It makes me so happy to hear from you guys! Thank you so much. :)
There was a question about how much we'll get to know about the physical side of L and Light's relationship, and for the most part that's being left as a secret between the two of them. ;) We can expect to get about the same amount of information in future chapters as in chapter 3.
Just as a heads up, next week's chapter is going to have a giant trigger warning on basically the whole entire thing, and for people who might be triggered by it and so would rather avoid it altogether, I'll put a little summary of the whole chapter at the bottom so you can read that instead. Take care of yourself, everyone!
I don't own Death Note, hymns, or lullabies.
Ryuk was cackling madly. "You told me you were popular with the girls, but I've never seen you act like this before! And with L! Hyuk hyuk hyuk!"
It was humiliating, to be sure, but Light would be the one laughing soon.
"It's almost a shame that I'm going to have to write your name in my Death Note now."
Light froze, and Ryuk dissolved into hacking giggles. Light pulled himself together, shaking, and coughed, hard. "Excuse me," he said, lifting his voice at the end just enough for Ryuk to know it was a question. He was going to have to be very careful, so that Ryuk would understand what he was trying to say without L guessing that there was a shinigami in the room.
"When I saw your lifespan, I thought something especially exciting was going to happen soon. But I followed you around today, and it turns out that you just have cancer. It was fun while it lasted, but you're really just a human at the end of it all. I'm not going to wait around for you to waste away and die. Might as well get it over with now."
Shit. Light had never imagined that Ryuk would give up on him like this. He had always seen himself as Ryuk's only form of entertainment, but maybe the five months apart had changed that. He could no longer rely on promising entertainment in the long term. He had to promise entertainment now, and a lot of it. But what influence could Light have on anything that could be remotely entertaining, from the confines of these walls?
L.
Ryuk had found it hilarious for Light to be romantically involved with L. The shock would wear off soon enough, but surely Ryuk would be entertained by Light's work to turn L into Kira. More than that, if Light was successful, Ryuk would be promised years of following around someone with Light's intellect but with a full lifespan. That was what Light would promise. But how could he propose the compromise to Ryuk without letting L in on his plan?
Misa.
Light laughed, as if he had just realized something, which he supposed he had, given the time crunch he was working on. Ryuk had threatened to kill him not thirty seconds ago, and already he was laughing.
"Glad you find your death so amusing," Ryuk said peevishly, confused.
L's voice came on over the mic, just like Light knew it would. L was under the impression that they were just as close as they had been in the car ride over. Less than five minutes ago, L had been unlocking Light's handcuffs and kissing his wrists, under the watchful eye of the barrel of Watari's gun. Now, there was a smile in L's voice as he asked, "Something funny, Light-kun?"
"I was remembering three conversations. First, there were two conversations that we had a few months ago, but only a few days apart. The first time was when we took a day off and were talking about whether I would get treatment for my cancer—"
"The temozolomide," L recalled.
Light laughed. "Exactly. And I might end up taking it anyways despite all my objections. But, anyways, you said that you almost wished I was Kira, because it would mean that I was just as brilliant as you."
Ryuk cackled. "He said that? You've really got him wrapped around your little finger, Light!"
"You are brilliant, and you are Kira, so I was right."
"Are you ever wrong?"
"Never. And what was the second conversation?"
"It was when I said you were starting to sound like Misa, and you said that Misa wasn't really such a fool after all."
"She's not," L affirmed. "She's been under surveillance since we released her, of course. She's been following the Yotsuba trials, and she seems to understand everything that's going on."
A thrill of excitement ran through Light's torso. Misa was still invested in Kira. As soon as he got the message through to her, she would be more than willing to help him. "The third conversation that I remembered also had to do with Misa, but this time it was between the two of you. You asked her how she would feel if I was Kira, and she said—"
"Awesome," L recalled, with a dark smile in his voice.
"Because she was pro-Kira."
"And because she was in love with you."
"I was mostly being a jerk when I suggested to Watari that I had more support in here than I thought, but maybe you're more pro-Kira than you realize."
"I'm certainly pro-Yagami-Light, but never pro-Kira."
And Light looked Ryuk right in the eyes and said, "We'll see about that."
"Hyuk hyuk hyuk!" Ryuk burst out, doubling over. "So, you want me to stick around to see this? And maybe I'll even get a new human to follow around after I kill you?" Light smiled, and Ryuk laughed uproariously. "And the best part is that he thinks you're in love with him!"
Light frowned, because he couldn't see any reason he couldn't both love L and want him to be Kira. After all, L loved Light and wanted him to be Kira, and L didn't even understand yet why Kira was righteous—or, rather, good.
Ryuk noticed the frown. "I've told you already that the price for using the Death Note is terror and torment, death at the hand of a shinigami, and not being able to go to either heaven or hell. And this is the gift you're giving your boyfriend! Hyuk hyuk! I really underestimated you, Light. I'll let you live for now. This should be fun."
It was only a small victory, and Light couldn't forget about the bigger picture. Light had convinced Ryuk to let him live, but Light hadn't even anticipated this being an issue, and he now still had to get Ryuk to contact Misa and go through a whole series of Death Note exchanges to get Light in a better strategic position. What was the one thing Ryuk wanted more than anything else? Apples? No, that was an addition, and the cravings that came with addiction only went so far. Besides, Ryuk had been abstaining for five months, and it wasn't as if Light had a consistent supply of apples anyways. But writing Light's name in his Death Note… Ryuk had been talking of nothing else since he had showed up. And he had said, nearly a year ago, that the Death Note was the bond between Light the human and Ryuk the shinigami.
Was.
Rem was being a pouting, disloyal shinigami, preferring to lurk around her Death Note in the basement rather than hover behind Light, but it was still her Death Note that Light now owned. The only shinigami with the power to kill Light was Rem.
"Ha ha ha!" Light burst out, louder than he had intended, and Ryuk looked startled.
"You're in an interesting mood, Light-kun," L observed, now a bit suspiciously.
"I was thinking about Rem. That's my shinigami's name, you know." Light said this while looking at Ryuk, who didn't show any signs of understanding the deeper implications of this.
"They have names?"
"Why are you surprised?"
"Knowing someone's name gives you power over them. I don't mean just in the sense of the Death Note. The concept goes back as far as the book of Genesis. If these shinigami have names, I suppose they are not truly 'gods' of death at all."
Light thought of his self-proclaimed title as God of the New World, and how the public had been the one to name him Kira, and he wondered whether he needed to adjust his rhetorical strategies.
"Is it just the shinigami's name that you were laughing at?"
"Oh, no. I was laughing because it's her Death Note that I own, and yet you would never know it because she's nowhere in sight."
"She's in the basement most of the time," L said, and Light attention caught on the qualifier. "Where should she be?"
"You'd think she would visit me at least every once in a while. I mean, she's my shinigami." Light looked right at Ryuk again, and finally he looked displeased. "I guess I'm too boring for her to bother talking to me."
"You are unusually talkative today," L observed, now with some suspicion.
"You were the one who said you wanted to talk to me more."
"I suppose…"
"So, you have ownership of Rem's Note now, huh?" Ryuk was scowling as much as his distorted face would allow. "Guess that means I can't kill you after all, even if I wanted to. I've got to say, that kind of pisses me off."
"I wonder if Rem's trying to pawn me off to some other shinigami," Light laughed. "Maybe she'll try to trade me away to someone who's really bored, who won't mind how boring I am."
"Can shinigami do that? Trade humans with each other?"
"How should I know? I'm just guessing."
"You want me to give you my Death Note?" Ryuk hacked a scoff. "Not a chance, even if it did mean I could kill you. I only have one now, remember? You buried the other one in the forest so that Misa could find it later."
Light looked steadily into Ryuk's eyes until he understood.
"Oh. You want me to get Misa to dig up the second Death Note. Then I'll have one Note to keep for myself, and one to give to you. As long as she gives up ownership first, there's nothing stopping you from having ownership when I bring it here. And you could have ownership of two Notes at once if you wanted, but you'd better play fair and give up ownership of Rem's Note afterwards. You don't want to get on a shinigami's bad side."
Light was almost proud of Ryuk for being able to reason his way through what was being asked of him.
"But what are you going to do once you get the Note? You're under pretty tight surveillance here, and your boyfriend will definitely notice if you start writing names in the Note, not that you have any access to the names of criminals anyways."
And this was the grand finale. Light was going to have to speak in heavy metaphor, coating it thickly enough that L would think Light was talking to him, but lightly enough that Ryuk wouldn't get lost.
"Have you ever read the Old Testament?" Light asked.
"Not in the original Hebrew, unfortunately. But we can learn Hebrew if you want."
The idea of learning a new language with L was so nice that Light almost felt bad for deceiving him—almost. "That wasn't what I was thinking, but I don't see why not."
"What were you thinking?"
"I was wondering what your favorite part was."
"My favorite part?" L sounded astounded. "Hm. I haven't thought about it before. I suppose it would have to be the book of Job. That or the book of Daniel. And you?"
"Either the book of Ecclesiastes, or the prophet arc." And here Light met Ryuk's gaze, and Ryuk laughed and paid close attention.
"The prophet arc? That's awfully broad. There were quite a few prophets in the Old Testament, and even some in the New Testament."
"I'm specifically thinking of how the prophets responded to God being absent. It was the fault of the people, you know. They worshipped false idols. They said something was God when it wasn't. And their idols failed them, as false gods always do. And so God was absent for a time. And this was where the prophet came in. The prophet made a few judgments, to prove that he was really sent from God, and then announced that God was going to be absent for a time, as punishment. The people would wallow in their evil, and then when God thought that they had learned their lesson, he would come back, though reappearing in a new form, and preaching news of a brand new world."
They were all silent for a moment, Light waiting, L reflecting, Ryuk thinking hard, trying to put the pieces together. Finally, L said, "This is your favorite part of the Old Testament?"
"Why not?"
"For one, it extends into the New Testament, so I don't know that you can necessarily call it a part of the Old Testament specifically. For another, I think you're misunderstanding how the prophet arc worked, period. For instance, you didn't even mention the major theme of faithfulness."
"I don't think I'm misunderstanding it, but please go ahead and look it up for me."
"Give me just a minute," L said, and the faint microphone static cut out.
"Let me see if I've got this right," Ryuk said. "You, Kira, are God. The people are the world. The prophet, I think, is Misa. The one who they said was God but who wasn't is that man who all the reporters are calling Kira." Dammit, the media really was sucking the lies right up. "And God appearing in a new form, I guess, is L."
Light had not intended for L to be part of the metaphor at all, but he supposed that it worked perfectly. He nodded, just once, giving a faint smile.
"Hyuk hyuk hyuk! Guess you've started rubbing off on me, Light. Can't say I would have expected myself to be able to figure it out like this. Can't believe I'm taking orders from a human either, but that's a whole other story. Now, let's see… You're going to be holed up in here until you can get L to take over for you. So you want me to give your Death Note to Misa, to hold onto, but you don't want her to have ownership over it. You just want her to be the prophet, to make a few judgments, write in the names of a few criminals, to show that she really does have Kira's power. She's going to tell the world that Kira will be gone, as punishment, and that it's their fault, for believing this other guy really was Kira the whole time, but that Kira will be back one day, and he'll be the god of a brand new world. Hyuk hyuk! Damn, that's harsh. Did I miss anything?"
Ryuk had done brilliantly. Either five months in the shinigami realm had done wonders for Ryuk's intellect, or five months with virtually only L for company had turned Light into even more of a mastermind than usual.
"We both were right, but I was more right," L announced, returning from his research. "The prophets certainly preached doom, destruction, and punishment, but you can't just ignore books like Hosea, which are founded in the idea of God's faithfulness despite events like the exile. I don't mean to suggest that you cannot appreciate the prophet arc, as you call it, but you perhaps would be safer in sticking with the book of Ecclesiastes."
"At least I don't have to worry about accidentally extending your lifespan," Ryuk said, with a hacking laugh. "Usually helping a human this much would be considered against the rules. But you'll die of cancer no matter what I do. It's sort of freeing. Maybe more shinigami should give their Notes to humans who are already dying."
And L quoted, cheekily, "Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?"
Somberly, Light added, "There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: righteous men who get what the wicked deserve, and wicked men who get what the righteous deserve. This too, I say is meaningless."
And L sobered, and Ryuk cackled and dissolved into the prison walls, and L said, "Meaningless, meaningless. Utterly meaningless. Everything is meaningless."
It was a few nights later that L woke up Light in the middle of a nightmare. It was a prochlorperazine-nightmare, filled with perfectly normal things like driving through an unfamiliar city in a car that only sometimes responded to the brakes, or like stumbling upon Sayu snorting a line off of her copied calculus homework, or like learning that L had been kidnapped by the Mafia after he had solved one too many of their crimes. Gone were the early-Kira-nightmares of blood and gore and endless screaming, and gone were the forgotten-Kira-nightmares of Ryuk and sprinting and laughter. But that didn't mean these ones were any less unpleasant.
"Light-kun," L was calling softly through the microphone.
"Shit," Light was mumbling blearily as he tore up out of his sheets, sitting up, fumbling at his mouth to make sure all of his teeth were still there instead of falling out into the sink.
"I'm sorry."
"No. It's just a prochlorperazine-nightmare."
"Falling?"
"Teeth."
"Yech."
Light smiled, despite himself, and his heartbeat began slowing. He swung his legs over the edge of the cot, stretched, and sighed. "I'm all ears. What's up? Nightmare?"
L sighed. "That's what woke me up first. I went to find Watari, thinking that perhaps sitting next to him would calm me down. I assumed he would be here, taking his turn keeping watch, but he wasn't. My first thought was that you had killed him somehow, of course"—Light winced—"but then I ventured out into the hallway and listened closely and heard the sobbing, and then I just thought that you had seriously maimed him."
"That isn't funny, you know," Light pointed out, because he didn't like the idea that his mere presence on this Earth made post-nightmare L even more terrified than he already was.
But L said, with some surprise, "I wasn't being facetious."
Light sighed. "Just keep going."
"As it turned out, Watari was not killed or maimed. In fact, he was kneeling in the kitchen doing something that looked very much like praying."
Light was uncomfortable, because the last time the topic of Watari and religion had come up, it had been because Watari had been threatening to kill him.
"Bear in mind that I have not seen Watari cry since—well. For a few years in my childhood, he would cry during dinner on the same day of every year. I thought he had lost a child or perhaps a wife, and on the fourth year I asked him about it. He laughed, wiped his eyes, and said that he had never had a child or a wife, and then he did not cry again. I think I know now what it was. Perhaps I'll tell you the story later. Regardless, this is not crying, but weeping."
"Is?"
"Mhm. I left after he sang a hymn a few times, and I assume that he's still at it, though I can't hear from here."
"He was weeping and singing a hymn?"
"Mhm."
"Which one?"
"Are you well versed in hymns?"
"No, but the words might give you a clue as to what's going on. Do you remember them?"
"Of course."
"Well, let's hear it then." Here Light's voice dipped towards teasing. "And you have to sing it, that is, if you can remember it."
"Light-kun," L said, voice lilting along. "I am the world's greatest detective. I think I can remember a few lines of a hymn."
"Oh, pardon me for ever doubting you."
"You are pardoned. Here is the chorus, in English, of course: 'I will arise and go to Jesus. He will embrace me in His arms. In the arms of my dear Savior, oh, there are ten thousand charms.'" L's singing voice was weak and only in tune enough to provide a very general gist of the melody. It felt like a secret, like a particularly poor drawing given by a child as a gift, and it made Light smile. "And here are the two verses: 'Come, ye sinners, poor and needy, weak and wounded, sick and sore. Jesus ready stands to save you, full of pity, love and power. Come, ye weary, heavy-laden, lost and ruined by the fall. If you tarry till you're better, you will never come at all.' Those are all the words. He sang it over and over again."
"Hm. Has he ever sung hymns before?"
"Plenty of times. But only when he was trying to teach me how to sing, which I was miserable at, or when he was trying to be subtle about squeezing theology into a conversation, which he was miserable at. He's never sung to himself like this."
"Hm. I don't really know what to tell you. It's strange, but it just sounds like religion, and religion is strange."
"I suppose."
"Keep an eye on it. Who knows? Maybe he has brain cancer too. Maybe in the frontal lobe, just like me."
"I am quite certain Watari doesn't have brain cancer."
"Maybe he should get scanned too, just in case."
"It's not brain cancer," L insisted. "Part of the reason it's so strange is that it seems so natural." He sighed. "I've never thought of Watari as having any genuine faith, but what if he does?"
"What if he does?"
"Yes."
"Does it matter?"
"Yes."
Light sighed, and lay back down in bed. L wasn't making any sense. It was the middle of the night, and he wasn't thinking straight, and his nightmare was fresh in his mind. He would be thinking more clearly in the morning. "Go back to sleep," Light said. "Just keep an eye on him tomorrow and I'm sure you'll figure it out then."
"You of all people know I can't go back to sleep now."
"Then come down here and sleep with me."
"Sleep with—?"
"I mean, literally. Fall asleep in the same bed as me."
L was silent.
"You know it would work."
"It would be a security risk, given that Watari is currently incapacitated."
"So now you're suddenly worried about security risks."
"Not for me. For the world. You're brilliant, Light-kun, and I want to keep you as far away from the world as possible."
Light thought of Ryuk leading Misa to the buried Death Note, and he did not know what to say.
"You could sing me a lullaby though."
"Like what?"
"What do you know?"
"My mother would sing a lullaby to Sayu almost every night."
"Did she sing it to you?"
"I don't remember. Probably not. I was never a very musical child."
"Let's hear it."
"ねんねんころりよ おころりよ. ぼうやはよい子だ ねんねしな."
And Light was almost as terrible a singer as L, but it did the trick, and by the third time through, the soft cloud of microphone static had cut off and L had fallen back asleep.
The next day L woke Light up in the middle of the night again, this time in the thick of a prochlorperazine-nightmare about being chased through the forest by werewolves. "Oof," Light grunted, falling out of bed, disoriented and pumped full of adrenaline.
"Oops," L said, whispering. "I'm sorry."
"It's alright," Light said, clumsily untangling himself from the sheets and climbing back into bed. "What's going on? Is Watari crying again?"
"Weeping," L corrected, because this was apparently an important distinction. "But, no, he isn't. He's sound asleep, which is why I wanted to talk to you now, while he can't hear me."
Light's heart leapt. "You're not planning on busting me out of here, are you?"
L was far more bewildered than he should have been. "Busting you out? Why would I ever do that?"
And with his voice far more disappointed than he should have let on, Light said, "Because you love me."
Speaking slowly, deep in confusion, L asked, "What does that have to do with busting you out?"
"If you loved me, you would do what was best for me."
"I am. Do you realize that up until today Watari has been endlessly trying to convince me to hand you over to the authorities to be executed?"
Light had guessed that Watari would be up to something like that, but he didn't realize it would be so frequent, obvious, or decisive. The cell's dim lighting was too dark, and Light wondered nervously whether Watari really was sleeping. His sense of self-preservation echoed, "Up until today?"
"Yes. This is why I wanted to talk to you. Watari has been acting very strangely all day long."
"I told you. Brain cancer in the frontal lobe. There's no other explanation."
"Please try to be serious, Light-kun. Watari has been acting kind."
Voice thick with sarcasm, Light intoned, "No."
"You didn't grow up with him. Watari is never kind. Loyal, responsible, conscientious, careful, forward-thinking, committed, yes. But not generous, not loving, not forgiving, not affectionate, not empathetic, not friendly. The only time I've seen him show any of those qualities was in his interactions with Roger."
"Roger?"
The microphone crackled dully. "Shit," L said miserably, and Light smirked, surprised. "I didn't mean to say that. Now I really can't bust you out. You would figure out how it was that I slipped, and then you would kill everyone I love."
"Hey," Light said, stinging, but also unwillingly intrigued by the idea of L having a weak spot. "I don't just randomly go around killing people. You of all people should understand that."
"Why me of all people?"
"Because you understand why it is that I'm doing this. All of my supporters understand too, but you understand even more than they do, because you're a hair away from being Kira yourself one day. You just don't want to admit it."
"I suppose your worldview requires you to be obscenely optimistic."
"On the contrary, I am realistic above all. There's no point in reaching for something that seems unattainable until you've already accomplished the attainable."
"And you're saying that my being Kira is attainable."
"You being a hair away from being Kira is attainable. The thing that seems unattainable is you actually being Kira."
"And why does that seem unattainable?"
"It would be too good to be true. You're not Kira yet, but I wish for your sake that you were."
L knew immediately what conversation Light was referencing, and he was reluctantly curious. "For my sake?"
It was the middle of the night, and Light had not been planning on making his appeal now, but he might not get another chance like this for a long time. Gathering up every bit of love Light had for L, Kira made his appeal: "You are the single most exceptional person I have ever met. But this world isn't big enough for you. If you spend the rest of your life solving piddling mysteries, playing at changing the world, you're going to be bored to the point of drowning in emptiness by the time you're thirty. And sooner than either of us would like, I'm going to die, and then there won't be anyone around to keep you from being bored. And you can hope that perhaps someday there will be someone like us again, but you'll have to wait for a long time, and it might not ever happen in your lifetime. The only way you'll ever have anything close to a life will be if you spend your life making a new world. Don't you see what I'm doing? I'm not changing the world. I'm making a new one. And I'm not doing it for myself, but I won't pretend it isn't the first thing that's made me feel alive. When I die, I don't want you to die along with me. I want you to live, and to live abundantly. And I want the world to live, abundantly. But it's you who I love, and even if I wasn't dying, I would still want you to be Kira with me, so you could live abundantly. Do you understand? I love you."
The soft microphone static faded to a distant murmur in the darkness as Kira waited for L's answer.
And then L said, "Light-kun, today Watari told me for the first time that he loves me."
Light did not know how this could possibly be a relevant fact, but it set a heavy stone in the pit of his stomach.
"Light-kun, I—" Impossibly, L's voice broke, and Kira was afraid. The static cut off, and Light wished desperately to be able to see L's expression, to see what could possibly be going on in his mind, but he was utterly helpless. And L gathered himself together and continued, "Light-kun, I think it has to do with what happened last night."
Light was cold and stunned. "You mean, the crying?"
"The weeping, Light-kun."
Slowly, Light said, "I don't understand."
And L burst out, "I don't understand either, Light-kun. That's why I'm telling you."
And Light tried desperately to imagine what it was that L did with his body when his voice leapt out like that. As for himself, he knew that he reacted powerfully and violently, throwing himself to the ground or across a table, pulling at his hair, shouting, swearing. But Light remembered how L had reacted after the first nightmare that Light had witnessed, his body collapsing into a single point, limbs coiling around his torso, every muscle crushing him further and further out of existence. Did his nails pierce his skin? Did his mind scream or go silent? Did his senses scald or deaden?
"Light-kun, Watari is the second person to tell me they love me."
Light was left with the terrifying realization that he had been the first person to tell L he was loved. He tried desperately to remember what the moment had been, but all he could think of was the most recent moment, when he had said it not out of genuine affection, but rather out of deep conviction. Kira spoke from conviction. Kira could not love—could not allow himself to love. Kira could not have nightmares. Kira could not die. But Light could love, and fear, and die. Unknown to him, L had been told that he was loved by three people, and only two of those people were telling the truth.
L's voice was very small, too small to be coming out of the three best detectives in the world. "Light-kun, why did he wait until now?" And he continued, using Light's name yet again, unintentionally making Kira shove his way even farther to the front, "Light-kun, I've never thought of Watari as having any genuine love, but what if he does?"
"What if he does?" Light echoed immediately, and he did not know why it sounded like he had already asked this question.
"Yes."
"Does it matter?"
"Yes."
All at once, Light remembered when he had first told L that he loved him. Light had muttered to himself, for the thousandth upon thousandth time, "I'm not Kira." He had been pouring himself a cup of coffee with one hand and straightening his tie with the other, a tie he had worn to hide the red mark L had made too high on his collarbone the previous night. The tension had been tight in his brows, and as he had spoken, they had flinched forward, creasing. L had made a small noise of surprise, and he had said, "I know." And Light had felt his brows relax, easing back into their proper position, and he had set the coffee pot down on the counter and had looked up at L, who had been thoughtful and suspicious and soft and leaning against the cupboards. And Light had said, "I love you," surprising himself, but apparently not L, who had said, once again, "I know."
But clearly L had not known, perhaps had not even believed, that Light loved him, just as he had not known or believed that Light was not Kira. And Light wondered whether either fact could ever be true.
"Do you believe that I love you?" Light asked. He had assumed that L believed it, that this was why he was so open with Light, so trusting of him, so eager to kiss him, so willing to sit by him getting sick in the middle of the night, so ready to pay for the millions of yen of medical treatment that would extend Light's life by a meager handful of months.
But L paused for a long time, and then finally said, "No."
"You don't?!" Light's voice leapt. It hurt more than he would have expected. "Are you fucking kidding me?!"
"You're very surprised."
"Yeah, maybe because I've only told you that I love you like a billion times!"
"Did you honestly expect me to believe you?"
"Um, yes? Wait a second. Do you love me?"
"Of course."
"Look, if you don't actually love me, all you have to say—"
"Yagami Light, I love you forever and always."
"This is so unfair. Do you really expect me to believe that you love me when you refuse to believe that I love you?"
"At risk of being clichéd, life—"
"Don't say it! Look, it doesn't have to be that way. I'm making a new world, a world where things are right, where everything is fair and just—"
"And good?"
"Yes, and good!"
And, abruptly, L's voice went hard and serious. "Yagami Light, you need to realize right this moment that there is no such thing as a good person. If you make a new world with only good people, one day the only people left will be the two of us, and then you will realize that I am not good either, and you will kill me, and then you will realize last of all that you are not good, and you will realize that you've fucked up terribly, and then you will kill yourself."
"What makes you so certain that you are not good?" Light demanded, hot with anger. "Is it because you've broken some laws in the name of justice? Or because you insult people sometimes? Or do you have some dark past that you just won't tell me about?"
"What makes you think you have any right to hear about my past?"
Light had not been seriously suggesting that L had a dark past. Quietly, he asked, "Does this have to do with your trauma?" L did not reply, and Light's next realization came with a pang in his chest, "Does this have to do with your nightmares?"
"Oh, Yagami Light," L said, with a sad smile in his voice. "You always know what to say."
"Don't tell me this is about that man who was innocent but who got put on death row anyways."
"You're misremembering my trauma, Light-kun. I'm tempted to say that you weren't listening at all."
"Hey."
"Do you want me to tell you about my nightmares? Now, when Watari is asleep and will not hear me? Now, when I have told you that I don't believe myself loved by you or Watari or anyone else?"
Light fisted his hands and his nails bit into his palms and his heart pounded. "I wish you weren't alone up there. I wish we were together, so it would be easier for you to tell me what happened."
"On the contrary, if I were anything but alone, I could never say any of this. If you could see my face, if I could see your eyes—" L broke off, and Light could imagine him biting ferociously into the skin around his own thumb.
"Please," Light said, gently. "I won't even say anything afterwards if you don't want me to. Please, just tell me what happened."
L sighed, a long, dry breath that make Light wonder at his lung capacity, and Light imagined that his eyes were closed as he began speaking.