Music used:
Long Shot by Kelly Clarkson
Lucifer's Angel by The Rasmus
Elegy For Dunkirk from Atonement
"Approximately 70% of murders have religious motivation."
XXX
I closed my suitcase with a satisfactory snap. Finally, I was finished! Ryuk was hovering behind me, bored out of his pitifully small mind, but I cared very little for his opinion. I smiled a little to myself as I left the room, one of my rucksacks in hand, heading out towards the lobby. The list would be going up in about ten minutes, and I could almost taste the anxiety in the air. After this, we were all going to the airport and flying back to England. Ugh. Fun. I didn't want to have to get stuck in customs again because it took hours for M to get through with all the weapons she had on her. It was a wonder the woman hadn't been arrested as a terrorist yet.
I had been gathering as much information as I could, having ordered Hamlet to hack into Wammy's records on 'Jenna Atkins'. Her sudden and much unexpected appearance had ruffled a lot of feathers, clearly. While she was ruffling feathers, she unknowingly was tempting curiosity. I had to know who she was.
I was right to research her. Her true name was Clarice Bell, and she was truly one of the first ever Wammy's girls. She'd been brought in for two gifts she possessed; one being that she had a natural charm that drew people to her, and the other for gymnastics. She was a grown-up Rosalie. She'd been about fifteen, my age, at the time she was brought in, and L, spotting her talents, had traveled with her for a brief time working. Later, when she was much older, she had drawn L in and it was rumored that they had shared a romantic, if not sexual, relationship. Once they split, due to 'conflict of interest', Bell moved away to Los Angeles for several years, completely forgotten. It was only around the time C began working with L, aged eighteen, that she began to commit plentiful armed robberies across the US. She was not caught until L started on her case and caught her in the act robbing a highly rated art gallery in Seattle. She was sentenced to twenty years in prison, yet seemed to have wormed her way back out when asked back by L himself.
Apparently, she was a prime example of criminal psychology, but… ooh, if she was an example of that subject matter, then she would be dealing with the closest expert on the topic. There seemed to be pretty nasty friction between C and Jenna, for some 'unknown' reason. I could figure it out, yet I did not believe that C knew the reason for their dispute herself.
I was surprised that L of all people would invite back an ex-girlfriend that had tried to shoot him. This put him more prominently on my list of people with severe death wishes. Slo was number one, so far, followed after quite neatly by Fall, Hamlet, Star and C.
In the corridor, I massaged the side of my neck with one hand. I was almost so stupid as to trip over the undone laces of my trainers, so, relieved I'd noticed, I bent down to tie them. Once I'd completed my mundane task, I stood up and took half a step – only to feel a hand clamp down on my mouth and drag me sideways into a room. I couldn't prevent the squeal of shock that escaped me, the person's hand still tight on my lips.
They let go the moment the door closed, and it was only then I noticed who it was.
"Are you trying to give me a bloody heart attack?" I snapped angrily, going to punch Slo hard on the shoulder. He let out a grunt of pain, but other than that, he ignored my reaction.
"I needed to speak to someone," he hissed. "And keep your goddamn voice down!"
"You thought I was the right person?" I demanded, still irritable.
"I want you to look at something," he told me. "Please, just… stay calm for a bit. You can beat the crap out of me all you want later."
"Fine, fine, what is it?" I sighed.
He took my hand hesitantly and led me to one side of the room, gesticulating to a painting on the wall. I reached out to touch it, wondering if I'd missed something in the picture. It was just a landscape painting of a simple rural scene, where was the strangeness in that-?
As soon as the tip of my index finger touched the centre of the painting, it fell off the nail it was hanging from and dropped to the ground. I was worried for a moment that I'd broken it until I saw what had been hidden behind there. There was a great dusty hole in the wall, something that obviously held another room before it was bricked up on the other side. Instead, all that remained was a sort of cubby-hole just right to hide things in. I looked to Slo, who nodded, and then I reached inside.
It wasn't the ample cobwebs that swathed my hands that made me feel like I'd been injected with some disgusting disease by a red-hot poker. It was what I'd taken.
My voice turned to ice.
"Slo, have you seen these?" I asked him.
"I-"
"Yes or no?"
"Two. I couldn't look at the rest."
I glanced at the photos in my hand once more, shuffling through them. There were approximately ten in total. One showed a much younger C, looking back over her shoulder with a stern expression. She looked about my age there, fifteen or fourteen, certainly no older than that. Standing what couldn't have been two feet from her was a teenage boy with bronze hair that fell across his face… just like mine. The next picture showed a dark-haired woman of about eighteen with glittering black eyes sitting next to an older version of the boy. The third photo in my hands showed the same woman full-on with irritated expression on her clear, pale face. Clearly someone had photographed her as a joke and had not gotten a good response. I couldn't blame her. I would have looked just as annoyed. There were about ten more photos, one showing the young, bronze-haired man again, this time properly. He was turned toward the camera, his eyes distant.
I dropped the rest of the photographs and held the two showing the man and the woman clearly side by side. In that moment, I felt my heart stop.
"Mum?" I gasped. "Dad?"
"What?" Slo whispered in awe. He took the photos from me, turned me by the shoulders to face him and held the photos next to my face. His jaw dropped and his eyes widened. "K."
"Slo," I choked out. My eyes were beginning to feel oddly warm, unconventionally moist. Was this what it felt like to finally cry?
It only took a few seconds and then Slo was holding me tight, hugging me like I was some lucky charm he didn't dare let go of. My tears – how bizarre and painful they felt – were staining his shirt, yet he didn't seem to care. We stayed there for a few moments, allowing the enormity of what we'd shared to sink in.
My parents… my mother, Rin, and my father, Light… what sort of life had they shared? Did they ever look in my eyes and think, 'yeah, this could work out', or did they think, 'this is so horribly wrong'.
Now I considered it, my mother looked a lot like L – crazily like him, actually. The same skin, eyes, hair color, long limbs, skinniness… they were like twins. Then again… I looked at the photo that held C, the same hair color as my father, the same hair style, similar posture; my brain was throbbing. Two pairs that were so like me it made my head spin. Light and Rin, the two that were never meant to be together for reasons that threatened Rin and her family; and L and C, the two that seemed to constantly be fighting for reasons that the rest of the world was oblivious to, despite the fact they always went back to one another afterwards, just because… they felt they had to.
A stone dropped in my stomach.
I broke away from Slo, picked up the photos on the ground and slipped my hand in his, dragging him out of the room. I hadn't realized the time: we were going to be late for the rankings posting if we waited around here any longer. I promised him on the way down that we would return to his room afterwards to sort out anything we'd left.
The crowd to see the next term's rankings was huge. Mello and Near were supervising, casting each other weird looks that made me want to vomit. I didn't quite understand them, yet they were enough to leave me nauseous. They spoke occasionally, keeping the tone nonchalant. The curiosity behind their words was evident, though. They were dying to know who was where just as much as we all were.
"I remember rankings day," Mello muttered to me in passing. "I know exactly what you lot are going through."
"No, you don't," Slo laughed, unknowingly still holding my hand. "You were number two. K's number seven."
"Excuse me, but I'm always on top," Mello protested.
"Actually, I was," Near corrected him. "I was number one for several years, until I left Wammy's."
"I was on top!" Mello complained.
"Whoa, whoa, you guys do realize how wrong this conversation is getting, don't you?" Slo sniggered. "Come on, K, let's get to the front. I don't think I want to hear another argument about who's on top."
"Ew," I laughed.
Slo put his hands on my shoulders and helped barge us to the front of the crowd. I read up from the bottom of the first page, the anxiety and excitement of the atmosphere becoming much too thick and much too contagious.
15. Billie Jean
14. Star
13. Aries and Gemini
12. Athena
11. Hamlet
10. Blu
9. Fall
8. Colt
7. Checkmate
My stomach tightened. So I'd handed over my seventh place to Checkmate. I was probably way lower than Blu, the previous number four.
6. Damnation (well, that would shut him up finally, wouldn't it?)
5. Io (that was cool, I liked Io, and she'd been the previous thirteen)
4. Leo
3. Slo
Slo was number three? That couldn't be right! He should be number two!
2. Chip Chaos
Chip Chaos? What the fuck? The mute kid with the blue hair who growled at me?
1. K
I was… number one? Number one? I could sense Slo going rigid beside me also as he read through from the top to the bottom of the lists. Oh… my… God. I'd done it. I'd finally done it. I'd beaten them all! I'd fucking gone through with the plan! Being number one was the most difficult part of the plan I'd tried out, and now I'd gotten there, the rest should be a piece of cake. There was no doubt I'd get a look-in with the Kira case now! The future L (I gagged at the name) would have to be told as much as possible about her mentor's activities.
Suddenly, everyone went quiet. Like, graveyard-quiet.
I turned around and saw L standing behind me. I took a deep breath, feeling his eyes scanning mine. Then he stuck out his hand, shook mine and murmured a hushed, 'congratulations'. That was it.
Once he was gone, I saw him gesture to C, who had been glaring at him for about five minutes. She followed him out, and I couldn't have cared less what they were talking about. My head felt light, and I knew at that moment my parents would have been proud of me.
XXX
"You can't be serious, L."
"Why not?"
"Well, first, you don't trust me. Second, I don't like you. Third, you don't like me. Fourth, this is what Wammy's was built for, and fifth-"
"This is turning into a very long list."
"-Fifth, I don't know anything about this!"
"Anything about it? You have been in training for seven years of your life."
"I don't know if I can do this. It's crazy. You're crazy."
"Don't panic. I'm sure you'll be a great L."
"Yeah, there's a downside to that for you, though."
"Which is?"
"I only become L if you die. So why are you telling me now?"
Thank you for reading, and please review to tell me what you think!
C.
P.S. Things are about to become a lot more dramatic. So stay tuned for more...