Disclaimer: My name is King, I am terrified of shrimp and bees to the point of crying, and I do not own Death Note.
Devil's Trill
IV: Tartini
Happiness is a thing to be practiced, like the violin.
CH30
The Devil's Violin
A special court order written up to revoke L's bail was put together as soon as Teru Mikami had convinced the judge to give L bail in the first place, and copies of it were left at the judge's chamber, office, car, home bedroom and the bedroom of her neighbor, ready to be signed immediately.
The legal argument was that if there was anything at all that would tip the scale into the favor of L being proven to be even remotely dangerous, given the sensitivity and the circumstances of his case, his bail privileges were to be suspended until further notice, and L was to be transferred into a maximum-security prison immediately.
This court order was signed minutes after Light had unintentionally given L up.
"I… I-" Light's eyes were wide and his eyebrows quivered. He didn't have anything to say, though he tried to make this somehow better.
Light, making as huge and stupid of a mistake as this one was beyond imagining. He slipped up in the most idiotic possible circumstance and way, and—
He couldn't waste time on this, not now. He knew he only had minutes left with L. Minutes.
Days and weeks and months weren't enough to cover everything he wanted to say to L and just moments ago the sweet delusion that after everything, they had lifetimes together, and then suddenly, they had minutes.
"I- I am what?!" said L, also completely aware that their last minutes together were ticking away.
Light still held a hand over his mouth and shook his head. He allowed his teeth to sink into the palm of his hand to distract him from screaming out loud, screaming anything.
"I am so, so sorry…" he groaned through his hand.
He felt tears.
Warm, tiny, trailing down this face, as if he could still cry, like he cried when L forced himself on him, and now he cried because L was done for.
"…I screwed up."
Feelings.
"I am- L…?"
"Don't say anything! For God's sake Ryuzaki don't say anything it'll only make it worse!"
"But if I was the one who forced you into this terrible mess, why would you... lie for me?" L said, forgetting all about 'Raito-san' and honorifics and speech-patterns that were so inappropriate for the moment.
Light was getting hysterical.
"I said shut the hell up and don't say anything!!"
"Why would you lie for me?"
Not 'lie to me'.
'Lie for me'.
What a thing to say…
Before Light had any chance to even think of the best answer for this, something that would redeem him in any miniscule way, something that would smooth over his own mess, even just a little, the door of L's room was broken down and the bulky male nurses grabbed both of them and dragged them apart.
Dragged them apart again.
Light ended up screaming, demanding they read their rights to them, but nobody bothered, and with sharp metal bands around their wrists that dug into their skin like jagged barbwires, they were shoved into the hallway and to the elevators.
The real medical staff who were never hard to spot because they were significantly smaller than the guards in nurse outfits, stood against the white walls of the hospital hallway. They aligned perfectly and kept their distance from L and Light and watched the procession before them like witnesses behind the glass of the execution chamber.
Light struggled, shouted and tried to kick away, but somebody hit him in the back of the head almost hard enough for him to fall, instead it shut him up if only for a short time.
The elevators weren't far ahead, and then-
Then somebody's cellphone rang, and then everybody's cellphone rang, and identical tedious work-ringtones echoed and tangled together and created a pained shriek between their unorderly ringing.
Then a few of the radio receivers each of the guards had inconspicuously bulging from their pockets for weeks started talking in clicking static voices, and all but the guards holding L and Light down answered theirs.
"Holy fucking shit," was the first response to the radio page, and Light's body stiffened and he tried very hard to overhear just what the hell made a response that by all standards should have been 'yes sir' into a 'holy fucking shit'.
"Yes sir!"
All men but one hung up, their temporary team head Light figured, and he took his orders with a grimace on his face.
"Alright! The other freak came to save that one," the man said after he hung up, motioning to L, and L was punched in the face and shaken by the man who held him. He spat blood. "Probably saw this as his last chance. Keep them close! Move them to the vans; if we can't, move them to air support at sixteen hundred. That's twenty minutes. Tango just unloaded it the ambulance entrance. First floor. Fifteen Black USA-standard issue SWAT getups again. Consider them heavily armed; one of them, 'Mello', singlehandedly took out an entire armed police station in January. Shoot then ask questions. Move out!"
Amidst the pandemonium Light suddenly had an urge to laugh; he wasn't sure why.
Mello was here, Mello really did plan this out and put together a storm team, and they realized something bad was up, and they were really going to rescue Light and L from this mess, and everything was going to be okay.
It was going to be fine.
Mello was going to fix it.
Apparently he ended up laughing after all, because suddenly his cheekbone started burning and he spat blood from his mouth too.
There were seven policemen with them.
There were about forty total in the hospital.
Light quickly surveyed their situation, counting each man's weapons and the best way to get their weapons, but then he wasn't seeing anything, but it didn't mean that-
Then he heard a shout. And annoyed, sharp and loud sound he had never heard before, and it took him a moment to place a face on it. It was L. L shouted, and his low and angry voice didn't sound more than irritation, but sent a very threatening message with its sheer power.
Light had never heard such a thing.
And L didn't exactly appear to do anything less than cooperate; Light was the one shouting and kicking, and L went willingly and submitted to the cuffing and the dragging like soft wax.
Maybe L was L after all?
"I demand you get me my violin."
No.
And really, what a stupid thing to ask for when L about to be shipped off to a prison for something he didn't remember doing. L's request was touching almost, and Light clenched his fists.
L never held things for their sentimental value.
L, asking for his violin was as stupid as Light slipping up and exposing L.
But there they were.
Two of the men broke off from the group to evacuate the hospital staff from the floor.
The other five, with L and Light in tow, took the south stairs.
A few hours prior to the boys' arrest, Soichiro Yagami had parked his civilian car at the hospital parking and spent good twenty minutes clutching the steering wheel of the parked car and breathing. He had done this sixty-three times already, once every day since Matsuda had found his son at the back of L's BMW.
At first, he breathed and prepared himself for the news of his son never making it.
When Light made it, Soichiro tried to figure out what to say to him.
For the bigger chunk of his sixty-three times of staring at nothing at all and waiting for nothing in particular, Soichiro had just hoped his son would see him.
Light refused to see everyone.
Soichiro, Sachiko, Sayu, Matsuda, and even that piece of dirt that was suddenly became 'special' because of his 'amnesia' were all banned from as much as being allowed in Light proximity according to Light's own wishes the hospital had no choice but to respect.
This time around, friendly surveillance crew stationed on the second floor in the borrowed conference rooms of the Infections Diseases department were very reluctant and looked rather awkward when Soichiro asked to see his son on a tiny monitor at least. Usually, they encouraged him, and gave him support, out of pity really, which made Soichiro feel much older and more helpless than he actually was. But at least seeing his son made his months on temporary desk-work transfer bearable, so he played his part, looked sickly and vulnerable, and was allowed to watch and listen to Light verbally assault the doctors and the nurses and the police and anyone else who dared bothering him.
Matsuda, who accompanied Soichiro on this strangely fateful day, did his full idiot routine until Soichiro could squeeze past the crew geeks and scan the monitors for his son.
The first thing that went through his head was that Light had finally broken his boycott and started talking to the piece of trash.
Once the realization that it wasn't talking at allthat the boys on the monitor were doing, he froze in his spot and remained still for a moment or two before clapping a hand over his mouth to prevent the stomach bile form dripping out and ran – ran! for the nearest washroom.
He had then returned to his car and sat in it for good four hours this time, trying to sort things out in his mind and not burst in there and strange them both.
He had returned to the hospital to do precisely that, and as soon as he set his foot through the automatic glass doors, the hospital went on a lock-down, and gunfire broke out somewhere very far away.
"Ryuzaki- RYUZAKI! Let me the FUCK go!"
But his wrist, still tender only a day after it lost its cast, felt like millions of pins, smallest imaginable, stabbed it and smoldered the bone from the inside. L's clutch on it made every word he shouted echo down his arm and jerk his bones apart as L dragged him back, and Light resisted.
"We, Raito-san, WE are going back for my violin," L droned in a low monotone that was very unsettlingly calm.
"You're - fucking - insane! They'll catch us! They'll see us on fucking cameras!"
But the floor was deserted by then.
"Raito-san says I am insane? I hardly thinks so, as he had just murdered five police officers!"
"Only three!"
"Yes, and how did I know to kill the rest? Why have I done that? Perhaps Raito-san has forgotten, but I am amnesiac!" L stormed as he ran. "This may come as a surprise to Raito-san, but seeing as I do not remember doing this before, murder by reflex is making me feel an overwhelmingly guilty and regretful!"
"You don't sound the least bit regretful you crazy bastard! Now turn around!"
L turned and leaped over the broken-down door of his room, and Light's wrist felt broken all over again, and he cried in outrage.
L snatched his stupid violin and a jar of fucking gummy worms – gummy worms, when they were about to be caught and shot and killed for fuck's sake! and they ran back to the stairwell.
L, running while bent over, with a jar of gummy bears under one arm, and violin in the other looked ridiculous.
"Seriously?! Gummy bears, Ryuzaki? How fucking stupid are you?!"
"I am not stupid, I am amnesiac, I regret what I am an what I have done, and I am in shock, and Raito-san will be considerate of my condition!" said L as he hopped over a large, dead body, stepped on another and ignored the ones against the wall, and landed in a pool of blood - all done in clear remorse, and kept running down the stairs with bloody footprints trailing behind him until there was no more blood to print the stairs with.
"Stop!" said Light.
L did not, and Light grabbed him by the back collar of his paper dress. "In here!"
Light shoved him through the doors of the tenth floor, and L was about to run ahead again, but Light stopped him and pressed his back to the stairway door and shushed him, and to stop L from asking stupid questions, he showed L his hand with five fanned-out fingers.
He folded each one with every second that passed – his thumb at 'one', his index finger at 'two', he held down his pinkie at 'three', and folded the ring finger at 'four' until four seconds passed and what he ended up showing L was his middle finger.
L scoffed, then, the lights went out and Light shoved L back through the fire escape door into the back darkness of the stairwell, and they palmed around for the railing and climbed down almost half of the flight until the emergency light came on and it the visibility of the gray and empty concrete stairway was returned to them.
Light finally huffed very angrily and sat down between a step and the wall, and folded his arms across his chest.
L looked down at him.
" '"You. Are." A censoring pause, "...Insane. They'll .Catch. Us,'" L recited bored and disapproving without fluctuating his tone at all as he stared at Light.
"No, they won't. Matt switched the live feed on the stairs' cameras to a recording of it being empty. And nobody in their right mind would take these stairs unless they know we're here. Which, they don't. There're only recorders left, but they aren't live, they just record. So nobody knows we're here. So shut up and sit still for five minutes."
"Who is Matt-san, and how has Matt-san achieved this, and how does Raito-san know this?"
"Matt. He's your associate. He sent me some spam about Viagra. Told me about the whole thing. I told you. The zebra, yesterday?"
L said nothing and sat his violin next to himself and hugged his knees with one arm, away from Light.
"I don' understand that, at all," said Light, his voice suddenly dry. "That thing. You went to get it, you risked your life to get it. It's a physical thing, not an intangible ideal. You only care about ideals, mentalities and ownerships."
"Whatever value I see in my violin, Raito-san, a life is tangible, and by the mentality you seemed to have attached to me, if I see ideals, mentalities and ownerships in my violin that I like enough, obtaining and keeping it is more valuable than any physical thing."
Was it the violin at all they were talking about?
"And I have explained what I see in my violin already," L added after a short pause.
"That's dense, and sentimental. In the end, it's just a stupid violin. There are far more important things going on around it, like questions you should be asking me right about now. "
"What I do not know cannot harm me, and I would like to live out my remaining twenty minutes of life with a clear consciousness. Thank you for respecting that, Raito-san."
And then, he opened his jar of gummy worms, and started devouring them, viciously and quickly.
"By all means," said Light. "Enjoy yourself there."
"So Raifo-san, whaf awe we waiting for?" said L, ignoring him and signaling that the previous conversation was over.
"To be rescued."
"Afright," said L and made a swallow so mightily Light grimaced, "suppose everything Raito-san has said so far is true. Why Raito-san, who is supposedly Kira, and myself, who is supposedly L, would need rescuing at all? I am sure Raito-san and I could have managed to leave here without any help from Madd-san."
Light rolled his eyes and didn't bother correcting L or thinking too much about the state of L's mind. L did not ask any questions, did not doubt Light or what Light's plans seemed to be, did not object much.
If Light simply left him there, L would be a sitting duck, Light realized.
The responsibility to get them out of there was Light's, and Light would without a smallest doubt run and leave L behind to be caught, if only there was a bigger chance of rescuing L that way.
If it came down to it.
And the policemen who would see the stairwell recordings three minutes later would also know for sure Light could and would abandon L, and that is why it will be easy for them to catch L once they boys had no choice but to separate.
"Oh no, aww! Is your amnesiac ego bleeding after you realized just how high and mighty you're supposed to be to need saving?"
L shot him a seared look and continued stuffing his face with gummy worms and hugging his knees tighter.
When he finally figured out what to say to that, he made another mighty swallow and Light realized why L was always so good at sucking him off.
What a thing to think!
"My ego is not bleeding," said L in his last sulky attempt to save face, "Has Raito-san considered I might have a devious plan to escape also?"
"Does it involve gummy worms?" asked Light, intrigued. "Perhaps you are planning to knit a rope out of gummy worms that would reach all the way to the first floor, and climb down it?"
L turned away, ate the worms, and watched his violin.
And then...
A heavy, metallic slam.
Another one.
The metallic slamming of the doors under them began – systematic, searching – the squeaking of multiple military rubber boots against the concrete stairs, decreased by one after each door slammed shut: one masked member of Mello's team would break off and search their designated floor. They were getting closer, and L and Light jumped to their feet and made it to the firedoor entrance.
The last floor – the floor L and Light were hiding at had only one member left assigned to it: the team captain.
Mello's masked face just around the corner just enough to see Light shove L through the 10th floor door and wave Mello in, before disappearing behind the metal door of the 10th floor. Mello, masked and with a gun at hand was right behind them.
---
The Japanese police team, with Soichiro Yagami among the armed officers (because of the shortage of men to cover the area) came to the 10th floor one minute too late to catch L and Light and Mello reunite and run off together, because the elevator would not stop at the 10th floor and would skip over it at stop at either 9th or 11th.
They also had surveillance problems with the whole floor, which signified just where exactly their fugitives were.
Soichiro was the one who had found the clothes: Light's silk pajamas, folded hastily, and L's paper-dress just discarded aside.
"They changed clothes," Soichiro radioed out, "expect them to wear the SWAT suit with masks. Apprehend all suspects, repeat, and apprehend all suspects!"
The empty Cancer Ward floor was large, with many corners and turns and awkwardly-positioned rooms, and the police had no choice but to separate.
There were shots fired when Soichiro was too far away.
And when the NPA Chief ran towards the gunfire, he almost missed L, crawling on the floor, probably coming from under the table he was hiding under.
Masked and black-clad, it was unmistakably L, and Soichiro would have missed him if it wasn't for the shine of the polished orange violin that had hit Soichiro in the eye.
That shine was like a beacon.
L had seen him, too.
It happened all too fast, the rush to get him, the missed shot, the precise last-moment spin that got L to slip right though Soichiro's grasp, another missed shot...
L was unarmed, and handicapped if anything by his determined refusal to let go of his violin, but he weaseled around Soichiro like a sly rat.
In his time, the police chief dealt with karate punks with crowbars, but they were at least conventional and predictable. L dropped, kicked, and rolled, and flipped in the air, and if Capoeira had its weaknesses if done wrong, Soichiro supposed L had extensive training in it, and it was its awkwardness and unpredictability that made it so difficult. A whirl in the air, a drop, a kick with a leg Soichiro didn't even know was there, and his knees lost ground and he shot the wall L just jumped behind and ran as fast as his legs would carry him.
Soichiro got up and chased him, muttering curses under his damp mustache.
L made it to the fire escape, the one Soichiro and his men just came though, and the old officer already calculated his chances of shooting L down as he jumped the stairs; the stairwell was narrow enough. It wouldn't be hard.
And then L pushed the bar of the exit and with a sickening crash of the metal and bone and metal plating of the SWAT clothes, his whole body implanted itself into the door that did not open.
There was nowhere to go, and as L was about to get up, confused and disoriented, Soichiro kicked him down with his foot and pulled him up, pressed against the miraculously locked firedoor.
"Suspect apprehended!" Soichiro groaned into his radio before he had to drop it because he needed his had do hold down this… this… touching him suddenly made Soichrio sick.
The blood from Soichiro's pulse was drumming in his ears; his breath was short from the chase, but he kept this… this despicable, disgusting filth of the world of a man in a crushing headlock, and hell if he would let him loose, or even allow him to breathe.
If he would kill this filth by accidentally strangling him, to hell, so be it.
His anger was pushing him closer and closer to the state of red mist the longer he held L in a headlock, and the more the L struggled and tried to elbow him, the harder Soichiro squeezed the space between his shoulder and wrist where L's throat was not passing any air.
In their struggle, L's black locks started poking out from under his black SWAT mask, and somehow it made Soichiro disgusted for even holding him.
Then, in a blink of an eye, L pulled his feet up in the air and Soichiro lost his balance because he suddenly had to hold L suspended in the air.
Damn it-
L dropped them to the ground enough to let a leg fly out and sock Soichiro in the gut in another obscene Capoeira move, but while the bastard did this Soichiro released one hand and grabbed his gun.
L could have grabbed the gun.
It was self-sacrificial almost how he clutched his violin, not dropping it when he should have, and reached for the gun with the wrong hand, but it was too late.
A loud shriek that followed the shot was louder than the engine of a police helicopter that had just taken off from the roof.
Soichiro couldn't help but notice that when it came down to it, L's form, thrashing on the ground with a bleeding, shattered kneecap was moaning in pain was a pathetic sight.
It reminded him of a rat, caught in the mousetrap but not killed by it, instead shrieking and tossing and trying to crawl away.
With that kneecap busted, L would be lucky to be able to walk to his own execution.
This coward, coward, coward!
This pathetic, filthy coward that had devastated the world, destroyed families, raped his son, this scum-
L sounded pathetic, shrieking like this.
It couldn't have been more than a minute, and the worlds' greatest murderer still couldn't form words, just low groans and writhe on the ground.
L was finally done for.
And still, he would still not let go of his violin.
A/N: So…
So... yeah, that just happened.
THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT POINT TO REVIEW AT.
CRUCIAL POINT.
I NEED TO KNOW YOUR THOUGHS ON THIS.
This is NOT the last chapter. NOT NOT NOT NOT!!!
Thank you for reviewing SHOUTOUTS AND LOVE: ArtistOfLight, Anemone Kurosaki, Dark Green Poop,incandescentglow, ellan54, jarnee337, ., Elizabeth Marie Jones, Sanzo4ever, Warratah, Huehuetecti, Cakeat, Kari Twilight Mist, Hispanic Tenshi, Nooo!, Keyinei, ., mary, fan-fan31, Weirdest, Jetta, Sovoyita, Nardaviel, Rosa Mar, unheardcries, Altair718, Blind Justice, s3v3n-d34d1135 and DNLover02!!
Almost all of you said things about blackmail. XD Sorry..! But it gets the job of an update done, sooo… OTL
But still.
L just got royally screwed without any way to escape.
SO I NEED YOUR THOUGHTS.
What the hell is gonna happen next?!?! GUESS!!
YES reviews = YES chapter next Friday. D8
Really. For all the people who're about to cry about what just happened, talking about it helps. ):
CH31: S---…. Oh no you don't. Starts with an 's' though.
I can't announce the name of CH31 because it would asdf spoil it.
Review.
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