warnings: blood, gore, really really slow pacing, and extraneous pov swaps.
notes: hello! okay, just over two weeks isn't so bad. it's better, anyway. i promise this is the last chapter before things start to pick up and, well, happen. the theoretical full mello + b chapter is not a theory anymore so much as a reality, and will be coming to you next chapter. i hope you like mello pov. and uh, gore? i hope you like this fic, actually, and though i am still not fully satisfied with this chapter, but i edited it a substantial amount, so it will have to do.
thank you very genuinely to everyone who reviewed last time. you guys keep me chugging along, i swear, and it makes me so so happy every time i get a review. (also shhhhhh don't laugh at the fact that this week's quote is an arctic monkeys lyric.)
chapter seventeen - small worlds.
"If you're gonna try to walk on water / make sure you wear comfortable shoes."
Piledriver Waltz, Arctic Monkeys
"Smile! Oh, but don't smile too much. It's a passport photo, after all, and those are never big fun for anyone."
Syd sticks the lens in his face and flashes a couple of shots of him against a clean backdrop. Mello doesn't smile at all. Across the room, Beyond is devouring Kung Pao chicken by the mouthful, mumbling something that gets lost in his chewing in a way that is startlingly reminiscent of L. Startling because of how natural and unmeasured it seems. The rest of his adopted mannerisms are self-evidently stitched on, like new arms on an old marionette, but this may as well have been there from the start.
All disguises and dysfunction aside, L and B are similar in mundane, unintended ways. They are, after all, both just people - which is a hard thing to remember most times, in both cases.
"Chin up, Mihael," Syd says, brow scrunching up in artistic contemplation, or else mild indigestion - it's hard to tell. "That's the 'I rob liquor stores and leave my spliff butts on people's lawns' face. Security won't be so up on it. Try not to look so displeased for a moment, will you?"
Mello frowns, arms crossing instinctively across his chest. This is just his face. "Don't call me that," he says.
"What? Your name?"
"That's not my name," he snaps, before he really thinks it through. It may as well not be. No one calls him that, except B, and he hardly wants to take the man writing what look like Egyptian hieroglyphs on the wall in soy sauce as the prime reference for his interpersonal relationships. Then again, he doesn't really have anyone else these days.
"It's not?" Syd flicks his eyes to B, setting the camera down - evidently resigned to Mello's facial expression - who just rolls his shoulders in uneven, bony clicks.
He doesn't look away from the art installation going on on the wall, chopsticks tracing stylized little shapes in dull, fading brown. "I just read my lines," he says, with trilling amusement. "Baby can call himself whatever he likes, but Mihael is what it says in red, so it's what I say. Anything else and it gets far too confusing, like rubbing your belly and patting your head."
Syd's brow twitches and he distracts himself for a moment trying it out. Mello huffs, slumping uncomfortably out of Syd's studio lights. He says he usually uses this room for shooting photos of tattoos - "It's great if they're all over, because some of the birds will take their clothes of," - but currently it's serving as the starting point for the manufacture of illegal passports. Evidently Syd runs an extra business on the side, or at least does now, at B's insistence. Mello wonders how long and well they've known each other, and how anyone could possibly get to know Beyond Birthday at all without ending up dead or at least mildly dismembered. His discomfort ultimately outweighs his curiosity, however, and he doesn't ask.
"I'm not sure what that even means," Syd says. He looks at Mello. "Do you understand what that even means?"
Mello wants to say something clever in response, but doesn't. Can't quite think of something and can't really get his lips to move, besides. He's almost afraid of speaking to Syd. He's afraid of what might come out.
Let me go home. Please, I just want to go home.
But this ferrety little man with cartoons inked across his skin could not be his savior if he wanted to. And Mello does not need saving to begin with. He has a a job to do. He has L waiting on the other end of some plane ride to some place. Japan. He's going east. B is going to take him east.
Beyond just smiles at the both of them, sticking the chopsticks into the side of his mouth and waving his hands theatrically as he says, "Magic," in a half-garbled jolt of his vocal chords.
"Oh yes, you and your magic tricks," Syd mumbles, his offbeat humor still edging the words, even though he's clearly not enjoying the situation. "I'm sure it would have saved a lot of needless trouble if you'd taken my advice and joined up with the carnival folk years ago."
B snorts. "And, like I said, my upbringing won't allow it." He shoots an overly pronounced wink Mello's way, perhaps just because that - if anything - is what they have in common. Wammy's. L. The man behind the curtain, pulling his levers and spinning his dials. "I'm too refined for that sort of thing." He follows the assertion up by licking his soy sauce scrawling off the wall, then smacking his lips gaudily. "Now, if the boy's all done, I'm ready for my close-up."
He hops up from where he'd been sprawled across the dingy art desk, leaving a mess of papers in his wake, despite having set them all in neat, perfectly organized piles before the food had arrived.
He swoops around Mello and falls raggedly in line with Syd's camera, smirk dissolving instantly into an utterly unremarkable expression of calm sobriety. The switch takes place in the small instant before the flash, but afterwards stays plastered on like it's his natural facial expression. It strikes Mello then that maybe B really isn't the way he is, and that it's all just a show, a carnival act of his own. But no sane man could feign madness so well, and wouldn't have any reason to. The mad, however, have much more incentive to teach themselves how to disappear into the dull thrum of normalcy.
Beyond Birthday is utterly out of his mind. He just happens to be a remarkable actor.
According to what Watari had always told them, the latter is just one more similarity to L.
She stays the night and sleeps in an unused staff room and has breakfast on the balcony because the dining room is too loud.
"This orphanage has too many children in it," she'd told Roger the night before, when he'd asked what she thought of the place. "I really can't make myself believe they're all geniuses."
"Any child is a genius," he'd said, eyes caving in at the sides with his smile, "if you allow them to be." He'd been called away not ten minutes later because one of the students had broken his leg climbing onto the roof to look for his lost frisbee. Wedy hadn't remarked at the irony. She hadn't needed to.
It's a classic English breakfast and she doesn't touch much except for the coffee, blowing smoke into the cool whistle of the wind as she watches the odd car pass by on the small country rode that peels off at the end of the driveway, counting the passengers and making up stories about everyone she sees. Investment banker, mid-forties, leaving his wife without a word and not intending to come back. Drunk driver, late-teens, tired of her life and hunting for a nice tree to wrap around. Married couple, three kids and all out of the house, looking forward to their first vacation alone in years and years.
Small, unnoticed worlds. She likes to notice them. She likes to slip into people's lives and take something purportedly precious and watch them not notice at all. It's only museums that make a big stink about something going missing, and only because they need to keep up appearances. In reality, ownership is a fickle thing and people aren't half as attached to their this and their that as they like to think they are.
She doesn't really care overmuch for things, either, but she likes scaling walls and disarming security systems and staying still and quiet, and doing all that for nothing just isn't done.
It's all just keeping up appearances.
The boy from yesterday joins her after a quarter of an hour, slumping out on lanky legs that that stretch too far for his body to calculate. He looks uneven, like a seedling that's had half its leaves plucked off already. He sits down on the rocking chair next to her and lights up his cigarette.
"They're sending you to look for Mello, aren't they?" he asks, after too long a pause.
"Who?" Wedy hums, not looking at him. She knows who he means - Roger has shown her a picture, had said to keep an eye out - but she thinks the boy will probably tell it better.
"He left here a few weeks ago," Matt, if that's his name, says. "Everyone but me thought he'd come back by now. They must be starting to panic."
"Hmmm." Wedy smudges her cigarette out on the arm of her chair, then traces the stain idly with one long fingernail. "It's fascinating," she says, "how confident all you little prodigies are, even in your spotty guesswork."
Her fingers smudge black and Matt frowns. There's a long, full silence as the wind hushes through the trees, rustling the pines and making everything smell sharper for an instant. Like a lull in existence. A lone car passes, small and green and pumping out dark fumes and further greying the grey air. There's what looks like a whole family inside. Someone is singing along to the radio. Small worlds.
"Why'd you tell me you were L's wife?" Matt asks after a little bit.
Wedy looks at him then. He's all mealy paleness and smattered freckles and dirty hazel eyes and he has the evident disposition of one who struggles with the process of making and maintaining facial expressions, though there's decent bone structure somewhere under the scrunch of his boyish cheeks and dull frown.
"Why didn't you believe me?" she counters.
The crevice between his eyebrows deepens a bit. "L wouldn't ever get married. I doubt he's even capable of having romantic feelings. Rellen swears up and down he's got to be asexual."
Wedy can't quite keep down her grin, so instead she forms it so if fades into the cool morning, a sharp blot of red lipstick and teething amusement.
"That's why," she says. "They've convinced you all that you're the little pinnacles of everything in this place, but none of you know a thing about the world, nor about your illustrious leader. Your friend with the funny name had the right idea, skipping out early. If he's not dead, he'll be better off for it."
"He's not dead," Matt says, too quickly, and then goes a vague, unsettled red and looks away. "You're right about this place being a self-aggrandizing little hellhole, but - but it's not as if there's anything out there that's much better. There's no particular point to trying to be the next L, sure, but then there's no particular point to anything."
Wedy watches another car pass. Her smile doesn't let up. "L was married once," she says, and enjoys the slight shift in the air as Matt freezes up beside her. "It was only for 26 days and it was under a fake name, but still. There's more to him and there's more to the world than you're ever going to figure out from here."
She waits for him to respond, but he doesn't, and after a moment she turns her eyes back to him, pushing herself up. Her boots make clicking sounds across the wood of the desk and his eyes follow her all the way to the door.
"His is not the trail I've been put on," Wedy says over her shoulder, "but I'll keep an eye out for your friend, if you want."
He still doesn't respond and so she just pops her eyebrows, reaching for the doorknob, and it's only just as she's stepping inside that she hears his voice trailing after her. He stubs out his cigarette on the brick wall beside the doorframe and follows her in.
He says, "I want to go with you."
Small worlds. That's all it is.
L devises sixteen plans of escape, mentally running through each one of them until he finally falls asleep at number twelve. It's perhaps exhaustion and perhaps a slight hangover but mostly, he assumes, just delirious hunger. He counts the tiles in the ceiling as he drifts off, and forms constellations in the off-white plasterboard, mapping the stars and tracing the slants of reality across it. He sees the smooth space between the top of Light's mouth and the bottom of his nose. He sees the church fading in and out of view. He can't remember now if the image he sees in his mind's eye is how it had actually looked that first night or just something he'd conjured up to fill the space.
There are thoughts that he can't tell from memories that he can't tell from dreams. Sometimes he smells B's semen when he's straddling the two sides of consciousness. Sometimes he tastes his sweat. Sometimes he hears his bad 80's records. Sometimes he just hears bad 80's records, ones that have nothing to do with and no association to anything in his life. Sometimes he sees Light standing over him.
Like now. Light is standing over him right now. He looks quite handsome.
L blinks and his eyes feel heavy and his mouth tastes like dryer lint and rubbing alcohol. "Sorry," he says. He's apologizing. He's just apologized. Like his falling asleep was some sort of social faux pas. Like Light isn't his captor and he isn't chained to an air conditioning unit and collapsed on the floor. Like L cares an inch about social decorum.
Light frowns and it's somewhat practiced. "What for?"
L sits up, blinking. "I'm not really sure. Hello. How are you? How's your day been and where is something that I can eat?"
A plastic convenience store bag lands of his chest. "I got all the cheap candy bars I could find," Light says. "Rice, too."
L sits up, the world shifting with him. "I don't like rice."
"You need to eat something with actual nutritional value or you'll die."
"I haven't yet," L says. He unwraps something he can't quite see in the low lighting and bites into it. Mmmmhhh, chewy. "Coffee?"
Light sets down a cup on the floor next to him, and then another. A moment later, his bent knees are following and then he's sitting cross-legged beside L, newspaper tucked up under his arm and eyebrows drifting up like a hazy businessman.
"Coffee this late?" L asks idly, sounding uninterested. He thinks he probably is uninterested. He's too tired to tell. He gulps from his own cup and it burns his tongue, but he doesn't wince the way he'd expected to. It's already sweetened. Nine sugars, just how he likes. Light really is turning into the darling housewife, isn't he? If only they had a house. As it is, they've got an air-conditioning unit and a chain and a mutual hangover. It's perhaps enough.
"I'll need it," Light says, flicking his bangs neatly out of his eyes.
L gulps his coffee as Light sips his and it's quiet through-out the building, only scant echoes from outside and the soft drops of a pipe leak somewhere making audible noise. There's no heat in the building because no one's paying the bills for it and a chill creeps up and down, locking onto L's body like a second set of clothes.
"Are you cold?" Light asks, after a moment.
L has to think about it. "Yes."
Then he hears a coffee cup being set down and feels the radiating warmth of Light invading his personal space - and the word invasion is so apt, is a perfect description of the utterly surrounding, overtaking feel of him. He doesn't even kiss L and doesn't quiet touch him really, just leans in and breaths on him and smiles his unsatisfied, lonely smile.
"Misa's moving out," he says, after a bit. "Everything went according to plan."
L attempts to shovel more candy into his mouth around the line of Light's shoulders. It's perhaps not the most seductive thing he could do but then he's got no particular desire or reason to seduce and, beyond that, he's fucking starving.
"And the man? Mikami?" he asks.
Light jerks slightly and it takes L a moment to realize that he's laughing. "Teru Mikami, attorney at law. He's taken care of, too. Don't worry about it. There's Rem and a few minor things with Misa, but that aside, the only thing standing in my way is… well," - L can taste his unpracticed amusement in the air - "you."
L swallows, washing down the too-hot coffee, and feels heavy. He paws at Light's chest with one hand, tugging him a bit closer.
"The Dead Sea," he says, into the feathered ends of hair that fall across his ears. "It's so salty that nothing can live in it, aside from microscopic bacteria and fungi. Watari took me there when I was rather young for a case wrapped up in the Israel/Palestine dispute. I stood next to it and imagined taking my clothes off and diving in. I knew someone would fish me out immediately and I'd get a stern lecture about lack of professionalism whenever Roger heard about it, but I wanted to anyway. I didn't." He blinks over Light's shoulder, at the twinkling streetlights out the far, far window. "I'd like to be able to go back there someday, just to have the option. I'd like to live long enough. I'd like to take you with me, perhaps."
He skims his hand down Light's back, fingers tracing the line of his spine. He's very beautiful, still. Perhaps should become less so or more so, but he doesn't. He stays the same. He has locked himself in his own glass case. L breathes in the soft scent of his hair, all product and cologne and pampered exhaustion.
He maybe expects something monumental, but what Light says is just, "Who's Roger?" with a tilt of dissatisfaction to his voice.
L pulls back from him. "No one you need to know right now."
Light blinks. "But I will at some point? What, like taking me home to meet the parents? I doubt you'll ever quite make it there."
L rolls his eyes, biting into another candy bar, the label of which he hadn't bothered to read. "If you're still pretending that you have any intention of killing me, you should stop now and expend your energy on something else. The effort is rather charming, Light, but - "
"Chew, then speak."
"I'm a busy man, I have to multitask."
Light's lips run along the ridges where his eyebrows are starting to grow back in. It's not a kiss, but it might have been intended as one. "You're not a busy man anymore."
L shifts his eyes, swallows, and says, "Roger's my other handler, that's all."
"You have quite a lot of handlers, don't you?" Light says. "Makes sense, I suppose. You're a lot to handle."
That conjures images and firm fingers and much groping and were L in a more satisfied and less hungry, tired, and itchy frame of mind, he would take it upon himself to enact such handling on Light's body, for how it presses against him. It's not sexual, or maybe it is, but he can't tell. It's like a hug except Light is not the type of person to hug so it's more like nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing, but all over each other.
"Just the two of them," he says, against Light's jaw. "And you now, I suppose."
Light laughs loosely, warm breath fluttering against his skin, and says, with exaggerated accommodation, "And can I get you anything, Sir?"
L hums. "Well, actually - "
"Oh, no no. I was joking." He pulls back slightly, but the humor is still bright across his face, sedate and lonely as it is. "I don't want to know what you want, but I can hazard enough guesses. Something you can eat, or fuck, or both, yes?"
"Neither. Something I can read. Although, if it happened to be both edible and sexually arousing, I wouldn't be averse - "
Light rolls his eyes, jabbing L slightly in the ribs, and it hurts just enough to cut him off but not enough for him to particularly mind. Even if it had hurt more he wouldn't particularly mind. His bones still ache from last night and there's chafing on his thighs and a slow turn of exhaustion in his head, but not in a way that he dislikes. He doesn't know that he remembers how to dislike or like things at the moment. It's all just airy surface, reality twitching between them and Light's knees knocking his and the slow drip of the leaky pipe in the background.
"In all seriousness," L continues, back slumping restfully against the wall, even as the caffeine lights him up a bit, "you'll need to bring me any new files in the police database on the Kaito Hidaka case. Don't bother reprinting the ones I had before, I've got them all memorized - although I wouldn't mind having my notes back, but I suppose you've thrown them away?"
"Shredded and burned," Light says.
"Shredded and burned? Why'd you have to shred them first? You do know how fire works, don't you? There's a caveman joke I could make but - "
"I was just going to shred but that seemed under-cautious," Light says, slumping with him. "The last thing I want to be caught out over is your terrible handwriting being so recognizable even in tiny little pieces. Where did you learn penmanship, a barn? If anyone's got room to make a caveman joke, it's me."
"Yes," L agrees, nodding lazily, "but you don't make jokes."
"I do," Light returns, but he doesn't sound particularly invested in the sentiment. "I'm extremely clever for my age. Everyone's always said so." There is self-deprecation in his voice, or else just general deprecation at the expense of the world.
"Yes, yes, you're the golden child and the prodigy. So was I. What a coincidence, eh?" He doesn't mean that seriously and Light doesn't take it seriously and is maybe going to respond in kind, but L skips over that, tapping the pads of his fingers to a slow rhythm against the dusty floors and taking another gulp of coffee. He says, "I want something to read, also. There's too much time when you're not here and when you are here I'd like to have something to throw at you."
"You seem pretty practiced at throwing yourself," Light says, smirking, but not unkindly.
"Ah," L says, without an inch of humor, "there he goes with the jokes again. Maybe you should just retire from this whole God thing and become a comedian. I'm sure plenty of people would come to your shows, if only for the face. Maybe for more if you wore revealing clothing."
"Oh, and now you're being funny," Light says, rolling his eyes and wiping at the loose drops of coffee that dribble down L's chin. "That's actually disgusting," he says. "You're quite disgusting, did you know?"
L closes his eyes and seeps into the feel of Light's fingers against him. "It's been suggested to me before."
He's just about to put in a request for The Brother's Karamazov and maybe Swann's Way - in the original Russian and French, respectively, if at all possible, but Japanese will do if it's what's available - when there's a noise from the far left and both of their heads snap towards it, like twin dogs picking up a whistle. L frowns, wonders if this the moment they've been waiting for and dreading in equal measure - drumroll please - but doesn't move. Light gives him a look like he expects it's his fault, even if he's not yet sure how, and stands cautiously.
The sound comes again, the creak of a door, and then it fades off into quieter, staccato taps. Footfalls. Someone is walking through the hallways.
Someone in heels.
L's guard drops quite a bit when he spots Misa coming around the corner, Rem at her shoulder, but Light's seems to go up even more. His shoulders tense, posture rigid, and if L was a bit closer he might dig his fingers into the muscle and work him smooth and soft again. As if he has ever been smooth and soft, or anything but a ragged little panic attack in khakis.
His energy shifts even more on edge then with Misa's appearance, though , and - as if meeting him pace for pace - she's decked out even more so than usual, all bracelets and shined leather and thick eyelashes. Her smile is drawn on in pale pink and her eyes are blue again. They're not always. He thinks she must wear contacts half the time. For the performance. She is a performance.
She is oddly cheery today.
Boots skipping on the cool tile, she does an easy little giggle when she glances at them. "Ryuzaki," she says, tapping a black-painted fingernail to her cheek, "you should really put some ice on that, it looks awful." Her eyes dance over to Light. "Ready?"
Whatever invitation she's holding out, he doesn't take it. "How did you know where to find me?" he asks, arms crossing over his chest.
Misa rolls her eyes playfully. "Like it wasn't obvious you'd be with him." The resentment that would normally manifest in such a statement seems pointedly absent and, as much of an actress as she in all things is, L thinks her lack of upset is genuine. What he doesn't quite know is why.
Light 's feet are planted firm, and he's not cowering from her so much as he is putting up a very blank and unmovable wall. Not that as much is particularly unusual for him - as it's his primary mode of social presentation - but he usually doesn't quite bother with her. Today he is bothering with her. Today he is bothered.
"I didn't tell you where he would be, though," he says, "if I recall correctly."
L's eyes bob back and forth between them, and it's more like watching a very subdued mud-wrestling match - one of those staged, sexually arousing sorts, with the girls in white t-shirts and pink lipstick. They are both so juvenile and L flits in between feeling very similar and very far-removed.
Misa sighs and examines her nails. "I had Rem go scouting for me," she says, glancing airily over her shoulder. "Right, Rem?" The Shinigami doesn't assent verbally, but blinks her eye solemnly and nods. "I figured," Misa continues, stepping forward with uneasy grace, "that if I didn't come and pick you up myself, you'd forget about our date."
L keeps his face blank and unassuming, even as vague amusement rises in his voice. "Light, you didn't tell me you had plans. I wouldn't have kept you so long. My apologies, Misa-san."
"It's not a date," Light says, his frowning eyes not sparing L a glance.
"Sure it is." There's a quaintly pleased little smile twitching on Misa's lips.
"I'm not buying you dinner."
Misa's smiler only grows. "That's fine. I'll pay. I have more money than you, anyway."
L snorts, eyes falling shut as he leans back against the wall. "I have more money than both of you combined and I'll buy everyone dinner and dessert too if it will get me a proper mattress to sleep on. Or a futon, a futon will do. I'll even take a desk chair, honestly, I'm not very particular, but this floor is cold and it smells like shoes and I am bored out of my mind and need more caffeine also."
He can't see them, but he assumes they're both looking at him and he likes it that way. Maybe Rem is looking, too. Maybe the other one, if it's even here, is as well. It's funny how easily he does whatever he firmly convinces himself he is not the type of person to do. Misa Amane comes in and puts on a production and he can't stop his lips from moving, from running rabid and stealing the stage. He's not even romantically jealous. He's not even really jealous at all, and it's more pride than emotion that powers the wild voice inside of him that commands, Look at me.
Look and see only what I want you to see.
He opens his eyes. Light is not looking at him, but the pointedness of the aversion suggests that he had been. "I'll see what I can do. I might not have time tomorrow but I'll at least bring you some more food. Eat your rice."
L looks down at his rice. He does not want to eat it. He nods anyway.
Before he can get it up to make a proper response, however - something cutting, but reasonable; it's forming in loose imprints in his head - Misa is there, and leaning down over him, pulling something from her bag. Instinctually, he assumes it's pepper spray, or else a blunt object that she intends to hit him with, so when the six pack of canned coffee is set in front of him with a tinny thunk, he's at first not quite sure what to think.
It doesn't look like a particularly expensive brand, but then this is more a thought that counts sort of situation. Still, thought or no thought, there's no way he's going to be able to stomach it without -
Misa drops a fistful of sugar packets on the floor, next to the coffee. She is getting good at this, at playing their games without even bothering to try and compete at their level. Coffee and sugar and a hint of a nod and that is all she offers him, but it's like water in the desert and the way Light frowns at the exchange just makes it all so much cooler and crisper. He is ruining her so she is ruining him is ruining herself is buying dinner and giving gifts and running, running, running to catch up. Normally he'd find that sort of thing annoying, but with the lack of external stimuli of late, Misa Amane and her tragedies - and how they intertwine with Light's - seem terribly interesting to him.
He's supposed to be making her fall in love and Rem is watching him like she expects grand gestures and fancy words and a whole lot of tricks and traps, but that is not how L works. You cannot talk someone into liking you. You can only exist, and do so - if you so choose - in their direction.
"Thank you," he says, because there is little else to be said. There is so much silence and it tires him, but he wants it back suddenly. He needs quiet to think, to sort himself out.
Misa doesn't say, You're welcome. What she says is, "Light and I are going to go and have sex now."
Light rolls his eyes, crosses his arms, taps his foot - but doesn't object. "Classy," is all he says, once Misa has straightened up and tapped her pretty little heels back over to him. He barely glances at L as they leave, but manages a, "I'll be back tomorrow," before disappearing down the hall. It's dressed up in disinterest but it reeks of a sedate sort of shame.
L watches them go. Rem stays. He hitches his lips at her in a crude estimation of a smile and she doesn't blink, just shifts her eye over to a blank wall in the far corner of the room. And L can tell then - they are not alone.
Several quiet hours later, he eats his rice.
It's too late for a proper dinner and he's not hungry and neither is she, so they just order food and then sit there, staring at the tablecloth and trying not to loath each other too obviously. Or he is. She, he supposes, doesn't have to try. It's strange, but for all her love for him, she seems to resent him in equal measure, but it comes in waves of lucidity and realness, rather than the sentiments piling atop one another.
"You're dressed down," she says, flattening her fingers against the tablecloth. She hasn't touched her silverware, and neither has he, but there are finger smudges all over his water glass and the waiter has to keep coming to refill it.
"These are my work clothes. You didn't give me time to change." He says it solidly and with little care, or at least the appearance of little care.
She smiles like daisies and sunny things and all the prettiness she truly lacks. "Oh, I don't mind. I like it. I like you." Her bangs tickler he eyelashes and she leans on the palm of her tiny hand.
Light frowns, leaning back, and says with perfect politeness and evenness of tone. "I really don't think you do, actually."
Misa swallows and her smile quirks wider, but she doesn't respond. The waiter passes by and she lifts her hand for the check. Light folds his napkin and sets it on the table, then takes another long gulp of water. He wonders what L is doing at the moment and assumes it can't be anything wildly interesting, but it's being done with L's body and L's mind and L's spiny fingers, so it appeals to him more than all the shiny surfaces and expensive glassware in the restaurant.
"I love you, then," Misa says.
That - that he can allow her.
He's curled up on the front stoop of the tattoo shop, watching the night's last passengers tripping down to the tube station a block away. There's a woman in ripped stockings smoking a cigarette across the street, her sparks catching glints from the buzzing streetlights, and B smiles widely at her as he steps out with a bowl in one hand, a glass in the other, and an eyebrow inching toward his hairline.
"You didn't eat," he says, in a matter of fact way, which is both foreign and entirely suitable for him.
Mello takes the bowl of noodles when it's offered and doesn't protest overmuch at the chopsticks stuck into his hand. He's hungry, probably, but it all gets mixed up with the turbulence in him, and the queasy sick feeling of movement after so much stagnation has him reeling internally. He might throw up. He eats his noodles. They're not bad.
B sit down next to him with his glass of something or other and continues to make eyes at the lady across the street.
"Are you going to kill her?" Mello asks, around a mouthful of steamed vegetables.
B does a quant little snigger, which could be a sharp negation or a dramatic assent. Mello can't tell and takes pains to be thankful for the fact that he's really not so well acquainted with Beyond Birthday as to be able to read him all that well. Anything greater and he'd be even more uncomfortable than he already is.
"Oh no, no, no. Can't do and won't do. It's not her time, as the holy men call it, and for all of the wildness, I have to abide by certain rules." B takes a long swallow of his peculiarly orange drink. It's possibly carrot juice, and possibly just paint. With B there's about a 40/40 chance, and another 20 that it's Syd's blood dyed a fun color. "You understand that, don't you, Mihael? It feels like we're making it up as we go along, but we're not, really. There's a path and a plan and patterns, patterns, patterns in everything. You see that, don't you?"
Mello stirs his noodles with idle disinterest, and a stark quietness that he only seems to be able to shake at odd times. "Roger says one of the biggest pitfalls of detective work is seeing patterns where there aren't any. Humans are pattern-seeking and making up a detailed explanation for every random event is how conspiracy theories get started."
B smiles. "Didn't it ever occur to you that maybe dear Roger just told you that so you wouldn't go looking?"
"No," Mello says stolidly.
B smiles wider and his eyes flick across the street to the girl and the mad spark seems to shiver and then fade into something vague and analytical.
"Even allowing that most conspiracies and pattern-based ideas that humanity has concocted have no actual basis in reality, there is a rough margin in scientific research that allows that at least some of them, if only a scant few, must be true, just by sheer numbers."
He blinks and sets down his glass. He smells like carrots.
"There have been thousands of recorded ghost and spectral sightings in the last hundred years," he continues, with a distance to his voice that makes the ridiculousness much less apparent than it might normally be, "and do realize that only one of them needs to be true, in order for ghosts to exist?"
Mello frowns. "When did we go from conspiracies to spooky stories?"
"All the best stories are spooky," B says, the mad sparkle lighting back up in his eyes. The woman across the street stomps out her cigarette with one thick heel and walks around the corner.
Mello watches her go and feels the late evening buzz of somewhere else fading in and out in him. He says, "What's the difference between killing her and killing Watson and Bert and… that other guy? Since when do you discriminate?"
B snorts almost, but it's a hackneyed, open sound that seems more likely to be snapping vocal chords than amusement. "I'm very PC, my little lover boy, but that's nothing to do with this." He looks over at Mello and doesn't smile, but lets his eyes do their vague, twinkling, wonder things. "I just paint by numbers. I stand where they tell me to and I break what is breakable and nothing else. There are unpleasant casualties sometimes, but I think of them more as a byproduct of nature."
Mello thinks the whole of B's victim's are unpleasant casualties - or not so casual, as it goes - but he's somewhat interested in where Beyond lays the distinction.
"Like the man at the door," B continues. "I don't know him. I don't know his name or his number. He died before I could get it and I can only assume that his number was right, that it matched up with big bad's and little bad's, because he was there and because he likely would not have escaped, but I don't know. It's not most of the bodies that haunt me; they're where they're meant to be. It's the blank pieces that jam up the puzzle and give me blind spots all over my eyes." He blinks at Mello. "Does that make sense?"
"No." Mello blinks back.
Beyond frowns at him for a moment and then there's a possibility that's he's going to snap Mello's neck when his arm flies out, and Mello would like to stay he'd either ducked quickly and defended himself or else stayed stock still and unconcerned, but he winces and closes his eyes, bracing for what seems like the logical impact, when he feels B finger's stop beside him, flexing.
"Pretty, isn't she?"
Mello squints his eyes open, the ambient streetlights flickering in and making everything blinding for a moment. Then he sees B's large, spindly hand right in front of him, holding onto a fluttering moth by its wing. It's a pathetic sight, although Mello can't decide if the worst part is the thing's struggles or the look of childish wonder in B's eyes.
"That's cruel," Mello says after a moment, posture relaxing slightly.
"Yes," B says.
"You should let it go. It's suffering."
"Christ suffered. So did the Buddha. Joan of Arc, too. All the great holy figures of the times have made sacraments of themselves, and we mimic it still in this day and age. We all want to be our own gospels. We all throw ourselves to the wind so that it will hang us on the cross." He twirls the insect around like an ornament and Mello watches, slightly sick.
He doesn't want his noodles anymore.
"And then, perhaps," B continues, "we will be loved." He flashes a smile. "That's always the story, isn't it? That's why you're out here."
Mello frowns, swallowing the disgust because it seems counterproductive. He has put so many things on so many shelves in order to survive B's presence without properly confronting it, and the screws holding those shelves together rattle and shake now. "Out here? On the front step?" he asks facetiously, because furious denials seem like too much trouble.
B smiles like he understands and the most ugly part is that he probably does. He seems to understand most things, like he's got a manual for planet earth and every inhabitant and contraption on it stored behind his ear, but he's read it backwards or else skipped every other word, so that the whole picture is swallowed in the irregular little fallacies that sprinkle his existence.
"And what if it doesn't work?" he asks, head tilting in a sharp jut. "What if you put in all the effort and expend so much energy and save the princess in the tower and the princess doesn't give a damn. What if she sends you home with a pat on the head and well done, kid. What then?"
Mello's eyebrows quirk and he tries to be more afraid than amused, but sometimes he forgets. "Just so we're on the same page, L is the princess, right?"
B nods and Mello sits back, thinking on it, not relaxed but not half as uncomfortable as he logically should be, in his position. But there's something in Beyond than can make his presence feel very unthreatening and it's seeped into the air now.
"I'll make him understand. I'll make him see me for what I am. I'll prove just what I can do beyond the shadow of a doubt."
The conviction in Mello's voice when he speaks is wavering, but present, and he feels the vague pangs of hope and accomplishment rising from where he'd buried them the other day, lying on the floor of Watson's flat, closer to dying than anyone should reasonably be able to get while staying alive.
"And," B says, "what if he sees what you are and still doesn't want you?"
He's probing and Mello doesn't like it but he doesn't want to posture his way out of it when he knows quite obviously that there are several hundred ways that B could and may kill him at this moment, on this stoop in front of this shitty tattoo shop.
"I don't know," he says, looking down at his noodles and the dirt and cigarette butts under his shoes. It's anticlimactic and it's not the words he wants to say, but everything else seems too cheap, and too terrifying to commit to. He looks back up at B. "Do you think he's going to do that?"
There's a look of something like shock that jags in among B's trilling eyes and he blinks at Mello, as if processing the question, and then shrugs. "No idea. He might do, but then baby-daddy likes to surprise people. Pulls things out of the woodwork, and then works the wood another way. I'm not really set on how he's going to react to you." He twirls the moth around gently, like a new plaything that he's afraid to ruin. "I do, however, have quantities of big, bright ideas. Stratagems and secret plans and diagrams of the end of your little world. But nothing is certain and even numbers change, and yours might, too. Depends how long you stick with me, I suppose."
B keeps talking about numbers and Mello had originally written it off as nonsense, to go with the multitudes of indecipherable things he always says, but it comes up often enough that it's caught his attention. He wants to ask, but then he doesn't particularly want to have to dance around the answer.
"I don't understand you," is all he says, because that seems easiest, and that's him these days - path of least resistance and all that. It's true, anyway.
Beyond stands, smiles, looks like he's taller and broader and more than he truly is, from Mello's slanted angle. "What makes you think you have to?"
Before Mello can settle on an appropriate response, B is shifting, arm muscles going tense as his wrist snaps, crushing the moth in his hand. Mello can see its wings twitch out a few last attempts at continued existence, before going limp and lifeless. Whatever was there before - the scant intelligence and writhing instinct - is gone in an instant and the world feels little changed for it.
It might as well not have happened. The moth might as well have never existed.
There's a cruel asymmetry to it, because as little as the life lost may be worth in the grand scheme of things, it still reflects disgustingly - in an intellectual sense - on Beyond. He is monstrous and he is cruel and he destroys things with what should be a terrifying easiness, and yet, Mello is not afraid. He is hardly bothered by anything but his lack of fear, the ease with which all of this has become commonplace for him.
He feels nothing for the moth and he doesn't like that. He thinks he should.
He thinks he should hate Beyond. He thinks he might, but it's so muted now that he can't properly feel the emotions. Maybe he's in shock. Maybe he's been in shock for days. Maybe he's just resigned himself to the role that he's been given and is content, for now, to let Beyond take the lead and play all the hard parts.
Everything that he doesn't feel tugs at him, rolling inside, and his insides wade and his eyes are stung and it's all to quiet and too still and he asks B, "Are you ever going to explain anything to me?"
B grins wide and drops the moth on the ground beside his shoes. "I'm going to go check on lovely Syd's lovely progress. Finish your noodles and then come inside. Good boys shouldn't be out this late." He turns the knob in one stark palm, the door jingling as he steps inside, and calls over his shoulder, "And don't forget to wash your bowl. If not, we'll get ants."
Teru does not like Miss Todai.
It's bad enough when he has to see her at work, bringing her father lunch six floors above him - though there he's got plenty of dated and timestamped excuses not to speak with her piled in his inbox folder - but it's far, far worse when she comes to his lectures. He's done two every month for the past semester, all on relatively the same subject, but for an enticing pay and a certain level of prestige that most of the other prosecutors his age and rank haven't come close to. It looks good to his bosses - people like Miss Todai's father - and that's all he needs to know, and in general he pays little mind to the students. Only a few faces stick out in his mind. Yagami's, of course, and then -
"Mikami-san, can we speak about - "
"Apologies, Takada-san, I'm running late for an appointment," he says, lifting his briefcase and quickly moving past her. She's in a a skirt and blouse and has a slightly comical hat perched on top of her head, like she's practicing balancing it there in preparation for becoming someone's society wife.
She could be more than that - is sharp, especially for her age, and evidently quite capable in school - but then there'd be no reason or occasion for her to wear silly hats, a pleasure that she seems incapable of sacrificing.
She smiles and it's very pretty and very fake and Teru's eyes flick to the floor instinctively when he sees it. "I'll walk you to the train, then," she says, following him casually, and in fact walking ahead so that it looks as if he's the one trailing her. "I've got no classes left today and these shoes are much more comfortable than they look."
Teru's legs move faster and his jaw grits. "That's not at all necessary," he says, trying to keep his voice low because he cannot feign pleasantries.
"It doesn't need to be. I wanted to talk to you." Her head turns slightly and she flashes a slip of a smile at him, then inclines forward as if it hadn't happened at all, though now slowing to let him catch up.
"It's not a very long walk," Teru tells her. "Shouldn't it wait until there's more time?"
They move out of the hall and onto the green of the campus with unhurried disinterest in their steps, both rather feigning a lack of perception of the awkwardness that wallpapers the entire conversation. Teru does not like Miss Todai. Miss Todai does not like Teru. She is polite to him, of course, and he is polite to her, but that indicates nothing of their personal feelings. Outward appearance matters only so far as its usefulness and lack of disruption. Anything more is unnecessary and, at worst, damaging.
"It's not a subject that requires extensive discussion," Takada says. "I only wanted to ask if you've had sex with Light Yagami."
She says it so casually, with so little creative inflection, that she may as well be asking if he's ever gone golfing. He has gone golfing. He hates golfing. The game itself is reasonably enjoyable, if not overly productive, but the company is unbearable. The company consists, usually, of men like Takada's father, if not he himself.
He's also had sex with Light Yagami. He stops in the middle of campus, shoes landing neatly in two separate paving squares of the sidewalk, and he frowns at the back of Kiyomi's sweater. Her hat looks at if it's stuck to her head by sheer will alone, rather than any clip or attachment.
Teru does not like Miss Todai.
Teru does not like Light Yagami.
Teru does not like anyone, particularly. The man on channel six who does the morning weather is alright. His intonation is very good and his suits are always neat. Every morning. Teru watches the weather on channel six every morning. It's part of his routine.
Light Yagami had not been part of his routine. Light Yagami's thighs and his bright laughter and the fastidiousness of his hands as they'd unbuttoned Teru's shirt - that had not been part of his routine. The flowers and the empty apartment and the very thin promises and thinner apologies, those had not been planned either, but perhaps should have been expected.
And here, now, talking about this with Kiyomi Takada - and, indeed, talking to Kiyomi Takada at all - is not part of his routine. He'll miss his train. He does not have an appointment and he will not be late - that had been a white lie - but he hates to miss his train.
"Why," Teru says, to the back of Takada's head, "would you ask me something like that?"
She smiles. He cannot see her face but he can hear it. "To find out if it's true, of course." The birds that live in the campus trees are cawing prettily. It's uncrowded at this time of day. "I don't believe in guesses and gossip, Mikami-san, and I don't participate in that sort of thing." She turns slightly to face him. "But, when I come across something that peaks my interest, I'm not afraid to pursue an answer. In situations like these, I find it's best to go to the source. So, here I am."
She smiles her quaint, soft, practiced smile and Teru does not like Miss Todai. He does not like her at all.
"If that's the case," he says, after a moment during which he takes the opportunity to push his glasses up his nose, "then why not ask Yagami himself?"
Takada tilts her head, expression going blank and expectant. "You make it sound as if we're on speaking terms."
"I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be. You were dating him at one point, weren't you?"
"Yes, at one point. And then he disappeared one day, for months on end, with no explanation. And then he came back, also with no explanation. He said hello to me in the hall once, last week, and that's it. That's all. And it's not as if we were particularly close or that I missed him terribly, it's only that the lack of respect demonstrated by that sort of treatment doesn't sit well with me. I'd like to think that there's a reasonable explanation, because I'd like to think well of Light Yagami. But, failing that, I'd like the truth. So," she says, words slowing, tilting her head, "I figured I'd ask about his treatment of you."
Teru bristles, shoving his glasses up his nose, and walks ahead of her. "It's more his treatment of Misa Amane you should be worrying about."
"The model?" Takada asks, following in no great hurry. She almost makes her tracking of him look unintentional, stepping evenly along the sidewalk beside him with no sense of urgency in her steps at all.
"I suppose she is that, yes," Teru says, not looking Miss Todai directly in the face as he speaks. There is nothing genuine in it, and nothing worth registering or retaining. "She looked like any girl to me. She's his girlfriend. As I take it, they're living together."
If Takada is surprised at this news, she doesn't let it show, just keeps up the walk at the same quick but unhurried pace. "Still?" is all she asks. "They're living together still?"
Teru shrugs. "I wouldn't know. Yagami and I are not in contact." It's not a lie.
"Of course, but you understand the implication that I'm getting from that is that you were, and in a very specific sort of way." She arches an eyebrow at Teru, and he barely holds back his blatant scowl in response. Not only is she presumptuous and interfering, she's far too sure of herself.
Nevermind that she's right.
He keeps up his pace. She keeps up hers.
"It figures, I guess. I think I'm insulted. I expect the men I date to have sorted out their sexuality quandaries by now."
Teru frowns, doesn't want to speak about this, but also doesn't want to refrain. "Then perhaps you expect too much."
"Obviously."
"Is there anything else, Takada-san?"
They're in front of the escalator that leads down to the train. The air smells like winter and the trees are on their respective ways to dead and dying. Takada's lipstick is slightly smudged at the corner and he wants to tell her - wants everything to flit gently into place and for the colors to fall within the lines; for things to make a certain sort of insistent sense. He doesn't and it doesn't. It's barely perceptible, the smudge, and nothing that common decency dictates he discuss.
"No," she says, "nothing." She turns swiftly on her heel, barely sparing him a farewell glance, and there's an uneasiness to her following movements that makes him almost want to call her back.
Not quite, though.
two days later.
"Stop!"
Wedy's voice cracks in ways she didn't know it could. She has never been in this position before. Or no, well, she has been in this position plenty of times - hands tied, held down, gun in her face; although the fact that it's her own this time is a new and raw-burning injustice. But no, capture is nothing new. Intimidation tactics from little men who think they're bigger than they are are hardly anything more than a jaunt in the park for her.
And yet -
Something is different about this man.
"Stop, stop, stop!"
She didn't know she could scream so convincingly. Usually it's put on, usually it's so her captors will think they're getting somewhere with the torture - a couple of bumps and bruises, a few tugs on her hair - but it's all routine and she cries for effect and to get the drop on them. She is not crying now. She is not crying yet. She hasn't thought to.
"Hey, hey!"
Its not her that's saying that. She's grateful. It hurts to speak. Not that any damage has been done to her throat, but there's some roaring, roiling pathetic shame in her that makes her want to keep as quiet as possible. Let them split her down the middle, let them tear her apart. She doesn't want to die, she doesn't want to die, but she does not want to be a weak thing left in the aftermath, either.
Survival is a grand idea, but not so pretty in practice.
"That's too much," the boy is saying again. He's dirtier than his photo, angrier and more tired. His clothes are more revealing. "You're not supposed to kill her. B? B, are you listening?"
"I'm not going to kill her," the man with the blade whispers jauntily. He keeps licking his wrist and Wedy can't quite register why. "Her numbers aren't up. I'd be fracturing reality. Do you think I'd do that for a pretty little petal like this?" He flips the knife between two fingers, holding onto it with terrifying ease. "The answer's no. No, no, no, jolly no."
Beyond Birthday, age 23. The file flits past in her head, like a film reel. Former ward of Wammy's House Orphanage for Gifted Children, discharged at age 16 for unruly, delinquent behavior. Arrested at age 20 for three counts of murder and one count of attempted arson, with other murders traced back and connected to him during the course of his court case, which was held privately, with an officially unlisted prosecutor. Earlier this month he escaped Los Angeles State Prison, leaving no trace of his whereabouts or goals with local police officials. He has documented Antisocial Behavior Disorder, and hypothesized Schizophrenia, based on several recorded sessions referencing delusions and hallucinations which he believes to be completely real. The target should be considered extremely dangerous and should not be approached.
That had been the executive summary of the official file. The Wammy's House folder had gone into much more detail, had listed the specifics of his crimes and subsequent trial - the prosecutor of which, it seems likely, had been L - and had given a much broader, more intense view of Beyond Birthday.
She had gone to London because that's where a man matching his description had last been spotted. It had been far too easy, really, when she thinks back on it. Most personnel tracking cases are not half this neat.
She realizes now that the hard part had come later. The hard part is right now.
"Stop," she grits out again. She's not crying, she's not crying, but she wants to. Her body craves the violence of some sort of release. She will not let it show, though. She will not let anything show.
The boy named Mello is still pointing the gun at her, but shakily, but with a wincing sympathy in his eyes. If it comes to it, he will not pull the trigger, she knows. She can tell. The only problem being that it will likely not come to it. That she will not manage to prompt any sort of reaction deserving of a gunshot. That she will die here, in this abandoned warehouse, with his pretty, frightened blue eyes staring at her, and a man who looks unbelievably, unexplainably like L cutting her apart.
He moves along the natural lines of her body, shallow cuts between her thighs and pelvis bone, then deeper, then deeper. He's centering around her sexual organs. He's threatening rape, she can tell. He doesn't have to say it. She's had it threatened before. She's beaten her attackers off before. She's not sure she could now. She thinks maybe she's lost too much blood.
Mello is wincing with her as Beyond Birthday works. "It's too much," he says, voice wavering. "Why am I letting you do this? It's way too much."
"It's necessary," Beyond says. "Do you want to know or don't you? Do you want to get anything done or would you like to waste slowly into a fragile bit of nothing in the slow, pulsing hell of day-to-day existence? Do you want to stop here? I could rip out her heart and feed it to you, but I'm not going to. I could rip out yours and feed it to her. I could rip out my own and leave it for whoever gets hungriest first. Does it matter?"
He looks at both of them like they're supposed to be agreeing. Wedy can only mouth, stop. Mello looks like he might throw up.
"No, it doesn't." He rolls his eyes, as if annoyed that he has to answer himself. "We all suffer for the things we want. We all bleed over stone floors but we all get up and keep on. She's going to get up. She's going to keep on. She's going to be our guide, this pretty little lady. Would you like that, Miss?"
He's looking directly at Wedy now. She can feel the blood warm down her legs. She wants to pass out. Why can't she pass out?
Beyond taps her cheek with a warm hand. "Merrie, Merrie quite contrary," he sing-songs. "Look a me. Look at me and think of all the lovely things in life. Ribbons in your hair and trying on your mother's high-heeled shoed when you were a child." Wedy stares blankly at him. "No? No, of course not. Smoke, then. Cigarette smoke in snowy air and money to buy yourself a warm room and somebody's front against your back, somebody pushing in and keeping things warm - doesn't much matter who. Somebody clean and capable who knows what they're doing and doesn't talk too much after, am I right?"
Wedy shakes her head because all of that sounds startlingly appealing. It seems very likely at this point, dazed as she is, that Beyond Birthday can read minds and is, at this very moment, digging through hers.
"Funny, I know a man who fits that exact description. He fits any description, when he needs to. He's very accommodating that way."
His left hand is empty, clean, no blood slipping down the wrist, no smudges on his fingers. He cups her chin with it and she reacts instantly bucking her head forward, trying to knock him away. More for the sentiment it communicates than any hope she has of hurting him. Normally she'd kick in this situation, but he's taken off her sharp-heeled boots and tied her ankles to the wall, leaving her to drape there like some sort of inexpertly made doll.
Blonde hair and blue eyes, like all the dream girls. And blood on her thighs. That's another sort of dream.
"So, I'll ask again, pretty lady," Beyond continues. "Where is he?"
"I told you," she spits, not least of which because she can't seem to control her saliva, " I don't know! Now are you cocksuckers going to kill me or just write poetry?"
"We're not going to kill you," Mello tells her, almost defensively. "Please, just tell him what he wants to know? Then we can just… just, please."
He's begging her. He's got wide eyes. Same color as hers. He's just as much of a dream girl as she is, and though a little worse for wear, not half so bad off as she's doing right now. There's something kind in him - stern still, like his predecessor - but a well of apparent emotion that seems to be swelling in him. Either that, or he's a better liar than anyone his age has ever had the misfortune to be.
His fingers twitch like he wants to wipe her face a bit - dirt, blood, spit, whatever it is there - but he stills. He's good cop. Beyond is bad cop. She, Wedy supposes, must be the criminal on trial.
"I don't," Wedy says, with a ravaging intensity that she summons from god knows where, voice cracking a bit in the words, "know."
The boy blinks at her, brow furrowed, almost as if he's about to nod, as if he's about to believe her - not that it matters, not that he has any particular control in this situation. But then Beyond is blocking her view, back in her face, filling the whites of her eyes. Sometimes he doesn't look at all like L. Other times, they might as well be the same person.
He drags the knife down her stomach, cutting lightly, and then -
"Lovely Miss Merrie, you are a liar."
And then it hurts.
two days earlier.
She left him with 200 pounds and a small smile and the words, "If you can keep up, you can come - but I'm not taking you anywhere."
Matt had stared after the woman in black who'd walked off in a cloud of cigarette smoke and called, " What am I supposed to do with this?" with a frown in his voice. This isn't what he'd wanted. He'd just wanted Mello.
She'd twirled on her heel, face blank, and shrugged. "I don't know? Call a cab? You're the one who's supposed to be a genius. Number three, right?"
With that she'd sashayed away, all smooth and dark, slipping into the rental car that had gotten her here. Sleek and black, just like everything about her. She strikes him as what a superhero would look like, only without the superhuman powers. It's just the attitude. She might as well be Cat Woman, come to Wammy's for a visit. Well, okay, Cat Woman is not a hero, but semantics, isn't it? Matt doesn't care. He doesn't care about anything. He's been making a point of it lately, the only thing is that - well, not caring about anything gets rather boring after a while.
And it's a lie, anyway, and not a very good one.
Number two. He's number two now. He hadn't corrected her.
It's the next morning that he does, in fact, take her advice. He calls a cab. London, he thinks, is as good a bet as any.
tbc.
end notes: so we're back to a bit of time-skipping, yes. my very favorite plot-device, as i'm sure everyone could tell. i'll try to update at about the same pace as this for the next few updates, because my schedule's relatively free, aside from a short trip next week. apologies for the low amount lxlight going on lately, that will pick up after next chapter, as i'm going to be narrowing in on the action as the set-up drifts into, you know, what's actually being set up.
as always, thank you very much for reading!