a/n: 14 reviews for one chapter? I could hardly believe it! Thank you! I'm glad so many people liked it---it's the only reason I wrote another chapter. (Don't worry, like before, if even one person likes this, I'll no doubt write another. I'm such a softie.)

Anyway, welcome to chapter two of Dear Raito. Death note is of course the property of Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, and I hope you enjoy reading!

The stippled reflection of water.

The sound of wind as it whistled through the bronze chimes, high above my head.

Sensation for the sake of sensation---textures, patterns, tastes, anything that glinted or shone. The smooth feel of paper as I brushed my thumb against the page of a text book, huddled in the corner of the room Watari warmly assured me I could call my own but that I never did…

And mysteries.

These are the things that delighted me as a child, a child who was in the process of having his blindfold---having been tied very securely around my eyes by my dearly departed parents---lifted away like so many of the preconceptions I'd formed.

Even as children we make assumptions, Light. I'm sure you know that, so I won't elaborate on how very liberating the process of learning about the world around me was.

Only a few words more, on the orphanage--- it was, for all that it was a blessing to so many, rather a dreary place. Have you ever been England? It rains a sight more there than it does here. On most days the sun is obscured, and on most mornings a thick pearly fog wraps itself around the edges of fields and forests. (And street signs and the corners of buildings, but a field with trees on its border was what I saw from my window on those mornings when I would wake early, which was nearly every morning.

(Thinking about it, there was a bit of fog this morning. I was watching you watching it. I wonder if you knew I was awake, but from the troubled look in your eyes---the expression they frequently adopt, Light-kun, when to your knowledge no one is looking---I don't think you did.

(You shouldn't hide so much. Maybe if you didn't hide so much, there wouldn't be so many people looking for you. Poor Amane-san is searching for you so hard that she has lost herself in the endeavor; is possibly fated to never find herself again. )))

I'm straying from my focus, though.

I never really thought of the orphanage as my home. In my mind it remained a temporary refuge, like the arms of a protective mother. I felt more at place in the library than in my own room, and that is exactly where I stayed most of the time.

Back then I read everything I could get my hands on---astronomy was just as interesting as zoology, which was just as interesting as architecture, and so forth and so on, until I had literally exhausted the library resources.

The day I explained this to Watari----more often than not, I found myself wandering into his office in the evenings, when the other children would talk and play---a past time I did not care for and for which I could not explain the lack of care---he pulled out a yellow file from the top drawer of his desk.

"I have a story for you right here," He said, and handed it to me. I read it quickly enough, and looked up. I was---for the first time in a very long time---confused.

"These are just details," I said, moving to hand it back. He did not take it from me.

"What do these 'just details' say?" He sat leaning forward, with his hands steepled in front of him, staring at me from over the rims of his glasses.

I blinked and ran a hand uncertainly through my hair. (I couldn't have mussed it more even if I tried. I was so interested in the things around me that I never wasted much time on appearance, especially after I inferred that it would take no small amount of work and would produce only a minimal result. Mathematically, it was not logical.)

"Maria West, died five thirty pm on August the twenty fourth from loss of blood after having suffered two bullets to the head. There was no one present at the time of the attack, and no gun left at the scene…."

I rattled off the rest of the case information without looking back at the paper. When I finished I fell silent, fidgeting.

"Well?"

"…well what, sir?"

"What else? What do you think?"

"I think this is not worth my time," Light said in agitation.
Your patience is wearing thin right now, I imagine. If this were a real conversation you would have left long ago, realizing you couldn't kill me with this information.

Or maybe you can.

It doesn't really matter, what's done is done. Either I am dead, or I am not.

Either you are a murderer….or you are not. Or you do not mean to be a murderer. Or in your eyes, you do not consider your actions as murder. Maybe you don't consider your murdering as an action, but a philosophy.

There are so many possibilities, and a different probability for each, and even as I sit beside you right now I am juggling them in my head, weighing them and changing them and creating more.

Light closed the file, throwing a dark glance at the computer before throwing himself upon the bed. Habit caused him to sleep on the far left. As soon as he realized it he rolled into the middle, and it was a simple thing to ignore how wrong this seemed.

He would not admit it, but L's apparent sensitivity to his emotional process was disturbing. Had he really always read Light so easily?

"Stop doing that," Light snapped. He was feeling particularly stressful.

"Stop doing what?" L said innocently, pretending to be preoccupied with licking the whip cream off of a small shortcake. Light knew he was pretending, and L knew Light knew he was pretending. That was what made it annoying.

"Stop staring at me." Light regretted the childish command almost as soon as he said it.

"Stop staring at me?" L repeated. Light could have punched him then and there, just for the fact that the absence of it in his tone of voice only magnified L's amusement.

"Yes. It bothers me. And it's not polite."

"I'm sorry, Light-kun. I'll try to remember to be more polite to you in the future."

"Shut up, Ryuuzaki."

No, that was impossible. L didn't know how to read him, he only knew how to bother him.

And L was right---it didn't matter now anyway.

"What, you're not going to read it?"

Light didn't even open his eyes when the shadowy figure who had been watching the whole time spoke. The rocky voice was familiar grating on his ears.

"No. It's pointless to read that garbage. I can already tell he left it behind to try and mess with my head, Ryuk, and however confident he is that I'll feel compelled to read it, I am not in the least."

Not in the least, he thought, before drifting off into fitful dreams filled with countless Shinigami, all staring at him with the same pair of expansive black eyes.