L had never been fond of champagne. He found the carbonation unpleasant and the taste of alcohol vile. That was what the laugh bubbling from E's lips reminded him of. Champagne. She laughed airily with a familiarity that sent shivers down his spine, and then she gazed up at him with that piercing electric blue.

"Creatures like me aren't meant to love," she declared in a voice masking seriousness with shrewdness.

"Is that so?" he questioned, ignoring the strange impulse to flee that her gaze seemed to instill in him. It had never been like this. L reflected on their past interactions from the day he met her to the day she left for Wales. Something had changed in her, and he couldn't pinpoint it. She looked the same. The blunt cut of her hair had done little to change her. Her eyes were still the color of caribbean waters. Her cheek bones still delicately sculpted her face. Still, there was something. Something that told him that standing before him was dangerous.

"What do I know about love, L?" she asked casually, as if they were discussing athletics or frivolous things that interested the masses. "My parents died before I could form any real opinions of them. My brother cared more about surpassing you than attending to me. None of the relationships I've sustained were real. Wammy's integrates us into a social environment because humans are social creatures by nature, no matter how reserved we may be. None of my friends outside of Wammy's interest me. We're shadows of people, aren't we? It would be strange, I think, to love someone else." She furrowed her brow as if it was the most difficult thing to consider.

In a way, he understood. They were isolated, essentially. He, himself, couldn't remember his birth parents, not that he felt any inclination to. He was, perhaps, the most removed of the Wammy's kids, but even he had a notion of what love was. Even he, the stoic detective, could feel the twinge of his chest. He was not above disappointment and envy, lust and greed, or excitement and anger.

"You know," he started mildly, "as much as I do, I imagine."

She smiled, and he was taken back to the image of a girl – not a woman, but a girl – accepting ice cream with a brilliant smile as stunning as her eyes. "Then we're in agreement," she said as he dropped his arms, allowing her to move away. She thought their conversation done with that. So much of their exchange, brief as it has been, felt wrong. L thought of her laugh, her gaze, the very way she carried herself. He ran the comparisons in his mind silently, and his hand shot out, almost of its own accord and grasped the fabric of her sleeve.

"When did you become a liar, Everest?" he asked, finally realizing what it was that gave the impression of a vast distance between them. Her policy of open honesty had been lost somewhere during the investigation. The ease with which he could read her had faded, like a muscle growing weak from lack of use.

{E.B.}

A liar? I considered his question momentarily, feeling the disdain rising in my throat before reason eased it back down. "You said it yourself, I'm an open book written in code. Don't you think it's possible that you've just been reading it wrong this whole time?"

"Everest," L pressed sternly, his tone conveying that my deflections had no effect on him. His hand gripped my sleeve with an insistence that couldn't be shaken off.

I reflected on the last few months of my life, but it wasn't enough to argue or justify or even explain L's claim. No, I had to look further, to those days under different names, forging a new identity every few weeks, when Everest ceased to exist, and there was nothing left of me but a memory in the minds of a select few.

Still, I couldn't answer him, because, as I looked into those damned, vacant eyes, I was reminded of a fundamental truth. A truth that Wammy's House was built around.

L is never wrong.

So, I wondered, what was it? When did it happen? I thought back to Wammy's, to Beyond patting my head with his sugar covered fingers and Roger's stern glares. I thought to the orphanages, when I was alone and annoyed by the noise and the separation from my brother. I pored over memories. I followed the branches of probability. I calculated the numbers. I thought, and I thought, and I knew from the look in his eyes that L was thinking, too. That the numbers and the branches and the memories were flying through his mind the way they were in mine, and I knew that he truly didn't know.

"Would it be so bad?" I asked, eyes dropping to his pale hand grasping the bell sleeve of my sweater. "If I was a lying monster? Just like you?"

"Yes," he replied promptly. "The world functions on the premise of justice and balance, E."

"The laws of physics?" I offered. "Gravity?"

"A law, all the same."

"I disagree."

"We aren't arguing the principles of the physical world," he pointed out, annoyance just barely seeping into his tone. "I am the only person in the world like me. Light Yagami, brilliant as he is, and I loathe to admit it, is a foil to me. You, Everest, are a foil to me."

"Truly," I replied, slipping into our native English, just the faintest trace of my Welsh heritage in the words, "I never knew that it was possible for someone as egoistic as you to hate themselves so much."

"We weren't talking about me," L pointed out.

"Really? Because you just referred to yourself thrice."

"I'm making a point."

"About how the world revolves around you?" I shot back, growing irritated with my sleeve still trapped in his grip.

"About how you, of all people, are everything I'm not," L hissed in his smooth English, and in that moment, we both realized the mistake we had just made. L Lawliet and Escallonia Birthday had come back into existence, and all it took was the sounds of an angry Welshwoman and a frustrated Englishman filling the empty kitchen. L sighed and dropped his hand from my sleeve. "You're supposed to be the honest one, the one who can get along with others and blend in with the crowd. You aren't the liar."

An irrational kind of anger welled up in my chest. "Who are you to say what I am?" I demanded. "You're right, you know. You always are. It was one of those things that drove everyone at the House mad trying to be like you. Everyone always thought you were some kind of impossibility, some entity greater than the rest of us. You should've seen the way C and D admired you. They didn't see you the way that A or B saw you."

"And how is that?" L questioned flatly, the same monotone that contributed to the detective known as L.

"A human being," I spat the word with a deeply rooted disdain that I hadn't known before. "A human being who relied on observation and mathematics the way the rest of us do. Has it ever occurred to you that what you're seeing isn't everything?" I exhaled heavily and composed myself, allowing the sudden onslaught of anger and disgust melt away.

His face remained as impassive as ever, and I sighed because it was beginning to occur to me that the answer to his question had been staring me in the face like a reflection in the bathroom mirror.

{E.B.}

"You're wrong about one thing, L. From the moment I was born, I've been the liar. I might even be the worst one of all. Worse than Beyond, worse than Light, and even worse than you. The greatest nuisance you've ever met." She cast her gaze to the floor and, by the slight furrow of her brow, as if she was pained by the words she had just spoken. He shifted uncomfortably as words failed him. She seemed melancholy in a way he had never seen. "There's no such thing as true honesty in this world. We're all just different kinds of monsters and liars."

Is she mourning? He wondered as he took in the glassy dullness to her usually vibrant eyes. When BB was incarcerated, her eyes had been alight with a blue fire that believed in the justice done that day. Despite the sorrow and anger in their depths, she had known what needed to be done. Yet, he hadn't been there when she was informed of her brother's death. How did she react to the knowledge that her only living blood had been taken from this world? Was it, perhaps, like this?

"You could never be a nuisance," he stumbled over the words, surprising her more by his lack of decorum than by his actual statement. Her eyes leapt to him, wide with shock and shining with a strange sort of fear that he also felt stirring in his chest.

Her gaze softened as the seconds ticked by, "Thank you." She looked away, again, and he, for once, resisted an impulse to turn her face back towards his so he could see her vivid blue eyes again. That seemed to settle their conversation, and she, again, made to leave. This time, he didn't stop her.

It was only when she was already gone that he realized with a heavy weight on his chest that she had never truly answered his question, and his mind whirred against his will formulating the chances that Everest was in love with Light Yagami.

{E.B.}

I had never liked myself blonde. I was reminded of this as I took in the sight of Emily Nakamura's platinum blonde bob, a new persona suited to cooperating with Namikawa. I had pulled up every article about Namikawa over the past five days, and Wedy had done me a favor, following his daily routine during that time. I knew everything about him from his alma mater to his favorite restaurant, and while I pulled up the zipper to my sleek black dress, I reminded myself that his favorite drink was secretly an American beer, but if you asked anyone else, he would say it was an expensive Italian red wine.

"I thought you weren't going to seduce him," Wedy remarked with a smirk as Aiber whistled low at my appearance in the garage. The two criminal consultants were leaning against one of Watari's shiny new limousines looking to all the world a pair of hired drivers.

I rolled my eyes and tucked my clutch under my arm, "When has seducing a man ever led him to see you as an equal?"

The thief hummed thoughtfully and took a drag of her cigarette but didn't question further. "So, are you sure L won't try to mess with this plan, E?" Aiber questioned, walking around to the driver's seat.

"I'm counting on it," I replied, carefully settling into the back seat. Wedy stood just outside, leaning on the open door and the roof of the car.

"Be careful, kitten," she warned simply before closing the door. Aiber drove us in silence, his chauffer's cap pulled low over his face to protect his identity. The events from the other night, my conversation with L in particular had plagued me throughout the duration of my research. For some reason, I felt that I had something to prove.

So much had changed during the course of this investigation, and try as I might to smother the emotions these changes had illicited, I failed. Everything I had ever known and believed in was wrong, and everything I had known about myself was no longer valid. My true identity, an identity that could no longer be ignored, somehow came to overshadow that of E, and I, at this point, could not be bothered to amend the shift.

"He's not going to like this, you know," Aiber remarked as we neared our destination.

"Well," I drawled, nervously playing with the expensive bracelet around my wrist, "he enrolled in a university and took our prime suspect out for coffee. He doesn't get to judge me."

The older man sighed heavily as he parked the car, "I hope my son doesn't grow up to be as stubborn as you, Evie."

"You shouldn't have named him after me, then," I retorted cheekily as he offered me his hand after opening the door. Aiber scoffed under his breath and circled back to the driver's seat.

It was so fascinating how much of a difference a tight skirt and high heels made. Beyond whatever sexual appeal lie in the attire, there was so much personality in the way a person dressed. Even the most miniscule decision contributed to the existence of an individual. For example, the personality known as Everest couldn't be bothered with makeup or maintaining hair care routines or wearing clothes more flattering than comfortable.

Take all of those things away.

Strip Everest down to the barest of bones, an empty shell to be filled by a new identity, and dress it in designer clothes and paint on a new face. Then, what do you have?

"Drinking alone, handsome?" I asked with the confidence of a new name and face. The man barely expressed any interest in my presence. I fit in perfectly with this crowd, all black suits and white shirts and high heels. Forty-two percent of the time he was asked this question, undoubtedly, by women who looked just like me. No, not me. Like Emily Nakamura.

Namikawa had his jacket carefully draped over the back of the high legged chair. His glass was just about empty. A long day at the office, no doubt. I took a seat in the empty chair next to him, "What's it like?"

He raised one long, thin brow in question to my ambiguous musing, and I knew that I had piqued his interest. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

I rolled my eyes and motioned for the bartender, "You're the smartest man in the room, aren't you? It must be hard in the office all day, surrounded by idiots."

"What makes you say that, miss….?" He asked, an indulgent half-smile on his face.

"Nakamura," I supplied, returning his smile. He reminded me of Light with that pleasant expression just shy of intrigue. "And, it's obvious."

"What is?"

"Well, I wouldn't have called you the other day if I didn't think you were the most intelligent man in the room," I smirked as the realization set into his face. It wasn't quite the encounter L and Light had shared, nor was it the revelation I had given to Light. Honestly, it wasn't anything more than the loss of his smile and an analytic scrutiny in his coffee colored eyes.

Just then, the bartender approached us, "Sorry about the wait, what can I get you?"

"Samuel Adams for the both of us, please," I supplied over Namikawa's silence. The glasses were set in front of us quickly and the bill paid in cash. "You said you'd see me on Monday," I said before taking a sip of the drink.

"I suppose I did," he allowed. "You made your position quite clear over the phone. I didn't think there was anything left to discuss."

"I suppose you'd be right if anything I had said the other day really meant anything to me," I said with a shrug. It had all been Light's words coming out of my mouth, after all. Maybe a part of me did care about putting an end to the utilitarian killings, and maybe another part of me didn't care so much to be bothered.

So, why did I make the call?

Why was it my voice and not Light's that Namikawa had heard that night?

"I guess you could say I was acting on behalf of my associates," I elaborated without prompting. "It was just easier than getting everyone else involved, and, to be very honest with you, they don't have as much use for you as I do."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah. They're the types of guys who like to play the long game," I groaned. "Buy time until an opportunity presents itself."

"I take it you're not fond of that."

"What's the point of having a mole if you aren't going to use them?" the question came out with a snarl of annoyance and impatience. "You don't particularly care for him, am I right? Afterall, with your leadership and resources, the Yotsuba Group could very well accomplish all of its goals the old-fashioned way. I meant what I said. I just want him. I don't have any interest in the rest of you, really. Staying on the sidelines is all well and good, but… keeping you right where you are isn't really much of a bargaining chip."

"You don't think so? I happened to like the options you presented the other day," Namikawa stated as easily as if he were negotiating with a representative from another country.

"I suppose you would. Let me paint you another picture. Say there are four sides – let's number them for the sake of ease. So, side number one and two are both looking to serve their own brand of justice. Number one's priority is to sniff out the rat, so to speak, and once the rat is caught, number one can go back to hunting for a more evasive pest. Now, number two also wants to catch the rat, but their main concern is minimizing the damage that the rat can cause. So, number two exterminates a whole colony of mice, a less guilty party, but responsible, nonetheless. With the exception of… a few useful mice."

"I'm a mouse in this scenario?" he questioned skeptically.

An amused smirk worked its way onto my painted lips at his analysis of the metaphor. "Number three's after the same evasive pest that number one wants so badly, but they aren't going to forget about the rat. They'd use the rat to track down that annoying pest, because without that pest, there wouldn't be any more rats."

Well, perhaps that wouldn't necessarily be true. If Light's Death Note could be retrieved, there's no guarantee that another one wouldn't just fall into the hands of another unsuspecting human. But, really, who could stop that from happening? At this point, all any of us could really do was put an end to the circulation and use of the two Death Notes that had undoubtedly belonged to Light and Misa.

"And the fourth?" Namikawa prompted, now completely immersed in the insight I had provided him to this entire grand scheme of ours.

"It's obvious," I stated before taking another sip. When I looked back at him, I saw that it wasn't as obvious as I made it out to be. There was no confusion, just a lack of understanding accompanied by complete awareness of that very fact. "That's the side that doesn't give a damn. The side that let the pests roam free and contaminate everything they touch. They'd let the rats and the mice and One, Two, and Three go to waste without so much as a blink of their eyes."

What color eyes? The memory of eyes as blue as the depths of the ocean came into my mind, followed by wild eyes with irises red like the skin of apples. Did it really matter? They were the same, after all.

"So, which are you? I take it you're Three in this scenario," he concluded, his eyes raking over me as if trying to determine whether or not I was who I claimed to be.

"Three," I repeated. "Or Four. I haven't decided yet. Maybe I'm somewhere in between."

"That does very little to convince me I ought to to do anything other than what I was told before. If you align with the third side, then I have no benefit beyond what I was promised. If you align with the fourth, then I'm endangering myself more."

The rich, bell-like sound of my laughter couldn't be contained at his assumption. "You already signed your death warrant the moment you first step foot in those meetings!" I informed him breathlessly. Oh, how funny. His eyes widened with shock, and I let the laughs die down. "Oh, you thought you were safe? L's investigation can only protect you up to the point of the justice system. Kira – that is, the real Kira – won't leave any loose ends. Lord knows, I wouldn't. Anyway, I've given you every side to this story, Namikawa. So, you tell me, if you were to pick a winning side, which would it be?"

I watched the deliberation in his face and read it in his eyes, and I reflected on what I had divulged to him. By speaking in metaphors, I really hadn't given anything of substance away. Admittedly, I felt something familiar under this guise. Some faint rustle in the back of my memory that seemed so true to who I had been as E before all of this madness had even been a possibility. It was the last shred of what had been the cornerstone of my name, my identity – bestowed onto me by Mr. Wammy all those years ago – and given meaning by my actions under it.

Yet, L was right. I was a liar and had been for a very long time. Perhaps if I had told Namikawa about that pest. That so called god among men. Perhaps, then, I could have retained a shred of that honesty that made Everest who she had been for years. There was, in fact, a fifth face, and it is the underbelly of Two. The justice seeker who, in his plight, eliminated every mouse and every obstacle in his path for the sake of reducing the damage.

Why was it that One, Two, and Three couldn't find that pest? Well, it is simply because the pest dwells among them, waiting, no, lurking in the deepest and darkest recesses of the Second mind. So, when it comes down to it. Really, truly comes down to it. Who has the best chance of putting an end to the pests?

I could see it, resolute on his face that he knew, and I couldn't help the curl of my lips, colored with a rouge so deep it could have been from the stain of blood.

"Yeah," I said, taking another sip of my drink, "that's what I thought, too."

A/N... I do not own Death Note or any of its characters.

I cannot believe how long I've been writing this story, and I mean that in the best possible way. Thank you so so much to everyone reading this and bearing with me on the long road to completion. I'm starting my adult life, and updates are/have been really difficult to work in. I promise I'm still working on this piece, and you will get to see what happens to L, Light, and E.

I'd especially like to thank everyone who is supporting this piece by following and favoriting it. I'm in a place now that I've spent so many years of my childhood hoping to achieve, and it's all thanks to you guys.

There is so much more to come. Thank you so much, and see you in the next chapter! In the meantime, would you guys like an omake or a Q&A filler until I can get more content ready for publication? It's been so long and I'd really like to do something for you all in case I can't get another chapter up soon.