A/N: Hi. Okay, I just had this sudden urge to write a oneshot for each of my favourite Death Note characters. And since my favourite characters happen to be the Wammy-boys, I thought that this was a splendid opportunity to explain some stuff about them. So basically, there'll be six chapters: one for each. A and B as well, because I love them to pieces. (If you don't know who they are, I suggest that you read 'Death Note Another Note: The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases'). I'm not sure about pairings yet, but there'll probably be at least one. (Yeah, I'm a huge fan of MattxMello...)
Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note or any of its characters. Nor am I creative enough to come up with a witty way of saying that. The poem, 'the Spider and the Fly', which will have an appearance in this fanfic, is a famous children's poem by Mary Howitt.
-
Wammy's House. A house of genius, of intelligence, of great achievement, but most of all a house of madness. Children were raised there, trained. First, the reasons had been good. Reasons such as the children, being the great masterminds that they were, could not handle the real world. Wammy's House started as a place where those children could learn to be human. In time, however, it became the exact opposite. There was no one to blame for the horror that the children would be put through. Of course, they all tried to find someone to blame which is expected for any human being who has been through the misery that these children had.
But at first, when everything was done with good intention, the children were happy. As happy as possible, that is, since they had all seen more than most people.
Wammy's House, said the sign on the fence.
-
"Will you walk into my parlor?" said the Spider to the Fly,
"'Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy;
The way into my parlor is up a winding stair,
And I have many curious things to show you when you are there."
"Oh no, no" said the Fly, "to ask me is in vain;
For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again."
-
L Lawliet
-
A young boy, no older than six, sat in a small chair with his knees pulled up to his chest, looking as if the entire world was falling apart in front of him. His black hair hung into his round eyes, wide with curiosity and fright, and he tried to think about something else than everything he had already been put through. It was hard, though, to forget the death of his parents; he'd witnessed their murder in their own little apartment, somewhere in London. They'd just moved there after having lived... many other places. The boy was pretty sure that he'd lost count of the places he'd lived by now. He knew that it was because of his mother. It was an illness called Borderline Personality Disorder, and he'd looked it up in some of his father's big books about psychology. One of the symptoms, the book had said, was inability to be happy in one place. Some of the other symptoms were lying, harming yourself, and the belief that people were either with you or against you, he remembered. He hadn't minded, though. He liked moving, because it let him see new places all the time.
His parents were killed by someone to whom they owed money. He'd shot them both in the head. The bad man. Yes, he was the bad man, and the boy was already determined to catch him. He'd gotten away. The boy knew very well that the police were too incompetent to ever find him, because it had something to do with some large organization. The police couldn't ever get their hands on someone with so much protection as he knew they had in that organization.
The man from earlier came into the room and the boy tried to pull his knees closer to him. Not that he didn't like the man; he just didn't trust the stranger who had taken him from the police station after they'd taken him away from the apartment. The man had said that his name was Mr. Wammy and that he knew the boy's father. "I can give you a home," he'd said, and the boy had believed him in a moment of trust. Now, however, he wasn't so sure that he wanted to be where he was. He missed his parents and the house he was in now was so big. He had only been in the hallway and the office, but children had looked at him from every direction, he had seen stairs lead up to at least two more floors and there was a big lawn outside where other children had been playing various games.
"Do you know why you're here?" asked Mr. Wammy. The boy shook his head, even though he had already guessed that this was an orphanage. There had to be another reason, though; his parents didn't have any money and it looked like a very expensive house. He'd also heard some of the children talk about classrooms, which meant that the house was also a school. There was no way he could stay there for free. There had to be a reason, a price of some kind. Maybe not money, but surely something else.
"I know that you've had a long day," Mr. Wammy said, "but I'd like to explain this to you now, if you don't mind? It's important that you decide whether or not you want to stay here. If not, we can easily find somewhere else for you to live."
He nodded, not looking at Mr. Wammy, but at the bowl of candies on the table. Mr. Wammy chuckled and pushed the bowl closer to him, and he warily reached out for one, which was quickly followed by another one while Mr. Wammy talked.
"This is Wammy's House. I'm sure you already know that it's an orphanage. But not just an ordinary one, this is a place where smart children can live and study. We have classes and teachers here as well, so none of you have to worry about the pressure of the outside world until you feel ready to leave. As I said earlier, I knew your father, and he always told me about how intelligent you were. He talked about the books you read, the ones that even he had difficulty with, as if they were common picture-books. I would like to give you a chance to develop your talents here. You have quite a knack for solving crimes, yes?"
Once again he nodded, his mouth too full of sweets for him to answer.
"If you want to, we can give you a bed, three meals a day, teach you almost anything you want to learn, and of course, you could make friends here. You can think it over until tomorrow, alright?"
"Yes," he managed to say through the candies in his mouth. He quickly grabbed a few more (because they tasted really good), and went to follow Mr. Wammy as he walked out of the office.
-
He'd been right; it was an enormous house. Bigger than anything he'd ever seen. It almost made him dizzy when he thought about how he was ever going to learn how to find his way around to classes and such. Mr. Wammy had taken him to a room with a bed, a closet, a desk and a chair and had told him that he could wait until the next day to decide if he wanted to stay there. So far, his answer was yes. Scary as it was, it was a place where they would teach him to be a detective -Mr. Wammy had said so himself- and he didn't want to have to meet more people any time soon.
With a sigh, he let himself curl up on the bed. He didn't want to go to sleep; what if he couldn't wake up again? He knew that it was a silly thought, but he couldn't shake off the feeling. Instead, he settled for staring at the ceiling.
The whole night passed like that.
-
Days turned into weeks, which eventually, without the boy even noticing it, turned into years. He was now nine years old and considered the most intelligent child to ever stay in Wammy's House. There were another child, though, who was pretty close to being almost as good. His 'name' was A.
They were all given aliases in the humble form of letters because of several reasons. One being that many of them would want to forget about their previous life. A new 'name' had apparently seemed like a good way to do so. Luckily his first name had been nothing but a letter, L, and he had insisted on keeping it. He did not have any wish to forget about anything, since he was planning to catch his parents' murderer as soon as someone would give him the chance.
But A was different than the other children. He never wanted to talk to L like everyone else. In fact, he left the room whenever L entered. One day, he had innocently asked why A disliked him so much, and the answer he had received had been a shock to him. Mr. Wammy had always seemed like a good person to him, but A made him change his mind about that.
"Mr. Wammy doesn't care about anyone else. Only you. You're always the one getting attention and Wammy even said to Roger that he was considering finding a backup for you. Do you know what that means? I'm the second best here, if they want a backup for you, they'll pick me. How could I live up to that pressure?! I can barely even keep up with my own life, what're they expecting? None of us are super-humans with the ability to deal with everything thrown randomly at us... we're just children."
"But then tell Mr. Wammy that you don't want to be a backup." It seemed pretty simple to L.
"You just don't get it, do you? You've only seen his good side, because you're his favourite. You have no idea how he treats the rest of us. It's like we're just little robots to him, with no emotions or anything. We don't even have any names! He expects us to just forget about everything we've been through. Not that I don't want to, but he's erasing our entire existence. What if we just die? You're the only one he'll remember... the rest of us will just be forgotten."
A was a very intelligent eight-year-old. It hadn't been more than a few months since they'd had that conversation, but L was noticing how Mr. Wammy was only smiling at him. He'd never noticed that before A had mentioned it, and he wished it would go away. He was sitting in Roger's office, listening to the adults talk about a new child who, according to them, was perhaps even more intelligent than A. He briefly wondered about what kind of person it would be and took another bite of his cake as he silently amused himself by thinking about how Roger would only be nice to the children whenever Mr. Wammy was around. He'd been told that they were friends, but Mr. Wammy was a lot kinder, even if he was a cold as A said.
Suddenly, Mr. Wammy turned to L.
"L, we are planning on finding a backup for you--"
"I know."
Mr. Wammy sighed. "I know you do. But my point is that maybe it's not a good idea if you're here any longer."
"You're... sending me away?"
"If we start training the other children here to be your backups, there's a chance that some of them might go insane if you're around them too much."
That made sense. If he was there, in the same house as his backups, they might go crazy from jealousy and effort. He knew how fragile some of them were, and A had disliked him after just hearing that they considered the idea of a backup.
"Where are you sending me, then?"
"I'm not going to send you anywhere. I want to take you with me when I go searching for new children for the house. Of course, I will teach you how to be a detective and if you get good at it, I might let you solve real cases--"
"Yes! Take me with you!" He had always been interested in the places Mr. Wammy saw when he travelled the world in search of intelligent children. And maybe, if he was good, he could get the chance to find the bad man. Mr. Wammy smiled warmly at him, making him remember A's words. But if L was with him all the time, he could keep him occupied and then he wouldn't go to the house as often, and the other children wouldn't be jealous because he wasn't as kind to them as he was to L.
Problem solved.
-
It wasn't long before he was allowed to solve cases. Of course, Mr. Wammy (who now asked L to call him Watari) would help since L was only a child. But after a while, he proved Watari wrong nine out of ten times they disagreed.
When he was seventeen years old, he was the one of the greatest detectives in the world. He had several presidents calling him 'sir'. And then, one insignificant day, he happened to stumble across someone familiar in the middle of a case. It was an easy case and he hadn't been paying much attention to the files he was looking at, but a picture caught his eye. The man in the picture was bald, had small eyes, somewhat tanned skin, a piercing in his bottom lip...
"It's the bad man," he muttered quietly to himself. He couldn't believe that he had forgotten about that man... the man who'd killed his parents. The man who'd been his reason for wanting to become a detective, the very man who had... who had...
With a lot more enthusiasm, he poured himself another cup of tea and set to work.
-
He caught the bad man. Put him behind bars, his only regret being that he had to work through the American police to do it. It had been almost too easy; evidence of drug-selling weren't hard to find, the organization had almost vanished. There was no one to protect the bad man.
-
A smile was playing on L's lips as he stood outside the gates of Wammy's House. He had a hard time remembering how long it had been since he'd last been there. There were so many questions. How was everyone doing? Did A still dislike him? What about that person who seemingly was more intelligent than A? He knew a few things, the obvious things that he could figure out without having to ask Watari, such as the fact that they still hadn't found a backup for him. Watari frequently visited the house, but L always chose to stay away and work, so his knowledge about the children there was below limited. But it had been his home for years; he wouldn't be what he was without it.
But when he walked in through the front door, his first instinct was to run away and never come again.
Wammy's House had... changed.
There were no longer happy children playing anywhere, there was no constant sound of talk and laughter, and no matter how hard he looked, he couldn't see a single smile. Instead, what A had said about Watari had become true.
"It's like we're just little robots to him, with no emotions or anything," A had said, and now they were. Everywhere, there would be blank stares and children buried in books and notes. What had happened? Confused, he tried talking to a few of the robot-children, but they didn't seem to understand that something was wrong. They just asked him what he meant, who he was, and then told him that it had always been like this. He didn't tell them who he was, remembering that their fragile minds could shatter at any moment. He would hate to cause them pain, but... he wasn't even sure that they could feel the pain.
Some of them were different, though. Four children in particular held his attention. Backup, Near, Mello, and Matt. They had chosen to give the children actual names instead of just a letter. Perhaps to make it seem more humane.
But these four children were different from the robots. Near because he was, if possible, even more robotic than the other children; his blank stare seemed constantly unfocused, he answered questions with as few syllables as possible, and he didn't even look up when Watari said hello. He was extremely intelligent, though.
Matt was different because he acted like a normal child. He played video games, smiled at L when they talked, apparently thought of classes as a chore. He, too, was very intelligent.
Mello had so much emotion that he made the children around him seem even more introverted. L decided that Mello was mentally strong enough to know who L was, and he spent hours trying to prove to the child that he was, in fact, L. It was then he noticed that the most intelligent children were the ones that had seemed different to him.
Backup. The boy who had been brought to the orphanage mere days after L left. The one whose intellect matched L's own. Backup was strange. The look in his eyes when he saw L was... hungry. L knew right away that Backup had figured out who he was and he did nothing to conceal that fact.
Backup didn't want to answer any questions. Instead, he asked about everything he could think of, and L answered politely, actually enjoying the company. Only one of L's questions were answered, the question that had been bothering him ever since he stepped into the house.
"Where is A?"
Backup looked at him for a while before he spoke.
"A killed himself. He said he didn't want to be your... backup." He laughed and continued. "I was the one who found him, you know. He'd hung himself in his room, didn't even leave as much as a note. It's only a few weeks ago, actually. Feels like forever..."
L wanted to feel guilty, but he didn't; he already knew that A did not have any wish to be his backup, and he'd feared that this was going to happen. He had not forced A to kill himself, it had been A's choice.
Backup went back to asking questions.
-
L was happy to leave the house. He hoped that he could talk to Backup again, though.
The chance never came. A few years after, when L was twenty-one, Watari suddenly told him something quite unexpected: "Backup has left Wammy's House."
-
Catching Backup was possibly the hardest thing L had ever done. And the most entertaining. As always, he had to act through someone else, this time Naomi Misora, but it had certainly been difficult. Backup was indeed a genius, and he'd left clues that even L had a hard time figuring out. A feeling of regret washed over him when he was told that Backup had been arrested; they could have been great friends, had L not left Wammy's House.
-
Time, as L noticed, had a bad habit of passing away.
-
And then something was interesting again. Kira. The first time Kira really started seeming interesting to L was when Backup died in prison. Kira was known for the ability to kill people without any contact, giving them heart-attacks. Backup had died of a heart-attack as well.
L developed a small obsession with Kira, to the point where he told his main suspect, Light Yagami, who he was. Yagami was a good actor, but L was very sure that he was a liar. He'd spend a big part of his life learning how to read people, and even though Yagami kept saying that he wasn't Kira, L had plenty of reasons to think otherwise. But, like Backup, Yagami's company was enjoyable, almost made L wish that they weren't enemies. (Which they were, whether Yagami admitted it or not.)
-
He was still afraid of sleeping. The fear had been there since that first night in Wammy's House, the fear that if he closed his eyes, they would never open again. And the few times he'd convinced himself to sleep for just a few hours, he was haunted by nightmares. The classic ones, the kind of nightmares where he would fall and fall. Only with one difference; he didn't wake up when he hit the ground. He knew that the shock of dying in dreams would wake someone up, but in the dream he didn't die. He felt his back hit the floor, saw someone smiling at him, closed his eyes, and then he would wake up. This nightmare had haunted him ever since he first took up the Kira-case, and his bad sleeping-habits had gotten even worse.
But this time was different; he didn't remember falling asleep, and in his dreams, Watari never died. He wasn't even there. He wondered about the variation in his nightmare as his body cramped up and fell towards the floor. Somewhere in the distance, voices yelled at him, which was new as well. Arms caught him before he hit the floor... why was everything so different?
He looked up, seeing Light Yagami bending over him with a smile on his face. No, it wasn't a smile, it was a victorious smirk. Yagami was Kira. Then this wasn't a dream.
He was really dying...
L, now the three greatest detectives in the world, L who had stopped the serial murderer B, was dying in the arms of a simple teenager.
It wasn't a dream...
I knew it, he thought, because he knew that he was dying now.
I wasn't wrong, he thought, because he'd known all along that Yagami was Kira.
But... I...
-
A/N: Please review, even if it's just to tell me that I should go die in a fire.