Ficlet Five: Echo
Author's Note: So I was reading this book…which, okay, doesn't narrow it down a whole lot, because I read books the way some people climb mountains or jump off cliffs—because it's there. It's called Son-Rise and is about an autistic boy whose family made it their personal project—independently—to pull him out of it. He had trouble interacting with other people, but would play with inanimate objects for hours on end. When given mental stimulation, he accelerated beyond anyone's wildest dreams. I didn't add two and two until I got to the pictures. The child in question had curly hair, a baby-face, and huge dark eyes. This is me: 'mustn't shout or squeak, I'm in a classroom, but oh, my gosh, that's Near!'
Disclaimer: I own whatever's made up, including pipe dreams and spider-webs (not literally: I mean anything I feel like adding to fill gaps that were never proven in context). I don't own those-whom-we-love; put anyone you like in that category.
ON WITH THE SHOW!
There's something; he can feel it.
L knows, on one level, that it is illogical to begin from a conclusion and then use logic to connect beginning to end, but on another level, it always has worked so far. He can never explain it, but it has never failed him, and since when did he have to explain himself to anyone, really?
The fifteen-year-old, relatively satisfied with the current situation, puts one finger to his lips thoughtfully, watching the adults chat. One he knows—has been in charge of raising him, inasmuch as the word can be applied to a child who had, three years ago, cussed out Interpol over something they'd done that he didn't like—but the other was a relative stranger. And that's all right—L doesn't mind strangers as long as they leave him alone. Preferably with a computer, because ten minutes later he'll know more about them than they remember about themselves.
He wishes that Mr. Wammy and the other man—Daven, he recalled—would go away and leave him alone so he can run off and find whatever is nagging at the corner of his mind. He has a feeling (a very good feeling) that it is a 'whoever' and not a 'what', and that makes him even more curious.
He's curled in one of his favorite chairs in Roger's study, reading an extremely tedious but important evidence report and getting sticky smudges all over it from a lollipop—well, truth be told, a series of lollipops. (He is also hiding from B, in a way designed to seem like he wasn't even bothering to hide and was in fact not even acknowledging the younger child's disturbing existence.) Through the haze of official phrasing and data, he's also listening to Roger and Quillsh Wammy sort through their own stack of information.
Something catches his attention—he doesn't quite register what—and he shifts his main focus from the document to the adults—while still reading, of course.
"Seems we're getting a reputation for dealing with difficult children," Roger says wryly, shoving a letter across the table to his brother-in-law.
"Who is it now?"
"One Mr. Samuel Daven, from America. He didn't specify anything more than 'difficult'."
L drops the document at this point (all over the floor, but he knows where he was) and joins the adults at the table, snatching the letter away from Wammy, who surrenders it without a fuss. (L is prone to doing this. The man is used to it.)
The child-detective perches on the edge of the table, a habit he acquired back when he was forced to climb on tables to look adults in the eye and has not gotten rid of yet, and scrutinizes the paper. What he's looking for, he can't specify. Roger anticipates him and passes him the envelope as well.
"Are you going?" L asks finally, turning his eyes onto his guardian.
"Yes, I thought I would," Wammy replies calmly, just to see what his brilliant young charge will do.
He is not disappointed. "I'm coming too."
"Any reason?" he hazards.
L taps his thumbnail against his teeth meditatively, and finally comes out with, "There's something…when I figure it out, I'll let you know."
So here they are, in North Dakota, of all places, and L's internal radar is telling him that there is something or someone here. He really wants to go and investigate, but he's promised to behave and act like a normal child until the director takes his eyes off him.
(This, of course, does not extend to sitting normally, because he does have limits, and it's not wise to push them. L overreacts fantastically when pushed. Few people try it twice.)
Finally, Daven rises and invites Mr. Wammy to review some files with him, and they move to leave the room. Daven hesitates in the doorway, as if to address L, but Wammy is well familiar with the effect L has on unprepared other people, and cuts him off.
"Don't worry about him, Mr. Daven; he'll stay out of trouble." The accompanying look, over the other man's shoulder where he can't see it, continues silently, You'd better!
L gives him his best blank stare in return.
When he can't hear them anymore, the teenager unfolds his legs from the chair, shucking the shoes he wore under protest, for the sake of appearances, with relish. Leaving them under the chair politely—his own version of politeness—he pads barefooted out another door, following what for the sake of metaphor we must call his nose.
His instincts lead him through hallways, past classrooms, and around dormitories, with a brief foray outside, where the sun burns his too-large eyes painfully, cutting that short. It was wrong anyway, he knew subconsciously.
Silently, he heads back upstairs. Better. His feet make no noise on the carpeted floor. Ssh… he thinks, and does not wonder why. Wondering why would ruin it.
He touches the tips of overlong fingers to a door; finding it ajar, he pushes it open curiously.
It's a playroom for children younger than him. It's mostly empty—it feels empty, like no one comes here. He finds it peaceful.
No, but wait, he was slightly wrong. There is someone here, all alone. From the doorway, he sees a very young child—he can't be more than three years old—lying idly in the middle of an array of toys.
There's a pattern to it, L sees immediately. It's what he's good at, patterns. But it's…he can't put it into words.
Staying very quiet, he closes the door behind him and locates a chair at what he estimates to be the corner of the little one's vision. Not intrusive, but not hiding either.
He stays there, resolutely not watching anything in particular. Instead, he widens his attention to include the whole room, not focusing on the little boy. In this sort of state, he notices things.
L can feel the emptiness—no one comes in here but the child. But not the loneliness—there's no loneliness emanating from him. Oh, but there it is! The boy has noticed him, and resents the intrusion. But it's a sideways sort of resentment. He knows, but doesn't really care.
He can't resist the urge to move, and automatically places one thumb on his lips, leaving the other casually on his knees. He makes no move to contact the boy, but now that he has his attention, he is perfectly justified in returning it.
Small. Very pale—hair and skin alike. Were it not for the eyes, he would be fairly labeled albino. L is distantly surprised. He very rarely encounters anyone with eyes so like his own. The boy is skinny, but not to the degree L has always been. Also, there's that spark to him, that spark that L and some of the other children share—intelligence, and more than that.
They ignore each other abstractly for half an hour, forty-five minutes, an hour. L's perfect internal clock keeps track without conscious volition as he watches everything and nothing. The pale boy plays with the toys, moving inanimate objects—no, projecting his own thoughts into them.
L learns languages very quickly (those are simply patterns too), and the little one's movements are just another language. Looking at it that way, he thinks he will be able to join in. But he leaves it a little longer anyway, just to be safe.
Distantly, he hopes Mr. Wammy is keeping Daven very busy. He does not want to be interrupted now.
When the child is looking the other way, L descends from his chair and stops, crouched on the floor a little way from the other boy's territory. Another few minutes go by; he is noticed, registered, considered, and ignored.
Gradually, L comes within easy reach of the complicated array. He is being tolerated, he feels, little more. He follows the child's movements until he's sure he's got the thread of the externalized, silent monologue.
And then he steps in.
Here I am, he says, moving a figure into the sight of the boy's current avatar, if the little plane had eyes.
The boy moves the plane into a different flight path. Go away. Or, possibly, You're not here.
L patiently moves the figure into his field of view again. No.
With a crash, the child drops the plane, toppling a small structure. L interprets it as the beginnings of what would be, in a different medium, a glare and the threat of tears. He ignores the threat in exactly the way it deserves.
Still surprised at being addressed in his own language, the boy turns to building a wall out of blocks between the two of them.
L matches him block for block. When the little one turns away in a huff (it is a huff, for all of its non-expression), he builds a bridge between the two.
The boy drives a dump truck into it. Pointedly, he takes the blocks that fall into the dump truck and moves them away to build another wall with.
L builds a building. For fun, he makes it appear to defy gravity.
It gets the child's attention, to be sure, but he pretends he's not watching.
Someone else might be fooled. L sees his own practiced clueless stare in the child's cold shoulder—white curls fallen over eyes. In this half-here, half-not state required to address him on his own terms, though, the teenager can see the glint of dark eyes watching him.
He ignores the attention. Two can play at that game—and do.
As he reaches the top of his building, the child shoves a car away, making it roll wildly across the floor. L catches it easily. It was, after all, aimed at him. He chooses to think it wasn't aggressive, but, in fact, a question.
Who are you? being a logical follow up from how did you get here? Thus, the car. He has perfect faith in the little one's ability to make abstract connections. The very medium of conversation depends on it.
L borrows some blue blocks and constructs a primitive map across the floor, creating England and the United States. He fills in Europe with a scatter of things no one is using right now. (The little one is still pretending to ignore him, and if anyone was watching, they would see two completely separate games.)
He reaches over to pick up the plane the little one was using earlier. He's allowed to do so.
Absently, he flies the plane from mock-England to mock-middle of the USA, exchanging it for the car and driving it into the boy's assortment of toys. Taking his fingers off it, he puts the ball back in the child's court. I'm here now. What will you do?
L is purposely mimicking the pale boy's behavior, sprawled on the floor. It feels vulnerable, and wouldn't like it at all were he in his normal state of mind, but floating free like this, thinking in the patterns of this new language, it doesn't bother him.
The boy picks up a toy seemingly at random and builds a wall of Lego blocks around it. Don't talk to me. No one talks to me.
L builds a small tower and puts his own random figure on top of it, where it can see into the boy's makeshift cage. I can talk to you.
Abruptly, the child knocks things down left, right, and center, searching for something. L is reminded of his own haphazard filing system, which only he understands. While he looks, the teenage detective collects a number of vaguely humanoid figures and puts them in a group.
The boy is distracted, but keeps on with whatever he's doing.
Deliberately, L builds a wall between the group of people and the little one's chosen avatar. You think you're different from everyone else, don't you?
It's definitely communication; the boy abandons his search to contribute to the wall. Yes. He turns his avatar so its back faces the people and the wall.
Gotcha, L thinks but does not articulate. He moves his figure to stand beside the boy's. The cage still separates them.
It's a long, long moment as L and the child stare at the tableau they've laid out together, lying on the floor, looking like negative images.
Then the little one moves bits and pieces of the cage. There's still a barrier, but not between the two of them. He does not move the two pieces any closer together. Still, it's progress.
From the remaining small figures, L peppers the remains of the map with solitary characters. He lets that remain for a while. Then he starts moving them, one by one, to where mock-England was before they cannibalized it to make walls.
He borrows some of Europe and the bits the pale boy took out of his cage to make a wall around the group. He leaves holes in it.
The pale boy regards this new arrangement with some interest. L lets him consider it.
Finally, he picks up L's figure and moves it to the walled-in group, but there's no hostility in it. He stays facing L, but won't meet his eyes.
Fair enough.
L borrows the plane again. This time, he lands it right beside the boy's avatar.
The child stares at it for a second. He looks at the assembly of lonely figures. Then he ignores it. Instead, he resumes his interrupted search, and this time, L lets him do it.
Eventually, he extracts something that might have been a robot's breastplate at some point. It's shiny, flat, and reflective. L gets the idea even before the pale boy sets it up so that L can see a vague reflection in it.
The teenage detective pulls a magnetic letter "L" out of the depleted heap that had once been mock-Europe, dropping it in between his body and the makeshift mirror. He trusts that the child can read. (After all, L himself had been reading for quite a while at that age.)
He moves the mirror to reflect the little one. It's knocked away. When he tries again, the boy shakes his head no.
L retrieves a handful of letters from various places on the floor, putting some effort into finding a complete set. The pale child watches him, but they still don't make eye contact.
When all the letters are in a heap before him, he reaches out and scatters them around. The only thing he grabs is a lock of his hair, pulling on it.
It's another connection between them. L has had his fingers in and out of his mouth the whole time, as he is accustomed to doing. He's really impressed—the child spots it, and looks at the pale strands and L's fingers in turn.
L doesn't pester him about the letters, but he returns to it of his own accord. The boy does not put them in any sort of order, but collects them together again and pushes them towards L.
Contemplatively, L surveys the board. He retrieves his avatar from the group in mock-England and puts it by the letters. Instantly, the little one reaches for a letter L. They place the toys in the same place at the same time, and the boy follows it up with his figure, clearing an open space for it. In the process, the 'everyone else' area gets knocked over, ignored. They are not important.
He offers the letters to the boy again, but they're still rejected, moved straight back to him. As if he's convinced L's missing the point, the child picks up the plane and puts it between the two of them. He turns it so that it's facing the group in England.
L thinks for a moment, enjoying the language they've built up between them, before selecting a handful of letters. Keeping his fist closed, he holds his hand an inch above the carpet in front of the boy's figure.
Feather-light fingers rest on the back of his hand, pushing it down.
He lets the letters fall, carefully feeling the shape of them as he does so.
N-E-A-R
The pale boy stares at the letters. And at L's avatar. At the plane. At the symbolic group of the isolated ones. Back at the letters.
Then he picks up his avatar and moves it over to L's so that they're barely touching. Figure released, the empty hand brushes L's again. The teenager turns his larger hand over so that their palms are touching.
When he folds his long fingers in, neither pulls away.
Quillsh Wammy has long since begun to wonder where his teenage charge has gotten to. There's been no sign of him, and he usually turns up wanting sugar before very long. He hopes L would stay out of trouble, but that child! Honestly. All that intelligence, not much common sense.
He is relieved, although he doesn't show it, when L appears in the doorway, nudging it aside oddly. He's surprised—definitely very surprised—when he realizes that L's hands are occupied with carrying a small child with white hair.
They lock eyes for a second, completely ignoring the befuddled Daven.
"That—but that's—how on earth?"
"Mr. Daven?" Wammy inquires politely.
"That's the child I'm most worried about," Daven sputters. "Nate—but I've never seen him interact with anyone!"
Wammy turns to look at the pair again. The pale boy—Nate?—is clinging to L like a lifeline, face hidden in his neck and shoulder.
"Well, I think he may not be your problem for much longer, Mr. Daven," Wammy predicts, seeing the look in L's dark eyes.
"You think you can help him?"
Without a trace of doubt, he answers, "I know it."
Daven flails for a second more before leaving the three of them alone.
Addressing his charge, Wammy asks directly, "And so who's this, child?"
L's arms tighten around the child, and he looks up. Involuntarily, Wammy draws in a breath in surprise. He has the same intelligent, jet-dark eyes as L.
"This is Near," L tells his guardian assertively. "And he's mine."