A/N: OK, first off, the fact that this is chapter 13 is completely coincidental. And it also sucks that I had to release this on V's "birthday." But, it's for you guys who faithfully read through this. After all, I had updated yesterday, and it's a Friday. Still...well, here it is (sighs).

Disclaimer: Don't own Death Note. Do own V.

Warning: This chapter is pretty heavy. Yes, that's a warning, because--well, I'll leave you to your reading.

Chapter 13: Vanished

Prior to searching for L, I had engaged in a brief conversation with Watari concerning my brother's whereabouts. For some reason, he had basically cross-examined the shinigami Rem and promptly disappeared. I was concerned over his well-being, curious as to why he would wander off like that. After informing Watari of the situation, I observed that he bestowed a kindly smile to me just as a grandfather would. Instinct told me at that moment that I didn't need to worry, only to placate my anxieties.

"He might be on the top floor, V," Watari hinted.

"I just hope that wherever he is, he's OK," I confessed, realizing that I was wringing my hands.

Shoving them into my hooded sweatshirt pockets, I awkwardly studied all the computer screens in this room, filled with data on the case. My fingers tapped against the soft cotton fabric of the insides of my pockets. Now, more than ever, I yearned for Kira's arrest, or, better yet, his death penalty that jurors would sentence him to. I just wanted this horrific case to conclude, so that I could stop worrying about my brother's survival or my own. Most of all, I would abhor this situation to spread worldwide, placing my best friends at risk. Everyone deserved safety and sanctuary from this bloodthirsty, despicable villain who had devised his innocent façade to perfection. He fooled almost everybody.

Watari eventually interrupted my rather frightened thoughts by assuring me, "You need not worry so much, Victoria. L says this case should be coming to an end in just a few short days."

A dry smile flittered across my lips before my somber countenance returned. "We all wish that more than anything, Watari. Mr. Yagami, Matsuda, Aizawa, Mogi, you, me, L, Light, and the whole world—we're all depending on this. And it will come to pass, I know it."

"Yes. I will see you this afternoon when I bring ice cream for you and L," the loyal surrogate grandfather to us promised.

"That would be great," I replied simply, turning to walk over to the lift. "Could we have Ben and Jerry's?"

"Of course."

Softly closing the door behind me, I set off for the apex of the high-rise, relying on Watari's suggestion. It seemed like forever until I was actually there.

L stood all alone, as though he had lost himself in a trance from which he refused to awaken. He was soaked to the skin, and I doubted the wind felt very pleasant. I knew I certainly wasn't enjoying it, especially when I noticed something different about him. Through his emotionless mask, I had a sense that he was depressed, probably resulting from a revelation he must have had. Otherwise, he would avoid unreasonably standing outside in a storm the way he did.

Slightly concerned, I waved to him before making my way through the strong gusts and torrential rains to approach him.

"I take it something is bothering you, big brother," I remarked as a greeting.

Appearing to have finished his profound musing for the moment, he turned toward me to respond. At least he wasn't totally despondent, which alleviated my nerves.

"Oh, V-chan, I see you've used your childhood nickname for me," he murmured monotonously, still not fully waking from his meditation. "You haven't used it in ages."

I grinned and patted him on the shoulder. "I felt that the occasion called for it."

"Interesting..."

My dark, fathomless eyes narrowed in suspicion. What had my brother thought about so intensely to compel him to act like a heavy weight had been placed on his shoulders?

I ambled around him to attempt diagnosing whatever condition had loomed over him. "Are you OK, L-kun? You haven't acted like this since the brawl between you and Light."

A wan smile graced my brother's lips, and I saw how weary he truly was, how much older he seemed than his twenty-five years. "Now you know how I feel when I become concerned over you. I guess this is what siblings do."

"We've only worried all our lives."

"True, true."

We mutely resolved to watch the storm together, its power impressing me as lightning flashed and thunder growled in a hostile manner. I almost felt like I needed to write a song about it, how haunting and melodious these two storm components behaved.

At that moment, bells, glorious bells that genuinely reminded me of my childhood, rang out the number of hours currently. L and I glanced at each other, and I could tell that we were thinking the exact, same thing. At that moment, I sensed that we telepathically clicked, more so than most siblings could claim, no matter how fervently.

"Remember when the church bells near Wammy's would ring every Sunday?" L asked quietly.

"I'll never forget them," I vowed, feeling in my heart the truth that had been executed. "I used to write all sorts of songs because of them. They were inspiration for me, the bells."

Another wry yet genuine smile passed through my brother's lips. "Sometimes...I wish I could have read them. But, I left shortly after your seventh birthday, and I had been so busy since that day."

I nodded, seeing within my mind the smaller version of me, weeping over the absence of the last tie to family I had at my disposal. It was a weak version of me that I preferred to forget prior to today. I remained silent as I journeyed through my thoughts and my memories. All the while, the bells echoed, their euphoria enchanting me. But, then, for a strange reason I couldn't comprehend at the time, a line from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Bells" established itself in my mind. Particularly, the fourth section of the poem resonated deep within me, a section that spoke of iron bells—death bells that sang melancholy, hopeless tunes.

This is what I deserved for hungrily perusing Poe during my early teens, I assumed bitterly. Funny, how the darkest items can come to you at times that seem brighter than that, so much more luminescent than what meets the eye. Even worse, the next few sentences I addressed to my brother sounded...like a parting farewell almost, though he stood beside me.

"No matter what the outcome of this case is, please remember this, L. You have been the best brother to me throughout my entire life. I could hardly eke it out without your support. And I have really seen why the orphans at Wammy's were so jealous of me. It was because they didn't have you for a brother."

Out of the corners of my eyes, I espied L allowing the largest, most honest smile I had seen all day from him. He then turned to respond to this almost sentimental speech of mine.

"V, you in turn have served as a caring, loving sister more and more with each passing year. We have seemingly gone through every obstacle life had to offer us. And now, we're here, trying to save the world. I'm glad you have helped me with this case."

"I am too, L."

I realized the inevitable when he mentioned the case. Light. I had to tell him about Light, regarding his behavior the past week. If hadn't known him for certain five months ago, I knew now. Before the thunderstorm had struck, I figured this out with conviction.

Light was Kira. No second-guessing existed for me now, but one factor still persisted.

I could clearly recall that L admitted that Light was the first real friend he had. But, would friends plot to kill other friends? Would they lie on a regular basis? Would they pretend constantly that they possessed kind souls? The obvious answer to all these questions was no. To hurt my brother by breaking the news to him, though, was what I opted to evade. I knew L better than anyone else, aware that a beautifully pure soul lay underneath the emotionless mask. I couldn't put him through unforgiving pain now out of all times. There was just no way!

Debating with myself whether to divulge my opinion or not, I began to say, "L, now that you mention the case, I just remembered what I need to tell you. I think I know one hundred percent who Kira, that revolting mastermind behind all those undeserved killings, is."

"Who do you think it is, V-chan?" he inquired, tilting his head slightly, droplets of rain falling from his soaked black hair.

Nervous from the building tension of this dramatic situation, I heaved a breath.

"All right, V," I lectured myself, "you can do this."

Of course, I said this silently, but aloud, "It's—"

Light emerged from the interior of the headquarters, his arms splayed out in front of him to balance himself against the roaring wind.

"Yes?" L endeavored to get the name out of me...to no avail.

"Never mind, I'm sorry," I sighed wearily before trudging off to grant L and Light a private conversation.

Due to my stupidly coy behavior, I lost ten minutes I could have spent keeping a sharper than average eye on the college student. Glaring at him on the route back to the inside of headquarters hardly counted, though I did detect a strange sight.

Light's eyes had glowed bright red for a millisecond before reverting to normal brown. That image I swore would taunt me for eternity. Later, all of us gathered around L sitting in front of the large computer screen. He seemed to contemplate over an idea, which lasted only a minute before he unveiled it to us.

"There's only one option I feel is needed to be executed," he calmly, quietly informed.

"You're not talking about testing the notebook are you?!?" Mr. Yagami asked, his eyes widening.

Aizawa immediately jumped into the discussion. "Ryuzaki, you surely can't be serious about this!"

"Yeah," Matsuda contributed rather furiously, "if you write in that notebook, you would have to do so every thirteen days or you'll die!"

"That rule could be fake, you know," I whispered to him, trying to cool down this heated conversation.

Only L, shockingly, raised his voice slightly. This was probably in part due to his passion in solving this case...even if it meant testing the Death Note.

"This is what I have to resort to in order to help solve this case!" he declared. "We need the evidence!"

Suddenly, every computer screen in the room stated that extensive amounts of data had been officially deleted.

"Watari?" L said our caregiver's name concernedly, though I glimpsed sadness in his normally emotionless orbs. The elderly man who had give us the gift of shelter in our early days had died. No one had to inform me of that fact.

"Watari...," I murmured, tears threatening to burn my eyes and the skin of my face.

"What's going on?!?" Matsuda urgently asked, his fear evident.

"I told Watari to delete all evidence in the event of an emergency," L replied in a much too placid manner, even for him. He seemed to have something else to say just seconds later.

"Everyone, the shiniga—"

And then, it happened...the most devastating blow of my life. The events that unfolded next seemed as though they originated from a horror movie that played before my eyes. I assured myself that this had to be a nightmare. I would awaken shortly.

The situation was all too real. L's spoon that he never dropped toppled from his hand.

"Not happening," I whispered to myself, "not happening!"

He fell from his chair, his eyes widened from the shock of a heart attack. These orbs, for a fraction of a second, drifted to me before resting on Light, whose eyes glowed red again.

Light caught my brother, who nearly crashed onto the hard tile floor.

It's all from a movie, a terrible B-movie with a low budget, I figured. My usually rational mind ran all over the place, frantically attempting to discern the real from the unreal. But, the smirk settled on Light's lips—I saw it when no one else on the force did. They freaked out and somehow lost their balances.

There was one thing I could do to prevent this college student—this terribly artful, powerful murderer—from killing me.

I pretended to faint, which I already felt like doing; the flabbergasted light-headedness had arrived to me full-force.

"Utako!" four men shouted my alias, though I abruptly couldn't remember which voice belonged to any of them.

L...hadn't died, right? He merely faked his death or whatever, too. Tomorrow, he would calmly sit in front of the computer with cake in tow. Assuring us that he had fully recovered, he would explain the next objective. And Watari—he would be there too to assist us in any way possible. Our caretaker had always done this for us, even as children, orphaned children who only requested a helping hand. I would joke with my brother after tomorrow's meeting.

Everything would be normal. It had to be perfectly normal!

"Utako?" someone asked from far, far away.

"Br—brother?" I was said to have whispered (according to Yagami-san later) before falling into deep black.

Infernal rays of sunlight ventured to penetrate themselves through a window into my bedroom the next morning. They impelled me to open my eyes, though I felt none too pleased from the prospect. I wondered why that sense persisted more annoyingly than usual. Stumbling to my window, I already noticed as I looked out people briskly walking about Tokyo with relentless determination. This presumably applied to the businessmen—but wait.

Yotsuba had consisted (or still have, I guessed) of businessmen, but one died...no, two. Higuchi had wound up being another Kira, obviously according to the arrest.

Afterwards, Rem, that haunting, eerie shinigami I refused to trust, came into the picture. She would merely observe us all day while speaking rather stoically to L.

Of course, my brother and I shared a conversation in the rain that somehow posed as foreboding in a sense. A foreshadowing had inadvertently been cast that day.

But, that was yesterday. This surely meant that the previous afternoon contained...

No! It had surely served as a dream, a horrific reverie that frightened me during the night.

"Oh my God, L!" I nearly panicked from the events of my positively certain nightmare as I abruptly slammed open the door.

Rushing out into the main room where we normally met to discuss information, I accidentally ran into Matsuda.

"Oh, Utako, you're up." He attempted to smile, though it almost seemed bleak, unlike his customary grins. "You know, we were all worried about you. In fact, we all thought that you got a heart attack, too."

"Too? What do you mean by 'too'?!?" I asked frantically, clutching him forcefully by the shoulders.

"Well, I guess you wouldn't remember it, since you acted like you were dizzy. Utako, I'm very sorry about this but...L's..."

"Yes," I pressed, my nerves fraying steadily by the second.

"He's gone, and so is Watari. I know you knew them well; that's why I hated breaking the news to you. But,"—and here, Matsuda sighed wearily—"I felt like I needed to tell you some time."

I felt as though the world should shatter now, come to an end, just so I could stop this terrible pain in my chest. Maybe my heart would mend itself then. But, it still remained incomprehensible to me.

How could L, my brother, my protector, my hero, die without so much as a goodbye to me first? How could he just fall off the face of the earth into oblivion? How could whoever served as the evil puppetmaster to fate pull the strings so awry?

He couldn't have vanished like he did! He may have concealed himself from ninety-nine point nine percent of the world, but he could hardly have severed ties with it. I would absolutely discover him in the computer room at least.

Losing placid, total control over my actions, I shoved Matsuda roughly aside as I shouted five octaves higher than usual, "He's not dead, Matsuda! What kind of sick, demented joke are you trying to pull?!? He's alive, I know it! Watari, too—they're both alive! Do you hear me, Matsuda?!?"

"But, I'm being serious here," the young cop replied, though faltered, considering my verging insanity confused as well as shocked him senseless.

"I'll prove you wrong," I told him in a low, husky voice, and I turned away from him to search for L.

I seemed to check every nook and cranny in the high-rise for familiar, unkempt black hair or remains of treats high in glucose. All the while, I called his name until my throat became hoarse with the effort. Finally, just as I was ready to give up, I glimpsed his laptop on the table in the main room where I had spoken to Matsuda an hour ago.

Of course! Why didn't I think to look for any signs of L's existence there?

But, a half-eaten doughnut along with a very lukewarm cup of coffee sat next to the laptop, all long since abandoned by their owner.

"He's only gone out to do...something," I tried assuring myself, but my tired voice cracked, and I could sense the distinct, hollow tone from my statement. Tentatively, I switched on L's laptop to find something to help; I didn't care what.

A concise number of words popped up on the screen instead of the familiar letter with the Cloister-Black font, otherwise known as my brother's symbol. These words basically displayed the last will (in a sense) and testament of him, which said that they proved that he had endeavored to solve this vital case. But, he didn't win.

I knew then that he was gone, just as Matsuda had attempted to convey to me. No sound effects resonated throughout the eerily quiet room, no dramatically melancholy music was orchestrated—this was real life, my life, not some fictional movie. Optimism defeated at last, I stumbled back to my room while the task force members reluctantly assembled.

"Hey, Utako, we have a meeting!" Matsuda called to me, but Aizawa gave him a stony glare.

"She wants to be alone right now at this time, so shut up! Can't you realize her friend is dead?!?"

The last thing I wanted out of any of them was their concern, which I had indeed heard through their voices as I made my way to the lift. As it ascended, I recollected the moment L left Wammy's House for good, all those many years ago. I had deemed him leaving me to reside in the orphanage a tragedy...but at least he had been alive. Was I so foolish as to not see that? All these years, I had taken L staying in this world for granted.

Now that he abandoned it too, how was I to go on with my life?

The ding of the elevator bell sounded as I finally reached my room to mourn the inevitable loss of my brother L. He was always so passionate regarding justice, his soul seeming to emit a pure, luminescent light. No one would have even bothered or dared to kill him, bringing darkness along with it. But, as I collapsed onto the bed, sobbing like I had fervently refused to for years, I realized that Light had been the harbinger of that darkness. He, that devil incarnate, had eliminated my brother like I had dreaded he would.

The despicable, two-faced, lying, back-stabbing—!

It was because of him that I believed what L said when he mentioned that that idiot was his first friend. I should have known that my brother lied to feign vulnerability. But, because of my stupidly caring heart, I registered these words differently. If I could have warned L somehow, his life wouldn't have been this tragically short.

Meditating upon this infuriated me in a terribly ironic manner. I lost my calm, nearly insane with grief, while I cursed violently. Every word I could bloody think of, I used carelessly and without any demure composure about it. I furiously hurled my pillows to vent my frustration, which increased by the second. How could Light Yagami—no, Kira—do this?!? How could he kill somebody's brother without remorse and only with a flourish of a pen?

These questions were the ones that enraged me, serving as extremely dry kindling to an already blazing fire.

Like the rain that had washed over us yesterday, tears drenched me, bitter tears that represented a sister in mourning over an unjust murder. Light had disregarded that fact, but he might not have even known that L and I were brother and sister. Even so, he nonetheless would have killed my brother. What angered me most was that I could have done something to forestall, if not prevent, his actions. He could have taken me instead, just not L.

Not L, not that good soul who brought me up to what I am today.

Panting after my tantrum, my maelstrom of sheer emotion, I surveyed the surroundings of this room. A potted plant had toppled over, the bedsheets were clearly untidy, and I possessed reddened eyes from my depression and madness. It was at this moment that I realized something that would fuel me later on in life. Though I hadn't the capability to stop L from dying, I vowed that I would avenge my brother's death. I believed strongly in the only rule of karma: what goes around comes around. Thus, with this awareness, I would ensure to put Kira to justice. Despite that not even the brilliant L could do this, I would for certain. This revolting, agonizing crime that Light Yagami had enacted would not go unpunished.

I, V Lawliet, would herald the end to Kira's crimes against humanity.

A/N: OK, I teared up while writing this thing. To also get the peak of the emotion in this chapter, I watched episode 25 (it's terrible in a painful way! T_T) the night before originally writing this. And, of course, that episode made me cry silently. It's just a really sad episode. I also had V be in disbelief, for I think that's the saddest part of death--not believing that your loved ones are gone. I hated killing off L, don't get me wrong. He's my favorite character, and it really made me depressed to kill him off. I remember not writing for three days after this chapter.

So, saying this, NO FOREST FIRES! You know, flaming, only tenfold--that's what I like to call them. I don't really like hate mail, and I don't think anybody else does either. I just couldn't get the creative juices flowing enough to save him...and you really can't have the Mello & Near arc without this event. That arc is important in my story, namely the Mello part of it. So, this is not over yet! But, sorry guys for this really long A/N and really sad chapter.