As L sidled off of the stage, overwhelmed by the heady mixture of joy and bewilderment and ecstatic achievement and insanity and wildness and disbelief that had kindly waited until he'd finished performing to leap upon him, he caught sight of one familiar figure, which was twirling with a pale finger at a section of paler hair.
Before he had time to wonder after the whereabouts of the other half of the pair, Mello had appeared from the crush of people and was wrapping him in an absolutely rib-crushing hug.
Before L could wonder about that, Mello was stepping hastily backwards, blushing furiously. "You were amazing!" he cried, fanning himself with one hand. "Jesus, it's hot in here!"
"Or maybe it's just you," Near remarked, apparently also possessed of the appearing-from-nowhere talent recently exhibited by his companion. He turned to L, smiling. "You really were wonderful, though," he declared, holding out a bouquet of lollipops.
L was utterly speechless for a long moment.
At last, after many congratulations, a little more bewilderment, and a solemn promise to his two friends that the three of them would go out and celebrate at the sweetshop the next morning, he allowed Monsieur Wammy to remove him from the crowd and lead him to an empty dressing room.
"You've done well," his instructor told him gently. "Have a rest and get your breath back. All of these flowers have been sent for you from members of the audience."
L nodded, a little overwhelmed, and Monsieur Wammy offered him a kind smile before disappearing and closing the door behind him. L went and sat down in the chair before the dresser-desk, drawing his knees up and wrapping his arms around them. It was then that he noticed, on the dark wood before him, a single black rose adorned with a blood-red ribbon.
His heart was pounding again, but not in that delicate, airy way it had when the audience had surged to its feet, a great collective roar breaking from countless throats. This time, it was heavy - almost leaden - and he couldn't breathe properly around it.
He reached out a trembling hand, clasped the dark green stem between two fingers, and brought it to him.
You've done well, it seemed to whisper. You've done exactly as I taught you.
L smiled. His tutor approved. This single flower outweighed all of the burgeoning, overflowing bouquets sprawling on the dressing tables, because it meant that his tutor approved.
For a moment, something like fear fluttered in his heart, but he pushed it away before pausing to consider it. It was strange. He was grateful to the voice that taught him, trusted it, and at the same time… it was just a bit frightening. Or perhaps he was just nervous at having the attention of such a genius.
Lifting his eyes, he considered himself in the mirror. He didn't look scared. He looked a little pale, certainly, and wide-eyed, but his face appeared calm. Almost glazed, even. He was probably tired. He was imagining things. Hearing things. The click of a handle, the whisper of the door across the carpet.
A voice, but not the one of his teacher - a soft, almost-familiar one.
"L," the voice breathed. "It is you."
It couldn't be, he heard his mind whisper.
He turned despite it, fast enough that his laboriously-brushed hair swirled in his eyes, half-obscuring the unbelievable reality in the doorway.
"Light…" he heard himself whisper.
His hands weighed tons and his fingers tingled like he'd dipped them in cold water; he couldn't lift them to move his hair out of the way, and Light stood, tall, thin frame decked in fine fabrics from head to toe, just feet away - somehow, impossibly, more beautiful even than he'd been in the summer, with the tiny grains of salt sticking to curving lips as he smiled, with the sun picking out the honeyed highlights in his hair—
"What are you doing here?" L heard himself ask numbly.
"I'm your new sponsor," Light explained gently. "Vis-Compte Yagami. I don't think I ever told you my last name that summer. And I didn't mention my family because - because I didn't want it to get in the way. I…" his voice grew quiet. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again."
"Neither did I," L murmured.
"I looked for you the next summer," Light said. "But you weren't there."
"By the next summer," L told him quietly, "I was an orphan, and I was sent here because Monsieur Wammy - the ballet master - was a family friend. He and the dancers have been the only family I've known since then."
"You were beautiful tonight," Light broke in. "Your voice, I mean. Your singing was beautiful. But you were beautiful, too."
Beautiful. It was a word for people like Light. A word for people who could follow the graceful curve of it, the lilt of it off of a practiced tongue, who could say it in sitting rooms, at lavish parties, on sunlit beaches where the encroaching night swallowed everything but the stars…
Somehow, L mustered a smile. The blush came more easily. "Thank you," he said, "Monsieur."
"Please," Light said. Two quick steps on two polished, fashionable shoes. "Call me Light."
"All - all right," L stammered, blushing a bit more.
"Will you go out to dinner with me?" Light asked gently.
"Of course!" L replied happily. Then his face fell. "I mean - I can't. I'm sorry. I'm not supposed to go out at night."
"I won't tell," Light promised with a wink. "Just give me five minutes to get my carriage ready, then meet me at the back door. All right?"
L smiled shyly and nodded, trying to ignore his misgivings. Light returned the smile and disappeared, leaving L to search his room for a warm cloak. Just as he was about to touch the doorknob, though, all the lamps went out abruptly in a gust of wind, leaving him in darkness but for the incandescent moonlight filtering through the window.
L hesitated, turning slowly, looking around him. Nothing had changed, but for the lamps' suddenly being extinguished - had he expected something to?
Moonlight glinted, coolly and enticingly, off of the tall, ornate, gilt-framed mirror standing proudly amongst the flowers. L saw himself in it, the milky moonlight exaggerating the pallor of his complexion. Without ever really understanding why, he took a step towards it, and then another.
Curiously he touched a thumb to his lips - and then a fingertip of the other hand to the mirror's surface. It didn't ripple or bend; nothing moved at all but for the faintest remnants of candle smoke that drifted through the air behind him. The slightest blur of his fingerprint clung to the glass. The shadows shifted behind him, churning as the moonlight swelled and subsided at the mercy of the clouds passing over its face.
Then the shadows coalesced into a solid being, a being who moved up behind L Lawliet and met his eyes in the mirror.
L gasped and spun around, but there was nobody behind him. Looking back, he saw that the shadowy creature was now standing where his own face should be - as if L was looking at a strange and distorted reflection of himself. For the face he saw was a little like his - not so soft, perhaps, the hair a little shorter and a little choppier, the smile more of a smirk than the kind that L usually found on his lips. And the eyes…
The eyes looking back into his were red, deep blood-red, the color of fire and fruit preserves and the ribbon on the black rose - bright and strangely lovely and penetrating enough to bore into every part of L's being. As though they understood him; as though they already knew everything about him; as though they owned him.
"It's you," he breathed.
The figure smiled - smirked - a little wider, raised a hand, and beckoned.
The mirror shuddered gently once, as if wracked with a sudden chill, and then the glass slid slowly downward.
L didn't watch it disappear into the bottom of the frame. He saw only the dark, dark, red-eyed man that remained even as it slid away. He saw the corners of the startlingly exquisite eyes crinkle with another smile, and he saw the man raise a pale, steady hand to him and sweep the other arm wide to indicate the narrow stone staircase descending behind and beyond.
And L saw his own hand rise to accept his tutor's.