Shattered Porcelain

I do not own Death Note, nor its characters

"The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius."

-Oscar Wilde

Chapter Two: wounds

It had been, if Light's inner clock was correct, two days and eight hours since he had seen the world apart from the small view from the window. He supposed tiredly, that he should be grateful, seeing as he was no longer chained to the bed. Now he could wander aimlessly about the room in which he kept. BB was always there, and he did offer stimulating conversation, but Light was unnerved by this man, if not wholly, than partially, by his red eyes. Light avoided speaking to BB unless necessary.

He wandered over to the small kitchen, stepping over the rotting cat. Neither he or BB had really made any effort to clean it. He felt a pang of sympathy for the creature; it probably didn't even know what was happened when it had been killed. Gazing at it, the feeling passed and he looked at it with apathy, pouring himself a cup of what looked to be coffee. He held the chipping cup close to his face and tried to take from it what little warmth it provided. The window that he was facing in the kitchen looked out on a busy street, bustling with people of all shapes and sizes.

Two women walked in perfect sync, their skirts swishing this way and that way, while a man with a hat and coat on, both midnight black in color, stared at them with a longing expression on his long face. A young child danced down the street, holding a toy airplane, moving it up and down as he skipped. A bedraggled young woman chased after him, carrying a baby and two grocery store bags. Then two men, walking slinkily down the sidewalk, whistling at the women they passed, although their eyes lingered on each other and other men a little too long.

Light leaned on the window, staring listlessly at the people inhabiting the world he no longer could be in. They all seemed so tired and grey, so colorless, so very...he searched for the right word. Very dull. Like blobs of nothing, each person similar to the one that followed.

'This world,' he thought, 'is so boring.'

"Isn't it odd," BB said, startlingly Light, as his voice had come from nowhere, "that the people out there think they are so normal, when they really are far more delusional then us?" Light winced slightly.

"Why do you say us?"

BB grinned.

"I like to think that Light is different like me, in a different way of course." He turned to Light, who frowned and crossed his arms, his sleeves falling over his fingers.

Light had no clothes of his own, only the ones he'd been wearing when kidnapped. When he had woken up the next morning, he had been unchained from the bed with a pile of shirts and jeans on the end of his bed. Half of them smelled of dirt and grunge, which gave Light the impression that none of the articles had ever been washed. The pile consisted of a few black and/or white shirts that were at least 2 sizes too big for Light, and a pair of jeans that seemed worn thin and hung low on Light's hips, which were lithe already and becoming smaller.

"Perhaps…" Light said, trailing off as he rubbed his thin arms through the cloth, "But I suppose I don't go around stealing people in the night." He looked over at BB and smiled for the first time, a wry grin to show what he said was a joke. BB looked startled at first, for Light had never shown a sense of humor in the days before, then smiled back at the boy. Light walked back over to the kitchen and placed his cup in the sink, looking back down at the cat. He blinked and looked up to BB.

"Are you going to clean that up?"

BB looked at the cat and raised his eye brow.

"No, probably not."

Light nodded, as if he'd expected as much, and walked around the cat. He boredly prodded the thing with his foot and looked over at BB.

"What am I to do with myself all day, while you're off," he paused here and made a swinging gesture with his hand, as if to communicate his lack of knowledge of BB's activities during the day, "doing what ever it is you do?" I mean to say, well, it gets quite boring around the house. There is very little to do around here."

BB held up a finger and disappeared off to the side, leaving Light standing there until he returned. In his hands he held a mop, broom, and several sponges.

"Here," he said, thrusting the cleaning products at Light, "Clean. It will keep you from being bored." Light gave BB an incredulous look and BB just grinned and walked off. Staring at the spot that BB had just been in, Light came to the sudden realization that he didn't even know the name of this man. Yet here he was, holding a broom and wearing HIS clothes, about to clean the home of the man who had just kidnapped him.

'Perhaps,' he thought to himself while rolling up his sleeves, 'the world isn't so boring.'

On his hands and knees, Light was scrubbing the floor of the musty room when BB walked into the room dragging a body with him. Light frowned and scrunched up his face.

"What is that?"

BB turned his head sharply, as if he'd forgotten Light had existed. He pulled up the leg of what looked to be young woman and glanced at it thoughtfully.

"It's a dead body."

"You killed someone."

BB nodded. Light frowned again and thought about how he was to respond to this. He went back to cleaning and BB began to drag the body again, stopping only as Light called out softly.

"Why?"

BB paused. He'd never truly bothered to think about it, because none of his other obsessions bothered to ask him about it. They'd always been too scared that they would be next. He wondered if the Light child carried the same fear. He doubted it.

"I wish to send a message to someone."

"Oh," Light said, nodding and scrubbing as he did, "Who, exactly, is the message for?"

BB frowned.

"I can not tell you that Light," BB said before grinning and pressing a finger to his lips, "It's a secret."

Light frowned, but continued to scrub the floor as BB went back to dragging the body.

L bit his thumb and stared at the picture that had been sent to him. It was, to say the least, disturbing, but L had seen it all before. A young woman sprawled in an alley way, her body covered in bruises, and her throat was slashed. He rotated his thumb in his mouth as Watari came over to give him some files.

"The young lady's name was Laura Yellker. She was an American businesswoman in Japan for a business related trip. So far there are no suspects."

L nodded and stared at the screen. It was difficult to concentrate on this case when he had another one from Japan at his heels. The chief whom he'd worked with before's son had disappeared two days past and he'd rarely time to talk or discuss the thing with the task force. But there was something tugging at his conscious, something that seemed important, but he wasn't sure what exactly. He bit hard onto his thumb, his teeth sinking past the first layer of flesh. It was the name, he was sure of it. He repeated it slowly in his mind.

Laura Yellker.

Laaauuurrraaa Yellker.

L. Y.

Laura Yellker.

Light Yagami.

L. Y.

His eyes widened. It couldn't be. It simply couldn't. Impossible, impossible…

Or perhaps not, he mused. He picked up his phone between his thumb and forefinger and dialed carefully the number for Chief Inspector Yagami's household.

"Ah, yes, may I speak to the chief? It is rather urgent…"

Later on that night, BB walked into the room to see Light sitting on the bed, staring off into the white space that seemed to infest the room. He tried to walk silently, but was stopped by Light.

"Why do you murder them?"

BB cocked his head to the side and gave Light a puzzled look.

"I thought I'd already told Light of the reason."

"No," Light said, his eyes narrowing and looking up at BB with a glint in them BB had never seen before (not to say he didn't like it), "Why would you do that to another human? It is sick, insane. It is wrong."

BB scoffed.

"Wrong. Who are you to tell me what I do is wrong? Does not everyone murder? Each time you take a step, you indirectly cause the demise of another 'human', if that is what you wish to call them. I think the term is used altogether too loosely. A human is not what the people of this earth are. A human makes mistakes and realizes them. The people who inhabit the world believe they are perfect, that their way is fail safe. You see Light, no way is fail safe. Some how, some way, everything is corrupt. It is how the world turns. It is fate. You can not go around telling someone that they are wrong when you very well could be wrong as well. So presumptuous of you, Light, to assume that your point of view is the same as everyone else's."

Light frowned and shook his head.

"A murder is a murder. You can not justify that, not with all the fancy wording you enjoy."

BB nodded, internally grinning at the stiffness of Light's voice. He did not enjoy the pointed prodding at his beloved sense of justice. It was just as BB loved. To tear apart what made a person whole until they became simply broken. Destroyed. Oh, BB thrilled at it.

"Then how do the ones who set up the death penalty justify them selves hm? That is just as much murder as to strangle the person with your own two hands. The way they do it is just so they do not soil their clothing with the blood of their fellow man. Failure to recognize that they are just as much human as the man they try and convict simply backs my theory of the people relying far too much on their little rules that they hope will keep them safe from chaos. Silly, Light, to believe this is justice. Justice is not always the law, you see, because justice has not a single rule, while the law is made up of them. To say you support Justice through the Law is completely contradictory."

Light sighed and bit his lip in anger.

"If you go by your reasoning it is. In my opinion, it is without any backing. The men tried and convicted are guilty, they deserve the death penalty. They have had their chance at life; they have simply thrown it away. Should we allow them freedom when they could be stopped from terrorizing the innocent?"

BB laughed sharply.

"The innocent? You think that they are fair always? A man is corrupt from the beginning and is until the end. It is the fact of life. To allow them to judge other men is essentially a joke. It is decidedly ridiculous. You cannot have a criminal try a criminal with out it being some how unfair."

Light opened his mouth, but shut it and looked at BB. His eyes softened, and he smiled sadly.

"Someone you trusted hurt you once, didn't they?"

BB looked aghast.

"Why would Light say that?"

Light placed his fingers next to his mouth. His thumb traced the out line of his lips.

"I know because I acted like that when first I was hurt the same way. I learned to hide it. You learned to act out in murder. It simply a different way to deal with things. I fake things, you destroy them, all for the reason of trust. We promise ourselves never to trust another and therefore our judgment of the world around us is changed. We are destined to destroy and fake and destroy and fake until we find a trust we can believe in."

BB nodded, accepting the knowledge.

"And it is simply fate that the trust will be broken and we will continue our pattern until we die. We can not control it. It is how it is, that we are meant to destroy. Or at least I am. Without this destruction, I would surely destroy myself with my bottled emotion."

Light nodded and looked down again. Memories were flying back and he did not wish for them.

"Who was it that broke you trust?"

Light's head snapped up and he bit his lip. This was his secret, his one little piece of information that he clung to inside, trying to drown it with denial. He did not know if he could say it. He did not know if he could say it aloud with out fearing it's eventual truth showing it self to him, so that he could no longer whisper to himself it was simply a dream.

"I was, um, rejected by someone I loved very much."

"You are avoiding telling me the whole truth Light. Tell me, I shall not laugh, nor tease."

Light glared at him.

"Yes, you will. You will tell me that I allow my feelings to rule me to much, that I am not in control of myself, that I need to stop acting like a selfish child and clinging to what isn't there."

"I would not."

"Yes, you would, because that is what he did."

BB cocked his head to the side.

"Who is he?"

"The someone I loved very much. But I didn't think to ask he loved me. I thought, I thought," here he began to stutter as his voice quivered, "I thought that he would love me forever. I was wrong. We met when my father was working on a case with him, which I didn't know at the time, and began an affair. I would see him most days for tea and talk and I stupidly fell in love. I told him and, the bastard, said he felt the same way, only to two days later tell me he could not see me anymore because he no longer cared for me. I was left alone, with the illusion of love ripped from me and there I stayed for a while, all but dead to the world. I stopped one day and began to bury it into myself. No one would know, no one would know that I had been hurt, that I could be hurt. I thought if I looked like a normal, whole person, maybe my mind would follow. I wanted so bad to tell, to share some of my hurt and anger with someone, but no one wanted to listen to the real me. They wanted fake me, they wanted repressed, dying on the inside not the outside me. The real me just wanted to die and for everyone to die with me, but fake me couldn't. I was stuck and I still am. This person killed any sense of myself that I had."

He looked at BB, looking for any sign of laughter. BB remained silent. He got up and shuffled over to Light on the bed, standing above him and looking down at his face.

"Mine was a man I greatly respected. I wanted more than anything to be him. I wanted to be the best, just like him. He told I was not good enough. I wasn't good enough. I had been training my entire life away to become this man, giving up what hopes I had for anything else, all for this, this pot of gold at the end of a shitty rainbow. For what? To be told that I wasn't good enough. So I showed him I was good enough. I killed the man he was after and showed him. He told me I was crazy, insane, that I was not fit to be anything. He called the police and they took me away. I thought he would know, that he would understand the difference."

"What difference?" Light looked up at BB puzzled.

"The difference between insanity and being different. I explain, time and time again to people that I am not insane. I am different. People can not handle what is different from what they are, not realizing that different can kill as well as insanity. When you are different, it isn't as if you want to be that way, but people assume you are and shun you. Shunning causes you to became angry at the world and wish to destroy it as it destroyed you. Revenge. It is how you felt when your someone betrayed you and how I felt as well. There is no end to the cruelty of a human and there is no knowledge of the repercussions of your actions. No one realizes what you say is what affects others most. It is," here he searched for the word, and then, upon finding, twirled his fingers in Light's hair, "unfair."

Light nodded. He leaned into BB's touch and closed his eyes. BB crouched down so that he faced Light dead on and pushed open his eyes. Light's cheeks reddened and he opened his mouth to say something when BB kissed him. The press of lips against his own was something Light had forgotten and remembered now happily. BB broke from it and leaned Light down on the bed. Light's heart raced. BB lied down next to him and held him in his arms.

BB didn't know where the urge was coming from to hold the little Light child. He seemed so fragile, so delicate, the slightest slip would cause him to break. It was strange, BB had never felt such a thing like this before. It didn't seem natural and yet it did. He needed to comfort the boy. He needed to. BB never had needed to help another human. It was touching, he thought, that he could feel this way.

Singing softly in Italian in Light's ear, he felt the boy go limp in his arms, now asleep. He looked at the sleeping thing. Oh, wasn't he lovely? He looked like a pretty new porcelain doll, lips pink and glossy, hair soft and perfectly placed, skin so peachy and perfect that only the artificialness of glass could explain it. So graceful, so elegant, so wonderful in all the right places.

It would make it all the more sad when this toy broke too. It was such a nice one after all, BB thought, he wished he could keep it. But the letters, red as strawberrys, stayed above the Light child's head, reminding BB that it was tick tock until the boy's last breath was taken from him.

the end of chapter two: wounds

A.N. Ah, I'm tired. This took waaaaaaay too long. Sorry if BB's blathering is tiring you. Believe me, I'm getting tired of it to.

L is the story line, do dah, do dah, it is really lame right now, oh the do dah day. Heh, he'll play a bigger part, I promise. But later, when I've had more sleep.

I'm listening to the phantom of the opera for this. Ah, Music of the Night is good for this one you know. So is the beatles, sexy sadie is good, but that's just my strange music writing combo.

P.S. Sexy, Oscar Wilde is my favorite to quote. His work is just perfect to pick quotes from.

Please review…