notes/warnings
+ here have a little bit more fic.
+ warning for people saying fuck a bit.
+ warning for the story still being character-driven and setting-the-scene-ish in this chapter. plot coming really soon, I promise.
Reunion
Wedy exits the casino, and approaches a nondescript white car. Nobody is following her because nobody has noticed her. She blends in perfectly everywhere she goes.
She knocks daintily on the side of the car.
"Hey, partner," Aiber says easily, rolling down the window. "What happened? I thought you were meeting up with Anthony?"
"I cancelled on Anthony," she tells him. "I found something more important."
Aiber frowns.
"You're not in trouble, right?" he asks.
They have a signal for when she's in trouble. Wedy and Aiber have signals for practically everything. They've been working together on and off since they were teenagers, sometimes on the side of the law, and sometimes very opposite the side of the law. But even they don't have a signal for 'we found that guy we thought we'd never see again'.
"I'm not in trouble," Wedy replies, rolling her eyes, because seriously she is way too cool to be hanging out with Aiber. Just look at them. He is wearing a tartan thing over another tartan thing. She is wearing boots with diamonds in the heels. "Something good has happened."
And right now, Wedy is really pleased with herself. She is always brilliant, but she is occasionally also very very lucky. And she hasn't been so excited since that time she stole the crown jewels and mailed them back to the queen piece by piece, just to prove she could.
"Something good?"
"I found L."
Her boss is going to be thrilled.
One of the screens on the wall briefly displays footage from a casino parking lot. It shows one Mary Kenwood and one Thierry Morello – better known as Wedy and Aiber – waiting in a car. Then the screen flicks over to an abandoned alley, channelling a different feed.
The person in the room gets out of bed. He's seen them before, of course. They sometimes operate from the London area, and they're not smart enough to figure out that the whole town is bugged. But it doesn't hurt to keep an eye on them. He's keeping an eye on all L's associates, just in case.
He reaches for the radio.
"Fifty-one," he says.
Then he shoves the radio in his pocket and crawls back to bed and pulls the pillow over his head.
L leaves the casino a few minutes later, through a different door. And a car pulls up in front of him and inside is Wedy and Aiber. Aiber! Aiber who he hasn't seen since the first world.
I've done it, L thinks. I have finally made it home.
He goes stumbling into the car, and sits in the back seat and draws his knees up to his chest. And Aiber starts the engine and they pull out of the parking lot, and L has dozens of things he wants to say to both of them.
But he really ought to start at the beginning.
"I am sorry that I got you killed, Wedy," he says, quietly.
"That's ridiculous," Wedy says calmly, without even looking around. "You had nothing to do with my death."
L nods, even though he doesn't really believe her. He doesn't know what to do or where to look. He is overcome. He had never really truly considered the possibility of seeing his oldest colleague again. And now, here she is with someone else he knows, and what is he supposed to even do?
"How are you?" he manages.
"Totally fine, honey," Wedy says, smoothly. "I've been keeping myself busy with work and a bit of thieving on the side."
"And shopping," Aiber interjects.
"Shopping is important to me," Wedy retorts. "I wouldn't expect you to understand."
"I thought shopping was when you paid for the things you bought," L says, momentarily caught up in the banter. Wedy and Aiber were the first two fellow geniuses he ever met.
"I'm all legit now," Wedy croons. "I've got a new boss and everything. Anyway, we're both fine. The third world is just fine, as long as you stay away from the cops and the Big Four."
"I'm legit, too," Aiber adds, copying Wedy's accent perfectly.
"What is the Big Four?" L asks. He's heard that phrase used before during a couple of different news programs. "And where are you taking me?"
"To meet my boss, of course."
L shifts on the seat, examining the car doors and considering his options. He likes Wedy very much, and he feels even more compassion for her now that he has learned of her horrible childhood, but he really doesn't want to meet whichever mobster has bought the better half of her loyalties.
"Who is your boss?"
Wedy sighs.
"You know, I think you've gotten even more boring than when we last met," she says, filing at an already-perfect nail with an implement that looks like it could probably slay a leopard seal at fifty paces. "Who is the only person I have ever worked for?"
"I feel like you intend that to be a rhetorical question," L says.
He wonders if Aiber keeps any desserts in this car. It's obviously Aiber's car since it isn't black, red, or shiny.
"L," Wedy tells him. "I work for L."
L feels his throat go dry.
"And who is that?" he asks, softly.
"I heard about the police force in England," President Whiffle says in what he probably thinks is an empathetic tone of voice. "It is my personal opinion, sir, that they are being imbeciles. Cutting of their own nose, and all that."
"What do you want?" the detective currently known as L asks. Whiffle must need a lot of help, to waste so much time on pleasantries.
"Some sensitive files have been tampered with," the president says, the jovial tone vanishing from his voice. "We are currently holding a convicted terrorist at a secure facility. Unless we release him, they will make the files public."
"Then this is the work of a cyber criminal."
"But not necessarily one of the Big Four," Whiffle pleads. "Please help us, sir."
This L doesn't take on the Big Four. Nobody does. Nobody can. They are the four most skilled hackers in the world, they are completely anonymous, and their only true peers are each other.
Of course, maybe the real L would take on the Four. This L is just a placeholder. Nobody knows that, of course. It's not like she ends her notes to the public with a signature block saying 'preferred: cases that can be solved by being objectively clever or shooting stuff'.
"It is definitely the work of Hangman," she says into the voice filter. "I recognise their modus operandi. You know full well I can't help you."
"Then you damn all of us, sir," Whiffle says, dramatically.
Whiffle is kind of a ridiculous person.
"Not really," she tells him. "I also have it on good authority that your convicted terrorist wasn't given a fair trial. I suggest you release him."
Hangman is actually generally fairly decent. They're something of a human rights activist. Naomi has learned to treat their actions with a healthy dose of respect. She does what she can to get by without access to the real L.
The president hangs up quite deftly. And like clockwork, Naomi's mobile phone starts buzzing on the desk. Which is a little troubling, since Wedy isn't due to check in for another few hours.
"What is it?" she asks, pressing the phone to her ear. "Wait. What?"
"The Big Four are an elite class of hackers," Aiber says, cheerfully. "Nobody knows who they are or where they are located. They cause a lot of problems for a lot of people, and they're universally feared and respected. They are known by their online handles: Hangman, Viv, Volution and Fivenine."
L stays very still, barely listening to Aiber's words.
Naomi Naomi Naomi Naomi Naomi.
His deputy. He is actually really going to get to see her again. He is going to maybe even get to work with her again. She is posing as him and she caught Roderick and she upheld his good reputation all on her own and he is so proud of her.
"Oh wait," Aiber babbles. "Viv was replaced. Now it's Hangman, Nocks, Volution and Fivenine. Which is good because I used to get confused between the two V's."
"The Big Four don't really cause too much trouble," Wedy says. "And I'm relatively confident I could find any one of them if they caused us too much trouble."
"Thank you," L says.
He doesn't have Rae, but he has never felt less alone in his life.
And then they pull into the basement of a nondescript high-rise building in an unremarkable inner London suburb. And L thinks this is perfect, this is exactly what he would have chosen to make his base.
L is out of the car before they have even come to a complete stop. The others lead him to across the cold cement garage floor for several paces. Wedy speaks into a small device set into the wall, and the wall proceeds to slide away to reveal a smaller room. And then they step into an elevator and ride to the forty-eighth floor and climb a set of stairs and L takes note of every retina scanner, every lock, every clever security measure that guards this wonderful place.
"This is the same colour scheme as our other office," he tells Wedy. "Oh, and that chair looks like my favourite chair."
"Sure, honey," she says. "The décor is really damn exciting in this place."
And then he reaches the bottom of another set of stairs, and a woman wearing a balaclava emerges onto the landing at the top.
"Stop," she says, briskly.
L thinks his grin might actually split his face in half.
There you are.
"I'm sorry to do this," Naomi continues – because she is definitely Naomi, "but I need to be sure. If you really are L, tell me the details of my death."
She has a gun in one hand. She's clever. She's protecting her team from imposters, even though they went right ahead and let him in here without question.
"You were killed by Kiyomi Takada through use of her death note," L answers, and he can still remember that awful day in vivid detail. "She instructed you to summon me, but you didn't."
Naomi doesn't give any response.
"You once brought a dog into our headquarters in the second world," she begins.
"It was a Labrador-spaniel cross," L tells her, anticipating the question. "Female."
"Who were you really talking to that day?"
"Rae," L says. That isn't such a good question. Naomi couldn't have known for sure who L was talking to before she gained the ability to see Rae.
"No, Raye was my husband's name," she says.
"There were two people with that name in our team," L replies.
And that should be enough to remove any doubt. He knows things that only L or another member of L's team could know. And sure enough, Naomi pulls off her mask. She has cut her hair off at the level of her chin. Other than that, she looks exactly the same. Dark eyes, blunt fringe, smile as bright as the room.
L feels as if his stomach has dropped somewhere into one of his legs.
"You," Naomi says.
"You," L echoes.
And then he's running, taking two or three stairs in every stride, because he has wanted this so much and he never even let himself think about it.
He reaches the landing and he and Naomi hover for a moment, staring at each other.
"I am sorry for getting you killed," L whispers.
"It was always a risk," Naomi says, just as softly.
"And your husband is fine," L adds, figuring that Naomi would want to know that immediately. "Watari will make sure he is provided for now that I am gone."
"Speaking of my husband," Naomi says, and looks over her shoulder. "Connor. Come here."
L frowns, because she said those last three words in honorific Japanese. A very small boy toddles out of a room behind her. He looks like a miniature carbon copy of Naomi. He is clutching what appears to be a large, fluffy dinosaur toy. When he sees L, he huddles behind Naomi's leg and scowls up at him.
"This is my boss," Naomi says to the boy. "He is safe."
"I understand," the boy replies, in the same language.
L stares between the two of them.
"This is your son?"
Naomi shrugs.
"You must have figured out I was pregnant after I died. I can't imagine this is a surprise to you."
In his whole life, L has worked while taking care of a child exactly once. He can't imagine doing it every day, all the time.
How do you ever get anything done?
Aren't you terrified?
"Why have you only taught him one language?" L asks.
"He speaks all languages," Naomi replies. "But he knows that people who are familiar him will only speak to him in honorific Japanese. It's one of the ways he can tell a safe person from an unsafe person."
"Wow," L murmurs. "But how did you manage to-"
"Can we hug now?" Naomi interrupts.
"I admit I have been fighting the urge to hug you since I saw you," L replies, and then she is in his arms and he's holding onto her, alive and warm and perfect.
L never ever wants to be without his deputy ever again.
"I missed you so much," Naomi says. "I didn't think I'd get to see you for years."
"I didn't think I'd get to see you at all," L tells her. "From now on, you are not allowed to die without my written permission."
Naomi snorts into his shoulder.
"Uh huh. And how did you manage to die so quickly, anyway? What happened?"
L hesitates. Naomi knows of Rae's existence, but she doesn't know of their relationship. He is certain that she wouldn't approve if she found out. L decides that he will keep that a secret, at least for now.
"It was a random stabbing," he explains. "I was unlucky."
"I don't believe you," Naomi says. "How could-"
She is cut off by the sound of wet bone china smashing against the floor. Sounds like someone just dropped their mug of tea.
"Oh my fucking fucking fucking fuck," someone else says, from behind them.
Len Grover is back again. His wife got a restraining order against him months ago, but he still turns up to the Southwest police station with alarming regularity.
"I still haven't heard from my wife," he bleats.
Sergeant Stanton stares at him blankly.
"You are not allowed within a sixty mile radius of Bonita Grover," she explains, in her unpleasantly monotonous voice.
Len is sweating profusely, and deathly pale. He has some sort of anxiety disorder. He looks terribly worried, and Teru hates Stanton for not even caring. Just like he hates himself for the fact that he would have killed Len Grover in a heartbeat in the first world, for the temerity of not being normal enough.
Once you start seeing in black and white, all the other categories disappear. The mentally ill are bad. The lost and lonely are bad. Victims are bad, if they don't react in exactly the right way. People who look different are bad. People who pray to different gods are bad.
Delete. Delete. Delete.
This is why Teru cannot ever become a lawyer again. He cannot trust himself with people's lives. He cannot trust himself with their freedom or their safety. And he cannot ever, ever tolerate Light's return. No matter what. Even if he comes back lobotomised and in shackles.
You were poison.
"She loved me," Len wails. "We were in love. And then…it all happened so fast. I just want to know that she is okay. Can't you do that for me? You don't need to tell me where she is or who she's with. You don't need to even tell me anything. Just…go and make sure she's okay."
"Sorry," Stanton replies, steadily. "We are too busy."
They're not busy at all.
"I'll look into it," Teru tells him, moving forward. "I'll find her for you. I promise."
Stanton gives him a look that could curdle bricks. She manages to do it without changing her expression at all.
"No you won't," she orders.
She can't stop him, though. She can't stop who he looks for, just as long as he appears to be following her orders. Stanton isn't the boss of him, as much as she'd like to think she is. Teru can do things in his spare time. He can run background checks undetected. He can take matters into his own hands.
No. No, he can't. The whole point of putting himself into the force was to make sure he would always be kept in line, that he'd never hurt anyone again.
How many people could be hurt just by Teru surreptitiously checking on one divorced woman?
Teru doesn't know how many.
"Sorry," he mumbles.
"You need to learn to keep your mouth shut," Stanton tells him, coldly.
Teru slinks out of the office, away from Len's disappointed face. When he gets into the hall, Deputy Sergeant Daniels shoulder-checks him and slams him against the wall. Then Daniels walks on, without even saying a word.
Teru hates this place.
Naomi pushes L away a little, hands on his shoulders.
"Turn around," she says, quietly.
The air is still. Connor stares up at L as if he is regarding a large and dangerous animal. L swivels on his heel, because there are obviously more people in this building than the ones that he can see right now.
Because of course.
L completes the half circle turn, and there he is. Tie askew. Hair askew. Looking from L to the ill-fated teacup on the ground and then abruptly back to L.
"Oh my god," L says.
"Oh my god," Matsuda says, pointing at L.
You're here, too.
L is suddenly hit by an unheeded franticness, as if somehow now that he's here he isn't doing this right. And he rushes forward and Matsuda catches him with one arm, twisting the other one around so as to continue pointing at him. And L doesn't know what to do with his hands or his face and then he's kissing Matsuda and Matsuda is kissing him.
"Aw," Wedy says, from somewhere in the distance.
"You are the weirdest girl I know," Aiber tells her.
Wedy and Aiber are long gone by the time Shadow arrives. Not that she understands who Wedy and Aiber are, of course. She just goes where she is told to go, carrying her tiny camera and her tinier two-way radio with her.
Nobody notices her.
"Zero," says the voice that only she can hear. The radio is hidden in her ear.
Zero means she can go wherever she wants. And she wants to go back to the park, to watch the dogs. Shadow likes dogs. She likes how slobbery and fun they are.
And she leaves the casino, and nobody says a word.
In the darkness, Shadow moves.
In the daylight, Shadow moves.
All around the city, Shadow moves.
Shadow moves, and he sees everything that she sees.
L lies on his back on a bed he has never seen before, plain and rectangular, with navy sheets and a cheap plastic frame. Naomi Penber sits by his left side. She's been trying to tell him about their recent cases, and L has been trying to listen, but he keeps getting lost. Eventually she gives up and kindly tolerates him running his mouth stupidly.
L has never experienced emotional overload before. At least, not with happy emotions.
"Are you and Wedy still dating?" he asks Matsuda.
"Yes," Wedy answers, from the doorway.
"Yes!" Matsuda agrees, happily.
"Ichthyosaurus!" Connor announces to nobody in particular, slamming one plastic dinosaur toy into another. "Grr. Rrr."
L stares at Wedy in confusion.
"He has standing permission to kiss you," Wedy explains. "We discussed that a long time before you arrived."
"I knew you'd come back," Matsuda says brightly. He is stretched out on L's right, curled up against L's side like a baby koala. "Just like I totally knew you weren't evil even though I knew you had a notebook and a monster thing."
"Wait," L says, reeling. "How did you know?"
"I heard you talking to your Shinigami one night," Matsuda explains. "But then Naomi told me that it was an okay Shinigami and you didn't kill anyone so I was totally right. Yay."
"Apatosaurus totherescue! Vrrrrrr!"
"So you thought I might have been evil for what, three years?" L asks, incredulously.
"Nope," Matsuda replies. "I knew you weren't."
"Maybe you should be a little more sceptical," L says, frowning.
"Waaa, Allosaurus!"
"You never employed him to be sceptical," Naomi reminds him. "You employed him to be spontaneous, unpredictable, and occasionally useful."
And L had forgotten how well Naomi knew him. He had forgotten all of this and yet been desperate for it.
"I'm occasionally useful?" Matsuda asks, sounding giddy and excited, like he hadn't dared hope he'd be useful to them.
"No, sweetheart," Wedy tells him. "They just pay you a wage for the tax cuts."
"Oh," Matsuda says, sounding disappointed. "Wait, was that sarcasm?"
"Hey," L says, knocking the back of his hand against Matsuda's chest. "I want you to work for me."
Matsuda tries to punch the air in celebration and almost falls off the bed. Wedy stretches one leg out and casually shoves him back into place with her foot.
"We don't have any pressing cases at the moment," Naomi says. "You should get some sleep."
L can sleep here. People will look after him.
"It's Mr Archaeopteryx!"
"I should ," L agrees. "How does your son even know all of these words?"
"I've been asking myself the same question," Matsuda says.
"Children grow up at least three times faster in the third world," Wedy says. "But he's also at least part-genius."
Perhaps he'll be a worthy successor, L thinks, and then he thinks of his own successors and feels horribly sad. Connor meets his eye and then proceeds to hide under the nearest chair.
Rest. L needs rest.
"All of you need to leave," he says, abruptly
And then he drifts off, knees drawn up under his chin.
Everyone will still be here when he wakes up.
In a public bar, not far from London city, there is a mass shooting. Three people are killed. Eight more are injured. A young police officer named Anushka Singh takes a bullet to the shoulder and ends up in hospital.
Later, her deputy sergeant visits her and asks her about the culprit. She keeps saying the same thing, over and over again.
There was no culprit.
"Crime rates are much the same as the second world," Naomi explains, fanning some large charts out onto the desk in front of her. "Those with god marks tend to be more careful, up to a point. But once they cross that line and kill someone, many of them become just as dangerous as they used to be."
L nods. There is a question he wants to ask, but he is simultaneously afraid of the answer.
"The Big Four can complicate issues, but Matsuda and I are profiling them. They're easier to predict once you understand their motives. Sometimes they help the criminals, sometimes they help the law."
"Have there been signs of anything strange?" L asks, putting off his important question for a little longer. This is important, too. "Monsters? Notebooks? Omnipotent gods?"
"Nothing," Naomi replies, setting her hands on the edge of the desk. "All claims of the supernatural in this world have been consistently debunked."
Has the hell-god has stopped hosting hells in the third world, L wonders. It would make sense, since she has truncated her capacity to see this world. But he doesn't really understand how Jas works, and that puts him at a disadvantage.
"Interesting," L says out loud, touching his lip. "That should make our job a lot easier."
"Well, you'd think so," his deputy says, with a bitter little laugh. "Our main problem seems to be the police force itself, at least in England."
L frowns.
"How so?"
Naomi passes him a small pile of papers.
"The chief of police has just publically refused to allow any officers to assist the detective known as L," she says.
"We can pretend to be someone else," L suggests.
He still doesn't ask.
"Of course we can," Naomi says, running one hand through her dark hair. "But the point is, they've disempowered the name of L. And more importantly, there is a significant taskforce that seems to be solely focused on finding Wedy."
L hesitates, processing this information.
"Let me guess. They are claiming this is because she is a known criminal, but you suspect otherwise?"
Wedy's association with L was not particularly secret in the second world, and it is unlikely to be a secret here.
"You suspect otherwise too," Naomi says, smiling a little and then sobering immediately. "I think the police are working their way up to being openly hostile to you."
It is possible, of course, that the police have simply made a business or political decision not to associate with him. But it is unlikely. It is more likely that someone with significant power in this country doesn't like him.
Please tell me he's not behind this.
Please.
"I have to know," L says, getting delicately to his feet. "Have there been any signs of Light Yagami in this world?"
Naomi looks surprised.
"Of course not," she says. "Don't worry about that. I'm pretty sure Light will never get out of hell."
L breathes easy again. Of course Light isn't here. Of course.
Anything else, he can handle.
tbc
a/n
+ thank you so much for your support, and for sticking with me from SC into this new fic. I will try to make it as good as possible.
+ I'm gonna guess that the next chapter will be up in two to three weeks again. :)