Hey *^*.
Sorry for leaving you for, like, 5 months. I didn't mean to, but every time I thought about writing something I just couldn't...
And I don't know what this chapter is, it's really weird, and YES, L IS HEARING VOICES, HOW CLICHE.
It's also shorter [and much worse] than the last, which is really annoying because I tried to make it longer [and better] but I didn't know what else to put...
AND FFFF- I DON'T KNOW WHAT L IS DOING AT THE END, TO BE HONEST. I WAS ACTUALLY LAUGHING A BIT AT THIS CHAPTER, IT'S SO RANDOM O_o. And woah, the voice really has a way with words e_e;;
Anyway, thank you for all your nice reviews, again... AND YES, HOSPITALS HAVE SUCH AN INTOXICATING SMELL. ALSO, JUST BECAUSE I'M THINKING OF NAMING MY CHAPTERS DOESN'T MEAN I'M CONTINUING.
... But I would call this one Bloody Petals and Voices if I was naming it ¬_¬
Unrelated question: Do you like yaoi?
"Are you feeling calmer now, Ryuzaki?" The nurse talked to him like he was a small child, like he had trouble understanding things. Like he was stupid.
He moved his hand away from under hers, and stared at the wall opposite him. This was all just another dream. It had to be. Watari couldn't have taken him here, to this hospital. He grabbed the sheets with both hands and dug his fingernails into the material. His head was spinning.
"Ryuzaki?" It was the voice of him. Of that traitor. He had trusted Watari. And now… now he had gotten him into an impossible situation. Everyone around him now thought of him as mentally ill. As incapable.
L shut his eyes and tried to stop his emotions from taking over him again.
No.
"Yes."
"I would like some time by myself to…" Panic. Worry. Scheme. Scream. Process. Wonder. Why. Why. Why? "… think, if you don't mind." L said the words mechanically, struggling desperately to slip the mask he had been living behind for years back on. He really shouldn't be surprised that Watari had betrayed him. Really, who hadn't betrayed him? His life was a metaphor for isolation and betrayal.
"No problem, Mr Watari and I will give you some time to yourself. If you need anything, just pull the red cord next to your bed and me or one of the other nurses will come running, okay?" The nurse, it appeared, also favoured wearing masks. A big fake smile was plastered across her face as she spoke, making L wonder what she was really thinking. Probably how she hated her job, hated this building with its sickly smell and deranged patients and snide colleagues and broken coffee machines. Hated this, hated trying to talk with countless numbers of psychos every day, hated the psychos, hated them. Hated him.
"Yes."
With that, the nurse walked out of the room, expecting Watari to follow.
"Ryuzaki… I'll come back tomorrow, okay?" Watari gazed at L, his eyes still full of concern and now a hint of something else – maybe remorse, regret. But L did not see these emotions, as his attention had turned back to the white wall ahead of him.
"Yes."
A mechanical reply, once more. Watari nodded once, unsure. "Okay."
Then he left.
The light from the corridor disappeared as the old man closed the door, and the incessant noises outside were muffled slightly. This was a small relief; the lights in the hospital were far too bright. So bright that their reflection bounced off the shiny floors and intensified the white of the walls and caused everyone to sweat from the heat they radiated. They were almost blinding.
And the noises, coughing and murmuring and obsessive chanting and machines beeping and the occasional spontaneous outburst from a disoriented patient. They all merged into one big buzzing noise that filled L's head with constant static, so loud that he couldn't hear his own thoughts sometimes, just a loud buzz of confusion. Then other noises would break through the static. Voices, but not his own. Voices that he had tried to forget over the years, memories he had tried to suppress. But the voices were becoming harder to ignore, they were getting louder and more insistent, and sometimes L found himself enjoying their company, taking some comfort in their presence, even if what they were saying wasn't always friendly.
"We're alone now, L."
The words came from nowhere in particular, they just echoed around the room. L continued to stare at the white wall.
"But we're always alone, anyway. No-one really cares about us, do they? The one person we thought we could trust was lying to our face the whole time. Do you think we deserve that?"
L's gaze did not falter. "Perhaps."
"He's just been using your skills at detective work to make himself look like more of a success. Quillish Wammy, the kind, compassionate man who took in a poor orphaned boy and raised him to be a genius, a detective prodigy who solved his first case at age eight. But that young genius is really a naïve unloved freak with no social skills. A sad, pathetic, worthless freak. Do you want to be a helpless freak forever, L?"
L flinched slightly, but kept looking ahead. "… No."
"Then let's destroy the old man. Let's get revenge, let's make him feel the pain we've felt with 100 times the intensity. Let's watch him burn alone, watch him reach out his hand for us and reject him, let's hear his screams of pain and fear as the life is drained from his frail old body and his dirty, tainted soul is sucked from his eyes." The voice was getting faster, more urgent. It lusted for blood.
"That would make me as sick as the criminals I've devoted my life to imprisoning. I'm not a murderer."
"No, you're just a coward! A fucking coward! Maybe you're the one who doesn't deserve to live, you retarded sociopath! Why do you continue to live when no-one loves you? Hell, no-one even likes you! I don't know why I'm even wasting my time on a pathetic insect like you in the first place. You're worthless!"
"I'm not worthless. I…" L trailed off. He couldn't fight back. Because it was true. He was worthless. No-one wanted him. No-one loved him. He was a pointless existence, a burden, a waste of space. Why was he alive?
"You're just a nuisance to humanity, a pesky insect that no-one really wants."
It was all true.
"So, instead of killing Watari, why don't you kill yourself?"
Why didn't he?
"You would just be doing the world a favour."
He would.
"But you're so much of a coward you can't even kill yourself!"
The voice was right. Every time he was about to plunge the knife just a bit deeper, something stopped him. Fear. He was a coward.
"Maybe being in this place will make you actually do it. Do you want to live the rest of your life in this bed, withering away like those disgusting, ugly flowers? Or do you want to die a beautiful death, painting those white walls with a magnificent crimson, filling the air with an intoxicating metal smell, leaving an everlasting scream echoing through the room and fading into the walls to stay for eternity as your heart beats for the last time?"
L imagined the vivid scene the voice was describing, closing his eyes and feeling the blood leave his body, inhaling the scent and watching the room become splattered with red as he left the earth in a glorious display.
But then he felt the pain pulsate through him, and he shot his eyes open to stop the disturbing fantasy, except the pain didn't stop and it just got worse and L was suddenly so confused…
He looked down to find his arm scratched viciously, his pale skin torn and slashed and bleeding, and his fingernails covered in blood.
Had he done that...? He searched for the door and found that it was still shut, with no sign of anyone entering. He must have done it... he hadn't even noticed. What else hadn't he noticed?
He looked at the red pull cord the nurse had pointed out, and then looked at the vase of flowers next to him. He shakily grabbed onto the metal bars fixed to the bed, and turned his body around so that his legs were hanging off the side of the bed. His arms were stinging with pain, but he ignored them, almost hypnotised by the vase of flowers. He raised himself slowly off the bed, and shuffled in his usual hunched-over way to stand in front of the bedside cabinet with the flowers, dismissing the blood that was dripping from the fresh wounds in his arms and hitting the previously impeccable tiled floor. He took a single flower and examined it, seeing how the petals were becoming limp, noticing how the leaves on the stalk were going brown around the edges.
L tore the head off the stalk, then began obsessively ripping the petals from the head, one by one. Blood from his fingers smeared onto the petals as he did this, and before long a shower of bloody petals had floated to the ground. He did the same with the rest of the flowers, covering a few tiles of the floor with a sea of bloody petals.
He looked down at the disgusting bloody mess and fought the stinging sensation in his eyes.
He had to escape.