Author's Note: One Shot. Wammy's era. Characters are L, Mello, Matt and Near. The latter's POV.

Written while listening to "Shape of Things to Come" by Audioslave, and that's where I pilfered the title from.

I'm finally back with some Death Note stuff! Enjoy :-)

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Shape of Things to Come

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Feigning sleep, I listened to the soft footsteps on the corridor, to the handle being brought down, to the door swinging open and our late-night visitor lightly stepping into the room. In swept the smell of freshly-painted walls, promptly revealing the reason for my lodging here tonight. Half of Wammy's residents had sought asylum in one of the rooms inhabited by the other half. Thankfully, Mello was so shaken by today's other news that he didn't even bother to revolt against me staying in his and Matt's room.

Our mentor probably wasn't unhappy to find all three of us in the same spot tonight. I had anticipated him to come see us. He had done this kind of late night trip once before, after news of A's death had reached him – silently wondering where he might have gone wrong, reassuring himself that we at least were safe and sound, hoping perhaps that our mere presence would help him rid himself of his anguish. So he did now. Unsurprisingly, he first turned to me on my makeshift bed.

I knew what I looked like: various shades of white. Tousled hair and rumpled pyjamas, sleeping on my stomach, face half-buried in the pillow. A couple of cool, slender fingers smoothed back the hair from my forehead. His lips touched my temple. For a few seconds, the faint smell of cinnamon and green grapes surrounded me. When it was gone, I knew he had stepped away from me and opened my eyes. I watched quietly, without changing the rhythm of my breathing. Only my gaze moved through the half-lit room. Three o'clock in the morning, I estimated. Matt's alarm clock faced away from me.

Its owner was lying on his back, one hand next to his face on the pillow, goggles shoved into his hair. Very carefully, L snatched them from him and placed them on the nightstand. Matt slept on, even when L kissed his forehead. I'd always rolled my eyes at the theory that people's way of sleeping reveals their true character, but if so Matt was a pretty confident person under all his self-sufficiency.

L turned towards the upper bed. I couldn't see Mello up there, but I knew how he slept: on his side, always. He wasn't even able to fall asleep otherwise. I narrowed my eyes when L raised his hand. He should know that Mello would wake up from even the lightest touch – and stay awake. No drowsiness whatsoever. It was a gift-curse of his. You could throw him out of bed at any ungodly hour possible and he'd be wide awake in an instant. Quite contrary to Matt and myself who – supposing I fell asleep at all – would stumble around like zombies for a while after waking-up.

I watched L extract an open paperback assumingly from Mello's hand. I knew what it was. Umibe no Kafuka by Haruki Murakami. Recent events had led us all to polish our Japanese. The book's owner promptly rose from his slumber. "Is it true?" he asked at once, and now I was able to see him. He had propped himself on one elbow, silky hair falling around his face, on his shoulder. "That B's dead?"

L gave the current page a dog-ear, closed the book and nodded.

"And that Kira did it?" Wammy's kids have learned to take everything they see and hear on the news with a grain of salt. But L confirmed it with a slight bent of his head. There was small pause during which our mentor gnawed at his thumb and Mello stared off into the dimness of the room, eye-lids on half-mast.

It was natural for Mello to be affected, I thought. He had been B's roommate after all when he first came to Wammy's. I halfway expected him to say something about the dead man, but when he spoke it seemed he had other things on his mind. "I think it's stupid that they show stuff like that on the news."

"Kira?" For the first time in many months I heard L's voice.

"That too. But I meant the Los Angeles case. They went in all the details. What the crime scenes looked like and which body parts were missing from whom and how he must have done it… just about all that. It's bound to give people ideas. I mean, every sadist whack-job in the neighbourhood was probably watching and thought: Bugger, why didn't I think of that?"

In the dark, I dropped my gaze. That was something I had thought about as well. While I didn't put a lot of trust into statistics, it seemed plausible to me that not the crime rate was going up but the coverage.

Kira, too, was most probably watching a lot of crime reports, I couldn't help thinking. We still had no idea how he did it and I was pretty sure that L hadn't much of one either at this point. But it seemed perfectly clear where he got his victims from. Maybe he had watched too much crime reports to begin with and someday it all just went over his head…

"What do you suggest?" L wanted to know, "reports of murder cases to be banned from coverage? But then shouldn't the same be done to movies that feature brutal scenes and," he tilted his head towards the lower bed where our number three was slumbering peacefully, "violent videogames?"

"Look, I'm just speculating about how it happened", Mello pointed out. "Kira's motives are pretty obvious after all. He has this power and uses it against what troubles him most. So it can be assumed that he sat in front of the TV a little bit too much, watched all those crime reports, looked at all the blood and the misery and one day just snapped."

Typical. I think it and Mello says it.

It was an unnerving idea: the two of us sitting in front of the same TV, getting the same information, instantly drawing the same conclusions – and never talking about it to each other. Never once.

"And what kind of person is likely to do such a thing?"

I could see Mello smirk in the half-light and knew my own face mirrored the expression. "I guess you expect me to say: a young one?"

"My word of choice would be immature." I heard the smile in L's voice.

"A student, then. And most probably male."

"I agree. It's unlikely that a girl or a woman would entertain delusions of grandeur or ever fancy herself as a god-like figure handing out righteous punishment to the wicked."

It took all my self-control not to snort into my pillow, thinking of Linda and how she had to poke her nose into everybody's business in order to enforce her will under the pretence of helping. And they regard me as worldly innocent.

Mello had other things to criticize, though. "Don't joke at that", he said darkly, "I've heard people call him god-like. Even in church."

"What do you think?"

Mello turned his head to the small crucifix that hang over the door. "There's only one God", he replied with the almost sinister conviction he sometimes displayed when his religious beliefs were challenged. "And I somehow doubt He employs henchmen."

"No," L agreed quietly. "I don't think that is role Kira would see himself fit for, either. I wonder – is his assumed god-like status a justification for his murders or was he led to believe in his godliness when he discovered his abilities."

"Does one automatically exclude the other?" Mello asked. "He probably feels he's making a sacrifice. I mean, he's a psycho… but… no one just fights against something." When our mentor remained silent, he added: "Take yourself for example."

L looked up at him.

"You're not doing what you're doing in order to prove to somebody that you can. You have a vision. That's what made you different from B after all."

I had known we would get back to that. It had hardly ever happened that I had seen L in a moment of weakness. But it made sense for him to go to Mello in the middle of the night, wake him up and however tentatively pour his heart out.

I didn't blame him. I understood. Now I was the most likely to succeed him, but it was Mello he loved the most. I was too similar to him. He didn't see much loveable in himself, so he couldn't see it in me either. Mello on the other hand was an anathema to both of us. Spirited, mercurial – an embodiment of life and the joy of it.

Remarkably, Mello didn't mind being used in this way. On the contrary, he even spared our mentor from having to actually spill the beans. Mello gave the cues himself instead.

"Any suggestions how I go about it from here?" L whispered.

Instead of an answer, black-clad arms suddenly came around L's neck. "You could start by saying you'll be here for my birthday. And since it's eleven months away, you could just as well promise that you'll have caught Kira by then."

I watched them, eyes narrowed.

"Promise?" Mello asked again.

L lifted a hand to stroke the nape of Mello's neck through strands of silky hair. "Yes."

My breath caught in my lungs. He couldn't honestly –

Stupid –

L couldn't possibly believe that Mello would forget about this promise just because it was made at three o'clock in the morning.

A sudden movement on the bed next to mine caught my attention. Matt's eyes were wide and stunned. I didn't know how long he had been awake but it was clear that he had at least caught on the last exchange of words.

L might fool himself to believe that Mello had made this gesture for him, to reassure him. But we knew him better. The memory of this promise would come back to haunt him when he last needed it.

And if L didn't make… if he lost this time…

Holding Matt's gaze in the darkness, something unexpectedly occurred to me – something we had always blissfully ignored:

For one of us to become his successor, L ultimately had to die.

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Another Note: I'm pretty sure L was affected by Beyond being murdered and I can just picture him going to see his youngsters in order to reassure himself.

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