Disclaimer: *gets kicked in the face*
A/N: Holy crap. Just holy crap. An earlyupdate. I think I might die of shock.
Fakes and Observations
In September, Quillish looked at the calendar and realized something. L had not caused any kind of trouble for a month, nor had he stopped being nice to Carla. There was something very, very wrong. So Quillish decided to observe the boy.
Quillish sat in the main playroom, watching the children play. Well, watching one particular child play. And what he was doing could actually be called "playing" without the sense of danger one usually felt from associating that word with that child. L was building a tower of blocks, and then knocking it down. Carla stood over him like an overprotective mother. Recently, the genius child and the young altruist had become inseparable. The other children still kept their distance from L, having learned their lesson many times over when they approached too close, but they did not shoot him nearly so many nervous glances. It was, over all, a completely different atmosphere than a month ago. Maybe L wasn't planning anything after all?
But then Quillish saw proof it was all fake. L flashed Carla a big, childish, beaming smile. The only expressions Quillish had ever seen on L's usually expressionless face before were confusion, disappointment, and a tiny smirk. L did not ever smile. But what was he planning?
The familiar knock on his door the next day brought the answer.
"Come in," said Quillish, and L entered the room.
"Quillish," said L, "what arrangements have you made to increase the amount of detective work in my training?"
"None, yet. You need a new go-between, remember?" Quillish answered.
"Ah, but I have one," said L, and the tiny smirk was back, "she's quite willing to start any time, and she did actually get a detective license before giving up on law enforcement."
And it clicked. That was why L was being nice. He needed Carla, and had realized that he wouldn't get her if he continued to act the way he usually did.
"You're going to use Carla as your surrogate." Quillish stated.
"Why not? She is the perfect candidate, and she dropped right into my hand." L shrugged.
"But…" Quillish wanted to object, Carla was just so young and sweet, and L was being so manipulative, but he couldn't think of a valid reason to tell L he couldn't use her.
"You can't give me a reason not to." L said. "Now, please increase the detective training part of my curriculum."
"Alright," said Quillish, in defeat, "but keep playing nice."
L turned around and left without another word, a curt nod his only assent.
And he did. He continued to be nice to Carla, and not to antagonize the other children. So Quillish increased the amount of detective training. And shortly before his sixth birthday, he was ready. Quillish expected the familiar knock on the door, and so he was surprised that when there was a knock, it wasn't L's.
"Come in," he said.
"Hello Mr. Wammy," said Carla, "I wanted to ask you something. Little L says that he wants to be a detective, and that you two discussed this, and that he's already trained, and that he wants me to be some sort of go-between so that he can do it now. Is this true?"
"Completely. L and I have been discussing this for over a year. He's trained, and certainly intelligent enough, he would make an exceptional detective." Quillish said.
"He's a little boy!" Carla almost shrieked. "How can he be a detective? He's too young, he couldn't handle law enforcement! It's too… too… serious!"
"Surely he supported his arguments with the accompanying facts when he told you about this," said Quillish, surprised that L had not covered this crucial detail.
"He told me some ridiculous lie about how he caught a rapist when he was four." Carla said.
"He was four and a half. That's how I discovered him; I heard a rumor about a detective prodigy." Quillish said.
"But there's no way he even knows what rape is!" Carla said, looking desperate.
"I assure you, he does." Quillish answered.
"Hm. May I be dismissed now, Mr. Wammy?" said Carla.
"Alright, Ms. Sorolin." Quillish said.
The day before L's sixth birthday, Carla registered as a private detective. L's birthday present was his first case.
Quillish decided to check on him after he'd missed dinner. There was a special birthday cake for him, and he hadn't shown up to eat it.
So Quillish knocked on the door. There was no answer. He could hear L shuffling around in the room, though, so he knocked again. No answer. Finally he just opened the door.
L was crouching in his usual position on the floor, lollipop in one hand, pencil in the other. Papers from the case file were scattered all around him, in haphazard piles which looked like they were organized in a way that the person organizing them could understand. He scribbled words on a few of the papers from time to time, and he mumbled constantly to himself in an unintelligible mixture of English and Japanese.
"L?" Quillish asked. The boy did not respond, look up, or even twitch to acknowledge that he had been spoken to. "Hello? L? Can you hear me?" he tried again, with a similar reaction from the boy. L shuffled a few of the papers, and continued his scribbling and mumbling. Quillish put a hand on the little boy's shoulder, and still nothing. So he decided to just sit and watch L work.
It was fascinating. L occasionally transferred one paper to another pile, and then shuffled through a completely separate pile to retrieve something else. All without stopping the constant stream of bilingual musings. It should have been mind-numbingly boring, but Quillish could tell that he was watching a genius in his element, and the energy L exuded was electrifying. It made Quillish want to go invent things, despite the fact that, other than for classes, he hadn't touched his workbench in years.
All of the sudden, late into the night, L blinked. He pulled several different papers out of different piles, scribbled something illegible across them, and then began to put the papers back into a pile. He put them back into the folder from which they apparently came, and stood up.
"How're you doing, L," asked Quillish, suppressing a yawn.
"To utilize an ancient, but still appropriate, cliché, eureka." L replied in a voice that suggested he was only half there. The daydreaming expression on his face only supported this theory.
"You made a breakthrough?" asked Quillish.
"I solved the case. It's a cold police case, so the evidence is all there; it's just that no one could make the connections. I did that for them." L said, still seemingly not quite there.
"Well, Carla can bring it back to the police tomorrow. In the meantime, you need to go to bed." Quillish said.
"Yes," said L, "Good night, Quillish."
So Quillish left, pleased that L's talents could be used for something… good.
A/N: Well, that was a warm and fuzzy chapter, with way too much of my OC. Don't worry, guys, it'll go back to humorously sort-of-dark next time. And have less Carla. Probably.