A/N: Helllooooo, again friends!
Annnnnd here's the next chapter! Yay!!!! Once again, THANK YOU ALL FOR THE REVIEWS!
Oh, and guess what? I had another epiphany thing, and I was all like, "Oh shit! That is SOOO fucked up!" And then I started laughing . . . heh. Yeah, I think I'm having too much fun with this story, but the "Oh shit that's fucked up!" won't show up for a little bit. XD
The Art of Drowning
The Great Escape
"Thank God I got to you in time!" his father whispered harshly.
Try as he might, Light could not comprehend the situation. He stared blankly up at his father's red face, the older man's hair was sticking to his head due to an excessive amount of sweat, and he seemed to be out of breath. Light realized numbly that his father must have dug him up.
Soichirou had moved the beam of his flashlight so as not to blind Light, who's eyes were rapidly adjusting. The light reflected harmlessly on dark walls of soil, roots jutting out here and there. The smell of earth was a welcome alternative to blood and flowers, and Light took gasping breaths.
He concentrated on the painful sting of his fingertips, trying to focus his mind on the present, but try as he might, he still felt like he was suffocating, like he was still trapped in a coffin six feet under ground.
"G-Get me out of h-here," rasped Light.
Soichirou hoisted Light to his feet. Light's legs were weak, and his foot caught in the blood-stained and ripped fabric of the coffin lid. His father helped him untangle his limbs and led him to the ladder that lay innocently against the wall of soil.
"I'll help you. Just one step at a time," muttered Soichirou, his hands steadying Light as the younger man awkwardly grasped the spokes.
"You're going to -" he gasped "- tell me what the hell-" he coughed "- is going on?" gritted out Light.
"Not here. We have to move quickly," replied Soichirou.
Light groaned, his foot missing a spoke. His knee slammed onto the metal of the ladder.
"Careful," cautioned Soichirou, who was still supporting Light from behind.
Finally, Light was high enough that he rolled himself off the ladder and onto the wet grass. He tried to calm his racing heart by taking deep breathes. His eyes cut to the man he called his father. He was climbing back down into the hell that Light had just escaped.
"No evidence. No evidence," the man muttered to himself, but it was loud enough that Light caught it.
Light paid him no mind. He was too tired, too relieved to be out of that prison, to care what the other man was talking about. Although, he got a fairly good idea of what his father was up to when he heard a ripping sound.
His father emerged from the pit a moment later. Within his gloved hands was the torn and bloody pieces of the coffin lining. Light frowned.
"On the off chance that someone else wants to dig you up, I can't leave anything behind. Dead people who've been embalmed don't bleed," explained his father.
Light gave the man a weak nod. Exactly how many people did his father expect to go digging up his grave? He grimaced. Maybe he didn't want to know.
His father descended into the pit once again, leaving the tattered linings to taunt Light. Within the moonlight, the remains looked innocent. In the darkness, they had been anything but.
He shuddered, tearing his eyes away from the pile of bloody rags. Dead people didn't bleed, but he did, and yet he woken up in a fucking coffin. The only reason he would ever be in a coffin was if he was dead, but he wasn't dead. His mind raced. His father had faked his death, going so far as to have him buried, before digging him back up.
Why?
What the hell was he missing? Why had his father gone to such lengths to ensure that people thought he was dead? How had his father even known where Light was in the first place? L had fed the team some half-arsed excuse about undercover work. His father shouldn't have known where he was, nor should he have been able to get to him. And how exactly did he end up in a coffin, supposedly dead and embalmed? Wouldn't someone have noticed that he wasn't all that dead?
His head was starting to hurt, so Light decided it would probably be best for him to think about all of that later, when he hadn't just crawled out of his own grave like some godforsaken zombie.
His father once again emerged from the pit, this time dragging the ladder up after him. The man tossed the ladder to the side before taking up a large shovel that had previously been speared in an equally large pile of earth.
Soichirou began to refill the pit.
As his father worked, Light could feel his strength returning. His limbs had more feeling, his thinking was clearer, and he could sit up without relative difficulty. His fingers stung painfully, but the pain helped in keeping him focused. He wasn't surprised to see that he wore a suit, and he wiped his dripping, bloody fingers on his pants legs in disgust.
Next time he died, he was going to be fucking cremated.
"What the hell are you doing?" yelled a gruff voice in surprise.
Light jerked.
His father froze mid-throw, a bit of dirt falling from the shovel into the pit.
A police officer, one of the lower ranked who's job it was to patrol places like these, stared in horror at the two men, who by all appearances, were grave robbers. Before Light or his father could do anything, the police officer fumbled for his radio.
"I need back up at the Shibushiya graveyard! I repeat, I need -"
That was as far as the man got before Soichirou slammed his head with the shovel. Light had never seen the old man move so fast.
"God damn it!" growled Soichirou, before throwing down the shovel.
"Dad?" asked Light hesitantly.
Soichirou didn't answer. He grabbed the bloody lining. Then he pulled Light to his feet and dragged him away from the half-buried empty gravesite. Light stumbled after him, thankful that he could keep up, if only barely. They dodged gravestones, heading up the hill where Light could see a car parked.
His father threw him and the bloody rags into the passenger's seat and slammed the door, before getting in on his side, turning on the car, and gunning it. Light's stomach rolled at the forceful movement. Having the ripped coffin lining in his lap didn't help matters either, so he quickly threw it in the backseat, and then buckled his seatbelt for good measure. After all, he wasn't to eager to return to his grave so soon.
Light gave one last backwards glance at the graveyard before looking away.
"WHAT?!" exclaimed L, his fingers digging painfully into the arms of his swivel chair.
"It happened four hours ago," explained Watari, subdued. The older man had only been in bed for an hour before Aizawa had called to inform him of what had happened.
"You mean to tell me that someone dug up Raito's coffin and stole his body?" asked L, his face a parody of calm. Inside he was seething.
Watari nodded.
"I'll kill them," growled L.
"L!" exclaimed Watari in shock.
"Damn it, Watari! Fine. I will not kill them, but I will make them wish that I had once I get through with them. Death would be too good for the scum. A shame they closed down Alcatraz, but I heard that the American's make Guantanamo Bay a lovely place to live," growled L, an unusually cruel smirk twisting his features.
"Grave robbers are not sentenced to life in prison and especially not at Guantanamo Bay," reminded Watari.
L shot him a dark glare. "Who said I would peg them for just grave robbing?"
"L!"
L turned away from the older man, his mind in turmoil. How dare someone desecrate Raito's grave! Who ever was responsible for this would rue the day they had ever laid eyes on a shovel - that L would make sure.
"Why would someone even do such a thing?" asked Watari, obviously forgoing the argument that was sure to come should Watari push L.
L gave him an annoyed glare. "It is not uncommon, especially in large cities such as this. Human trafficking, even if the human is dead, is a profitable business. The soil of a freshly dug grave has not settled. It is easy for body snatchers to dig up the freshly buried dead in order to harvest individual organs and tissues to sell on the black market for transplantation surgeries, usually in the form of allografts."
"Ah, yes, I seem to recall a few cases like that in the past," remarked Watari. The older man was trying to stay objective, as if this situation was just like any other case. He obviously didn't like the hardened look in his ward's eyes, nor did he like the way his ward was clenching the arms of his chair so tight that his knuckles were white with the pressure.
L viciously bit down on his thumb, causing Watari to cringe, but L paid him no mind.
"I can't shake the feeling that I'm missing something important," L murmured, his fingers flying over the keyboard. He was looking up the police files that pertained to the purloined body of his friend.
"Eh? Do you think something's afoot?" asked Watari, peering over L's shoulder at the files the young detective pulled up.
L shook his head. "I don't know, but I intend to find out."
"I glad that Aizawa had the sense not to inform Yagami-san about the incident just yet. There's no telling what the man would do," remarked Watari quietly.
"Hmm, yes. No doubt he would have plans similar to mine. They have not uploaded images of the crime scene yet. We only have the preliminary report," sighed L.
Watari nodded in agreement. "I wouldn't be surprised if a witch hunt is called against the perpetrators, especially when Yagami-san is informed."
"That is exactly what I am counting on it," affirmed L, his face hard.
The silence was suffocating.
His father hadn't once looked at him the whole time they were driving. Light snuck glances at the him. Soichirou held the wheel in a death grip, his back rigid, and his eyes never wavering from the road. Light had ceased to recognize his surrounding within the first ten minutes of being in the car.
"There is a duffle bag in the trunk filled with clothes and any necessities that you will need. Open the glove compartment," said his father, his eyes still on the road.
Light, confused, opened the compartment and reached inside. He pulled out what appeared to be a sheaf of papers, a plane ticket, and - a passport?
"Dad? What -"
"I'm taking you to the airport. You're plane leaves at five AM," interrupted Soichirou.
"What? Where? What the hell is even going on?" yelled Light in frustration.
Soichirou shook his head. "You're going to England. You have family there. The papers you hold contain the names and addresses to all of your extended family. Granted, there's not many, but hopefully someone will take you in. If not, there's plenty of money in the duffle. As to what is going on, I can only tell you what I know, but even I don't know all of it."
"Then what do you know?" exclaimed Light, his head spinning. He was going to try and find family . . . in England? He didn't even know that he had family in England.
"Did you ever think it was odd that a Japanese couple came all the way to England to adopt a ten year old boy?" asked his father suddenly.
Light blinked, taken aback by the unexpected question. Now that he thought about it . . .
"Not . . . really," answered Light, afraid of where his father was going with this.
"I was contacted by a former associate of mine who called in a favor. I was asked to travel to England with my wife under the guise of being a barren couple looking for a son. He gave us your name, the address of your orphanage, and plane tickets. He even pulled some strings to expedite the adoption process. Foreign adoption is England is extremely rare," explained Soichirou.
Light's head spun at the revelation. "But, why? Why would some guy want you to adopt me?"
Soichirou shook his head. "I don't know the exact reason, but I do know that it has something to do with your biological parents."
"My . . . parents?" breathed Light, his eyes wide.
"I don't think he wanted to give you up just yet after having found you at that orphanage, but something caused him not to proceed with his earlier intentions towards you, whatever they were at the time, and he called on my help."
"Are you trying to tell me that some psycho has been manipulating my entire life without me knowing? For what? What the fuck makes me so god damn special?" angrily yelled Light.
Soichirou sighed. "I don't know. We were just told to adopt you. If I had said no, my family would have been killed."
"But, but why - why did you, in the cell? And the coffin?" tried Light, his mind as jumbled as his words.
"Because he contacted me again after all these years. He wouldn't tell me why, but he wanted you dead. I don't know how, but he knew where you were, in that cell. He told me that you knew . . . things . . . you weren't supposed to, that you were getting too close to something, and he wanted you dead. I tried to reason, plead, anything to save you, but if I hadn't gone along, hadn't renounced my feelings towards you, hadn't killed you, then he would have killed you anyway, along with Sachiko, Sayu, and myself," explained Soichiorou.
There was a moment of awkward silence as Light tried to process all that the man beside him had just told him. He had his suspicions that Soichirou was holding some things back, but Light couldn't concentrate on that with all the recent revelations. Out of everything that he wanted to know, and he wanted to know absolutely everything, there was only one question that he yearned to know, one that only Yagami Soichirou could answer.
"Why am I still alive?" asked Light quietly.
Soichirou sighed once again, taking one hand off the wheel to ruffle Light's hair like he used to do when Light was younger.
"I couldn't kill my son," answered Soichirou softly, simply, as if it explained everything. And it did.
Light felt himself flooded with emotion. His eyes pricked, but he deftly blinked away anything that would be cause for embarrassment. Yagami Soichirou truly was his father, despite the blood not shared between them.
"So you faked my death?" asked Light in a steady voice, determined to curtail any unnecessarily mushy emotions.
"Yes. I injected you with a pentalinium oroxide compound. For all intents and purposes, the victim dies of a heart attack, but in truth their body is in a state of suspended animation for up to three days after injection."
"A heart attack? But does that mean that -"
"Yes, L believes that Kira was the one that killed you," answered Soichirou simply.
Light froze. Oh Lawli . . .
"H-how is he?" hesitated Light.
"Not good," answered Soichirou, leaving it at that.
Light pushed any and all thoughts of L away. He could only deal with one thing at a time.
"And the autopsy? The embalming?" asked Light.
Soichirou shrugged. "It was assumed that you had died of a heart attack. After all, what else could a healthy young man on the Kira Investigation team sitting by himself in a fortified room die of? It was unnecessary to cut you open if preliminary tests proved the cause of death."
"That's a mighty large chance you took," glared Light.
"Well that, a little money, and few well placed threats go a long way," answered Soichirou.
Light blinked. "Really?"
"Yes, I am the chief of police. I have connections."
"Right, so how are you going to explain my missing body?" asked Light, trying not to let his surprise at his father's actions distract him.
"I'm not going to explain anything. As far as I am concerned, my son's body has just been stolen by grave robbers, more than likely for your organs. I'm going to be cracking down on some of the local human trafficking rings," explained Soichirou.
"That makes sense," muttered Light, trying not to think about what L would do when he found out.
"I'll probably be able to plant some false evidence. Maybe someone will recover your left kidney," continued Soichirou, smirking slightly to himself.
"So, according to the world, I died at the hands of Kira?" asked Light, wanting that little fact to be reassured.
"According to the world, you died by falling down a flight a stairs. According to all those who matter, you were murdered by Kira," corrected Soichirou.
Light stared. "How embarrassing."
His father didn't respond.
Light glanced out the window, trying not to lose himself in his worries, when something caught his eye.
His back went rigid as he instantly recognized the surrounding area. "I know where we are!"
Soichirou gave him a funny look. "Yes, we're close to the airport."
Light shook his head. "No, not that! There's something I need to get! Turn up here!"
"What? Why? We don't have the time -"
"Please, just do it!" begged Light.
Soichirou gave an explosive, annoyed sigh, but complied all the same. They continued on the road for about three minutes before Light told his father to stop the car.
"What are you doing? You're not going into those woods!" exploded his father.
"Dad! Trust me! This will only take a second. There's something I have to get," rushed out Light, already halfway out the car.
If only he had an apple.
EDITED: 7-3-09
A/N: Alright! More of the conspiracy is revealed . . kinda! YEAH!
Alright everybody! You know the drill! Why don't you SAY SOMETHING! Lol, I love to hear from you guys! It spurns me into writing faster!