no·lens vo·lens
adv. Whether willing or unwilling.
A revolution of three hundred and sixty degrees revealed only trees.
The door to the rooftop was gone.
Light, unsure whether to feel trapped or freed, settled for some sort of all-consuming glee when the deeper meaning for his being here came to him like photosynthesis.
This spotty sunlight, this mist shimmering on his skin… this was the forest in which, once upon a lifetime, he had buried the Death Note.
His smile was so wide and bright, he created shadows around the corners of his mouth.
L was frowning so deeply that his tongue felt like it was underground.
Hours, perhaps, had passed since Light left the rooftop, yet he hadn't moved from the spot where Light cast him aside. His limbs were numb, but not nearly as numb as his brain and his tongue, reliving, "Light-kun?"
For a genius, he was unquestionably dumb.
L squeezed his head between his knees to a painful degree, even knowing that blocking Light out of his thoughts wouldn't be as simple as shielding himself from the sunlight above. At this point, it was probably impossible.
What was once muted fascination, in death, became obsession; hate became the desire to maim Light-Kira, to claim him; physical chains became the belief in fate.
Maybe he was deranged, but in that case, Light-Kira was more than his messed up match.
Toes curling with impatience, L muttered, "Ninety-five percent chance of failure… stalemate, four percent… success, one percent."
L crossed the rooftop and opened the door.
"Did you miss me, L?" Light accosted.
The forest was overtaken with silence, a breathless agitato at last interrupted by the smacking sound of the sole of his shoe against hollowed out wood and equally hollow laughter.
"Because I didn't miss you," he sneered, and the tree stump he was talking to didn't argue. A few paces to the east, he could see the tree representing Light Yagami in all his glory, the X of this treasure map terrain, and just one foot beneath the earth's surface lay Heaven.
Dropping to his knees as though praying, fervently, faithfully, Light began digging.
L's nails dug into his palms and drew blood in an attempt to prove that the sight before him wasn't an illusion, perhaps futilely, but he would always cling to his logistics and tricks. Licking the blood from his own wounds, his eyes softened at the sharp taste, saddened, and he buried his hands in his pockets where they wouldn't be tempted to touch anything, that ironic taste still clinging to his tongue when he murmured, "Light…"
The Death Note wasn't where it was supposed to be, but Light excavated until he reached the roots of the tree, until the hole expanded to the dimensions of a grave, until the forest became a maze of trenches and tunnels.
At some point, maybe, just maybe, his intentions changed. Maybe he was trying to craft himself a rabbit hole out of that world. Maybe, by upturning more and more soil, he was trying to fill the holes that had already formed.
L would know, he thought to himself, a mantra, but the only words that left his mouth were half-developed curses degraded into desperate whimpers. His hands wouldn't stop, no matter what he thought; his hands just wouldn't stop.
"Light…"
His chin tipped upward, drawn to the voice addressing him, but his eyes wouldn't focus through the built up brine of crying. Blinking once, twice, finally on the third time, L stood before him; even more bewilderingly, his backdrop was composed of decadent mirrors and chandeliers and wall sculpture in stucco, the hotel suite where their chains were put into place. Did L see… did L know…?
Light glanced back at his hands and was surprised to find a wreckage of flesh, his fingernails cracked and bleeding and even now scraping feebly at the carpet.
"What are you doing?" With his voice, with his eyes, L wasn't chiding or accusing Light; it was a question in its purest form: one that asked for an answer.
"I…" His hands stilled and became the support he needed to push himself off the ground. "I want to show you something." That was his answer, and L accepted it with an unblinking eternity of expectancy, as if to say…
"This is the day I died."
"Is that so?" was L's rather insipid reply, sapped of strength by imbedded wariness and unaccustomed puzzlement as he watched Light spin about passionlessly, an off-course music box ballerina who bled from his hands rather than his feet and gestured at things L couldn't see. Compared to the here and now, to the stinging warmth and subsequent chill of Light accidentally swiping him across the cheek, their whereabouts were meaningless. An apology wasn't forthcoming, but L didn't wipe away the streak of blood Light had left behind, either. He was unsure if the blood was Light's or his own or both, and for once in his life, he didn't want to know; he wanted the world to blur and break down between them. He wanted.
"You don't believe me, L? You don't trust me?"
"No."
The dance ended on that awkward note.
"What? What am I supposed to be seeing?" If L were speaking to a child, his tone of slow condescension, of almost tenderness, would have made more sense. As it was…
Love and hate, destruction and creation, black and… Light was reaching out to him. It took all of L's mental strength not to flinch. Though the pain of having his wounded hands latched onto was ignorable — the gentlest form of torture — the connotations of this situation ravished his mind. Their hands entwined in a bloody nest over Light's heart, L's eyes itching with tautness and dryness, and Light, even his voice pulsated: "Can you feel it now?"
"One hundred fifteen beats per minute," L answered automatically, but shortly thereafter a spike in Light's heart rate negated his statement, tangible anger speaking beats into his palms, squeezing them harder and harder until he felt compelled to vocalize his discomfort, "That hurts."
Surprisingly, Light listened, loosening his grip and casting those beautiful liar eyes downward. Shadows dribbled over Light's face like a mantilla of black lace, face paint shame; surely this person felt no shame.
"When I died, I… was so afraid…" Not a mantilla, then, but the lattice of a confessional.
Silence: the closest thing to absolution L could give for Light's sins.
And this, this was the closest Light had ever come to contingency, his forehead colliding clumsily with L's shoulder, a weighted whisper, "I wish you had been there."
What did that even mean? L couldn't see anything. His eyes had closed as nonconsensually as the day he died, enhancing the scent of Light's humanity, the sound of shallow breaths like the artificial ocean within a seashell; everything spiraling out of control. "Take me there. Show me."
Six heartbeats before Light spoke. "There's only one door, an entrance as well as an exit. The first things I notice when I walk inside the warehouse are the chains hanging from the ceiling and the smell of rust. It reminds me of you, even before I see Near crouching on the ground, wearing your mask. You know what I think, L?"
L shook his head minimally, though they were close enough now that his nose traced Light's neck.
"I think to myself, Near is far inferior to L. He has no right to be wearing L's mask. Near is inferior to L… I think that to myself, on and on and on…" Even as Light wove his story, he laughed, a clawlike laugh, so far from the rich vibrato L was familiar with. What Light said was dubious at best, yet L was absorbed, to the point where he jolted when Light stopped snickering abruptly, stating dully, "And then he pins me. No one believes me, no one supports me, and no one saves me, not even the Shinigami who gave me the notebook. My name is written. I am fated to die. I'm so afraid… but then I see your face, and I know you're waiting for me. Peacefully, my heart stops beating."
Opening his eyes only after Light had withdrawn, his hands deprived of the pulse-proof of Light's existence, L realized that they were no longer underground; they were…
"And then I find you again, here, on the rooftop — as many times as I need to," Light concluded, all but demanding that something significant be returned to him, but…
L couldn't do it. His mind lost the battle with his facial muscles and he smiled, all the more so when Light punched him, rattling his brain like always. He retaliated with a spinning kick, immediately regretting it when Light was sent crashing into the chain link fence behind him. It caught his body like a noisy net, but rather than bouncing back to fight as L would have expected of him, Light slid defeated to the cement and covered his face with his blood-stained hands.
L blinked. He stared at the sun for a full minute. He blinked again, but the sun's afterimage remained, staining unchanging Light. At last, as confused as ever, he questioned, "What is wrong?"
The vague back-and-forth motion Light made with his head answered naught.
"Nothing is wrong?"
"No." Again, it was unclear what Light meant.
"You don't want to talk about it?"
"Shut up and die."
…That was clear enough. Nonetheless, L said, "I'm already dead," the first frivolous words that came to mind, not to annoy Light but because he had come to dislike silence; or conversely, because he had come to…
"…hate you…" whispered Light, so breathy the air was sucked out of L's lungs. Wide eyes wavering between Light's oddly puckered lips and marshmallow clouds swirling in the sky, L nibbled on the pad of his thumb in agitation, consuming only the credence of both his and Light's feelings.
Honesty had a bad aftertaste.
"We're repeating ourselves," L observed, clinging to the mechanics of the situation, to the surface of things worn smoother every moment; of course, this didn't escape Light's notice.
"Well, we have an eternity to repeat ourselves, don't we!?" Light blazed, demonic in appearance with the way he had pushed his bangs up in a spiky array to reveal two smoldering embers of cried out red-eye. "Of all the people, of all the places, I had to end up here with you."
A bit blue, "Oh?"
"That's exactly what I mean! You're inhuman, a cold, calculating machine who… who laughed at me when I told you how I died." The sentence was punctuated with a snarling half-sound life wouldn't have allowed Light, but then he hung his head and combed his fingers through his bangs until they were perfectly arranged, neurosis defined.
Stillness and silence reigned for a long time after that, neither comfortable nor uncomfortable nor even contemplative in nature. Perhaps it could best be described as the passage of time which only comes with timelessness; whether that made it more precious or wretched was introspective, and L had never been one to consider such matters, least of all now, below a sky steadily graying.
If the universe were having an unspoken contest of endurance, L lost when he took a tentative step forward. The clouds didn't burst and nor did Light stir. The raspy evenness of Light's breathing, like a sleeping dragon, beckoned L to his side for better or for worse to stare out at the swampy Tokyo skyline. Everything seemed dull and distant from this height, vacated despite the city glitter and glow; even the clouds were comatose.
"This is the day I died," L said softly. "Seven degrees Celsius, approximately. The rain sounds like… tiny bells on the surface of the rooftop… one-hundred-and-eight sins being cleansed. I am… sad… especially when I… when you…"
Softer still, "But I'm happy, too."
Crouching down, L tucked a strand of hair behind Light's ear, the movement jerky with nervousness and inexperience and his whisper even more so, a shuddering breath above all, "The truth is…"
A/N: I'm alive. I'm working on the next chapter. It'll probably be the last, depending on how the characters want to interact and where my mind takes me... but is it even possible to cram an eternity into one chapter? Light and L better get busy, if you know what I mean. XD
Additional info…
"In Japan, at the end of the year, a bell is chimed 108 times to finish the old year and welcome the new one. Each ring represents one of 108 earthly temptations a person must overcome to achieve nirvana." – Wikipedia. That's why there were 108 chapters to the Death Note manga, et cetera et cetera…
