Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note nor any of the characters contained therein.
Summary: L is almost 17, investigating a serial murder case near Toronto University. Undercover as a student prodigy, L will have to find a balance between education, investigation, and (ye gods) a social life. Rated T for language/gore.
The Worst Feeling Ever
Chapter 5: Ripples
Tick tock, tick tock – baker's dozen, soon to double! So many flavors, tripping on my tongue . . . The puppy's pawn wavers in the dark, and the hound can barely summon his own bark! The fools, the fools, following their rules. They think they know – they think they see – they dare to think they can find me! Oh, but they've both been found, thanks to the hound, whose brazen acts become confession, so soon they'll have, in quick succession, the next few links in my seraphic chain.
Such a shame – I only wish this bliss was just beginning, but oh, the game is too good now to begin anew. The touch, the scent, the sound, the sight, the so so sweet conflation of flesh, too precious to waste for even a taste. They sense only the science – they do not yet see the art! Thirteen more strokes before they themselves take part.
The building up to what must be built, with more, much more, scarlet ink to be spilt. When the chain becomes a leash, a yoke, I wonder if he'll get the joke . . . More, and more, and more again, until it is everything, everything, everything – and then everything stops. A perfect construction of defiant destruction, the organ crescendo unending until the metronome ticks us to sleep.
L's week was not going well. After he had meticulously assembled his, thus far, second package of evidence to send to Watari and placed the call to have it picked up, he had perched on his bed as usual to view video feeds, snacking on brownies in the dark. He did remember bringing the package downstairs to hand to the courier before returning to his room. He had then resumed his vigil, and his snacking. It was only after he had finished his third brownie that he had noticed some unexpected sensations, at which point he had become very concerned that he might have been poisoned. The last thing he could recall doing that evening was shutting down his computer and sprinting down the hall to pound on Geoff's door.
He did not remember entering Geoff's room, expounding on his theory that Gellie might be a terrorist while pacing the floor, though apparently he had. He did not remember the long conversation in which Geoff explained what hash brownies were, why people would consume them, and how Gellie probably had meant him no harm, though it apparently had occurred. And he did not remember Geoff walking him back to his room as he confessed to having touched Gellie's breast – the first time he had done any such thing – and then giving Geoff the remaining few brownies to dispose of however he wished, though that was apparently what had happened. He did not think that Geoff's account of these events was false. He simply wished that it was.
L had eventually woken to discover that he had missed his Tuesday morning class for the second week in a row. Professor Rouchard was considerably less understanding when he'd spoken to her, admonishing him that such "antics" were not acceptable of a graduate student. He'd had to scramble to get to Professor Batista's class, chagrined to note that Guy had managed to snag L's usual seat at the front of the classroom. All day long, he'd felt out of sorts, as if a much smaller percentage of his brain was being used, and he had wondered if that was how most people functioned, shuddering to himself. To his added dismay, he'd been so exhausted after finishing supper that day that he'd gone right to bed afterwards, sleeping the whole night through, though he'd later consoled himself that it had at least been a dreamless sleep. He'd resumed his nightly vigils the next evening, but found them interrupted by inadvertent napping.
On his way to class on Friday, he had overheard students discussing the Butcher's latest drop, and he had cursed himself for not keeping proper watch, though the drop had occurred out of range of Watari's cameras. This time, the part had been a lung. For a change, it hadn't been a student or employee of the school or hospital who'd found it – some unfortunate woman pushing her baby in a stroller had spotted it, a bloody mess by the sidewalk near the hospital on Elizabeth Avenue. To L's annoyance, the students he'd overheard had seemed more concerned that the great Eraldo Coil hadn't made any follow-up announcements yet rather than the possibility that the Butcher might be escalating his activity to include a greater swath of the local population.
Now that it was Saturday and he had finished three of his papers, L was hopeful that he could get more work done on the case. Watari had emailed him the coded results of the testing that had been done on the blood drop evidence. Predictably, the blood itself hadn't matched any on record, but they at least had a sample to compare should it later be found elsewhere. According to the police records they'd hacked into, the blood in the container was different from that on the ground – O positive rather than O negative. Janine's bloody fingerprints from his shirt, interestingly, had brought up a reference to a sealed juvenile record. He looked forward to receiving a copy of the file itself, as promised by Watari, since no sealed file was truly off-limits to L, whether he was working directly with the police or not.
There was a tentative knock at his door, and L cringed. He was not in the mood to socialize, regretting the amount of time he'd already lost to the brownie incident, and considered ignoring it completely. As the knock came again, he decided it was already becoming too distracting to ignore completely, so he closed down his computer programs and stepped off the bed to answer the door.
"Yes?"
"Hi Ezekiel." Janine blinked up at him, one hand still raised as if ready to knock again. "I . . . just wanted to know if you wanted to maybe sit out with us. It's a beautiful day, and we've got a whole bunch of food, so we were going to go have a picnic on the quad – there's enough room on the blanket for –"
"I have an inordinate amount of work to finish." L cut her off, his tone flat. "I cannot afford to take a break now."
"Oh, I . . ."
"Told ya." Danielle's voice carried from the hallway. "Ezekiel's allergic to fun."
Janine sighed, hair swinging forward to frame her face as she stared at her toes. "It's OK – I understand. I just thought, well, everyone needs to eat, and I wanted to thank you for being there for me when I found . . . when I found the . . ."
"I was happy to help, and you have already thanked me." L tilted his head.
"Yeah, OK. See you." Janine turned on a heel and walked quickly down the hall toward the kitchen.
As L was swinging the door shut, he felt it meet resistance and turned to regard Danielle, who pushed it back open, glaring at him. "What the fuck is your problem?" she hissed.
"There is a belligerent blonde preventing me from closing my door." L kept his face blank.
Danielle huffed. "All you had to do was give her a little of your time – chill out, have some food, listen for awhile. That's it. She's been trying to be nice to you since you got here, and you've been a total jerk. I can't even tell if you're doing it on purpose. If you hadn't helped her out that day . . ." Danielle swallowed, blinking, "I wouldn't even be telling you any of this. But you made it seem like you actually cared about her, so here's the deal: either humor her by having lunch with us, or be consistent and avoid her completely, but stop jerking her around!"
"I am not jerking anything."
A moment of silence passed before laughter burst from Danielle's mouth. "Are you for real?"
L's mouth twisted as he glanced away, recalling the colloquialism he'd inadvertently referenced. "I am real enough," he ground out.
"Just make up your damn mind." Danielle removed her hand from the door, shaking her head, her face caught somewhere between a grin and a glare.
Rather loudly, L's stomach spoke for him, and he felt his cheeks flush as Danielle's eyebrow rose to its customary spot. L swallowed. "Perhaps . . . I will join you for a short time."
"Awesome. Don't make me regret it." Danielle walked away, leaving L to wonder why she would regret something he was already regretting in advance.
With a cursory glance at the state of his room, L pocketed his keys and exited, not even bothering with his sneakers. If I can gain Janine's full confidence, he thought, she may be willing to share information regarding her criminal experience that is not in the file, which will help me determine if she is indeed connected to the Butcher.
He'd managed to get out of playing Frisbee, but L was still held hostage to the social outing to which he'd agreed, and he perched on the edge of the blanket as if it was a cliff from which he longed to jump. To his surprise, Janine had brought along plenty of sweets, which he had happily devoured. She was certainly far less demanding than Danielle, who was now laughing in the distance, catching a thin disk of plastic and flipping it back to the boys playing with her on the grass. L wished he had already received Janine's sealed file to review, but consoled himself with the possibility of getting some details directly from her in the meantime. He knew that he would have to be subtle about it. Turning in place so that he was facing her again, pressing his heels into the corner of the blanket, he looked up and saw that she was staring at him.
"Um . . ."
"Yes, Janine?"
"I wasn't sure whether to tell you this or not, but . . ." Janine shifted from one hip to the other, her bent legs tucked to one side, propping herself up with one hand. A spare breeze caught her hair, sending it lazily sideways like a sienna flag. "You, um . . . you sit in that sort of defensive position with your knees up like you're trying to hide or something, but you don't keep your knees together, so . . . you're basically making everyone look at your crotch." The last part of her sentence ran together in a rapid flow as she looked away, cheeks pinking.
"I . . ." L looked down at himself and then back up at Janine as she intently watched the others playing. "I had not noticed that, but I do not think that I am making anyone do anything. Sitting in this manner increases my brain activity." Receiving no response, L wondered if Janine was still listening. "Have people been looking at my crotch?"
Janine's eyes darted to his and away again, gazing across the grass. "Uh yeah, I've seen some people look. I just . . . I thought I should tell you, in case that wasn't what you wanted to happen."
"Hm. I would not expect that to have an adverse effect on me, unless people viewing my crotch became offended to the point where they might do me harm. I have not noticed any extreme negative reactions to my presence, however, so I estimate that there is a less than 6% chance of danger to my person as a result of my sitting position." L saw a slight furrow in Janine's brow. "Is my crotch that offensive to you?"
"What? No!" Janine's face reddened as she glanced at him again. "I mean – I just . . . ugh." She covered her eyes with one hand. "Nevermind. I'm sorry I brought it – mentioned it. Sorry I mentioned it."
"You needn't be sorry – I am not offended. I did not mean to upset you."
An odd, strangled giggle escaped Janine's lips. "Oh, I'm not upset. It's just, well . . . sometimes when I'm trying to think, I look down, and if you're facing me . . ."
"Ah. Perhaps we should sit side-by-side, then, so as not to cause you distress." L shifted so that his knees were pointed away from her. "Is this better? I confess, manners are not my strong point."
"Yeah, I, uh, kinda noticed." Janine's eyes twinkled as they met his. "Honesty is more important than manners anyway, but, well, thanks."
L nodded, following her gaze to watch the Frisbee players leaping over green grass once more. Further across the field, there was a larger group playing volleyball, and he wondered why so many students would spend so much time on such non-productive activities. He decided it was time to focus.
"Has anything else unusual happened to you?"
"Um . . . unusual?"
"Yes. Anything like when you found the container of blood?"
Janine blanched. "No. Nothing . . . nothing like that." She stared at the blanket, tracing the lines in the plaid with one shaking finger. "I've been more careful since then."
"What about when you were younger?"
"Excuse me?"
L realized that he was being far less subtle than he had intended, but forged on. "Your behavior at the crime scene . . . it led me to believe that you had experienced some earlier trauma."
"Trauma . . ." Janine's brown eyes had a faraway look to them for a moment, sun glinting off the lenses of her cat-eye glasses, and then a steeliness he hadn't seen before came over them. "I don't want to talk about it, sorry."
"That is quite alright," L said, squashing his regret. "I was merely concerned for your well-being." Seeing that her expression was still closed to him, he decided to try an alternate approach, one that would, unfortunately, pay off later rather than sooner, if at all. "If you would like to talk to me about it sometime, you can, but I will not press you."
Janine nodded rapidly, still staring at the blanket. "OK."
L stood and stepped onto the grass, relishing the cool, springy feel of it on his toes. "I must get back to work now. Thank you very much for lunch, Janine."
Her head tilted, eyes seeming to pull reluctantly his way, her expression blank. "Thanks for joining us, Ezekiel. It was nice to see you more, um, relaxed."
L nodded, turning to leave, wondering why he wouldn't normally seem relaxed as he loped toward the dorm, already looking forward to the work ahead of him.
Finally, in the evening, the file had arrived. He could understand why she wouldn't want to talk about it. Her account of the event, transcribed when she was twelve, was harrowing enough. It was clear from the descriptions in the file that Janine's brother had saved her life, giving her the opportunity to escape before succumbing to the wounds inflicted on him by the group of men who had hemmed them in on their way back from the library. L thought that it was unlikely that the brother had known that she would see it all from where she'd hidden. L also thought that, while such a trauma would have affected her significantly, there was no guarantee that it would have induced her to become a murderer herself, at least not in the manner of the Butcher, though he conceded to himself that he could not rule it out. Given her behavior at the scene and since then, L thought, she is unlikely to be the culprit in this case. The trauma she experienced as a pre-teen only raises the likelihood from 1% to 3%.
As he shoved the file back into its hiding place under a loose floorboard inside his closet, he shoved certain memories of his own from his mind. L knew all too well what it was like to watch a loved one die, messily, and be unable to help them. I need to focus, he thought. If I miss something important, that arrogant clod Coil might actually solve the case first – and there are lives at stake, after all. L perched in his customary spot at the end of his bed, which was situated close enough to his desk that it precluded his need for a chair, simplifying things, though he missed being able to twirl.
An oddly regular buzzing noise began emitting from somewhere, disrupting L's train of thought, and he cocked his head. After a moment, eyes widening, he bent to reach under the bed. Phone now firmly in his two-fingered grasp, he pressed the button to answer it.
"I can only imagine that this must be an emergency," L intoned drily, confirming to himself that there was indeed a mechanism in his phone that allowed it to be turned on remotely.
"Indeed it is. I am sorry for contacting you in this manner, but . . . there has been a breach." Watari's intake of breath was audible over the connection. "A and B are missing."
L remained frozen in his crouch. "For how long?"
"The last verifiable sighting of them was on Wednesday evening. We thought we'd finally caught up to them today, but discovered that they had diverted our attention to the wrong country and had already crossed the Atlantic. The trail of misleading clues they left for us was quite effective – I'd be proud of them if it wasn't –"
"Why did you not tell me right away?"
"I did not want to trouble you unnecessarily. Also, we had fully expected to catch them."
"I see. And your assessment at this point?" L fought to keep his tone neutral.
"I have no direct evidence of this, of course, but I suspect that they are on their way to you. They have been talking animatedly about your current case since they began assisting us with the photo analysis."
"Are you in the same location as before?'
"I am."
"Have you determined an arrival time for them?"
"It's possible that they are already in Toronto, based on the surveillance timestamp from Heathrow, but they may have taken an indirect approach and still be en route. I know Montreal is lovely this time of year . . ."
"Did you consider that they might have flown to the US and then driven up?" L knew that he didn't have to point out the relatively lax security at the Canadian-US border any more than he had to mention Beyond's skill at hot-wiring cars.
"Yes, actually. Despite the rather obvious choice of flying into New York City, it would clearly give them the most options for flights as well as . . . vehicular opportunities. We've already started looking at all three airports and –"
"Actually, I recommend that you start looking in Rochester or Buffalo instead – they could easily have taken a short flight up to get closer to the border and possibly avoid more well-surveilled areas. It will save you time to start there, considering the long list of stolen vehicles you'd otherwise be facing for the New York City region."
"Mm – I had thought that the preponderance of thefts would make it more likely they'd steal one from the more metropolitan area."
"Odds are they took that into consideration when making their choice. In any event, checking Rochester and Buffalo first will be quicker – if I am right, you'll have found them much sooner, and if I am not, you won't have lost that much more time."
"Agreed – I'll get to it. Be prepared, however, for them to arrive, just to be safe."
"I will. I intend to turn them back around as quickly as possible. As much as they may yearn for field experience, they will draw too much attention to me and themselves – B especially. This must not be allowed to jeopardize the case."
"Roger and I will work as quickly as we can."
"I know. Thank you." L terminated the call. He kept his gaze on the video feeds, scrolling through methodically. He knew that he could not afford to let his anger get the better of him.
L wasn't sure which bothered him more, the fact that Watari and Roger had dropped the ball and let two of his potential successors slip away, or the fact that Aleister had gone along with such a pointless expedition. There was no doubt in L's mind that Beyond was the primary instigator in their departure. Beyond always seemed to find exactly the wrong thing to do and then do it, as if he valued the disruption more than the results.
Any time he was at Wammy House, L tended to avoid Beyond, even more than he avoided the other orphans. B had been brought there just over two months after A, and one day prior to L's twelfth birthday. The unruly boy had managed to irk L almost immediately by mimicking him mockingly to his face and later ruining his birthday cake. Beyond was always pushing – pushing, fittingly, beyond the point of reason. Running off with Aleister in tow was yet another example of how unstable and unsuitable he was to succeed L. Aleister was far more suited to the task, if occasionally oversensitive, but recent events had created a rift between him and L. In fact, L wasn't sure what he would say to either of them, other than "get out," and he hoped futilely that they would be intercepted before they could arrive.
Shaking his head in aggravation, L realized that he hadn't been paying full attention to the video feeds. I may as well take the time to shower now, L thought, shutting the program down. Perhaps I will find it easier to concentrate afterwards.
L walked to the closet and extracted a towel and his bottle of strawberry body wash. Keys in his pocket, he left his shoes behind and padded down the hall toward the bathroom. The simple act of cleaning himself always relaxed him. It almost made up for the fact that he rarely slept.
Author's Note: Fun fact: there are an absurdly large number of times in the Death Note anime (and to a lesser extent in the manga) where L's crotch or butt is directly in the "camera" – I was re-watching the anime for some reference points and was like "wow, what the . . ." I'm wondering if the creators did this intentionally as a sort of sly joke, but it inspired me to be a little silly by addressing that in this fic.
Since this is all occurring back before 9/11, the border security between the US and Canada was more relaxed then – they'd check your driver license, but not ask for a passport. Doubt there were any beatings of scifi authors just for getting out of their cars then (google Peter Watts if you're curious about THAT mess).
I'll try to update again soon. Things are taking a turn I wasn't quite expecting . . .
Thanks for reading!