Chapter 1: Death Cocktail
A/N: New story! Can't believe I'm posting this about three months after I started writing it. It's going to be long, as in more than ten chapters, that is… if I ever get around to writing it.
There are actually no apples in this story. I do not own Death Note.
Warnings: female-Beyond, female-Light (already major WTF factor, oh dear)
First chapter is… too prosy, I think. Not hugely gripping. In fact, this whole story is kind of an exercise in different forms of writing. So you get to read the mangled results! Well… no use putting it off now; here we go.
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Black hair black eyes, black hair red eyes; it was inconceivable that their net output would be white hair black eyes. This was, of course, before anyone knew anything about carriers of recessive genes. Even the royal physician couldn't explain the phenomenon. With time, however, it was plain that any unusual physical features were the least of the child's anomalies.
Near didn't speak until he was five; his first words were to Beyond: "Mother, would you like a strawberry?"
The red fruit splotched against his white fingers, making Beyond and Lawliet, shudder. They lived in a land where the people's fears were still ruled by rampant fevers and whispers of the undead, where defiling red on pure white was death incarnate.
And if Near's complexion were not enough to freeze blood, the clothes he insisted on wearing (insisted is not passive enough; rather, he wriggled out of anything else they tried to put on him) were blanched beyond any possibility of hue. He said his eyes hurt from bright colors.
He had disliked sunlight since infancy and didn't set foot outside the palace until he was seven, and then only in the wee hours of the morning the day after his birthday. His nurse had sworn she'd put him to bed that evening and fallen asleep on the night watch (Near had mild sleep apnea), but Beyond found him the next morning curled up in a circle of dewy azalea. For a moment she wondered why the mischievous sprites hadn't danced right out of A Midsummer Night's Dream and raised up a fairy ring around him in the night, but then she reminded herself that this was her son, that he was unusual and unique and everything else that flustered parents substituted for 'freak' when lovingly describing their children. He was magical enough without the courtesy of Shakespeare's impish creatures.
As to why he had gotten out there, Beyond remembered the bouquet she had placed in Near's room the morning of his birthday, pastel colors of forget-me-nots and pale carnations to spruce up the tomb-like room. Perhaps he was not completely averse to color and life, she thought as she watched her son wading through bushes half his height, trowel and pliers in hand, the gleam of pure content in his eyes, eyes that saw everything.
Near's greatest joy in life lay in observing his rows upon rows of perfectly laid out flowers, watching them grow to maturity because he had provided them with what they needed. However, he knew also that flowers withered and died, that life could not last forever, that the world tended to ever-increasing chaos, and that he was not exempt from the disorder.
Therefore, it came as no surprise to him when Beyond succumbed to an asthma attack one day and stopped breathing for too long. Near was twelve. He and Lawliet had been conveniently away from the palace that day. They had returned to a shambles, which Lawliet plunged into to sort out with his typical ministerial efficacy, but amid the chaos, he might have missed the very convincing display of grief Beyond's newest, brown-eyed chambermaid was putting on. A little too convincing, truth be told; the two months she'd spent in service didn't seem long enough to form a massive emotional attachment. Near saw it all, of course, saw the wavy brown tresses slipping around corners of the labyrinthine palace, bobbing out a back exit and disappearing.
At some point, reality caught up with the pale boy, and paler tears watered the black rose in a vase by his bed. A real black rose, the result of cross-pollinating several generations of the darkest blue specimens he could find, and with what intent in mind? Likely not to commemorate the passing of his mother; no more likely to celebrate another, still less savory event.
A king should never be without a queen. Light was the exquisite wife of Lawliet's late younger brother, whom spontaneous heart failure had taken early from this world. He had actually taken his leave a few months prior to Beyond, leaving Light alone with her son from (dare we surmise?) her first marriage to yet another nameless nobleman. Her son's name was Mello.
We are still operating in that day and age where it was right and proper, and indeed, a moral obligation for a man to take his brother's wife for his own following her bereavement, because a solitary woman is the devil's snare, for her own soul and for others'. God forbid that Lawliet should abandon Light due to mere sentiment for his wife now in heaven. Life, after all, is for the living.
And so Near crouched in the little garden shed that still smelled like strawberries and honey after two years, waiting for the wedding ceremony to begin so that he could escape back to his rooms without being noticed. Snow fell, and he wouldn't have to work hard to blend in, but he didn't fancy his chances freezing outside. Perhaps whoever had seen to it that Beyond and Lawliet's brother both died conveniently (because there had to have been someone; these things didn't happen by chance) would look after his disposal as well, but he wasn't about to take any active measures himself.
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Likely the only honest words that had ever come out of Light's mouth were these ones to Mello: "I love you."
That is, if you defined "love" using Light's dictionary and not the ordinary definition that didn't involve serial murder, fraud, and infidelity. The things Light did for her so-called love…
Mello was two years older than Near, yet he didn't know his mother's plans for him as she bundled him off onto what she called a "grand tour" of the land the day after the wedding. He would be traveling through all the provinces, meeting local petty nobles that probably didn't hold a candle to his natural graces, but had to be charmed and cajoled anyhow, all in the name of the new royal game, diplomacy. It was the sort a task the crown prince would be expected to take under his wing when the time came, barring one fact: Mello was not the crown prince.
He was, however, fourteen years old and quite excited to be spending a year in the equivalent of a modern day study abroad program. Light waited until the train of his delegation had faded beyond the horizon before turning to her own business at home. Her agenda:
Get Lawliet eating out of her hand by the time Mello returned.
Get the rest of the nobility to follow suit.
Figure out what to do about that white rat of Lawliet's, what was his unnatural name? Neil or something?
A/N: So how was it? Not too terribly sleep-inducing, I hope. Confusing, maybe? Reveals will come in later chapters. Anyways, review please, dears!
