notes/warnings
+ general bad writing
+ stealth firearms
Shadows
"I'm sorry, Miss Singh," Deputy-Sergeant Maryanne Marigold tells her. "I assure you the police detectives have investigated thoroughly. There is no reason to believe that there wasn't a gunman present in the bar at the time of the shooting."
Anushka shakes her head. She loves her job, and she loves her team at the Northwest Police Beat. She would do anything for literally any of them. They are the smartest, gentlest, most competent people she has ever met.
Which isn't a surprise really, since all the less desirable police officers were assigned to Southwest.
But as much as she loves her job, she also trusts her judgement.
"Then they're wrong," she says, voice steady.
Maryanne touches Anushka's shoulder.
"It was a big night," she says, sympathetically. "The Religious party won for the first time in eighty years. Everyone was celebrating. Some of the other patrons were so drunk they were hallucinating."
"I wasn't," Anushka says. "There was nobody with a gun. You have the results of my last physical and you know that my vision is excellent. The bullets came out of nowhere."
"Look, I know some people with god-marks say that their hells contained a supernatural element," Maryanne says, crossly. "And that's all well and good, but nothing like that happens in this world."
"I'm not saying it was supernatural. I'm saying there was nobody in that room with a gun."
Maryanne sighs, and turns away.
"The case is closed, Anushka," she says. "Accept it and move on."
No, Anushka thinks.
"Okay ma'am," she says out loud, with all due respect.
She'll investigate this on her own terms, if necessary. She is not giving up.
The first time they sit down to a meal together is bliss. Naomi talks about Roderick, and how she posed as a young critic online in order to trap him. She talks about how she determined his habits from weeks of studying his movements. And she sounds so clever and smart and safe that L has to battle down the urge to touch her, to reassure himself that she is with him again.
He doesn't have to battle down the urge to touch Matsuda, because everything Matsuda does is tangible and obvious. It's as if he is bigger than his own body, colouring everything around him. He spills sauce on L's caramelised pear and says 'whoops' and L wants to cry with how much he has missed this.
Wedy eats daintily, exchanging witticisms with Aiber. She is so precious to so many people, and L will look after her.
Connor hides his head under the table and blindly sculpts his mashed carrots into the shape of a dinosaur on his plate. And Connor is an intruder in all this – L has never worked with him before – but he is Raye and Naomi's son, and that makes him welcome.
"How did you manage to achieve all this with a child in tow?" L asks Naomi.
"How could I not achieve this?" Naomi asks. "I want him to be proud of me."
"Aren't you scared for his safety?"
"I'm scared for everyone's safety."
"But aren't you scared that he will be used against you?"
"He knows how to use his guns," Naomi says, shrugging. "He knows the protocols if there aren't safe people around. There isn't a foolproof way to parent a child, but this is my way."
Aiber folds his arms.
"It still doesn't seem right to expose him to so much so young," he says, sternly. "Children here grow up fast enough as it is. Teaching a toddler that the world is a dangerous place isn't fair."
"But the world is a dangerous place," Wedy says. "Every world is dangerous. My dad taught me how to handle a pistol before I was one."
"That's just stupid," Aiber says.
"My dad never let me have guns," Matsuda says, enthusiastically trying to add to the conversation and failing slightly.
When L was two years old, he could dismantle the most basic of his mother's bombs.
"I love tyrannannannannannosaurus rex," Connor tells his mother, cheerfully.
"He doesn't seem overly stressed," L says to the others. "We should stop criticising Naomi and enjoy the time that we get to spend together."
He pretends not to see the way Aiber rolls his eyes, and slams his plate hard against the table.
Jas loses herself in the second world, engrossed in Near and everything she does. Jas starts to rebuild her identity, and her thought processes. She starts to heal. She starts to reclaim her hold on the good version of herself, on who she wanted to always be.
To remain moderate, she must always strive for goodness.
And she loses herself in the honeymoon phase of having found a new human to watch. A new hope in her life. A person she can pretend is utterly flawless.
She doesn't pay much attention to the third world. For ten days, she had scrutinised it closely, waiting and watching. But there was nothing to see. Nobody used her notebook paper, and so she could not locate it. The paper must be used in order to leave a trail.
So Jas waits. And in the meantime, she focuses all her energy on the Prince.
Well, and Mihael, of course. He will always be precious to her, too.
Things get serious for a little while. Another Kira starts causing trouble. L knows it isn't the same one as before, because L is brilliant and talented and everything you'll never ever be.
L is pretty much the opposite of you, except that he's not married to Matt either.
But anyway, the new Kira actually manages to hunt down Near's headquarters. Near has to move at the last moment, detonating his own office building with a massive smoke bomb and escaping into the confusion. Everyone talks about how great he is for fooling Kira. Matt sends you three texts on the matter.
'Wow, Near is awesome.'
'No seriously, Near is so so awesome.'
'Remember when we used to talk about how much we hated Near? Haha, were we ever wrong!'
You kind of want to send back a string of expletives, but you don't, because you love Matt and he hardly ever swears these days and anyway Gemma might be playing with his phone and you would taint her pure little mind.
You taint everything. You are more fungus than person. That's what Near said.
And more than that, you don't say anything because you do remember when you both hated Near. When you were both friends and you were still pathetically convinced that you were going to save the world and win the boy and ultimately beat Near.
(Well, you never really had firm plans for winning the boy, but you were going to try, at some point. When things were less busy. But you never tried and now it's too late.)
You remember the blue roses and the dusty orphanage beds. You remember him telling you in patented detail about how important Samus Aran was, and that she was cleverer, more beautiful, more talented, and more capable than Lara Croft. You remember not caring about that, either.
Anyway, it doesn't matter now.
Near builds a new headquarters, and doesn't tell you where it is. Halle tells you that they'll be moving the Jeevases again soon, and this time they won't be within driving distance of where you are.
You kick a few things, including Dwayne. And then you go and lie helplessly on the ground, because there's nothing you can do.
You are worthless.
"This really isn't that much fun, you know," Ryuk comments, munching on six apples at once. "You promised me this would be fun."
"You're having fun," his friend replies. "You're enjoying the anticipation. You want to know how I plan to destroy my darling son without drawing any more attention to myself."
Damn, how did she know? It's like she can read his mind. They are such good friends.
"Well, the queen is watching," Ryuk says, helpfully. "She'll find you as soon as you use the notebook paper again. To be honest, I don't really see how you're going to get out of this."
"Watch and learn," his friend replies, grinning.
L and Wedy go to a tiny little café three blocks away from the new headquarters. Wedy is meeting one of her thief friends later, and it is an excellent excuse for them to catch up one-on-one. L orders a dessert that is literally a stack of different-shaped lumps of sugar. He enjoys every mouthful. Wedy orders expensive black coffee and proceeds to smoke near it. She tells L about Gladville, about the other high-profile criminals in the area, and about a new make of car that is significantly harder to lock-pick than any other vehicle she's ever encountered.
"I swear, it took me a whole three minutes," Wedy says, sounding genuinely impressed. "I hope they paid the inventor handsomely."
"I met your mother," L says. There is never going to be a good segue into this particular conversation.
For the briefest of moments, Wedy's mask slips. Her usually-neutral face shows the briefest flicker of emotion. The corner of her mouth twitches violently, just once. And then she is back to normal, as calm and collected as ever.
"A lot of people have met my mother," Wedy says. "I hate to break it to you, but that isn't special, honey."
"I met your father, too."
"Naomi told me about that. I'm not going to apologise for what he did."
"Ah," L says, awkwardly. "But your father raised you, am I correct? You didn't have much to do with your mother when you were growing up."
"My mother left me," Wedy says, matter-of-factly. "That was her decision. Father and I cut her out of our lives. That was our decision."
Wedy raises her mug to her lips, and sips fastidiously. L sighs. This is going nowhere.
"Do you even know what your mother is doing in the second world?" he asks, quietly. "Did you know she had another child?"
Wedy slips for a second time, freezes with the mug halfway between her mouth and the dirty café-standard table. Then she sets it down.
"I remember when my father told me my mother had replaced me," she admits, cautiously. "She'd just had her eighteen week scan. I don't even know how he found out the results. But he told me that she was having another daughter, just like me."
The last time he and Wedy were together, L had no sort of emotional understanding at all. He was barely capable of compassion. Now he can almost imagine her pain – of being a child and not being wanted. He can see how she still carries it around with her.
"I'm sorry," he says, respectfully. "That must have been awful for you."
"Are you kidding?" Wedy asks, taking another swig. "I was ecstatic. I'd spent my entire childhood wanting a sister. I assumed – stupidly – that we were going to meet up and play together. That we were going to steal shoes together and then trade them."
Well, that's not what L was expecting.
"So you've met her?"
"No," Wedy says.
A tall, skinny man with freckles and thick glasses is making his way over to their table. Wedy notices him at the same time, and doesn't seem worried. This must be Anthony.
L decides to try one more time.
"What happened?"
"Life happened," Wedy says, shortly. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go and be amongst my people."
"Who was that guy?" Anthony asks, kissing Wedy on the cheek.
"Ugh," Wedy says, waving her hand in the air dismissively. "My least favourite ex. Well, least favourite after that one girl who tried to murder me with an axe."
"Are you sure he isn't L?" Anthony asks.
Anthony thinks literally everyone is L. He's sort of a fan. For that reason, Wedy refuses to tell him any details about her work or her association with L, even though he's her closest friend. Wedy has to protect her boys. And her girl.
She still doesn't like the feeling of having a set job, a single employer, and a firm demand on her loyalty. Her life is becoming regimented – she's getting old – and sometimes she just wants to run off into the night with Anthony and go back to her old life and never return.
But then that idiot Matsuda would be sad, and it's kind of her responsibility to stop him from being sad to the best of her ability. And she loves the others, too. Love makes people settle for less than they deserve.
"Yes," Wedy says, curtly. "Any recent exploits to discuss?"
"Yes!" Anthony says, excitedly. "I found another way into the Pentagon. The sewerage to the east bathrooms is just wide enough to accommodate a person. I've figured out that if I-"
"Stop," Wedy interrupts. "If you're still doing things the dirty way, you're more of an amateur than I thought."
"You're such a princess," Anthony jokes, admiringly.
"I'm not a princess. I'm just me."
"Fair enough. What have you done recently?"
"Just the United Nations Bank," Wedy tells him. "Oh, don't look so impressed. It was easy."
The world is easy. She can go wherever she wants. And sometimes she feels like L's team doesn't really appreciate that.
"Whatever," Anthony replies, grinning. "Say, do you want to steal a car? Just for old time's sake?"
"Sure," Wedy tells him.
She doesn't often think of disappearing into the night.
But sometimes.
Sometimes.
It happens again, in a little town adjacent to London. Her brother just happened to be next door. He calls her immediately after.
"I swear, Anushka," he babbles, "there was nobody there. Nobody had a gun. Nobody that was standing in the right place, anyway."
"I know," Anushka replies.
She listens to him talk all night, trying to calm his shattered nerves. And when morning comes, she makes a different call. A call to a number she memorised specifically before it was removed from every contact list in the police force.
"Hello?" she says, into the automated system, and she hopes and prays that he's actually listening. "I need L's help. Something strange is going on."
"We have a new case," Naomi informs him. She has somewhat taken up Watari's role of monitoring their one semi-public phone line. She hasn't taken up Watari's role of baking, which is disappointing. L is getting a little tired of living off sugar cubes and the jars of maple syrup in the pantry.
Naomi finishes checking the answering machine and moves on to the four most reputable reporting websites that have been set up for 'L' by third parties. They're mostly just filled with ridiculous spam and pop-up ads.
'L plz help I have accidentally fallen down my stairs'
'L are you real will you take me on as an apprentice I got straight As in school'
And a really odd message that posts once a day, every day:
'Whatever you do, watch out for cats.'
They should really have two or three phone lines, advertised to various sectors of the public, and they shouldn't bother with websites. But L hasn't mentioned those facts to Naomi yet. He doesn't want to seem too critical when he's so pleased just to be with her again.
"And that's the only significant case," Naomi says, finally. "Shall we investigate it further, boss?"
L grins.
"You never called me 'boss' before."
"I wanted to try it."
"I see."
L considers her question for a moment, trying to envisage how this case might progress. In the second world, he would've had Watari contact this girl and learn more information.
"Who do we usually send out to talk to victims and investigate crimes?" he asks, thoughtfully. Wedy would be the obvious choice, but she's the subject of a significant police investigation.
"If it's dangerous? Me. If it's not dangerous, Matsuda. He's good at disarming people."
Matsuda?
Is he really reliable enough? L had forgotten just how ditzy the man could be. In any case, it doesn't matter right now. The caller is a member of the Northwest police. She could get into significant trouble if anyone finds out that she contacted L.
"Call her back," he says. "Find out more information about this absent gunman. We'll take it from there."
"Got it," Naomi replies.
He sleeps a lot. There are alarms on the screens that will tell him if L ever appears. He programmed facial recognition software into the surveillance feed software. He sleeps because he can't lose himself in the screens any more, the hundreds of moving, changing pictures aren't enough to drown out the screaming inside his head.
He doesn't know what he wants.
He doesn't know what he's going to do if he ever gets what he wants.
He doesn't know what to do when Shadow comes home, because she's warm and alive and he doesn't want to feel anything. He wants to break her in half and he's terrified that he might hurt her.
He doesn't know what to say to the woman who brings him food in exchange for the occasional favour. She'd be a perfect hostage, but he doesn't even know what he'd ask for if he had a hostage. He doesn't know if she's worth anything to anyone. He doesn't want to starve to death. He wants to die. He doesn't want to die. He wants the noise in his head to stop.
He wants to go back to the beginning and he just. He can't.
The world is over. Everything is permanent.
"Life sure is weird, isn't it?" Edison says, cheerfully. "I mean, back in the first world we thought death was like, a permanent thing. And now people have been in hell and other worlds and all sorts of things. Sometimes it just blows my mind."
Teru doesn't answer. He doesn't tell anyone about the mark under his fringe. He's pretty sure nobody knows. He refuses to hide his identity, because people deserve to know, but he doesn't have the courage to actually tell them.
He's scared.
He and Edison are in the middle of an eleven-hour stakeout, sitting in a freezing car outside a suspect's home. Teru is always given the worst jobs. He is always assigned the boring, uncomfortable, reward-less tasks, even though the other constables are rotated through the good and bad in equal measures.
He really hates Stanton and Daniels.
"What do you think of Mills' latest orders?" Teru asks, carefully. "It's a pretty big change, right? We usually work with L."
Edison frowns.
"It's hard for me to understand," he admits. "I mean, I always thought L was a pretty decent sort of enigma. My little sisters look up to him, you know?"
So he has some doubt. Teru feels almost palpably relieved. He needs somebody to talk to about this, someone who is decent, who understands.
"I think something's going on," Teru says in a rush. "I think someone high up has a grudge against L."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Edison says, actually clapping his hands over his ears. "Don't say things like that, Mikami. Who are we to question the wisdom of the chief? I'm sure everything will work out just fine in the end."
Teru might not even be here to see the end. Today, Daniels changed the lock on his locker without notice, and then docked Teru's pay for being late to start work. If that happens twice more, that'll be grounds for suspending him. If Daniels is trying to force him out of a job, then he might be gone within a month.
But while he's here, he's going to support L. No matter what it takes. And if his is the sticky end of a man who quibbled with a politically-corrupt chief, then so be it.
I will do better this time. I will do right.
"Sorry," Teru says, out loud.
He doesn't mean it.
The public bar seems fairly standard with copious numbers of old brown stools and permanently sticky tables and a few booths crammed into a corner. There is a good quality security camera overhead and solid locks on both the front and back doors. But the level of security is almost irrelevant to a bar that is open seven nights a week to anyone who is sober enough to crawl inside.
Naomi always struggles to get started in cases that don't have any obvious leads. She is really glad to have L back. It's a relief to be able to fall back into her old role, into the job she always wanted, the job she loves almost as much as she loves Raye.
L doesn't do a lot of close examination at first. Instead he stands in the middle of the currently-empty bar, examining a hand-drawn chart of the approximate positions of the victims at the time of the shooting. Then he checks a fistful of photographs of the injuries received.
"I've requested the security footage from the owner," Naomi tells L, hoping to be at least a little useful.
"We won't see anything," L murmurs.
Naomi tilts her head.
"You've figured this out already?" she asks, not exactly surprised. L is kind of magic, in a way.
"I've figured out where the gunman was standing," L replies. "Or at least, where he rigged up his apparatus. This is a one-level building, and yet for this pattern of injuries the shots must have come from the ceiling."
"He was in the attic?" Naomi asks.
"There is a sixty-two percent chance," L tells her. "We should definitely go up there and search for evidence."
Crawling around in tiny spaces should be Wedy's job, but L doesn't feel comfortable asking her to help. She assures him that she's fine, that she's one step ahead of the police and all her other enemies and everyone in the world who wishes her ill.
According to Naomi's rough calculations, there are at least two thousand, five hundred and thirty people in the world who wish Wedy ill.
That is an awful lot of people.
And now L is beginning to see the chinks in Wedy's designer armour. She still has obvious weaknesses where her family is concerned. What if her sister shows up? Would she leave L? Would she take Aiber and Matsuda with her?
Being part of a team was much easier when L could pretend not to care about his colleagues. Now he has no choice. He cannot ever be rid of the Achilles heel that is everyone he loves.
What if Light finds me like this?
Well, maybe he'd lose. Maybe he'd assume L is still the same and miscalculate. Or maybe L will be with Rae by then.
L examines the attic floor carefully. A correctly-placed hole would allow someone to shoot straight into the bar below. A semiautomatic weapon, coupled with such a hole, would allow precisely the placement of bullets that occurred the other night.
"Are you done?" Naomi calls. "Can you see anything, or not?"
Naomi is right to be annoyed. The hole would have to be within a thirty-centimetre radius of the centre of the attic. With the light on downstairs, it shouldn't theoretically be difficult to spot.
But there is no light leaking into the attic. And thank goodness for that, haha.
The thing is: L trusts Naomi's words. He wants to believe in her conviction that Light will never come back. But somewhere at the back of his mind, he keeps on planning for the day when he and Light begin round two. Anything else seems too easy. L is still frightened of Light, and that's why he is sure that one day he'll have to try again, and either win and be okay or lose and…
…and the world will fall.
And that's the most comforting thing about this third world. Light cannot be the one with part of the hell-god's notebook. If he was, everything would already be ruined. The world would be burning. L wouldn't be here, on his elbows and knees in an attic, because a particularly brave police officer won't stand for crime no matter what her chief orders.
"Did you figure it out?" Naomi asks.
The attic floor is normal. The only thing that's even up here is the top part of the security camera.
Bingo.
"Yes," L replies.
Today Teru and Kylie are standing watch outside the grounds of an actual mansion. The place literally has its own post code and Teru fails to see how standing around outside, several kilometres from the house, is going to protect the children in the house from any sort of kidnapper.
"Don't worry about it so much," Kylie tells him, sombrely. "Leave worrying for the detectives. We're just constables. Standing around uselessly is what we do."
Teru sighs, and adjusts his glasses.
"Did you ever feel like maybe you were cut out for better than this?" he asks. "Because I used to."
Now he knows this is what he deserves, all he can do, but it's as frustrating as hell. The old Teru waged a literal war on bullies and criminals and nearly goddamned won. The old Teru was a renowned prosecutor. The old Teru was once the right-hand man of the most powerful being on the planet.
The slightly-less-old Teru was a literal monster possessed by a figurative monster who turned children to stone.
And that's the reason why, but that doesn't help when Teru has hundreds of ideas for solving this case and no-one is doing anything.
"Nah," Kylie replies. "I'm happy with my life."
Sometimes, when nobody is looking, Matsuda attempts to crouch instead of sitting. It doesn't work and it mostly makes him look like an idiot. But sometimes Matsuda likes to pretend to be L, or some other powerful successful person. He knows he can't succeed, but he has a pretty good imagination at times.
He is currently perched on the sofa, watching a thrilling marathon of surveillance feed. Which is actually a pretty good task, because the other option is to be stuck in the neighbouring room reading pages of evidence. And watching stuff is a lot easier than reading stuff and sometimes reading makes Matsuda's head hurt. So it's good, even though he's in here all alone and he misses L. Sometimes it's okay to miss L, because then Matsuda can just get up and wander down the hall and remind himself that L is back now and that they're together.
He slept in L's bed for three nights in a row. Matsuda would probably date L if Wedy didn't exist. And if he didn't have the sneaking suspicion that maybe L was waiting for someone else.
L stares at the dismantled surveillance camera on his desk and tries not to look overtly dismayed. This is just about one of the nastiest things he has ever seen.
"There's a gun built into the camera?" Aiber says, helpfully. "Ouch."
"That's not the worst of it," L says, slowly. "This has happened in at least two other bars."
"And it also may have happened in a popular clothing store," Naomi says. "I'm still investigating the similarities."
"Gun!" Connor says, picking up on exactly one word out of the conversation.
"Not now," Naomi tells him. He calmly goes back to smashing plastic dinosaurs against the floor, and Naomi immediately returns to her work.
"All three bars were celebrating various recent elections," L muses. "But there have been plenty of other local elections in the area that haven't been attacked. And what would a store have to do with any of this?"
"It's a designer store," Naomi says. "They won't let us in without a warrant, and we won't get a warrant without the assistance of the police."
"Anushka would probably go if I asked her," L says, thoughtfully.
"Or we could just send Wedy?" Aiber suggests.
Wedy is currently out stealing pastries, because L was hungry and she was bored. L needs to find a better way to obtain sweet foods.
And he doesn't want to actively involve Wedy in this case. But the thing is, there is no reason to assume that the camera-guns are firing all of their bullets in every shooting session. Nor is it reasonable to assume that nobody is going back to fill them up. And no saying how many more gun-cameras have been sold and installed in other places.
There will be more fatalities, if L doesn't act soon.
"Contact Wedy," he says, decisively. "Tell her to go to the store and retrieve their security system without damaging it. Tell her to bring it back here, and tell her that this may be an ongoing task."
"Right," Aiber says, cheerfully.
"Naomi," L says. "Please investigate whatever company makes and installs these security cameras. Contact the other bars to see which companies they used, and investigate those as well."
"Understood," Naomi replies.
L hesitates for a moment, eyeing the blinking red light mounted on the wall.
"I already checked our systems," Naomi says. "They're safe. No bullets. No firing devices."
Damn. She is actually still a step ahead of him. L needs to focus.
"Can you ask Matsuda to check the surveillance feed?" he asks.
"Already done, too," Naomi tells him. "He said that at the time of the shooting, the camera didn't record anything at all. But it started recording again a few seconds later."
Huh. L had assumed that the devices were being set off at a pre-programmed time, but perhaps they are being controlled remotely.
"I didn't tell you to ask him to do that," he tells Naomi.
Naomi hesitates.
"I thought it was the right thing to do?" she says, sounding confused.
Yes. It probably was. So why does L feel like he's struggling to keep up with his own team? Why does he feel like he hasn't quite taken over from Naomi?
"Triceratops boom," Connor tells them, soberly.
"Can you consult with me a little more, before acting on my behalf?" L asks Naomi.
"Oh, sure," she says. "I didn't mean to make you feel…I didn't…"
"I know," L says, ashamed. This shouldn't be about his fragile ego. "I'm sorry to have to ask."
Matsuda wanders in, carrying a giant cup of soda and drinking loudly.
"I'm not out of practice," Naomi says quietly. "That's all. You'll be up to speed in no time."
L smiles at her, uncertain, and she grins back, and god he's so stupid for even worrying about things like this. He has his team. What more could he possibly ask for? He'll get better – he'll get back to his old form – because how could he fail to get better surrounded by these amazing people.
"So, can I name this case?" Matsuda asks, not-quite-completely oblivious to L's discomfort.
"Please do," L says.
Matsuda thinks deeply for a moment.
"Mr Shooty," he says.
"That sounds like something Connor made up while half asleep," Naomi says derisively.
"Mr Shooty it is," L declares.
They've changed the name of Stevenson Street. They're calling it Whiffle Street, in honour of the President of the United States of America.
It doesn't even make sense. The president is irrelevant here. It's just stupid fucking change. Change for no reason!
Gregory Plaice fists one hand, inside his pocket. He hates the world.
"Come on, mate," Lara hollers from the van. "We've got an appointment at ten. We're gonna be late."
"They've changed the name of the street," Gregory yells back.
Please understand.
Everything changes, and nobody cares. Everybody just wants to celebrate the new thing, the fancy new thing. Old things are just as fucking good and nobody understands.
"It's a street," Lara says, icily. "I'll update the GPS when we get back to the office, okay?"
Gregory has been working for Hawthorne and Hawthorn for exactly three weeks. He's still learning the ropes. He's still getting to know his colleagues. He's unfamiliar with the job, and the newness of everything makes his head ache.
"Okay," he says, and gets back in the van.
Shadow goes to area thirty-seven. This is one of her favourite locations, with rolling green spaces and ponds filled with ornamental fish. She sees two people standing at the gate, and hesitates. She isn't supposed to draw attention to herself, but this is one of the few places where the fence is low enough to jump. She waits for further instructions.
"Mikami!" says the voice in her ear, which isn't a command, so she continues to wait.
Most of the time, Shadow feels like she's too good for this job. But she wants to please, too, which is at odds with her general royalty-like nature. Although she knows she ought to live out her days on piles of silk pillows eating expensive cheese, she also wants him to be pleased.
She's highly bred, is Shadow. Why, her brothers and sisters sold for tens of thousands of dollars.
But she didn't.
Bad attitude.
Too small.
Funny hind leg.
Weird meow.
Those are the things that people said when they took her from her glass-fronted cage and put her out on the streets. She didn't understand. She still doesn't understand. But then she found him, her brown-haired master, so it doesn't really matter.
"Retreat," he says, into her ear. That means she should go back the way she came. But then one of the people at the gate starts moving towards her.
"Normal."
The command has changed. On cue, Shadow washes her face with one paw, and then rolls over to show her belly.
"Aw," says the human, rubbing her obligingly.
"Mrow," Shadow says.
She's really great. She knows.
tbc
a/n
+ thank you for reading, I really appreciate it.
+ okay, I've had several comments recently pointing out that this fic is substandard. first of all, I want to apologise to those of you who have been disappointed. I did consider stopping this fic altogether (as rewriting 400k+ words is just beyond my ability right now), but I've decided to continue with it for personal reasons. I'm going to re-instate 'bad writing' as a constant warning for this fic out of respect for these comments, so please don't feel like I'm disregarding them completely. if you really dislike this fic and are bothered by the fact that it is continuing, I would really appreciate if you subscribe to the age old internet practice of 'don't like don't read'. I still welcome all constructive criticism as I can apply it to my future writings, but I probably won't be discontinuing this fic unless I get a lot of really good reasons.
+ next update: probably in one week.