A/N: Well, posts will be slightly later in the day since it's no longer the weekend and work is one of those necessary things. Anywho~I'm hoping this chapter is formatted correctly. FN keeps eating it.
+NOTE+ I have no idea what happened to my formatting! It bugged out.
Shoutout to FireWolfAbianvi, albino tabby, iwanka94, knightvalen and UnsightlyDreams for reviewing! Your feedback is super important to me. ^_^
iwanka94: Well, hello back Poland from Florida. Heh
Knightvalen: +whistles innocently+
UnsightlyDreams: Yes. I'm planning on updating this daily unless circumstances prevent me from doing otherwise. This is not a 30 day challenge, so I cannot say how long this will end up and I'm not going to force myself to post every day even if I hit that wall known as writers block. But my objective this summer is to write daily, so these kinds of things help. Also, glad to see you back. Hope you had fun on your vacation. Heh.
House of Cards
Part Three: Chasing Dawn
"Mister Ryuuzaki."
L groaned, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Wait. Sleep? He looked around. Right, he was in the hospital. He'd been staying in a chair outside the ICU recovery rooms for almost a week waiting for Light to wake up. Even insomniacs succumbed to sleep eventually. L rolled his shoulders and glanced up the doctor. It wasn't a sight one saw every day, a man sleeping curled up in a plastic chair, a laptop balanced precariously on his knees.
"Yes, doctor?"
He pushed up those wire-framed glasses of his and cleared his throat awkwardly, "This is against our policy, but given your employer's demands..."
L shifted, more alert now than he had been in a week.
"She is awake. I would say she isn't ready for guests, but she keeps panicking and it would be counterproductive to her recovery to medicate her further."
"I will do what I can to calm her."
"Very good. Come along. She is in room 301."
L slipped from the chair and quickly zipped his laptop away in the bag. Slinging it over his shoulder, the detective followed the doctor, hands buried in his back pockets and his back slouched in a manner that made many a stranger cringe.
When the door to the recovery room opened, L felt his heart race. Her voice. She was alive, awake and asking questions. Well, demanding answers more like it, but this was wonderful progress. He shuffled further into the cramped little space, ignoring the many machines blinking and humming around him. He reached for the delicate blue curtain that offered Light privacy around her bed and pulled it aside.
He wasn't sure whether he was overjoyed or horrified. Light looked terrible. There were bruises on her face from where she fell. Her eyes were bloodshot and moist in a sickly way. She was deathly pale and someone thought it was a grand idea to cut most of her hair off instead of washing the blood out. She looked more like a boy than ever before. L then saw the real heart of the damage. Bandages covered her shoulder and chest, and both of her hands were in braces, the fingers tied into complete immobility.
There was a good chance that she would always experience pain after this event. Twice she was shot in the shoulder, and her first injury had pierced bone and was still healing when she was hit again near the same location. Then there were her hands, with fractured wrists supporting broken thumbs and other cracked digits. Fingers almost never healed quite right.
Finally taking notice of him, Light's tirade, whatever it was about, ceased. She stared at him in silence, somehow paling further than before.
"Why?" she croaked, her throat clearly raw from sleep and breathing tubes.
L stepped a little closer, ignoring the hawk-like eyes of the doctor and nurses.
"I love you," he said simply. "People do foolish things for the ones they love."
"You should be dead," Light said in startlingly dark voice. There was that spark. At least it had not faded from her. It would not be Light if not for that fire.
Coolly, he sighed and rolled his gaze at the ceiling, "Light did die. Her wounds were fatal...but here we are. Both of our hearts are still beating."
Light sneered. Ungrateful brat. He should burn the Death Notes. They were both better off not remembering this Kira nonsense. At least then they could mend their differences and return to being friends and lovers. He quite missed those days.
"I can tell the whole world what I know about the infamous L."
"Light could..." L sat down on the edge of the bed, careful to avoid the various IV tubes and other wires. He was not quite sure what half of these things were. Many things we was, but medical professional he was not. One of the nurses tried to intervene, but the doctor held him back. After all, the patient wasn't having a fit anymore. "...but then Light would only expose her own little secret. Yet again, my dear, we are at a stalemate."
Those eyes. Piercing, intelligent eyes that were still foggy with drugs, illness and pain, fluttered shut. "I hate you," she whispered.
L smiled a small, ironic smile, "There is a fine line between hate and love. I hope once Light recovers more, she will find the humility to be thankful for the one who couldn't hate her enough to stop loving her."
"Go away."
"As Light wishes. I will return tomorrow."
"Don't bother."
"Such drama. I'm not so unfeeling that I would allow my dearly beloved to recover alone in the hospital."
Light grunted and turned her head away.
L tugged the curtain back into place and faced the doctor, who was appraising him in his usual, politely disdainful way. "Care to explain?" the man said.
He tapped his chin, staring up at the ceiling for a moment, then he looked the doctor in the eyes and said, "No."
"No?"
"I believe that is an easy answer to understand. Now, I have work to do. Goodbye." L walked straight back to his usual seat. He wouldn't let it show or say a word about the fact, but his whole body ached. This next year would be full of hurdles and he could already tell that Light didn't want his help. But what could he do? It wasn't exactly easy to change the mind of a person who was dead set on killing you and was prepared to die trying.
Desperate not to think about the troubles that approached now that Light had awoken, L poured himself into his work, fingers flying across the keyboard of his laptop for endless hours. It was routine and familiar. No one bothered him. They were used to his presence. Even when they came rushing into the hallway, a patient bleeding his guts out needing to be in surgery five minutes ago, he was unfazed and mostly unnoticeable because of it.
He yawned.
Surprising in itself.
The hallway was dim, signaling that it was nighttime for the normals of the world. L blinked at the time at the corner of his screen. It was closing in on 6 a.m. Dawn was peeking over the horizon now, alerting the break of a new day. Yet he felt numb. A new day. Another step towards Light's recovery. Another trial that faced him.
Maybe today she would be more willing to tolerate his presence.
After all, in this big, bad world, they were all the other had left. Light's father was dead at her hands. Her mother and sister missing. L was an orphan and after Watari passed, the closest thing he ever had to a father was snatched away. Neither of them really had friends. And as far as anyone was concerned, Light Yagami was dead. He didn't exist anymore. The prodigal son fell with the Oligarchy. No one alive, save for L, knew he was Kira. And the Light in his care, she would never become Kira. He wouldn't allow it.
The sound of expensive shoes echoing through the hall caught L's attention.
It was the doctor.
He held two cups of coffee. Sleep must have eluded the man last night.
He didn't say much, the doctor, but neither did L. They didn't like each other. Yet they never said anything on the matter. Thus it came as a surprise when the man bent and offered one of the steaming cups. L, never the biggest fan of coffee, felt the instant urge to decline, but instead, held his tongue. He peered at the doctor with suspicious eyes before accepting the proffered cup without a word of thanks.
Hesitantly, he took a sip. His eyes widened and he jerked the cup away.
"Is something amiss?" asked the doctor.
"It's sweet..."
"Nauseatingly sweet," he confirmed, sipping on his own drink.
"How do you-? Light."
He adjusted his glasses, "Yes. Your wife was quite informative. She had quite a bit to say about her husband yesterday afternoon."
"Anything good?"
"Hm. Depends on your definition. There were many threats involving various sweets being used in rather creative ways to end your life. And of course, she mentioned something about taking tea with your cup of sugar. Quite the temper that one has on her."
L sipped his drink, "Hm. Indeed."
"Sir," the doctor said. "I think I'm beginning to understand."
"What exactly?"
"I think you know. I'm not going to pry, because it is my business to heal patients, not question their career choices, but I'm not stupid."
"No. An IQ of 136 is evidence enough of that."
"How?"
L drummed his fingers on the outside of the cup, "It is my business to pry. Have a nice day, doctor."
The bespectacled man clenched his hand hard enough to indent the cup, but said no more. Instead he turned to start his shift. L sighed.
This was going to be a dreadfully long day, wasn't it?
-tbc-
A/N:(So, we have an awake Light. A phone call to Whammy's House. A suspicious doctor. And L is calling Kira his wife? Now how is this all going to blow up in his face?
Please review! I was so happy to see the feedback for last chapter and hope to see this fic be well received. Now, I normally don't ask this, but I'm going to be a naughty author and ask for span five reviews. That is the number from last chapter. Why am I doing this? Well it effects nothing, I'll still post daily, but I really want to hear what my readers have to say. So please, write a few words for me. Thank you.
See everyone tomorrow.)