Thank you for all the lovely reviews! They really do make my heart soar. :)
I don't own Death Note.
Finally, it was over. They had caught Kira. Light would die, and he would die soon, but they had caught Kira, and that was all that mattered. If Watari took his eyes off the sights of his sniper gun, he would see Light clasping L's hand between the helicopter seats.
If Higuchi's story was to be believed, it was a notebook, of all things. "Clean," Light murmured, surprised. There was no better way for a genius with a god complex to execute his judgment on the world. L flinched, looking sharply over at Light, and it wasn't a remark that L could have disagreed with, but, impossibly, he must have still suspected Light of being Kira. Stubborn asshole. L's hand squeezed tighter, and it was an embrace and a restraint all at once.
L asked that the notebook be brought to the helicopter, and Light was already absently musing about how he would live out the last of his days now that the Kira case had been solved, and specifically whether L would be involved, when his father screamed, and, impossibly, reached into his jacket for a gun that he did not have. And then Mogi, a still and silent and imperturbable stone of a man, screamed, and collapsed.
L was no less shaken. He tugged his hand from Light, focusing, shifting, curling in on himself, tucking his legs tighter against the rest of his body, and asked again for the notebook. While Mogi and Light's father were gathering themselves, L covered his microphone and said in the barest whisper, "Please, Light, wait a moment to touch the notebook. I'm only concerned about your health."
Light sighed automatically at that, but the seizure was fresh on their minds, and Light didn't know if seizures could be triggered by shock but he certainly didn't want to risk it. "Fine. Tell me what you see though."
"Of course."
Delicately, with his thumbs and index fingers, L held the notebook, a black, slim, elegant thing, and froze. Light waited patiently for ten counts, and then he prompted, "Well? What is it?"
"Ninety seven percent," L mumbled. Light frowned briefly, again automatically, and L shook his head. "Ninety eight. No lower than ninety eight point two, certainly."
Light scowled, more offended than horrified, and reminded, covering his own microphone, "Ryuzaki, the—"
But L realized his mistake right away. "It's some kind of monster," he said absently, going through the motions, mind somewhere else. "Like a skeleton creature. Like it's rotting off its bones. Seven—no, eight feet tall."
Something clicked, and Light's heart jumped. "A skeleton?"
L's gaze flicked over, his eyes very dark. "Hm?"
"Does it have wings? Is it grinning?"
Cautiously, L answered, "No."
"Oh. Then never mind. I was just remembering—" Light broke off, embarrassed, because to his knowledge Watari still didn't know about the nightmares.
L did not look reassured.
"Can I see the monster?" Light asked, reaching out, but L flinched back, drawing the notebook along with him. "Hm."
L switched off his headphones and yanked them down around his neck. "Light-kun, please," he prompted, and Light did the same. "I hope that I have been able to describe the monster well enough to you that you will not be shocked when you see it for yourself. Remember, it is very tall, very thin, humanoid, skeletal, and startling but not frightening. I am confident that you will not be afraid of the monster. That being said, are you ready?"
Light nodded, and, without letting go completely, L set the notebook in Light's hands. Immediately, Light began to seize.
It was utterly unlike the previous night, clearly inorganic in origin, with an onset like a shinkansen. Eyes glassy, arms and legs shuddering and jerking, jaw locked, the worst part was the flood of nightmarish thoughts.
I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm Kira, I'm—
L yanked the notebook away, and Light collapsed into his seat.
In a hard, worried tone, L demanded at once, "What did you think?"
Inexplicably, Light's heart was not racing, and his breathing was slow and even. He stared blankly at L's wide eyes and pinched mouth. "Of what?"
"Close your eyes, Light," L demanded, lunging at him as if to physically ensure he obeyed, his mind flying in unknown directions. "Please," he added belatedly, "Light-kun."
Light did so, because he did know that he had just had a seizure and that it had been bad and that he should have been upset but he wasn't.
"What did the monster look like, Light-kun?" L asked.
"I-I didn't see it."
"Why did you seize?"
"I don't know."
"What did you feel when you were seizing?"
"I can't remember."
Very carefully, L echoed, "Can't remember?"
They fell silent, and Light did not open his eyes, and was afraid that it was not over at all.
Light did not have to try very hard to convince L to let him hold the notebook again. L spent one thoughtful minute expressing his concern for Light's health, but after concluding that the decline of his health was inevitable, the both of them slipped out of the bedroom in their pajamas at two in the morning and took the elevator silently down to the lowest level of the basement.
The monster was already there.
"What are you?" L asked coolly, though with his hands fisting nervously. "Does this notebook belong to you? Where do you come from?"
Looming silently over them, the monster did not speak. It was just as L had described it, and Light was not frightened at all.
"Who are you?" Light asked, and still the monster did not reply, but its yellow, slitted eyes fastened curiously on Light's wide, warm ones.
L had flinched towards him. "Why did you ask that?"
"Why not?"
L compressed his mouth and did not respond.
"Let's just get this over with. Maybe I should sit down, just to be safe."
Settled on the ground, Light took a deep breath and L placed the notebook in his open palms. Light seized for ten full seconds, and then he stopped, abruptly. His eyes flashed open, and met the gaze of the shinigami. Then he met L's gaze. He began to shake.
"Well?"
Light gritted his teeth, and bit through the very edge of his lip. His eyes narrowed. The God of the New World was dying.
L attempted, casually, to pull the Death Note away, but Light held on tight. He remembered now that if he let go without first killing Higuchi and regaining his ownership, he would forget it all. The plan had been to write Higuchi's name in the slip in his watch with his own blood, but how could he do that now, with L undistracted, unfrightened, and watching his every move? Frustration bubbling, a precious second ticking away, then another, then a third, he bit harder into his bleeding lip and tasted sharp failure.
No. This was his blood, and he tasted victory. He would write himself a note on his arm with the blood from his lip, and the next time he was alone, when L was bathing or pissing or shitting, he would open the watch and kill Higuchi and make sure to keep a finger on the shred of the Death Note and that would be enough to give him full ownership. Now he just had to hold onto the Death Note long enough to write the message.
Four seconds had passed, and L was still watching him suspiciously. "The seizure passed," he breathed, mouth cracking into a relieved smile. "Now I can really investigate this. Do you mind if I look inside? You can still hold onto it, of course." His eyes crinkled, carefully, fondly, at L, who frowned.
"Let's see." Light licked his thumb and index finger, to give him more traction for turning the pages, and picked up a heavy drop of blood from his lip on his middle finger. "Hmm…" He pored over the first page of names, and, holding the Death Note with his left hand, wrote with his right middle finger on the inside of his left wrist, just behind that horrible handcuff, the first two characters of the hiragana for the word "clock": とけ. He went through the same process for the next page, and he reoutlined the け and added the い. And finally, just as L was really starting to get suspicious of his incredibly unhygienic finger licking, he thoughtfully rested his chin against his palm, picking up just enough blood to add a 1' 4, telling himself to pull the knob of the watch four times in less than one second intervals. It was crude, but it was as much as he could get down safely.
It was fortunate that L had picked up some absurd notions about not wanting to shatter Light's delusions about being innocent. He had waited until now, stressed and conflicted to the point of barely breathing at all, to yank the Death Note all the way out of Light's grasp, and—
"Light-kun," L said, holding the notebook in his lap. "If you don't mind, I would like to—"
"Ouch," Light muttered, dabbing lightly at the corner of his mouth, which stung and bled steadily. "At least it wasn't my tongue."
"Your eyes," L murmured.
"I beg your pardon?"
L shook his head. "Light-kun, I hate to ask this of you, but would you mind holding onto the notebook all the way through your seizure once again?"
Light sighed. "Once," he agreed. "But if I bite my tongue this time, I'm not touching that anymore as much as I can help it." He reached out, and—
Goddammit, he was a fucking idiot when he couldn't remember a damned thing. But more importantly, why was L looking at him like—?
"Thank you, Light-kun," L said, pulling the notebook away again. "I'm sorry for the trouble of you having to go through this three times in the span of only a few hours. I completely understand if you would like to rest now."
L was being oddly formal about all this. With an embarrassed peek at the monster out of the corner of his eye, Light reached out to L, affectionately, and L flinched, pulling the notebook out of the way. Light frowned, wounded. He was also concerned by the amount his lip was bleeding. Maybe it was for the best that L apparently did not want to be kissed right now.
"You should sleep, Light-kun. Everything will be clearer in the morning."
"I'm not tired," Light snapped, bewildered. "Even if I don't touch the notebook anymore because of the seizures, there's no reason we can't investigate it together."
"I have seen all I have to see," L said, distantly. He stood and put the notebook back in the secure mechanized platform that sunk into the floor when it was closed. L had made Light turn around when he had opened it, and Light had obeyed, resigned, so that there now was no hope of Light figuring out how to get in.
Helplessly, Light said, "But you barely saw anything. What are you talking about?"
"I cannot tell you right now," L said, looking genuinely apologetic as he bit at the skin around his thumbnail. "Please, Light-kun, allow yourself to be content with the end result of this case. We may never fully understand how this notebook works or what this monster is, but the important thing is that we solved the Kira case. Higuchi is in jail, and justice has prevailed."
Light felt himself go slowly cold, in ripples washing down his torso. "You're lying to me," he said, surprised. "There's something big that you're not telling me. You would never just give up on figuring out how Kira did it. You would investigate every bit of this notebook, and you would trap this monster and interrogate it, and you would keep me handcuffed until you gathered enough evidence to convict me alongside Higuchi. In fact, Higuchi being Kira now would be part of the evidence against me, because you would show how Higuchi could not have been the first Kira. But you're saying that you won't do any of this. So either you're lying to me about this, or you're lying to me about what's going on."
L's mouth pinched into a thin, white line, and he looked away. "I will tell you this one thing, and then we will not discuss this further. We will go straight to bed, and we will sleep. Understood?"
After a moment, Light nodded, but L was not looking to see his response.
"Light-kun, with only deductive reasoning, the chance that you are Kira is ninety-nine point seven percent."
True to his silent promise, Light did not respond. Instead, he twined his fingers together and stared down at the veins threading through his fragile wrist.
And then he saw the blood. There was blood smeared on the inside of his wrist, and it looked an awful lot like it was spelling something out. He blinked hard, sure it was an illusion, like picking out a leering face in a mess of dry, autumn leaves, but still the characters remained: とけい 1' 4. Then he saw the other blood. There was blood smeared on the very tip of the middle finger of his right hand, and it looked an awful lot like it had been the one doing the spelling. He must have written himself a message while he had been seizing. Surely L had seen him do it. If he just asked, L would tell him what had happened.
But then Light stopped, first because they had agreed not to talk anymore, then second because L was keeping secrets too.
Light was rinsing off after his regular morning sickness, careful to keep his dry hair—except for the traces of sweat at his temples—out of the warm shower stream. He had stopped eating after six o'clock a long time ago, which reduced most of his sickness to empty heaving, but that didn't make it any less disgusting. Now, clean, but unwilling to get out just yet, he turned his hands upwards and imagined that he could still see the blood streaked along his wrist. But most of it had worn off, smeared and dried somewhere in the bed sheets, and the rest had been long soaped away. とけい 1' 4.
The shower curtain rustled and the chain rattled, and L invited himself in, stripped completely bare, and sat on the edge of the bathtub. His feet dipped into the pooling water, and stray shower spray misted towards him.
"Hey," Light said. L nodded once, not looking at him. "You'd better not be planning on shoving me and getting my hair wet. I'm not really in the mood." The warning was unnecessary. L didn't look much like he was in the mood to do anything, despite the obvious fact that the both of them were naked in a shower together. Light tried to busy himself with something related to actually showering, but he had been finished a long time ago, which L probably knew, which was why he was intruding. "Hey," Light said again, this time flicking water at L, who didn't flinch. "What's up?"
L compressed his mouth and his bangs obscured his eyes. Then he stood, and Light stepped aside so he could join the shower spray. L looked very worried, and he reached up to hold Light's face, careful not to touch his hair, and Light cradled his elbows. "Can I see your eyes?" he asked.
Light answered yes with his gaze, and L looked carefully at his eyes, not into them, flicking from one to the other.
And then he did look into them, and he asked, "Light-kun, if Yagami Light was Kira, but he no longer remembers being Kira, is he still Kira?"
"Yes," Light answered immediately.
"Why?"
"He knew what he was doing at one point. He is responsible for his conscious actions, even if he no longer remembers them."
L did not reply for a long time. The spray started getting cold, and Light shifted to twist it to hotter water, but then L said, "Yagami Light."
"Yes."
"Then you are Kira."
Light swallowed, and reached all the way over to fix the shower temperature.
"You are Kira because you once were Kira, but then you forgot. However, it did not have to do with your brain cancer. I was wrong. It was because of this notebook, and perhaps this monster, but it was not because of your brain. You understood what was happening the whole time."
L was still holding Light's face, and Light leaned his cheek into L's palm. "Kira would have given up his memory voluntarily, not to hide from it, but for some strategic purpose."
"How would Kira get his memory back?"
Light's right hand, holding L's left elbow, flinched towards his left wrist.
"There was blood on my arm," Light said.
"I know."
Light's heart sped up, because he was afraid.
"What did it say?"
"とけい 1' 4."
"Hm."
"I wrote it."
"Of course you did. Do you think I didn't see you?"
"I don't remember doing it."
"Did you decide to forget?"
Light shook his head. "If I was choosing to forget, I wouldn't have needed to write myself a note."
"What does the note mean?" Light hesitated, and L gave a hint of a smile. "You're too clever to not have given yourself all the information."
"It's my watch. とけい. One second. Four. I'm sure I could figure it out after tinkering with the watch for a minute."
"Much less than a minute," L scoffed. "It takes me no more than twenty seconds to pee."
Light cracked a smile, but his heart raced at the realization that L knew when it was that he would have tried to puzzle out the watch himself.
They shut off the water and dried off and sat on the cool tiles in their towels, Light with his loosely around his waist and L with his draped over his shoulders. It took them seven seconds and three halting beginnings of sentences to decide to start with the crown. L wanted to push the crown, because pulling it would change the date and time, but Light knew that it would have been easier to change the function of something than to add a whole new mechanism altogether, so he decided to pull it instead. The first time he pulled too slowly, leaving a whole second and a little bit more in between. The second time he pulled just a bit faster, and the compartment popped open. It took nineteen seconds altogether.
Inside the compartment was a slip of paper and a pin. Light knew right away that the paper had been torn from the notebook, and that the pin was for pricking himself and writing a name in his own blood. "Holy fuck."
L smacked the watch out of Light's hand and pinned him to the ground. Light's heart raced, and L's eyes were wide and wild. "You don't have to be Kira," L said. He did not add "for me", because the both of them knew that Light would never be Kira for only one person. They did not, however, know the same of L.
"Was this my plan?" Light asked, horrified. "Did I give up my memory so I would fall in love with you and then try to get you on my side to take over for me when I died?"
"You didn't know about the brain cancer," L said.
Light craned his neck to look over at the watch. For who knew how long, the pulse in his right wrist had been beating against a weapon of mass destruction. "What happens if I touch the paper?"
L did not speak, because there was only one way to find out. He sat back, letting Light go free.
"Don't let me kill anyone, okay?" Light said, still lying prone on the floor.
L nodded.
When Light took the paper out of the watch, he seized, just like every time before, and afterwards he reached to pull his towel tighter around his waist. "Goddammit," he said, with a laugh. "You've got me."
L crouched low to the ground, and Light recognized it as a fighting stance. More than that, he remembered the name. It was capoeira that L had been using this whole time, a dance that L had usurped for his own violent purposes. Maybe Light really could get L on his side.
"Did you learn that from Naomi?" Light wondered aloud.
L's mouth pinched, and genuine anger flickered in his eyes. He had not been expecting Kira to look like this. "You killed her."
"Beyond Birthday was your best friend serial killer," Light said, with some surprise. He laughed, again, and L flinched, mouth twisting downwards into a grimace. "The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. Are you so unlike him? Are we so unlike each other?"
L lunged. He spun and jackknifed his foot upwards, either towards Light's face or towards the hand holding the piece of the Death Note. So predictable. Light threw his left hand up, and the chain snagged around L's foot as it came down, tripping him. He landed on the ground hard, disoriented, and Light tossed the rest of the chain over L's head and around his neck. L's eyes bugged and his hands scrabbled. He tried kicking Light off, but the chain was still around his ankle, and extending his leg that much pulled the already taut chain even tighter around his neck. He gagged terribly.
"I'm not going to kill you," Light said. "Just don't move for a second, okay?"
L was having none of this. He curled his leg towards himself, slackening the chain, but Light just used this new slack to pull farther away, giving him more space to move freely. L was really struggling now, presumably because less than a minute ago he had said he wouldn't let Light kill anyone, so Light wrapped the chain once more about L's neck, and set to work on holding the Death Note scrap between his middle finger and his ring finger, and painstakingly wrote Higuchi's name in his blood with the pin held between thumb and index finger. Now it was just a matter of waiting. Light mouthed the numbers, so he wouldn't lose track and let go of the Death Note scrap too early, and in the meantime, L writhed, fading as his air ran low. Light was not concerned, because the worst that could happen would be for L to pass out.
For a flash of a terrifying moment, Light remembered Watari and the security cameras, and realized that Watari might be on his way down with a gun at this very minute. But then just as quickly he remembered that Watari almost certainly would have seen L climb into the shower with Light and immediately would have turned away. Morning showers together, Light recalled with a bewildering mix of disdain, incredulity, and fondness, were not so rare as to be suspicious. It would be at least another ten minutes before Watari dared check the cameras again.
After this brief pondering, L's eyelids were fluttering, and there were only seventeen seconds left. When this was over, Light would have to revert to his previous self. This had been a necessary personality shift, but any further acting out would only be counterproductive. Surely it would not be unbelievable for Kira to love L as Light once did.
Then the forty seconds were over, and Light felt the memories solid and unchangeable in his skull, rooted as deeply as the tumor, or perhaps even in it. He let go of the Death Note scrap, and he was still himself. He allowed himself a moment to smile, and breathe, and then he cried out and set to work on untangling L from his chains. "Holy shit," Light said, and his voice and his hands shook just as he wanted them to. "Oh my— Are you—?" The chain lifted away, revealing deep indents in L's neck which would soon turn to bruises. "I don't know how— God, L, I'm so sorry—"
Quite calmly, though wheezing, L sat himself up and turned away from Light, ignoring his words. The bones of his spine stood out sharp and curved. Light began a few more sentences with just the right balance of horror and apology, and then he trailed off, as if words were not enough.
Finally, L said, "Ryuzaki, Kira-kun." His voice was rough and bruised.
Light frowned, in case L was watching. "I'm still Light. I'm still the same person. You don't understand. That-that wasn't me back there." The stammering made L flinch, then relax, just slightly, and so Light played it up even more. He glanced nervously over at the watch, swore, and ducked his head into his hands, crumpling slowly against the cupboards under the sink, pulling steadily at his hair with tense, shaking fingers. "God, L, I'm so sorry. Fuck. Please. You have to help me."
L sighed, and coughed. "Watari isn't coming," he said, wearily.
So L had known when he had gotten into the shower that there was a risk he wouldn't leave the bathroom alive. Why would he have taken such a risk? Had this been a set-up, so that Light would be convicted as Kira even if L wasn't alive to see it? It didn't make sense, because Light could almost certainly argue his way into a manslaughter conviction, even involuntary manslaughter. Besides, killing L didn't mean he was Kira, and L was probably the only one smart enough to follow the convoluted reasoning that led to the conclusion that Light was Kira at all. If this had been a last ditch attempt to bring Light to justice, it had been a stupid one. What was going on?
"But you've slipped up, Kira-kun."
Light wanted to snap, "How?" but he couldn't, and so he remained silent instead.
"These bruises will be too suspicious. Watari will know something has happened. He might wonder about BDSM, but he'll be willing to risk seeing that to make sure I wasn't attacked. But I was. And he will find out. I have no choice but to arrest you, and Watari will be upset that I am only doing that much."
L's voice was slow, meandering, and sad. Light was struck by an impossible thought. Did L not want to bring Light to justice anymore? More importantly, did he not want to bring Kira to justice anymore? Could it be that L was already on Kira's side without Light having to convince him of anything? How could Light find out without giving himself away?
Perhaps…honesty?
"I don't understand," Light said, lifting his face, peeking out through his defenses to let his genuine confusion flow through. "What are you talking about?"
"Who is asking?"
There were infinite answers, and many right answers, but only a handful of answers that would be effective. Light chose the following: brokenly, he sunk to the floor and said, "Both. Yagami Light is Kira. And I understand how this must look to you, but you have to let me explain. Please, let's just get dressed and talk this through. You have to understand."
"What must I understand?"
Fuck. Light had hoped he would have more time to figure out what his strategy was going to be. He was going to have to wing it and decide as he spoke. "I am Kira, but the person you saw back there was not me. I would never have done that to you. It was the Death Note, forcing my hand. Higuchi and I couldn't be Kira at the same time. Either Higuchi would kill me, or I would have to kill Higuchi."
"You're saying there cannot be two Kiras?"
Light knew where L was going with this. "Misa was a different type of Kira than I was." And then he was struck by a thought, and was thrilled that he had thought to say this. "I'm not phrasing it right. Kira is a name, not a description. I am the only Kira there ever has been. Misa and Higuchi played at it, but they were not me. They did not understand me. There has only ever been one person who was like me." And here he paused, meaningfully, so L would know that Light was talking about him.
And then he continued, hurriedly, as if not wanting to imply too much, "But there cannot be two owners of a given Death Note. Misa owned a Death Note, but it was not mine. Higuchi owned a Death Note, and it was mine. Misa and I can both exist with our memories of being Kira, but Higuchi and I could not both exist. One of us had to go. The Death Note forced my hand, pushed everything that was Light to the side so that I would survive. Can you honestly say you're displeased that between of Higuchi and myself, I am the one alive?"
L absorbed this, and then asked, "Is the Death Note sentient?"
"No," Light said, hints of surprise leaking through, because the question had never occurred to him. "But that doesn't mean that it isn't powerful."
"Do you take full responsibility for your murder of Higuchi?"
Hidden in the question was this one: do you take full responsibility for what you did to me?
So Light did not answer the question. "I'm Kira, and you are wondering about whether I am responsible for one death?"
And L said, "Yes," and forced him to answer.
Light was quiet for a moment, thoughtful, and then he said, "If I was seizing and I hit you and you were hurt, would it be my fault?"
The response was immediate. "Of course not."
"When I had my nightmare and I struck out at you and you hit your head, was it my fault?"
"Are you saying that being Kira is a sickness that absolves you of responsibility?"
"The Death Note is the sickness, and being Kira is the cure."
L fell silent. He had never thought of it this way before, and, to be perfectly honest, until about three seconds ago neither had Light.
"The moment you learn of the existence of such a thing, you are burdened with enormous responsibility. What will you do with it? Destroy it? Lock it up? Give it to the police? Or use it for good?"
"Something so terrible cannot be used for good."
"No? Can't a virus be used by a doctor for a vaccine? Can't a gun be used by a police officer to protect a child? Can't a knife be used by a surgeon to remove a tumor?"
This last one struck home, and L flinched. "And Kira is using the Death Note for justice."
It was true, but it was not what L wanted to hear. "Kira is using the Death Note for good."
Too quickly to anticipate or react to, L looked over his shoulder. Light did not know what to do with his face, but he knew that he had to do something with it, and so he struggled in vain towards a more appropriate expression—but of what? solemnity? conviction? tenderness? All L saw was the struggle. He saw enough. He stood. Dammit.
"We can discuss this further while you are in prison. Please, Kira-kun, let's get dressed."
Light couldn't believe he was being arrested. He was furious, but he let it show as fear. "B-but what about my oncology appointments?"
L bit at his thumbnail and said with wide eyes, "Who said you wouldn't be permitted to go to them? I'm not going to kill you."
L was echoing him.
"I am the one arresting you, Kira-kun. Officially, Yagami Light is and always has been a free man."
Light probably shouldn't have been questioning it, but he knew that L was expecting him to. "Why are you doing this? You have enough evidence to convict me."
Despite his apparent desire to answer the question, L did not reply.
Light thought hard, staring blankly at the ground, and then up at L's face, questioning. His eyes held an emotion Light had considered and rejected. Tenderness.
"You still love me," Light gaped. "You love me even though I'm Kira."
"I've known you were Kira the whole time. This is only a new discovery to you."
"You said you'd love me even more if it turned out I was Kira."
The tenderness did not fade, but it certainly dropped out of sight. "It is possible I was mistaken. I love you precisely the same amount, Yagami Light."
It was horrifying. What had Light done? He had not expected this level of loyalty, and it made him afraid, and careless. "I love you too, Ryuzaki," he said, standing, reaching affectionately, and L grimaced and flinched away.
Light had used the right name—or, rather, the wrong one.