Chapter 6 - Spiralling
"This is ridiculous, Ryuzaki."
Cael tugged at the collar of her shirt, nervously glancing around at the crowds of students mulling around them. Cael, despite her nerves, was an extremely sociable person. However, the world of schooling wasn't one she had found particularly enjoyable. Hours of droning lectures surrounded by silly frivolous people had left her with soured memories of university. She loved learning - Whammy had once said that the pursuit of knowledge was her entire reason for living- yet she couldn't stand the social aspect. It was infuriating not learning at her own pace.
"Actually, I will be referred to as Hideki Ryuuga while on campus."
"Like the popstar?" She asked, quirking a brow as L hummed in response. "That's the most ridiculous thing you've said yet."
"Is that the only word you have in your vocabulary today?"
"It's the most prominent one, yes." The two shared a smirk.
They came to a stop outside the giant glass doors of the university, and the ginger turned a teasing grin to the hunched figure beside her. She thrust a white paper bag into his arms. "Don't forget to drink water!" She cooed, pinching his pale cheeks.
"Cael-"
"And try to make some friends!"
"Can you stop-"
"You have to be nice"
"You're being-"
"Remember, no biting!"
"You do understand that I will just be giving a speech, yes?"
"I put some extra sweets in there," she flicked the bag with a wink. "Sharing is a good way to make friends."
"... Do you think Light Yagami likes sweets?" He cocked his head, peering into the bag with his nose scrunched. In response she shrugged, Soichiro would know, maybe even Touta, asking her was useless.
"I'll see you later tonight, then?" Cael was already walking away when a hand gripped her elbow. L peered through his hair.
"I thought perhaps you could accompany me inside and watch my speech?"
Taken aback, the woman considered the man she once called an inspiration. Her mouth felt like sandpaper. L's dark eyes seemed genuine, his face totally relaxed. Despite herself, she felt a bubble of pride. He wanted her to be with him during this time.
But…
The watch face strapped to her wrist flashed in the sunlight. She was meant to visit Beyond this evening, she had already missed a call from the Director this morning- no doubt just giving an update on her brother's mood for today, and Tokyo traffic was always insane…
Clapping a hand to his shoulder, she nodded her assent. "I'll be the image of a proud sister!" They assimilated into the crowd of parents and students entering the building, any previous anxiety drained from her body as she overheard a parent lovingly congratulate their child on work well done. Smiling as she passed the small family embracing, she cast a glance towards L, casually slumped, hands in pockets. She stuffed her own into her pockets and wondered, not for the first time, if Watari or even L had ever been proud of her. If they had ever looked at old photographs of her, beaming with pride while she was countries away, over the fact that she had gotten into college course after college course, no matter how competitive it was.
Cáel shuffled into one of the plastic chairs near the back, gently touching L's back as he broke from her company to make his way to the front. The top Kira suspect sat just meters away from him, and Cael had a direct view of the two. In her eye line, she also took notice of his parents and sister, the youngest Yagami bouncing in her seat, eyes gleaming with excitement. The family was so nice. So sweet and supportive. It was almost unfathomable that Kira could ever come from such an environment. No, she reminded herself, It was almost unfathomable that Kira could, allegedly, ever come from such an environment. Innocent until proven guilty, and all that jazz.
The woman clapped along with the applauding crowd as the Head of the University made his speech, clapping particularly loudly when L ascended the steps. From his pocket he produced a folded sheet with a jagged edge,causing Cael to cover her eyes and quell a strangled laugh. L, world class detective, was reciting a speech using the back of a ripped up paper bag. Some genius, she grinned in glee, eyeing up her fellow audience members as they exchanged looks with their family and friends- everyone asking if they knew him, did he go to your school? Maybe he comes from a different region? Is that the popstar, I thought he would be taller?. Cael was unsure how she felt about L bringing so much attention to himself. In her opinion, it was better to work in secret, fading into the background, becoming no more than an extra in unbranded clothes on the television. In this grand scheme of life, it was still a role, after all, just as important as the main characters, just not as prominent.
Siblings, parents, extended family and staff were all seated, some anticipatory, some bored out of their mind . Then, the single worst occurrence that could take place during the brief quiet spell in an echo-y auditorium happened. Cael's phone rang..
A cacophony of shushing answered her as she smiled sheepishly at the surrounding audience, apologising as she shuffled out of the auditorium and made her way through the halls. She took a deep breath, answering the still ringing phone call, jerking out of the way of the oncoming crowd as the doors behind her swung back open. Huh, it seems the event had come to an end anyway.
The mobile finally made connection and she breathed a sigh of relief, ducking into an alcove and away from the crowd of people rushing out into the sunlight.
"Frederick, what brings me the pleasure of your call this afternoon?"
"Doctor Connors, I'm very sorry to tell you that Mr. Birthday has…" Cáel's head and heart throbbed painfully, as if a deep smog had surrounded her, weighing down and penetrating her very being. Head buzzing, Frederick talked slowly on the other end, explaining the situation. Delivering the news she had never wanted to hear, sympathy coating his awful nasally voice.
Her brother was dead. He had died of a sudden and unexplainable heart attack.
Beyond had zero genetic disposition to heart disease or cardiac arrest. This she knew for a fact. It doesn't matter what the scientific prognosis would result in, what was etched into his death certificate was nothing more than a lie given to comfort his family. Countless death certificates had fallen onto her desk in the last few weeks, all with the same words. Same diagnoses, different name, different signature. But C didn't feel comfort. She was furious. Eyes honed in on the young man her fury was directed at as he chatted with an easy smile, charming the pants off of anyone that gave him a moment's thought.
"Put him on ice. I want to be the one to carry out his autopsy. I'll be there around midnight."
L and Light chattered softly, L entering the sleek car Watari was driving. "And Frederick? Don't you or any of your staff dare move anything in his cell, not even a speck of dust." She had parked the far side of the car park, they had arrived separately, her goal after the welcome ceremony to keep an eye on the Yagami's. And there he was: suspect number one. On his way home to a lovely meal with his lovely family - his lovingly attentive parents, his breathing sister.
The Yagami son was now alone, his father off to bring the car around, his sister and mother mingling in the crowd with what Cael recognised as neighbours. Light's jaw clenched, as if in response to something- a quirk she had noticed before in her surveillance of him-, and his head shifted, meeting her eyes. His own widened in shock, hesitantly raising his hand in a confused wave. He recognised her from her visits to his workplace, they had chatted a few times as she had taken notes on him, under the guise of adjusting and editing photographs on her laptop. His eyes glanced left- there it was again- what was he reacting to? An earpiece?
She felt like a child again, anxiously picking at old scuffed jeans whilst awaiting orders from her mentor on what to do, how to act, when to act, what to think. For the first time in years, she was utterly alone- an unknown, unwanted orphan amongst a crowd of strangers. A beep sounded from the mobile in her hand, glancing at the message from L, the tightness in her chest increasing tenfold.
I'm certain, is what shone on the screen. We will continue as planned.
Her fingers curled tightly, the edges of the phone digging sharply into her palm as she raised a hand, returning the wave with a laugh and a friendly smile before slipping into her car.
Kira would pay, she decided. L had never been wrong before. Not in all the years she knew him. She had always wanted to doubt him, thousands of times before had mentally begged for his theories to be met with a blatant laugh in his sallow face. The gotcha! didn't even need to be from her, she would have just simply basked in his being knocked down a peg.
But now?
Kira thought he was so very clever. But who the hell was he to decide who got to live and who got to die?
Cáel shed the gloves and scrubs, violently ripping them from her fingers and stuffing them into their respective waste bins. Beyond's body lay prone on the sterile examination table, his chest now sewn back up neatly, only the hint of silk surgical thread gleaming under the bright white lights. Everything was as she expected, she had taken samples and promptly sent them off to the lab, in the scrubs covered arms of the Director, who had squeamishly done as told, but she knew what she would find. Increased adrenaline, no other explanation, identical to the other victims she had examined. He was in perfect health and he died of a heart attack. There was no doubt in her mind that this was Kira's doing.
"Beyond…" her voice cracked as she stared at him, his face now more peaceful than it had ever been in life. He was always sullen in character, even in his most tender ages. C and A had fit together like puzzle pieces. Birds of a feather, so to say, but it had taken longer for B to break from his shell. He often shied away from their attempts at friendship, and would disappear alone for hours at a time , much to C's frustration. They had lived such secluded lives, and the children had taken refuge in one another, but Beyond had still withdrawn from them .C had cornered him one day, A in tow. It is only the three of us, a six year old C had cried out one day, A narrowly dodging under her waving arms, as she pointed a finger close to B's sharp nose. We live together as closely as siblings, you should allow us to love you as such!
He had stared just above her head in that peculiar, absent way he usually did. Then, for the first time, she saw him smile, and he met her eyes. "Alright," he had said, his voice hoarse from disuse. "But I won't tell you your numbers, no matter how low and jumbled they get." The girl to this day doesn't know what he meant by that, but just explained it away as one of his many quirks. She had stuck out both hands crossed over one another, and the children joined their hands in a silly triangular hand shake. That was the first time she had ever seen Beyond smile, and it was so very infectious.
From then on, two became three.
And now only one remained.
Numbers plagued Cael's mind. She had studied everything from statistics to quantum physics. But, and she was loath to admit, she was stumped. Within her brother's belongings was a notebook, swirls and clusters of numbers littering every inch of the pages. Perhaps it is a code, she had thought, only to come up blank. A clue was presented to her, however, in an excerpt from the notebook. Ramblings of death and gods. The words had given her pause, mind reaching back in time to when she had read through Mello's notes a few months ago.
"So you wanted to know about B's… life story?" Cael raised her brow, looking through the reading glasses perched atop her bumped nose at the young boy casually gnawing on a bar of chocolate. She had confiscated his notebook, flicking through the pages to review his conversations with Beyond. If she wasn't so peeved by the whole situation she would have been in awe of his note-taking skills. His calligraphy and clarity, despite being written in crayon, was beautiful, and the points of conversation was well laid out and formatted.
"Well, I wanted to learn about the LA case, as the case files weren't in the FBI or the CIA database, and what better to learn from than a primary source!" The young boy held firm under her disgruntled stare. She already knew there were no official files on that case to be found either online or in person, with only two copies of it ever made, one deep in the archives of the LAPD filed between a 1946 closed case and a 1947 court transcript for an unarmed robbery, right where nobody would look for it. She had put it there herself. The other copy lay in a storage locker belonging to Whammy.
"But why?" she said after a long moment's silence.
"…It's for a school project."
"I know damn well it is not."
Mello huffed in that pouty way that pre-teens are overly fond of, crossing his arms over his chest and slumping into the sofa.
"Mello, you're not in trouble, in fact, I actually kind of admire your dedication to this." The boys blonde head perked up just a smidgen, large eyes peeking through fair tresses. The bait was taken, now to just reel him in.
"Now what was with all the… theological talk?"
Mello, bless that beautiful boy and his beautiful brain, had opened his mouth and confessed everything. He had wanted information about L that Near could never learn by himself. He had wanted to one up his childhood rival, Cael could certainly relate to that. But the other things he had revealed had given her pause.
Beyond believed that he could see when people would die, he could decipher numbers that would reveal the exact time that people have left on this earth. He believed that he was gifted eyes by a god of death- a Shinigami to be exact. Her jaw clenched as she reviewed the notebook's scribblings. Could it be true? Beyond was originally Japanese, his mother being from the southern region of the country who emigrated to the UK with Beyond's father whilst pregnant. Perhaps he just latched onto his mothers folk tales as a result of death following him throughout life?
An invisible hand clenched around the crown of her scalp, and with a sigh she closed her eyes, fingers covering them like shutters. She couldn't bear to look at it any longer, the pages scorching the back of her eyes, the random numbers imprinted in her mind.
Right before Mello entered the plane, the young boy had gazed up at her, telling her that the second to last page was important, Beyond had told him so. She had assumed the boy was talking about his own little notebook, and she insisted he send her copies of it, but it was only the writings of a child. But in Beyond's own notebook, what was there was a jumble of numbers and letters, and Cael still felt no closer to unravelling the enigma that was her brother, nor the mystery of how Kira operates.
There was no possible way for Kira to have access to him, the Director was too greedy to willingly allow one of his most generous donors to close her wallet, so he definitely had no part. She had access to every staff file, their resume, background checks, personal security numbers. No one fit the profile L had created for Kira.
Well, not no one…
L was certain his hypothesis was correct. He had never been wrong before, she trusted him, even if the words felt like acid pooling in her mouth.
"How is Marco doing?" And there was another enigma. Matsuda Touta. The last few weeks the air during work had been particularly icy, tension suffocating every conversation she held with the police force. But Matsuda was as chipper as ever.
"Who?" Her brows knitted together. Matsuda's confusion reflected on her own face for an uncomfortable moment, until the proverbial lightbulb lit. Cael cringed.
"Oh, Marco, my son, sorry," she laughed, covering her eyes in embarrassment. "I'm a million miles away. He's just back at school now, he's doing well." Her eyes fluttered derisively, and Matsuda smiled. "Well, he's not doing well- he's a pre-teen, he's moody and too smart for his own good, he snuck on a plane and travelled halfway across the earth on a whim for goodness sake." Her fingers knitted under her chin, an earthshaking sigh falling from her lungs. "He'll be the death of me, I just know it."
"Does he go to that school you went to? The one for gifted children you told me about?" Matsuda asked, dark eyes gleaming with a smile.
"He does, and I'm not sure if its good for him, they encourage all his crazy endeavours too much." She laughed, Matsuda joining in as he turned his head, something on the table catching his eye. Dark brows furrowed as his lip bought between his teeth, head cocking like a confused puppy.
"Are you scouting for houses? I think the estate agent may have given you the wrong address."
"What do you mean…?" The woman frowned, mapping the man's eyeline to that dreaded notebook. An uncomfortable feeling stirred.
"Matsuda-san!"
The man cast an apologetic look towards the woman as he sprang to attention, back straightening at Yagami's voice.
"Coming sir!"
Matsuda, that silly, kind confusing man bounded towards the other investigators. Papers cluttered the table, and she honed in on the notebook, opened to its mysterious final page. She squinted at the chicken scratch from all angles once again, realising that yes it could possibly be an address, she just didn't recognise the written Japanese. But why would her brother be writing down a random Japanese address?
A horrifying thought occurred to her then, one she had never hosted before. What if Beyond had a family? A child or a partner? Dread curled deep in her gut, a headache forming at her temples, just imagining the type of person that Beyond would ever reproduce with.
Beyond was eccentric on his best days and downright malignant on his worst, which she had only recently reviewed thanks to dear Marco, so it was still fresh on her mind. Someone he could ever willingly procreate with would be on his level and no lower. Meaning they would be just a few cranberries short of a fruit cake.
Fingertips massaged closed eyelids, feeling the pouches that exhaustion had formed under her eyes. Every day they grew more prominent, as did her genius pseudo-family-induced headache.
A rattling of wheels against the floor signalled the entrance of L, toes curled against the seat for safety as he hauled the office chair across the room using his weight in an unusual method of transport.
"Forget how to use your legs?" She remarked snidely before an air of professionalism set in, and she began to summarise that days findings, handing over a transcript of the Yagami boys' day and a copy of L's university schedule, marking out the classes and routes they shared. L waved a hand to silence the younger woman, reaching out robotically to hold her arm, a sober look in those dark eyes.
"So you heard."
"Watari informed me moments ago. You should have told me, C."
She shook her head, lowering her aching eyes. " I didn't really want to admit it." She said hollowly, cursing the quiver she felt in her throat.
"I'm sorry. I know you were close." He responded simply.
Were.
Fuck. He was really gone, wasn't he? Cáel was operating on her professional mode, slipping into that detached impersonal state that was necessary for autopsies, and then had kept it while searching through his objects, viewing them as puzzle pieces rather than her deceased brother's possessions, and had not turned off that switch as of yet. Something within her crumbled, a lump sticking painfully in her throat.
The investigators glancing towards the pair every so often, seeing the two talk softly, L extending an uncharacteristic lofty arm to rest on Cael's. The task force in the few short months they've worked with the woman knew that the pair had known each other prior, but the true depths of their bond was still a mystery to the group. Soichiro Yagami's nose twitched, scrutinising his younger co-worker who snuck glances towards the pair with something akin to worry. Matsuda and the woman- Doctor Cael Connors, she had introduced herself as- had grown increasingly friendly in the short while they had known one another.
Soichiro did not approve, to say the least.
She had never mentioned a son, had never even alluded to being a mother in all their conversations, and then suddenly there was a surly young boy grasping at her hand in that elevator some weeks ago. His suspicions had arisen at that moment. She was private, and too polite. He had seen her at the welcoming ceremony earlier that day, Light having pointed her out as a new acquaintance of his- a regular at his work who was new to the country. Soichiro had felt his heart drop at this admission. If she was keeping an eye on his son, then that could only mean that he was still suspect number one to Ryuzaki.
He had attempted to search for information on the woman, and nothing was unearthed. All that he could find on 'Cael Connors' was a short biography segment in a research journal published five years prior by the Royal College of Surgeons. No address. No medical records. No record of an education, despite her claims of having multiple Master's and PhD's.
In short, he didn't trust her. She may not be a liar, but she was not truthful- and to Soichiro, this was just as damning. Matsuda's gaze flicked to the older man, cheeks blazing red at being caught not paying attention to his work. The younger man ducked his head, and Soichiro's gut roared at him, unease twisting deep within him. Matsuda had admitted one night at dinner that he had grown attached to someone he had met recently, and it was obvious to the man who he had meant.
Sachiko had encouraged this affections, elated to hear of Matsuda having a crush and insisted that once he finally entered a relationship with this mystery woman, that she should be brought to dinner. Soichiro almost agreed, he would be appreciative of a chance to question her without the surveillance of Ryuzaki or his butler.
He just hoped that foolish young man knew when to cut his losses. 'Cael Connors' was an act, a plant inserted into the Force to help Ryuzaki pin this case on his son. He could not prove it, but he was certain of it.
Hope everyone is well! This chapter was determined to be rewritten over and over, thus the long time!
As usual, i love to hear your thoughts, and thank you so much for all your kind words on the story!
-Cai.