I've had the concept of this for a while, but originally it would have involved creating my own character. Even in any other situation, I'd be reluctant to do this because for the most part, I believe every story has "x amount" of characters for a reason and I don't want to disrupt that balance. But Death Note in particular (one of my absolute favorite anime/manga) is something I would never intrude on, so I've kept the concept locked away. However, I recently discovered a loophole. In this fic, Wedy (real name Merrie Kenwood) was involved with Wammy's House, and namely, L, since she was a young girl. I am being VERY cautious with this fic, and it might end up a total failure, but I would LOVE to hear your opinions. PLEASE REVIEW 333 Disclaimer: I don't own this story. All praise and proceeds and such obviously go to its wonderful creator Tsugumi Ohba.
It had been ages since she had last seen such a gloomy day.
The rain lashed against the metal and glass walls of the building in furious torments, and the wind howled out a mournful dirge, threatening to dampen all spirits and weather away the resolve of humanity and justice. It was the sort of weather that made a day drag on forever.
The sort of weather that always seemed to foreshadow an ominous threat of despair and bad fortune.
Wedy stood by the large window, dispersing the aura of gloom she had clad herself in by lighting a cigarette and clouding her persistent worries with a breath of smoke.
I'm not superstitious. This kind of stuff doesn't phase me.
She exhaled, fogging up the window with a mixture of smoke and carbon dioxide. Tendrils of her breath, made visible by her admittedly bad habit, drifted through the air with her concentration. She couldn't place her finger on it. What was wrong with today? There was definitely something bothering her, and it wasn't that damned Shinigami; it would take more than a demon of death to frighten her.
I'm not afraid of anything!She clenched her teeth against the cigarette in her mouth, and realized to her shock that she was trembling; ash dusted through the air, dislodged from the tip of its quivering, burning stick.
The wind continued to wail, like a widow at a funeral.
A funeral…Would the unveiling of the god of death bring misfortune and death on their small team now that its presence had been revealed? Perhaps it was the monster that was bothering her.
Well stop worrying about it. The shinigami never made one hostile move against us; if it had wanted to support Kira, I'm pretty sure none of us would still be alive to pursue the matter. Besides, L said he was one step away from solving this cursed case…
L.
At that instant, lightning and thunder collided in one heart-stopping burst of sheer power, clarifying every subconscious doubt, thought, and fear.
He's in danger.
That thought sent her body flying into action. Years of training and devotion to the one unchanging cause she had allowed to remain in her otherwise scattered, ratpatch life of burglary and espionage coursed through her veins alongside the adrenaline; pure instinct was the force that sent her hurtling down the halls at an almost inhuman speed. Watari was closest. She had to tell him to warn L. The Shinigami must not see his face!
It never occurred to her that she was too late. That was an impossibility, because if there was one life that could never end, one being that could never cease to exist while she herself still drew breath…
The shinigami loomed in the doorway to the main computer room. This was Watari's abode, where he managed all of L's requests, kept an eye on the goings on around the base, and made sure everything ran smoothly. What use could the shinigami…?
"Watari!"
In the eerily lit room bathed in the red glow of every computer reporting a sudden deletion of all data, the old man's motionless body looked unfamiliar. The entire scene was so unreal…Watari…
Dead. She could tell by the mere fact he wasn't exerting every effort in his aged body to reach L and warn him of the shinigami's loathsome intents.
Now is not the time to mourn.
That monster's next target could be none other than L.
Once again she was running, but she could barely notice how fast she was going. Her lungs didn't burn, her legs didn't protest against such sudden movement. She neither slowed nor gasped for breath. She had one goal, one purpose pounding through her mind and body, and she could not fail. She couldn't be late. Her timing, which had always promoted her title as one of the most skilled thieves and accomplished agents of espionage, had to be perfect now above all else.
God…I can't be late…please let me reach him in time…The doors to the assembly room slid open too slowly for her advanced velocity, so she slid to a halt, limbs trembling and heart pounding.
If I'm not in time…She stepped into the room.
The same dull crimson light pervaded an otherwise dim interior, and the scene that greeted her eyes was one of absolute stillness. No one was moving. Everyone was frozen, as if the end of the world had come and the master that pulled the strings of humanity had left his post.
What she was seeing…
It has to be…Only one word could describe it. The same one that had been screaming from the recesses of her mind since that single strike of lightning during what would otherwise have been a rainstorm.
Impossible.
The members of the taskforce were all arranged around two figures on the floor. One was crouching, a familiar pose to Wedy. But it was all wrong. The person crouching was holding another one in his arms.
Spindly limbs spread-eagled across the floor…
A head full of wild, black hair hanging limply back, motionless…
An entity that had never before been still, from the pondering shift of his bare toes to the long, slender fingers that were always reaching for another sweet, or even to the large, unearthly eyes that constantly swept across reality, baring the world of its dark secrets and blood-stained truths…this man had been reduced to a motionless body.
But he was so much more than just a man…
He was the world's silent champion, the hero that was supposed to preserve the true ideal of justice against a monster that had reared its head in such a brutal, intense manner with the slaughter of hundreds.
He had sworn to defeat Kira, to stop this monster.
He couldn't be dead…
But this stillness, this indispensable shadow that had fallen could only be that of death.
This has to be a dream.
If she had been awake, she would have felt something. The death of this man would have meant the death of something else inside of her…but she felt nothing.
Am I the one who's dead?Sounds. Movement. Panic. It was like a glass falling to the floor and shattering. The noise was piercing, and the pieces flew everywhere in undisclosed chaos.
Life was moving without her. Fast.
They understood.
She smelled fear. The fear of death. The fear that death would strike again.
Cowards. Fools.
He had instilled this panic. While the others had been worrying for themselves, he had been trying to create more fear inside of them. The gesture wasn't human, and in a time like this, it only made him seem more like the man she had always believed him to be.
"Don't concern yourselves," she said in a cold empty voice that cut clearly across the haze of fear and confusion. "It's over. You're safe."
All eyes were on her, calculating and wide. They were waiting to see how she would react, how her response to this incident would unveil who she truly was.
The enemy is still at large.
"If this had been the creature's original intent, we would all have been dead already. The fact that only L and Watari have been taken shows that the shinigami was making sure to eliminate the most obvious threats. I have a feeling it was an act of desperation, and one that bore a serious cost. You can look for it, but I'm almost completely sure you'll find nothing of use."
An excuse. They would all go.
One by one, they rushed past her. She stood in silence, a pillar against fear and death, seemingly unchanged by what had happened.
"I'll take him," she said calmly, approaching the man who had been entrusted with the body. "You should go."
Gratefully, yet reluctantly, the largest member of the task force gently transferred his load to her waiting arms. She was almost staggered by the weight of it.
Death truly is a burden. He was always so slender…he could never weigh this much in life.
She looked down at the body…down at him. He looked so unusually peaceful, as if he had fallen asleep. Carefully, she shifted her left arm to support his head, tracing his face with her eyes. It had been ages since she had been this close to him. He seemed unchanged, as if Time hadn't even bothered to brush his face with His burning glance. Now set in its final rest, L's face seemed as young and pure in its separation from the rest of the world as it had been when she had first met him as a child.
So many years ago…
He was a quiet one. The boy with the half-crazed mess of untamable, raven-black hair and huge, smoky black eyes. While the others talked among themselves and formed friendships and rivalries, he was content to stay crouched in his little corner of the world, marking his otherwise simple lifestyle at Wammy's House for Gifted Youngsters with a laptop and a seemingly endless supply of fruits and assorted sweets that were perpetually at his side like a two-year-old's security blanket. The other children had basically ignored him. They were complacent with his existence…
Until he became a threat in the Competition.
He was smarter than everyone at the House put together, and even worse, he was Watari's favorite. Every child at Wammy's adored the old man, and he practically doted on this boy, this L.
For that, Wedy had hated the newcomer just as much as her colleagues at first. She had never had parents; Watari was her father-figure, and this strange, haunting child was stealing him from her. She felt more alone than ever now; she had received a taste of what having parents would be like, and it was being slowly pulled from her grasp. She watched L keenly, trying to find some imperfection in him so she could prove to Watari that his new favorite was no better than a lowly pickpocket when it came to flaws and wits. To her fury, she found nothing, but her investigation on the boy revealed something else far more important.
He was just as alone as she was.
She threw down her pride and jealousy the moment she realized this. The boy was alone, and he wasn't strong like she was. His spindly little form couldn't take the beating the others had been conspiring to give him. He needed an ally, a defender…
A friend.
"Are you okay?"
She stood over the boy, turning her back on the other children, who were beginning to retreat with various bruises, a few bite marks, and battered pride from her scathing reproach and insults.
The strange child swiftly averted his eyes; it was an action she knew all too well. He was trying not to cry.
Hesitantly, she knelt and began to pick up the scattered textbooks and sweets that had toppled so easily from their precarious tower when those antagonists had deliberately bumped into him and thrown him to the floor.
"I don't understand…" He brushed the trickle of blood from his nose with the back of his hand. "I am not their enemy, yet their aggression was blatant and direct. Why?" He lifted his eyes to meet hers, and the startlingly human palette of confusion and pain that bled through them was as alien as the bright, crimson blood that stained his pale skin. In her mind's eye, he became an angel. A creature of purity so different and set apart from the world that she never wanted to see such base, human feelings in its eyes again.
So resilient…but so fragile…
That was the moment she resolved to protect him.
No matter what.
She reached out with her slim, eleven-year-old arm and ruffled his hair.
"Don't worry about it." She winked at him and grinned at his growing confusion.
"I won't let it happen again."
The red computer screens were pulsing gently as Wedy bit her lip in silent anguish. A thin trickle of blood slid down over her crimson lipstick as her heart cringed against feelings that reminded her this was definitely no dream.
L was dead.
Never again…
What had gone through his mind as the pain exploded in his chest? Had he immediately suspected Light Yagami? His…friend?
The pain she had seen in his eyes all those years ago…it must have been nothing compared to what would have been seen as he lay dying on the floor.
I was too late.
The knowledge that he had been beaten…for death was certainly the best way of stopping his fight against Kira…what sort of blow had that been? In hindsight of these two other blows put against him, the physical pain in his chest must have seemed so small…
The pain.
How could it have been fair for such a man to die like that?
It wasn't. It isn't. It shouldn't have happened!
The truth hit her hard, and her vision blurred as tears slid down her cheeks, staining her face with makeup and his white shirt with wetness.
It only happened because I failed you…
That promise she had made so many years ago had been broken.
Merrie Kenwood gritted her teeth against the pain and tears that threatened to overflow from her heart.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry…L…Watari…"