It was white...
It was black...
Somehow, both adjectives applied perfectly.
It was absolutely and completely blank.
It was Nothing.
No, honestly: one cannot possibly describe the feeling that was felt in the whiteness, the sense of total darkness, the sense of Nothing.
...Nothing...
...The word was a failure. It didn't mean anything in any form other than the one that was felt now... Or was it lack of form that was the true definition of Nothing?
He didn't know.
It bugged him, just a little bit. He didn't know. This was a new feeling, because being nothing meant being everything. Nothing and Everything were Yin and Yang to each other, where one could not exist without the other.
It was an interesting thought.
...
Wait a moment.
Then... if he was Nothing... and Everything... but more importantly, if he was Nothing At All...
How could he be thinking?
...
And all at once, the illusion was shattered.
June 1, 2011
12:09 AM
His eyes fluttered open.
A bright light was on the ceiling above his head. A few strands of hair were in his eyes, obscuring his vision just a bit. A thin blanket covered him up to his shoulders.
Across the room, someone snored.
In a bit of a daze, he sat up in the bed. With calm eyes, he took in his surroundings.
White walls. Underground. Beeping machine. A tall man with closed green eyes and brown - no, chestnut - hair.
...It gave him an incredibly annoying sense of dejà vú.
To complete the scene, there was a small vase of flowers on a table next to the bed. After removing the plants, he chucked the vase across the room as hard as he could, and it shattered with a satisfying crash on the wall.
The doctor awoke with a start.
"What the-? Ryuzaki!" He outright grinned. "You're awake!"
L glared daggers.
"Mido-san, you have some explaining to do," he said harshly.
Mido's smile disappeared. "It seems pretty self-explanatory to me."
"Mido-san!"
"What?" he asked. "Ryuzaki, friends don't let friends die!"
"Friends don't bring friends back to life!" L shouted back.
"I..." Mido frowned at first, but then his expression changed and he tried to stifle a grin. "Oh, that's what...!"
And just like that, the doctor was laughing.
He's probably delusional; lack of sleep, perhaps? L raised an eyebrow. "I would appreciate knowing what's so funny about this situation."
"I - I - I didn'tbring you back again, that's what's so funny!" Mido rubbed an eye where small tears were beginning to form. "You just went and assumed that I'd broken my promise to you about that before even asking what the hell happened... And they call you 'The World's Greatest Detective'... HAH!"
L wasn't sure what his reaction was supposed to be to that.
After precisely two and a quarter seconds of thought, he settled for softly laughing along with the doctor.
"Mido-san," he asked some time later, "what did you do after I passed out?"
Mido was now sitting next to him, stuck fast to a folding chair while L was confined to bed and eating ice cream (strangely enough, the doctor hadn't complained about that one bit). He considered his response a moment before answering, "I just... did. Automatically... without thinking. I fixed you up as best I could, I phoned the team - Oh, you probably want to talk to them, don't you?"
L glanced at the clock. "Perhaps later. Twelve-thirty in the morning isn't the ideal time to call someone."
"True..." Mido hesitated. "Anyway, I told them what had happened, and they helped me... clean up all the bodies and blood... and since then, I've more or less been sitting here waiting for you to wake up."
"What about the notebook?"
"We didn't do anything with it," Mido said. "It's in the cupboard if you want to see it."
"Please."
Mido got up to retrieve the Death Note, and he returned and handed it to L. "It's... technically mine now," he added, "because I was the first person to pick it up after Light had died. I had Ryuk explain all the rules to me."
Hmm... L had all but forgotten about the shinigami. "Where is Ryuk?" he asked, glancing around.
"He's sitting upstairs. Apparently he's well entertained with just an old Nintendo and a crate of apples," Mido said, a hint of a smile on his face. "He didn't want to hang around you because of... erm, your lifespan. Or lack thereof."
"Ah. I see..." L paused. "Mido-san, why didn't you stop Light?"
The doctor looked confused. "What do you mean?"
L gazed at him imploringly. "I know you had cameras installed in that room, and that you were probably watching them with your assistant to make sure I wasn't hiding something... but why did you wait so long to come out and kill Light?"
Mido didn't answer for a minute, but when he did it was - somehow - exactly what L needed to hear.
"Because... it wasn't my fight to win."
L just nodded to himself.
"You know," he said, "you never did tell me what drug you gave me to get rid of the pain."
For a moment, Mido had a complete and utter deer-in-the-headlights look on his face. "Erm, well, you see, aah..."
"The truth, Mido-san," L said pointedly.
Finally the doctor sighed. "I don't have a name for it, actually. I developed it myself..." Suddenly he changed the subject. "Can I be honest with you?"
"Hmm?" L bit his thumb.
"I knew you would pass out, no matter what stupid promises I had you make."
L frowned. "So why did you make me say that?"
"Because ultimately I... I wanted to feel better knowing that you broke your promise of passing out before I broke my promise of not bringing you back to life."
L started up again, "Mido-san! You said you didn't-"
"And it's the truth!" Mido defended himself, hands in the air. "I just wasn't 100% sure it was the truth at the time."
After considering that, L dropped the subject. "Back to my original question," he said.
Hesitating, Mido said, "It was the same drug that I gave to you on January 31 of this year."
L raised an eyebrow. "The final drug that brought me back to life?"
"The one and only. It doesn't specifically bring people back from the dead, per se - what it really does is sustain and restart life."
L thought that over, and slowly he nodded his head. "It kept me alive while you were bandaging me... What's the main ingredient?"
Mido frowned. "I promised you I would never tell you that!"
"You made me break a promise," L pushed, "and you would be a fool to think that you can't trust me by now."
Finally, after several moments of mental debate, the doctor sighed. "You probably won't believe me, but... sand."
...?
Well.
L hadn't known what to expect for an answer, but that definitely was not it. "...Sand," he repeated, skeptical.
Mido nodded. "I found a container full of sand in a storage rooms one day. It was labeled 'REM,' so I freaked out because I thought it had something to do with nuclear physics and radiation. But then I looked at a small sample of it under a microscope, and it was..." The doctor seemed at a loss for words. "...I just can't describe it, but... I just knew. In that moment, I knew that I'd found something absolutely supernatural. And right about then was when I figured out that I was going to bring you back, because before that point you were just another body in my over-sized freezer," Mido finished all in one breath. "...Erm... sorry," he added sheepishly, "that sounded really cheesy..."
L was at a loss for words. Other then, perhaps, the word "irony."
Rem had killed him... and it was because of Rem that he'd gotten the chance to live again.
..."Irony" seemed to be a rather mild adjective, actually.
"Interesting," was all L said aloud.
The doctor just nodded in agreement.
"I don't understand your reasoning," L admitted a short time later.
"My reasoning with what?" Mido asked, confused.
"You wanted to catch Kira - but Kira killed Lind L. Tailor, who murdered your parents," he explained. "I also know for a fact that you were told of the incident... One would think that logical reasoning would lead you to revering Kira instead of hating him."
"...Well, for the record I didn't exactly hateKira," the doctor corrected, "but I definitely didn't feel the need to become a Kira follower. What I wanted to happen... Oh Lord... erm, this is going to sound really bad. I didn't want Lind L. Tailor to have a split-second heart attack when he died: I really sort of wished that he would had died a bit more... painfully."
L raised an eyebrow.
"I told you it sounded bad," Mido responded meekly.
"No," L said softly. "He destroyed your life... To me that isn't a completely foreign idea."
"Well, you are a detective. I suppose you used to deal with that sort of thing all the-" Mido paused, and a curious look of realization came onto his face. "...But that isn't what you meant. You wanted to kill Light yourself, didn't you?"
"..." L was silent.
"In a manner a bit more painful than a heart attack, right?"
"Perhaps," he muttered.
"...Now that I think about it, neither of us is especially bad because of it," Mido admitted.
"...Maybe you're right," L said quietly. "It doesn't sound bad... It just sounds human."
"Hey, L?" the doctor asked.
"Hmm?"
"When I said that I was your friend, I honestly meant it. You're one of the few things in the world I think I can really hold on to after all of... this."
The deaths, the wounds, the weight of everything that had happened on their shoulders.
"I'm not trying to pressure you into saying that much back to me," he quickly added. "I just wanted to make sure that you knew I was serious."
"...Mido-san..."
L paused as he thought about the doctor's words.
"...I'm not 100% sure I can say the same, because I've never had a friend..."
Mido's expression was completely blank.
"...But I do know something that I can say for certain about the subject that might almost be as good."
The doctor tilted his head with a slightly puzzled look on his face. "What would that be?"
L looked him right in the eyes.
"When you call me your friend, I believe you."
And even Mido knew that coming from L, that meant more than anything else the detective could have said.
"I don't know how to put this," Mido said, "but what happens next?"
"...In our lives, you mean?"
"Well, yeah. What are we going to do now?"
For a moment they were silent.
"I hope you don't mind," L said softly, "but I have a vague idea..."