AN: Hello everyone! So I kept my promise, and I updated eventually! Yay!
I'm seriously hoping I'll have a lot more free time now because guess what? I GOT INTO COLLEGE EARLY DECISION! I'm SOOO pumped! It's a small liberal arts school with writing, theatre, and nerd-dom so I'm stoked. If anyone wants to know what SPECIFIC college it is, just ask and I'll PM you. :)
So enjoy chapter 20! Oh! And Happy New Year! ...yes I know I'm an hour late...
I have to be dead.
I am far from familiar surroundings, my DS is dead, my pockets are void of cigarets, Mello is stone beside me, and L is living before me. An illusion of life. If L hadn't died, surely his successors wouldn't have been told he had. Surely we would have been spared the grief, the responsibility, the misery. Surely Mello wouldn't have been ripped from my side, ending our childhood and killing our innocence. The smoke of his gun and the blood on my wrist.
I struggled to remember death, to recall the drive away from Mello, the car chase, the police; it was all meticulously mapped out in my mind, but the images were no more than plans and expectation, a ghost of death that turned the tarot cards, shifted the ouija board, spun the pendulum, but failed to materialize.
Can I be dead without having died?
L's eyes widened and focused; they were the lens of a camera, the butt of a gun. Colder and sharper than I had remembered.
"Y-you're alive," Mello's voice trembled.
L blinked. "Yes, I know this must be shocking. Unfortunately it wasn't prudent to inform you of my choice until now."
"Your choice." Mello's fists clenched with his teeth and his voice expanded with his body, filling the small foyer. In all his petit glory, he loomed over L.
"Mels," I soothed, grabbing his clenched fist.
Mello flung me off blindly, narrowly avoiding punching me in the face. "You chose to tell us you were dead."
"Yes. It was appropriate."
"You didn't choose a successor, you let us believe you were dead for years, you destroyed our lives, and you still haven't captured Kira?" The words slithered out of Mello's clenched teeth, quite, controlled, and venomous.
"I summoned you both here to assist me in doing just that. I could have waited a few more months of course, but I thought it wise to circumvent your foolish kidnapping scheme."
With a feral cry, Mello sprung. A thud and a crash and L was on the floor, oozing blood and serenity.
Mello glanced at his bloodied fist and L's bloodied face, seething, sputtering, shaking. He bolted, not out the door but deeper into the loft.
Crashes and curses and silence.
L sighed and rolled onto the balls of his feet. Unperturbed, he prodded his nose and examined the blood that cling to his fingertips.
"S-sorry."
"I expected as much."
A single drop of blood broke from the smear and rolled down his face. A tear carving a trail of blood. L did nothing. He crossed his eyes and tilted his head in a futile attempt to see what lay just under his nose. He was blind to the blood staining his face, and his hands lay limp, tired and useless.
"Where's the bathroom?"
"To the left, third door on the right," he mumbled through still lips. The blood was undisturbed.
I found the bathroom easily and gathered toilet paper and hand towels. I tossed out the toilet paper flower and destroyed the neatly folded towels. It seemed so egregious that a housekeeper or an employee of the building could infringe upon the hideout of the world's three greatest dead detectives. Then again... there was no toothbrush on the counter, no pictures on the wall, no footmarks on the fluffy beige carpet other than where I had stepped. This must be a new location for L.
I peered further down the hall before returning. The hallway seemed endless. Clean white walls carved with naked white doors, all leading to a sharp turn. Are we living in a maze?
I sighed and turned back. Perhaps L had Near here too. He'd find his true successor by putting Near and Mello in the center of the loft. Whoever finds his way out first wins. A truly genius idea. Plus, Mello couldn't simply kill Near since he'd blend in with all the white...
L hadn't moved, and the blood had stopped flowing on its own. Regardless, I set about restoring L's face to white. Gingerly, gingerly. When I had cleaned Mello's wounds, I had worried about hurting him and I had worried about angering him, but I hadn't worried about breaking him. L was a porcelain doll, still and cold beneath the warm blood. He was frozen, and he was breathless. He did not blink, and he did not sway, despite his unsteady crouch.
I wonder if this is what a mortician feels like...
"Done." I was almost surprised to see smooth, unbroken skin beneath my towel.
"Perhaps you would like to know why I died." Not a word of thanks, not a glimmer of approval. I nodded. Perhaps Near mirrored L's appearance, and Mello mirrored his manners.
Mello...
Is it really alright to talk to L by myself? To leave Mello alone and angry with no one to yell at, to threaten, or to ignore...
L rose and tromped down the hallway, and I scurried after. Mello had always put L above me. L was the being and ideal with the highest value when L was living and when he was dead. Does that change now that he's both? Should I follow L rather than Mello?
"I want cake."
I had to wonder whether he was talking to me or to himself, or if he even knew I was still trailing behind him.
Two turns beyond the first was a small kitchenette. Two refrigerators stood side by side, framed with bare white counter. In the center was an island with sparkling pearl and silver granite.
"Would you like some cake?"
My stomach would have certainly liked some - a pop-tart isn't much of a breakfast, no matter how freaking delicious it is - but something about consuming L's cake seemed perfectly blasphemous, and I imagined the frosting would choke and kill me. I'd be as dead as the man slouching before me.
"No, thank you."
The fridge was stacked with cakes of every shape and size. A single slice lay on each individual plate, filling the space of every shelf.
"Cake slices," L opened the first refrigerator again. "Cakes," L opened the second to present a fridge stacked with full cakes in large, clear tupperware. "This is the cake eating kitchen. You may take slices as you desire. The other kitchens are for making and baking. Please do not enter."
He took his perch on the stool beside me and lowered a morsel of cake into his waiting mouth. He chewed slowly and mechanically, his eyes still and empty. Does the cake bring him any pleasure at all? Does he eat can because he wants to because he can, or because he always has?
All of L's attention was focussed on his simple task. Fork to cake, cake to mouth. Scrape, chew, swallow. Did he simply forget about me?
"L... will you tell me-"
"I would ask you to no longer call me L." He told his fork around a mouthful of cake.
"Why?"
"I am not L, not anymore. L is dead."
"Okay..." Perhaps L is dead, truly dead. Perhaps this man is an impostor, a fraud who somehow knows our names and our personalities, and magically looks exactly like him... It seems illogical, but so does L's behavior. "Should I call you Ryuuzaki then?"
Clang. "No!" He raised his clenched fist from the counter. "No." He pulled and rubbed and groped at a shining object on his wrist. A bracelet? No. It was a handcuff. A chain didn't dangle from it and there was no other side. It was just the cuff clamped around his wrist, hanging and rubbing on his pale pink raw wrist.
"Um... sorry." I shrank into my seat. This was definitely L... it had to be. Still... whether his heart still beat or not, death had changed him.
"I am no longer L, so all that's left is Lawliet. Call me Lawliet."
"Is that your name? Is that what L stands for?"
"I am Lawliet."
My thoughts flickered to Mello, alone and fuming God knows where, and I had found out L's real name before him. Now he was really going to kill me...
"I know who Kira is, and I cannot catch him alone."
If I had been eating cake, I would have choked on it. "W-what? You know?"
"Haven't you discovered his identity as well?"
"Yes, but-"
"Then why wouldn't I?"
"But you haven't caught-"
"Of course not!"
"But you should-"
"Have you caught him yet?"
"We would have!" I burst.
L dropped his eyes to his naked, cake-less plate. "A suicide mission and a piece of vital evidence is not proof and it is not success." He scraped the fork over the smeared icing and lifted the fork until it dangled inches from his lips. "To die is to lose." His tongue darted out and captured the speck of blue frosting like a vile, vapid reptile.
"So... why did you die?"
L leapt off his stool and dropped his plate into the trash bin by the sink.
"Why did you throw out-"
"So many questions." L straightened and fixed his gaze on the window above the sink. The sky was clear and so pale it almost blended in with the walls. "I do no like doing dishes. And as for your previous question, I died in order to survive. I lost in order to someday win. Light Yagami is Kira, but Light Yagami is not Kira." L swiveled his head, and drilled his eyes into mine. Marble pitch, they were no longer quite as dead. "I need to separate Light Yagami from Kira."
"B-but... What?"
"That will be all. I suggest you find Mello."
L returned to his stool and to his crouch and nibbled his thumb, eyes fixed on the naked wall.
His mind is either filled with theories and calculations, whirring numbers and sophisticated philosophy... or simply nothing.
I reached for my cigs. Not even an empty box.
I reached for my DS. It was dead.
I ran for Mello, rounding corners and thudding doors, deep into the endless white
Thanks for reading! Let me know how you're following along. Not-dead!L is kind of trippy. O.o All shall become clear... in due time. If any of you have pieced together my personal opinion of Light/Kira, you'll see where I'm going with this. :)