall to the carpeted floor like fallen dominoes. With his feet now freed, they hung over the car seat like hooked feet of a bird as L rested his hands on his knees pulled under his chin.

L sat with his thumb between his teeth, vaguely listening to the faint sound of opera that filled the car as it sped towards the airport.


It had been a year since L had arrived in San Francisco and he had settled in, blending into the background while remaining a prominent part of the city. Only no one knew it except a select few. He had adjusted living in the city where the streets angled at 45 degrees, where the fog covered the buildings like thick cotton, and where the golden bridge seemed to glow in the morning sun thatpeered over the horizon. The city was in all peculiar, like he was; they seemed to get along fine.

On this one particular day, a day bathed in cool fog like usual, L found himself in a small library smashed in the middle of a diner and a antiques store that was perched along one of the steepest streets in San Francisco. Watari was taking care of business with the police force that they were in league with for a murder case and L wouldn't be joining him until later in the day. As usual the library was deserted except for a few people who milled about while the rest of the population hadn't even had their coffee yet.

L sat hunched over in a secluded corner of the library, pouring over books of various kinds that were arranged on the table with such neatness that it was almost OCD. He flipped the pages with two nimble fingers holding the corners, flipping the thin paper wings of the book as if it was something that would fall apart. His eyes streaked with black bags scanned over the words, absorbing them into his mind quickly. Sitting next to his chair, like small guardians, were his worn tennis shoes. The library smelled of paper and a faint hint of mildew; a smell that came with old buildings. The few people that walked by gawked at him with his weird posture and baggy clothes that made him look more like a peculiar homeless person than a sixteen-year-old. L was unaware of them and continued on with his reading.

He suddenly glanced up as the chair opposite to him was dragged out from under the table by a thin hand. L glanced up a bit, following the arm attached to the hand to the face of the hand's owner. A pair of soft hazel eyes looked back at him with a mixture of amusement and sincere friendliness, long brown curls fell around the oval face of the woman who had approached him.

"Mind if I sit here?" she asked, her voice low and smooth like wind chimes being nudged in the breeze.

"Go right a head, though I don't see why you'd want to," L replied politely, more with a mumbled than a clear sentence, but the woman seemed to have understood him. She gave a smile and slid into the seat, L watching her for a moment out of passing curiosity. Normally people didn't approach him for reasons that he didn't know so this was the first time that someone other than police had talked to him.

"So…you really seem to have a passion for reading," the woman commented, her eyes landing on the books in front of L. He paused for a moment, unsure of what to say. Having a conversation with a regular person was somewhat foreign to him since the only people he had talked to recently were Watari and detectives and they weren't exactly normal.

"What makes you say that?" he asked.

"You've got all these books out in front of you," the woman pointed out as she gestured to the books.

"Well this could just be that I'm working on an assignment for school and I could have no love for reading what so ever," L suggested without missing a beat.

"True, but if it was an essay you must have one every week because you've been coming here without fail for a whole year."

"You've been watching me?" he questioned, raising a surprised eyebrow. L knew that people often watched him, but no one had watched him for that long. "That sounds rather stalkerish, don't you think?" Those dark rimmed eyes of his stared at her with glazed suspicion.

"Stalking you?" Her eyes widened. "No, I'm just observant with things like this. Besides, when you work at a library that only get's crowded on testing days, you tend to focus in on the most peculiar thing that you can find. In this case that would be you."

"I'm…peculiar?" the teenager mumbled, staring off in thought. The comment didn't particularly offend him since he already knew that fact about himself, but hearing someone else tell him made it sound a bit…hurtful.

"Yup, but in a good kind of way," the woman smiled.

"I'm afraid I don't quite follow…" L's toes tripped over each other as they were hooked over the edge of the chair.

"Well, everything gets boring after awhile if everything and everyone is normal. When someone like you comes around, sitting like you do and having that peculiar air about you, it spices things up."

"Spices things up…?" L tested the phrase as if he was chewing on an unknown piece of food, testing to see if he liked it.

"Yup, it's a figure of speech," she explained.

"I'm aware of what it is," L informed her.

"Ok, I just wasn't sure. You seemed to be looking a bit confused."

"I was just thinking on what you said. This is my thinking face."

"You must do a lot of thinking because whenever I see you, you always look like that." With slender fingers, the woman brushed a strand of her hair behind her ear.

"I believe that it's necessary to always think for if we don't think we'll cease to be human," L told her, suddenly forgetting his reading for the moment. "We'll be like animals."

"Wow, that was really philosophical. But what about the people who think but end up acting like animals? No, animals have a thinking process, but it's governed by something else." the woman asked him, her eyes swimming with thought.

"Are you referring to murders?" he asked.

"Murders, psychopaths, terrorists, criminals, etc. They have thoughts like the rest of us, think things out, but still end up acting like monsters in the world's eyes. If they think enough to plan out their actions then what's the difference between us and them?"

"Perhaps the fact that they think that what they're doing is right. Every person is governed by reason that determines in their mind what they should do, what is right or wrong, safe or harmful. Unsatisfied with the world's reason, they go out and carry out their own reasoning. Their own reasoning is what justifies their actions; that becomes their idea of justice," L said, feeling the cogs of his brain slowly turning, the worlds of his massive knowledge bank beginning to trickle out like a stream that would turn into a waterfall once he picked up speed. That's what happened when someone threw a question at him that was in his range. He'd start saying everything about the subject that he knew, overwhelming the other person until they had drowned under his knowledge without him knowing.

"Justice…" the woman mused, sucking on the word as if it were candy. "That's one of the trickiest words there is."

"How so?"

"Well, it's like you said. People will believe what they want to believe and, if their beliefs don't match up with the world's belief, they'll take their reasoning and belief and mold that into their own idea of what is right or wrong. People form their own sense of justice from their beliefs," the woman said, her brown eyes focused with seriousness that resembled L's own eyes. Then she blinked, eliminating all traces of her concentrating look. "Sorry, I didn't mean to bore you with my rambling about justice and stuff. I'm sure a kid like you finds it boring." She gave a small laugh.

"I'm not a kid. I'm sixteen," L huffed lightly.

"Well according to law that's still considered juvenile."

"You look about the same age as I do so should you really be talking?"

"I'm eighteen; I'm legally an adult," the woman smiled brightly.

"You're only two years older than I am so that hardly qualifies you as an adult."

"Say what you want but at the end of the day, I can leave home legally and you can't."

Leave home? I pretty much go wherever I want anyway. How did we even get on this subject? L thought, staring at the woman with disinterest, suddenly finding her a tad bit annoying.

"Hey! Natalia! Get back to work! You aren't paid to make small talk with people," a loud voice suddenly came, cutting through the silence of the library like a gunshot. Several people turned to the girl behind the book counter as she stared in L's direction.

"Looks like I've been found," Natalia sighed as she stood up from the table. L realized that she had been wearing a black apron like the rest of the librarians. "I'll talk to you later." She flashed him a small before she disappeared around the shelves filled to the brim with dusty books. "You really shouldn't yell in a library, Ally. Haven't you heard that silence is golden?" L heard her say.

"Yeah, and duck tape is silver and that's what I need you to help me find," Ally retorted and the girl's voices faded into silence.

"What a weird girl…" L sighed as he continued with his reading, thinking that he and Natalia would never cross paths again.


It didn't turn out that way. The next day, as if she had a radar built into her, Natalia found L crouched in his seat in the back corner of the library. He was focused again at what was laid out in front of him. This time it was thick files snuggled into manila folders rather than books. L was so absorbed with the files that he didn't notice that Natalia had taken her seat across from him until he suddenly looked over the top of the piece of paper he held delicately behind his fingers.

They stared at each other for a moment, each with different expressions written on their faces. Natalia wore a bemused smile on her lips, her eyes shining; L hung a blank look on his face, his hooded eyes half-closed.

"Yes? May I help you, Ms. Librarian?" he asked.

"I was just watching you. This time you've got what look like to be important files of some sort," Natalia replied, her head in her hands as she propped her elbows on the table.

"You do realize that when a person says 'I'm watching you' it usually isn't taken well. Are you stalking me?" L said as he set down the form down carefully.

"You've asked me this before. I'm not stalking you."

"It feels like you're stalking me," L sighed.

"Well I'm not!" she protested.

"If you were I might have to report it to the police since stalking is a crime," he informed her matter-of-factly.

"I'm not stalking you. Scout's honor," Natalia assured him as she held up three fingers together.

"You're not a boy scout," L told her.

"So? It's still honor whether you be a man or a woman." Natalia let her hand drop onto the table.

"You're a strange woman…" His eyes dropped back to his papers.

"So did you finish your essay?" Natalia asked him suddenly, brushing aside his strange woman comment.

"Pardon?" L lifted his heavy eyes back to Natalia, trying to follow her

"You said you were doing all that reading because you had an essay. What are you doing now?" Natalia went on.

"Again you ask me questions about my life. I don't even know you, yet you pester me incisively," L told her, hoping she'd pick up on the slight annoyance in his voice that lingered like oil on water. "I don't know your name even."

"We know each other; we met yesterday. I'm sure you heard my name from the other girl shouting at me yesterday," Natalia said, her eyes on his pale face.

"She wasn't exactly quiet," L mused.

"Got that right. I never cease to wonder why she works in a library, which is the epitome of silence. Well, my name's Natalia. Natalia Blake," the librarian introduced herself.

"Pleasure to meet you…" L replied. Natalia stared at him, as if waiting for something. "Yes?" he asked reading her anticipating look.

"This is the part of the conversation where you say your name," Natalia said.

"…I am L," he told her.

Natalia raised an eyebrow questioningly. "L?"

"Yes."

"As in the L that comes after K and before M?"

"Yes. Is there a problem?"

"It's just L?" Natalia inquired.

"Yes, just L," L answered, switching into the questioning mode that he used often when conduction investigations.

"Really?"

"Really."

"Are you positive?"

"Why would I not be sure of my own name?" L asked her, growing tired of the pointless questions.

"Dunno, it's a possibility," Natalia said, her face concentrating with thought. "Are you sure the L doesn't stand for something? L by itself sounds like a code name or an alias."

L paused, knowing that she had guessed it on the nose. He was never supposed to reveal his real name; it had been what he had been taught at Wammy's. The name L shielded him from those who wanted to harm him because of what he did; it was the main thing that kept him hidden. "It's just L."

"I don't believe you," Natalia sighed, leaning foreword on the table.

"I'm not lying to you, I have no need to." It wasn't a complete lie; there was no such thing as a complete lie. He had learned that behind every truth there was a lie and every lie a truth. It all depended on how much information you let slip.

"Louis!" she suddenly said, catching him off guard.

"Excuse me?" Now it was his turn to raise his eyebrows with question.

"That's what L stands for!" Natalia exclaimed, looking at him, waiting for him to cave and give his real name.

"No…L just stands for L," L told her, straightening out his hunched frame a bit.

"It can't. You're parents didn't name you L. They couldn't have."

"What if my parents didn't name me that?" L's toes fiddled together like nervous fingers.

"You named yourself?" She tilted her head to the side curiously.

"That's one way of putting it…" There was no way that he could say that L was the name given to the greatest minds at Whammy's house.

"I swear on…" Natalia looked around and slammed her hand down on the closed file in front of L, "this folder that I will find out your real name!" she proclaimed loudly that heads turned, giving her disapproving stares. L shifted in the chair a bit, his back pressed against the chair in an attempt to put more distance between himself and the spontaneous librarian.

"I suggest that you give on such a ludicrous oath," he told her, staring at her with his black eyes. "There are thousands of names that begin with the letter L in the world and you won't have enough time to go through them all. Besides, like I told you, my name is L. Just L. Nothing more."

"I will find out your real name! I won't stop until I do!"

"Natalia!" came a booming voice that ripped through the quiet like a gunshot. "This is a library! What part of being quiet do you not get? What part of working don't you get either?" Natalia stiffened, her face going white as she heard the familiar footsteps of Ally coming towards them.

"Like you're one to talk," she muttered and quickly jumped out of her chair, making a beeline for the opposite bookshelf to hide. She suddenly stopped, did a U-turn and marched back to L. "I gotta run, but if you want to meet up afterwards meet me here." Natalia pulled out a pencil and scribbled down a name on the manila folder's blank cover. "I'll treat you to something nice." With that she disappeared in a flash of brown hair as Ally stormed into the corner where L sat, perplexed.

"She's gone?" Ally groaned, her hands balling into angry fists, her voice still raised. "Did you…" she turned to L then trailed off uncertainly as she took in his dingy, homeless looking appearance. "Never mind…" Ally muttered and walked off, her blue eyes scouring for traces of Natalia.

Once she had left, the thick silence of the library settled down again, like a blanket being dropped over the place. L let out a sigh, chewing on the tip of this thumb as he turned back to his work. But no matter how hard he tried to focus on his files, he couldn't stop thinking about how weird Natalia Blake had been, and her loud-mouthed friend. Her determined oath to figure out his name bothered him a bit; no one had taken such an interest in his name before.

"What a strange woman…" he mumbled to himself.