CHAPTER 5: After Processing
She leaned her head against her mother's shoulder and said, "Are we there yet?"
"Yes," her mother replied. "Just at the end of this block. You'll see. Now, stop that. You're stretching your seatbelt."
"Why do we have to-"
"Not this again. It's only across town. It's not a far move. You've got nothing to complain about."
Her mother's lips set in a thin line. Looking up at that determined face, she knew it wasn't any use to keep complaining. It had all been said before, many times. Grown-ups were unfair. That's just the way it was.
It's not the same; it's not! I'll be in a different school, without any of my friends. Mom won't listen.
She shifted in her seat, straining upward, trying to get her head high enough for a good view of the new house.
Everything on this block looks dull.
She saw high stone walls partly blocking off the various houses from view, and the portions that poked above the walls all looked too fancy, with steep, pointed roofs. It scared her.
They pulled off the road and through an iron gate that swung closed behind them, the car stopping on a small graveled area. She slipped out of her seatbelt and down to the ground as soon as she could, and stood there, looking around at the small, walled-in yard that felt like a prison.
Her mother was beside her, trying to take her hand, but she was angry and wanted to sulk, so she snatched her hand away and skipped off, running towards a narrow dark alley between the house and a wall, an alley that must lead to a back yard.
Her mother called after her, "You can play in back for an hour, but after that I'll want help with the boxes. All your stuff will be in your new room, just waiting to be unpacked."
She glanced back over her shoulder just long enough to nod, and then she was running through the narrow space, no grass here, only a cement surface underfoot and occasional thin puddles.
She stepped around them and kept going until the wall of the house turned to the right and an entire walled backyard opened up, a little bigger than the front yard.
It was filled with dull green grass, two trees, some lawn furniture, and had a little pad-locked iron gate at the very back, just wide enough for a grown-up to walk through.
She poked around. There was nothing really to see, and the sky seemed almost closed off by the high walls, too far away. She spun in place, arms outstretched, looking at the clouds far above and wondering how long it would be until the computer would be unpacked.
There were sounds of voices coming from somewhere on the other side of the wall, at first low and indistinct, but then one rose above the others, a yell of, "Don't hurt me!"
In reply, there was laughter.
She ran to the little iron gate and looked out, seeing a scrawny boy around her own age surrounded by bigger boys who were circling him.
"Hey!" she yelled.
One of the big boys said, "The little brat can't do anything. She's locked in and I don't see no key in her hand."
Another one said, "Go run to your mommy, little girl. It'll be over before you can do a damn thing."
The small boy in the center huddled in on himself. He was so small, and so outnumbered. Her heart went out to him. A desperate plan jumped into her mind.
She said, "If you don't hurt him, I'll eat one of my boogers!"
One of the boys said, "Yeah! Let's do it. We can always beat up frog-eyes later!"
The big boys crowded around the gate. She took a step back.
Do I really have to? It was the only thing I could think of.
The little boy stood in the background, big-eyed and looking scared. She put a finger in her nose and probed, trying to find one. That nostril was clean.
Laughing nervously, she switched nostrils and found one, pulling it out. She didn't want to look at it, stuck on the end of her finger. She coughed, unsure, and then said, "You won't hurt him at all if I eat this booger, right?"
"Not today. Maybe there'll be a new deal tomorrow."
She closed her eyes, held the booger-clad finger up and slowly began moving it toward her open mouth. It was so gross! Her stomach was churning. She didn't want to do it. The big boys were jeering at her, egging her on, begging her to hurry it up.
And then, suddenly, there was a shout from several of them at once, and she felt a tug on her skirt.
She opened her eyes to see the little boy, his face muddy and his clothing ripped, sitting at her feet. It looked like he had just squeezed under the gate somehow. It must have been a very tight fit.
"Move back," he commanded, and she took a step backwards just before one of the bullies lunged, an arm thrust between two bars clawing for her.
The guy couldn't reach, but it was still scary. Together, they both scrambled further back until she felt safe, and then she leaned down, wiping her booger on the grass, relieved at not having to eat it.
"I'll get my mom!" she shrieked.
The big boys quickly dispersed.
"Let's go inside," she said. "My mom can clean your face and maybe you can borrow one of my shirts."
Dropping his voice low, he said in a near-monotone, "It was not needed. I had everything under control."
"What? I almost ate a booger for you! Don't be like that."
He gestured up at one of the nearby telephone poles. "They are habitual bullies who are all very good at not getting caught. They do nothing where they can be seen, and they know how to cause pain without leaving marks. I managed to convince them that the camera up there is malfunctioning and no longer records, but this isn't true. If you had let them proceed, there would have been enough video evidence for severe disciplinary actions against them."
She stared at him. He stared back blankly, his big dark eyes bulging. She could see why the bullies called him 'frog-eyes' with a gaze like that, enormous eyes dominating his face.
"That's weird, to set them up," she said, "but kind of cool. It's like a trick from a movie! But, won't the recording show the truth anyway? They were threatening you."
"Yes, but it may not be enough. I will try my best to make it stick to them."
"Are you hungry?"
His eyes lit up, and he said, "Yes!"
She took him up the back steps, hoping this was an unlocked way in, and, to her relief, it was. It opened on a long, confusing-looking hallway with boxes piled head-high to the right and the left. She navigated through them and found another door, opening it to find a kitchen.
She started some microwave tea, one of the few things she could make well on her own, and then looked through the contents of several open boxes sitting around on counters and the floor, until she'd found some crackers, two plates, and an unopened jar of grape jam.
By then the tea was done, and she brought out both cups, setting one in front of the boy. He was simply crouching on the same chair, as he'd done the whole time, looking at everything as if he were trying to memorize it.
She got the jar open for him, and then yelled, "Mom!"
He'd eaten two jam-smeared crackers by the time her mother appeared.
She said, "Mom, this boy was going to be beat up and I saved him!"
"Oh! He looks terrible. I'll get a washcloth and a new shirt. What's his name?"
She realized she'd forgotten to ask. She elbowed him and said, "Hey! What is it?"
"Louis," he replied.
Her mother said, "Introduce yourself back. Be polite."
"I'm Missy," she said, extending a hand to him.
A/N (Author's Note):
This is the last chapter, and, yes, it ends as a reincarnation fic with L renamed as 'Louis' and Misa renamed as 'Missy' and since they're still children it's open-ended as to whether they will later get together in a romantic way.
L and Misa are together because of the choices each made during the false world that only existed as a kind of dream in chapters 2, 3 and 4. The reason why L, Light and Misa could all experience that world together, despite dying at different times, is because of the outside-of-time characteristics of that process. I hope I made this stuff clear in the fic itself, but, if it wasn't clear, then you can at least see the explanation here of what I was aiming for.
I know it's cheesy, but if you try hard enough you can make reincarnation mostly or completely compatible with the "Mu" concept outlined in the supplemental shinigami rules (I consider the supplemental rules to be the ones that didn't appear or get used in canon proper, but were publicized as true by the canon author).
Reincarnation without an afterlife means that people don't "go" anywhere, since they stay instead. You can kind of get around the "not returning to life" thing if you say that reincarnating as new people doesn't really count as "returning to life" since each individual is a new, different person and the body is permanently dead.
Reincarnation is attractive in the realm of Death Note fan fiction because it's a way for favorite characters who died to not really be dead, and it's also one of the few ways to have a genuinely happy ending for everyone. The situation in canon Death Note is so tragic and so full of problems that it's hard to imagine any way for it to realistically end without tragedy happening to at least some of the main characters. Reincarnation fics, severe AUs, and some types of amnesia-fics offer a way to sidestep those tragedies.
I know it's possible to write a Red-Riding-Hood AU without explaining the setting and turning it into a reincarnation fic, but in my case I just felt like I couldn't believe it was really L, Misa and Light in this fic without offering some kind of reason why. I could have done it as a crack fic with no explanation, but I really wanted to do a serious smut story with hints of real romance.
I've been working for ages on a RemxMisa High School AU (none of it has been uploaded yet, so don't bother looking for it) that has a similar concept, a way to bridge between the actual Death Note series and a weird AU, to make the fanfic more plausible to me. I think that this other fic had some influences on "Big Bad L", but the process shown isn't exactly the same, so if I ever do finish that other fic and upload it, I hope it won't seem like I'm copying my own work too much.