Misery Loves Company
I wrote this fic to make up for and apologize (to both myself, and to my wonderful readers) for the absolute OOC and writing DISASTER that was The Art of Dying Alone, which is so hideously disastrous that I verily think I was drunk while writing it. This isn't my usual style of writing (I wanted to try something different), and I'd love to know how it turned out!
Note: This takes place in the movie universe, where L has 23 days left to live.
{If you are terrified of your own death,
and want to escape from it,
you may want to write a poem…}
L had made a mistake.
Getting Watari killed had never been part of the plan. It hadn't affected him too much, at first—his mind had been much too busy focusing on catching Light, catching Kira. He had been caught up in the moment—they all had been—and then it was over, just like that. Kira was dead, Misa was suicidal, Soichiro had lost his son, the case was solved. Done. Over with.
And L had less than a month to live, and the passing days were not taking their time.
Now, sitting alone in the big, empty headquarters building, everything was all beginning to sink in. Watari's death, his own. Everything.
He sat in his chair, staring tiredly at the monitor. His cake was ignored—he wasn't really in the mood to eat anything. It was quite early in the morning—almost one-thirty or so—which is why it was quite unexpected when none other than Matsuda wandered through the door, appearing rather strung out.
"Hey, Ru'zaki," Matsuda slurred, walking with a sway in his step and plopping down onto the chair next to L.
L stared at him. "Matsuda-san," he started, slowly, "what are you doing here, and why are you heavily intoxicated?"
Though it wasn't as if the answer wasn't obvious.
"Dunno; thought I'd jus' show up n' help you." He lolled his head back so that it was hanging over the back of the chair.
L blinked, and then exhaled. "I have work to do. I ask that you please go somewhere else."
"Oh, right."
Rather than getting up and leaving, however, Matsuda proceeded to promptly pass out. L stared at him in slight irritation for a few more moments, and then sighed and continued with his work.
Matsuda woke up sometime in the early afternoon with a major kink in his neck and a massive headache. He was still sitting on the computer chair, but it took him a few minutes to piece together where he was and how he had gotten there. L was nowhere to be found.
Though his entire body protested, he forced himself to stand up and go to find the other man.
L was in the kitchen, pouring some tea into a cup full of sugar. He noticed Matsuda immediately, but gave him only a short look before going back to what he was doing. Matsuda stood awkwardly in the doorway, unsure of what to say. Had be done anything awkward last night? Did he say anything especially strange?
He hoped not. How humiliating that would have been.
L, tea in hand and slouched over almost to the point of being bent in half, slowly walked past Matsuda and said quietly, "You are free to leave at any time."
Obviously, L wanted him gone. But why? He was dying—why wouldn't he want any company?
L's decision sounded terribly lonely to Matsuda. He didn't like the idea at all.
"D-don't you want some company?" he tried, timidly. Even as the words left his mouth, though, Matsuda had a feeling that L knew that it was Matsuda, rather, who was the one seeking companionship. Light being Kira had hit him very hard, he being the only one who had believed in Light's innocence up until the very end. The boy's death had left the cop feeling traumatized and depressed, and was reaching out to any form of comfort, including alcohol.
Matsuda lived alone, and he was desperate to be around people who knew what he was going through, and were even going through the same things. Soichiro was having a hard time enough without having to worry about Matsuda's problems, Aizawa was spending all of his time with his family, and Mogi wasn't one to want to talk, so Ryuzaki was his last option for some sort of support. He could tell that L was also suffering.
"I'd prefer to be alone, Matsuda."
Discouraged but not giving up yet, Matsuda continued, "Please? I…I won't stay for very long. Just a few days, really. I won't bother you or anything. Just please let me stay." He really was desperate.
After what felt like a very long amount of time but couldn't have been more than a few seconds, L finally sighed and mumbled, "A few days, and no more."
{…for the poem might carry your name
into eternity}
L worked for most of the day, stopping only twice in the late afternoon and evening, both times to make himself some more tea. Matsuda just sat on the couch and watched him as he worked, fairly certain that, were it not for all of the caffeine he was drinking, L would have been dead asleep by 7:30, at the latest. The bags under his eyes were darker than ever. Matsuda didn't say a word, opting instead to observe in silence.
The pain was bad enough later that night for Matsuda to again be driven to using the bottle as a solution, but L, in that standard, offhanded manner of his, frowned, took the bottle from the older man, said that he absolutely hates being around people who are drunk, and offered him tea instead.
Matsuda slept fitfully on the couch only a few yards from where L sat working, having come to the surprising realization that he could no longer be alone for even the shortest of times without trembling and sweating and being thrown into a near panic attack. Matsuda wondered when that had all started, and hoped that it wouldn't last long because he would have to go back to living alone once L was dead.
L still hadn't slept since Matsuda had been there, and Matsuda was beginning to wonder how long it was even possible for a person to go without sleep. At times L seemed like a machine, always going and going and seeming to never need to stop, fueled by cake and tea and sugar and nothing more.
But then Matsuda occasionally would see emotion lurking behind L's eyes—pain, weariness, frustration—and would remember once again that even L is human.
{the poem
may become immortal}
Matsuda doesn't talk to L about dying until one day he does, one day when he's tired of watching L keep going and going without stop and in desperate need of another reminder about L's humanity.
"Do you really want to waste your last weeks of life doing work, Ryuzaki?" Matsuda said, sitting in the computer chair next to him.
L looked up, acknowledging Matsuda for the first time in hours, and replied, "The time is not being wasted. I am solving cases."
"But, don't you want to spend some time doing something for yourself? I mean, you don't have much time left…"
Matsuda wasn't quite sure how, but L suddenly seemed to become very, very cold. "I am being much more productive working on my casework than I ever would be enjoying myself. This is who I am. This is what I do."
Matsuda dared to question it. "Why does it have to be that way?"
Matsuda bit his lip, wondering if he had crossed some sort of line, but L didn't say any more after that, apparently deciding it better to give Matsuda the cold shoulder.
Matsuda sort of understood. L was too busy worrying about all of these other people's lives to actually have a chance to live himself. Sometimes, the older man didn't find L's logic very smart at all.
{beyond flesh
and fashion}
L slept on the third—or fourth night (Matsuda wasn't really keeping track of the days). He slept in his chair—the big cushy one next to the couch, not his computer chair. Matsuda had woken up sometime in the middle of the night (he found it almost impossible to sleep through the night, lately) and had found him like that.
The expression on L's face was far from peaceful. His eyebrows were furrowed, and a deep frown was set on his face—the emotionless façade he so often wore had fallen away in his sleep, exposing the small, long-suffering side of him that was human.
Matsuda watched him as he slept, taking comfort in the fact that he wasn't the only one struggling, the only one in pain.
Matsuda wasn't sure how long he had been watching L sleep when L's eyes suddenly snapped open, pupils dilated and shifting about the room sporadically, trying at once to steady his quivering breathing.
Matsuda understood, then. He wasn't the only one being tormented by nightmares, by flashbacks. L was undergoing the same thing. Matsuda understood.
Without a word, Matsuda went to L, hesitant and unsure, and put a light hand on the detective's shoulder. He knew he was most surely out-stepping his boundaries, but this time, Matsuda didn't care, because he understood.
L looked as if he was starting to say something, but Matsuda averted his eyes and L was quiet.
{it may be read
in a thousand years by someone
as frightened of death as you are}
"I don't want to die," L said aloud, in the middle of a particularly long silence one day. Matsuda looked up at him from his turkey sandwich, eyes particularly widened.
"Well…I wouldn't imagine you would," Matsuda deliberated, unsure how, exactly, to respond to such a statement.
L didn't wait for a better response before he went on. "I…I am afraid to die."
L's eyes rested upon Matsuda with a certain intensity that made him feel uncomfortable, though at the same time shocked that Ryuzaki would admit such a thing—and to him, of all people.
Matsuda didn't have anything to say to that. Of course L was afraid to die—Matsuda had known that all along; he had thought that it was just an obvious, unspoken fact between the two of them.
L was shaking, Matsuda realized, and he didn't think there was anything he could do that would really help at all. But, he could try.
"What're you going to do?" Matsuda asked, the only thing he could think to say.
There was another pause before L spoke, and he clutched his knees tighter. "I don't know," he admitted, "I don't know."
{in a dark field, at night}
By now, Matsuda had been staying in headquarters for much longer than only a couple of days, and neither man spoke a word about it. Matsuda had grown dependent on Ryuzaki's company (though he knew how incredibly bad it was to get attached to a dying man), and Ryuzaki was going along with it without mention.
Maybe, Matsuda liked to think, just maybe, L turned out to be more human than he himself thought he was.
Watching L work one day, Matsuda wondered what, exactly, the two of them had. They weren't exactly friends, and they certainly were not lovers, but they were by this point beyond colleagues, as well. They weren't companions—L didn't need a companion; it was Matsuda who clung to his company like a drowning man clings to floating driftwood.
Matsuda wondered if he would ever know, and then wondered if it really mattered.
{when he has failed once again at love}
L kisses him, just once.
It wasn't any sort of a romantic kiss, and, though it was on the lips, it wasn't for long and it lacked passion. If Matsuda had to describe it in one word, he would have to say that the kiss felt sad, and nothing more, though L's expression remained utterly blank.
It had come on so suddenly that Matsuda didn't even have a chance to kiss back, and he thought maybe that was probably for the best.
Matsuda doubted he would ever truly understand what L's full intentions were that afternoon, but somehow, the kiss had seemed appropriate.
"Do you think I'm an idiot?" Matsuda asked one evening, unexpectedly. Even he himself wasn't sure where the question had come from—he had just been thinking aloud.
L was mercilessly biting his thumbnail, not bothering to stop the action as he promptly answered with a simple, "No."
"But, you always say, 'Matsuda, you—'"
"Impulsive," L cut him off, staring at the ceiling, "yes. Excitable and naïve, yes. But an idiot? No, I don't believe so."
"Then why do you always call me one?"
L let out a soft sigh, possibly one of annoyance. "Because you have a tendency to act like one. However, acting like something and actually being something are two completely different things. So no, you aren't an idiot. You're just a bit slow at times."
{and there is no illusion with which to escape
the inward pull of his own flesh}
L was running fairly short on time, and both detective and police officer knew it. Neither of them did anything to acknowledge it, however, until Matsuda came back from the kitchen one day to find L sitting on the couch with his face buried in his knees and his arms covering his head.
Matsuda sat down right away next to him, only to hear L choke out in a cracked voice, "Leave me alone."
Matsuda was fairly sure that it wouldn't be right to just leave the younger man in such a condition, so instead of leaving he rested his head on top of L's covered shoulder, put an arm around him, and held him. L stiffened at the contact and curled in on himself even further, but he made no other attempts to deter the man. It was quite possible that he didn't trust his voice enough to say anything more, but, just maybe, even L needed comfort sometimes, too.
Whatever the reason, they stayed in that position for a long time, L shaking lightly, hiding his face, and Matsuda with his arm curled around him tight, both maybe finding differing forms of comfort in each other, and it was in that moment that Matsuda realized that he was fully prepared to see L's life through to the end.
{against the narrowing margins of the spirit.}
L had less than an hour left to live, and he made a serious request to Matsuda to let him be alone in his final stretch of life. Matsuda agreed, though reluctantly, and worried about his anxiety possibly rising when he left.
The reality of what was about to happen hadn't completely sunk in for Matsuda yet, though it had long ago for L.
As he drove away from headquarters, Matsuda just felt numb.
L died late that afternoon.
Matsuda would have never imagined just how much L's passing would affect him. He hadn't even been all that close to the man, even with all of those weeks alone he spent with him.
Nevertheless, Matsuda couldn't seem to stop crying, and nor would his anxiety let up enough for him to stop trembling and sweating all over.
In his apartment, he flung himself over to where he kept the alcohol and drank and drank and drank until he passed out on the floor.
People must have been worried about him when he hadn't been answering his phone for days, because a few days after L's death, a worried Aizawa showed up at the door to his apartment and found Matsuda sprawled out on his couch, holding some type of alcoholic drink (Matsuda wasn't anymore sure, exactly, what it was).
Matsuda didn't really remember much about it, but apparently Aizawa was so concerned about his health that he had taken him to live with him and his family for a few days. Matsuda drank most of the time he was there, but at least his shaking had ceased.
Matsuda wasn't really sure why Aizawa let him go back home, but he had a feeling that it had something to do with Aizawa's wife not wanting their children exposed to his alcohol abuse.
Matsuda didn't know why he was so sad, but he didn't actually care. All he knew was that he was a mess.
Matsuda remembered how L had said that he hated being around people when they were drunk, which made Matsuda feel even worse.
He finally regained some sort of a hold over himself when he found one evening a teacup in the back of his cupboard. He suddenly felt a little bit ridiculous; he had fallen so far, for a reason he didn't even understand. He had done what he had set out to do—he had been at least somewhat useful to L—or, at least, he was pretty sure he was.
It was about time he got on with his life—not forgetting, but moving on. He could help more people, that way.
Resolutely, Matsuda put down the alcoholic drink and made himself a warm cup of tea and sugar.
But if you have accepted your own death,
if you have pinched daily the corroborating flesh,
and have passed the infinite gravestones
bearing your name, if you know for certain
that the day will one day come
when you will gaze into the mirror in search of your face
and find only a silence, then
you may want to make a child, you may want to push
the small oracles of flesh forward
into some merely finite but lengthening story,
you may want to toss your seed into the wind
like a marigold, or a passion fruit, and watch
as a fresh flower grows in your place, as your face
inches onto another face, and your eyes
slip down over your cheeks onto the forehead
of your silenced, speakable future.
Wow, I wrote all of that in one sitting. Go me! The poem (the words in italics) is called "The Difference Between A Child And A Poem", and it's by Michael Blumenthal.
Wow, this was really angsty. I don't really know what my intention was with this fic—the idea for it was incredibly spur-of-the-moment—but I kind of like it. Reviewing gives you good karma, and makes me unbelievably happy! It's a win-win situation, guys. Trust me. =]
Thank you very much for reading!
~Ratt Kazamata, 4/27/2012