warnings: too long, too much plot, vague and poetical gore and uh? unlikely people kissing each other.
notes: hello i'm jaye and welcome to thunderdome! no i'm kidding it's just 'nights.' thanks everybody who reviewed last time! i appreciate it so so much i can't verbalize and won't try because that will end badly, but just. thanks. this time around i've got a very long chapter with a lot more happening in it than usually happens, so that's something? not sure if it works because i was very satisfied with it when i wrote it and very unsatisfied when editing (such is life) so who knows! i just hope you all enjoy as much as you possibly can and thank you for reading!
chapter twenty-one - monsters.
''You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.''
- Charles Bukowski, Too Sensitive
"Light Yagami," B repeats back, hands stilling, head cocking like a puzzled labrador. Abruptly, he steps away from Merrie's body, picking up a wet rag and wiping his hands, brow furrowed. "Spell it. And the Kanji? It sounds Japanese. What's the Kanji?"
Merrie blinks up at him, doe eyes hazy with pain, body twitching in its bonds. "I can't - "
"You can," B insists.
Mello's hands waver, the gun shivering in his palm. He wonders if Merrie can tell he barely knows how to use it.
"I'd have to write it," she breathes out, swallowing down a grunt of pain. "And I can't - "
Before she even completes the sentiment, B is across the room, bending around her to loosen the knots at her back, freeing one hand just as he jerks sharply on the other. "Lefty or a righty?" She must give some sort of indication, because he's tugging out her right wrist, tucking the other back in like a toy he's not as keen to play with, and producing a ball-point pen from nowhere conceivable.
Casually, he holds out the back of his hand to her, a clean white canvas, stained only by blue tinted veins and ridges of bone jutting beneath the skin. Mello watches as, slowly, she traces out a series of characters across his flesh, running slightly out of space and moving onto the wrist.
B shoots him a glance over his shoulder, ducking his head with sheepish pleasure. "Tickles."
Then, more suddenly than expected - but certainly not wholly unexpectedly - Merrie jerks Beyond forward by the wrist, giving one violent tug and then leaning up to head-butt him frantically. Her movements are speedy, but almost staggered, and if it weren't for the blood loss and pain-induced nausea, she might have had a fighting chance. She's certainly holding up better than Bert had, but then he's dead and heartless now, so it's not all that much of an accomplishment.
Slipping closer in on her, wily and serpent-limbed, B regains his balance and jerks her hand behind her back again to tie it to the other. Maybe it's to throw her off long enough to get her wrists secured or maybe it's just because he's a bit of a fiend, but Beyond leans in and kisses her squarely on the mouth, sinking in on her like some sort of hungry ghost.
Mello feels his face heating up a bit, but it's more in indignation than embarrassment, likely. "Hey!" he says, waving his gun in what he hopes is a sufficiently commanding manner, though neither of them are looking his way. "None of that! You said you wouldn't…" Mello doesn't want to say it.
He doesn't want to say to Merrie Kenwood, I'm fine with being an accomplice to torture, but rape is where I draw the line. It seems even more shameful to differentiate that way. If you're in an inch, you're in a mile - but, but he doesn't want that. If he's going to be playing Bonnie and Clyde with B all the way to Tokyo, he's going to have to stop him somewhere.
"Relax," B breathes wheezily over his shoulder, once he pulls away. His eyes are alight with amusement and when he jolts an eyebrow at Mello, it makes him feel a little sick. "I'm just playing tit-for-tat. If Little Miss wants to pull me close, she better be prepared to have me close. All under the skin." He trails a finger up Merrie's chin, the way one would pet a cat, and she spits at him, breathing heavily with disgust.
At least she looks more cognizant than she had.
"You had to know I'd at least try," she says, and there's a keen dip of resignation in her voice, tone gone less refined and more dirty American.
"Oh, I'd hoped," B giggles, glancing down to scan the words written on his hand. "I have to go look into this," he mumbles, bulging his eyes a little for what Mello assumes is effect. Snapping his glance up to him, B instructs, "Clean her wounds and bandage them. You know how, right? And get her something for the pain."
"How do you know we got the information we wanted?" Mello speaks before he can stop himself, and then quite immediately wishes he hadn't. No more torture, please, please. His hand is cramping up from holding the gun - even down at his side as it is now - and if he's done anything to start the horror-show up again, he's not going to forgive himself.
B, however, looks like he's given up the idea altogether. "I know," he says, finger tracing the pen marks with a strange delicacy. Abruptly, he turns on his heel, not looking over his shoulder as he calls back, "Don't try any funny business with the boy," and disappears up the stairs.
Aiber scrolls through every angle available, eyes scanning down every street that Tokyo's traffic and security cameras can possibly reach and sifting through at a speed faster than he can process most of the information. He sees two instances of shoplifting, four obscene displays in back alleys and on porches, and an immeasurable amount of traffic violations - but, alas, no Yagami. Or at least, no destination.
Light shows up at the train station in Ikebukuro around 8 AM, presumably taking the line to the closest stop to headquarters, but where he comes from, Aiber can't figure out. The less densely populated the area, the lower the amount of cameras, and where Yagami is stashing L must be virtually deserted, because no matter how many times he scrolls back, following the obvious flag of his ridiculously colored hair - the sorest of thumbs in the uniformity of most of Tokyo's citizens - he can't find where he'd come from or where, when heading out last night on the late train, he'd ended up.
He's obviously taken measures against being tracked this way, and the only thing Aiber can think of to circumvent them is to follow him in person, but -
"No," Watari says, stolidly, "you're not trained for this sort of thing, and L's orders for me were not to leave my post, unless - "
"Unless there's a body," Aiber snaps. He knows the whole spiel. "Except how are we ever going to find a body if we just stay cooped up in our comfy ivory tower. Do you think Kira's gonna mail us a corpse? Maybe send along a greeting card?"
"I thought you believed that L was still alive?" Watari asks, scrolling through his own camera feed at his usual leisurely pace - and yet he seems to inevitably spot twice as much as Aiber does, and keep twice as much as that to himself, besides.
Aiber rolls his eyes. "Yeah, well, there's no way we'll find out one way or the other if we just sit around with our thumbs up our asses, counting the days until Yagami decides to off us." He breathes out, air feeling heavy and coagulated in his lungs. He needs to sleep. His head is pounding and when he closes his eyes he sees static. He needs a drink. He's been up all night, but he'll have to give the whole Shinigami blow-by-blow to the rest of the team once Yagami gets here, so what he needs is a drink.
In his usual manner of understated over-competence, Watari stands and pours Aiber a quarter-finger of Scotch, as if on instinct, handing it off like the stately old butler that he pretends so convincingly to be.
Sheerly out of childish impudence, Aiber would like to refuse, but his head pounds again and then the glass is cold in his hands and the alcohol is harsh in his throat.
"Look," he says, after one full swallow, "don't think I discount you or L or your expertise. I'm sure you have a plan and it's brilliant and it'll blow us all straight out of the water, but until then, you've got to give me something to go on, you know?"
Watari continues monitoring the perimeter, eyes not straying from the screen, but something in him seems to sigh and creak and it's only in the odd moments, like this, that Aiber remembers just how old he is.
"I have someone on it," he says, voice only barely audible. "I have faith that this person will arrive any day now. Should they, by the end of the month, have still not shown up and done what needs to be done, then we will take other measures." He tips his own mug up to his withered lips, taking a sip of what Aiber only assumes is tea, but could just as well be Jack and Coke for all he knows. "Until then, please hold your ground. And, if you can possibly help it - "
Aiber nods, knowing where this is going, as he always does, and continues Watari's warning for him: "Don't do anything stupid. Yeah, yeah," he sighs, taking another sip, "I'll give it my all."
That's only 11 days. L had disappeared on the last day of October. It's now November 19th, with no indication either way as to his location or his being alive, other than Yagami's nightly trips downtown, and Aiber is eager. Too eager. Unevenly eager. He should wait. He should just listen to Watari, and wait.
Resigning himself to his very dull and antsy fate for near on the next two weeks, he turns to Watari and says, for what feels like the tenth time in the last hour, "Okay, but can't you at least tell me about Beyond Birthday?"
Watari, predictably, does not do any such thing.
Syd isn't answering his phone, and the spare apartment key under his worn-out welcome mat leads to nothing but a dim haze of sun-specked dust and week old take away boxes in the fridge. There's no one home, and doesn't look like there has been for days, despite Edmund having seen him yesterday. There's been no sign of the woman with the slit in her skirt. Wedy is the name printed on the card that he fishes out of his pocket every few minutes, re-dialing the number printed there.
Again, no answer.
He goes down to the tattoo shop, but that he doesn't have any legal way into, and as he's already going to be late for work, he doesn't fancy arriving in cuffs after breaking and entering. Peering in the window with little shame, as this is a part of town where loitering doesn't even register on the crime-scale, all he can really surmise from his limited view is that the place is far, far cleaner than he usually finds it. Granted, he hasn't been by in a few months, so maybe sobriety - if Syd's truly managed it - has turned around more than a few things.
On the other hand, maybe his cousin's been murdered by a fairytale psycho and Edmund's let it happen because he'd bee too stuffy and pig-headed to believe him when he'd needed him to.
Most likely, though, it's all gone fine and Syd will be in tomorrow with another tall tale and liquor on his breath. Here's hoping.
He doesn't bother to grab breakfast as he hops the underground quick as he can to the station, tossing his jacket over his chair before anyone can think to miss him and rooting around through the files that had been requested by the second floor. A very harassed woman comes in to report a missing child half an hour later, only to be called quickly away by the supermarket down the street having found him playing hide-and-seek in the juice aisle.
After that, it's a series of relatively minor complaints, as it always is, but he takes them with trembling efficiency, pushing out any thoughts of Syd and Ms. Wedy and the storybook villain with the ridiculous name that they're after.
Setting his attention on the next person in line, he has to slant his eyes downward a bit to meet those of a spotty teenager in black and white whose hand is playing nervously with the paper he has clutched in it.
"Hello, how can I help you today?" Edmund asks, with routine accommodation.
The kid twitches slightly, as if shocked at being addressed, but nods quickly, unfolding a rough but very decent sketch of what looks like a young girl - or boy, perhaps - with a sharp bob of light hair and a rather poisonous expression. "Have you seen this boy?" he asks. "He'd be a bit older by now and maybe… angrier. He's run away."
"He doesn't look familiar," Edmund says, placatingly, "but if you'd like to leave the sketch with me, and maybe have his parents come in to file a case report, if they haven't already done." He reaches out for the piece of paper, but the boy jerks it out of his reach
"No," he says, quickly, rubbing a smudged hand against his smudged nose and stepping back, "thank you. I just thought I'd try here first."
Edmund's eyebrows lift and he means to prevail upon him to please find an adult to help him with his search, but the man next in line is already eagerly detailing his neighbor's building code violations, and by the time Edmund looks again, the boy is already gone, red hair disappearing into the vibrant, multi-colored crowd on the London streets.
"Have you seen Rem?"
Her voice pops like bubblegum in his ear as he ducks through the early morning rush on his way to headquarters, and it's far too early for this, and they'd slept together far too recently, besides. Light is never keen to speak to Misa, but now, of all times, he feels more disinclined than ever.
"Don't just say her name in casual conversation," he snaps, coming around the corner. He's about two blocks from his destination, and he intends to take them quickly, in order to end this conversation as swiftly as possible. "Try to be at least slightly discreet."
He would have liked not to have picked up, but the tiny pin-prick of worry, of what if it's about Kira? had grown and grown, and by the second ring he'd been forcing himself into a strained greeting. Now, he mostly wishes he'd thrown caution to the wind and let it go to voicemail.
"What? But no one's around, right?" There's a rough sound, and the a squeak of discomfort as she shifts again, creating a rushing static on the line. "It's too early for you to be at work already."
"Change of plans," Light grits. "I got called in preemptively, and speaking of, no, I haven't seen Rem, but someone has. That's what the emergency meeting is about. Your pet god has gotten herself spotted by one of the investigators."
"Huh?" Misa says, and her shock is overdramatized, but not falsified, he thinks. Not anymore than anything she is and does. "But I thought she was with L."
"She was, but she left when I got there, and she hadn't returned - as far as I could tell - by the time I woke up this morning. I'd figured she'd spent the night with you, but then I got the call." Scratching at his skin irritably with one hand, Light slows his steps a little, suddenly less keen to be at headquarters.
Misa gives a little squeak of what Light supposes is meant to be some tragic emotion, and says, "She was supposed to walk me to my shoot this morning, since it's not in the best part of town and she likes to make sure that nothing happens to me. She's super sweet to me that way! But, uh, she's not here and I have to leave soon. I thought maybe - "
"Well, you thought wrong. I don't know what's going on right now, but I'm guessing she has something to do with it and… " He pauses in front of the building, just outside the reach of the security cameras, lifting his fingers to pinch the bridge of his nose. Shit. "L. Goddammit, I bet he's manipulated her into doing something for him, something to get us found out." He grits his teeth. Shit shit shit.
"No way! Rem would never take his orders," Misa squeals with wavering indignation.
"You'd be surprised at what he can get people to do," Light says. He hopes it hurts. He hopes she understands the implication and he hopes it fucking wounds her, because if sticking around to play house with her last night had given L ample opportunity to manipulate Rem into doing his dirty work, she is going to pay.
Or L is. Or Aiber. Someone is taking the blame for this, anyway, and it's not going to be Light.
He says his clipped goodbyes and snaps the phone shut, setting his facial expression pleasantly flat - if doused in a hint of worry and confusion - then rushes into the line of the camera's sight, making like he'd given it his all to get here as quickly as possible.
Mello thought he'd have to staunch the bleeding, but it's already clotting in most places, B's cuts are too shallow to do any lasting damage. To hurt had been the intention, not to kill, which is at least comforting in how it differs from the encounter with Bert. That, it seems, had been a pleasure kill. This is business.
Or maybe, Mello thinks, as he dabs awkwardly at the cuts along Merrie's hipbones, her numbers just aren't up yet.
It's only after he's left and returned with a bottle of port - no glasses, as he couldn't find any that weren't dust-coated or otherwise filled with some unpleasant, unidentifiable substance - and lifted several sips to her dry lips, that she speaks.
"So, what's a boy like you doing in a place like this?" she sighs, head-lolling back against the pillar she's tied to, eyes misting slightly. There's alcohol dripping down the side of her mouth and Mello can't decide if it would be more polite or impolite to lean in and wipe it away.
"I… " he starts, trailing off to kneel back down and check on her wounds, "I'm doing the same thing you are: looking for someone."
She coughs, throat struggling over her words. "And you think that fucker's going to help you find him?" She nods at the stairs, dimly lit now that B had managed to wire in the auxiliary lights.
He shrugs. "I have a better chance with him than I do by myself."
Merrie's laugh is unduly loud, harsh and hushed as it is, in the vast echo of the room. "Oh baby," she coos, with a loose, wind-swept quality to her tone, "you're gonna get yourself so very killed."
And the uneasy thing is, he knows she's probably right. He knows that B has, for some reason, decided he might be useful at one point or another, but the guard-dog act can only go on so long and Mello's not going to kid himself that they're - that they're friends or something. You can't get on with somebody like that. He's not even sure B can feel affection, or if he's just faking it like everything else. Temporary team or not, Mello is on his own, and he knows it.
And yeah, maybe he can't protect himself. Maybe, without B's blessing, he'll get torn apart by this case - maybe B will do the tearing himself - but Mello doesn't altogether care. He's decided not to care. Cliche of all cliches, but he's either going to find L, or he's going to die trying. Anything less and he'll - he'll be nothing. He'll have nothing. He's not coming in second again.
He'd left Wammy's because he'd known, game set the way it was, that Near wold win. He would be chosen. He would prove the better option. Mello doesn't blame anyone, really - classroom scores compared, he could never beat Near. But out in the real world, unused to it and stumblingly fragile as he is, this can be his arena. Near can't play here. This is where real cases gets solved, where real work gets done. This is where L is.
He stands up, rubbing at his arms, backing quickly away from Merrie. He feels sick suddenly. Looking away, he says, "I don't have anywhere else to go. I don't have anything else to do. This is my life's purpose." He looks up again, almost shyly, but swallows it down. "I'm sorry you had to suffer for it. I'm sorry if you have to suffer more. If he - I'm sorry." Strangely, his hand twitches slightly, the long-buried urge to make the sign of the cross rising up in him quite suddenly. "I'll try my best to make sure he doesn't kill you, but - but this is the only way."
"I appreciate the sentiment," Merrie says, snorting like she doesn't, "painfully naive as it is." Throat clicking strangely, she nods by the bottle at his feet. "Another."
He takes the insult and packs it away, feeling too guilty about her predicament to take any great offense, and lifts another gulp of Port to her lips, which she swallows down easily, rigged muscles easing with every drop. When he pulls the bottle back, she breathes for a moment, then regards him with a slightly more focused glance, and says the thing he's so very afraid of saying to himself.
"And what if L's dead?"
Turning around, he gathers up the excess bandages in his hand, teeth gritting as a stream of I know I know I know runs through his head, but he can't let it take over, so he breathes in, out - once, twice, again, again - until he can get a hold on himself. Then he turns back to her and says, "But what if he's not?"
And there's the other side of the coin, the glint of hope that peeks in between the window slats on early mornings. The ringing joking lying truth that he sees in B's eyes. There it is.
Merrie Kenwood looks him up in down, and laughs it off, shucking away his truth like loose skin.
"In that case," she says, "it means that he and Kira are playing their reindeer games and the rest of us aren't invited." She looks Mello in the eyes, sharply lucid, despite the pain and alcohol. "L doesn't get himself captured, and he certainly doesn't stay captured, without ulterior motives. I choose to believe he's dead, because the alternative is that he's dicking around with his Ken-doll boyfriend, who's - in the meantime - killing off anybody who doesn't make it onto his Noah's Arc with a spotless record, aka me and mine. I'd like to give L enough credit to say that he wouldn't do that, but - "
Creaking in from the floor above, B rounds down the staircase, open laptop balanced in his hand and chewing on the inside of his cheek with perturbing amusement.
"But," he continues for Merrie, "if you really knew him, you wouldn't. Now, what's this about a boyfriend?" He skips down the last few steps, tapping out an uneven rhythm with his boots, and Mello's glad B had asked that question, so that he doesn't have to.
Before Merrie can answer, though, Beyond's setting the laptop down on one of the loose basements crates, and scrolling through some sort of database. Abruptly, his eyebrows pop up, and he brings one dull finger to his lips. "Oh, he's pretty," he murmurs, staring at the screen. "He's very pretty. That's no good."
Merrie's expression is loose, rolling with the alcohol, but she still seems to, laughingly, understand something about the situation that Mello doesn't. "And clever, too," she says. "Genius IQ. The whole package."
"Well. That's annoying." B tilts his head to the side, letting his ratty hair fall in loose strands, across his eyes. "I'll have good fun tearing him into little tiny bits."
"I suppose that's one solution to the Kira case," Merrie snorts.
Mello feels awkward and slow, trailing behind them intellectually - but it's not his fault when he's not been given any proper information. "Wait, Kira case?" he asks, looking between the two of them. So Yagami is somehow related to Kira? And… pretty, also, he supposes. He crosses his arms, not liking the implications, nor the look that B's giving him. "I'm still, uh, stuck on boyfriend."
Beyond rolls his eyes, and there's a queer fondness in the movement that Mello chooses to ignore in favor of remaining still and uncomfortable. "Hush, Mihael," he says, "and cover your virgin ears, the big kids are talking." Rounding closer in on Merrie, he abandons his laptop to lean the sharp jut of his chin on one dreamy palm. "I like you," he says to her. "You're much more useful than he's been - "
"Hey!" Mello snaps. B needs him. He's - he'd helped with Syd and… B needs him. For some reason that Mello hasn't quite figured out yet, B decided it'd be a better idea to take him on the road than it would be to kill him in Watson's apartment. He'd tracked him down, in fact. If he's meant to be doing something that he hasn't been doing, Beyond ought to tell him that upfront.
Instead, he shoots a winning, killing smile Mello's way, then flits his glance back to Merrie. "And," he continues, "you held out for a good while. I respect that."
There's a lucidity in B's eyes, deep black and rocking sea-like in the dim, that Mello immediately distrusts. Not that there's a bit about Beyond that he particularly trusts, but this is just… he's playing. He's playing with his food. He just hopes, for her sake, Merrie doesn't buy into it.
"That's funny," she says, chapped lips forming a mirroring smile, corner tilting up to crinkle the rest of her expression, "because I don't have a bit of fucking respect for you."
Mello can't quite help his own glinting amusement. B's expression flickers a little, but then the mask is back on, twice as locked to the skin. "Oh?" he says, voice dipping so high and pleasant it's like a crack through glass. "Is that so?"
"You sick, pathetic bastard," Merrie spits, strands of her hair dripping unwashed across her cheeks. There's a hazy, relieved expression tilting in her eyes, and it's one Mello recognizes. The absence of pain, where pain has been; or at least lessened suffering. "You're not the monster in the dark, are you?" she laughs, asking without asking, eyes flicking to the open laptop, then up and down B's body. "Just another love-lorn suitor who's taken the whole get-up a little too far, huh?"
On most levels, Mello doesn't really understand the insult, or the way it seems to - for half a moment - take B, split him open, and remove all of his organs. His mouth opens, then closes, and the air in the room shifts, thicker and deeper and easier to melt away into, and Mello thinks then that he doesn't really need to understand in order to know.
Beyond takes slow steps closer to Merrie, leaning over her like a towering skyline of whites and blacks and glinting teeth. "I'm sure you've heard of the Black Dahlia in your line of work, yes? Elizabeth Short, age twenty-two, cut all the way in half. Killer never caught. It's a fascinating case, isn't it? And beautiful, too, in the most sickening way. I've always wanted to try something similar. A Christmas present for a friend, eh?"
Merrie Kenwood grits her teeth, face set as if making a pointed effort to not be afraid. "It's November."
B grins. "I'm an early shopper."
"Hey!" Mello snaps, tired of being written off as the junior partner, now that B's found someone his own size to pick on. Not that he misses being the subject of the mind games and death threats, he just - this isn't getting them anywhere. "We're not cutting anybody in half," he says, firmly, forcing his voice not waver, for his resolve to remain set in his jaw. "And we're not killing her."
B rolls his eyes, expression loosening from monstrous to something like pouty, as if he's just been told he's not allowed a new puppy. "Well, we either have to kill her or take her with us, as we can't have her skipping off to make her reports to Granddaddy, and the former sounds like a lot more fun to me."
"I'll go with you," Merrie puts in, before Mello can even begin to make his argument.
"Mmhmm," Beyond says, dragging the sound out as he lets his bones shift lazily, "because you won't tip off airport security as soon as we get there, I'm sure? Nope, not taking the chance," he says without waiting for an answer.
And that's - does he really want to kill her? What about the numbers? Either he'd been lying then, or he's lying now, because he's not going to make the decision based on the possibility of her slowing them down, he'll make it by - Mello doesn't know, consulting the stars or laying out tarot cards or some similar rot. Listening to the universe. Maybe he's just trying to get more -
"Shinigami!" Merrie says loudly, as B moves in, as if for the kill. "It means 'god of death.'"
- Information. Oh.
"I know what it means," B says, but he's stopped, expression going genuinely interested for a moment, before slipping back behind the mask of terror, disappearing into the whites of his eyes.
"I've seen one," Merrie says, "up close and personal. So has L. So has the whole Kira investigation team. And the murder weapon, the way Kira kills, I know that, too. And, trust me, if you want to find L without dying the moment Yagami realizes you're in Tokyo, you need to know this stuff. And I won't tell you unless you take me with you."
Her eyes are flat, her jaw is set, and she's either being very clever or very stupid - or maybe both at once.
"God of death," B repeats, moving closer to her, frowning with what looks like genuine interest. "What does it look like?"
"You're kidding, right?" Mello puts in, loathing to be ignored almost as much as he finds himself annoyed by B's weird mysticism bullshit. "I mean, yeah, let's not kill her - but Shinigami? Isn't that just a bit too hokey, even for you?"
Beyond snorts, the sound rocking echoey through the room. "Believe it or not, I don't have a very hard time accepting the otherworldly." He moves in closer to Merrie, bopping one long, claw-like finger against her nose, ridiculously. "Oh, and if you make one move toward getting us caught - and I mean one move, one jerk of your pretty little pinkie finger - I'll kill you and everyone in the immediate vicinity in half a heartbeat. Don't think for a second that I can't."
She believes him, Mello can tell. He believes him, too - at least on the can. He's not so sure about the will. He's not so sure about most things, when it comes to Beyond.
Merrie stares up at him, not even bothering to shake his touch off of her face. Not even seeming to notice it. "What are you?" she asks.
B pauses, then loosens suddenly, laughing jerkily. "Jeez, if people keep asking me that, I'm gonna get a complex or something."
It takes only a few moments for her to track down Ryuk once she's back on Earth, as he's the only Shinigami presence she senses - though, evidently, not the only one around, unless the King's instincts are going haywire in his old age, and Rem knows just as well as any of her breed does that it doesn't work like that. There is no such thing as old age in the Shinigami realm. There is only the spinning, faulty wheel of time and those that manage to hang onto it longer than others.
And the King is the most accomplished hanger-on.
Ryuk is, predictably, doing nothing of any import. Bobbing upside down outside of L's building, he nips and paws at passers-by, seeming to take great amusement at their inability to sense his presence. She thinks she sees him giving one harried woman bunny-ears, and then wonders vaguely how she even knows what that is.
But - Misa, of course. Everything that she knows, is, and has become is because of Misa Amane. It is consistently weakening to realize that she doesn't wish it any other way.
Gliding down on steady wings, she yanks Ryuk away from the woman with one lucid hand and a jerk of her shoulder, and he flips around to grin at her amiably.
"Oh hey! Did you know that you can get apples baked into bread? This world is amazing!"
Rem blinks at him, still near shuddering with the weight of this plane of existence around her, shifting weary and hard and bright on her flesh. There's dirt on the ground and laughter in the streets and the pulsing uneasiness of humanity. She may have grown used to it of late, but the sharp contrast between this tremendous noise and the utter silence of the Shinigami world is apparent to her from the quick switch. Here and then gone, then quickly back again.
"I did," Rem says, knocking the subject aside, impediment that it is. She cocks her head. "Did you know that there are two other Shinigami in the human world?"
"Huh?" Ryuk says, grin slitting down into a confused glint of teeth. "Really? Who?"
His shock is genuine, she can tell, and is then confused as to the thought process. Of course it is. Shinigami, as a general rule of temperament, do not lie. They have no need to. Dishonesty is for the wheedling, small and weak. For humans who cannot get what they want any other way. Humans like Light Yagami. A true God has no need of such a false means of control; they simply have it.
"I don't know," Rem says, letting go of him and pulling away. And the King doesn't, either. It was as if he could sense but not see, which means…. She does not know what that means. "The King told me about them." She turns, scanning the midmorning skyline.
Ryuk's expression shifts. "That old kook is awake again?" He laughs, and it echoes through the streets, drowning out the hum and drone of everything else. "Oh man, I wanna go see him!"
"You can't just leave the human world while you have a Note down here," Rem says, turning around because she know he'll follow her.
Ryuk scratches his head with one jagged claw. "Yeah, but how did you?"
"He called me," Rem says, glancing over her shoulder with one irritated eye.
"But why?" Ryuk whines, grin shaped anxious, petulant like that of child who doesn't understand. But that's the thing about Ryuk, he is not a child, and he does understand far more than he makes apparent. He just likes having things explained. He likes watching people explain things. He likes to watch.
"Because," Rem continues, leading him on towards the abandoned office building, to where L is, "I was speaking to someone I shouldn't have been." She's going to have to explain that sending messages to Thierry Morello - for whatever reason, and the possibilities range from overarching master plan to mindless fun - is not going to endear her to other beings of her sort, and if he wants her to try again, he's going to have to make a far more convincing argument for it.
But, then - she stops. Ryuk stops behind her, not because of her, but with. She looks back at him.
"Do you feel that?"
His grin splits his face like a seam opened up, sharp teeth glinting in the open white skies over Tokyo. "Sure do."
Merrie - or Wedy, as she insists on being called; and as he's in a similar situation, he respects her wishes - wants to go back to the hotel to pick up her equipment, and Mello agrees that lots of guns and telescopes and whatever else Wammy's agents use would probably come in handy when tracking down L, but B refuses. And as he's the one with the rib-spreader and the can-do spirit required to use it, they have to abide by his wishes.
Cornering him as Syd finishes up the passports and Merrie - Wedy - showers in the dirty washroom that looks like it hasn't been properly used in years, B lines his lips up to Mello's ear, breathing in tingling ripples across his skin, "Watch her."
He pulls back then, but not wholly out of the region of uncomfortable proximity, and murmurs, "She's not given up. Not even close. And that's fine, it'd be a shame if she had, but you have to remember that she's not on our side, she'll take her first decent chance at getting us caught, and more than likely, she thinks she's leading us straight into Papa Wammy's hands by going with us on our journey east." He clutches each of Mello's cheeks in his clammy hands, holding him more like a handful of flesh than the human being breathing under it. "That's okay, let her think that, but don't for a slice of a second trust her."
Mello jerks, quite weakly, out of his grasp, folding his arms across his chest. "I'm not stupid," he says. And then, after a long moment, "So. Us? We have a side, you and me?"
Beyond blinks at him, humming somewhere low in his throat. "Of course," he says, like it's nothing, like they're old pals and Mello isn't still vaguely afraid of being brutally murdered by him. B leans in, pressing one sloppy kiss to Mello's forehead - like pecking a grandchild - and scampers off to harass Syd, calling over his shoulder, "Us castoffs have gotta stick together."
They leave Syd at a street-corner a few blocks from his shop with a tibia bone in his hand and a, 'Thanks very much for your hospitality,' that, in reality, translates more to, "We're taking the car. We'll leave it in the Heathrow parking lot. I'll even fill up the tank."
Syd chews on his lip and looks a bit like he wants to smack B across his face, but then he more or less always looks like that. "Take whatever you want, as long as you promise not to come back." And then a smile, weak and a little forced and brimming with the pangs of leftover terror, but a look that Mello has grown almost fond of by now. Syd is almost familiar. Syd is almost a friend.
He waves him a solemn, wordless goodbye from the passenger's seat. Wedy is cuffed in the back, rolling her eyes and occasionally bemoaning the lack of leather interior.
Beyond gets out of the car and hugs him around the middle, squeezing him to his chest like a lover not to be seen for ages. Syd looks surprised and wildly uncomfortable, and he freezes stock still for a moment, before taking a couple breaths and patting B lightly on the back, glancing up at Mello for assistance, who just shrugs in the evening chill.
B pulls back, and looks at Syd with a soulful gaze that skates the edges of comical. "We had some times, didn't we?"
Syd blinks at him, then nods. "They were awful, awful times, B."
"Stay sharp, Sydney," he calls back, climbing into the car. "And keep the sobriety up. It's a dandy look on you."
As they pull away from the curb and into the bustle of the London roads, Mello watches in the rearview mirror as Syd flips their retreating car off. From the back, Wedy says, "Why didn't you kill him?" with a sigh of bored curiosity.
Beyond doesn't glance back at her, and Mello's glad of that. He's a mad enough driver as it is. "Wasn't his time."
Mello barely believes that they get through airport security alright, but they wave him through without a second glance, and even though B earns himself a long look that may just be the fight-or-flight instinct rising in the guard, he's waved through along with everyone else. Wedy flashes one the many false identification papers she keeps in her purse and smiles pretty, giving no indication of her wounds, nor her unwavering dislike for her traveling companions.
Mello's got no idea where B had found the time - not to mention the money - to book a flight, but he'd evidently managed it, and well too, as they've got three seats together near the window. Wedy's made to sit between them, and Beyond is in the aisle so that neither of them can make their respective dashing escapes. Not that Mello can think of a reason he'd want to, at this point. Not when he's so close to his goal, to Tokyo, to L.
It's not as if he'd particularly believed that stuff about them being on the same side and sticking together and all that, but, well, he'd be lying if he said he hadn't grown just a little used to B. He sort of grows on you. Like cancer. Not the mention, he's gotten him this far. Even if he is a psycho - which Mello is honestly starting to question, inarguable murderer though he still remains.
When they're all settled in with their beverages and their inflatable pillows and little movie screens - strange and wondrous to Mello, who hasn't been on a plane since he was a little kid, and never one so large or advanced - he turns to Wedy and asks what he's been meaning to ask for the past several hours.
"So, uh, this Yamaguchi - "
"Yagami," B corrects, from the other side of the row, as he rubs his temples. Air sickness, he'd said before, grinning like the loon that he debatably is.
"Yagami," Mello continues. "He's Kira?"
Wedy shrugs, sipping her gin in its little plastic cup. "L thought so."
"Thinks so," B corrects, adjusting her past tense to present.
Wedy rolls her eyes, huffing, and seeming not to remember any of the mass of varied threats he'd treated her to before lift-off, or at least not caring. "It's funny," she says, not sounding amused at all, "I don't think the boy asked you."
"Don't think so much," B says, licking his teeth with a sly, nighttime grin that Mello is well familiar with. "Don't you know everyone hates that in a woman?"
Wedy grins back, sharp and, god, she either really doesn't like Beyond, or really does. She's wearing lipstick again, back to being poised and perfect, even coming apart at the seams as she is, just under her clothes.
"One day," she murmurs, turning to B, voice low so that none of the other passengers will listen in and, uh, call security. "One day I'm going to put my gun in your mouth and I'm going to pull the trigger. And I'm going to keep pulling, and pulling, and pulling, until you stop talking." She takes another sip of gin, and shoots a self-satisfied smirk over at Mello.
On her other side, B bites his lip. "Oh, death threats," he says. "Be still my heart."
Part of Mello really wishes they'd stop flirting - despite the fact that it, thankfully, takes B's array of eager sexual innuendo off of him as the target - but another part rather hopes that they don't. That they have sex and fall in love and adopt Mello, and then the three of them move into a nice apartment in Tokyo and nobody dies and nobody gets tortured, and maybe they never find L and maybe it's alright. Maybe they get a cat.
Probably not, though. Probably Merrie Kenwood is going to end up dead. All Mello can really afford to hope for is that he doesn't join her.
Her father is in the lobby, setting up a business lunch with some important client or another, trading dull jokes and duller gossip, and as to not be made into an ornament of sale, Kiyomi opts to wait out on the sidewalk. The November air is chilly, so she wraps her fur tighter around her shoulders and flips open her compact, checking for lipstick smudges and creased spots of skin.
No, of course not. Smooth as porcelain, everything as perfect as she'd set it, after a thin breakfast and half an hour of aerobics - no more coffee, caffeine rots you - lining it all up with surgical precision, presenting exactly the face that she needs to present: sweet girl, good daughter, honey and silk and everything lovely. Someone who doesn't go out drinking in underground bars in Roppongi, and especially doesn't make-out with nameless men against bathroom mirrors.
She powders her face a bit more, just to make certain that the bags under her eyes are virtually invisible, and is about to snap her mirror closed when there's a flicker of movement in the rearview, and everything under her skin - blood and bones and starched straight sinews - jerks up a few centimeters on instinct.
Kiyomi spins around, ankles wobbly, hand going immediately to her purse to jerk around for her pepper spray. Come on, come on, come on - it's - it's not. There's nothing there. No one.
She's starting to breathe out, shoulders releasing their tense hold, when there's a scrabbling crash from the thin alley in between the office buildings, holding only the drains and manholes, and - someone. There's someone there. The shadows are thick and she can't make out a face, only the shivering length of an overlarge body, pale hands and a glint of orange or - is that red? Is that blood?
She should move, she should go over to investigate - pepper spray at the ready - she should do something, get someone, be the girl in the bar with the liquor in her mouth and the laugh grinding her teeth and nothing holding her back, holding her tight - but no no no. She is not that girl.
What would Kiyomi Takada do? Something clever, probably. She's just so clever. Everyone says so.
She takes a step forward, suede pump making an echoing thunk on the cold concrete, and the figure freezes, hunching further. Hair, hair, they have a lot of hair. They have - there's a body, it's small. Small hands, small fingers, tiny breath and it's all gone and oh no no no no - where is that girl? Where is Kiyomi Takada? Where is her father? Where is anyone? No one is home. Call back later.
She can't, she can't, she can't - there's a child. There's more than one.
The hair flips and the shadows break for a second and she is struck by a lightning fast glint of cognizance, flickering in the bright eyes of the someone climbing into the manhole, dragging the bodies of a few children after them. It.
After it. Something.
She screams. She turns and she screams and her voice feels as if it carries across the city, climbing in windows and slipping under doors, hollowing everything out to fill it with sound. Terror. She is terrified. She thinks, more aware of the world inside her head than the reality outside of it, that this is the scariest moment of her life. There has never been terror in her before. It's here now. It's swallowing her up.
She turns, she runs, moving as quickly as she can, forgetting about decorum and her designer shoes and anything but getting away.
As it is, though, she doesn't get two steps before she slams shoulder first into the chest of Teru Mikami, who, on contact, yells just as loud as she does.
The headquarters are abuzz with a lively hum that hasn't quite been present since L was around, and it all breathes one word, false as it is: progress. The excitement of development, of change - the lack of stagnation that L had always insisted so heartily upon - it's here and it's breeding hope, and Light, for the life of him, can't tell if that's a bad thing or not.
It's either distraction or rejuvenation, and he can't quite decide which. Whatever the outcome, though, Rem's not going to escape punishment - unsure as he is as to how to enact it. He'd had everything in line, all ordered and neat, and now it's spun out of his grasp, into the open, and he's got to scramble for the pieces. If not a real threat, it's at the very least heavily inconvenient.
He should be in Ikebukuro, face pressed into L's jaw, drinking coffee and asking where is hurts and laughing with the morning. He should be allowed to have that.
Instead, he's staring around at the faces of the other investigators, equal parts eager and nervous. And they're looking to him for guidance. Of course.
He clears his throat, fingers playing on his loose collar, and says, "I think we all know what this could mean," mostly because he enjoys the unsure glances they give each other, and knowing that they don't know anything at all really, and are completely reliant on him to lead them by the hand. He takes a deep breath, and makes like he's forcing himself not to smile, but it's slipping in at the edges, anyway. "If the Shinigami is still in the city, that means L could be, too."
"Light," his father says, a stern kindness wavering on his lined face, "it's important not to let your hopes get up too high. I wish to find Ryuzaki just as much as you do, but - "
"I know, I know, it's a long shot," Light says, feigning stunted disappointment, which he makes a show up shoving down behind his eyes. "But we have a to pursue every avenue and, well, without hope, we would have just given the world to Kira a long time ago. I know this isn't much, but it's a start, and if we pursue this lead to its end, who knows what we could find? If not L, then maybe Kira himself."
He looks around, eyes wide with youthful enthusiasm, and it takes everything in him to keep himself from laughing outright. As if they had ever needed to give Kira anything. As if he hadn't just taken it on day one.
"Aiber," he says, turning the lone, pastel shadow slumping at the corner of the room. Watari's nowhere to be seen, but he's sent his dashing little envoy to do the dirty work. Their eyes meet and everything of last night steeps in the glance for a half second - the kiss, the loathing, the almost-truth slithering around between them. It dries up in an instant, and then it's just business. "What did it say to you, exactly?"
Breathing in luridly and letting his eyes roll around the room with an air of disinterest, Aiber shrugs. "Just that it had a message for me. And it called me by name." There's a little twitch to his lips on the last word, as if he knows very clearly how much Light would like to be able to do the same.
"Well, what was the message?" Aizawa asks, cutting Light off rather unspectacularly.
"Don't know," Aiber says. "It didn't get that far. A moment later, it was gone."
"It left?"
"No, it didn't leave. It was just gone. Disappeared. Maybe I blinked for half a second, but it didn't have a chance to fly off or burst into a puff of smoke. Just gone."
Light frowns, looking around at the faces of mirrored confusion around him.
"I suppose Shinigami can do that," Light's father says, a resigned sort of lilt in his voice that has been there for weeks.
"I suppose," Light says, although he's never seen it done before, and Ryuk isn't exactly subtle with his abilities or peculiarities. Dammit, what was Rem doing? Something for L, no doubt, but what's with the show? Is Aiber lying? Did he really get a message and the disappearing act is just a crappy cover story? No, no, no, that's far too sloppy, even for the likes of him. If he had, the best option would have been to just not mention it at all, and that's no doubt what he would have done had he actually gotten a message.
So, what had happened?
"You weren't, um, intoxicated, by any chance, were you?" he asks, forcing the sly smile in his voice not to spill over onto his lips.
"Yagami," Aiber growls.
"Light," his father says, at the same time.
"I'm sorry, it just, it doesn't make a lot of sense, you know?" Light says, looking around at them all. "I mean, the thing tells you it has a message for you, but then disappears before it can deliver it? I think that warrants suspicion that the story may not have the most reliable narration."
"Maybe that was the message?" Matsuda puts in, speaking up for the first time in the whole discussion - an unusual silence that Light supposes he should have treasured while it had lasted.
That Aiber's incompetent? Light wants to say, but doesn't. Instead, he asks, "What?"
Matsuda looks around, wavering and unsure. "The, uh, the disappearing. I mean, maybe the message was 'poof!' Well, not 'poof,' but you know what I mean? Maybe it's some kind of complicated coded message that we're supposed to figure out."
Or that Aiber is.
Light frowns. He can't quite wrap his head around it, but Matsuda might have actually just said something that's halfway to intelligent. He can't let him know that, though, not any of them. If there is a code, he's got to be the only one to figure it out.
"That doesn't follow," he says, shaking his head. "If we learned anything from our dealings with the Shinigami, it's that it's not really the most intellectually advanced creature around. No, I'm betting it was more to do with Kira."
"Kira sent a message?" Aizawa asks.
"No," Light says, "Kira intercepted the message. Whatever the Shinigami was going to say, Kira got wind of it and, I don't know, called it back?"
Matsuda's eyebrows fly up the play hockey with his hairline. "Can he do that?"
Light shakes his head. "I don't know. We have no idea of the full scope of what Kira is capable of, but if the power of the Notebook is any indication, he can do a lot. We've got to be careful, now more than ever." He looks around at the group gathered, all of them tense now, and far less eager, and would very much like to smile.
In the back, Aiber is rolling his eyes soundlessly, one chunky thumb playing obnoxiously with his lighter. He, of course, doesn't buy it for a second, but then Light had never expected him to.
He's just about to continue his speech - with something no doubt uplifting and fear-mongering in equal measure - when a voice crackles over the intercom, and a stylized W shows up on one of the computer screens.
"Yagami," Watari says, and as he always refers to Light's father as Chief Yagami, they all know who he's addressing. "I do apologize for the interruption, but something's happened that you might be interested in. It's not related to the Kira case, as far as I know, but as you asked me to keep an eye on any police updates on the serial child murders that have been happening - "
"What is it?" Light asks. More, already? It was just three last night, it can't - that's ridiculous - it's not even been -
"Two children have just gone missing, in broad daylight. Not a few blocks from here."
The investigators go wide-eyed, a collective starkness overtaking the room. Matsuda looks as if he might cry. Even Aiber looks troubled, brow crumpled and eyes fallen closed.
"There could still be time," Light says, hurriedly, all thoughts of performance going out the window as everything in him aches with true tragedy. "They might still be alive."
This is his city, his country, his world. And people like this killer, like this disgusting, foul excuse for human life doing this to these kids? He is not allowed here. He has to go somewhere else. He has to bleed and suffer and hurt and die, and Light will be damned if Kira isn't the one who kills him.
"The police are out patrolling every street," Watari rattles off quickly, "cars are being searched, the district is practically on lockdown. But there's something else, a possible witness. A woman saw something apparently very suspicious and frightening very near to both the scenes of disappearance. The police are having a hard time getting anything out of her, as she's possibly in shock. If I'm not mistaken, I believe you go to school with her. A Miss Kiyomi Takada?"
Light blinks. Everything today is very, very, very strange. He blinks again. And it keeps getting stranger.
Teru Mikami calls the police for her. Teru Mikami explains the situation to her father - who then, with a quick kiss to her cheek, disappears on a quest to keep the story from breaking in the papers without an appealing spin on his family. Teru Mikami sits with her at the police station, another witness in the case, though they both know he'd seen nothing but her.
"Your lipstick," he says, as the police shuffle around one another, making calls and looking for files - completely incompetent, the lot of them - and points at her chin. She can feel the waxy smudge dipping below the neat line of her mouth and she grimaces and begins searching frantically through her purse for a tissue to wipe it away.
This is all wrong. This is a terrible morning.
When? is the first question they ask.
She doesn't know. Earlier. Half an hour ago, maybe more.
Where? they ask next, for confirmation, because they'd picked her up there and they know. It's procedure, Mikami says, and Kiyomi ignores him because she is awfully good at that.
They'd asked all the the same questions at the scene, when she'd been shaking, unable to speak, to verbalize her terror as anything more than, "I'm alright, I'm alright," a confirmation more to herself than to anyone else present. Head, hands, feet, shoulders - you're here, you're all here. But the terror, still.
She knows what question they're going to ask next, still doesn't know how to answer. Who? they ask, and her hands shake.
"I don't know," she says, moving her head in a half-aborted shake, "I didn't see, I - "
"But you saw the children?" the officer asks, frowning, pressing for answers she's not giving. But she can't, she can't tell them. They wouldn't believe her, they'd sigh and whisper amongst themselves, and she can't take the whispers again.
"Yes," she says, nodding, composing herself, appearing as sane as she possibly can. "I think they were children. They were small. But the - person dragging them, I didn't - it was dark, and only for a few seconds. Just a few glimpses and then I ran." Setting her shoulders, she lets her eyes glint tearily, courageously, the way all the doctors applaud. "Not very brave, I suppose. Maybe if I'd followed them, if I'd done something other than shriek and run away, maybe - "
The officer is already shaking his head sympathetically - evidently very much softened in her favor by now - but Mikami speaks first.
"Don't be ridiculous," he says, in that same quivering no-nonsense tone he always uses. "Your duty as a citizen was to report the crime, not take up vigilantism."
Kiyomi wants to frown, but doesn't let a hint of it show on her face. She knows for a fact that Mikami is, despite what he's saying now, quite in support of certain forms of vigilantism. And, as a golden opportunity like this only rarely presents itself, she raises one delicate brow and says, "Do you really believe that, Mikami-san, or are you just saying it because you shrieked and ran away with me?"
His expression immediately flattens, and that of the officers goes frowning and quizzical - doubting her. She can't have that. She can't - it all has to be just as she says.
"I'm sorry," she murmurs after a moment, hand to her heart, "the stress is getting to me. I mean no offense, Mikami-san. I'm sure I don't know what I would have done without you there."
That seems to appease the officer, but she watches as Mikami barely restrains an eye roll, and the familiar practice of baiting him makes her feel more steady-footed than she has since they'd gotten here. It's okay, it's okay, it's all going to be okay. She hadn't seen anything. Not anything.
The questions are dispensed with for the moment - the police offering her some respite before the next wave, she supposes - and the officer with them goes off to get her a cup of coffee, which she thanks him for, despite having no intention of drinking it. Caffeine is hell on her complexion.
When they're left alone for a full moment, Mikami mumbles, with barely a glance at her, "I didn't shriek, I - "
"Oh, whatever," Kiyomi says, rolling her eyes, "and you're very against individual enacted justice as well, of course."
Mikami huffs beside her, straightening up. "Well, what was I meant to say? Announce my unpopular affiliation in a building crowded to the brim with those that strongly oppose my views as part of their job description? That would have been extremely foolish."
Kiyomi looks away, plucking at the dirt somehow caught under her fingernails. "I know that. I only thought it was funny." Teru Mikami is the most fervent Kira-supporter she has ever met - and considering that there are quite a few extremists running in her social circles, kept under wraps as they are, that is saying quite a lot.
"Nothing about this situation is amusing, Takada-san," he says grimly. "Two children are as good as dead."
"I know that," she snaps back, "but I don't see what my state of humor is going to do about it. I don't even know why I'm still here. There's nothing else I can tell them."
"Perhaps the truth?"
Her eyes jerk over to Mikami's face, set in a stern line, grim with that old-world justice of his. She may agree with his basic tenants of morality, but she hasn't got half of his fanaticism and has no interest in taking it up. And, that aside, she doesn't like the fact that he thinks himself able to question her.
"I have no idea - " she begins, but he doesn't let her get far.
"You're not as good a liar as you think," he tells her.
She clenches her jaw. "And you're not half as clever as you tell yourself."
"You saw something," he shoots back at her, ignoring the jab. "It's obvious. If you don't tell the police then you may hinder the investigation invariably, and perhaps you value your reputation more than the apprehension of an extremely dangerous child rapist and murderer, but - "
"It's not about my reputation," she snaps, because it isn't, it isn't, she's not so shallow as that - and Father is keeping her out of the papers, besides. There's a bit of a clamor towards the front of the station, a lot of raised voices, but they're tucked neatly behind a weight-bearing beam, out of the general commotion, and it all sails right past like a wave. Kiyomi closes her eyes, tries to breathe steady, then turns back to Mikami to flash them open and say, "They won't believe me."
Mikami, however, is not looking at her.
"Who won't believe what?" Light Yagami's pleasant, familiar voice asks, filling up all of the space in their close little corner and making Kiyomi's head reel even more than it has already been doing this morning, what with the murder and kidnapping and horror.
Light's presence knocks that all out of the park.
Her steps don't echo down the hall, and the only reason L hears her is that she's shouting, "Rem! Rem!" at the top of her delicate little lungs. She's wearing tennis shoes, jeans, and a shirt in an aesthetically offensive shade of pink. Hair in a bun, large sunglasses. She looks like Barbie, Spy Edition, except Barbie would be far better at disguising herself. Barbie's always good at her jobs, no matter how many hundreds she has. That's the whole point.
"She's not here," L says.
He's standing, stretching again. He'd really like to be able to move more, to do jumping jacks - even if they'd cause a raucous commotion of clanging metal - but there's an ache low in his back and his muscles feel like they'd all been torn out and then sewn back under his skin upside-down. He'd woken with most of the blood and spit and come cleaned off of him, but there's some left tacky and thick deep between his thighs and he wishes, with no little fervor, for a long hot shower and an actual bed and a day alone to recuperate.
Not from the sex so much - he's hardly that delicate - as the words. Thoughts and poetry and Plath ringing in his ears. He feels stupid, embarrassed of himself, like the morning after a night of binge-drinking and vomiting on doorsteps.
Misa puts her hands on her hips, looking him up and down. "She might be. Just because you can't see her, doesn't mean she isn't around."
L tilts his head. "You can't find her, can you?" he asks, trying to occupy her mind, so that she doesn't focus overmuch on his physical state.
"That's none of your business." She twirls in a circle, checking about her, as if Rem is lodged away in a ceiling crack and will be tugged out with little effort if only she could be found.
"Hmm, interesting," L says out loud, though only because he wants her to stop, and frown, and pause uncomfortable; all of which she does quite commendably.
"What is?"
"You," he remarks keenly. Flattery might get him somewhere, and then again it might not. She seems to react more to Light's distaste than she does to her thousands of adoring fans, but the question becomes: is it because of the man himself that she scrambles at his feet, or because of the rejection. Does she long only for what she cannot have, or does she simply long for him, whatever way you slice it? L taps his fingers on the wall, and his nails make a sound. He hasn't been able to clip them in weeks.
He continues, "You're kinder to me when he's around."
Misa worries her lip - pale and unpainted as it is, for once without make-up - and shrugs defensively. "So?"
"So," L says, dragging out the word, "I'm guessing it's less to win his favor, and more just to piss him off, right? Nobody gets to bring me coffee but him. Thanks for that, by the way." It hadn't been good coffee, but it made his brain work. "I know what you're doing, of course. You're putting yourself between he and I so he'll have to go through you to get to me." He feels pale and fluorescent in the shuttered grey light, peeking in from boarded windows. "So, how was it, then? When he 'went through you,' so to speak?"
He pops his eyebrows and expects her to wrinkle her nose, but the lack of chains and buckles and black must signify a greater lack. She is emptied of her pretensions. She did not come here to put on a show. She came here for Rem, pure and simple, almost sweet. So, then what is he doing? Why is he baiting?
Because he wants a show, isn't it? He's bored. He's B, nine years old, poking at the deer carcass with his bare hands just to watch the maggots squirm.
Thought, that's not very kind to Miss Amane, is it, making her the carcass? Or maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe she'd made herself that a long while ago. Something to be poked at, prodded. Something that longs for prodding.
He's, uh… getting into the innuendos again, and it's not so much fun without Light here to scoff at them.
Misa's jaw is clenched and her eyes are hard and he is hurting her, he knows he is, and there is some moral imperative that says he should stop, but also a deeper, truer, more animal desire to keep going. To wear her down with fingerprints and marks, until she does something worth watching - collapses, explodes, implodes. Cries, yells, throws a tantrum. Says something intelligent. Does something drastic. Leaves. Comes back, and leaves again.
That's all his relationships with most people are, he supposes. A series of tiny experiments. What will happen if I press this button? Or that one?
He always presses. He always finds out. That's what ends with him chained up in buildings that he owns, hungry and smelling of linoleum, crick in his neck, patterns inside his eyes that makes up constellations outside of himself, long ago memorized. Maps and charts. The Tokyo train roots, all the little roads, touching each other at odd points, only to fly off away again. It's in him, rattling around, and it's because he'd put it there. Pressed the button.
He presses Misa's buttons and she stares at him for a long time, as if frozen in the moment, not letting the scene continue until she's got a proper hold on what she wants, what she means, and what she's going to say.
Then, resolutely, she straightens, walks over, grabs him by the face with both hands, and kisses him. Her lips are soft, and she smells clean, but unscented. Warm hands, loose blonde hairs; her eyes are wide open. So are his, but unfocused, gaping at something too up close to get a proper look at. She's much shorter than him, and his spine curves more fully to accommodate her. He kisses back.
He wonders if this qualifies as an explosion or an implosion.
He'd believed himself fully prepared for the situation, however it lay, up until the moment he'd walked around the corner. Takada screaming at him, Takada crying, Takada ordering him out. Stony silence, enthusiastic politeness, utter disinterest. He'd even considered the possibility - slim as it was - that she might not even remember him. It had all been accounted for, and he'd run all the scenarios in his mind and decided on the most appropriate responses.
Teru Mikami had not factored into any of them.
Teru Mikami is no longer supposed to be involved one way or another. He'd served his purpose, had in fact served several, and Light had liked him well enough, but he'd been discharged. The game doesn't need any more players, particularly not ones that don't even know the rules.
"Ah, Mikami-san," he says, not needing to falsify his surprise, though he does certainly tone down his level of annoyance. "What are you doing here? The report only mentioned Kiyomi, I didn't know - "
"I - Takada-san and I were both at the scene. I accompanied her to the station in order - "
"I think the better question," Takada says, interrupting Mikami flat-out and flashing an uneasy frown at Light, "is what you're doing here. Just because your father's a policeman doesn't mean you've got an all-access pass to every on-going investigation, does it? And if it does, I'll really have to have my father bring the subject up with the board of directors, because if security is this lax, I fear for my personal safety."
Ah, so she doesn't remember him fondly, then. Light's irritation is mounting, but he does his best to keep it undetectable.
Going stiffer and sharply professional, he says, "I'm here on behalf of L. He's taken an interest in this case."
Mikami blinks, wiping at his glasses before pushing them back up his nose. "Taken an interest, has he? Was that before or after the two recent attacks? I suppose it finally made it to his minimum body-count range, then."
"That's… " Light doesn't know what to say to that. He agrees, actually, and the truth of it is that he doesn't know whether this case would have even peaked L's interest enough for him to embark on it, were he still in his same position of power, and that disgusts and angers him, but he - he can't tell Mikami that. He has to appear as the good little solider, just taking orders from above, blind to any possible wrong-doings of his idol. "There's a lot going on right now," is what he settles on. "With Kira still on the loose, the world is in a state of flux and resources are scattered. This case has only recently come to his attention."
"Yes, of course," Mikami says, "what with all of the innocent criminals being targeted, it's understandable that these children escaped his notice."
Takada huffs a slight, humorless laugh, but she's not looking at either of them. She's pale and far less composed than he's ever seen her, while, conversely, Mikami is acting far more alive, more sure of himself, than he's ever done around Light before. Tragedy, he supposes, cuts people to the quick, bringing the roots to the top, and letting the rest all wash away in the surrounding dirt.
Swallowing down his vague desire to pursue the subject of L - to hear Mikami continue his diatribe against him and perhaps have Takada join in - he doesn't much fancy playing defender to the ethical decisions that he's spent the last year opposing, and besides, he's here for a very different reason.
"Look," he says, sighing with all the well-intentioned charm he can muster, "I'm getting the impression that neither of you are too happy to see me at the moment, and you're fully within your rights to feel how you do, but if we want even the slightest chance of saving those children, we're going to have to put aside our issues and work with each other. Now L, however you feel about him, is a brilliant man, and he can help. Just, please, Kiyomi, Teru - " and the familiarity might be taking it a step far, but the way their eyes on him start to soften immediately tells him it's in the right direction, nonetheless - "tell me what you saw."
And they do.
When she tugs herself off of him - briskly, like pulling oneself out of bathwater gone cold - she speaks immediately, as if it's something she'd been rushing to get out since the beginning, and only hadn't because of the impediment of his lips:
"I don't see what the big deal is."
Head cocked cutely, arms going across her chest. Without high heels, she's even smaller than usual, and it feels a bit like having his romantic prowess insulted by a child.
He blinks down at her. He knows what she means, of course, what the point had been, but he just mirrors her stance, and keeps his voice bored. "What deal would that be?"
"You," she mumbles, looking down at her hands as if she'll be able to see the stain of him marring her skin. "You kiss like any other guy. There's nothing special about it. And your breath stinks." It's strange, because they're the type of words that are supposed to be indignant, that she's supposed to squeal and snap, balling her pretty little fists all the while.
"Well, to be fair," he replies, "he hasn't let me brush my teeth in a couple of days. Moving threw my living arrangements a bit off balance, or didn't you notice my luxurious accommodations?" He holds up his chain jangling it against the air conditioning unit. "You don't happen to have a spare mattress along with that spare car, have you?"
She stares at him as if he's said something utterly confounding. "I just kissed you," she announces.
"Indeed you did." L's not sure what else to say.
"'Indeed,'" she mimics, in a rather unflattering parody of his accent. "So, you're supposed to react. You're supposed to ask me why."
L nearly rolls his eyes. He supposes she's got a whole speech planned out in her head, then. Something about him being nothing to write home about, no one to fall in love with, so then why, why, why? That's the question of all questions, isn't it? How did he, of all people, end up the man that he is, with the ability to do what he does? Heartbreaker is perhaps an apt word. He doesn't have the face for it, nor the body, nor even the temperament. Maybe it was his particular set of circumstances. Maybe it was Beyond. But then why Beyond in the first place?
L is a heartbreaker and Misa's heart is broken, and the conduit between them, the heart that is their connecting point, is out for the day. L had woken up in his absence. L had lived in his absence for twenty-four years, and still he had felt strangely hollow when he'd opened his eyes to find himself alone this morning, legs shaky, words like love painting echoes on his lips.
Not such a heartbreaker after all.
He doesn't let her have her speech. "I thought I reacted rather accommodatingly. The thing with my tongue, at the very least - "
"Shut-up," she says, "shut-up, shut-up, shut-up." Still low pitched, still muted, not half of her usual self-made production.
"I know why," he tells her, matching the murmur of her tone. "I know, Misa." He leaves off the honorific at the last second, stumbling over the s in san, but abandoning it ultimately. She's meant to fall in love with him or something, anyway, isn't she? Love is without honorifics. Love is without honor of any sort. "I know what hurts, and I know why, and I know who. And it's not me. You're only here because he won't let you follow him so closely any longer, and I'm the nearest thing to him."
Her eyes are hazy and still. She looks like someone who is not herself, or at least not the self that she usually is. "What do I do?" she asks.
She doesn't look at him, but he doesn't need her to.
He shrugs. "You could try again."
Takada insists on calling an officer over to substantiate Light's claims of being L's representative, and when he does such, she waits until the man is out of earshot to huff insults at his disappearing back. Ever concerned with image, that much doesn't seem to have been much rocked by her recent scare, but then she's far less poised than Light's ever seen her before. Perhaps because she thinks the role of the traumatized victim will suit just fine, and perhaps just because she doesn't find Mikami and Light's respective opinions worth her pretensions.
She used to. She and Light used to trade airs like a laughing chess game, both doubting one another wholly, maybe, but making as if they hadn't. Their very brief, uneventful relationship - if it even warrants the word - had been just that: a trade. An exchange of goods and services, emphasis on the latter. He had served to elevate her reputation by being the most sought-after boyfriend in their year, and she had been one of many covers - useless as they'd ultimately been - against L's probing eye.
Now she's just a girl he'd briefly dated a few months ago, and Mikami is just a man he'd fucked a few weeks ago.
Funny, he never really thought he'd have people like that, or be in a situation like this. In his mind's eye's view of his life, it was all much cleaner: his friends, his family, his acquaintances, lined in neat rows; Misa, Ryuk, and Rem in another; L in a whole column of his own. Mikami and Takada, though, hadn't even so much as made it on the map. They don't belong to him, in his life. He had cast them off when he'd finished with them, and yet here they are, both frowning at him expectantly.
And so, out of sheer necessity, the world continues on, personal feelings funneled out, and they lay their respective stories before him.
"I'd been on my way back from my lunch break. Early. I'm always early and the receptionist always glares at me because I make her do a slight bit of work when she'd rather be painting her nails and corresponding with her friends. There's an on-going case that requires my attention at every spare moment, and I meant to continue my work on it as soon as possible. I didn't manage to get to it. I didn't even make it indoors. I'm sure the receptionist is pleased. I met Takada-san on the steps, which isn't an unusual occurrence, as her father is a senior partner at my firm. It was unusual in other respects, though. She looked - to use a very tired phrase - as if she'd seen a ghost. I suppose, in reality, what she did see was near enough."
Bodies. Bodies, she'd told him, and told the police. And - and - and something else. What? I don't know. What did they look like? I don't know.
Stop asking her questions, she's in shock. Call her emergency contact.
No, her father works in the building. I'll get him.
Takada sits silently as Mikami speaks, Light taking notes all the while, though he doesn't intend to consult them. He'll remember it. He'll tell it to L in his own words. They'll figure this out. They'll find the bastard and he will die.
"I'm sure my information will be of far less use than Takada-san's, however. I only caught the tail end of the scene."
"You didn't see anything in the alley?" Light asks him, all professionalism, not letting the thin remembrance of Mikami's breath on his neck, hair tickling his chin, cock pulsing in his hand, color any part of his questioning. Mikami does him the service of returning the favor, and acts more or less like they barely know one another - which, Light supposes, is true. Heartbreak, etc. aside. He continues, "According to what I'm told, the police did a sweep of the area in question and found no blood, nor any other fluids, and no particular indication that anyone had been there at all, dead or alive."
"I know," Mikami says, nodding. "I was there, and though they held me back from the scene, I didn't see anything to correspond with what Takada-san has said." He swallows, not looking at her, though her eyes jerk up to Light as he speaks. "I want it noted, however, that - the possible exaggeration of the mind aside - I do not believe that she is lying, nor knowingly falsifying any of her account. The most she can be accused of is not sharing the full scope of her experience, and given the apparent trauma of what she saw, she can't be blamed overmuch for it."
Light finds himself almost smiling slightly. This is not a Teru Mikami that he's ever met before. This is not the stuttering bedroom fool, dropping his eye-glasses on the floor while aiming for the nightstand. This is not the under-enthusiastic lecturer being cornered by his student. This is a man doing his job, with the utmost surety and strength of belief. This is a just man. Perhaps even what one would call and good man.
Light rather wouldn't mind having sex with him again. But not now. Now he has a job of his own to do.
"Thanks ever so for the confidence, Teru," Takada says abruptly. "I'm sure I don't knowingly do anything." She's bitter, voice strung and weakening, and her hands shake slightly in her lap. She does not look like herself, and that's what makes Light believe that she is telling the truth, far more-so than any of Mikami's vouches. She is not quite this good an actress, and he knows real terror and confusion when he sees it. The inability to speak of the realities you face, on the account that silence might make them less real.
Mikami rolls his eyes, pointedly doesn't use her given name. "Takada-san, I apologize if my account has offended you. I only - "
"Go," she says, cutting him off starkly in the middle of his apology. "I'll only speak to Light alone. I'll only… " Her hands are still shaking.
Light sighs, then nods to Mikami. "Please," he commands, but makes it sound like a more of an entreaty.
Mikami goes. Then it's just the two of them: Light with his notepad, Takada with her fear.
The second times goes on longer. She grasps his hair in her hands and melts into him with a determination that suggests that she isn't enjoying it half as much as she'd like to. He's a good kisser when he wants to be, though, so it's more than likely the mental blockade of not Light that makes it less pleasant than it should be. He's not offended, doesn't have the energy to be, and is in fact keenly grateful to her for wearing bobby-pins in her hair.
As his fingers ruffle gently against her, she breathes softly along the seam of his lips, eyes blinking gently shut, before dragging herself firmly off of him. "This isn't helping," she sighs.
He doesn't know what she'd expected to be helped, but he also doesn't know that it matters. He shrugs. "I feel quite benefitted, thanks." His thumb twitches where he covers the stolen pin up in his hand.
Huffing, Misa crosses her arms and takes one more long look at him. "This never happened," she says, after a moment of breathing the same uneasy air at one another.
"What?" L asks. "Afraid Light will hear of your indiscretion and be heartbroken? I don't mean to be cruel, but that strikes me as unlikely." His lips tingles with here presence and he wonders why he hadn't found himself wrapped up in her instead. Why he hadn't gone for the weaker link, hadn't had sweating, quiet nights with her back at headquarters. Hadn't fallen in the love that wouldn't end up drowning him. He's done it a hundred times before - well, maybe not quite so many - seduced the accomplice instead of the true offender, gone in that way.
Looking back on it, that would have been the far more successful route, it he could have managed it. And quite a bit easier, probably. There wouldn't be this clawing sickness in the pit of his stomach, wouldn't be pennies dancing in his head like a light show. His insides would not be torn out from under his skin, emptied on the floor. A steaming pile of weakness.
It's only when Misa speaks, still standing unmoved from her guarded position, that he realizes that he'd been treating her like she'd already gone.
"Don't talk down to me," she says, vocal frills stripped, tone pale and insistent.
His eyebrows - where they're growing in across the bone - go up. "Then don't invite it."
"I'll invite whatever I want," she snaps back. Loose hair shining golden in the light that reaches in through the shaded cracks. She glows a different color than Light, but she glows. L wonders how he ever manages to get mixed up with such - to put it bluntly - good looking people. Not all criminals are attractive, certainly, and he can quote firsthand experience on that, but there's a mesmerizing quality to certain sorts of killers. A self-denying, self-aware catastrophe that, when taken out of motion, when frozen at unearthly points between one great cataclysm to the next, is beautiful.
There he goes, romanticizing murder with the best of them. That's his job, though isn't it? He wouldn't do what he does if there wasn't artistry on all sides of it.
"Admirable," he tells her, because that's maybe the truest thing she's ever said to him - that's the basic tenant of how she operates, isn't it? "You'll get yourself ruined that way, but it's admirable nonetheless." He knows from experience. He knows.
He can feel it rotting him now, and alternately livening him in ways he's never felt before. What he has invited in.
She looks at him, swallows, then turns toward the exit. "If you see Rem, tell her I'm looking for her." She doesn't glance back at him, and he knows, because his eyes follow her all the way down the hall.
He waits until her steps have disappeared utterly, then counts down from a hundred after that just for good measure. When he's sure she's gone, he gets to work.
Without any other tools but his bare hands, bending and shaping the bobby pin is hard work, and smoothing down the end is what really takes the most time. He tries it a couple times and finds his work unsatisfactory, and has to go back to molding it a little more. Finally he gets it flat and bent at the right angle and when he jams it in the handcuff lock, even the extra-strength special order that it is, he eventually manages to pick it.
Just like riding a bike.
A rusted, very criminal bike that he and B had stolen at ages 10 and 8 respectively, when Roger had insisted to Watari that they were too young to learn these sorts of things. Back to basics.
Unhooked finally after so long, he feels weirdly bare. His wrist is mottled with pink lines of worn flesh and twisting it feels like walking with a wooden leg, but it's nothing that deters him for more than a few moments, before he makes his move.
The urge to go straight to the front door, run out, and borrow - using force, if need be - a cellphone from the first person he meets is strong. He doesn't put effort into fighting it. It's what he should do. It's the only reasonable option in the situation.
Without a second glance, he goes straight for the bathroom. He needs to wash, brush his teeth, clean himself up. There's no shower, but the sink will do just as well, and besides - he can't walk off when the game isn't even halfway done.
That would just be unsportsmanlike, nevermind the whole tortured romance bit.
"I don't believe in monsters," Kiyomi Takada tells him, in her slate grey upper-class Tokyo murmur. "I want that on the record. I don't believe in ghosts or UFOs. I think that astrology is meaningless sensationalism, that table-psychics are crooks, and that we don't go anywhere when we die." She taps her fingers on the arm of her chair.
Light nods, as if any of this makes a difference. "Noted."
When he speaks, she blinks up at him, the slightly dazed film lifting from her eyes, and her lips tilt self-aware. "I wonder," she says, changing the subject completely, "where you were for all that time. Before. You disappeared and never came back."
"I came back," he corrects. "I just didn't bother to approach you personally about it. I didn't know that you'd care."
"It was a blow to my pride more so than to my feelings." She brings her neat, manicured nails up to her mouth, curling them lightly against her lips. "I don't have feelings, didn't you know?" Her fingers are shaking.
"Kiyomi," he starts, prepared to steer her back onto the subject of the case at hand.
Instead, she steers herself. "I'm not crazy," she snaps, then stiffens abruptly, "is what someone would say before they tell you what I'm about to tell you next. I'm not crazy. It sounds like overcompensation, doesn't it?" She folds her arms across her chest, bending down into herself.
It does, a bit.
"And what are you going to tell me next?" Light leads, pen tapping out a soft rhythm on the page, drawing the moment closer with every tap-tap-tap. Crazy or not, he needs answers. He needs a suspect description, he needs -
"Well, to start with," Takada says, in one long breath, like she'd been building it up that way, "it had red eyes."
The monument of panic that rises up in him at the sight of the abandoned handcuff chain hanging from the air conditioning unit is not quite overcome, but rather for the moment obscured, by the sound of a flush from the restroom a few yards down the hall.
L is thin and rumpled, a statue against the tile, standing in glints of afternoon light that have slipped in around corners and under doors. The dog is off the leash.
Okay, wolf, rather. Something mangy and feral, anyway.
Light looks at him and he looks at Light and the night before ruptures the air between them, making daytime hard to maneuver through. It feels like a rough morning after, even thought it's rounding three. L's hair is wet from the dripping sink, his skin looks rubbed raw - a shade of fluttery, young pink that's all foreign on him - and he's not wearing any pants. Just the plaid boxers Light had lent him and an off-white shirt that says 'To-Oh University' on it in big black celebratory letters that his mother had purchased for him in the spring.
Light walks the distance between them in quicker steps than he means to, like a sharp drop and the quick fall afterwards, ground flying up to meet him. L's got blood under his skin, bags under his eyes, fine muscle tone in his calves.
I think it happens that I love you.
It had been very artless of him to say it. He ought not have said anything. Light wants to shove the words back in him with his mouth. He wants to ask how he'd gotten off the chain, whether he'd had this means of freedom all along. He wants to ask where Rem is, what L has been having her do. He wants to ask plenty of things. How's your day been so far? Could you go for lunch? Can you still feel the burn from me inside you?
L blinks at him expectantly, but eventually when nothing is forthcoming, opens his own mouth to speak up.
Light cuts him off abruptly, before he can get a word out. "Kaito Hidaka," he says, grabbing the first starting point that comes along. The one heaviest in his mind. He had originally intended to bring files, reports, evidence. The things they'd need to solve this case together. He'd forgotten all that. He'd forgotten.
"Yes?" L probes, when Light lapses into sharp silence again. Trying to get it all in a row, but it just doesn't fit. "What about him?"
"Not him," Light says, lifting an arm to grab L by the shoulder, a mechanical movement. The skin and sinew is warm under his hand. "He's not - he's dead. He's not the person doing this, killing these children."
L tilts his head, leading Light along like he'd led Takada. "Obviously. So then who is?"
The drip of the sink is unnerving, the whole building feels hollow and insubstantial, as if there are eyes looking through the walls. Eyes all around him, watching his world tear itself apart. God giveth, God taketh away.
"Not a person," Light says, swallowing, and just for the added twist of cruel humor to the drowning enormity of the situation, he adds, "I'm 90% certain."
tbc.
end notes: so that's a thing! is it just me or are we getting a plot or something? only took 21 chapters and 250k+ words but hey, better late then never. stay tuned for a big messy mix of L, light, B, mello, wedy, misa and all your friends in next week's (uh, month's?) episode of the death note fic that wouldn't end.
no but serious announcement: tomorrow i'm flying to california to stay with my long-distance girlfriend for 2 weeks, and as i haven't seen her in person since august, i'm probably going to be very busy and not so much with the writing-time. forgive me if chapter 22 takes a while to get out. i promise to try my best!
and once again, thank you for reading, and i would heartily appreciate hearing your thoughts!