Chapter Thirteen:
CONTENT WARNING: Discussions of death. Swearing. Mild body horror?
The crackle of the computerized voice carried over into the waking world, and Erin instinctively tried to block it out, blindingly reaching for a pillow to drag over her head as a panic driven irritation spiked.
"—is not a waste if I know why he gave that information to me. Of course, he is not aware that you are a source of information, so for him it was nothing but a harmless bit of gloating. However, if I can use it to my advantage—"
"Ugh," Erin groaned miserably, trying to piece together what the demented detective was going on about. "For Christ's sake L, you aren't going to be able to lure a Shinigami with apples." Her hands lifted and pressed themselves into the sockets of her eyes. "Probably. Hell if I know what their deal is. I think it's a case-by-case type deal." Her voice was so rough that she sounded like an actual zombie. The irony was not lost on her.
"Which is why I want you to negotiate a meeting between me and the Shinigami," L returned, and for once his level drone was marked by impatience, as if he wanted to tell her to keep up, which was entirely unfair given that she had been asleep and having the worst kind of dream.
The young woman paused and stared blankly at the ceiling, wondering how on Earth this had become her life. L wanted her to what? Introduce him to Ilmort? He clearly had a very poor understanding of her place within the power structure of this entire situation.
"Um. Yeah. Sure. I'll just ring them up. Except that I don't think I can? It's not like they just hang around all day. And even if I did, I don't know if you'd be able to see them. As far as I know you would have to touch a Death Note for that. Or be like me. Which. I don't recommend. Then again maybe Ilmort just slapped me in the face with their Note while I was dead." Technically if she was setting up a meeting between the two of them, she could also request Ilmort let L touch the Death Note. It'd definitely help with the cause, so she could see them doing so with only the usual amount of remonstrance. But the point was moot because she couldn't actually just summon Ilmort out of thin air.
"More to point," Erin began, "You believe me?"
She was sure she was going to develop a lasting trauma to the sound of static.
"I'm willing to explore what you said as a possibility," L explained, his voice returning to its usual monotone. It made her uncomfortable, and the image of a twitching, spasming butterfly flickered across the forefront of her mind. "At the very least it is clear to me that you believe it, and whether or not everything you have conveyed is accurate, there are parts of it that do align with details from the investigation."
His explanation was level and ponderous, as if he was discussing an interesting theory that she had shared over coffee. It was also strangely gratifying. Sure, he had implied she might be some kind of crazy, but he was still taking into account what she had said. And that filled her with such an abrupt surge of relief that the room spun from the force of it. She hadn't even realized how much she had wanted and maybe even needed this.
Now if only she could get the dream out of her head. In fact, if she could have talked to Ilmort, she would have—which was a horrifying notion because she had never thought that things would get so bad that she would desire to trade any sort of words with Ilmort of all people… Things. Beings. Entities. Whatever Ilmort counted as. Besides, given the last time she had seen the Shinigami, with that peculiarly alarmed expression on his face she had a feeling that he would either not have any answers for her, or she would really not enjoy what he had to say.
Fighting a surge of stress induced nausea, the young woman sat up and roughly tugged her hair out of her face, dragging her back to the present. She should ask about getting it cut. It had already been scraggly and outgrown before her world hop, and then there was the whole awkward hospital stay. That was at least a month. And for however long she still had she didn't really want to have hair in her face.
"I'll take what I can get" she groused in the direction L's voice was being projected from. "Honestly you cut out so abruptly last night I almost thought I'd given you a heart—ah. Well. Um." She grimaced, and could not help the errant 'too soon Erin, too soon' from flitting through her thoughts. Only it wasn't too soon because it hadn't happened yet, and hopefully wouldn't. "Yeah. I didn't know what was going to happen."
"You mentioned that your information hinged upon the fact that you were from a parallel reality and that it came from a story."
This time Erin would have placed money on having heard the note of incredulity in L's voice. She didn't say anything though, since she had a feeling that was something he needed to contend with on his own and given that it was quite the thing to contend with, she was willing to bite back the pithy quip she wanted to level at him. Instead, she shoved her way out from under the blankets and headed to the bathroom. She kept the bathroom door open so that the conversation could continue but set to washing out the horrible taste in her mouth.
"You also spoke about these events in the past tense, implying a fixed nature to them. I assume you had no role in them which does beg to question their reliability considering your presence here. I assume it is not that you have omnipotence, and you professed yourself that you lack preternatural foresight. As such your information is a limited resource."
Erin paused, toothpaste frothing at the corners of her mouth, and stared sadly at her reflection. Again, maybe it was her pinning emotions to L that she had no business pinning to him, but underneath the convoluted wording of what he had said, she had the sudden feeling that what he was really trying to say, to clarify, was that his death was not fixed.
In that sense she suddenly felt a strange sense of… well something. Like she was his senpai in death or something and was obligated to offer some sort of consolation, or advice. That was very firmly squashed though, on account of it seeming like a thoroughly mortifying feeling to have. For both parties, although she had the strong feeling that L would be able to brush it off in a way that only made her more embarrassed.
And anyway, his Death wasn't fixed. If she could be yanked across realities and if actual, literal Death, a cosmic entity thought she could literally stop a whole future from happening, she really didn't see why he had to die.
With that thought in mind, she leaned over to spit out her toothpaste so that she could say something to the effect of 'yes L, if you go arrest Light Yagami right now and have him executed then you won't die'.Unfortunately, life was cruel and just loved to ruin everything.
Because when she spat the toothpaste into the sink it came with mangled butterfly wings.
Of course, her immediate inclination was to shriek, run out of the bathroom, slam the door, and crawl under the bed. A morbid curiosity overtook her though, and with a shaky hand she prodded at the insect corpse with the butt end of her toothbrush. Thankfully it behaved as corpses should, outside of the fact that it had been regurgitated alongside her toothpaste and remained still and blessedly voiceless.
"With that in mind—."
For a second, she thought her dream had followed her into the waking world, the crackly voice overlapping with the one from the nightmare, and she did shriek, jolting so hard her skeleton might as well have been trying to escape.
"Miss Harker?"
The string of curses she unleashed was not particularly creative, her imagination stunted by her shock. "Yes?! What?! What?" She gasped once she had run out of expletives to string together.
"What is the situation?"
Neat, Erin thought distantly. He must have really upheld his bargain and not put cameras in the bathroom. Or he had, but could not make out what was in the sink. Or he could see, but there was nothing there to see and she was hallucinating. "Ohhh not good. Not freaking good. Either I'm, like, actually going insane or I just spat up a butterfly. Oh no. Oh nonono. They didn't say anything about side effects. Consequences" She cursed some more.
There'd been no click of static so L must have been keeping the line open. "Explain."
She hiccoughed. "I don't know! I don't know anything! My information is a limited god damn resource! They said I was dead, but also not dead because they hadn't filed it and they said they wouldn't until I stopped Kira, and then I'm pulling myself into that stupid grey land in my sleep, and then there's a freaking butterfly telling me that I'm a criminal who steals death and let me tell you that sounded like a very, very bad thing!"
There was a pause, though not a particularly long one. "They told you that you would stay alive until you had stopped Kira?"
She blinked. "God damn it! I'm not going to help, protect or do anything to assist Kira just so that I can stay alive! I-I'm not a freaking liability! For fucks sake, I want to die!" She sucked in a sharp breath trying to keep her face from contorting into that expression that was always followed by the very harsh and loud kind of sobbing.
The moment lingered, pitched upon the edge of a cliff. The silence was loud, but that might have been the ringing and incoherent wailing in her head.
And then it dropped, and she sagged backwards, slumping bonelessly into the wall. "Just—" and her voice was so small she wondered if he would be able to hear her. "C-can you send someone to see if it's really there? Or. Or if I'm just having a mental break, or something." The crack was involuntary but unavoidable.
"Please?" She added in a whisper.
Several minutes of condemning silence later, there came a knock at her door.
"Please exit the bathroom and stand at the far end of the room. Do not move or approach the individual.
Numbly, she did ask she was instructed. Part of her wanted to hover and to see what was going on for herself, but she did not push the issue. They were doing her a favour, and it was far too important that she confirmed what was going on. She really wasn't sure how much she could take, and honestly at this point she'd almost take hallucinations over some sort of cosmic curse.
Outside snow was falling and she closed her eyes against it because the gently fluttering flakes made her think of something else. Ash. Burning pages. Butterflies.
She heard the click of the door behind her, and the footsteps. Then there was moment of silence, and Erin gnawed furiously on her lip, her fingers gripping the windowsill with white knuckles so as to not glance behind her and demand to know what they saw. She squeezed her eyes shut and found herself trying to mentally project a desperate plea out into the universe, not quite a prayer in that there was no intended recipient beyond anyone who would just help.
"It does seem that you have regurgitated some foreign matter." L commented through the speaker after a period of time that felt like far too long.
"Fuck." The young woman crumpled to the floor. She pressed her head into her knees and sighed heavily. "Of course I did."
"How are you feeling right now?" a voice asked, and it was a new and different voice, old and kindly, and surprisingly close though not invasively so.
"Watari!"
She flinched at the sharp warning that crackled through the air. Not that she could blame L in the moment. The young woman wondered what kind of strange beast she must have looked, feral and gargoyle-esque in her hunched position. She wondered if her smile was as unhinged as she thought it might be, wondered if her eyes said anything at all of the primal undoing of her spirit. "What a question" she hissed out.
She glanced up, and there was Watari, cloaked from head to foot in his dramatic disguise. It was jarring because against the neutral backdrop of the hotel he seemed dreadfully out of place. The real Watari would have been infinitely less disconcerting.
"Are you feeling any physical discomfort? I am trained in some emergency response procedures, so you can tell me." Came his voice from behind the mask, only slightly muffled.
Where did Watari fit in L's theories of monsters? Was he a monster too, for rearing monsters and setting them upon the world? Or was he their human anchor, the one who brought them back before they tripped over the edge? Was he both? The hypocritical kind of monster? Or the kind type? "I'm feeling so much discomfort, but no. Not what you are talking about."
"I would still like to have a look." The man insisted, tilting his head in the same direction that she looked when talking to L.
There was a hiss over the speaker, and she pictured L gnawing furiously at his lip, trying to calculate odds and risks.
"Don't think that's a good idea. Boss might not like that," She snarked, and wondered where the energy came from, how her mind had space to think about anything at all.
"Indeed. Watari, if Miss Harker needs medical attention, then we will use procedure."
That made her laugh, a wet phlegmy laugh that probably gave away how close she was to tears amidst all the derisive humour. "You have a procedure for this?"
"Not as such" Watari explained. "However, you were recently released from a medical institution after a very serious accident, and also showed signs of severe trauma. I thought it would be wise to prepare for potential emergency situations."
He was very good at remaining calm in a way that was almost infectious. "Fine. What do you need me to do?"
"I'm just going to check your blood sugar, your pulse, and your blood pressure. I'll ask you a few questions as well, and we will go from there." Watari explained mildly.
"If the question is: What did you eat last, you should know as well as I do that it wasn't that."
This comment rewarded her with a light chuckle, and a startling pat on the shoulder. "Give me a moment if you would, I'll be back momentarily. I just need to fetch some things"
She nodded, pressing her face back into her knees though the movement was hampered by her crumpled pose. "Nowhere to go."
There was the sound of footsteps and the rustling of cloth, followed by another click of the door.
"So, I assume he knows everything you do?" She asked because she wasn't sure how much she was going to have to explain.
The static was followed by what sounded like the end half of an exasperated sigh. "Yes. You mentioned side effects. Please tell me what you meant."
There wasn't all that much she could say. She let herself unfurl slightly, though she remained seated between the bed and the wall. Something about the smaller space gave her a sense of security. "I don't know. Ilmort didn't tell me anything. Not really. Well. Other than the fact that I was a—," she stopped before she could tell L of all people that she had been called a stupid maggot in a variety of different ways. "Seriously, not much. Um, they mentioned that I was more fragile than they'd expected. I was supposed to wake up before Kira even got the Death Note."
Yay. It'd just sunk in that the implication there was that if she had just woken up a bit sooner, none of this would be happening. Yes, that was beyond her control, but knowing that didn't stop the tiny spark of guilt.
Her fingers clenched like manacles around her own wrists as she tried to keep herself grounded, frantically trying to keep her focus from spiralling off and getting consumed by mindless gibbering.
"I had a weird dream last night. Ilmort mentioned that because of my condition I was pulling myself into their world. Um. The Shinigami realm. I was there before, I think. When they first told me what was going on. But it was more like, um. Like a setting. A backdrop for the conversation." She spoke automatically using the action as a distraction. "This time it went all weird. I got kind of pulled away. Or maybe I fell? It was weird. I started seeing burning pages, and my breathing got messed up. And then I choked up the butterfly. And then it told me it was going to undo my crime and that I was a thief."
"That you stole death, yes. What do you think that means?"
Chances were that L was not actually asking her what she thought. Most likely he was just thinking aloud at her. But the question did get the gears turning in her head.
"Well, I assume if all the people who Kira is going to kill in the future are fated to die then it would mean I was ruining that. But that doesn't make sense. Ilmort gave me the impression that their whole issue with Kira was that he was screwing up fate, or whatever."
"And this thing that was speaking to you—what was it? Another Shinigami perhaps?"
"I…" she trailed off and considered it. "Don't think so? I mean, I never saw any indication from before that this was something Shinigami did or could do. They're more like people, and this was more like… like a phenomenon. And it didn't really communicate the way Shinigami do."
Of course, L was never one to let anything slip by him. He was insatiable that way, constantly devouring every single detail by supernatural compulsion. "How did it communicate then?"
She fidgeted and glanced away, which was silly because she had not really been looking at anything anyway. "It used the voice of someone else. Like a recording."
"It must have been a voice you recognized then, for you to discern that. What voice did it use? The voice of a predeceased?"
"No," she groused stubbornly.
The out of place young woman was reluctant to discuss her dream with L now that she had to mention that he had featured in it. Even if only partially. She knew that this whole time the detective had been talking to her as if he believed her bizarre story for ease of communication, but he had also implied that there were other theories and that he wasn't inclined to narrow in on one approach. In the end L was just entertaining her so that he could mine her head for everything stashed away in it. It felt invasive somehow. Like he was digging up all the private ways she ticked. Typically, that didn't happen unless both parties trusted each other, which was something sorely lacking between her and L.
Then again, this had been happening long before they had even met, so perhaps she should be growing desensitized to it.
Still, she couldn't help but feel like dreams were terribly private. She wasn't the type that believed they conveyed supernatural messages to her or anything, but she did believe they contained all the things that were on a person's mind, subconsciously or otherwise, and that alone could be telling about where the person was mentally.
Sure, this whole debacle could be a case of some external force trying to recriminate Erin for her unnatural existence and interference. Or it could have been a very disturbing dream as her inner psyche tried to work through all the messed-up things that she had been going through. As for the actual literal butterfly that was still in her sink. Well.
She didn't want to think about all the weird things that could be happening to her body on account of being ripped from her reality and living in a completely different one as a person without a lifespan. She would not have put it passed Ilmort to leave out those kinds of pertinent details on account of her 'piddling mortal brain not being able to handle it'.
Needless to say, while Erin did not want to have to deal with any more forces appearing on the board and hampering her unwanted mission, the alternative was not more appealing by any means.
"…No. I see. A voice that is familiar to you then, and likely has enough of an emotional impact that you are reluctant to disclose who. A friend, family member or romantic partner possibly. Or, more likely, someone whom you have wronged to coincide with the rebuke. I had supposed it'd be a deceased person, given the likelihood that this was an entity relating to death, but perhaps I was mistaken. Of course, there is also the possibility that your dream was affected by your own subconscious, and the manifestation was merely the way your mind chose to interpret the information being delivered to it. As a result, I require you disclose to me who it was so that I make an appropriate evaluation."
There he went again, casually disclosing his thought process and driving the proverbial knife in further, oblivious to societal courtesies. Truth to be told, a part of her was suspicious about how much he really needed to know, and how much of it was born from his nosiness and drive to have a whole psychological profile for everyone he ever encountered. Was he trying to hoard more information about the weird anomaly he had at hand, like a dragon hungering for gold?
"Ass," She muttered.
"I have received that assessment before. However, it does not answer my question."
Very well then. She tucked her reluctance away and smoothed her face into an expression of indifference. Although she did try to muster up an air headed sort of bafflement on account of wanting some form of plausible deniability. She kept her tone light and as vaguely concerned as an old granny gossiping over cards and tea. "It used your voice. Well, this one. Not your real one."
Ah. Shit. She supposed it did not truly matter if she revealed how much she knew about him, but still. There she went, giving away everything without a thought. Airheaded was a decent role for her after all.
There was another pause during which she found it harder and harder to keep her face straight. "I see. This increases the chances that it simply used the last voice you heard then. Particularly given that it used the modulated tone."
"Yeah. That seems reasonable. Although… it said something at the end which I do remember you saying from before. It said that it was justice." She had no idea what to make of that. Had it been cobbling together words that L had said, or that she had heard him say in the show? It had sounded almost pre-recorded. But why choose that quote specifically other than to tell her it was going to enact some sort of punishment, or correction. "I wonder if it didn't choose you because of you, not me, if that makes any sense. After all, I've been here this whole time, but it wasn't until after I told you what was going on that it did all this."
She frowned as the thought began to bud further. "Almost makes me wonder what would happen if I met Kira. Not literally, because he makes me want to shove nails though my ears. Smug little shit. But given that you two were kind of the lynchpins of the investigation, and he was arguably the crux of things… actually you both had the whole 'I am justice thing."
How did it make him feel to be on the other side of the lens as she contrasted his character against Light's? Certainly, he had acknowledged the similarities before, and he himself stated he was a monster, so she doubted that it would make him defensive. But did he ever feel uncomfortable looking into the face of a criminal and seeing bits of himself looking back? Or had he buried that, marked it as irrelevant to his cause?
Again, she was approaching things from a literary perspective, and this wasn't an English class. But it was the frame of reference that she had to go on. She wasn't a genius like Light or L, so she had to work with what she had: her outsider's perspective. "To look at this from a more metaphorical standpoint, we have several different concepts at hand. Death primarily, but that's a very passe way of talking about it. Human ego is also a pretty strong theme. And of course, morality and justice. Maybe it's not that I'm interfering with death or fate so much as I am interfering with something more intangible."
The thought circled like an errant breeze, and she could feel herself getting pulled away by it. It wasn't even a particularly practical train of thought, but she clung to it anyway. "I might be getting in the weeds a bit here, but maybe it was something which your death was representative of as opposed to the actual event itself? But maybe I'm being blinded by the fact that you were a main character…"
It felt strange to talk to the individual themself as if they were still just a fictional person, but it was easier for her that way, and at least it felt like she was doing something, making sense of things in the only way that she could.
Maybe it was her brain desperately putting up barriers and compartmentalizing things so that her already fragile sanity didn't fracture further.
"Interesting," L murmured, impersonally, and as if they were talking about someone else's death and not his own. He trailed off just in time for there to come another knock on the door. "For now, however, please cooperate with Watari without deviation. If you resort to any form of violence, I will warn you know that we have back up."
That was interesting. Did they really have back up? Or was it a bluff—no. Not a bluff. Was L counting himself as backup? Quite frankly, given the fight she had seen him get into with Light, she wasn't even going to contest that idea. She also had a feeling Watari himself could probably take her if it came down to it. Frankly she had all the combat ability as a panicked chicken, so it would not be hard. In addition, Watari had medical supplies. She'd bet that included tranquilizers, just in case.
Still. "My dude. After everything I've told you, do you really think I'd be that stupid?'
"It is still too soon to forego standard precautions."
Fair enough. After all she doubted, he was comfortable with how much she knew. Actually, in that sense there was no way he was ever going to let her out from under his very intent watch. She hadn't even told him everything yet, having not mentioned what she knew of Whammy House, or his heirs, and even still she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was going to keep her very securely contained. To him she was a liability.
"Speaking of precautions, what are you going to do about Kira? Time is of the essence, especially if something is now working against us." Him. Her. They were not an 'us', she reminded herself. They were just teaming up temporarily until she was allowed to die. She had to keep reminded herself of that, because she wasn't sure how hard the idea would hit if she lost sight of it for even a moment.
She wasn't just dying. She was already dead. It was already determined. Weird butterflies aside, she didn't foresee that changing. It was just a matter of how complicated the road getting there was going to be.
Then again, wasn't that just how life worked in general?
"Oh! The FBI agents! Kira gets Ray Penbar's identity and tricks him into writing all the names of the other agents down on a piece of the Death Note!" She jolted as the thought crossed her mind, accidentally jostling the blood pressure cuff Watari was securing around her arm.
"Unfortunately, Ray Penbar and his fellow agents have already been eliminated."
She blinked, confused, and tried to remember the timeline of events. It had been too long, and it didn't help that so many of the things she had watched and read were in a haze of exhaustion, late at night when her insomnia was eating away at her brain. "O-oh." When? How? And then another thought flitted across her mind. "What about Naomi Misora? Ray was her fiancé and she started to investigate based on something he had mentioned. She figured out that Light had spoken to him and was trying to get in contact with you, but Light happened to bump into her first and made her commit suicide and buried the evidence!
There was another crackle of static. "Do you know when this happened?" And there was something like urgency there, battling against resignation.
"Not exactly. Um. It was after Chief Yagami and the others met you for the first time because Light was bringing him a change of clothes and the police at the desk would let her see you, and Light was pretending to be involved with the investigation. But I'm not sure how long afterwards." She grimaced and hated herself for her own faulty recollection of events.
"Hm. I'll look into it." She could see him, maybe dragging a laptop closer, sending a message out to Chief Yagami, perhaps, or the police station. Maybe even sifting through CCTV footage around the police headquarterstrying to find her, hoping he wouldn't because if he did it was too late.
She looked down.
Watari was removing the blood pressure cuff and patted her shoulder again as he did so.
It didn't make her feel better.
How easy it would have been to just do this all from the beginning. How many people could she have saved from pain and grief?
And what could she say now? There was nothing that could fix this. Wrong doer indeed.
Stupid Light. Horrible, horrible, selfish Light. If she ever met him, well. She hoped she didn't because she was not sure what she would turn into. Where did he get off, terrorizing an entire world? Why did he have drag people along in the wake of his moronic ego? What kind of absolute child just… actually believes in stark good and evil? "What a fucking idiot" she whispered and pressed the palms of her hands into her eyes.
The rest of the medical checkup passed in a stilted silence except for when Watari asked her a series of standard questions about if she was feeling pain anywhere. L had stopped communicating entirely, and she found it harder and harder to say anything beyond one-word responses, and even those grew quieter. Eventually Watari informed her that she seemed fine, but to let them know if anything changed, before excusing himself and leaving her to sulk.
Or so she thought, but a few minutes later he returned and carefully jostled a cup of tea into her hands. And then, with his stupid duster and fedora and ski mask or whatever proceeded to bustle about her room. First, he went to the bathroom, and she watched as he scraped the butterfly into a test tube. Which was absolutely horrifying because it was still covered in tooth paste and spit. And then he proceeded to clean, which was baffling because there was barely even anything to clean.
She watched blankly and sipped at her tea. And ho boy it was good tea. Apparently, someone had noticed and tracked her propensity for both milk and sugar in her black tea, which she appreciated immensely. It was also just warm and comforting.
The first sniffle was very quiet, and Watari didn't even pause in his puttering. Eventually it was followed by a second and a third while she started down at the last dregs in the bottom of her cup, hoping her hair worked to hide her face some. Then there were tears plip-plopping down onto her hands and sending ripples across the surface of her drink.
And then the cup was being gently pried from her fingers and replaced with a handkerchief.
She offered a wobbly smile down at it. "Sorry" she muttered, for more than just the crying.
"Try to get some rest. He will have more questions later, but for now have faith that he will take what you've given him and make use of it," Watari advised.
And that was all there was too it. Outside of telling them everything that she knew, how that shaped the events to come was out of her hands.
A/N: What's this? I'm back again, this quickly? Must be the end times. Hahah. Ha. Anyway, wow I'm actually really nervous about how y'all are going to take the recent developments in the story. Somehow swinging towards AU feels so risky. And yet I just couldn't justify clinging to the original plot based on how this story was set up. I hope L wasn't to jarringly different in this chapter, it is hard to tell for me, having been staring at this for so long. Yeah. I dunno. As always, I tried editing. I wept. Also: I hope that you are all doing well, and taking are of yourselves.
Zack: I appreciate the review, and I'm glad you found the conceited tick bit both funny and suitable. The more I think about him and grow as a person the more inclined to think conceited tick is exactly what he is.
Guest: Thank you for the review, and the enthusiasm. I hope this lives up to your expectations!