Ah, I know I've kept you all waiting a while, so in order to get this chapter to you ASAP, I admit that I actually only finished writing it today. I did reread it to weed out any mistakes that I came across, but I may have missed some, so… apologies in advance for any hilarious situations arising from words either misspelt or missing altogether.
(Ironically, Microsoft Word has underlined 'misspelt' in red. However, it also underlines 'mispelt' in red, so it seems that I am doomed to misspell mispelt however I spell it. O.o)
Thankyou to all who reviewed the last chapter: Myu-dono, Gabi Howard, greatstars, ZoneRobotnik, Dahlia Franks, yellowrose87, Black-Dranzer-1119, SeraphChronoMage, gemenin001928, -Red Angel-Blue Angel-, ddz008, ?, Gone and Forgotten, Vera-Sama, PikaNecoMico, teito13, bookenworum, badwolf5, Kazutaka-kun, TheDarkWingedAngel, OneWhoSitsWithTurtles, Scripta Lexicona, Deus3xMachina, NX-Loveless-XN, Star Jinin, Danny Phangirl, K, realityfling18, Retrophilic, Tainted Ink and Paper and Kuro Shinzo!
So… this chapter is kind of fun. I think.
;)
V - Philip Marlowe
"—And it keeps on getting weirder…" Mello muttered, slamming down the phone with more force than was necessary.
Matt, across the desk from him, glanced up from his laptop in puzzlement.
"What's wrong?" he asked, reaching for the cigarette slowly burning itself into oblivion in the ashtray to his left.
"Oh, where do I begin?" Mello groaned, leaning his head back and massaging his forehead with his fingertips.
"With the first phonecall?"
"First phonecall," Mello repeated wearily. "Okay. I called up that Yagami guy's agent, Teru Mikami, just to check out his story. Couldn't tell me much – seems like he's kind of crazy, to be honest. Wanted to know if I would be interested in buying a second edition print of 'Death Note', if he can get the publishing deal to go through."
"Did you ask him about the accident?"
"Yeah. He said it was a pretty standard car accident, as far as he knew – but he gave me the hospital's number and the name of the doctor who oversaw Yagami's recovery after the crash."
"Second phonecall?" Matt prompted, drawing on his cigarette.
Mello nodded.
"Right," he said. "Doctor Mizushima. He said it was a pretty standard car accident, pretty standard head injury, pretty standard mild case of concussion…"
"What about the memory loss?"
"He said that's a little more puzzling – the kind of memory loss Yagami has sustained is unusual, given that he hasn't lost most of the details of his past, nor is he unable to formulate new memories, but… has completely lost all memory of anything to do with him being an author. Mizushima said that…" Mello paused, frowning. "…It's almost like Yagami doesn't want to remember it."
Matt blinked.
"What, like… he blanked it out on purpose?"
"Something like that, I guess."
"Is… is that even possible?"
Mello shrugged.
"I have no idea," he muttered blackly. "I'm not a fucking psychiatrist."
"Well…" Matt frowned, chewing on the end of his cigarette. "…Okay, third phonecall?"
"Oh, yes. That." Mello grinned, but the expression was icy, utterly humourless. "This is really where it all just starts getting too perfect… I thought I'd check up on that detective – you know, the one who was carting Yagami around with him like some kind of must-have fashion accessory."
"L," Matt supplied lazily.
"I know what he called himself!" Mello snapped. "But listen to this: I called up Interpol, their head office, you know, to find out when this L guy had been assigned to this case which we also, as agents from Wammy's House, were assigned. Well, I wanted to know how long he'd been here, who he was assigned by, stuff like that. And Interpol…" Mello gave a bitter little laugh. "Well, Interpol said that they had no record of a detective called 'L' at all – and that no-one aside from us, as far as they knew, had been assigned to this case. You know, not including the NPA."
"So… is he with the NPA, then?" Matt asked.
"That's what I thought," Mello replied tersely. "He didn't look Japanese to me, but I thought maybe he was just based in Japan and was either affiliated with the NPA or had been approached by them as a private detective to take on the case. So I called the NPA, but they didn't have any record of him either."
Matt blinked.
"Who the hell is he with, then?"
"That's what I want to know," Mello growled in response.
"Did you try Scotland Yard? He sounded British to me, and he seemed to know about Wammy's House."
"Tried them. Nothing. I also tried the ICPO, the CIA and the Police Nationale. No-one knows anything. I thought of calling the FBI or MI5, but I get the feeling that their response would be the same. It's almost like…"
"It's like he doesn't exist," Matt finished, meeting Mello's gaze. "…Well, as a detective, anyway."
There was silence. Matt dragged on his cigarette again, perhaps for a lack of anything else to say. Mello simply stared at him through the smoke, picking up a pencil to irritably tap it on the tabletop.
"Detective fiction it ain't," the blonde finally murmured. "Nothing falls into your lap around here." He dropped the pencil again and abruptly got up, heading over towards the kettle sitting on one of the low shelves of their small, temporary office. "Coffee?"
"I still have some here."
"Matt, you made that coffee two hours ago."
"I…" Matt tried the coffee, made a face and disgustedly put it down again on the desk. "Yeah, sounds good, if you're making some."
"I am." Mello unceremoniously poured milk and a spoonful of instant coffee into two cups and filled the kettle. Waiting for it to boil, he turned his attention to the window, pushing back the blinds. "It's fucking tipping it down out there."
"Well, at least we don't have to go out," Matt replied, reaching the end of his cigarette and stubbing it out with precise poise.
"Mm," Mello said; but it went unheard, drowned out by the sudden strident knocking on the door to their office.
Matt glanced at Mello, who was busy pouring hot water into the coffee cups whilst looking with narrowed eyes at the door; the redhead rose and went to it, opening it. A young, uniformed Japanese police officer was standing in the corridor, panting a little, evidence of the fact that he had hared down here as fast as he could.
"Detectives," he gasped, "I was… sent down here by… the director. He said… that there's been… another murder!" He fished in his pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper with an address scrawled on it, handing it to Matt. "Here's the address… Forensics have already gone down…"
"A-alright…" Matt gave a nod. "Thanks." He shut the door and turned to Mello. "Mel—"
"I heard." Mello had folded his arms. "Are we to presume that this just fell into our laps?"
Matt gave an uneasy shrug.
"No idea, but either way…" He gave a nod towards the window. "It means we have to go out there in that."
"There he is," Matt said, pushing off from where he was leaning against the car.
"That detective is with him again," Mello muttered.
"I can see that," Matt replied grimly. "Still, first things first."
"Right." Mello gave a morose nod of his own, raking his soaked hair back. "That little kid's corpse."
—
"Thanks for coming so quickly," Matt said by way of greeting, covering for Mello's sulky silence. "Sorry about the awful weather, but this is kind of… urgent."
Light nodded.
"No, I understand." He was drenched through, and rather pale, but determinedly reined in his anxiety. "Please, lead the way."
"Very well," Mello snapped, finally speaking; he beckoned sharply as he turned on his heel and stomped away over to line of police tape threaded between several of the trees. "The killer's MO has altered – the victim wasn't a politician, the murder wasn't made to look like a suicide and the body was dumped out here as opposed to being left in the place where the murder occurred. It's fairly typical for murderers to dispose of their victims out in woodland areas like this, but since this a complete change in the murderer's behaviour—"
"But…" Light interrupted, but then trailed off as he stopped; they had stepped over the police tape at this point and were making their way through the dense, dripping trees, Mello in the lead. "I apologise, but… it doesn't sound like it's the same murderer at all. Are you sure this isn't just another unfortunate murder victim that—?"
"Oh, no," Mello cut in, looking back at him. "It's the same murderer all right, Yagami. You'll see for yourself." He turned away again. "Come on, it's not much further now."
Light glanced uneasily at L, who merely shrugged. Light looked away once more – he wasn't sure if he was on speaking terms with L right now, in lieu of his cryptic behaviour. Something about this just didn't add up at all…
"Hey, move over!" Mello demanded of the forensics team, all of whom were in their white overalls, clustered around a certain small area; he batted at them as though they were a pesky cloud of horseflies and they duly scattered, regrouping a little way away, still making notes on their clipboards as though they hadn't just been chased away from the object of their attention.
"There," Mello went on, his voice short as he thumbed towards the body of the seventh murder victim.
The corpse was very small, soaked through and on its back on the woodland floor. The eyes, huge and dark, were wide open, sightlessly staring at the canopy of gnarled trees hanging overhead. There was quite a lot of blood, and it stood out against the white canvas that was the child's body.
A little boy, dressed all in white, and with hair and skin to match.
"We're not sure how he was killed yet, nor do we have an identity," Mello said flatly, his lifeless tone a striking, harsh contrast to the mixed feelings welling up inside Light as he looked at the dead boy.
(Horror and hatred and anger and disgust and nausea—)
"That sounds like the ambulance," Matt said of the wailing siren, which grew louder and yet served to make the silence between the four of them more prominent still.
Light hadn't been aware that he was shaking, but the violent quivering of his body became obvious to him when he felt L's still hand come to rest on his shoulder; it did nothing to comfort him, however, and he shook him off angrily.
He didn't know what to say.
"Yagami," Matt said finally, "we appreciate that this is upsetting for you, but we wanted you to see it—"
"Why?!" Light burst out. "Do you think I don't feel guilty enough as it is?! You thought I didn't care enough about some politicians being murdered because of my books and thought you'd see how I took a little kid being killed instead?!"
"Don't be so ridiculous!" Mello snapped. "I appreciate that you're giving the body your full attention, but that's not why we brought you here." He gestured to an area slightly beyond the boy, darkened by the density of the trees. "That is."
Light followed the direction of his hand. The wet ground Mello was pointing to was decorated by a wide scattering of small, white rectangular things, limp and disfigured by the rain. From here he could just about make out that those closest to him had print on them…
Pages. They were pages from a book, all torn out and thrown to the ground.
"Can you guess which book those pages belong to, Yagami?" Mello asked in a hard voice.
But Light wasn't listening to him. He stepped away from all three detectives in silence, making sure to keep away from the child's corpse as he moved towards the pages. Standing directly over a few of them, he looked down at the paper and was able to read the warped words, recognising them as his own.
Death Note.
He couldn't help it. He knew he shouldn't disturb a crime scene, but he couldn't help it; he lifted his foot and slammed it down on one of the wet pages, twisting it, angrily grinding the paper into a muddy pulp.
"Hey!" Mello appeared at his side, grabbing him by his shoulders and stopping him. "Forensics hasn't finished with this area!"
"This isn't what I wrote," Light whispered in reply – though he spoke, really, more to himself.
"Well, someone wrote something," Mello said tersely, beckoning to Matt. "And they wrote it to you."
Matt joined them, clutching something in a clear plastic bag, which he had recovered from the forensics team. He wordlessly handed it to Light, who didn't want to take it but was compelled to anyway.
"It was in the boy's hand – probably put there by the murderer," Matt said. "Forensics removed it before it was ruined by the rain."
Light looked at it through the transparent plastic – it was the jacket of the book, empty, having had its pages torn out and strewn over the forest floor. It was a little damp but didn't appear defaced in any way, the picture and blurb and title and author name all as they should be. He turned it over—
"Hardly fan-mail," Mello muttered of the hand-written message scrawled on the inside of the cover.
My Dearest Kira, Tell Him I'm Near.
Light read it over and over, unable to make any sense of it – having no idea what was meant by it, nor why every word began with a capital, nor why it was in English.
"Tell who… that who is near?" Light asked quietly, looking up again. "That the murderer is near, or that the little kid is near, or…?"
Matt shrugged.
"We hoped it might make a little more sense to you," he admitted, "but obviously not."
Light shook his head.
"I don't know what it means," he said. He had begun to shake – more than before, almost uncontrollably, whether because of the cold or horror or fear, he didn't know. "I don't know what it means," he said again, blindly pushing the cover back at Matt, at Mello, whoever would take it.
"Hey, what the hell is up with you?" Mello asked sharply, folding his arms, as Matt finally took the book jacket.
Light didn't say anything; he looked up at L, who was still standing several paces back in complete silence. Light didn't want him to say anything, but wanted to know why he wouldn't—
"Yagami!" Mello snapped, his tone more demanding.
"I-I'm sorry," Light whispered; but his attention was arrested by the space between the blonde detective and his redhead partner, through which paramedics diligently trooped, weighed down by equipment.
He couldn't help but watch with disgusted, detached interest as two of them knelt beside the little boy's body and checked him over – before one beckoned for a body bag.
That was that, then.
"It's just," Light went on dully, "…I didn't write this."
"Why won't you speak?"
"Because you don't want me to speak."
"I do now."
"So I am."
Light said nothing to that, shutting the front door by sinking heavily against it. He was soaked through and shivering but thought little of it, every last square inch of his imagination filled with the stale image of the dead child, and of the message to him.
L, equally drenched, with the brim of his fedora drooping a little, stood before him in the hall. He didn't seem uncomfortable from being so wet, but even though he'd joked earlier about being waterproof, it would have been ridiculous to expect that he'd be dry after being out in rain that torrential.
"I'll stop again, if you want," he said at length. "If Light-kun wants me to be silent, I won't say anything."
"I-I don't know. I don't know what I want." Light pushed away from the door. "Right now, I just… I don't know."
"Light-kun, that child's death was not your fault."
"It was!" Light burst out. "It was because of those wretched books, because I wrote them! The killer… must want my attention, or—"
"No, the killer wants you to pass on a message."
"To who?!" Light demanded frustratedly. "To… to a politician? To… I don't know, Mikami? It can't be Misa, the note specified "he", but—"
"Or," L interrupted calmly, "was it meant to be written from the point-of-view of the child?"
"As in… the child was near the killer?" Light frowned. "I guess… he must have been, if he was murdered—"
"No, forget using the word as a preposition," L said, cutting into Light's speculations for a third time. "Try using it as a noun – a proper noun."
"…Near? Like… his name was Near?"
L shrugged.
"Maybe," he said airily. "Light-kun," he went on, abruptly changing the subject, "no child was ever murdered in any of your books. That is correct, isn't it?"
"Yeah," Light sighed. "That's… that's why I said I didn't write it…"
L nodded, more to himself, apparently sinking into deep thought right there in the hallway, dripping all over the place.
"Excuse me," Light said tersely, walking past him. "I'm going to change."
"Go ahead."
Light didn't thank him for the "permission", wordlessly passing him to get to his room, shutting the door sharply once he was inside. The sound of the rain lashing against the window was magnified by the dark silence of the room, dirty city glow leaking in through the glass and lying crumpled on the bed like an abandoned shirt, the narrow slats of it speckled with the shadows of the raindrops clinging to the windowpane.
The sight of it suddenly depressed him – the plummet aching even as he stood there, unmoving, looking at his empty bed.
He flipped the switch next to his hand, filling the room with a cleaner, brighter radiance, and covered the bed with his detective fiction collection, taking the books and comics from the floor and strewing them haphazardly across the sheets, filling the absent space that it hurt him to look at – perhaps because the expanse of neat white sheets reminded him of the boy, stained white by death, his eyes sightless and empty.
When he was satisfied by his montage – putting more effort into it than was necessary, overlapping and fanning them perfectly, wiping a little dust off the front cover of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep – he went to the wardrobe and opened it, pulling out some dry clothes. He pulled off his wet things, glad to get them away from his skin, replacing them with the fresh garments. His damp skin was still a little sticky, but he felt much better for the change of clothes, the thick sweater stifling the shivers out of him.
He didn't quite want to go back out to L just yet, and, in glancing idly around the room in search of something to distract himself with, found himself settling his attention on the desk pushed up against the far wall.
Is that where I…?
He went to it, resting his hands flat on its cool, hard wooden surface, trying to imagine laying a blank piece of paper upon it and spilling out words, hoping his hand was fast enough to pin them between pen and paper.
He couldn't – or, rather, he could, but knew that it was imagination only, and did not draw remotely from his buried memory.
He pulled back the chair and sat in it; reaching across the desk for the mug filled with pens and pencils. He settled for a blue ballpoint, leaning back in the chair deftly twirling it between his fingers. A portion of the manuscript of Death Note had been written in blue ballpoint. Was this it? Was this the pen that had spewed those awful words all over that hateful page?
(Which was more to blame – pen or paper?)
No. He couldn't blame the tools. He couldn't blame the fifty yen ballpoint. He couldn't blame the notebook – any of the notebooks. They might have been used by anyone for anything. The ballpoint could have been bought by a man on his way to the office one morning and used for taking minutes at a business meeting. Any of his notebooks could have been bought by a schoolgirl and used as a diary or a homework planner. It was not what they were, nor even who used them.
It was how they were used.
And he had used them to create something monstrous.
He put the pen back – it didn't feel familiar in his hand, and he was uncomfortable holding it. Instead he leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling for a long while, blindly running his hands along the edge of the desk. He paused as his fingertips came into contact with the shape of a key, hard and cold, jutting out from the lock on the drawer. He dropped his gaze to it, idly turning the key this way and that, listening to the bland rhythm of clicks.
Finally he unlocked the drawer and slid it out. He couldn't remember for the life of him what he might have put into it, and so had no idea what he would find.
There wasn't much in there. A few more pens, a collection of rubber bands, a pad of Post-It notes, some colourful paperclips and a book of stamps. He wasn't sure if he was disappointed or not – wasn't sure what he'd been hoping to find.
He shut the drawer, not bothering to lock it again, and rose, starting towards the door. He stopped, however, halfway across the room and looked again at the deliberate collage he had made of his bed – his optical ode to detective fiction.
The book closest to him was The Big Sleep, perfectly positioned slightly on top of the bottom right-hand corner of his Dick Tracy omnibus. His copy of The Big Sleep was fairly old, printed in English, the cover typical of pulpy reprints from the late 1950s and early 1960s, with a corny tagline in garish font beneath the title declaring "PI Philip Marlowe: He always gets his man, he always gets his girl!"; a low spectrum of colours and a grainy print job giving questionable life to Marlowe himself, rendered in that comic book quasi-realistic style. He looked rather dull next to Dick Tracy in his vibrant yellow, instead wearing the stereotypical brown of the fictional hardboiled detective, but despite the difference in colours, it was clear to see the similarities between the clothing they wore – the shape of the fedora, the buttons and belt style of the trenchcoat.
It reminded him more than ever, looking at that old, battered copy of The Big Sleep, that L was half a century behind as far as detective fashion went.
He went back to the wardrobe and opened it, going through it and pulling out a few more garments; putting them folded on the bed right over The Big Sleep before finally leaving the room.
L was still standing in the corridor, leaning against the wall close to Light's door, his arms folded. He was still soaked through – of course.
"Hey, you'd better change," Light said flatly. "I left you some of my clothes on the bed – you can wear them until yours are dry."
L looked up at him with a wry smile.
"Light-kun seems very determined to get me out of this attire," he observed. "Does it bother you so badly?"
"Do you mind not trailing water all over my apartment?" Light retorted waspishly, evading the question. "Go and change, for god's sake!"
"Alright, alright…" L smiled lazily at him and followed the direction that Light was pointing imperatively in, going into the bedroom and only half pulling the door shut behind him.
Light irritably shut it properly, under the impression that L had left it ajar just to annoy him.
He sank down against the door to wait for L, curling into a sitting position with his back against it, his arms wrapped around his knees. Even though L was only on the other side of the door, Light found that he suddenly felt very lonely, and clutched at himself for comfort, trying to push the image of the little boy – Near, as L had called him – out of his head. It was more difficult not to think about it now that he didn't have anything to distract him – and that included L. It wasn't that L was the greatest example of company Light had ever had the fortune of being in, given how annoying he found him, but on the other hand… he had to admit that he did feel quite comfortable with him. He didn't know what it was about the detective, because on the other hand he found him to be infuriating and slightly untrustworthy, but somehow he felt like he knew him. He didn't know from when, or from where, or even how, but there was something about him that was so familiar that Light felt at ease with him even as he thought of him as suspicious.
L was fairly taking his sweet time. At first Light didn't mind, rather content to wait for him sitting against the door, but, after what must have been about ten minutes, he found himself getting up and giving the barest of knocks before abruptly opening the door, not caring if L was only half-dressed or not.
He was, in fact, fully-dressed in the clothes Light had left for him, the reason for his prolonged period of time in the bedroom being that he was enthralled by Light's detective fiction montage, standing at the foot of the bed in silence, looking at it. He turned to Light, however, as he entered the room – Light blinked at him, stopping, the sudden difference in the way he looked taking him by more surprise than he would have expected.
The clothes he had left for the detective had been simple – just a long-sleeved white T-shirt and jeans – but Light couldn't help but feel…
…that this was how L was meant to look.
"What's the matter, Light-kun?" L asked pleasantly, rubbing at his damp hair – wilder and spikier now without the fedora to push it down.
"You…" Light gave a little shake of his head. "You look… so different."
L shot him another wry smile.
"More modern, certainly," he agreed. "Is Light-kun satisfied now?"
"I… just didn't want you to be wet," Light muttered defensively.
"Yes – it appears that I am not as waterproof as I first presumed."
"I wouldn't have expected that you were."
"What a shame that your expectations govern my reality." L glanced back at the books littering the bedsheets. "You have some good books here, Light-kun."
"Oh, I…" Light felt a little embarrassed about the way that he had arranged them now that L was looking over the whole thing like some kind of art critic. "I just put them there to keep them off the floor. I-I was looking for something earlier…"
"You are perfectly entitled to arrange your reading material however you like," L replied genially. "I think I'd prefer a shelf, personally, but that's just me." He reached out and picked up The Big Sleep. "How ironic," he murmured. "Our murderer seems rather intent on administering doses of the Big Sleep, hm?"
"…If you want to put it that way." Light's amber eyes narrowed as he watched L turn the book this way and that. "Don't wreck my book, L."
"I'm not – I'm just interested. This looks like it's rather old."
"Early sixties, I think. Maybe very late fifties."
"Mm. It looks authentic. Might only be a second or third edition – The Big Sleep was first published in 1939. Depends on how quickly it sold out. This copy has a great cover, though."
"You think so?" Light frowned at it. "It looks the part, I guess, but that tagline kind of annoys me."
L looked at it himself and smiled.
"It was the style at the time. It does seem a little boastful, though – even if Marlowe does always get his man and his girl. Honestly, he rather puts us real detectives to shame."
"Well, I hope you get your man, and I hope you do it quickly," Light replied bitterly, going to the window. "Every time I think of that poor little boy…"
"Light-kun, I'm as sickened and angry as anyone about the fact that a child was killed for the sake of passing on a message, for we'll assume that the child would not have been made a victim otherwise, but I won't have you blaming yourself, either."
"But I—"
"Because even if you do," L interrupted calmly, gently tossing the book back onto the bed, "it won't change a thing. The child is still dead. The murderer is still out there—"
"And I still wrote those books," Light finished, leaning his forehead against the windowpane.
"Even burning every copy in existence wouldn't do any good now, Light-kun," L said. "Nothing can be done except for the capture of the killer."
"Then why don't you do it?!" Light snapped, whirling on him. "You, or those Mello and Matt guys, or someone! I don't want there to be another body, L! I don't want someone else to die because of me, whether… whether they debatably deserved it or not!"
"Light-kun, it isn't that simple," L replied patiently. "Don't be so ridiculous – you know that."
"Why would I know that?!" Light retorted. "Because I wrote some silly stories about a character I made up? You think that implies that I know how these things work in reality? You're the one being ridiculous if you think that! If only it were true, if only I could put a stop to all this simply… simply by willing it to stop, then that would be perfect, but—"
"Ah, yes," L interrupted with a sour smile, "if only reality bent to your desire as easily as I did." He gestured to his simpler clothing as he spoke.
"You look better. You should stay dressed like that."
L gave a sigh.
"You seem to rather have it in your head that my usual behaviour and attire is incorrect," he said. "I find that very strange – most people picture a guy in a fedora and a trenchcoat who smokes and hangs around in bars at 2am drinking malt liquor when they think of a detective. Well, that, or Sherlock Holmes – but we can't all be Sherlock Holmes, you understand." He looked down at himself again. "But this, Light-kun… this is abnormal. I don't look at all like a detective now."
"Oh, and a fine job you were doing when you looked the part," Light spat in reply. "Perhaps you'd make a better anomaly. Perhaps then you might get closer to catching the killer."
"Don't be unfair, Light-kun. This isn't an easy case."
"I know that, but you…" Light gave a sigh of frustration. "You said when the killer got bored, when he changed his method… That was when you'd get him, and yet… here we are still. That poor little boy is in a body bag, no doubt lined up for an autopsy, and the murderer is still free to lay out Body Number Eight for us."
"With all due respect, the child's body was brought to our attention only a little over an hour ago. I didn't imply that the murderer would walk straight into our outstretched arms the moment the MO altered."
"Then why are you here?" Light hissed. "Don't you have work to do, Mr Real Detective?"
"Why am I here?" L tilted his head at him. "Because you want me to be."
"You sound pretty sure of yourself," Light said coldly.
"I suppose I am," L agreed, "but please don't think it's arrogance. I simply know that it is the truth. You don't want to be left by yourself."
"I—"
"It's understandable that the death of the boy would have upset you, Light-kun. There is no need to be ashamed of it."
"…And is that why you're here?"
"I'm here because you want me to be," L said again. "That is my understanding, anyway. Of course, if you would prefer to be left alone—"
"No," Light interrupted wearily, suddenly feeling both defeated and relieved all at once. "Stay. Even though I admit I find it weird… that you just seem to do whatever I say, I'm not saying it as simply an order."
L gave a nod; and, after a moment, returned his gaze to the books upon the bedsheets.
"What were you looking for?" he asked. "You said you were looking for something."
"Oh…" Light looked at the scattered tomes himself. "To be honest… when I was rereading Death Note, I couldn't help but notice… that a lot of Ryuk's traits are borrowed from other fictional detectives, and it just reminded me… well, I guess I just wanted to look at my sources."
L smiled.
"Oh, yes, I have to say," he concurred, "that you did shamelessly steal a lot of things from other works of detective fiction."
"Shut up," Light snapped, coming to join L at the foot of the bed. "This coming from the guy who prefers to dress like Philip Marlowe?"
"Hm. Too bad I don't have his luck." The detective was referring to the cheesy tagline again, no doubt, but Light didn't rise to the bait.
"L," he said.
"Yes?"
"…You are going to get him, aren't you? The murderer?"
"Of course I am, Light-kun."
"Okay. Because I don't want him killing any more children."
"That's a good reason," L said airily, "but do you mind if I ask you something?"
"What?"
"Well, I assume you are so affected by the death of the boy, whose name we agreed might be 'Near', because he was real. You said that a child had not been a murder victim in any of your books, but… would you have ever considered writing it?" L paused. "That is… would you ever have condoned the murder of an unreal child for the sake of plot advancement?"
Light glared at him.
"How the hell can you ask me something like that?" he bit out.
"Because it is an important question. Please answer it."
"I… I don't remember. L, you know I don't remember writing those books—"
"That should not prevent you from answering the question. Even if your memories are limited, surely your opinions have not changed."
"Oh, god… I… maybe…" Light shook his head. "I don't know, L!"
"It is a common practice in modern crime and detective fiction. Killing children, I mean."
"I said I don't know!" Light screeched.
"Don't shout at me, Light-kun," L sighed. "There's no need to get upset about it."
"There's perfect reason to get upset about it!" Light blazed, suddenly grabbing at the copy of The Big Sleep and wrenching it open. Without a moment's hesitation he tore it in half, straight down the centre of the flimsy spine, and threw both halves onto the bedroom floor. "I hate them! I hate all these horrible stories about people being murdered over money and jealousy, children being killed by sickos with childhood traumas of their own, and I hate the way the deaths only facilitate the plot!" He reached for a Japanese-language copy of an Agatha Christie book and started to rip that apart was well. "I hate the people who write it, I hate the people who read it— God, L, I hate detective fiction!"
"Stop it, Light-kun." L grabbed his wrist as he disposed of the Christie book and reached for a Batman comic. "I know you're angry, but this isn't going to solve anything."
"Why don't you solve something, then!" Light snapped, trying to wrench his wrist back. "Like the fucking mystery!"
L said nothing, just looked back at him in silence, still clutching the younger man's wrist.
Light could feel himself beginning to shake again, wracked with a coldness that slipped past his senses and settled instead in the cores of his bones – feeling that the cause of it might be the emptiness of L's eyes, so much like those of the dead boy. He felt his knees give out and sank against L, comforted by the contact in its simplest sense.
"Just put me out of my misery," he murmured against the detective's shoulder. "I don't want to be haunted by it anymore…"
L still didn't say anything; but Light thought that the strange control he seemed to have over L must stretch beyond words, for what he wanted was a distraction, something to encompass his consciousness so wholly that he could dwell on nothing else, least of all the image of the dead boy nailed to the wall of his mind—
And L kissing him seemed distraction enough.
What he wanted was something that stopped him – stopped his thoughts, stopped him from remembering why L was here at all, stopped him… the way he wished that it all would stop.
(And wishing that it all would stop somehow felt familiar.)
As did L. Even though Light knew that he'd never met L before, he couldn't shake the feeling that he did know him from somewhere, even if it was only from the page of a book. This was that much more intimate than even curling up under the covers with a tome and a torch, making a private little book-club of Holmes' adventures or Marlowe's rash methods.
The rhythm was not as neat as words but was easier on the mind than a story. The bedsheets were still covered with the books he had not destroyed; littered with detective fiction, the edges of them leaving imprints in his skin, making him marked by it, just as he was dominated by the very embodiment of it.
It made him – or all of it – no more or less real, and made him hate detective fiction no less, even when he cried detective fiction's name.
When he woke, it was still raining. He didn't think he'd been asleep for long, for it was still dark. L was asleep next to him, his jet hair messier still.
Light didn't know what to say to him and hoped he didn't wake, although tried his best not to disturb him anyway as he slipped out of the bed and pulled on his jeans and shirt, leaving the latter unbuttoned.
He was drawn back to the desk. It was as though there had been a storm in his skull, the overbearing heat before it preventing him from formulating thought clearly – but now, in the aftermath of the downpour, the gears of his mind turned better in the cooler, fresher atmosphere.
It wasn't that a whole memory had come back to him, rather a mere fragment – but a fragment that had not been in his possession before.
He sat in the chair at the desk as before and, again, reached for the blue ballpoint. He unscrewed the end of it and slid out the narrow plastic ink reservoir; then pulled out the drawer and slipped the piece of plastic upwards into a tiny hole drilled underneath, levering what had seemed to be the bottom of the tray up.
He knew that there'd be a circuit beneath the false bottom – that was what he had remembered. He'd also remembered that he needed to use the plastic ink reservoir of a ballpoint to keep the circuit from connecting and setting the whole drawer on fire if he wanted to get the false bottom loose.
He had no idea what he would find beneath it, though.
It was another notebook. He reached in and carefully lifted it, sliding it out of the drawer and looking at it. Touching it brought back nothing, and nor did staring at it, and eventually he resolved to open it.
It was filled with pages of his own writing, small and neat. The words did not tell a story, as he had thought they might on first glance, but were instead notes.
Notes on what seemed to be a… character? A detective, perhaps – but not Ryuk—
He turned the page and something slipped out, fluttering to the floor. Frowning, he put the notebook on the desk and bent for the folded sheet of paper, picking it up. It was thin and flimsy, which wasn't surprising, given that it was a newspaper cutting.
He carefully unfolded it, beginning to read it. It was an article about a murder case which still lay open twenty-five years after…
…after the little boy's body had been found in the woods on the Halloween of 1979.
Light looked at the photograph. It was grainy, a reprint of one taken a quarter of a century ago, but there was no mistaking it.
L. It was almost ironic how often he referred to himself as a "real detective".
He wasn't – in fact, he wasn't even real at all.
He was nothing but a character created from the corpse of a child:
Detective fiction incarnate.
Guest-starring Nate "Near" River as The Corpse.
…Ah, it sucks. I love Near, and would have preferred to use him in a more dignified manner, but, hey, I have my reasons, nonetheless.
As for the rest… kyah ha ha, I have nothing to say, but if you've read some of my other stuff, you should know how much I love my crazy, wacked-out, that-barely-makes-any-sense plot twists.
So if I can get one into a story, I am a happy bunny.
I am a happy bunny right now, yes sir. :)
Doctor Mizushima: Named after Takahiro Mizushima, voice-actor of Code Geass R2's Rolo Lamperouge (also the voice-actor of Romeo in RomeoxJuliet, FYI).
So, um, more soon (I hope)?
RR xXx