A/N: This is when you know your life has reached a new low: I'm writing an alternative universe fanfiction based on my own fanfiction Turmoil. I don't think you need to read it to comprehend this story, but I think it probably ha a better plot (I spent five year formulating it, rather than one night of deciding I felt motivated to write nly Death Note fanfiction).

Disclaimer: I would mention that I would not be writing Death Note fanfiction if I owned the rights to Death Note, however, sinc writing an AU fanfic, I would, indeed, write fanfiction to my own copyrighted work.

Melancholy

Chapter 1: The Darkness That Plagues Him

In 1989 the World Health Organization released a report detailing the prevalence of self injury in Europe. A few years later, crouching over a clunky computer, top of the line then, navigating an archaic version of the internet, he remembers reading the information, but now, nearly a decade past, the information that caught his attention then, and floats to the forefront of his mind now, stated: the highest percentage of males who engaged in self injurious behavior were between the age of 12 and 34. He remembers his lips curled up in a grin; the same grin plasters his face now. Statistic. He reminds himself he is a statistic.

He started when he was twelve.

He prefers razor blades. Specifically the tiny blades torn from cheap plastic pencil sharpeners most kids carried around in primary school. Not that L ever attended primary school. He substituted public education for individualized tutoring, excelling through the equivalent of a university degree by age fourteen; he substituted parental affection after the accident with small nicks on his ankles, loved by the thick metal digging into thin skin. The skin peeled back; red beaded along the ridges of his ankles, and the melancholy dripped away.

L realizes his lips are still quirked upwards. His cheeks begin to hurt, and any humor he felt fades in the blackness he has suffocated under since mid June. He gazes at the computer screen: he is attached to Light Yagami by a chain of slightly less than six feet. "I'm actually depressed," he explained to Light a week and two days after the boy's release, but the admission did nothing to help alleviate the swirling of emotions festering just under the skin of his ankles. Nor did their physical argument, Light with fists and L with his feet, as L bounced around theories behind his sulky mood, and Light countered in justification of himself and those he considered innocent volunteers.

Although his face reveals no active emotion as he looks into the monitor, Light stares at him. In his musings, he almost forgets about his presence. "Does Light-kun require something?" He stirs his tea with the biscuit end of a pocky stick. L nods at Light's resolute head shake, even as his mind slips backwards in time. He knows what will motivate him, even if the respite is short lived, fleeting. Watari comprehends; he requested L's company. L glimpses at Light from the corner of his eye, a motion so subtle, the boy is unaware of the detective's gaze boring into him. With the chain affixing the two together, L is unable to formulate a reason meticulous enough to convince Light he requires more than the time allotted to shower separated from him.

L in truth does not want to subject himself to Watari's gaze, the solitary person able to deduce his thoughts. Watari would be disappointed to recognize where L's deliberations have drifted. It's been four years since Watari noticed the inflamed red lines circling his ankles. "This needs to end," Watari stated, a tone ringing with finality, and it did end. Eventually. After months of cat and mouse secretive cutting, L quit turning to little scraps of metal for comfort. As he kneels in front of the large computer monitor attached to an equally small modern tower and sips at his overly sweetened tea, L's preoccupied with the next instance he can lead Light to the toilet without rousing suspicion.

After precisely two hours and fourteen minutes, and an interchangeable variable of seconds, L summons Light, leading the boy out of the main control room, away from his father and the task force. Light questions him as they walk to their, his, destination, and L replies, not giving the inquiries much contemplation. He slips into toilet slippers: he was raised in a British environment, but he is able to adapt to conflicting cultural norms. He had issued a two minute allotment for privacy sakes, and he followed his set protocols.

L closes the door, sinking to his familiar arrangement on the carpeted floor. This won't necessitate an elevated cognition level; it's simply easier to reach his ankles.

The blade slices through his flesh with ease. This isn't the first time he has done this since July; this isn't the first time he has done this whilst chained to Light. He drags the blade with thumb and forefinger against the skin above his ankle precisely, aware the blade's length is less than the distance from the edge of his thumb and the first joint. Between years of hunching over, putting strain on his calves and ankles, and the quiet desperation that urges him on, he doesn't flinch as he presses into his skin.

He has a minute left. The cut is deep, aching, and the skin splits open. The edges sag away from each other forming an elongated oval. He presses toilet roll to the cut, absently yearning for the comparative tranquility of memorizing trickles of blood, and allows twenty seconds to halt the flow, before standing and flushing the toilet. His jeans are long, bunching at the tops of his feet, and thick, and he trusts them to camouflage his secret yet again as he had for years. He rinses his hands in pretense and exits the toilet, darkness reigned to a small niche of his psyche.

Light raises his eyebrows, and L regards him with a tiny smile. He steps out of the toilet slippers, detecting belatedly the minute crimson splatter on the off white fabric, or the steady drip of red snaking down his feet, an perceptible indication. When he jerks his head up to meet Light's eyes, he recognizes the intent look, not of astonishment but, verification, as Light's intelligence places the truisms he acquired into an equation, and the answer calculates it's self. L gulps at caustic bile gathering at the back of his mouth.

...

A/N: The information about WHO is from wikipedia. It was what inspired this whole fanfiction.