Chapter 3:Duality

I cannot believe how long it has been since I updated this, but I have updated the original story that this has become an alternate scenario for. I feel that I've been neglecting this fan fic a little. I am sorry to my readers, not that there are many of you, but I appreciate that you are reading and reviewing. I warn you that I was received a request from a reader who asked me to make a change in my original fan fic and I had to say no because what's written is written, but I promised to try to piece it into this one. I generally take my requests for certain story qualities into consideration especially if I think they could put an interesting spin on things. In order to make this fit I did a lot of research, in how I could best make this change without totally botching the original storyline because this is supposed to follow it pretty closely except that L is alive and such. I finally found the perfect fix though the way to get it to work is a little outrageous I think it makes a nice fit in the story so I apologize if it seems like it's a little off the wall it's the best way I could get it to really fit in there. I hope that you enjoy the new chapter and continue reading and reviewing. I do not own Death Note, its characters, or its plotline. I do own Ellie, strawberry jelly, and this fan fic of course.

Sometimes the most unlikely situations lead us to who we are going to be. Ellie had never believed this more than when she was making these crazy travel arrangements for a wedding that had just been planned the week before. Was she crazy? This was marriage she was talking about, with L nonetheless! He could change his hair color, he could change the way he looked, the way he talked, but he would still be L! It wasn't that this bothered her, she had in fact fallen deeply in love with him, but she didn't feel that it was mutual. He had chosen to lock himself away from her in either his office or his bedroom, only taking meals with her generally.

She paced around the room like a caged animal. She certainly wasn't caged, it had been she who had chosen this, she just hadn't expected things to go so fast and for herself to fall so hard like this.

Ellie was supposed to meet the preacher today who was to marry them. She had asked Laurent where she was supposed to take the man when he got there. Laurent told her to take the man out into the backyard through a room in the stairwell that Laurent hadn't shown her on the initial tour.

Ellie heard the doorbell ring and greeted the man who was to marry Laurent and herself. She took him on a tour of the downstairs leaving out the upstairs and took him into the backyard. It had been the first time even she had seen the backyard and it was hard for her to suppress a gasp when she saw it.

The man shivered a bit. "Are you sure you don't want to wait, it's still going to be chilly and possibly snowy during the wedding."

"I'm sure," Ellie said trying to refrain from holding her stomach. If she waited until April or May when it would be warm enough for a real outdoor wedding she would already be showing.

"What are you going to do if it keeps snowing like this?" the man asked her.

Ellie thought. She wasn't sure what she would do. "I hear its supposed to warm up a bit," Ellie said. "If not I suppose we will have to figure out how to do it indoors." Ellie said thinking quickly.

The man nodded and surveyed the backyard. Ellie took the whole backyard in. She could see the small shoots of grass underneath the melting snow. She saw the flowers that would surely grow around the edge of the house and as she looked out onto a meadow on the property that Laurent owned. Ellie felt breathless at the sight. It was everything she loved, everything she had wanted in a home. She smiled and the man nodded his head again. "Well I've got to go, but give me a call if there are any changes."

Ellie escorted the man to the front door where he excited. Ellie was walked back into the kitchen. She hadn't even been aware that there was a room that lead to the backyard, she had thought that you just had to walk around the house to get to the backyard, but one of the rooms she had mistaken as a bathroom on the tour of the stairwell was actually a doorway leading to what she thought of as a mudroom to discard clothing before walking into the perfection of the home. She saw that the washer and dryer were found there as well as lot of s closet storage space for winter coats, shoes, umbrellas and things of that nature.

Ellie washed the dishes while thinking. "What is going to happen?" She dried the dishes and walked upstairs. She walked past Laurent's office and saw that he wasn't inside of the room. She peaked into the bedroom and he wasn't there either. She scratched her head.

"Where could he possibility be?" Ellie thought out loud to herself. "Perhaps he is in the living room," she thought to herself.

She walked downstairs and into the living room. "Where is he?" she thought to herself.

She looked outside and the car was still in the driveway. "Where could he be?" She shrugged and walked back upstairs. She supposed he would just always keep her guessing like that, it wouldn't matter that they were married or going to be parents soon, he would still confuse the hell out of her.

She reached the top of the stairs. She turned the corner and walked on to her room. She stopped for a moment and turned around and peaked into the baby's room. She had sworn that she had heard something.

She peeked into the room and saw Laurent sitting cross-legged in the floor. Ellie smiled and opened the door a bit farther to get a better look at Laurent. She stepped into the doorway and then all hell broke lose in her body.

Ellie felt a horrible pain go through her body. She hadn't had a cramp like this in a long time. She cried out and Laurent turned his head quickly to see her clutching her midsection.

"You need to go to the hospital," Laurent said after she cringed for a few minutes in pain on the floor. "This isn't normal at all." Ellie gritted her teeth and nodded feebly. Could she really argue?

Ellie walked down the stairs and Laurent followed behind her. The pain had subsided a bit, but she didn't want to chance it. She had heard pregnancy horror stories, and she knew that she wouldn't feel it if she did miscarry this early, but it seemed nothing was normal about her body. She wasn't sure what she would have done if Laurent hadn't been there. Would she have just tried to grit her teeth and ignore it? She probably would have. Something about him being there with her looking as concerned as she felt made her want to get it checked out, even though it probably was nothing.

Laurent started the car quickly and Ellie climbed into the passenger seat. They drove several miles, and Ellie kept looking at the speedometer. Laurent showed no sign of losing his cool, but his speed showed otherwise. They were going almost 90 miles per hour and she felt as if her stomach were about to come through her entire body when they made an abrupt stop. Ellie hadn't remembered going through any large cities on the way there, but it seemed that there was a big city approximately 20 miles away, with a hospital. It hadn't taken any time at all to get there with the speed that Laurent was driving at.

A few minutes later they were in a hospital waiting room. Laurent seemed as calm as ever as he insisted she sit down in the waiting room while he took care of the paperwork. She had never known how charismatic he was until that moment. He seemed to pass the receptionist something and then Ellie was taken right away. Ellie looked back and realized that Laurent had bribed the receptionist and probably the doctor who would be seeing her later with cash. She felt dirty at that moment, but also flattered that he would do something like that for her when it probably wasn't that big of an emergency. She wanted to argue it, but she was already being rushed into a room.

"What seems to be the problem?" the doctor asked her.

"Horrible cramping," Ellie said. He gave her a strange look as if she were coming in for mere menstrual cramps. "I'm pregnant," she added.

The doctor raised his eyebrows. That seemed to make this situation more complicated and more serious now. He left the room and then she was taken to get an ultrasound.

"Miss, we can't see a lot, but it looks like your going to lose one of your babies," the ultrasound technician said.

"One of them?" she questioned. "I was pregnant with twins?" she questioned again as if that wasn't obvious from what the technician had said.

"Yes, we may have caught it early enough to get you into surgery to see if the problem can be fixed, but its very rare, and the baby is just a mass of cells right now. It would be more natural to the child go as nature intended it, but if you should choose surgery you may have a small chance of reattaching the child to the placenta and possibly having twins if all goes well," the doctor explained coming into the room just moments after Ellie had received the news.

"I want the surgery," Ellie said. She didn't care if there was barely any chance. As L had said before when he was investigating Light, even small possibilities shouldn't be overlooked.

"You could die on the table," the doctor said raising his eyebrows again. He seemed to do that a lot.

"I realize that," Ellie said.

"You could lose both children, and you could die, you have no guarantee that this will work out," the doctor said flabbergasted.

Ellie thought for a moment. Was it worth it? She had so much death in her life, was sacrificing one child worth saving the other or herself? She wondered about how many times she had scraped by from death. She must have some kind of guardian angel looking out for her, and if it were looking out for her it would look out for her babies. She hung her head for a moment as if praying and then met the doctor's cold steely eyes. "I'm sure of my decision, get me in as soon as you possibly can."

The surgery took only a few hours, but Laurent was still pacing in the waiting room. He hadn't been in the room with her when she had discovered that she was having twins, she was going to lose one of the twins, and now she was risking her life for a surgery that may not work out at all. He of course had to hear all of this from a nurse, which made him even angrier. He didn't even have a chance to say anything to her before she went into surgery. Apparently one of the twins was going to be lost to a syndrome called Vanishing Twin Syndrome. He had never heard of such a thing.

His life was certainly a mess. He got engaged, became a prospective parent, lost his virginity, lost Watarai, was hiding out from Kira, and was going to get married all in 2 months. He was so good at adapting, but in this situation it was just too much. He was easier at adapting when it was jut him, when there was no other person involved, but now he became intertwined in another person's life. This was the hardest adaptation he had ever had to go through.

Ellie's surgery was very short. When coming off of the anesthetics she took a look around hospital room she was in for her recovery. She blinked a couple of times. She wondered how big of a scar she would have on her skin. She sighed. She had no idea how long she was out, she buzzed for the nurse, just to let her know she was awake and to see what was going on with the babies.

She turned to see that Laurent had fallen asleep in a car beside the bed. She reached out and touched his hand. She laughed at how he sat in the chair.

The nurse walked in and said, "Oh, you're awake, well I suppose the doctor should be in soon to tell you how it went then." After checking Ellie's vitals she left.

Ellie watched Laurent awake by her side. She smiled at him and held his hand.

Laurent watched Ellie curiously. She smiled at him, after a surgery, after knowing that she might lose her children, their children, which he still couldn't believe. Having one child was hard enough to imagine in his mind, but now, the thought of having twins, was far too much for him. When the doctor handed him the ultrasound he was amazed. Such small creatures, with two separate heartbeats and both were going to be fine and carried full term if all went well. Nothing was certain because most vanishing twins weren't caught, but then again nothing was normal about Ellie he noted.

Ellie got out of the hospital the next day after her stitches were assessed and another ultrasound was taken. Ellie looked at the stitches across her lower abdomen. It was going to be a small scar, she could see that, but it still made her self-conscious. She didn't expect her wedding night to be anything exciting, but she had hoped that maybe Laurent would want to do something. She didn't even want to look at the scar, she was just happy that she was going to hopefully have a healthy pregnancy after this.

When she got to their home she was surprised to see that she had missed several phone calls and as she went through the answering machine she was grateful that she had planned ahead for the wedding because it seemed that Misa and Matsuda were already in their hotel rooms in the bigger city about 20 miles away and were awaiting instruction for the wedding. She didn't want to keep them in the hotel rooms for too long, she knew that Matsuda at least had a job to probably get back to. She also knew that Misa did a lot of things that she may be able to get out of a little easier, but she was still a star in Japan and she couldn't be gone for too long before questions were asked.

Ellie looked at the weather when she got inside and found that it would be warm in three days for a few days before another cold front went through. It would not be spectacularly warm but it wouldn't be raining, which was a first for Britain because it was generally always raining.

"We should have our wedding on Tuesday," Ellie said.

"Tuesday?" Laurent questioned. "You just came out of surgery!"

Ellie laughed. This was the first time she had ever heard Laurent get flustered.

"It was a small surgery," Ellie said. "I will rest all of tomorrow and the next day, and then get everything ready Monday."

"You are exhausting," he said to her as he walked upstairs to his office.

"That's what I've been told," Ellie thought to herself smiling.