"There are moments of false hope sometimes. Where you go and you see, ah I am not that influential, things are the same as they always are. It's both disheartening and relieving, to think you have no influence, but sometimes things are more subtle than you expect. Often times things wear the same face initially only to transform into different beasts at a later date. "
They ended up celebrating his finishing the entrance exam by watching a horror movie in a nearby theater.
She had been waiting for him outside the building, as she had promised a few hours earlier, looking more frustrated and disgruntled than she had that morning as if she had lost herself somewhere inside her own thoughts. Still, there was something strangely comforting about seeing her there, almost consistent as if her presence was combined with Ryuk's so that it was hard to imagine a world where they weren't there.
When he'd reached them she'd looked at him for a few moments and then declared in a typical Anna Jones confident tone, "We should go do something fun and stupid."
Fun and stupid had translated to horror film.
They had done the horror film routine a few times before, both on their own and with vague acquaintances from school. Anna Jones had declared that it was a mission to introduce both her and himself to the wonderful world of pop culture that would make him seem like a normal teenager and her not sound like an idiot referencing things that didn't exist. He wasn't sure why he went along with it, especially the times when she invited several of his admirers from the class claiming it was Light's once in a life time chance to be the Bachelor, but he did never the less.
He never really enjoyed the movies themselves, he wasn't a fan of the genre, it just seemed like such pointless death. There was no thrill or terror only a dulled grief inside him as he'd watch the bodies pile up against one another without greater cause. He wasn't even entirely sure Anna enjoyed them, she often looked quite bored during them, or if not bored then with an expression of vague amusement that almost matched Ryuk's. Watching Anna during horror films, was an interesting experience in and of itself, the way she looked at them was often similar to the way she looked at him when her life wasn't immediately threatened. Reality, to her, was still more akin to watching a show. In spite of whatever reservations they both had they'd go all the same and when an opportunity arose neither declined.
This time inside the dark theater he felt as if it was different, as if this film of demon children and failed priests was somehow more significant than all the others, not because of the film but because of her.
She had asked him a question before he had walked into the exam and so far it seemed as if she hadn't wanted to hear the answer. Whatever his response was then, to her forced casual query about anyone interesting, it was significant enough to give her pause. It was as if this was one final attempt at pretending, at playing out the charade of Light and Anna, before it disappeared like smoke under the weight of Kira.
Watching as the protagonist made her way through darkened hallways where the shadows seemed jagged he wondered if he was not simply indulging her but also indulging himself. Things had been easy as of late and while part of him had longed for some action on L's part, some sort of a move, he had also been strangely content with the way things were.
A charade of normality, he wondered if they hadn't played a little too well in the months since the agent's disappearance. They had been living in the beginning of a horror film, when there were unseen eyes in the trees but the protagonist was blissfully almost unaware, before the true dawning of knowledge took place and there was only that occasional flash of intuitive fear. It was time, however, for the plot to start rolling.
L had taken his time, had rethought and reevaluated his situation, had thinned his task force to contain only a few men one of whom was Light's father. They were ready for battle now, Kira and L, and that only left the irrelevant question of whether Anna Jones was ready for what was to come.
They sat through the credits as everyone left and then travelled back via public transportation in silence. Only when they had reached his room with the locked door did he respond to her request which had taken up far more of his thoughts than any single question on the exam, "There was a man there who looked as if he was on some form of narcotics and sat in his chair in a fetal position. There were a few odd looking young men who probably spend most of their lives in their basements playing computer games but he was by far the one who stood out the most."
She looked blank at that, nothing on her face, as if the emotions rolling through her head were too overwhelming to present themselves on her features. She sat down on the bed with an almost comical heaviness breathing out as she did so, "Okay."
"Should I be worried about him?" Light asked, she appeared to think about that for a few moments as she lay on her back and inspected the ceiling, searching through memories from another world and lining them up against one another.
"I don't know. I don't know what they know anymore or what they can figure out, I mean he's there so obviously something… I really don't know." She gave him a shaky smile for a moment her pale eyes meeting his before looking back at the ceiling again, "I suppose he'll let you know himself soon enough."
He took the seat across from her, the computer chair, a position they had taken quite a bit. Him at the desk, her on the bed, and Ryuk somewhere in between from his memories alone he could paint a thousand pictures of this scene. Always between them, somewhere invisible in the air, would be that sense of mistrust, fear, and desperation.
"What does that mean?" He asked quietly in a tone that had not presented itself since the agent's death, the last time they had confronted each other over matters of Kira.
"Let's just say that he's not the most subtle of people." She responded with an odd tone of humor in her voice, as if she found this observation rather funny but wasn't quite willing to share the details of the joke.
"Do I know who he is?" Light asked to which she glanced up at him again and gave him a wry sort of smile, "He'll probably tell you himself, like I said, he really lacks the subtlety and the social cues."
For a moment he wondered if they had taken a few steps back from where they were, as if Lind L. Taylor had just died and they were trying to pin the blame, what to say what not to say what to give what not to give.
"I'd prefer something more concrete than that, Anna." He said softly and he knew that even then she heard the danger in his tone because she turned her head to look toward him those blue eyes penetrating.
"If he doesn't approach you and tell you himself then it isn't important. I just wanted to know if he was there, I don't know if that means he has the same intentions as he had before, we'll have to see."
He doubted that, as if someone's importance could be written off solely by the actions they chose to take, but he remained silent all the same turning to the desk and pulling the notebook out of the secret compartment.
She seemed insistent this time, as she had been when she had approached him about the agent, the terror was there but it was stowed safely behind a wall of steel. She'd only tell him what she wished to and relying on the forced words of a prophet was just as dangerous as disregarding them altogether. It was a fine line he walked meddling with gods, demons, and prophets so casually; it required greater planning than he initially expected that was all.
He'd simply have to wait and see, and until then write, that was the way the world seemed to work after all.
He barely noticed when she softly shut the door of his room behind her.
There was probably some sort of philosophy, to feel at first as if your slightest action could change the world and that everything was teetering on some edge, and then to discover to both your relief and disappointment that your actions had made no difference at all. Some mix of romanticism and existentialism, perhaps some nihilism as well, until it turned into the layout of the fabricated universe she now wandered.
Somehow without Raye Penber's and Naomi Misora's death L had still figured it out and she thought that should have made her happy. It was the goal after all, she should be thrilled she got exactly what she wanted, but then why was it so unnerving.
Maybe she had wanted, if only for a moment, to make some true catastrophic difference for there to be some sort of unseen price for her actions. Something to say that she was more than some character thrown into a story, more than Anna Jones; something to give her reason, purpose for existing beyond giving Light some vague semblance of a friend that wasn't L.
She didn't like questioning the ramifications of her own existence but she'd found she was doing it a lot lately.
She wanted to wait it out, see what L really wanted, see if he would approach Light in the auditorium and whisper into his ear, "I am L" and watch how he squirmed. She wanted to see if she truly was irrelevant but then she wasn't irrelevant, Naomi Misora and Raye Penber were still alive, they would be getting married soon just like they had originally intended so she couldn't be irrelevant.
She had to remind herself that she wasn't on Light's side or even on L's side really but on the side of the Naomi Misora's, and then it didn't seem as if she had somehow inexplicably failed.
"So this is Stockholm Syndrome." She said to herself, shaking her head, because somehow not answering Light had hurt as if it was truly betrayal instead of self-preservation.
Somehow along the way he had become more Light than Kira, and that scared her, but at the same time she was so tired of being anxious.
There were probably some philosophical ramifications for that as well.
Sitting in the guest room, a plain undecorated place that she had never quite managed to take over, she wondered if the storm that was brewing in Light's eyes had found its outlet. He had wanted more, expected it even, he wanted details but he hadn't threatened to kill her and somehow that detail was caught in her mind. There had been no blatant threats at all only that undercurrent of danger and expectation, as if they were somehow beyond threats, and perhaps they were.
If someone could be friends with Light, if he was capable of friendship, then maybe this was what it looked like.
Or maybe it just didn't matter because they'd find out soon enough.
Somehow she had no doubt that her exam scores would find themselves being scored though she herself had not been present, either way she'd go to that opening ceremony with Light, and from there she'd seem the implications of her actions for herself.
But of course, if L was at the university in the first place, it had to be for Light because Light would be the only reason L would go. Why else would he be there? So was there really a point in putting off the inevitable conclusions? Some part of her wanted to say yes, and she rarely got to do what she wanted in these days.
Just pretend for a little while, a little bit longer, not that she was Anna Jones but that she was just someone pretending to be Anna Jones without any real reason to. She wanted to pretend that she was trapped in Japan having to learn a language she'd barely even heard but not that the only person she could claim to be a friend was a mass murderer who was about to enter a cut throat game of cat and mouse that would decide the fate of the world. Surely, she thought to herself, that wasn't too much to ask.
She had the sudden urge to break something, to smash it into pieces, but she wasn't willing to sacrifice her laptop for a fit of rage.
"Goddammit all." She said to herself and the empty room.
Well, she'd just do what she'd said she'd do in the beginning, play it as it came. Save those inconsequential people, the people like her, who didn't matter to L or Kira. That was the point, not L winning or Kira winning, but everyone else not losing and then somehow maybe they would find a way to make it so that Kira didn't exist.
She didn't like thinking about that too much either; stopping Light and thus stopping Kira, because at the end of this she didn't want him dead, she just wanted Kira gone and even that she didn't believe in too strongly. How could she? It wasn't her world, she was an extra just like the rest of them, she didn't have time to worry about things like the morality of Kira only the deaths that just kept piling up.
She didn't want Light dead just so that she could be free, friendship really was a terrible thing, if it had led her to conclusions like that one.
So she'd just do things one step at a time, like she always had done, taking the Lind L. Taylors and the Raye Penbers and the Misa Amanes in hand as they came rushing by like freight trains. It seemed to be working so far at any rate and she had to remember that.
It really was the easiest way to approach things, think too far ahead and you'd lose your head, or so she'd always thought.
"This is so stupid." She said to herself, getting what you wanted, seeing Kira confronted for the thing of destruction that he was, there should be some satisfaction in that and saving a few lives at the same time.
Hadn't it been her, who had thought only a few hours ago, that a world without Light as the main Kira suspect didn't make much sense?
Still, they'd both see soon enough, when L acted for himself. Until then there were events in the forms of freight trains and games of divulging only enough information as necessary to the local serial killer.
Picking up her well-worn Japanese dictionary as well as the latest children's book she was attempting to read she attempted to focus on the one thing she actually seemed to be capable of. Who could really tell, maybe at the end of the day, it would be something inexplicable like literacy in Japanese that would solve all her problems?
"One thing at a time."
Author's Note: So I'm alive and realized I hadn't touched this story in a few months and while it's great to get distracted by the Harry Potter fandom this story is actually pretty cool. So, yay update. Thank you to readers and reviewers you guys are great, reviews are greatly appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note
