notes/warnings
+ pairings: now with light implied matsuda/wedy.
+ warnings for matt being politically incorrect.
+ here be foreshadowing.
+ this chapter brought to you by google maps!
Flame
Three days later, a fishing boat in Huntley goes up in smoke and sinks. There's no way to tell if it's arson or accident.
M is quiet, even more so than usual, still not recovered from the burning cross. N and R are simultaneously twitchy and apparently craving affection, and L unsubtly orders them to move to a more soundproof bedroom after the first night. Their hotel is in Aberdeen itself and huge. An entire two floors just for them.
Their reputation precedes them, apparently.
"Abe Malcolm, convicted kidnapper, escaped from jail yesterday. Auckland, New Zealand. The police can't find any trace of him."
"No."
"You're honestly not concerned for the kids in the area?" Rae asks him blackly. "He was last sighted two blocks from a kindergarten, and you're just going to do nothing?"
"I am neither in Auckland, nor am I the police," L reasons calmly.
"And of course, you won't ever have to talk to the mother of the next victim, when it inevitably happens again. Which is good, because how would you ever tell her you had the chance to stop Malcolm and didn't?"
The Shinigami has done nothing but quote names and crimes at him for the past forty-nine hours. Not random offences, either, but serious ones. The sort of crimes that L would love to be able to stop dead, then and there, leaving the world a safer place.
God, it's good. He'll give it that. It's good.
But he still won't.
"If you want to make yourself useful, you can help with the Arcy case," he says, valiantly not rolling his eyes at the way Matsuda's stupid name has stuck.
There's no pattern. It almost seems as if a random location and a random structure are selected, with the only guidelines being the general area. Last time it was close to London, this time near the Aberdeenshire region.
"I can't help you with the Arcy case," Rae tells him with distaste. "Until you find out the identity of the perpetrator, my notebook is useless to you."
"You yourself could still help," L says. "There can never be too many minds on a case. Hmm."
He sucks on his fingertips, staring at the computer screen.
"If we presume there's always a series of fires preceding a murder, then surely the fires have some purpose. A declaration, a cry for help, a hint about what's going to happen. It can't be random, surely."
"How do you know it's not a simple thing?" Rae asks. "A few fires in the same general region, then kill someone in that region, then move on?"
"Perhaps," L says, considering the possibility. "No. No, Arcy is overconfident. He's got something to say. He commits crimes in places he could easily be caught. And then there's the number two. It's got to mean something, and by something, I don't just mean 'I'm a crazy arsonist'."
Rae doesn't answer. It has apparently returned to the task of fanatically scouring the news, searching for someone who might tempt L. To be honest, he's surprised it even commented on the arson case at all.
"Lisa Duffield. A prison security guard who was found to be torturing and humiliating the inmates. High pressure hosing, force-feeding, mutilation, the lot. An abuse of power, if I ever saw one."
"Just like using the death note," L says agreeably, and takes a bite of cake.
"I have a theory," N tells him the next day. L raises his chin at her. He's always interested in exactly how quickly his team can catch up with him.
"Tell me."
She blows her fringe out of her eyes.
"Ricketts had a fairly popular following, and was held up as the most intelligent man in England by more than a few reputable organisations, right?"
"That certainly seems to be the case," L agrees.
"What if the number two isn't intended to be a numeral, but rather….a placeholder?"
L gives her a tiny smile, pleased. N catches up quickly.
"So not two, but...second," M says from the balcony, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He's on his nineteenth smoke break of the morning.
"I had considered that possibility myself," L tells them. "It certainly has merit. 'Ricketts isn't the best, I'm the best. I'll show you. I can outsmart him. I can kill him. He's only second. I'm first.' I wonder if that's what Arcy was thinking?"
"If that is the case, then we're looking for a deranged genius," R surmises. "Someone who's probably also well-known, but not considered to be quite as good as Karl Ricketts by the general public."
There's a pause.
"The natural assumption would be Abigail McWhirter, wouldn't it?" T asks them. "I mean, there's a well documented rivalry between the two of them, ever since that newspaper described Ricketts as having the highest intellect in the United Kingdom three years ago."
Rae comes back from wherever it's been and crowds over L to stare at his computer monitor. L watches it with interest. Despite its attitude yesterday, it seems to be almost curious about their present case.
Seems to be.
"Yes," L replies, pouring himself some tea. "I agree. The media does like to make them sound as if they are competing."
"There's a big jump from rivalry to murder," N muses, cradling her own mug in both hands. "Have we really got grounds for suspecting this woman?"
"We can suspect whoever we choose to," L reminds her. "What we need for an arrest, however, is evidence. And I do agree, there is little evidence at this stage implicating McWhirter, and all of it is circumstantial."
"She lives in Scotland, yes?" R asks.
"She works in Schoolhill," M clarifies in his usual deadpan. "She's a zoologist. Her life's work has been dedicated to making computerised and robotic animal models to be used for research. She's a passionate animal rights activist, according to her blog."
"I would like to speak with her," L says. "She is our prime suspect at present, however tenuously. I think I will go and see her today. Of course, she may not be willing to tell us anything, but that, in itself, will tell us something."
He gets up from his chair and stretches, before hitting the intercom button.
"Watari?"
"Yes, L?" Watari's voice crackles through the speaker.
"Get me a car, please. Something unobtrusive. We've got work to do."
When L wants to be taken seriously, he takes N. When he wants to appear perfectly normal, he takes R. When he wants to scare the living daylights out of someone, he takes M.
But when he wants someone to presume he's harmless, he takes T.
"I haven't been to a university since I was seventeen!" he says, excitedly, when they arrive.
"We're not here to enjoy ourselves, remember?" L asks, slamming the door. "We need to speak with Abigail, and I need you to be at the top of your form."
T fidgets with the keys.
"I don't really have a form," he says sadly. "I'm just ordinary, a little reckless, and too hyperactive."
He's clearly quoting something R has said to him in the past.
"That is your form," L tells him bluntly. "And it's very frequently useful."
T gapes at him.
"I...oh. Really? I'm useful?"
"Come on, we're going to Genie's cafe," L says, before the situation becomes unduly awkward.
"A cafe? I thought we were going to Abigail's office?" T slants a look at L. "Or is this about cake?"
L sighs. He's not even particularly fond of cake, emotionally. He just runs on it, the way a car runs on petrol.
It's not an addiction. Really, now.
"Professor McWhirter frequents this particular cafe," he tells T. "If she's as popular as she's reported to be, then people will be talking about her. I want to hear what they have to say. We'll stay for two hours, then pay her a visit during her tea break at four o'clock."
"Good thinking," T says brightly, as if L needs to be told.
The cafe is busy, and they have to squeeze all the way to the back of the room just for a place to sit. The table is low, and L has to push his chair out to be able to squat comfortably. Matsuda kicks his legs out and grins.
"I'll have black tea with eight sugars," L says immediately. "And two slices of chocolate cake."
M's not here. He can have chocolate.
"Need refueling, huh?"
L pushes a wad of notes at him.
"Get anything you want for yourself, too."
T needs to be the one mingling. People might be uncomfortable around a young man with a hunch and creepy black eyes, but they won't be bothered by the bouncing, smiling idiot that is T. He'll hear things, if there's anything to hear.
"I'm pretty certain that blue Yaris was following you on the highway," Rae says, as soon as he's gone.
"Yes, I had spotted that, too," L tells it quietly.
"This is bizarre," it says, after a pause. "The only thing I can conclude is that Arcy must be insane. Even I can't work out what he wants, and I'm smarter than you. Mind you, you'd have to be pretty stupid to be certain that a stalker is irrelevant."
L stares up at it thoughtfully.
"You've been trying to work this case out, have you? How unusual. Are you taking an interest in the human world, now?"
The Shinigami rolls its red eyes and goes back to hovering in the corner, ignoring him.
Matsuda comes back with their food and drinks. He's ordered himself some sort of ridiculously large sandwich containing cheese, meat, and what appears to be an entire tomato. His drink is tall and frothy, and contains a paper umbrella. Typical.
Never ever change, L thinks, suddenly, and frowns. Sentimentality does no one any good, after all. He can't afford to get too set in his ways, too at home with his little group. He works alone, needs to always be able to work alone.
One day, there will be a case that will only be compromised if the others are involved. And when that day comes, he'll need to be prepared dissolve his little L squad and go on alone.
Well, alone with the demon that follows him everywhere. Rae is hardly company. In fact, L considers that it's seventy-six percent likely that the presence of the Shinigami has influenced him to spend more time with the others, just for a distraction from its grating voice, and its awful eyes.
Not that it's affecting him. He can handle it.
And he needs to remind himself that even in the unlikely event that such a case never comes, N and R will eventually want to settle down and have a moderately normal life, and M will probably get himself killed or snap and turn evil, and that will be the end of it, anyway.
He's not sure about T, or what T wants from life. He thinks even T doesn't know, yet.
"Evening boys," a familiar voice drawls, and L snaps out of his reverie.
A tall woman, dressed sharply in a skirt suit and sunglasses, and wearing what L knows is a strawberry-blonde wig, smiles down at them.
"I was wondering when you were going to stop tailing us from a distance," L tells her calmly. "Wedy."
Matsuda blinks.
"Wedy?" he sputters, eyes flying from her to L. "But she's...L, should we arrest her?"
"Only if she's stupid enough to visit me when I'm working with the police," L informs him. He glances at her. "I trust you have some information for me?"
She doesn't answer him straight away. She's still staring at Matsud...at T.
"Well, didn't you get cute since I last saw you," she says thoughtfully. T flushes and stares resolutely at the floor.
Wedy laughs to herself, and drops gracefully into the spare chair.
"Of course I have something for you, honey," she says. "I wouldn't dare show my face, otherwise."
"Then I would suggest you say your piece and leave. You don't want to draw too much attention, surely."
The chocolate cake is really good. He may need to buy a box of it to take back to London. Maybe he can tell M its blackberry, or something.
"You can be very boring sometimes," Wedy informs him.
"Yes. I pride myself on it."
"Very well. I went to London a week ago on other business. Shortly after that, I realised I was being followed."
"I imagine they didn't get very far," L comments. He keeps contact with Wedy because she's incredibly intuitive. She may have even saved his life once.
"Well, they certainly weren't an amateur," she elaborates. "It took me a good few hours before I was certain of her intentions."
T picks up his fork, apparently recovered enough from his earlier embarrassment to try eating again. He's the only person L knows who uses utensils to eat a sandwich. Wedy watches him with interest, and T manages to miss his mouth completely and dump the whole forkful in his lap.
"Wedy, please try and focus," L says lightly.
"Right. So this woman eventually approaches me, after I make it obvious I know she's there. Turns out she knows my name and what I do for a living, neither of which are huge secrets, but still. What she wants to know, though, is information about L."
"Oh?"
Wedy lowers her voice.
"She tells me she has information that I'm in contact with L, and she wants to know if I've met him personally, where he lives, what cases he's working on right now. Keeps calling him the 'best detective in the world'. Of course, I told her I didn't know what she was talking about and that she was misinformed. She left, not long after that."
"Interesting," L whispers. "I wonder what she was looking for?"
"Seemed to be a huge fan," Wedy says, taking a drink of T's smoothie. "Ugh, what's in this? It's disgusting?"
"Sorry?" Mats...T manages, cowering.
"Did you get her name?"
"Identified herself only as Ellen," Wedy tells him. "Not older than her thirties, but I can't tell you much about how she looked, because she was wearing sunglasses, and had a scarf on over her head. She had a mole on the left corner of her upper lip. Lithe build. About five foot five tall total, but I don't know what sort of shoes she had on."
L rubs a hand over his mouth, considering this.
"I was aware there were fans, I suppose," he says softly.
He's disappointed. She usually comes to him with more important information than this. L wonders absently if she's lonely, too. Or maybe she's just losing her touch.
"Could be nothing," Wedy agrees. "But it struck me as just strange enough. She was obviously a pretty talented spy in her own right. Additionally, it's been a while since I've had the pleasure of your company."
She stands up in a fluid movement, and flashes a smile at him.
"Yes, you probably ought to leave now," L agrees calmly. "Thank you for the things you said, I'll keep them in mind."
She must have been really bothered by the Ellen woman, L decides. It's true that his persona isn't a secret to the world, but very few people know who is connected to him, and even fewer would try and get close to him. It's fairly common knowledge that L is suspicious of people trying to get close to L.
So, a stupid fan, then. Or at least, an ignorant one.
Wedy salutes him, almost mockingly.
"I can tell you're not impressed, but I call it as I see it. Strange things are going on, honey. Take care of yourself"
"I always take care of myself."
"Obviously not, or you wouldn't be here," she says with a smirk, and turns to walk away.
"Goodbye!" Matsuda yells frantically, dragging his head back up off the table.
Wedy doesn't even look back.
"Have you recovered yet?" L asks as they climb the second set of stairs that lead to McWhirter's office.
"From what?" T asks, smiling nervously.
"From Wedy."
He's going to have to ask her not to hit on his more vulnerable members of staff in the middle of missions. Despite what M might say, T in his normal state is not as useless as T when he's grossly distracted and unnerved. L would have preferred the former.
He didn't overhear anything of note in the cafe. All mentions of Abigail had been general, and mostly admiring. He'd caught a few complaints from people who were obviously her employees about how high-maintenance she was, and one student bragging to another about getting a job with her next year. Nothing incriminating. Yet.
"She's...kind of friendly, isn't she?"
"Not usually," L tells him, which seems to cause him to shake even more.
"What a useful young man," Rae says sardonically. "You have totally proved to me how he is working hard for you, and not in any way trying to cause you to fail."
"Ah."
L blows his fringe out of his eyes, irritated.
"Do you remember who you're supposed to be?" he asks.
T thinks.
"Yes? Am I really going to pass for a prospective student? I'm over thirty."
"One, you don't really look it, and two, there are plenty of mature-age students studying these days," L tells him. "It shouldn't matter."
"Right. Hold on, what were our names, again?"
"You are David Slip. I am Lionel Finch."
"David. Lionel. Right. Hey, Lionel's not your real name, is it?"
L ignores that last remark.
"I always wondered what the story was behind your name," Rae says curiously. "Were your parents just lazy, or were they actually mad?"
L ignores that one, too.
"So, should I try to sound Scottish?"
"Please don't."
They've arrived on the top floor. McWhirter's office is predictably huge. Both doors are closed, but the light is clearly on inside. L raps limply on the polished wood with one hand.
"Come in," calls a harassed-sounding voice, and he pushes the door aside to reveal a luxurious-looking room, with a middle-aged woman sitting behind an expensive desk, staring at them.
Based on some general profiling, there's a ninety-two percent chance she'll be happy to entertain interested, enthusiastic, intelligent prospective students. Between the two of them, he and T are all three.
"Professor McWhirter? I'm David, and this is Lionel. We're huge admirers of your work," T gushes, right on cue.
Abigail sighs, her grey braid flopping against her shoulder.
"I don't really have time to see anyone right now," she says, sounding a little stressed. "I'm sorry. Two of my macaques are ill, and the vet's coming to look at them in ten minutes."
Aside from her computer-substitute work, McWhirter keeps an elaborate menagerie in the next building. They took a look at it on the way here. Each enclosure has been specifically designed to provide for every single physical, mental, and emotional need of the animals. Sound, lighting, terrain, artificial sky, robotic mates, elaborate foraging mechanisms, everything. L was more than a little impressed by the sheer attention to detail.
"I'm sorry to hear that," he says, as compassionately as he can manage.
"Oh, that's all right," T says brightly. "We can come down with you, if you'd like. I love macaques."
L is eighty-eight point two percent certain he doesn't actually know what macaques are. In fact, there's at least a three percent chance T thinks they're either a muscial instrument or a breakfast cereal.
Abigail regards them both with open distrust.
"No, thank you," she says sternly. "Any students wishing to meet with me need to make an appointment with the faculty reception. It's two floors down. Also, if you were attempting to make a good impression, I'd suggest not turning up unannounced, and actually grooming yourselves beforehand. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have things to do."
And she gets up and turns her back to them, grabbing a few books off the shelf behind her, probably at random.
"Plan two it is," L says under his breath.
"I thought so," Rae says from somewhere behind him.
"Okay," T whispers. He grabs his wallet, and opens it to show his other ID, the one that says Federal Police.
"I apologise for deceiving you," he says, thankfully sounding calm and relatively mature. "We needed to be sure you were really Abigail McWhirter."
Abigail pauses and raises her eyebrows at both of them. L pulls his own fake ID from his shirtsleeve.
"Officers? I can guess what this is about," she says unhappily. "What do you want?"
"We're making enquiries about the death of Karl Ricketts," L begins.
"And you think I did it?" she asks curtly. "Of course. You're not the first. I'd love to know who actually reported me, though. I thought it would stop with the silly rumours."
"Why would you say that?" L says thoughtfully. "Do we have reason to consider you are a suspect in Ricketts' murder?"
"Of course not," McWhirter says bitterly. "I despise cruelty in all forms. Why do you think I do what I do?"
"But it's true that you stand to benefit from Ricketts' death, in status, if nothing else," L tells her. "I suppose that's why the rumours started?"
Abigail tilts her head in his direction.
"For all you imply I'm not a suspect, this is definitely an investigation. I know when someone is sussing me out."
L smiles at the lingo.
"Of course, maybe you don't feel that you stand to benefit from his murder at all. Perhaps you believe that you were always better than Ricketts. That he was always second to you?"
Abigail glares at him, clearly insulted.
"Don't you dare," she breathes. "I know the circumstances surrounding his death well enough to know what you're implying. Ricketts was the same age as my son, and someone set him on fire and left him to die. So arrest me, if you're going to arrest me, or else I'll press some charges of my own. Harassment, in fact."
"Er," Matsuda says quietly. "Er, that's not why -"
"Do either of you have anything of consequence to say?" she asks. "I take it if you had a warrant you'd have shown it to me by now."
L gives her a crooked grin.
"You realise we could arrest you for obstructing this investigation?"
"My macaques are suffering," she informs him darkly. "If a court would place your stupid and unnecessary investigation before their lives, then I don't think I much care for our justice system."
"You and me both," Rae says in a derogatory sort of voice.
"Fair enough," L tells her. "You may go."
They leave, after breaking back into Abigail's office and downloading all of her files from her computer.
"Do you think she did it?" T asks inanely.
That's never the right question. The right question is how much does he think she did it.
"I'm about eight percent certain," he tells T. "She is very convincingly indignant. And there's no record of her travelling anywhere in the past month, according to her data log she's been right here, working."
"But she's brilliant, so we can expect that she wouldn't leave a trace, anyway," T asks.
"I don't think it's her," Rae says, close to L's ear.
L files that away for future reference. The heir of the Shinigami king thinks she's innocent. Does that hold any weight at all?
He's not sure.
"Everyone leaves traces, with everything they do," L tells T resolutely. "It's only a matter of how obvious that trace is."
"Even...?"
"You caught him, didn't you?"
"Yes, but-"
"Then it's settled," he says with finality. "Don't worry about it. If Abigail is responsible, I'll find out, and we'll arrest her."
"That simple, huh?"
"Yes."
For the past sixteen years, ever since he started as a detective, he's lost exactly once. Once. Too many times.
He's never going to live it down. Everyone knows. It drives him to do better, to work harder, to let it never happen again. It makes him a better sleuth. It drives him insane, to distraction, to despair. Kira hangs over him all the time, a shadow across his face, a blemish on his record.
Failure, his inner Near-voice reminds him. You lost. He won.
L grips the steering wheel tighter than is strictly necessary for safe driving.
Thank god Light's in fucking hell.
There's nothing incriminating in the files on Abigail's computer, but M hacks through all of them anyway.
Then there are three more fires over the next four days, two of them just ten hours apart. A library in Alford, burned all the way to the ground. A distillery in Keith made completely unusable. Then a cottage in Farmtown. Firefighters managed to save most of it.
"They're all so close together," M murmurs. He's got the coordinates of the first six fires and the last four fires printed in front of him, trying to decipher if there's any sort of code.
"Yes, so they're clearly a warning that the second death will be in this area," N agrees.
"If there is a second death," L tells her. "I agree that right now, it's looking like a pattern. Even more so since they found that lighter in the fishing boat wreckage."
"If that's true, and this is a pattern, then the next person will be killed after the next fire," T says, demonstrating his profound understanding of basic maths.
They've listened to M's best approximation of the real voice of the caller, and it's definitely a woman, northern Irish accent, slight lisp.
"What, can't you deduce what her face looks like from the recording?" Rae had asked him in mock-shock. "What kind of a detective are you?"
The Shinigami seems to have resorted to sarcasm, snide comments, and general pettiness. L gets the distinct impression it's considering its options, and biding its time. He doesn't doubt there will be future onslaughts of emotional torment, if not physical torture.
Intriguing.
It follows L mostly silently, giant knife-winged demon, the stuff of nightmares. L has no idea what it's thinking, most of the time.
But right now, it seems to be thinking about...Arcy.
"Who do we think the next victim is going to be?" T asks, snapping him back to here and now.
"I imagine we've all got our own theories," L says. "If Abigail is not Arcy, then she's probably in danger."
"There's a chance that number two could have been a reference to the next victim, if we're dealing with a serial killer," R agrees. "We've killed number one, the next one will be number two?"
"The National Police have already offered her protection," N says, worriedly. "She turned it down."
"Sounds like she's guilty, to me," M says. "Otherwise she'd be worried."
"Or just stubborn," N reminds him. "Never presume that highly successful people will be sensible regarding their own safety."
"I'll say," R agrees, looking right at L.
"Even if we're sure it's here, we still don't know how and where," L reminds them.
"Burn her on a cross in the middle of a church, I guess," T says. "If it really is a pattern."
"It wouldn't hurt to put surveillance in all of the major churches in the Aberdeenshire area," R agrees.
"Yes," L says. "I had that done yesterday. Watari is monitoring the feed. However, Abigail is Protestant, not atheist. If she is targeted, then there is far less likely to be a religious component to the motive."
"At which point you should be worried, right?" R asks sternly. "I mean, you told us you were safe because Ricketts was burned as an atheist, not a genius. The entire police force knows you're working on this case. I wouldn't put it past Arcy to have you lined up as a victim."
"I would like to see him try," L says in a satisfied sort of voice. "It's been a while since anyone directly attempted to murder me. It would be difficult, since no one knows my name, or my face. And our location here is strictly classified information. Even the head of police thinks we're staying at a hotel two streets over."
"If only we could predict the next place they're gonna burn something," M says calmly. "We might be able to just catch them in the act and be done with it."
L stares at his computer screen, a jumble of the names of the various scenes of crime. There's no connection. Big cities, small towns. Vehicles, homes, famous buildings, trees. Why?
"This is obviously a cry for attention," Rae says, presumably to itself.
L scans the room carefully. The others are all busy with their own tasks.
"What attention, I wonder?" he says, barely a whisper.
"You okay, L?" R asks. "You're talking to yourself."
"Vocalising evidence is a valid way of processing it," L tells him calmly.
"I don't know," Rae says. "But why else go to all that trouble just to burn a cross into the ground?"
L opens up a word document and types.
I'm more interested in the six previous fires, he types.
"That's what I meant," the Shinigami clarifies. "If you plot the locations of the first six fires on a map, you can draw a crucifix connecting all the dots. But why? Why take the time to map it out?"
L brings up a map of London with two strokes of his keyboard, and stares.
"Of course," he says slowly. "You're right."
Interesting. Why did you notice, Rae? What are you up to?
"Could you stop talking to yourself now?" N asks. "It's getting distracting, L."
L doesn't actually mind showers. They're warm, and they often smell like sweets, and he feels good when he's finished with them. It just seems like so much effort to actually take all his clothes off, get wet, get dried off again, and put clean clothes on. Effort that he'd prefer to spend on more important ventures, like deciphering Arcy's latest code. But both Watari and N insisted, so he concludes he must have begun to smell fairly offensive.
His shampoo is strawberry scented, and if he doesn't concentrate when using it, he'll absently put it in his mouth.
"So, what do you make of the locations of the fires in Aberdeenshire, then?" he asks. He knows Rae is standing in the bathroom proper, just beyond the shower curtain.
"Nothing so far," Rae says primly. "And why would you ask me? Is your awesome team not as brilliant as you'd hoped?"
"You've been surprisingly helpful so far," L replies. "I was merely seeking your opinion."
"I have no intention of being helpful,' the Shinigami says. It's trying to sound haughty, but it's clearly aggravated.
"Of course you do," L says, turning to rinse the suds out of his hair. "You're trying to be helpful to point out my own inadequacies, and therefore why I should use the death note."
Or maybe there's another reason. What do you say, heir to the king?
There's a pause from outside. L wonders absently whether Rae can see his gestures through the curtain. In some respects, he's gotten used to having the death god follow him around, and he's unbothered by the fact that it's seen him naked. In fact, it's safer this way. He can't take the death note in the shower, so it's sitting on the floor by the sink. He's eighty-one percent confident that Rae will warn him if someone else is going to accidentally come in, because it believes it will be at a disadvantage if any of the others know L owns a note.
Which suits him just fine.
L touches his chest. He's getting chafe marks under his arms from the holster. Maybe he needs to line it with something.
"I just can't believe you're happy to let someone else burn," Rae says, sighing. "You're such a big disappointment, Lawliet."
L likes to amuse himself by imagining a mental scoreboard, between himself and the Shinigami. He counts the points at the end of the day. He usually wins.
"Only because you thought I'd be easy to corrupt," L says, grinning to himself.
Point for L.
Rae laughs, a horrible throaty giggle that grates on L's nerves more than anything else, although he's not really sure why.
"You have no idea what I'm thinking," Rae says. "You're guessing, and theorising, and calculating possibilities, but you're not sure. You're never sure. Are you? Have you ever been one hundred percent sure, L?"
L stares at the wall.
Point for Rae.
tbc
a/n
+ honestly did not realise this one storyline had accumulated so many words until I finished writing it, ugh. hope it didn't seem to drag on and on.
+ thank you.