A.N: I dream of owning death note almost as much as i dream of genie. And yet neither have come true.
- - -
An idle finger around a curled lock of white hair, the new L looked mournfully down at his toys, his soulless eyes penetrating their colored plastic.
He views the world from behind a black stained glass window, watching the fragments of light shift their way into his world. He never goes outside the realm of his window, never opens the window and never expects it to be opened. He is where he belongs.
He views the world in pictures and actions. He is a 'visual' person, he is a clear thinker and a logical one at that.
And he views the world as L, learning from past mistakes and avoiding future ones.
And, at this time, he is avoiding the world as well, caught up in his snowy world, too cold to continue.
He darts his eyes to his chattering colleagues, aware of their disdain. The men that had recently arrived peered at him, their attire as white as his own.
One dared to enter the room, crouching just outside of the card metropolis that Near was in the process of creating. He extended one careful hand out to the silent creature, in the hopes that Near would shake it. He waited, as if he was waiting for a dog to sniff his fingers and become acquainted with him. After half an hour in that uncomfortable position, he clenched and unclenched his aching fist. Near, as always, was unresponsive, simply watching but not approaching. The man rose and addressed the snowy mass at the center of the room.
"Do you know who I am?"
The words, if you looked them up in the dictionary, were simple words, words used to calm a frightened creature. Of course Near knew who he was. Near knew everything, because if Near didn't, he would know nothing. This is the job of L; to know everything, to figure out unknown things before someone else does.
Silence greeted the man in the white coat. He made a small mark on his clipboard, just a note. Near did not frighten him, instead the man was reminded of a lost doe in the middle of the highway, wide-eyes and wary.
"I am here to help you."
The words slid out in perfect timing, with perfect pauses and perfect diction. They were words that this man has repeated often enough that they follow him in his dreams, stealing his last chance to be freed from his job. These words that were meant to comfort but most of the time were ignored. Because in just the way he said them you could taste the sarcasm polluting the air.
"You are here to help me with what?"
Ice. Frozen words that hung in the air, hard and cold and impossible to hear without flinching. They were hateful words, but somehow they possessed the ability to be indifferent, as unflinching as the tundra and just as deadly.
The man retracted a bit, flinching unwillingly. It was just a second, but in Near's constant soulless staring, the move had been noted. The doctor tried to pass it off as a twitch, or another gesture, but he could tell that not much passed this boy.
"Well, we'll see, won't we? My name is Dr. Frendt. Very pleased to make your acquaintance, Ne-"
"Don't finish my name."
The words slipped out like the wet scales of a basilisk, cold, hard and deadly. The stare that accompanied it made the doctor pause in horror. Near himself had paused in his building, glaring at the man with enough ferocity to freeze a continent. He blinked, and went back to his state of indifference, as if it had never happened.
"Well, I see we have some problems here. I mean, look at this city...L." He said this a moved his hand across the cards, none too gracefully.
Near looked up, picked up a gun, and aimed it at him, his face contorting in a way that defied him. His black eyes tore into the man, gouging him.
"I will not hesitate to murder you if so much as one card is touched by you."
The threat was one that the doctor had to face over the years occasionally, the threat of death. He had even faced a gun several of these times, but not once in any of those trials did he back down. Instead, he had held up his hands and suggested something else. But it was in the way that Near said it, in the quick movement and hating eyes that the doctor got the feeling that this snow demon would really shoot him. He quickly retracted his hand, and made a small note on his clipboard, hoping to regain some composure.
Silence. Silence for hours, the creature blanketed in snow not talking, but observing. Not moving, knees to his chest. A silent battle raged between man and winter.
Man lost.
He stood, shivering as if he had really been covered in snow.
"We'll...talk later."
Again only frosty silence. The man left, shivering uncontrollably, hoping never to return. Near watched him leave, indifferent. Granted, the man had almost knocked over his towers, but it wasn't like he cared if people watched him back. He wound a finger in his hair, then placed a replica of Darth Vader on the top of one of his pillars. Idly his finger strayed from his hair to the gun on the floor, stroking it.
It wasn't his, and he was not destined to fire it, he was not the one to pull the trigger, ever. It was loaded, and the safety was off, but never would Near pull the trigger on this gun. He had other guns with him he could fire, yes, but it was this gun that Near had threatened the man with. The man had not seen past his bluff.
This was the way that Near viewed the world, in precious mementos of lives lost, in small signs of permanent mourning that no one else could see. This was the way that Near tried to keep his sanity and indifference, this was the way that Near tried to survive.
This was not his gun. He was never going to fire it, but he kept it loaded by his side, three bullets missing. Always three from the six-bullet chamber. The way that he had gotten it, he had kept it like that.
This was not his gun, but the gun of Mello.
This was not his gun, but he slowly ran his white fingers over it anyway.
- - -
Xander imagined himself as fire. Yes, that was it. Fire, bright, burning, misunderstood. And clever too, although he couldn't quite connect that to the qualities that fire possessed. He stood in the middle of the row, stacking Campbell's tomato soup cans in an artistic way, making sure that all of them faced outwards. He knew he couldn't sign this one, but at least he could do it. And it wasn't hard. Plus he was already getting credentials as an artist.
This one didn't scream because she couldn't scream. Oh, no, X was too smart for that now. He had cut out her tongue before she could, but when she had tried to emit her helpless whimpering anyway, he had gagged her. Now she was on the floor, watching him with helpless eyes as he paced her room, thinking. A severed limb was too used, instead he had to do something more original, more unknown. All at once, it occurred to him what to do, but this had less to do with the victim then with the room itself.
He kicked the aforementioned creature casually, and she flinched. She couldn't beg for mercy, but she could kick back, which she did. Her arms had been tied in the beginning (X wasn't that ignorant), but he hadn't imagined that girls would have strength enough to fight back. He rolled his eyes.
A ringing noise as the blade sliced the air, then a dull thump as it rid the woman of her legs.
Now, he hadn't wanted to spill blood, had he? But that vapid little girl was just too feisty, and besides, it wasn't like she was going to need her legs were she was going. Perhaps she already knew that she was going to die, and had decided to go out with a bang.
But this is the way her world ends.
This is the way her world ends: not with a bang but with a strangled yelp and an arc of blood.
Her thoughts crashed, her world fell, and she tumbled from her life into the cold reality of death, dashing her maimed body against the frozen marble floor.
Seven, eight hours, this one. It took time to do the impossible, after all. She had died after he had maimed her, he was aware of that, but he didn't care. This woman bled a lot less then the other one, he barely had enough to finish his artwork.
But it was done.
- - -
"Do you know who I am?"
A silent stare and a frosty hate reached the man. It was a ridiculous question. Of course Near knew who the doctor was, he had pointed a gun at him not too long ago.
"My name is Dr. Frendt, what do you say to the two of us having a nice long talk? Talk about you, what you think...Whatever you want."
The offer was blatantly ignored. Near was taking down a tower, a quick movement that somehow did not effect the rest of the city. He removed the debris, then began the tower again, card by card.
"You have been building this city for quite some time, L."
Dr. Frendt knew that it was his job to deliver information to the new L, information about a curious case that the police were desperately attempting to solve. For the moment, though, he attempted to make the icy beast comfortable as possible, tried to get him to engage in casual conversations.
"L? Can you hear me?"
"Yes."
A silence greeted this, but Dr. Frendt realized that this was the first word that Near had said to him that day. Perhaps this glacier was partially melting.
"I heard that some people were shocked by how you acted. They said you shut yourself in here?"
Silence. Hours and hours of it, Near building then taking down the same tower over and over and over, moving certain plastic figures from one pillar to the next in a parade of artificial superheros. The psychiatrist watched this with great interest, making the occasional note on his sheet.
"Listen, L, there is a case, and the world really needs you back, ok? If you could just...help?"
"It is not a matter of if I could help, doctor. I am more then capable. The question is wether I would help, isn't it? Which is an entirely different matter in itself."
The doctor met this with stunned silence. It was the longest that Near had talked to him, and in that moment, Near had shot down his request.
"...Y-yes, that is true, L. I did not say that you were not capable..."
"Then you should have." The fluffy white beast swung his dark eyes to the man in the white coat.
"I-I don't understand..."
"Chronic schizophrenia, doctor. Look it up."
Those words dismissed him and scared him, and he scurried away, thoughts whirling in his scruffy brown head.
Near, as always, watched him go, indifferent. He twisted his head to the side, eyeing the person sitting next to him.
"Mello, what did you think of him?"
The blonde bit into a chocolate bar and shrugged.
"Dunno, seemed like a fellow you should ignore, I think."
"And what about the case?"
"You are L, aren't you?"
Near nodded and continued to rebuild the pillar.
This was his castle when Mello died.
This must be kept the same as always or the blonde dressed in black would fade away, and Near would be left alone.
All alone in his icy tundra, Near would freeze.
- - -
A.N: mello's lines are not supposed to be itallisized, i did not forget i promise. and near actually is showing signs of schizophrenia and sorry if i offended anyone that has the disease i didn't mean to.
Again, Absh rocks for totally being awesome. but you knew that.
