notes/warnings
+ warning for people experiencing psychosis/hallucinations
+ warning for severe injury
Overload
No.
The building is on fire. Collapsed. Strewn across the road.
Please.
Everything is too hot. Crackling. Burning. Dead.
Not him.
A painting falls from the wall with a clatter, foul-smelling smoke emanating from the canvas.
I had plans.
Rae can't.
He was mine!
Rae stops, collapses to its knees. Everything is on fire. Everything is broken and L was here and Rae cannot even fucking move.
Doesn't want to move.
He is mine, fucking please.
The rubble must be at least two feet deep. There could be bodies in here. Nobody would ever know.
If L dies, he goes to hell. Rae will never see him again.
Nobody ever loved me before.
Not properly.
Nobody was ever properly mine.
They were going to fight crime. They were going to eliminate criminals and make a world where everyone could be happy and safe, and they were going to rule that world together and insult each other and sleep in the same, gold-plated bed.
I am the fucking king, you can't fucking do this. I deserve to be loved. I deserve everything.
Rae has no idea who it is trying to plead with. It stumbles blindly through the flames, the smoke, the crumbling building. It finds a hall it hasn't explored yet.
L must be somewhere in here. Alive or dead, L must be here.
There's a body on the floor. A curly-haired man. Almost certainly dead. Not L.
It's okay, it's okay.
Rae walks right over it. Was the building evacuated, or were all the bodies just buried under the rubble?
If the building was evacuated, that dead man wouldn't be in here.
Rae turns another corner. If L has been taken away, then it will tear the universe apart to get him back. Somehow.
When did this get so serious?
Shut up.
…I did it for people like him.
What good are all the death notes in the world, if they cannot save the people that need to be saved?
Someone else is here. A group of someones, wandering around even though the building is coming down on their heads. One of them is wearing a transformers mask, and Rae hates that stupid cartoon.
Please don't be dead.
Rae sees a familiar-looking ornate vase. It has no idea if it's been here before, or if it is just…
Falling apart.
Fucking please.
"We still don't know who is responsible for your abductions," Near says, matter-of-factly. "Sorry."
He definitely isn't sorry. Jasmine pats your shoulder soothingly. She's here mostly to remember what Near says, because you have trouble concentrating on words. Your hand hurts so much that you can't even think straight. Your medication isn't working. Nothing helps.
Jasmine is here to help you. She's here to help you not snap and try to kill Near. Because you would definitely try, otherwise. Even though he's in some unknown city at his new headquarters and your only present connection to him is a grubby handsfree telephone.
You hate him for not caring. You hate that you're all alone.
Because you can't see the Jeevases and Dwayne doesn't give a shit about you and nobody else even knows that you exist. You could suffer forever, and nobody would care. You're all alone.
And sometimes it feels like Matt doesn't really exist here, either. He's changed so much since the orphanage. Since the days when you honestly thought you could catch Kira on your own. He's barely the same person, but you're still in love with him.
The pain is like a red hot drumbeat, jarring and arrhythmic and right behind your eyes. You glance around the room. You're on the twelfth floor, and the windows here are just big enough that you could fit through them.
"We don't think they're connected to the Kira case," Near adds.
You stop fantasizing longingly about killing yourself and glare at the telephone.
"What? But they said-"
"Don't interrupt me," Near says, blandly. "I have more important things to do than guarding you."
"But-"
"Those are L's orders," Jasmine murmurs. "Mihael, he's just doing his job."
"Oh," you reply.
You don't have anything. You don't even have a single fucking point to make in a conversation about your own abductors.
This will go on, endlessly, maybe forever. You will suffer forever. You can feel it.
You go back to staring at the window.
Raye stares at the television. L still isn't back, and the art gallery he was supposed to be visiting is apparently now a smoldering pile of debris.
"Have you heard anything yet?" Raye asks Mail. He clenches his hand against the arm of his chair. L is both talented and resilient, but he isn't infallible. Things can go wrong.
Things have already gone wrong, and Raye is worried. L needs to live. He needs to lose the fucking skeleton and live.
"Nope," Mail says, calmly. He's staring at the scenery, one palm pressed against the window, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.
"You could at least sound worried," Raye says, irritably.
Sometimes he forgets that Mail isn't actually a real human being. Sometimes he forgets how alone he is.
In a kind world, the blast would have killed Thornber instantly. Instead, death is agonizingly slow. Fire hisses around him, oppressively hot. It's only a matter of time before he burns.
God, he's so scared. Why does living always hurt so much? Why is the afterlife just the same as the shitty first world?
Why does everything hurt? Why can't he just be unconscious and die without feeling horrible?
"Hey," someone says, quietly, and they're probably just a figment of his fevered imagination.
They bend over him, coming sharply into focus. A tall man wearing a blue transformers mask. He's familiar. Thornber has read about him in the newspaper. His name is Near, and he is purportedly a good man. He took the name from some other detective called Near, who solved the Kira case but wasn't as good. Thornber is a little hazy on the details. Possibly due to blood loss.
At least I hallucinated myself a hero this time, he thinks, wryly.
"You are suffering," Near says. "Do you want to live?"
Thornber blinks, a new sort of shock to go with his regular shock. Hallucinations don't speak.
"Are you," he rasps, and he can't feel his tongue. His mouth aches. "Are you real?"
"I'm real," Near replies, speaking quickly and clearly. "My name is Near. I can save you."
Thornber attempts to laugh, and tastes blood.
"Nobody can save me. There isn't a world for people like me."
Near takes his left hand.
"I am building a world for people like you," he says, kindly.
Thornber stares at him, wordlessly.
"You are in incredible pain," he continues. He takes something from his pocket, and pricks Thornber's arm with it.
"Ow," Thornber murmurs, even though it doesn't really hurt.
"Pain relief," Near tells him. "It will start acting momentarily. Listen to me. You need to decide what to do from here. If you want to live, I will take you to a good hospital. You can work for me when you get better."
Work for you? Thornber thinks, a little deliriously. You can't be real, after all. People like you don't exist, and they especially wouldn't come to save people like me.
"You want people to live," Near replies, so maybe Thornber said some of that out loud. "We are alike, you and I."
"You don't understand," Thornber pants, searching uselessly for the words to explain to this fine upstanding man why he's a hopeless case. "In my world, there are no people. Only monsters."
"I used to think that, too. But if there are no people, then who did you just save?"
And suddenly, there is clarity. Nobody has ever cared about Thornber ever, in his entire life.
"I want to live," he says, desperately.
L goes to the local library, mostly because it's in the opposite direction to the way the other masked man went.
He crouches on the stairs just outside the entrance, trying to collect his thoughts. He has a pocket full of undetonated explosives. He needs to get back to headquarters as soon as possible. He can have Watari analyse the explosives and perhaps learn something about the new designs being used by up-and-coming criminal organisations. And then the venture won't have been a total waste.
Because he didn't save anyone. He put hundreds of people in danger, and he didn't save a single one of them.
The terrorist who refused to terrorise.
The world sometimes produces the most unexpected heroes.
Everything was so much easier before Rae showed up. L was competent and strong, and not inhibited by emotion. He didn't depend on anyone else. He wasn't trying to solve impossible cases involving monsters and gods and worlds he cannot predict or understand. He wasn't trying to save someone he loved. He was reliable.
Now he is useless.
Except when he is with Rae. Together, they are incredible. Better than L could ever possibly be on his own.
Not that that matters. They are almost out of time.
L takes out his phone and calls Mail.
"Please send a car to the library on White Street as soon as possible," he says, quietly.
"Okay," Mail deadpans. "Good job not dying in the explosion."
"I did not do a good job," L replies, seriously. He's not sure why he bothers explaining things like this to Mail. Mail quite obviously doesn't care about his state of mind, or whether he's even remotely a good person.
Mail doesn't care about anything, except a man he may never see again.
But Mail is still important. L would still do anything for him.
L would do anything for too many people.
Mail hangs up. L examines the phone for a moment. There are people milling around. A woman is sitting next to the stairs, quietly nursing an infant. A young couple are standing just inside the glass doors, gesturing animatedly towards a book display.
The explosion was a good few blocks away, and nobody here even knows about it yet.
The world in general, is actually kind of-
L doesn't get to finish that thought, because something slams into his back and knocks the wind out of him.
"Hey," he complains, only irritated, not panicked, because surely this is an accident. None of his enemies are stupid enough to attack him in public in front of several witnesses. "Watch where you're…oh."
The something turns out to be a really huge flaming skeleton creature.
His skeleton creature.
"What?" L manages, confused by the fact that Rae is here and not in Dundee, and even more confused by the fact that Rae has latched onto his waist and buried its giant skull-face in his shoulder and might actually be shaking. "What happened? Are you all right?"
What on earth could upset you like this? Nothing upsets you.
Whoever did this, I will kill them.
"Fuck you," Rae growls, loud and angry and fearful. "Fuck you for everything. How dare you lie to me. How dare you even fucking be near me. You are scum, you are fucking scum."
L tries to point out that he doesn't actually have the option to not be near Rae, because Rae is presently doing a first-class limpet impression, but Rae just talks right over the top of him.
"I fucking hate you," Rae continues, voice frightened and too high, words cascading over each other like it can't actually stop talking. "You deserve to die. Liar. Liar."
People are staring at him. L wraps his arms around Rae's shoulders and holds on tightly, aware that he looks like a madman standing alone on the stairs and embracing the air.
"I saw on the news," Rae growls, and L has never seen it lose control like this. He's never seen it lose control at all, really. "I saw the place…explode…fire…fuck you, I thought you were dead."
It knows. Somehow, it figured everything out. L continues to be a complete and utter failure.
I really thought I could help you.
"I'm sorry," he murmurs.
Rae doesn't move and doesn't shut up until the car arrives.
"Is that thing okay?" Raye asks stupidly, as soon as L closes the door behind them.
Fuck you, Rae thinks, because that's all the venom it can muster. Everything was almost lost, and it hasn't recovered. It has never felt bad before – never helpless, not like this – and it cannot even begin to process the way it feels.
"Please mind your own business," L says neatly, and Rae stops fantasizing about punching him in the face long enough to be grateful.
Everything was almost lost.
"Is your friend okay?" Watari asks, when the sky has darkened outside, but no time seems to have passed. When Rae has yet to even loosen its grip because it has a person now and that person almost died and how does anyone deal with this ever?
"It's my own fault," L says, sounding miserable, and then his tone changes a little. "Rae? Do you want anything?"
"I hate you," Rae replies, because that phrase is one of the only two things that it is certain of right now.
I hate you.
You are mine and I nearly lost you forever.
L is evil and hell will never spit him back out once he dies. And nobody has ever…has ever been this valuable toRae before, and Rae cannot.
Cannot.
"You have something on your shirt," Mail says blandly, later in the evening, eyeing Rae like it's some sort of barely-interesting parasite instead of an all-powerful god.
I am a god, Rae thinks.
I am still me.
Rae has never needed anyone before.
Rae has…fundamentally…
Things are…
Rae cannot even think about it. If Rae loves L, then everything is lost.
Has been lost for several days, now.
Rae goes silent for a while after that, and L stays where he is, crouching on the sofa and still apologizing with every other breath.
He's never met someone he cannot save before. It's almost as if his falling for Rae is a punishment for something. Or some sort of challenge.
Are those in hell ever used to test the living?
Is he even certain that Rae is in hell? What is going to happen when their time is up?
L hates not having answers.
Rae wakes up the next morning, still in the living room, still wrapped around L. It gets up and goes to the empty office down the hall and screams and yells and pounds the walls with its fists.
Nothing is okay. Rae has never ever cared about someone, because caring about someone is the worst sort of weakness and Rae has known that all along.
Hell, that's how Rae managed to manipul…
Never mind that now. That was a long time ago. That was practically someone else, remember?
And L said…
No, it shouldn't matter what L said. Rae should never have gotten into this terrible situation in the first place, and now it has to find a way out. But there isn't a way to solve this problem, because this problem is inside Rae's head.
And Rae has so many enemies. It's only a matter of time before one of them uses L against it, and there won't be anything it can do to…
Rae stops, suddenly, fist raised in midair.
No.
Enough.
It hasn't been thinking clearly. The whole point of everything – the whole entire point – is to become king. Once it is king, it will have absolute power. It can destroy whoever it wants. It can possess whoever it wants. And it can protect whoever it wants.
Those last two sound just right for you, L.
Rae feels much better. Calmer. The whole point of becoming powerful is so that it can stop worrying, stop guarding every action, stop always looking over its shoulder.
The whole point of winning is to get what you want. And Rae has just taken what it wants a little early.
The only thing left is to seal the deal.
And really, the deal practically seals itself.
Rae is okay. Rae is just fine. Still, even now.
It just needs to keep L on a shorter leash, that's all.
They eat breakfast together in silence. L eats Raye's leftover jam roll. Rae eats Raye's leftover baked potato.
"I still wish I could protect you," L says, sadly.
"I will punch you in the mouth if you try anything stupid again," Rae replies.
Mail wanders into the main office at midday, the remains of Mello's sketch clutched in his left hand. L considers offering him tea, but he's pretty sure Mail had tea only last month, so it's probably too early.
"Hey," Mail says, by way of greeting. "It'd be really fuckin' inconvenient if you died, so stop doing fuckin' stupid shit."
And suddenly L feels terribly guilty, because he is the only thing that Mail even notices in the whole world, and L is supposed to take care of him.
"I'm sorry," he says, quietly, briefly grappling with the urge to hug his pseudo-son.
"I agree with absolutely everything you just said," Rae pipes up. "Seriously, can't we just put him in a cage or something? For the next few days, at least."
Mail stares noncommittally at the Shinigami, which is a shame. L would really like it if the two of them got along. They are practically the most important people in his life.
And Naomi.
And Matsuda.
And Wedy. The little girl whose father murdered her mother. The little girl who grew up despite all of that and became a master thief and a powerful ally.
L would like to see her again, too. But he can't. He has to stay here and look after these precious people.
"There's one thing I don't understand about you," Rae says to Mail, conversationally. "Why do you keep on living?"
"Don't say that to him," L snaps.
Mail is vulnerable and Rae should know better. It's amazing that Mail doesn't just give up and go on dying and dying, over and over again, ricocheting through the worlds until they run out.
If they run out.
The point is that Mail always seems like he's a hair-trigger away from vanishing forever, from dying eternally, and even the suggestion of that option might push him over the edge.
Rae kind of shrugs.
"I don't mean to be rude, I'm genuinely curious. Your life sucks so much here that I'm amazed you don't want to check out the third world. It could hardly be worse. And who knows, it could be nothing at all."
"It would be pointless," Mail replies, with certainty. "The only thing I can do is remember him, and I can do that here. So I will do it here, forever. I'm not ever dying again. I don't have any hope."
"But-"
"Shut the fuck up," Mail growls, and stalks back outside, slamming the door behind him loudly.
And oh god, L would probably give his right arm to be able to comfort Mail in times like this.
He'd also give his right arm in order to be able to guarantee Rae's safety, but the choice between the two is a dilemma he's unlikely to ever have to face.
"That was horrible," he tells Rae, his sympathy for the Shinigami temporarily evaporating.
"Sorry," Rae says, sounding suspiciously genuine. "I really did want to know. Didn't you want to know?"
"No," L replies.
At eight o'clock, Raye goes to find L and the giant creepy bones-thing. He finds them both working, Rae sprawled out over the desk, and L curled up into an improbable position on the arm of the sofa.
"Hey," he says, gruffly. "The awards ceremony will be on in a minute."
"Oh yes," Rae replies. "They're showing a montage of Jones' day-to-day life, right?"
Rae frowns.
"Jones?"
"Wedgewood," L corrects, looking from the Shinigami to Raye and back again. "I have no reason to stop you from watching television, but why did you feel the need to tell us?"
"Are you actually a fucking idiot?" Rae asks, derisively. "They're showing us her life."
"Her apparent life. I highly doubt that any of her many secrets will be revealed in that montage."
"Even so, it might give us something to go on. A ticket stub. A web address that Jeevas could hack. Something."
L tips his head to the side, expression curious. Then he smiles softly.
"Are you actually going to help me find her, Rae?"
"Don't get me wrong, I still think this is pointless," Rae grumbles. "But if you want, sure. We don't have any other cases right now."
"Thank you," L says, warmly, looking only at Rae.
Raye rolls his eyes and picks up the remote.
"Either shut up or get a room," he complains, switching the television on and flooding the room with garish blue light.
The awards ceremony is drawn-out and boring. The first half hour is cars pulling up outside the venue. The introduction section passes uneventfully, showing fluffy, useless pictures of various fashion models sitting elegantly in luxury hotels, clutching small children they have plausibly never seen before, patting puppies, and generally twirling expensively.
And then, they get to see Grianna Jones.
Her montage is stark compared to the other models. Stark has always been her thing. Even the description under her stage name reads 'delicate looking, tough as particularly elegant nails'. Another, less-kind descriptor reads 'serial divorcee'. The only shot is of her sitting in her hotel room, staring moodily out the window. It's obvious that the camera crew were at a loss with what to do. At one point they open the closet and film her stash of dresses. Otherwise they just pan around the room for a few moments, and then cut to a section on a tall Chinese woman.
L looks at Rae.
"Did you see the photograph on her desk?" he asks.
Rae makes a weird expression, like someone trying to wrinkle a nose they don't actually have.
"Why are you useless?" it asks. "Who cares about the pictures of the kids? Did you see the-"
"Plane tickets on the nightstand? Yes, yes I did. The time was obscured, but I could make out the first five digits of the flight number."
Rae reaches for the laptop.
"B9877, right?" it asks, sounding pleased that L is still keeping up.
"Yes."
"There are two flights leaving in the next twenty-four hours starting with those numbers. B98771 and B98779. Midnight tonight to Washington, and ten o'clock tomorrow to Vancouver. I'm not sure which she's taking. Unless-"
"Unless those are her old tickets, and she caught a flight here from one of those regions and is keeping them for some unknown reason," L says, rubbing his eye. "We need another-."
"Another shot of her room," Rae finishes, and L feels amazing right now. "We're unlikely to get that unless she wins, or is featured in the closing credits somehow."
"Just in case you were wondering," Raye says awkwardly, "I am still in the room."
L turns to him.
"Did you have anything to add?" he asks, feeling genuinely friendly.
"Polls say she has a one in two chance of winning," Raye says, folding his arms tightly against his chest. "There's a good chance that we'll get to see more shots of her life after her speech."
"Excellent," L says. "Let's keep watching then."
Grianna has been to so many awards ceremonies that they're starting to all blur together. This one is important, though. This is a big deal. This is an international modeling award that specializes in diversity. The ceremony is being broadcast live all over the world.
She's wearing a blue leather dress that approximately nobody else in the world could pull off with any amount of grace. She always liked leather.
It was a trait, apparently, that she shared with her daughter.
Not that she'd really know.
Fuck you, Marvin. Fuck you for everything.
If I ever find you, I will tear you apart.
She can look for Marvin later. Right now, she has something more important to do. Someone she has to save. So that she can…
…so that she can say 'hello'.
'Hello, my name is Grianna Jones.
You wouldn't remember me.
The last time we were together, you were only a baby.
But I love you, and I want you to be okay.'
She's so tired of chasing after people in hell. This ceremony is almost a nice distraction. The canapés are even edible.
"And the winner for the most popular model of the year, in the size seven category, iiiiiiiiis…"
The host pauses for dramatic effect. Grianna doesn't look up. She knows that the cameras will be zoning in on her face, and then rushing away to capture a glimpse of the other major candidate for her category, May Silver.
May ought to win. She's sweeter-tempered than Grianna, she devotes herself to charity work, and she struggles with a hormone condition, body dysphoria, and nasty comments from a lot of transphobic assholes. And she still comes out smiling and beautiful, with kindness to share. She's basically perfect.
May ought to win, but Grianna needs to win.
"Waitforit, waitforit, the winner iiiiiiis…"
The host is dragging this out because neither of the nominees are giving the camera the desired anxious response. They may or may not have discussed this in the dressing room beforehand.
The modeling world media is fucking stupid, seriously.
"The winner iiis…Miss Jacinta Wedgewoooooooood!"
Grianna Jones stands up to thunderous applause, and makes her way quickly to the stage.
Totally normal, look totally normal. Don't look like someone who's about to do something important.
She reaches the stage, receives the obligatory hand shake, kisses the host on the cheek, and takes the clunky but light award into her arms.
Then she goes to the podium.
There are at least seventy cameras here. All of them are rolling. The audience is silent in their seats, the air above their heads a sea of letters and numbers.
Shinigami eyes are forever, but that isn't her concern right now.
The world is watching.
This is for you, baby.
"I want to thank a lot of people," she says, demurely. "I want to thank every single person in this room. But first, I want to tell you all something. But not a story. I want to tell you a fact. After all, we are all dead. And we are all people."
Everyone applauds again, even though she hasn't said anything.
"I want to tell you about something terrible," she continues, loudly and clearly. "I want to tell you about the god of hell."
Jas very carefully sets the squash-filled basket on a nearby stone. She politely tells Ryuk to go away – for the third time this week. She wipes the dirt from her hands.
Then she collapses in the dirt, screaming and clutching her head, trying to rewrite a million lives all at once, and the garden blurs and stretches against the melting skyline.
"Are you fucking serious?" Rae demands, sitting up straight. "Now she's going on about the god of hell?"
L stares at the screen, a tiny smile dawning on his face.
"Very clever," he murmurs, sounding impressed. "Well played, Jones."
Raye shakes his head.
"A god of hell? She's nuts, right? How does that even work?"
"Perhaps," L tells him. "I doubt you will remember what she says for very long, but you should listen to her, all the same."
"Listen to a supermodel who is probably just part of a cult?"
"Yes."
Raye glances back at the television. Jacinta Wedgewood – or whatever her name is – is still talking animatedly.
"The hell-god is real, and they hurt people. They hurt our friends and family. They hurt people we love. They break us and there isn't a damn thing we can do. Nobody even remembers the things they've done. But I do, and tonight, there is something I can do. I'm going to break the god of hell."
"Nuts," Raye mutters, but he feels uneasy all the same.
Grianna pauses for a moment and beams at her audience. She's fully prepared to die. The hell god will surely be reaching, desperate, dangerous. She might just spontaneously combust. She might disappear forever.
She takes a deep breath and plows on.
"Let me tell you about the people you have forgotten," she chirps. One of the security guards is edging towards the stage. The host is eyeing her nervously. But nobody has stopped her yet. "Does the name Bernard Holland ring any bells? How about Amy Tilbeard? She was a modern pirate. She slaughtered an entire cruise ship full of people. But now nobody remembers that except me. What about Reverend Croup? A whole street full of people witnessed him bring a small child back to life – right here in London - but now none of them remember. Do you recall faux-Kira? She murdered thousands, and yet it seems that nobody actually died."
People in the audience are starting to frown. One man pinches the bridge of his nose like he has a headache.
It hurts, trying to remember. Grianna knows.
It hurts being a mother, too.
She sounds crazy. That's the beauty of it. Anyone who speaks out against the god of hell sounds crazy, but that won't stop her.
"And I know," she says, "that there are those of you who also remember. Perhaps not here, but elsewhere. Watching. Some of you have memories – half formed and ignored, things that never quite made sense - and I am here to tell you that those memories are real. You are not mad. Remember the hell god. Remember."
She can't hurt anyone in the real world. She cannot have another Naomi Penber. Nobody can die because of her. But Jas doesn't have the strength to control so many people at once. She was never meant to rule the world.
It used to be that anything she wrote became real. She was limitless, because the notebook was limitless. But things don't stay that way. Tolerance builds up. She is part notebook and the notebook is part her.
And she is failing. Something has to give.
You still don't have any chocolate. You still haven't gotten over the cravings. You're hungry and in pain and the room is too bright and Dwayne won't shut up and Matt has stopped returning your messages.
You don't even have the energy to be angry. Now you are just sad.
"I'm pretty sure the cobwebs in the corners are getting cobwebs in their corners," Dwayne says, grinning at nothing.
You follow his line of sight. The ceiling is as shitty as the rest of this place, yellowing and dusty and papery-looking. You groan and drop your head back against the leathery maroon sofa, trying to get into a more comfortable position.
You can't ever get comfortable, though.
"I don't fucking care."
"You never care about soup," Dwayne complains.
"Soup?"
"Sorry, I meant to say 'anything'."
That doesn't make any sense. Strangely, the hair on the back of your neck prickles, as if something is really honestly wrong instead of Dwayne being an asshole.
When you glance back at him, for a moment he appears to have two heads, one ordinary and one small and blurry and demonic.
You blink once and he is normal.
"Fuck," you say. "I need some fucking chocolate or something."
You need Matt, but you're never ever going to get him.
You're not going to get chocolate any time soon, either.
You blink again, and Dwayne disappears completely. So does the sofa. You're lying on the floor and the room is too small.
You rub your eyes, waiting for everything to become normal. You've never hallucinated before. You are struck with the tremendous sense that you are all alone, that whatever is about to happen to you will not stop.
You suppose you've just been waiting to go mad.
When you open your eyes, the sofa has rematerialized, but the ceiling is green. But maybe it has always been green. It looks normal, with cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling and eyes in the corners of the cobwebs.
And teeth.
Everywhere.
When you blink again, there's something standing over you. Something tall, with a manic smile and claws.
The walls collapse, and horrors pour out of the darkness. You start screaming and don't stop until your mouth disappears.
Grianna Jones finally stops talking, coughing wetly as if she's choking on something. Except she hasn't eaten any food.
The hell-god is most definitely real.
"There are already records of her speech," Rae comments, laptop perched on its knee. "People are posting soundbytes and videos."
"They will vanish," L tells his Shinigami. "Everything will be gone within a week."
"Rubbish," Raye says. "How could it all vanish? Are you talking about a government conspiracy, or what?"
L turns to him, keenly, pen in hand. He draws a little skull and crossbones on Raye's arm, just below the wrist.
"Look at this," he says, quietly. "Remember the god of hell. Remember Holland. Remember what we went through."
Raye stares at him warily. Then he frowns.
"Holland," he says, sounding confused. "Who was…that was…"
"Remember how Grace Backstrum died," L continues. "Remember Holland. Remember what the god of hell can do."
"I don't really understand why you're doing this," Rae says. "Why do you need him to remember?"
"I want as many people as possible to remember," L says. "I want Raye Penber to know so that when I die, he can tell oth-"
"You're not going to die," Rae growls, gripping the back of his neck. "Ever."
L smiles to himself, and keeps tracing the drawing.
"Whenever you feel like you ought to remember something," he tells Raye Penber, "draw this on your arm. And remember Holland. Remember the hell god."
"She was turned to stone," Raye says, abruptly, aghast. "Grace Backstrum was…"
"Yes," L says. "That's right.
To the credit of the hell god, nothing terrible happens to Grianna Jones. She leaves the ceremony unharmed, arrives back at her hotel room, and spends a few smug hours browsing blogs and newsfeeds.
Nobody is certain. She hasn't broken the hell-god's spell completely, but people are confused. Most of the content of the various articles are recounts of Grianna's speech, followed by a few jumbled anecdotes of things people can't quite fully recall. Other sites are piecing together the information, creating profiles on Holland and Takada and various others.
And of course, her fansites are just talking about how clever and 'gutsy' she is. She doesn't care. All that is left to be done is to wait.
To wait and see if anything has changed. To see if she managed to make a hole in hell, that some might escape.
That some might escape.
And if that doesn't work, then she'll go back to tailing those in hell.
I hope you're afraid, hell-god. Because I am never going to stop.
tbc
a/n
+ thank you for reading :)
+ also I wanted to say that I realise there is a bit of confusion regarding what happened in the last chapter. in the hope of clearing things up, I would like to clarify a few points. a) bomb-retrieving guy in the previous chapter was L, and was only referred to in this obscure way from Near's point of view because Near didn't know who he was. b) any references to 'Near' are references new-Near, aka transformers mask guy, aka guy who doesn't kill, aka guy we don't know much about yet. he is working with Halle and Gevanni (from the canon story) and they all came to the second world relatively recently. c) in this story, Nate River is referred to by his real name or Buzz, as he no longer owns the title 'Near'. hopefully that clears things up - let me know if there's anything else I need to clarify.
+ thank you again.