True Elision Chapter 13: Mushi o Mushishite, a death note fanfic

Well, what can I say? There's nothing I can say or do that will express how honestly sorry I am that I've taken so long to update!

And the sad thing is, I didn't even do it because I was lazy. I just moved to England three weeks ago, I started Uni two weeks ago…and my life has been a living hell since then! Even now, I'm actually not supposed to be working on this story, but on my project for school, which is horribly overdue and which is completely buggered up!

Every day, I see peoples' reviews asking me to update and I think 'I'm so very, very sorry guys!! If only you knew I honestly have no time!!'. I thought of staying up at night to write the story, but that's not a good idea. For one thing, if I try and force it, it's not going to be as good as it could have been if I did it leisurely, at my own pace.

Honestly, I'm very sorry! This is why I was so hellbent on finishing it before September, because I knew this would happen. I've probably lost half my reviewers already by now…I don't even want to think about it!!!!!!

I sincerely hope that this chapter makes up for all the time I've been absent. Generally speaking, it's a relatively low-tone chapter. There aren't any extreme symbolisms yet, as it actually depicts the process of Raito and L getting accustomed to each other. I would have liked this chapter to have some more detailed horror, but if I had tried to sit and write more detail, then it would have taken me even LONGER to update, and I simply can't deal with my reviewers telling me: 'I hope you haven't abandoned this story!' any more.

I assure you I will never abandon it, until it's finished! However, I'm not going to rush to the end, just because I need to. Most importantly of all, this story must be what I initially wanted it to be!

Also, at times, in this chapter I was fighting with the idea of OOC. Ryuuzaki will probably seem OOC. This is exactly the reason we went through chapter 9, the 'L cameo', to show that L was also undergoing his own Trial of Souls. As such, when reading, always keep in mind that, just like Raito himself, L has undergone a Trial which has changed certain given standards of his mentality in Death Note.

There are probably many grammatical errors. I haven't even run a Microsoft Word check, since I'm so eager to update this chapter. There will possibly be many repetitions of the same word or phrase. It may become annoying, but please cope with it. I'll edit it ASAP.

Upon finishing, please remember to review and tell me what you think of it! Remember that the reason I'm so dedicated to it is your sincere excitement about it. The more you like it, the more I write of it!!

Ignore the Insects

Their voices echoed like gongs in the distance. The motions of the crowd had grown still; trapped in a frozen loop to the extent that more than motion had become suspended. Even time had been magnified.

And then, as though a thunderbolt sliced through the unstirred, thick air, the world shot to animation once more.

Facts started to accumulate in Raito's brain with extreme speed, and the things that had gained godlike proportions only a few seconds ago now seemed 'completely natural'. Hence, Ryuuzaki's face, with its distractingly balanced proportions and protruding cheekbones, was no longer a dark shape floating in an old nightmare. It was tangible, and, in this confusing world, where geometry blended with curvature and dreams became reality, it was surrealistically sharp. Raito's irises had become filled with the image of that apparition, just as Ryuuzaki's had filled with Raito's own visage.

In a rush of power, which almost knocked the wind out of Raito's lungs, thoughts began to crowd him. The two conflicting poles that had taken permanent residence in his mind were coalescing and reaching their highest peak yet: on the one hand stood his identity as Kira, and his doubt in trying to approach others, and on the other his blind, utterly illogical belief that, despite all odds, since this man, Ryuuzaki, had approached Raito on his own accord, he might actually…

"…Ehm…" he could have sworn he'd never made a sound as embarrassing as this in his entire life. And the fact that Ryuuzaki wasn't responding at all was not helping. Raito belatedly realized that he could not continue his sentence, so he cleverly disguised his blunder by transforming the invalid statement into a cough, and pretending he was clearing his throat. There was no question as to whether L had noticed, but would he be gracious enough to bypass the matter? Or perhaps, would he completely ignore Raito? But if he wanted to ignore the other, then why would he have confronted the chestnut haired man in the first place?

And why was Ryuuzaki…looking at him like that?

Raito felt suffocated as he stared straight at Ryuuzaki's distressingly expressive face. He started a sentence in his mind but felt unable to finish it. This was the first time he was meeting someone who'd been close to him during his lifetime, he reasoned with himself, so it was perfectly natural for him to be feeling so awkward now.

Yet the excuse sounded cheap, even in his mind.

After a few more seconds of unexplained staring, Raito began to consider abandoning this effort altogether. L didn't seem keen on starting a conversation and Raito was feeling uncomfortable enough to be convinced that, somewhere along the Trial of Souls, he had indeed lost conscious touch with his more useful social skills.

One may have considered this uncomfortable interaction puzzling, compared to their former staring contest of just a few minutes ago…but it remained a fact that the more time passed, the more Raito got a chance to arrange his thoughts. And the more he arranged them, the more he came to realize various things about his current state, and Ryuuzaki's current state. Treating memories more as feelings than facts, he relived the exact sentiments associated with Ryuuzaki's person: the constant anxiety of being hunted, the impending fear of ridicule. The glee of victory, when L had finally been wiped out, which had been unexpectedly coupled with an emotion of unfulfillment. None of these were pleasant recollections. And the more Raito considered them, the more skittish he now was about reestablishing touch with L.

He could envision Ryuuzaki's fully justified possible unwillingness to help him – he could almost see Ryuuzaki's ironic little smile in his mind. Conveniently ignoring the fact that L currently seemed nonchalant, Raito started hallucinating, thinking that L was secretly mocking him. Had he been looking at the other more closely at the present moment, Raito would have seen that L's expression was just as uncomfortable, if perhaps even more so, than his own. But still, everything seemed to be hanging in the balance between them. Even their unexpectedly common awareness of their abnormal situation, which was perhaps the most disconcerting and discomforting thing of all.

Just as the thoughts were running rampant in his mind in an effort to mend what was rapidly turning into quite the mental self-confidence disaster, someone's voice sounded, and it took a moment for Raito to associate the eerily familiar drawl with the mouth opening and closing in front of him.

"I take it Yagami-kun is…searching for someone as well, then." the husky voice rung suddenly, jerking Raito out of his increasingly abysmal thoughts. He raised his eyes to look at the speaker, letting them briefly connect to the other man's moving mouth before pulling them away again. This time, he let his stare focus somewhere to the side, steadfastly ignoring Ryuuzaki's face.

Raito was momentarily taken aback. He'd expected fury, or at least some kind of frigid cynicism, such as: 'Fancy seeing you here, Yagami-kun' or 'Surprised to see me, Yagami-kun?'. He'd expected cleverly disguised sarcasm, or perhaps some form of humorous mockery about the common fate of a righteous murderer and his secular victims...but L, in typical fashion, had managed to deliver everything in one single blow, since he had struck at Raito's most painful subject.

However, by the way he spoke, and by the slightly subdued inflection of his voice, Raito thought that the other sounded more…resigned than anything else. His tone was neutral: neither antagonistic, nor brimming with camaraderie. It was just a nonchalant, rather resigned, tone. This routine conversation sounded exactly as though it had been swiped from Raito's memories. The echoing recollection of it from his worst nightmares was so sharp that it sent a stab of pain straight into his chest, as though reminding him of a life that had left forever and could never return.

Raito didn't really know what to assume. Was L playing a game with him…? Was there any hidden meaning in this phrase? Because no matter how much he analyzed it, Raito couldn't come up with any ideas. It just seemed as though, abnormally enough…Ryuuzaki was just making small talk.

As if he was intentionally ignoring the fact that Raito was his murderer, and that the last time they'd seen each other, he'd been dying in Raito's arms.

"Yes…" Raito finally chose to answer, not knowing or thinking it prudent to make any hints or inquiries about…more complex matters. He supposed it was strange enough that L was voluntarily talking to him…let alone talking about their common history. Best if Raito tried to abide to triviality for the time being, albeit there could be no real definition of 'careless triviality' in the streets of Mu.

"I see." L answered, not as cryptically as he once would have. Raito, who would not let a pin drop unnoticed, observed every single detail about the other man, including his unusual lack of suspicion, or restraint. In all honestly, L behaved as if…there was no subtext at all.

Raito caught himself giving Ryuuzaki's exposed collarbone a prolonged stare and immediately moved his eyes away, all the time evaluating the fact that L seemed a bit too bony. Or perhaps, in the long years Raito hadn't seen the real Ryuuzaki, he had forgotten what the real man had looked like, and focused instead on the hallucinations of his Trial. It was impossible for people to grow thinner, fatter or older in Mu, so this image of Ryuuzaki must correspond exactly to what the detective had looked like when he was killed. Raito probably hadn't noticed, during those few panicky months before L's impending death, that the detective had obviously lost weight and grown grim.

L had probably known he'd die soon, and that there was no way to escape it.

Raito remembered the feeling well.

People bustled by, the sky was a shade of icy grey, and Raito, to his horror, found himself trying to keep the conversation alive. Anything to prevent the uncomfortable silence from recurring. He did not want to be stuck in the middle of the dark street with L, feeling uncomfortable. If it came to that, he'd rather just walk away. He didn't really need this kind of pressure…

But as he remembered L's words from a few moments ago, he realized that the black haired man had asked whether Raito was looking for someone 'as well', which would imply, as Raito had guessed, that L himself was now looking for someone.

The fact that Raito's personal quest was not at all exceptional or original had not become so clear until now. At times like this, it became painfully obvious that everyone was in Mu for the same reason, be it friend or foe. And Ryuuzaki, who Raito would have wagered could never have a person who'd want to find him, was now searching for someone of his very own. This fact took precedence above all others, and Raito's curiosity – mixed with a jealousy of the most restless, aggravating nature – could not wait to be quenched. Who was this person? Perhaps someone from L's British past? Someone that Raito didn't know…? Unexpectedly, upon recalling that unusual face L had been making when Raito first spotted him in Mu, the chestnut haired man was attacked by a somewhat confusing bout of annoyance. Who had the power to make L – the man with the unchanging face – look so genuinely hopeful? In all the years Raito had known L, in all the months he'd flaunted his extreme achievements in front of Ryuuzaki's face, he'd hardly ever received more than grudgingly disguised interest.

"And you? Searching for someone, that is…?" he asked quietly, trying to probe the other carefully, despite being almost completely sure L would catch on immediately and never provide a straight answer. He cleverly masked his curiosity by looking at Ryuuzaki's left cheek as he spoke, only turning to look into L's eyes for a few seconds at a time.

The mute question that was left hanging between them was obvious, requesting the identity of the mystery person. But Raito had conveniently forgotten that, even though he was expecting to be offered a full-fledged explanation of L's plans, he had not offered something of the sort himself.

Strangely, however, despite the obvious tension, L did not seem troubled or defensive when faced with Raito's indiscreet attempts to interrogate him, nor did he inquire after the person Raito was searching for. This disinterest annoyed Raito vaguely, but he chalked his irritation to his general dislike of Ryuuzaki rather than anything in particular.

"Has Yagami-kun, by any chance…" L started with a non-sequitur, and this time kept his gaze fixed on Raito's, momentarily looking extremely like the arrogant person Raito had always envisioned in his memories – and in his Trial. As L's statement hung unfinished between them, Raito could almost feel his tendons snap, unexplainably anxious to discover who Ryuuzaki's fated person might be. Someone that Raito had never met, or-

"…encountered….Wa,,,Watari…anywhere?" Ryuuzaki finished slowly, his voice growing curiously quieter and more reluctant with every passing second, and Raito's eyes were drawn rather abruptly to the hollows of the other's cheeks.

"Pardon?" Raito asked, rather stupidly, and immediately berated himself for saying it after having said it.

L seemed strained "'Watari'. I said 'Watari'…" By the time Ryuuzaki had repeated the old man's name a third time, he'd turned his eyes away from the other's, looking anywhere but at Raito. If the tall auburn-haired man didn't know better, he'd say Ryuuzaki was acting…embarrassed. Perhaps annoyed? Probably both, because he'd been forced to ask Raito – his own murderer – for help…

But Raito wasn't too preoccupied with this, stumped as he still was over the issue of L looking for Wammy – that old man – in Mu. The man stayed silent for a few moments, looking at L's face rather blankly, as though unable to digest what he'd just heard. Then, after a few moments, his mind ignited again and realized that the small line between L's eyebrows was an indication that he was expecting an answer.

"No…No, sorry…No." Raito needlessly – and rather uncomfortably - reiterated, shaking his head slightly from side to side, aware that he was refusing a bit too nonchalantly. But he hadn't yet uttered the last denial in his sentence when Ryuuzaki's words overlapped with his.

"I trust you remember what he looks like." The detective said, and, finally, his eyes sought to find Raito's, and locked on them.

"Raito-kun doesn't forget faces."

Silence.

This time, they were staring right at each other's eyes, both their expressions completely neutral, as though trying to figure out what the other was thinking. It was obvious that L had just dropped a rather uncouth hint about Kira. There was a palpable tension in the air, as though the two rivals were saying much more through their prolonged silences and sharp eyes than through their words. The true nature of this evasive chat was quickly becoming obvious, and it was now clear that there where many untold things resting under the surface, threatening to break through.

As he stared into L's onyx eyes, Raito could have sworn he saw some kind of glint in them. Like the strike of lightning, or a string of venom as it shoots from a snake's mouth: unexpected, instantaneous and lethal. As always.

Raito chose to ignore the last statement, knowing that if he said anything or if he took the bait now, this situation would most likely end with an explosive and inconclusive debate, which would in turn result in never seeing or hearing from L again. And in the isolation of Mu, this was not an option. So Raito just gritted his teeth silently, and when he was confident enough of his own calmness, he spoke again.

"Yes, yes. Of course I remember…I haven't seen him…" then, as an afterthought, he repeated for good measure "Sorry." He couldn't believe that this conversation was so subdued, and so very anticlimactic, despite the fact that there was such underlying stress carried in every charged word. Raito couldn't understand himself, much less Ryuuzaki. Why were the both of them willing to converse so minimalistically with a person they mutually despised? Were they both really so desperate for company? Raito was aware that he was consciously chosing not to start being antagonistic, but to remain this way.

Ryuuzaki's new attitude intrigued him, as did the fact that, when hearing Raito's last words, L's face gained a well-masked crestfallen expression. In order to distract himself from Ryuuzaki's resigned nodding face, and the claw-like fingers he could see fisting in Ryuuzaki's pockets, Raito turned downwards, staring at the pavement.

This felt so uncomfortable. So uncomfortable. He could see that Ryuuzaki was trying not to crack, but it wasn't working. Whatever had happened in L's Trial had been enough to change him, at least on this level. What could it be…? What in the world would be powerful enough to make Ryuuzaki – Ryuuzaki, for God's sake – uncaring of showing his inner thoughts? On the outside Raito seemed completely idle, but on the inside, is mind was running miles per second.

It made sense that Ryuuzaki would be looking for the old man, Raito thought and advised himself not to be so surprised. After all, who else was there for L to be looking for, when Whammy was the closest thing he had to a comrade? What had Raito been expecting, he asked himself? Perhaps someone from L's past that Raito hadn't met…perhaps Near or Mello…? The very thought of L having some kind of secret or knowing something that Raito ignored was infuriating enough. But now that he thought about it, it really did make perfect sense that L would be looking for Whammy – and vice versa, probably – since they'd been so involved with each other during their lives.

And yet…what was L thinking? Did he really expect to spend the rest of his existence in the company of that old man…? What would they have to talk about? The evolution of turnips through the ages…?

Then again…even in his dying hours, Raito remembered, and felt not a small amount of unjustified annoyance, L had been worrying about the old man…Calling his name and such…Raito didn't have anyone like that…did he? Not even Misa would…

Well no; that was a lie. Misa probably would do this for Raito, and much more. And this was why finding her was his only hope, he reminded himself, as finding the old man was probably L's only hope.

After all, who else would care enough for a spastic, insomniac, antisocial piece of vegetation with no personal redeeming qualities whatsoever, except for old Whammy? Raito thought all this, and felt a bit better about his own situation. This was why, compared to others, he was much better off-

"And Yagami-kun…? Who have you been searching for?"

Raito raised his eyes quickly from where he'd been staring off, obviously caught unawares and not realizing the expression of surprise he was displaying. Had anyone else asked him that? He didn't remember anyone else asking that…It seemed personal, somehow…Besides, he didn't want to admit to L that he, the great and respectable rival, had fallen low enough to depend on someone he'd scorned so much during life…

He met Ryuuzaki's unwavering, slightly questioning gaze, and realized it would be considered fair to answer L's direct questions now, as compensation for gaining information before. However, even though Raito was thinking of viewing this as one of their old debates, where things were at stake and lives were hanging on words, he noticed that Ryuuzaki's face was not really displaying even half the competitive penetration that it had been famous for in Japan. Besides, L's questions were so very direct and open that this was an enigma in itself…L was never known for being direct about his business. Stealth, secrecy, subtext, mystery, vigilance and cowardice were common words in the detective's dictionary – frankness was not. This was a universal truth. And as Raito started talking, coming face to face with that openly direct, uncaring expression, he truly realized, perhaps for the first time since his death, that he was not the only one who had changed.

Other people were different as well.

"Me, I'm looking for…" it felt strange thinking of himself as searching for her, but Ryuuzaki's face was waiting for him to finish his statement. In order to make himself feel better, Raito reminded himself with intentional villainy that L had fallen low enough to be searching for a grandpa, so he was the worst off from the two.

"Misa". He said it quickly, as though it were a swearword – something to be ashamed of. He snapped his jaws closed after uttering it, as if thinking of a way to falsify or retract his statement. But faced with L's rather steady gaze, he realized how silly he was being, blinked rapidly and nodded firmly, as though to verify his claim.

Ryuuzaki's reaction didn't make things better.

"Yes…I see how that could happen…" the former detective nodded, his patronizing, rather dismissive tone a ghost of memories past. It didn't fail to strike straight at the heart of Raito's sensitive zone. And the brunette, who had been agitated ever since the beginning of this unlikely conversation and was searching for ways to relieve the pressure, latched onto L's harmlessly delivered comment with spite, realizing that he hated the tension weighing down every word that came out of L's mouth.

"Are you implying something?" Raito started, and his tone had switched to significantly less compliant than before. The pressure was begging to be defused by now, and the fact that L was not mentioning what they were both thinking was driving Raito crazy. He looked straight at L's face, not realizing that he was frowning in a rather petulant fashion. L's complete lack of disturbance was perhaps the most infuriating of it all. Faced with Raito's irritation, L was just as expressionless as Raito remembered. The only difference with before, Raito realized, was that this time he wasn't being obscure or nonchalant on purpose in order to augment Raito's anger. This time he just honestly seemed… not to care whether Raito would understand his intentions or not.

"Not anything in particular…Just that Amane-san was always very dependent on Raito-kun, so I consider it plausible she'd be looking for him now." Ryuuzaki explained, nodding slowly, as though his wisdom was indisputable, a behaviour which made Raito all the more agitated. Raito noticed that, even though obliging Raito and specifying his point, L still had not brought to the open the real argument. He had chosen to speak with sugarcoated, fabricated politeness, and avoid the real issue: that Misa, being Kira's accomplice, would be the only person who would care enough for Raito in order to search for him. But L continued, the frankness in his voice so startling that it clashed even with Raito's inner thoughts, reaching straight into his greatest fear.

"That is, unless the status-quo of your relationship remained unchanged after my…death."

Raito inhaled sharply. In all the months he'd spent in Mu, he'd never heard anyone – except of course himself – actually say it. Say that they were dead. Unconsciously, his inner respect for Ryuuzaki's stature rose up a notch. Raito's impression of the detective had been correct then, and the other really was as mentally mature as Raito would have expected, even in these extenuating circumstances.

However, there was something in the way L had spoken that Raito could not forgive. That annoying pseudo-logic infested way in which L had said it, as though he were completely detached from the whole experience – as though Raito hadn't killed him as well...as though Kira had never existed. The detective, as before, had laced in his words a quiet invitation for Raito to tell him what had happened after his death. But Raito was frustrated by the fact that L considered him incapable of finding another consort except Misa, so he resolved to retain the information from the other, out of childish spite.

Even though it was now obvious to L that Raito – or Kira – had eventually been killed…Raito would make sure L would never find out about the grand finale of the Death Note. Perhaps Raito saw this retention of information as a form of revenge for L's eternal refusal to offer his real name.

And even though he knew that he shouldn't be thinking about this yet again, he couldn't really help it. He could already feel the veins pumping in his temples, alive for the first time in his afterlife: Lawrence? Lance? Luke? Ludwig?...Largo Winch? Lara Croft?! What was it?

But, after all, in the end, he decided to pity Ryuuzaki and not hold it against him. It must feel horrible for poor, disoriented L, Raito thought with unkind superiority, to be left in the dark concerning the continuation of the Kira case – the case he had worked so hard on. Not to mention that Ryuuzaki himself was in a situation as equally sad – perhaps even sadder – as Raito's, not having anyone to search for him except an old, balding wreckage of a man. It seemed that L was finally paying for his prolonged scorn of human relations.

"Yes indeed." Raito decided to bypass Ryuuzaki's previous statement by just noncommittally agreeing to it. He hoped it would soon be as though Misa's name had never been mentioned. He supposed that if L had seen her, he would tell Raito, so no need to voice the extent of his concern.

Ryuuzaki had nothing to add to the conversation, so Raito stayed silent.

However, when time passed and they still weren't speaking, Raito started to feel uncomfortable all over again. The discomfort had never truly left, just become slightly ameliorated. But now that he was facing Ryuuzaki and had nothing to do except rest his eyes on the person directly in front of him, he felt a keen sense of exhaustion and futility.

Ryuuzaki's jeans were of a faded green-navy colour, and the fabric on the knees was scraped and covered with red dirt, Raito noticed, and was in turn woe to ponder what kind of image he must present to L. And then, almost unconsciously, he raised his head again, as though to shake his bangs away from his eyes. Unintentionally, as he was staring around with fake nonchalance, he met the twin inky stains that adorned L's face.

Feeling as though he'd been caught doing something inappropriate, Raito was so quick to avert his eyes that he didn't realize that, actually, L had simultaneously done the very same thing. The tension augmented tenfold, to the extent that Raito felt like he wanted to grab Ryuuzaki's throat and wring it back and forth.

Minutes passed, and, for some reason, it felt like they were the critical ones before Ryuuzaki's death. The chestnut haired man could hear the silence in his brain – contrasted vividly by the uncomfortable squeeze in his chest. With every word they seemed to exchange now, Raito simultaneously felt closer and closer, then further and further to that horrid – and exhilarating – time, when L's translucent eyelids had permanently shut, and the weight in Raito's arms had frosted over.

What do you say to someone who knows you've killed them? This is useless, Raito thought, not for the first time, and felt his entire body be dipped in the pits of despair. Useless…he should just end this stupid conversation and resume his quest…Besides, there was no way Ryuuzaki's presence would be of any use to Raito in his effort to find Misa. The more he thought about it, the more sense it made, and the more Raito wanted to move away.

This…this 'thing' between them that they were trying to do…it wasn't working. It would never work. And it wasn't because of justice, or murder, or politics. It was because they were Raito and L, and the underworld – just as the living world – was simply not big enough for both of them.

But at the same time, the loneliness out there, within that huge crowd of people...

And indeed, the desperation was so intense, that, once Raito recalled it, a persistent tightness coiled around his lungs. He turned to look at the people around them, walking, walking and going nowhere…men, women and children alike, strutting confidently toward nothingness, trapped in a futile search.

They were all alone in the world. It wasn't like going to study in a foreign country, knowing friends and family are left behind waiting for you. It didn't have the comforting knowledge that the nightmare would end. This was endless, and true. They were all alone.

Living people have no idea how lucky they are, being able to talk to anyone they wish. They must be stupid not to utilize this extraordinary ability every living second of every breathing hour, Raito thought, conveniently forgetting the fact that he once used to do the exact same thing.

Alone. Forever in a huge crowd of people, but still alone. Ryuuzaki must know the feeling first hand, Raito thought, as his eyes reluctantly returned to stare at Ryuuzaki's half-shredded tennis trainers. He'd lived in Tokyo after all, hadn't he? Even though he'd rarely exited the building, he must have known what it felt like walking in the streets, crushed between strangers, sandwiched between people one would never meet again in one's entire life: all those people.

Many of them…Too many of them. So many that they felt they needed to retreat to their own minds in order to find some free space.

People's lives are supposed to be interconnected. But they're not connected at all, Raito thought bitterly. Each person is just a speck, a glimmering presence in another's life. Each person one sees walking down the opposite side of the street is just a fleeting second of an hour in one's life. After that, it's all dust, and those two people shall never meet again. In every second of every minute of every hour, a person in your life – a potential soul mate – dies, and you never even get the chance to meet them.

And though he'd wished for this isolation during his lifetime, the prospect now seemed less and less welcoming. What's worse, he knew that human presence was infectious, like an addictive drug: the more time spent conversing with someone, even if that someone was Ryuuzaki, the harder it would be for Raito to adjust back to his lonely trek later. The harder it would be to pretend he didn't feel like Ryuuku was following him constantly. It would become torturous to walk alone, pretending that somewhere, someone in this huge band of people was looking for him too, even though he knew – through the logical part of his mind – that he'd probably never find that person.

A gust of wind blew by, and Raito felt the strings of his hair whip around his face. From the corner of his eye, he noticed that, in L's case, not only the hair but the clothes also seemed to float around his body. The white shirt seemed ethereal, almost translucent, against the dull blue-grey background. Then the gale was gone, and all was normal once more.

Raito had to do something or else this uncomfortable, forced silence, which was loaded with cryptic meanings, could go on forever.

Finally, as he gathered his valiance and opened his mouth in a renewed attempt to speak, aware that he must resemble a fish by now, he noticed that Ryuuzaki's eyes briefly slipped downwards to observe something, then quickly returned to Raito's face with renewed interest. Raito, feeling utterly defeated, proceeded to hide his hand – the one covered with the pulverized orange, which Ryuuzaki had just been staring at so amusedly – behind his back.

"…Can it be hidden once it's already been revealed…?" Ryuuzaki's eyes slipped imperceptibly toward Raito's hand, which was concealed behind the tall brunette's back…

This wasn't about the orange, was it?

But there was no biting edge in Ryuuzaki's tone – if anything, it sounded rather philosophical, as though L had spent hours and hours pondering over this matter. Not to mention that his expression still retained a tint of weariness. As though, in all honesty, he had resigned himself to this kind of reality, where people kept trying to hide behind their little finger.

But Raito didn't treat the situation quite so whimsically. He wore an expression of forced restraint, realizing that he was now making himself look as though he felt guilty for his choices, when he didn't really feel guilty about anything. But perhaps the worst of all was the humiliation of the lack of spite in Ryuuzaki's voice.

Gritting his teeth imperceptibly, he turned around to face the other again, and his blood pressure started rising steadily. So this was it. They had reached the stage where Ryuuzaki would try to flaunt his superiority in Raito's face. And it was a universal truth that, once Ryuuzaki would set his mind on wanting something, not even wild tempests – much less Raito – could stop the other from trying to take it. And so Raito knew, long before he opened his mouth to utter the next words; that he would never manage to escape this conversation until he heard what L had to say. Subconsciously, this didn't bore him as much as he'd thought it would. He attributed his lack of fury to his prolonged period of isolation. He supposed he'd… 'missed' this kind of conversation. The kind which had some subtext…even if the subtext was disadvantageous for him.

"I'll try hiding it nonetheless, out of politeness." Raito said rigidly, assuming a stoic image and bending his head forward slightly, as though acquiescing himself to a dialogue weighted down by double meanings. Perhaps he was talking about the fact that he was Kira. Perhaps he was referring to the demented smile he'd granted L before the detective had left his last breath. In any case, even though he tried to sound as neutral or as uninterested as the other, his larynx curiously did not obey him. In the end, his tone had a healthy dose of venom.

This was because, even though he did not yet know it, Ryuuzaki's question had struck some chords inside him; and the part of him – the proud part – which was always ready to deny his own mistakes was ignited: honestly…can something be hidden once it's already been brought to the light? Be it a squished orange – proof of Raito's sudden social skittishness – or the fact that he was Kira…can an entire life, an entire identity, be stashed away in some dark corner, just so that Raito could have more chances to find a soul mate? No, it can't. It wouldn't be right. And Raito despised the fact that Ryuuzaki was implying that Raito was trying to hide himself.

"And of course, to satisfy your own pride, Kira-kun." L stated with astonishing directness, and Raito, whose nerve endings had already been strung tightly, now became extremely taut, realizing Ryuuzaki was antagonizing him, however discreetly. But as he looked at the black haired man, he started to notice the utterly neutral colouring of his expression – much more neutral than it was before. As L finished his sentence, the occult appellation established itself between them, and Raito was momentarily shocked into speechlessness.

No one…no one had called him 'Kira' so casually before…as though this were his given name…strangely enough, this form of address enraged him more than anything. It was like…'Kira' was taking away his personality. As though he didn't exist as 'Raito' any more in L's mind, only as Kira.

"It's more a question of respect than it is of pride, L." Raito said, his eyes narrowing imperceptibly as he intentionally stressed Ryuuzaki's fake name. Then he remembered the play 'Measure for Measure', which he and L had been discussing so intently during the Trial of Souls "As long as people didn't see anyone doing it, they would never question it."

He said it, even though he suspected L knew very well that life had disillusioned them both on that aspect. But it wasn't a question of words anymore – Raito was surely much more mature than he was currently displaying, and the arguments they were using sounded more like childish quibbles than serious accusations. No; the reason they were debating was not the words themselves, but the atmosphere.

The need.

A few moments of brief silence ensued, which felt remarkably like the calm before the storm. Then, L opened his mouth again.

"Is that what you told yourself to feel better about thinking like a child?"

'How dare he?!'

Even though he didn't want to admit it to himself, L's words were the exact kind of stimulation Raito had been expecting, in order to launch guiltlessly into full rage.

He needed this indignant anger. It was familiar, and comforting, and he knew how to deal with it. He needed it in order to shield himself from the discomfort, and from L's eyes.

"You of all people should know, L. Murder and the death penalty are two completely different things." Raito sad, barely containing his voice.

"There's just one problem with that statement, Kira-kun. You're not a certified judge. In order to scorn a system openly you must first prove yourself worthy in its terms. Did you do such a thing? " Strangely enough, Ryuuzaki himself, contrary to his usual standard, was talking in fast, venomous snaps. It was just enough to give Raito the ammunition he wanted to launch into a full-blast accusation.

"Stop calling me Kira!"

"Why? Isn't this who you wanted to be?"

Raito raised his arm, and the former detective took a reflexive step backwards in order to defend himself. However, just as Raito's hand was spiraling forward, balled as a fist, a particularly loud, horrible shriek sounded from somewhere on the left of the street.

The chestnut haired man froze on his tracks, never managing to deliver that punch. Both Ryuuzaki and Raito, temporarily distracted from their prevarication, turned to the direction of the screams. There was an unusual amount of people gathered there – even for the standards of Mu – looking at something. By the sound of it, it was probably a hallucination of some sort. The heads of the people in the front were obstructing the view, so Raito couldn't be sure what kind of hallucination it was.

Raito turned to look at L for a moment, noticing that the detective was looking at the scene with intense concentration. Even though Raito could only see his profile, he noticed that Ryuuzaki's brows were furrowed, and he stubbornly didn't turn to look at Raito again.

At first, Raito had been planning to ignore and bypass this hallucination as a simple sign of everyday life in Mu. However, L's obvious interest in it put a halter to his plans.

Taking a few small paces forwards and moving his head around, Ryuuzaki seemed to act as though he'd completely forgotten about Raito's presence – a thought which, in itself, was rather irritating. Raito was initially startled when he heard some kind of shuffling sound echo from his side. Overcome by an irrational fear that the Grim Reaper was hovering over him again, Raito whirled around immediately, only to come face-to-face with a random passerby, who'd simply been moving near him.

Unbelievable, Raito thought in a completely self-demeaning way. He'd become so sensitive to close human presence that he was bordering on paranoia…But Raito was pleased that his little pause, however humiliating, had drawn L's attention, and now Ryuuzaki was staring at him again, with a gaze obviously indicating incomprehension. Realizing that it would take a while to explain what had happened, Raito simply turned around again, continuing to walk forward, this time feeling a small jolt of comfort when hearing the echo of L's footsteps fall after his own. Finally, Raito thought. He was the one being followed.

Eventually, when they were sandwiched amongst the crowd, they could not walk any further and were forced to crane their necks in order to see what was going on. Raito wasn't so very interested in these apparitions right now, since the need to talk – and spar – with L was more precipitant. But Ryuuzaki himself obviously didn't view it that way, drawn as he was to the hallucination like a moth to the flame. Raito resigned himself to obliging L and investigating this matter, if that meant that they could continue their 'chat' later.

Besides, by now, Raito had also become intrigued about what may have drawn all these peoples' attention, and what the hallucination was all about – and perhaps more importantly, whether he could resolve it.

Finally, as he stood there, trying to detect even a small view of the happenings from between the bodies of various people, Raito caught sight of a deep scarlet colour, splashing against the ground. Reflexively, he stepped backwards.

So this was why everyone was gathered here.

It was a fact that the most grotesque hallucinations tended to attract the most people.

"It's another apparition." Ryuuzaki's voice echoed from the left, and Raito was momentarily distracted, having become too absorbed in what he was seeing.

"Yeah…" he started, letting his statement drop. Then he fell back to the heels of his feet, turning to Ryuuzaki, eager to speak again. But just as he was expecting to see L standing there, he blinked in surprise. L had left…?

Raito turned, looking around rapidly, not realizing how anxious he was until he actually felt the reassurance – and slight annoyance at being cast aside – of seeing L's familiar hunched figure squeezing between people in the crowd. Not wasting time, and knowing perfectly well that it was easy to lose sight of someone after having found them in this place, Raito followed the other, burying himself in the throng of people and walking toward the front, nearest to the apparition.

Once Ryuuzaki had reached the front line of the crowd, Raito came to join him a few seconds later, feeling strangely comforted by the rather familiar shimmer of L's shirt. Raito supposed it was extremely strange that, even though he hadn't been accompanied by the real Ryuuzaki in his Trial, it still felt as though…he and L had been together recently. However, Raito would rather die than reveal to Ryuuzaki the reasons why he felt this aura of familiarity. If Ryuuzaki ever found out about what Raito had…done in his trial…

Privately, he was glad for the distraction that the hallucination offered, grotesque though it may be, since he'd frankly been running out of 'safe' subjects to discuss with Ryuuzaki before. If it hadn't been for the hallucination, a full-fledged brawl of the most uncivilized kind would have occurred. And yet, even though Raito was glad it hadn't happened, the need still burned in him like an undying furnace, which, once lit, could not be extinguished. Now that he'd gotten so close to relieving this pressure, he couldn't wait for it to be defused.

However, the moment Raito came to the front of the crowd and was faced with the hallucination which had attracted all these people, he suddenly thought that he'd rather be stuck in the middle of the street, being uncomfortable around Ryuuzaki.

"Get me the scalpel…no! The scalpel!" the translucent, ghost image of a man roared. He was bent over a surgical table, upon which lay a thing that vaguely resembled a woman. She was literally split open, like a cantaloupe, and her face was scarred to the point that her idiosyncratic characteristics had become completely unrecognizable.

The front of the surgeon's light green robes were covered in blood – like those of a regular butcher. There were various red lights going on and off, illuminating the doctor's sallow face, as he kept shouting at someone in the far distance, who could not be seen in the hallucination.

Momentarily flabbergasted by the gruesomeness of the scene, Raito temporarily forgot that L was standing right at his side. When he finally turned around to see what L was doing, he was surprised to see that the crow-haired man's face was not completely expressionless as he observed the proceedings. There was a slight grimace of…of something…etched in Ryuuzaki's face, but Raito could not identify the emotion.

"Air! We need air!" a voice from outside the frame of the hallucination shouted harshly and Raito immediately turned back to watch the continuation. It felt like watching a car-crash, or perhaps the story of his own life: the scene was so horrible that it was mesmerizing. The woman – or, more correctly, the chunk of meat – lying on the surgical table was emitting groans of pain now and then. It was blood-curdling.

"I can't find them!!" the voice from outside the frame shouted again. The doctor pulled his hands out of the woman's open belly and turned around. Seeing his blood covered hands, Raito almost flinched in dismay. He noticed from the corner of his eye, that L blinked quickly a couple of times. It was probably L's equivalent of a wince.

"Damn them…can't even do a single thing properly…have to do everything myself…" the chief surgeon started muttering, as he removed his blood-covered plastic gloves quickly, and then lay them on the surgical table, by the woman's shivering body.

Raito expected the doctor to shout again, but was surprised to see that the surgeon, after leaving his gloves aside, simply proceeded to walk away from his patient. Initially, Raito had thought it strange that there was only one doctor occupied with a case as serious as this one, but then he decided that this hallucination must not be the product of memory, but a nightmare. A dream, or…

As the doctor walked away from his charge, his translucent form progressively got narrower and narrower, until finally he vaporized, turning into wisps of thin air.

Raito quickly stole a glance at Ryuuzaki's direction, surprised to find that the former detective was already staring at him with a rather strange look in his eye, as though expecting Raito to say something in particular. Temporarily ignoring this, Raito turned to observe the rest of the crowd, noticing that they were all looking at the hallucination with bated breath, obviously waiting to see what would happen when the surgeon would return.

If Raito had been alone, he would have left by now. He enjoyed trying to resolve hallucinations, but only those which reflected memories, or real events. He didn't want to become associated with the inner musings of any other person. His own nightmares were enough, thank you very much.

But, despite unwilling to admit it to himself, he was here with…Ryuuzaki. And L still seemed intent on standing here to observe. And Raito would be damned if he acted like a wuss in front of his former rival. Admitting that he'd been looking for Misa was humiliation enough, so he wouldn't stand for demeaning himself further in L's eyes. So Raito, deciding to be patient, stood there as well. On the one hand he was annoyed at himself for following L's lead so intrinsically, but on the other hand it was such a rare opportunity to find someone who would willingly talk to him – especially when that person knew his identity as Kira – that he didn't want to abandon the effort just yet.

So he stood there, watching. There was nothing else featured in the hallucination except for the surgical table and its lonely occupant, the lump of bloody flesh disassembled on it. Small groans sounded from the woman now and then, and they were so sharp in the mute silence of the crowd that they could be heard echoing around. As though this entire hallucination was a cruel theatrical play and the throng of ghosts its audience. A throng of ghosts in which Raito was part of.

And Ryuuzaki…who would have thought.

And Ryuuzaki.

They waited for the surgeon to return.

They waited and waited. Minutes went by, and, after a while, some members of the crowd around Raito seemed to become disinterested in the spectacle, choosing to leave well enough alone. Others, like Ryuuzaki – and consequently Raito – chose to stay until the end.

An hour must have gone by. Nothing really happened. They waited for the surgeon to return, his white plastic gloves which were seated on the table like a mockery of a presence that was most needed but most absent. The woman groaned, shuddered. She laboured to breathe.

Only then did Raito begin to realize what this was all about.

She inhaled with a shudder, then she slowly exhaled. It took a while.

Ryuuzaki didn't move until the woman on the table had left her very last, trembling, shaky breath.

Then, finally, she died.

The crowd around them started to disperse as the hallucination began to loop, replaying the entire thing from the beginning. Raito's eyes, by now, were fixed in front of him, unblinking. His expression was completely blank, as he was reliving his own personal experiences. It took a few minutes for him to regain touch with his surroundings, and by the time he came back to it, Ryuuzaki was already looking at him, the same quizzical hue in his black eyes.

Raito turned to look at the other as well, but his mind was filled with other things – what he'd just seen had reminded him almost with barbaric cruelty of the thing he never wanted to remember.

That thing…which had happened to him…

And along with that memory came the unadulterated and completely shameless feeling of desperation, of defeat and of a pain which does not belong in this world. He felt the loneliness of abandonment all over again, and he almost grabbed Ryuuzaki's shirt in order to assure himself he was not alone anymore. Within seconds, his attitude toward Mu changed again, and he suddenly started to view this grim world as a blessing, compared to the horrors of his Trial.

Ryuuzaki started walking away.

Raito followed wordlessly. He didn't want to be alone just yet.

"How curious." L's voice echoed, and Raito started slightly, caught in a trance "I saw a hallucination very much like this one a few days ago"

Ryuuzaki continued to elaborate. Apparently, in the apparition he'd seen, a French soldier from the trenches of the Great War had been the one on the surgical table, his leg having sustained irreparable damage. If the man were to survive, his leg would have to be removed. His wife had been begging the doctor to issue the proper medical care, but did not have the money to fund the operation. As such, the disgusting doctor had requested the next best thing: her body. So she sold herself to him in order to help her husband…and when her husband was finally cured, he called her a whore, and abandoned her.

That sounded very much like a memory from the real world, Raito thought, not just a bad dream. In fact, the former Kira immersed himself so much in this tale of fraud and injustice, and the complexities involved with punishment, that he was caught unawares when the sound of L's voice suddenly penetrated his thoughts.

"Yagami-kun…? Oi, Yagami-kun." The tone echoed and Raito blinked rapidly, shaking his head a bit to clear his thoughts. His vision finally zeroed in on Ryuuzaki, who was staring at him with an unreadable expression of neutrality, combined with something else – perhaps curiosity.

"Eh…?" Raito said, and immediately internally cursed himself for sounding inarticulate. It would take a lot of training to reinstall all the principles of self-restraint he had lost during his Trial, if he planned to be talking to Ryuuzaki again.

It was unclear when he had started thinking of Ryuuzaki as a potential piece of his reality, or even an option for a partner, but Raito was currently unwilling to overanalyze his own thoughts, so he let it pass.

Since the street was crowded, they couldn't really hear each other's voice and they were both being continually squashed by the pedestrians. So Raito started walking forward in a slow pace, heading toward the side of the road. Seeing that he was attempting to move out of the way of the heavy traffic, L followed.

However, as he was getting closer to the small group of trees on the side of the road, Raito realized that, if he stopped, he'd have to talk to Ryuuzaki. And he didn't presently have anything to say to Ryuuzaki. Or perhaps, he had too much to say, most of which he didn't want to talk or even think about. So, even when he reached the edge of the street and was able to stand still if he wanted, he actually continued walking.

He expected Ryuuzaki to question this, or at least say something about it, but, to his surprise, L just slipped into place at his side, matching Raito's pace step-for-step, not asking any questions.

He didn't know what Ryuuzaki thought, or if he could feel the tension, but, as for Raito, it felt as though strings were being pulled beneath his skin, where the extreme pressure in his tendons could not be seen. His nerves were ready to snap, as he suspected was the very air around him. There was just too much bad blood between them – they didn't really even like each other – and it felt as though they were just tolerating one another for plain politeness' sake. Besides, for the time being, Raito found the sound of Ryuuzaki's footfalls rather reassuring, even though this had nothing to do with Ryuuzaki's personality features – at least they weren't the ghastly toes of a non-existent Reaper.

But, in the end, even though Raito kept panicking and questioning all of this, they ended up walking like that for some time, until the orange trees were naught but a small speck in the distance, and the spectre of the Titanic was starting to become vague in the horizon. During their walk, Raito could feel something in his chest, like a constriction of his breathing space. It felt as though, for some reason, he was escorting Ryuuzaki – or any other person he could ever talk to – to a train that would take them far, far away from Raito's life. And then, as the girl had told Raito some time ago, they would probably never see each other again.

But it was not about Ryuuzaki – Ryuuzaki was a symbol of Raito's chance to be accepted for what he was. And honestly, since Matsuda had scorned him so openly in Mu, Raito was prepared from the same reaction from Ryuuzaki, which would surely come, eventually, be it sooner or later. Raito was preparing himself for the eruption.

What he got instead, after such a long trek, was a question.

"Why d'you reckon he left her there to die?" a voice suddenly floated, from within the mist of the surrounding muteness, and it took a moment for Raito to realize the question was being directed at him. He stopped for a millisecond, surprised not so much by the suddenness of it, but by the talkative intention behind it. In retrospect, he should have expected this, he thought with mild annoyance.

Ryuuzaki, regardless of having changed, would always remain the same. There was always something he wanted to observe, something he wanted to analyze. Who knows why he'd forced Raito to watch that hallucination? Raito didn't want to admit it to himself that he felt refreshed by the whole experience of it, or the fact that it reminded him of his life. Instead, he chose to accept it.

"It seemed not to be a real event, but a representation of her greatest fear…probably abandonment during a time of pain." Raito answered, with his eyes fixed straight ahead and not bothering to turn to Ryuuzaki at all. He kept walking, but his pace became slightly more relaxed, as though he were taking a stroll in the park instead of walking tersely alongside his lifelong nemesis.

"Even so…why a surgery?" Ryuuzaki questioned again, and Raito turned his head imperceptibly to observe the other, noticing that Ryuuzaki was looking straight ahead as well, walking in his distinctive, hunched way. The awkwardness didn't bother Raito as much as it once could have.

"Probably something to do with exposure…maybe helplessness, despair and such..." Raito said, weighing the possibilities in his mind.

"This kind of conduct is typical of abused or orphaned children…at times, even rape victims." The detective's voice floated around like nocturnal air, and Raito realized there was a thoughtful quality to it. However, when he heard the word rape, he stiffened unexpectedly, and his knuckles turned white. Unable to stop himself from being unaffected, he stopped walking momentarily. If it were anyone else, they wouldn't have noticed, but Ryuuzaki definitely did. In any case, he didn't say a word about Raito's strange conduct, and continued walking as though never having seen anything.

"Maybe so." Raito said, succeeding in not sounding as stiff as he felt. It was one of Ryuuzaki's trademarks as an annoyingly capable detective to detect this kind of automatic symptoms where Raito could not. "In any case" Raito started, a bit more aggressively than necessary "this kind of speculation won't help anyone get rid of it." And by 'getting rid of it' he meant, of course, the process of resolving the hallucination.

Ryuuzaki seemed to understand immediately, but his answer surprised Raito.

"I think their purpose in blending here is hardly to get rid of them…perhaps observe and learn from them, instead."

Without controlling his reactions, Raito impulsively let out a loud snort. Then, too late to retract his unreserved brashness, he abided to it "Yes, that does sound very much like something you would think." Raito said, meaning it more as a private, ironic remark than anything else. He expected Ryuuzaki to bypass it and continue the conversation smoothly, as always.

"Excuse me?"

The voice suddenly came, as L stopped dead in his tracks. He spoke in a tone completely alien to anything Raito had ever come to associate with L before. Perhaps this was how Raito realized, coupled with L's narrow eyes, that perhaps he had struck…a nerve.

But since when did L have…nerves?

"I just mean that you like to watch people, instead of act. That's all." Raito said by means of explanation. He didn't want to come across as being defensive, but on the other hand, he really felt rather lost, when faced with the completely inconceivable concept of pressing Ryuuzaki's buttons. Ryuuzaki just…didn't have any buttons! That's what made him Ryuuzaki! Raito considered saying that, but was unsure of what to say anymore.

An openly irritated Ryuuzaki was just…not Ryuuzaki at all! Then again, on the other hand, if he'd never undergone his Trial, Raito would never become angry so easily either.

"Oh, I see." Ryuuzaki said with a deceptively calm voice, which sounded very much like his normal tone. However, he didn't resume walking, and just kept staring at Raito – no, not staring. Glaring. "But of course Yagami-kun doesn't like to see such blood and murder. You prefer taking care of things from afar."

But Raito had not gone through the entire Trial of Souls, just to get told off by a grumpy L. And if L had problems… well then, Raito's problems were ten times bigger.

Somewhere deep down, Raito realized how immature he was being. But on the other hand, this relief of not thinking felt so good – so very good – that he didn't want it to stop.

"That was a long time ago." He said through gritted teeth, and without realizing it, was clenching his fists at his sides. "And I never took care of anything without a good reason." After a beat, he said, in a much darker voice "You know that very well."

In the meantime, the sky overhead had turned much darker, and the wind had intensified, to the extent that the two men's hair constantly whipped around their faces as they spoke.

Suddenly, just as Ryuuzaki's face had been poised in an expression of mild annoyance, it switched back to complete neutrality again, momentarily reminding Raito of the L he'd always known. Unconsciously, Raito prepared his mental defenses. This was the kind of icy face that Ryuuzaki would always use before he went in for the kill.

"How old are you, Raito-kun?" the unexpected question suddenly came, and Raito was momentarily taken aback. But then, he detected where Ryuuzaki's argument was leading up to, and narrowed his eyes, the muscles in his jaw pumping as he stared at Ryuuzaki's slightly self-satisfied face. "You look older. You talk like you're older…But not old enough for Kira to have changed the world. Twenty-one, perhaps? Twenty-two?" he narrowed his eyes again, extremely calmly "Are a few years after my death all it took for God to undergo the death penalty?"

"At least I did what I did because I thought it was right! I had the courage to do the thing that everyone thought about, but no one actually dared to do!" Raito said, reminding himself that it was not prudent to raise his voice, but unable to help it at a time of such intensity "What's your excuse for being a coward?"

"The coward is the one who's afraid to kill unless he's writing names, Kira-k -" but Raito didn't let the familiar drawl continue, and interrupted immediately.

"I'm not the one who was too afraid to continue doing the thing I believed in, just because my life was in danger!"

"Somehow, I'm not prone to believe th-"

"Everything I ever did I only ever did for justice!"

"You don't even know what justice is!"

"And you do?"

"I'm sick of people thinking they can fool me!" L suddenly barked, and Raito was so shocked that he actually took a step backwards. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. No, he couldn't believe what he was seeing. In fact, he was so flabbergasted by the image of L's face, with its flushed cheeks, and its black eyes becoming onyx from the lights of fury, that the auburn-haired man momentarily let his jaw drop. But Ryuuzaki didn't stop there: "Do you really believe you're going to divert my attention now?"

And even though it was a vague accusation, Raito immediately understood exactly what Ryuuzaki was referring to.

"I didn't wish for things to end that way." He said, not realizing that his tone had turned defensively placating, if slightly indignant, when faced with L's rage "But I was prepared to take extreme measures for-"

L suddenly moved, leaning forward slightly and looking straight at the chestnut-haired man's face, as though to test him. Raito wasn't aware of it in his anger, but his cheeks reddened as Ryuuzaki's face fluttered into his close proximity.

"I've always acted in the name of my beliefs…and don't try to convince me that your ideals conflicted with mine, Ryuuzaki, because I know you too well. Death Penalty indeed." Raito bit back through gritted teeth, and by now he was sure that his eyes were clashing so hard with Ryuuzaki's that there must be sparks flying in the air. Ryuuzaki seemed to also be affected by this, because, now that Raito was noticing every small detail about the other, he realized that, strangely enough, L was shaking.

"Your arrogance and personal feelings of emotional impotence became the cause for the slaughter of thousands, Raito-"

But he never managed to finish that statement.

With one sudden motion, Raito had grabbed L's shoulders in a steel grip, squeezing them and pulling them forward, wringing Ryuuzaki as though he were a rag doll. The detective was probably too surprised to resist, as the chestnut-haired man dragged him forward, until Ryuuzaki's nose almost bumped against Raito's mouth.

"As if you didn't want them slaughtered." Raito said, in a harsh whisper aimed at Ryuuzaki's black-covered ear. "You just wanted the glory for yourself."

With a sudden jerk, L pushed at Raito's chest, forcing himself free again. As the hunched man's sharp knuckles dug in his skin, Raito thought he felt something like excitement, or adrenaline, sing within his veins.

"Perhaps." L stated, and, to Raito's glee, his eyes belied that he'd been more perturbed by their little spat than he let show "But what you fail – and always have failed – to admit to yourself is that principles are completely irrelevant to what you did." He stared deep into Raito's eyes, as though challenging him. The argument wasn't real. It was juvenile, especially for a man like L.

It wasn't the words. It was the need that was driving them to do this.

"No" Raito countered, without missing a beat "Principles are irrelevant to you. To me they are the -"

"Have you forgotten who you're talking to, Raito-kun? I know you." Ryuuzaki interrupted, and Raito felt the temperature rising in his blood. "The Shinigami gadget you used… It put something in you. I could feel it, even without looking at you. An aura of something." A beat of silence passed, and they looked straight into each other's eyes. The treble of L's next words hung between them, and Raito was daring him to say it.

"…something evi-"

But the word never finished, since, by that time, Raito had swung a full-fledged punch, and Ryuuzaki was obliged to dodge it. Before Raito knew what was happening, a bony ankle dug into the side of his neck, like the sting of a bee. He gritted his teeth and steeled his jaw, but there was no handcuff this time for him to lug L around. He had to punch again, faster.

It was a long fight. And this time, there was no Matsuda to stop them.

When it started raining, Raito could barely drag his feet across the unforgiving mud, which covered the side of the street. For every punch he gave, he received a kick in exchange.

Of course people stared as they walked by. Everyone stared. And if Raito had had half a mind to think of anything except the sweet redemption of torturously familiar, unbelievably brutal human touch, he would have realized that this was the surest way to attract peoples' attention. All he had to do was keep picking fights in public places, and then Misa would be bound to notice him, wherever she was.

At some point, a few people even tried to separate the two men, but the rivals would have none of it, and the strangers would sooner go their merry way than become collateral damage of anyone's ire.

And so the rain poured down. Ryuuzaki's shirt changed colours as Raito threw him down in the mud. His black hair looked longer wet than dry, and there were snake-shaped strands stuck on his nape, cheeks and lips. Raito threw punches without aiming, feeling the power sing through him. He felt horrible, with his trousers sticking to his thighs, his hair completely unruly and Ryuuzaki's pliers-like fingers lodged around his throat. It felt horrible, but, on another level it felt…good.

By the time the neon lights on the street had switched on, the two of them were still standing, by now throwing half hearted punches at each other, falling and supporting themselves on each other's shoulders as they still, until this late hour, tried to determine who was superior.

Perhaps this was proof of what would have happened if Matsuda had never been there to stop them. And within a few minutes, everything that Raito had learned in his Trial, his whole quest to discover the mysteries of justice and life had suddenly become secondary in face of the pure, simple pleasure of doing something he had done while he was alive. Something he had done during the more carefree years of his adult life, when he hadn't known he was Kira, and he'd had absolutely no reasons to feel neither nonplussed nor unsure about anything.

A nostalgic time.

As they struggled to remain standing, Raito's hands were on L's shoulders, and L's palm was fisted on the fabric on Raito's chest, trembling from the cold.

Had they acted unwise? Unquestionably. Had they shamed everything they'd recently learned by acting like adolescents? Certainly. Had they felt better than they had since the day they'd left their last breath? Absolutely.

The arguments of their fight had been childish. In retrospect, it became painfully clear that they'd never really intended to antagonize each other from the start. What was the point of arguing seriously, anyway? Everything was already over…there was no impact in the real world, and, just as Ryuuzaki had said, justice had nothing to do with it. It was all about pride, at this point.

So now, in Mu, where a man's interests were forced to become restrained in the most basic needs, certain things of more primal importance suddenly became pronounced, like human contact, hunger, loneliness. And as such, they both realized that there really was only one question to be asked – the one which had always been the most important: who was the most powerful? Who was the smartest? And if need be, who was the strongest?

In the end they fell down simultaneously, when L dragged Raito down with him by pulling on his shirt. In this way, no one had the privilege of calling himself the last man standing. Raito finally surrendered himself to the feeling of clear bliss, as he lay down on the mud, feeling the rainwater – the dead rainwater, probably from a rain in the living world – wash his face. And at this time, it almost felt as though this very rainwater was washing away something older than this dirt.

It hurt to move his head, but he still turned to see what Ryuuzaki was doing. Part of him didn't want to go to sleep; for fear that he'd find himself completely alone again come morning. Not that he particularly enjoyed Ryuuzaki's company…but still, now that the tension was finally diffused, and it was all over, he found there were certain issues Raito would want to discuss with Ryuuzaki. About ideals. About justice. Mostly about L's Trial, and what had happened in it to make L capable of expressing anger. However, for the time being, Raito felt at rest. At least his pride had been comforted, seeing that Ryuuzaki, even though having changed so much, was in an equally unstable situation as himself.

When Raito turned, he saw L lying completely supine, limbs spread completely open, in a way Raito had never seen before from this specific person. Ryuuzaki's head was turned away from Raito, so the only thing he could see was the blue glow of the jet black hair in the neon lights, reflected in the rain, and L's wet chest, heaving up and down from exertion.

He could see Ryuuzaki's bruised throat, and the beginning of his collarbone, which dipped into a filthy shirt. The wet skin looked fibrous, almost silken to the touch. Raito squinted a bit in the darkness, and he saw the way that the rain started gradually cleansing the thin white shirt.

As Raito was observing this a bit absentmindedly, he noticed a ridge on Ryuuzaki's chest, and it took a moment for him to realize what he was looking at with such extreme curiosity. The nipple looked as firm as pebble, beneath the strained wet fabric. If Raito squinted hard enough, he could see a dull brown colour. It seemed strange thinking of Ryuuzaki as a creature with…nipples. Raito had seen them once or twice, but…still, most of the time, he tended to conveniently forget Ryuuzaki was also supposed to be a human and not a computer. Today, this humanity seemed unusually pronounced.

The fact that there were pedestrians roaming the streets and sitting nearly everywhere around did not seem to bother him, as he continued staring at his focal points of interest. Had he been conscious, he would have mocked himself, since he was acting as though he'd never seen a male chest before in his life. But something about this was…different. Somehow, it felt as though Ryuuzaki's chest and any other man's chest were…completely different. Had Raito really wanted to admit it, he'd say that, deep down, despite having seen L topless, he'd always tended to think of Ryuuzaki's body as something vague and abstract.

Perhaps it was that huge, overpowering presence of L's extraordinary mind that dulled all the potential of his body. In any case, Raito thought, as he slipped in and out of the arms of Morpheus under the rain, 'In any case…L is better now that he's not such a hypocrite…'

In fact, Raito was so exhausted that he had not idea what on earth he'd dared to think about, before he completely lost himself to his blissful, sweet exhaustion, for the first time accompanied by a feeling of reassurance.

"Speak, my child" the whispery voice slithered through the curvy, elaborate woodwork of the cubicle. The boy sitting on the other side was barely tall enough to discern the outline of the priest's figure in the dimmed light, let alone speak. There were a few moments of silence, during which the priest patiently kept his eyes turned downwards– a mockery of human closeness, the boy thought – obviously waiting for the child to start talking.

But the more time passed, during which the boy stayed completely silent, the more the priest seemed to get impatient, or aggravated.

"My child?" the slightly impatient questioning tone came after fewer minutes than one would expect from a man of this occupation. As though he couldn't believe the boy had not started revealing the deepest darkness of his soul already. These little brats were all annoying, thinking of organized religion as more of a game than a constitution, the priest thought begrudgingly,

Actually, contrary to what the priest was thinking, the boy really was wracking his brain to think of something he could say, which would honour the purpose of this whole process. In the end, though, he could still think of absolutely nothing which was presently weighing down his soul, or tormenting his conscience, or anything equally poetic, really.

"Do not be frightened or ashamed," the efforts of the priest to sound jovial and understanding were largely fruitless when combined with the innate qualities of his voice, which sounded as low and sibilant as that of a snake – the wisps of his breath like the heavy pants of a predator eyeing its prey. The boy thought that this man had unusually blue eyes.

"This is a House of God…" the adult continued, not at all phased by the boy's unresponsiveness "whatever you say shall be kept confidential. In these walls…Think of me not as a person…because speaking to me is like confessing to God himself."

But truth be told, L was neither frightened nor ashamed. He was, as always, meticulous. He couldn't really understand how this whole concept would function properly. To be honest – and in his mind, he always told the truth – he didn't much feel like he was speaking to God at all. He was just sitting in a claustrophobic, wooden little cubicle, speaking to a nondescript man. Actually, a few nights prior, L had seen this man, Father Horatio, taking money in secret from some foreign stranger in one of the darker crannies of the orphanage courtyard. Of course, L had investigated, and soon realized that Father Horatio, in some cases, was not as keen to abide to his oath of confidentiality without any form of compensation – or something of the sort.

But L – along with the other children in the orphanage – had been repeatedly lectured about the importance of the Holy Sacrament of Confession, and how it was capable of relieving one's soul…and L especially remembered being told that he would have to master the inner psychological workings of Confession if he ever wanted to achieve the position of Great Detective . L was never one to much care about the mysteries of the supernatural…but even so, he did have an affinity for encyclopedic knowledge. And, after all, he viewed achieving this feat as a personal challenge.

Therefore, even though his eleven-year-old mind was constantly reminding him that this process was a testament of absolute stupidity, he tried to ignore the fact that he was sitting in a small dark room with an extortionist… and instead tried to focus on trying to make this work.

But the more he stood there thinking, the more he came to realize…he had nothing to confess. What would he say? And, more importantly, even if he did have something to say, why on earth would he be as completely foolish so as to say it to this habit-clad crook, and risk his inner musings be proclaimed to the world for a price?

More than anything, this concept of…revealing… clashed so severely with the integral elements of L's personality, that it became impossible for him to understand not only the method, but the very existence of this so-called 'Sacrament'.

"Well…?" the priest's voice echoed again, and L just stared back at him, blankly. All the other apprentices of the orphanage had come to this room before...now it was L's turn. And even though he had the will to prove himself to this austere, pretentious teacher and overcome a standstill…it just went against any principle he'd ever taught himself was important: secrecy, self-sufficiency, restraint, retentiveness, doubtfulness, logical analysis…

But L was only a boy now. He had not yet grown into the full potential of his ability, and the presence of an adult near him still made him jumpy and skittish. He had not yet turned into a man, nor realized what kind of impact his gaze could have on other living things, as he later would. Until now, he'd been just an observer – not a judge – absorbing any information he could process, disposing of nothing, and paying as much attention to detail as his hawk eyes allowed him. And since he was only now starting to experience the first vestiges of moral and ethical philosophy, he was – although he didn't know it – very confused about the nature of the world and, indeed, even his own psyche.

"I have nothing to say." He finally spoke, the maturity and conciseness in his tone a horrible clash with the childish squeak his vocal chords produced. But, even though he didn't yet know this, in just a few years time, these vocal chords would adjust to a deep bass drawl, and he would never have the misfortune of sounding so childish again.

"Nothing to say?" It was hard to say whether the man on the other side of the wooden pane was predominantly surprised, scandalized or amused. Begrudgingly, L realized it was probably the latter. As he was looking at the tongues of light that slipped through the soft wooden curves of the window, L realized he could now see the priest's blue eyes – an ugly, insanity blue – trained on him, contrary to the customs of Confession. After all, no instrument of God would ever have the vanity to look at someone like that: only a human would have this stare.

L didn't need to think anymore. He'd already processed everything in his mind, and reached his conclusion.

"No." he answered impartially. "Nothing at all."

"I find that extremely unlikely." Father Horatio's patronizing tone rung and L, prepubescent as he was, felt a distinctive spark of a very human-based petulancy ignite in his chest. This priest was not only decidedly disinteresting…he was even treating L as we would any other random child. How dare he…didn't he know…? But L would be damned if he ever let show his private annoyance.

"There is nothing." The boy stood by his initial thesis. He didn't even bat an eyelid as he stared at the priest – who was openly trying not to become annoyed – through the shadows of the wooden surfaces.

"It is a sin for a human to believe they are flawless, child…and I'm sure you do not understand the impact of what you say…" the priest started, still infuriatingly calm, showing he was thinking that it was useless to become frustrated over a child. "Now search deep within your soul…there must be something you can find in there….something that is weighing down your conscience. If you confess this to God, and openly accept your sin, your soul will feel delivered, and be redeemed…there is nothing to fear, for I shall not judge-" the man continued his useless tirade, but L had long before stopped paying attention to what he was saying and started focusing on the way he was saying it: calmly, with a deceptively sage tint of fabricated wisdom.

And L – a new learner in matters of human dialogue – was amazed at the impact this deception could have on other people, who thought of this priest as a holy man, and not as the crook he really was. The young L, a nincompoop in matters of ethics – admired this kind of power.

In the future, to L's unexplainable discomfort, Sir Whammy would often say that the Great Detective's disguised venom, deceptive morality and unexpected scorpio sting were rather reminiscent of the more sinister members of the clergy.

But for now, after noting down the priest's conduct, L bypassed everything the priest actually said, opting to ignore the fact that, even if he tried hard to think about it, he couldn't come up with anything personal enough to say for the purpose of confessing. In order to avoid feeling disappointed, or thinking that there was something wrong with his soul, the boy focused on the other man's conduct. After a brief silence, in which the boy's interest had switched from the purpose of Confession to the attitude of the man in front of him, L spoke again.

"I can't think of anything such as what you're describing." He concluded with ironic honesty, eager to test the priest's patience and the man's reaction to prolonged strain.

"And what about your future?" the man said, not letting his tone show any annoyance, but remained undisturbed and genial. "Don't you care about the state of your soul – the way it shall rot if you do not cleanse it now?"

There was a small pause in L's brain, during which he processed this new bit of information, weighing the possibilities of danger. He concluded that this talk of souls was naught but pointless drivel, and that he had nothing to fear. So he continued with pure honesty.

"I don't have a precipitant need to confess anything right now." He said, and the priest appeared taken aback at the advanced vocabulary. The man pressed on, however, seemingly trying – more from personal pride than actual interest – to make L yield to his will. The priest was not so patient anymore…when he spoke again, his voice was nothing like the bored acquiescence of before. Now, he sounded completely frosty…he sounded plain hostile, and the switch in his expression was startling to say the least. There was a part in L, the prepubescent orphaned part; that felt slightly intimidated. He started to admire this priest even more, for being able to intimidate him.

"If that is indeed the case, then you must learn the importance of purity and cleanliness…for the sake of one's soul." The priest concluded, and L acquired a slight sinking feeling, which he quickly suppressed. But the priest's blue eyes had become a colder shade of blue than before, and his lips had drawn back to an ugly grimace.

"If you refuse the Holy Sacrament of Confession" the priest started, and turned to look away from the boy "Then I have no choice, as a shepherd, to safely lead my flock to virtue. And as such, you shall be made to climb…in order to learn the importance of dignity, humility and maturity, my child. "

Even though the priest had not specified what he'd meant by 'climb', L had understood perfectly. Seven hundred and sixty steps of a spiral, narrow staircase, which would lead him to the dome of the cathedral. That's what he'd have to climb if he weren't careful not to anger this priest. And it was not the climbing that L feared. It was the fact that he'd be forced to stay up there, hundreds of feet above the earth, for all the afternoon.

Suddenly, and completely shamelessly, the level of priorities seemed to switch with extreme speed inside L's brain.

"Now that I think of it" he started, looking at the priest with unblinking black eyes "I do have something to confess…" Perhaps, L thought, if he was clever about it, he could kill two birds with one stone: on the one hand avoid the dire punishment and on the other simultaneously establish himself as the smarter of the two. After all, it was a fact that whenever L found a person he admired, he rushed to antagonize that person, rejoicing in proving himself better than someone he considered a worthy opponent.

The young L did not yet know, of course, that long years from this moment, at a cool April morning, he'd be staring across the Tokyo University Lecture Theatre, watching Light Yagami walk inside in his pinstripe suit, covered with the scent of sakura petals.

Even L did not yet know.

"Oh?" the priest asked, his interest renewed and his satisfied glee completely shameless. He obviously thought he'd won and made the 'little brat' behave properly. On the outside, L fortified this impression by acting obedient. But where the priest was expecting to hear a certain kind of story, he had another thing coming, L thought privately, with unusual excitement.

"Yes" L continued, his voice expressionless. There was some kind of primal thirst growing in his mouth, as though his tongue was begging to utter the next few words. And the more he saw the priest's smug face hover in front of him, the more the wild need for redemption seemed to intensify. Without flexing even a muscle of his face, L continued speaking in the same stale, blank tone. "A few nights ago, when the others were playing in the yard, I walked to the back of the church courtyard-" the priest's face seemed to twitch imperceptibly into an expression of slight worry "And then" L continued, with a violent happiness throbbing in his gut "I got surprised, because I saw a very distinguished member of the Brotherhood hiding in some obscure corner of the gardens, exchanging money with what seemed to be a less than appropriate friend." And during the whole time he was speaking, he was looking straight into the priest's eyes, as though daring him to say anything.

And the more he spoke with those unblinking eyes, the more the priest seemed to lose his footing, as he probably realized what he was being told…and could find no way to show his discomfort. Until, in the end of L's monologue, the priest glared at the boy with open hostility.

A few moments of silence passed, during which L and the priest stared at each other, the pastor with a glare and L with a blank, emotionless gaze. Minutes passed, and there was an illumination, an intoxicating deliverance in L's soul which he'd never experienced before.

Victory.

Father Horatio's eyes had turned to oceanic crystals as they pierced through L's skin. His lips had turned to a tight, shivering knot, his eyebrow was twitching unabashedly and his fingers were shaking in their interlocked position, as though he was straining to keep himself from harming the child.

"Seven hundred and sixty steps" the man finally said, and, as L had imagined, his voice now sounded monstrously deep and having none of the fabricated geniality of before. "That is the way children learn…respect." His voice trembled slightly as he uttered the last word and, through the dim window of the cubicle, even L could see that the other was trembling with self-restraint, obviously trying not to let himself do something violent in broad daylight.

Eventually, even though he'd confessed his supposed sin, L had been forced to climb, so as to be taught a lesson. And even as he tried to stop the primal fear from gripping him when climbing the endless steps, alone in the narrow staircase, he felt, for perhaps the first time in his entirely too prolonged existence, the feeling of unadulterated glee. Because he'd won, for once. He'd won, and the limelight was on him.

All on him.

In the end, L found that this 'Confession' game was indeed as powerful as rumoured, and it suited his taste perfectly…Crooks and criminals don't like to be told their sins and L had discovered something new about himself: he liked forcing people to do what they don't like, and oblige them not only to do it, but to thank him for forcing them.

Naturally, revealing to a potential crook that he knew all kinds of sordid secrets was a dangerous thing for L to do…but the boy did not yet know this. And most probably, in retrospect, had the priest truly been malicious, he would have killed L at that time. But before Horatio could say or do anything to L in order to silence him, the man with the moon-shaped spectacles, Sir Whammy of aristocratic descent, had appeared. He'd explained to L, with his familiar precision and commitment, that this entire 'confession' scenery had been a scheme – a test – to measure L's reasoning ability.

To ascertain to what extent L was ready to take on the duties of a detective.

L had qualified, but with one fault: he'd been too foolhardy, Whammy said. He'd been so eager to win – to achieve victory – that he'd been too hasty with showing his power to his opponent. If L were to become the Great Detective, he would need more self-restraint and less personal involvement in his investigations…he would need to become the hidden ace in his own sleeve.

"There is no greater ally you shall ever find, my boy" Whammy had said, as he treated a wide-eyed L a particularly soft, pastel-coloured ice-cream cone "Than yourself."

L was always a meticulous person. If need be, he dotted all the 'i's and crossed all the 't's. And most importantly, even though he never displayed this ability in the later years of his life as a detective, he knew how to follow directions.

After all, as he would much later rejoice in telling Kira, over and over again, one could not become king without first proving himself a lord.

With this last fated confession, L's first stage of detective practice had ended. It was now time for more advanced training. Until now, L had viewed his own life from a rather impersonal perspective, too absorbed in the bustling business of others to care about his own. However, after seeing Father Horatio's face – even if it had all been just a scheme – that infuriated look of hatred that had passed the man's face had carved itself into the boy's memory forever, as his first truly happy memory…. L marveled at the way that, for once, someone's eyes had been trained completely on his face and not vice versa – even though it had been a look of malice, it had been a look reserved completely for L. A look that was concrete proof of L's superiority, L's ability, L's powers…L's victory.

In time, as Whammy often said, the whole world would see and know. 'L' would blind them …a colossal giant stifling England, until the world would be completely saturated with its power. And why stop there? Why only England? Why not the whole of Europe? Why not America? Why not…the whole World?

L liked thinking about it. As he would climb each invisible step and solve each case – like the seven hundred and sixty steps of the cathedral – he'd come closer to the sky, closer to omniscience. In his mind he could actually visualize it: each of his jerky movements, each of the disturbed children he'd had to endure in this god-forsaken place, each of the thick black strands in his hair...they would all grow, all coalesce, until they would form a gigantic, sharp black beacon, which would stand poised above the globe like a monolith. Like the all-knowing eye. Like a blinding relief against the light, able to be see across the corners of the earth – no, the entire galaxy – until every living creature in the vicinity would whisper it in their dreams.

When Raito opened his eyes again the next morning, he didn't realize why he felt so unusually calm. It was as though some kind of weight had been lifted from his chest, to the extent that, in those few moments that transpired between waking up and opening his eyelids, he almost forgot he was in Mu.

It was too early in the morning and he'd just woken up, so he didn't remember the exact reason behind his unexplained, rather strange sense of relief. The first thing he managed to discern in his blurry vision was a slightly fuzzy outline of a black building, and the icy grey background of a cloudy sky.

'Ryuuzaki'

It all came back. Raito, who'd been sleeping turned to his side, whirled around immediately, moving his head back and forth frantically in search of the familiar curl of L's body.

'He's gone. He's gone after all' if he'd had half a mind to realize the level of anxiety he was undergoing, he'd have tried to restrain or question himself about it. As it were, however, Raito sat up immediately, bringing his hands to cradle his tired head for a few seconds and then lowering them again, moving his head around in a renewed search for the detective. There were people everywhere, as always, trying to cling to the last vestiges of sleep during the wee hours of the morning, or walking around already…but L was nowhere in sight…

Should he call…? Should he-? Nah…probably-

"Raito-kun"

Raito turned immediately, his eyes effortlessly narrowing down on the figure walking toward him. Now in broad daylight, the dirty stains and pathetic state of L's clothing was obvious. After a night of brawling in the rain, the detective's hair was caked with a layer of dried mud, as were sections of his face. Even so, as he approached and Raito had a chance to stare at him, it looked as though there was a glow emitted from his diamond white shirt. As though there was a sense of elegance in the lines that comprised the curves of the fabric-

"Water?" L asked, and Raito realized that the other had been lugging a filthy-looking yellow bucket, filled to the brim with transparent liquid.

Raito didn't have to stand up, since L silently approached. Raito rubbed his eyes with his hands as he heard the sound of the bucket hitting the ground, then felt L settle on the ground a few feet beside him.

"Thanks." Raito said, looking at the water with surreptitious suspicion. It wouldn't do to inform L that he was wary of the water in this place, and that it tended to transform to cockroaches or other kinds of monsters around him. Raito decided he'd wait and see how the water interacted with Ryuuzaki before trying it for himself.

He faked a yawn and pretended to stretch in order to waste some time, but, as it turned out, he didn't have to go to such lengths. L fearlessly plunged both his palms in the clear water – Raito noticed the long pale fingers, and only now realized that he hadn't seen them for a while – and splashed a healthy amount of liquid on his face.

Following his lead, and trying not to appear skittish, Raito proceeded to put his hands in the water too. He hoped, despite his better judgement, that since he was with another person now, Mu would spare him and not create as many problems for him.

But it was not meant to be.

Just as he pulled his hands out of the bucket, intent on splashing some of the much-needed liquid on his face, the clearness of the water disappeared, its fresh scent and texture thickened, and soon, just as he'd feared, Raito had a handful not of the liquid of life, but of monstrous, small insects.

Not even the most restrained of men would have managed to keep his composure, however, unwilling to lose face in front of a former rival.

"Argh!" Raito exclaimed, shooting up to a standing position immediately, and reflexively throwing the water-turned-cockroaches away from his body. He turned around and walked a few restless paces, letting the goosebumps wrack his skin and muttering "shit" a few times over. A splashing sound was heard as the insects hit the ground, and a few pedestrians walking by made estranged, disapproving or sympathetic faces, and then continued walking.

"What is it?" L's voice suddenly sounded, and Raito's stomach dropped as he was suddenly reminded where he was and who he was with. Realizing he'd just let himself make a scene – however suppressed – in front of Ryuuzaki, he immediately steeled his expression, willing himself to gather all the composure he had left.

"Nothing" he answered noncommittally, not daring to sit down near that blasted bucket again. He contented himself hovering over Ryuuzaki instead, trying to make himself feel confident once more. "The water was too cold for me. I just woke up"

Ryuuzaki watched him for a few seconds. Raito didn't bat an eyelash.

There was a terse silence as they stared each other down, each expecting the other to crack. Raito's eyes almost dared Ryuuzaki to oppose his blatant lie. Until finally, the pressure valve was opened.

"Naturally" L answered. Then he turned to stare back at the bucket, a look of apathy on his face. "I understand."

Raito considered answering something to that quizzical statement, as he looked at L curiously. The detective's words seemed to hide an underlying meaning, as though Ryuuzaki knew more than he was letting on. Then, without another word, Ryuuzaki obliged himself, grabbing the entire bucket of water and bringing it above his head. Raito felt slightly jealous of the detective's ability to feel so free with the coveted liquid. At least he didn't have to go through Raito's constant panic.

L looked at him for a moment, with the water suspended over his head. Raito looked at him questioningly.

"What?" he finally asked, staring down at the other.

"Nothing" L answered, and if Raito didn't know any better he'd say Ryuuzaki looked rather comical like this, like a little kid who's managed to snatch an entire cake from under his mother's nose.

Then, before Raito had the chance to say anything more, L flipped the bucket backwards, drenching himself – hair, face, clothes and shoes included. Raito stared at him for a few moments, noticing that L shook a bit for a few moments, then started waving his hands a bit, as though he were a dog trying to dry itself.

But L's face looked pained as he stood up. He looked at the bucket for a few moments, and Raito thought at some point that the detective was going to kick it. But instead of an act of violence, L simply bent forward.

"This seems like a rather useful tool. I think I'll keep it."

Raito shrugged behind the other's back, watching L gather the ugly thing in his hands.

"Suit yourself." The chestnut haired man said "When it comes to me, I prefer to use the houses if I need a bath." The implications of this statement were left unsaid. That didn't stop Ryuuzaki from turning immediately to look at Raito's face, an expression of completely alien speechlessness poised over his features.

Apparently, L also knew exactly what happened inside the houses. He probably couldn't believe that Raito would voluntarily enter them.

The Japanese man swallowed thickly as he met Ryuuzaki's eyes, and his open lips. He wasn't used to this kind of expressiveness. He didn't feel…comfortable with it.

Then, after a while, L seemed to gather his thoughts again. The detective turned away, looking at the distance along with Raito.

"To each his own, Raito-kun" the crow-man said, and his eyes seemed to scan the street, obviously searching for the one important, familiar face in an ocean of unfamiliar ones. "To each his own."

A few minutes of silence passed, during which Raito felt Ryuuzaki's last words weighing down on him – 'to each his own'…a bitter treatise of his isolation. He looked upwards as he felt a few pricks on his face, realizing that the wind was causing small pebbles to hail around them.

Without turning to L, he spoke again; his eyes meticulously scanning the crowd for any sign of Misa.

"Where on earth did you find that thing, anyway?" he asked with a nonchalant voice, referring to the bucket. The non sequitur, he knew, would be an ideal way to reinstall a conversation, and prevent a stifling silence from developing once more.

"It was just lying near a well, not far from the High Street" L answered, his cooperativeness rather unusual. Upon realizing Ryuuzaki had walked away from the High Street – where they'd fallen asleep together last night – he was intrigued.

"You woke up much earlier than I did, then?" Raito didn't like the idea of it.

"Not much, per se."

"I see."

A few more moments passed. A sudden scream ripped through the relatively calm atmosphere, immediately followed by others. The hallucinations had reappeared around them…the day was officially beginning. Not that there weren't any apparitions during the night, but not nearly as much as during the day.

"Well, then…" Raito started, his voice indicating the beginning of a greeting. And indeed, he was preparing to say goodbye. Even though he hadn't even said half of the things he wanted…he knew he couldn't expect anything more, really – although judging by the pang in his chest, he clearly had been expecting something, which he hadn't even been aware of.

"Well…" L echoed, his tone also as dismissive as Raito's.

"I'm walking that way" Raito said, pointing toward the blurry horizon. He only assumed that L had already walked toward that direction, since he'd seen Ryuuzaki walking toward the opposite direction before. Upon meeting Ryuuzaki's eyes, he felt the need to specify "In search for…Misa, of course…and…you?"

"Oh" L started, and Raito's heart made a rather strange jolt as the detective moved his eyes away. "Well," L started again, and the beat definitely augmented in Raito's eardrums. "…I either have to go that way" Ryuuzaki pointed to the completely opposite direction from which Raito had indicated. The chestnut-haired man felt some kind of grip squeeze his lungs at L's words. It was confirmed. There was no way L would happen to-

"or that way." And he pointed straight at the same blurry horizon that Kira had indicated just before.

"That's because I came from there." L turned to show the third route in the three-way crossroads, a route Raito had not yet visited.

They stared at each other for a few seconds, then Raito couldn't bear it any longer, and turned his eyes to the ground. Had L just suggested…that he come with Raito? It certainly sounded like it. Suddenly, the chestnut haired man felt rather bashful for no reason.

"Either one's fine with me, really..." the detective said as an afterthought, and Raito didn't raise his eyes from the ground until only after the other had finished the sentence. He realized rather reluctantly that L was giving him the responsibility of making the invitation.

"You said you're looking for Whammy, right?" As if he could ever forget. He was just trying to act as nonchalant as possible.

But in his efforts to seem uninterested, Raito didn't realize his error until too late. Only as L's attention shuttered down on him did he mentally slap himself.

L's eyes were sharp.

"Who else's name do you know?" the drawl came, and this time Raito looked straight into the other's eyes. These moments, the moments that they weren't being themselves – the words that they spoke not as Ryuuzaki and Raito but as L and Kira – were the easiest ones. At these moments, Raito could feel confident and in control again. He was sick of socializing, of being forced to notice all kinds of stupid things about Ryuuzaki that would never be of any use to him…Kira's role was much easier. Hating felt much more familiar.

"I think I'll let you wonder some more time, L."

Unexpectedly, the one side of L's lips rose in a half-smile. Raito was rather taken aback by the expression, as he tried rather hard not to notice the new, unseen angles it added to L's face.

"Just by that statement, Kira-kun, I can see that you know less than I imagined."

"Don't call me-" but Raito stopped himself, making a muscle pump in his jaw and turning his eyes away briefly, as though to calm himself. Then, he turned to look back at the other's smug face, intending to reverse the tables once more "So, have you made up your mind? What is it going to be?" he asked, referring of course to which direction L would walk.

And indeed, Ryuuzaki was successfully caught unawares, seeing as the smile slipped off his features and his eyes immediately became not even half as sharp as before.

"I…" he started, and Raito, despite having all the will to feel cruel and vindictive, couldn't stop a sliver of empathy from overcoming him, upon seeing that intensely confused face.

Minutes passed, and they'd stopped looking at each other. Until finally, Raito turned, only to see Ryuuzaki staring at his own defiled tennis shoes, kicking a red pebble back and forth and watching it roll around on the ground. It finally became clear that Ryuuzaki would not end that sentence. Therefore, Raito took it upon himself to amend the situation, and find a solution. Although he doubted L would wish to come with him…

"I guess, maybe if you walk that way too" Raito started, aware he was floundering with the effort to find an effective excuse but unwilling to overanalyze his own motives. However, even though he had the will, his mind was at a loss, and he could not conjure anything even remotely plausible, or interesting, to say. He turned to watch L, realizing that the other was expecting something and not participating in the thinking process. Finally, Raito settled for the best he could muster.

"Maybe you can…maybe we'll have more chances with the hallucinations."

What the hell did that mean? Not even Raito knew. What chances with hallucinations? As in, 'resolving the hallucinations'? But L didn't like resolving them, did he…? This must be the worst-sounding excuse in the chronicles of Raito's admittedly short life. In Raito's mind, it practically cried out 'I don't want to look for her on my own! Even if it's you, please come with me!' It sounded pathetic, even in his thoughts.

And yet, Ryuuzaki nodded.

"Maybe. And since I haven't gone there anyway…" L simply said.

Silence reigned supreme for a few moments, as Raito digested the information.

"So you-" Raito started, snapping rather quickly and gesturing vaguely toward the general vicinity of L's person, in the effort to mask his disbelief.

"I suppose."

Raito restrained himself from nodding neurotically, tapping his foot on the ground, staring at his fingernails, crossing his arms over his chest or otherwise indulging in nervous gestures. He settled for gritting his teeth instead.

"Well, then, I guess we should-"

Raito didn't finish that sentence verbally. But he waved toward the street in front of him, and Ryuuzaki started moving without waiting for the statement to be concluded.

Internally glad for the elevation of the constant pressure, Raito let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding behind Ryuuzaki's back, and then started walking quietly after the other. Naturally, they would pretend that the former conversation had never taken place.

For the first few moments, as they squeezed through the various people crowding the streets, they felt the atmosphere between them grow dark and heavy. At some point, Raito became so hyper-aware of the other man's movements that he came to wish he had not accompanied Ryuuzaki after all.

As they would soon discover, however, temporarily leaving their interpersonal issues behind was much easier than they'd initially expected. After they'd walked a bit more than fifty yards, the silence stopped being oppressive and uncomfortable, and started feeling natural and familiar. They soon both started staring around their new surroundings, flabbergasted by the amazingly large buildings around them.

If it weren't for the soft sound of footfalls on his left, Raito would have thought he was completely alone once again, surrounded by silence, walking amongst a perplexed, mute panic. But, even though he wasn't currently utilizing his newfound ability to speak to another soul, it felt comforting to know he had the option of doing so, if he wished.

For the time being, however, he did not have much time to ponder the mysteries of camaraderie – or lack thereof – seeing as he was preoccupied with the amazing buildings in the environment: the houses were of old western architectural style, and Raito was sure that he'd only seen this type of building in textbooks before.

"Are these houses medieval, or from the Renaissance?" Raito asked, watching the imposing, Gothic arches of a very particular, rotund-shaped structure. He didn't fully understand the true extent of his internal joy upon being able to communicate these thoughts to another. In fact, he'd been so casual about speaking to Ryuuzaki that, when he finally spoke, his voice seemed magnified in the silence of the crowd.

"I doubt it is neither. This style was popular in England in the late Victorian Period." Ryuuzaki's voice carried the distinctive deductive hue. As the man's heavy, husky tone sounded, several heads in the silent throng of people turned around. This was, perhaps, the moment Raito got his greatest shock.

Now that he was speaking to another person…everyone could hear him. In fact, they were the only ones who were talking in this entire crowd, apart from the shrieking hallucinations. Raito did not fail to detect the gazes of unadulterated envy that some were shooting him.

"Could it be that Mu is separated into sections?" Raito asked, lowering his voice and moving a bit closer to Ryuuzaki.

"It is true that different parts of this dimension seem to have different themes." L answered, nodding his head slightly but looking at the sides of the street, not at Raito. They were huddled closely together, mostly in order not to lose sight of each other or get lost in the bizarre labyrinth of the crowd. "At some point, I even visited a place which featured clusters of Aztec structures."

Raito took note that Ryuuzaki offered this information with the suspicious directness which had recently become the norm. He also registered that, judging by Ryuuzaki's integration in this environment, he must have probably arrived here before Raito himself – which only made sense, judging by the times of their death, Kira thought, with a slight tint of unwelcome guilt.

"How long have you been here then?" Raito finally asked, lacing his voice with a hue of disinterest and looking anywhere but at the back of L's head. He saw L's hair flutter from the corner of his eye, and realized L had turned to look at him. Raito kept his face turned away. He didn't want to see the meaningful gaze, filled with implications.

"I believe you will find that there is no sense of time in this place, Raito-kun." Ryuuzaki's voice rigidly stated, and Raito could not refrain from frowning at the distance. Here he'd expected L to throw some caustic remark about the fact that Raito had sent him here, so he should know when Ryuuzaki had died, but the black-haired man had simply taken the question at face value. "As there is no sense of time in the afterlife, in general."

Raito swallowed, blinked a few times and kept his gaze steadily locked on the imposing marble buildings around them. He knew perfectly well what Ryuuzaki had meant by 'afterlife', of course…but he was not ready to acknowledge openly that he had gone through that Trial just yet.

The chestnut haired man kept silent after that, and, a few minutes later, the conversation was permanently dropped. They walked silently, very much like the undead ghouls that they were, doomed to walk the land ceaselessly, until they'd find the person ordained for them.

As they were walking and wondering what the buildings around them might be hiding on the inside, Ryuuzaki suddenly stopped, causing Raito – who hadn't been paying attention – to stumble and hit the other man's back. After recovering with a slight mutter, Raito immediately turned upward to see what on earth was going on, which had caused L such interest.

As Raito raised his eyes, he expected to see another building, or perhaps – though he didn't like to consider the possibility – even Whammy. And if L found Whammy, then he'd leave, and Raito would be left alone to-

"That building…why…?" L's voice sounded, and Raito turned to the direction the detective was looking at. But no sooner had he laid his eyes on it, than a sudden jolt erupted in his chest, and his heart started to palpitate painfully.

There was a man standing there, miles above the earth. Beneath the endless plains of glass window and metal scaffolding, a huge crowd of people was gathered, looking upwards, their hands stretched upwards. Around the area of that building, the sky was not icy grey, but filled with orange and pink hues.

"…Let's go." Raito said, his heart having reached extreme levels of painfulness by now.

"Just a moment, Rai-"

But Raito grabbed Ryuuzaki's upper arm and pulled the other man away, forcing L to look away and follow him. The Japanese man started walking toward the side of the High Street, in order to avoid meeting that image again.

"Wait!" Ryuuzaki ordered solidly, proceeding to pluck his arm out of Raito's grip. Raito turned around, the look on his face a mixture of annoyance and slight panic.

"This way is quicke-"

Not listening to the man's words, L turned around again, black threads of hair flowing in the wind, and Raito fought the urge to cover the other man's eyes to prevent him from realizing what he was seeing, knowing he'd only make things worse.

But just as Ryuuzaki turned back to where they'd seen the huge building before, and just as an exasperated Raito followed him, they both froze.

"Where..?" L asked, and Raito was amazed by the sheer talkativeness Ryuuzaki was displaying. Raito didn't remember the detective being half as intrinsic, or spontaneous about his responses to the environment.

Glad he'd escaped the peril of humiliation and fear, but rather disturbed by the fact that the hallucination had disappeared unexplainably, Raito was left just as speechless as his temporary companion.

"Wasn't that the Headquarters building just now?" L asked, his black irises scanning the vicinity with clear mistrustfulness and suspicion, as though realizing that the world of Mu was playing games with him.

Raito, his heart still beating wildly, tried to combat the inner panic which had awoken upon seeing that image, and focused on distracting L as best as he could.

"I'm not sure." He answered, hoping he didn't sound even half as anxious as he really was. Ryuuzaki's eyes zeroed on him, observing him meticulously for signs of dishonesty. Obviously, Raito had become much less confident than before his death, not to mention rather significantly less adept at restraining his own emotions. L found what he was looking for.

"It dematerialized." L continued, as though not having heard Raito's last statement.

"I'm hungry. Let's find something." Raito said, nodding at the side of the road and nodding toward a batch of trees. There were hordes of people already fighting to reach the rotten fruits, and Raito knew he'd have to wait a long time before he could get his hands on some food. However, he was willing to go through anything in order to forget what he'd almost just seen.

"Why did you pull me away?" But Raito ignored the question, continuing to walk as though never having heard anything.

Ryuuzaki didn't say anything as he walked behind Raito, but the auburn-headed man could feel the two black diamonds bleed into his back, their sharp stare making him feel trapped.

They queued up silently, waiting for their lunch.

No matter how much time passed, however, or how many Victorian buildings loomed over them, Raito's heart was beating irregularly, and he could not feel at rest.

This was one of the times that he truly could not wait to find Misa.

He didn't really know how it happened, actually. He knew how it started, but not how or why it managed to evolve so much. It was one thing staying together for a while, or even a couple of nights just to keep company. But it was completely different remaining together after that.

Most of the time, L was silent, and they didn't really talk much about anything. The highlights of their day were their lunchtime and those few times that each of them thought they'd spotted the person they were searching for – in Raito's case, Misa – only to later discover that it was someone else, and that they'd been mistaken.

They slept in the humid, narrow dark streets that surrounded the central area or, if they had had enough of the constant hallucinations, they walked out the sides of the streets and entered the silent, outer world of Mu. In the mornings they woke up, Ryuuzaki not always awake before Raito, and washed. Raito did not approach the water, of course, but rather enviously watched Ryuuzaki splatter it over his black head with the bucket.

They'd lost count of how many days they'd walked together, but it must have been more than a week and less than a fortnight. Ever since the day he'd seen the apparition of the Headquarters building, Raito's efforts to find Misa had doubled, as had his constant sense of nervousness. He felt like a fugitive, caught in a struggle between expressing his panic and not allowing Ryuuzaki to detect it.

However, now away from computers, work or modernization of any sort, Raito was obliged to admit that Ryuuzaki was not half as annoying as he once was. Perhaps it was also Raito's views of 'annoying' which had changed, but it was a fact that Ryuuzaki's features suddenly did not seem as aggravating as when they were both alive.

Not that they were friends, of course. But the atmosphere between them was not that between two unforgiving rivals either. More than anything, overall it felt like they were involved in a common struggle, a trek. They were tolerating each other, and that was that.

One day, as they were walking quietly amongst the picturesque English scenery – since they still hadn't left the section of Mu involved with this kind of architecture – Raito turned to look at the back of Ryuuzaki's head.

"Ryuuzaki" he called, and watched the other man slowly turn around, a questioning hue in his eyes. "You have a…thing. Right here." Raito motioned at his own face, showing Ryuuzaki where his face was dirty.

L raised his hand, wiping the side of his face with his sleeve at the place Raito had indicated.

"No, the other side." Raito motioned again, and L successfully ran his sleeve over the place the other man had told him. But the filth still did not come off. Instead, Ryuuzaki flinched slightly as his hand made contact with the small batch of reddish blackness on his cheekbone.

"That's a bruise, Raito-kun." L said, lowering his hand and shaking his head slightly at Raito, resuming his walking. After a few moments of realization, Raito quietly followed, resolving to keep his mouth shut.

Of course it was a bruise. He'd been the one to put it there, only this morning.

Naturally, they'd fought again. That first fistfight beneath the rain was a precursor for others, and today was probably one of those days. But, despite being childish, Raito thought, feeling the pleasant, refreshing sensation of ache in his ribs, where L's ankle had hit him, this fighting felt rather rejuvenating. Not that he'd ever say that to L, of course, even though he suspected Ryuuzaki thought the same.

However, Raito had not realized the full-fledged alteration in L's character until a few days later. Until then, he'd thought that L's trial had simply made him much more expressive, or less suspicious of others. He had yet to discover the impact of it on the rest of L's conduct.

They'd just stopped walking for the day, and the sky was quickly darkening. In fact, it was quite cold, and Raito felt increasingly filthy. Today they had decided to leave the streets and recede to the outskirts, to see how the outer world of Mu was faring.

As always, the forests had no wind blowing through them, the animals looked starved, there were piles of rusty objects and machines lying in various pits around them, and there were small huts above hills, from which newcomers constantly exited. Newcomers in Mu, that is. Raito vaguely wondered what happened in case a baby died. What kind of Trial would a baby be put through…? He'd never seen a baby yet, in Mu, only children from four years of age and upwards.

He didn't like to think about it.

"I need a bath." Raito had said, looking at his clothes with an unsuppressed expression of disgust.

L, who'd been sitting on the ground and leaning on the crumbling wall behind him, did not answer. Raito sat up a bit, resting on his elbows and looking at the other man.

"I'll go take one."

Ryuuzaki, who'd been observing a specific small hut on a faraway hill, lethargically turned to look at the other man.

"Where?"

Raito sat up completely, massaging his nape in order to work out the kinks. "One of the houses."

Ryuuzaki stayed silent. Raito realized that the other would not answer anything, so he decided not to wait. But surprisingly, just as he was putting on his shoes, having turned his back to the other man, he heard Ryuuzaki's voice.

"Feeble."

Raito gritted his teeth a bit, more out of habit than anything else. He turned around slightly.

"What?" he asked, his voice rather bored, not betraying his level of interest.

"Feeble idea."

"Oh." Raito said, but went out of his way to show he did not give a penny what L thought. He'd stayed with Ryuuzaki for so long that he'd learned not to care, for the most part. L might think whatever he want of Raito's desperate measures, but, at the end of the day, he wasn't so much better than Raito himself.

"You'll stay here, right?" Raito asked, having finally finished wearing his shoes. He stood up slowly and turned toward Ryuuzaki "Can I leave my things?" His 'things' consisted of a rather shabby old coat, which he had picked up from a garbage lot at the side of the street earlier that day.

Ryuuzaki didn't answer again, just shook his head lightly to indicate nonchalance. Raito got the message and nodded, starting to walk away.

He didn't want to admit it, of course, how good it felt to have a point of origin – the fact that he'd left someone waiting for him somewhere. Actually, he was subconsciously so eager to return that he didn't spend much time pondering which house to choose.

However, as he selected a relatively satisfactory building and tried to enter it, he was left disappointed. The door would not open. Sighing slightly and not bothering to solve the strange and illogical inner workings of Mu, he decided he'd just try another door.

But he couldn't enter the other door either. In fact, he could enter none of the doors he tried, except one. The problem was that the only door that could open was that of a completely derelict building, run down and in ruins, and definitely without a bathroom.

When he returned to L, he was considerably less agreeable than before.

"Well?" the detective asked, without moving his eyes away from the distance.

"You knew they wouldn't open, didn't you?" Raito asked in a rather resigned voice.

"I thought they might not." Ryuuzaki answered, his tone clouded with somewhat impolite disinterest.

"Ah."

Raito wanted to ask for an explanation, of course, but after a few moments of deliberation he decided not to. And indeed, in a few seconds, L started to elaborate by himself, just as Raito had predicted. If there was one thing that Ryuuzaki would always remain, it was a know-it-all, Raito smugly thought.

"The houses with pinned doors are already occupied." The black-haired creature stated, turning to look at Raito. The chestnut haired man noticed the subtle silver-blue glow in the other's hair and eyes – a product of the dead moonlight. In fact, Ryuuzaki's cheeks looked rather white and soft right now, against the tufts of black hair. And his lips, as he kept them open, appeared rather fuller and fleshier than Raito had remembered. "There are many like you, who ignore the apparitions in the houses in view of some comfort."

"I could never sleep in there." Raito said, walking slowly towards the other and finally sitting down on the other side of the wall, across Ryuuzaki. The detective slowly turned his face to the other and the overhead shadows cast his cheeks and eyes to shade. Raito, who was hiding entirely in the darkness, looked at the other's moonlight-lit hands. They stared at each other for some more time.

"I'm not necessarily talking about sleep." Ryuuzaki's voice, loaded with heavy subtext, clashed intensely with his unperturbed expression.

After a few moments, Raito grinned.

"I'll be damned. Is that your sex face?" when L kept silent for a few moments, the grin slipped away from Raito's face, and he became utterly serious again. "People can't even talk here, Ryuuzaki." He gestured with his hand to accentuate his point "Let alone fuck."

"Who said anything about fornication, Raito-kun? I was implying that, like you, they may wish to use the bathrooms." Ryuuzaki spoke with false innocence his fingers kneading the fabric on his knees "But now that you mention it, they probably do that as well. "

But Raito had had enough of trying to stir L's annoyance. He'd been trying to avoid the central issue all this time, and the issue was that he felt utterly filthy.

"I need a bath quite urgently." He said, leaning his head backwards to lean on the wall more firmly. His body slid downwards, until the inner sides of his knees bumped slightly with Ryuuzaki's curled calves. "I need to walk further, until I find a house I can use. You'll have to come with me."

A few moments passed, during which Raito was certain the other would refuse, just for the sake of being a nuisance. But, to Raito's surprise, Ryuuzaki acquiesced without a scene.

"Very well." He said, nodding, "But do not expect me to enter the house with you."

"Fair enough." Raito said, standing up. Reflexively, not really thinking about what he was doing, he stretched his hand toward L, to pull the detective upward. He hadn't realized the significance of what he was doing until Ryuuzaki paused, staring at his hand.

Raito, unexplainably feeling as though he'd just committed some obscure social gaffe, considered pulling his hand away. But that would accentuate his lack of restraint even more. So he decided to abide to his initial action, unsuccessful though it may be.

But Ryuuzaki stared at his hand a few more moments, then ignored it and stood up by himself. Raito was left there standing with his hand extended, as L walked away toward the streets. Fisting his palm and bringing it to his side, Raito felt some kind of primal anger grow within his gut, threatening to overcome his senses.

The logical part of him claimed that it was completely sensible for L not to trust him, and that it was only to be expected that Ryuuzaki would not consider him as a friend to depend on when circumstances were dire. Raito had killed the man, for God's sake!

But, even so…

Raito gritted his teeth – a habit which was quickly becoming his trademark – and proceeded to follow Ryuuzaki's slow pace.

The street was packed with people, some lying supine on the ground, some sitting quietly on the edges of the street, or on the upside-down staircases, which led to nowhere.

As L was walking, with Raito flanking his right side, he suddenly stopped.

"What's the commotion about?" Raito asked, nodding toward the group of people in front of them, who, despite completely silent, seemed to be moving in jerks – too violently.

Ryuuzaki didn't answer for a few moments, taking a small step forward "A brawl, perhaps? They're not speaking, so it's not a hallucination."

Raito was considering mentioning that Ryuuzaki and he must have presented the same picture a few days ago, when they were fighting in the street yet again. However, that wouldn't have done justice to their valiant fighting techniques. Where L and Raito had been fighting for honour and pride, what they were witnessing now looked more like a mass beating than anything else.

"Is that a…!?" Raito suddenly exclaimed, and his eyes widened. This was because he thought he'd seen, between the bodies of two half-naked, muscled men, the figure of a white clad woman.

And if there was one thing Raito could not tolerate, it was rape.

Raito's first instinct was to dive forward, but he held back. What if he wasn't aware of the whole story? What if he was putting the blame on people who did not deserve it? It wasn't any of his business anyway…was it? He wasn't the right person to try and-

"We'd better see what's going on." A solid voice rang from the left, and Raito was jarred from his trance immediately. He saw Ryuuzaki marching forward, dragging his feet as usual. But the detective did not look quite as casual, or unconcerned as he always did in these cases.

"Wait, Ryuuzaki!" Raito called in a whisper, trying not to be to loud lest he alert the mass of people a few yards away. He walked a few paces and grabbed a fistful of the fabric of L's shirt. It wasn't quite as soft as Raito had remembered, caked as it currently was in dirt, but the chestnut-haired man barely paid any mind to such details at that moment.

"What are you doing?" Raito whispered again, dragging Ryuuzaki, by the edge of his shirt, toward the shadows at the side of the street. Ryuuzaki's face seemed concerned as he turned back toward the brawl, to see what was happening.

"Maybe we should help her." L said, the neutrality in his voice clashing with the actual words.

"What are you talking about?" Raito asked, aware that this was the third ineffective statement he was making in a row "We don't even know what happened with these people! How can we know who is at fault?...And since when do you care?" he asked motioning vaguely toward the direction of the commotion.

"It doesn't take a nuclear physicist, Raito-kun" L said, his voice a rather irritated whisper "The woman's in danger. We should alleviate the pressure before the situation turns any worse."

"What are you…? Have you…?" Raito said with a tone of exasperation in his voice "It's dangerous…we'd better check if-"

But as Raito spoke, Ryuuzaki shook the chestnut-haired man's hands off his shoulders and whirled around, walking with new decisiveness toward the gathered crowd. Not knowing where to place himself, Raito settled for walking after the other, his lungs and liver constricting rather hurtfully in the effort to restrain himself.

"Ryuuzaki!!" but the detective ignored him completely.

"Excuse me." L's voice rang loud and clear in the dead silence. The people who were fighting did not pause their intense struggle, however. Raito thought they must be accustomed to noises and voices from hallucinations.

"Excuse me." Ryuuzaki repeated, even louder, but none of the others took notice of him. Then, suddenly, comprehension hit Raito like a brick, and he rushed forward L's side.

"Ryuuzaki…they can't hear you." Raito said, grabbing L's shoulder to draw his attention. L turned to look at him for a few seconds, and the dawn of realization lit in his eyes. Raito repeated "They can't hear you when you talk to them, remember?" Obviously, L had grown so used to communicating successfully with Raito, that he'd conveniently forgotten he was unable to communicate with anyone else.

But, without knowing it, as the two had started talking to each other, their voices started to be heard from the strangers. As such, the people who'd been fighting before now temporarily put a pause to their battle, turning to look at the two men strangely.

"Their not Japanese. Speak English." Ryuuzaki said, having already reverted to English. He had quickly devised a way to be heard to the others by speaking to Raito.

And indeed, when he spoke English, the strangers seemed to focus on him, as though they understood what he was saying.

Raito took a few brief moments to note the situation. There was a group of four or five muscled men, fighting with each other, surrounding a woman wearing a torn white petticoat, who indeed looked like the epitome of victimized femininity.

The fact that Ryuuzaki seemed to have been right gnawed on Raito's gut with exceptional spite.

"What do you want me to say? They don't seem to be in the mood for conversation." Raito asked, speaking in English, and noticed that the men seemed to be listening.

"We came here to tell them to stop what they were doing." L said, directing his words to Raito but looking at the stranger closest to him. No sooner had he finished his sentence, however, than the man – half a head taller and half a man more muscled than L himself – grabbed the detective by the collar of his shirt, raising his upwards.

'Shit! ' Raito eloquently thought, as he saw the rest of the enraged men motioning with hostility toward him. He'd known this was a bad idea…he'd known-

"Go on then, Kira. Tell them what scum they are." L said in a slightly choked voice, and, despite the panic, Raito had time to turn and grant Ryuuzaki a heartfelt glare.

"Don't call me a hypocrite, L, when you were quite happy to leave this kind of people roam free and unpunished!" the only question was why L had so drastically changed his perception of justice.

"None of this matters now!"

Raito puzzled over these quizzical words, feeling as though time had frozen over him, and as though he could hear L's voice echoing the words over and over again.

This was one of the few times during the time the two had known each other, when L's eyes were completely open, leaving nothing concealed. In other words, Raito realized that the other was not trying to achieve anything through saying these words. He was not being antagonistic…which was….strange in itself.

Actually, judging from the way they were uttered…These words held only one meaning…the one that was being said.

Looking at L now, Raito realized that his senses had not cheated him, and he had indeed heard Ryuuzaki sigh slightly at the end of that sentence. So as he took a better look at L's expression, he came to realize there was little true interest there about the words themselves, and about the act of uttering them. In all honesty, Ryuuzaki looked… He spoke this truth so openly, with such an unabashed, direct tone, that…that it was almost as if…

L had nothing to fear.

Not even Kira.

Startled suddenly out of his reverie, Raito realized what was happening. The shock was unadulterated, like a bucket of ice tipped over his head, as Raito realized the importance – the crucial impact – of what he was seeing. This was Ryuuzaki, true enough…but it was a Ryuuzaki…without fear. That was why L had been so open, so careless about making hints about Raito…

It was the real person, no doubt about that…however, it seemed obvious now, by the way he spoke directly and did not bother to mask his expressions – which had suddenly gained disproportionate variety – or conceal his intentions and opinions. Something…Raito realized with a strange jolt in his heart…something had changed. The man who was standing in front of him had a familiar face…but other than that, Raito did not recognize him.

But it seems their opponents had had enough of being ignored and being distracted from their own fight. Raito saw a punch aimed at his face, and reflexively dodged to the side. After that, the situation got frantic.

The fight became generalized, and Raito found himself simultaneously fighting against two of them horrid creatures. At some point, he thought he saw the sharp, angled sting of Ryuuzaki's kick, but he was then occupied with his own stuggle.

As they fought, he felt a mixture of fear and righteousness. Every time they landed a hit on his body, he felt clear, real pain.

But at some point, as he caught sight of L's face, he saw nothing there except the cold, calculating precision of a man who is…who is…

Not afraid.

Something had happened. Something mysterious enough to strip the ever-present, trademark fear and cowardice away from L's soul. The L that Raito knew would never speak so directly, he would never march so carelessly in a dangerous situation.

He would never risk his own well-being for a belief, or an ideal. But now that they were already dead… Dead enough to be fearless, dead enough to not care about what had happened during his life, dead enough to understand there would be no negative consequences – or positive ones – for any action he would try to take. Because his actions from here on out would never matter…they couldn't even really be considered proper actions. Because he was dead.

Raito understood all this just from a few small sentences, having known and studied Ryuuzaki's conduct for years. And as such he could see, quite clearly in retrospect…that this L, despite being the real person…was not L at all.

And even though his posture may have improved slightly and his bobbing Adam's apple become a bit more pronounced, perhaps the most essential change about L, which was at the route of all the others, was this.

The Trial. It must have been the Trial.

And even though, for Raito, the humungous changes that had been made in his way of thinking during the Trial were mostly subcutaneous, or at least not easily discernible to himself…in L's case, Raito could see the alterations jutting out prominently. It was natural that Raito hadn't noticed the same thing about the other people around him, because he hardly knew any of them. But in L's case, he had lived with Ryuuzaki for years, knew very well the other man's mannerisms and could recognize the unbelievable changes.

It was as though something had broken – some invisible chain which had been holding Ryuuzaki down during his lifetime had finally been released. As though he'd been held in a trap during all his life and now he'd been finally set free. And now, it was the same old L…only not afraid to become daring, because he had nothing to lose: he had already lost his life. What more was there?

Death, Raito decided, had done L some good.

It seemed that now, without the effervescent, eternal fear which had blocked his every opinion and decision during life, L had reached…an entirely new level of capacity.

Raito groaned as he felt someone's fist collide with his jaw. The pain was a sharp stab and he limped backwards falling to the ground, finally beaten to a bloody pulp. From the corner of his eye, as he slipped in and out of consciousness, he saw that the woman who'd been shaking on the ground before was not there anymore. She'd probably taken the time her captors were distracted to flee the scene.

Then, Raito heard a heavy noise of something dropping next to him, and the next thing he knew, his vision was full of Ryuuzaki's image.

The black hair had turned red from the dirt. The white soft skin of the face was covered with blood, and one of his eyes was completely blue, swollen and ugly – and finally shut instead of open and inquiring. Perhaps beating L was the only way to stop those eyes from remaining open and curious.

Raito suspected that he must make a similar picture.

As L fell down next to him, they looked at each other, observing each other's pathetic state, with what little strength they had left. Then, they heard the angry footsteps of their opponents, as they ran away. With his ear resting on the ground, Raito could hear clearly the sounds of the stampede.

He kept looking at L. Had his cheeks not hurt so much, he might have grinned. But as he saw the slight crease around L's remaining healthy eye, he thought Ryuuzaki might have taken the hint.

In retrospect, he should have known all along that Ryuuzaki's mind was much too advanced to become derelict in these narrow corridors of hate, malice and retribution. He felt slightly…sympathetic to it. Because L, like Raito himself, despite having human weaknesses in his arrogance and pride, still held something about him which, at least in Raito's understanding, made him more likely to…connect to the level in which Raito's mind was operating.

In this moment in time, it felt as though something strange happened: as though they hadn't been enemies all along, as though circumstances hadn't made it so that Raito would become L's killer. Now, if Raito could blink slowly and concentrate very hard, the vague colouring of L's shirt could become something different. Seeing L's vague outline now, and sensing that light, familiar aura, he could almost feel the obscure metallic touch of a handcuff weighing his left hand down. At this moment, Raito thought that, it felt as though this person was not L, the great adversary. But just Ryuuzaki, the awkward, antisocial idiot whose quirks Raito had been forced to endure for time on end.

So he kept the silence surrounding them, preserved it as something sacred. And then he nodded slowly, a sign of acceptance, perhaps. His cheek scraped against the ground beneath them as he moved his head. If L had managed to learn something during his Trial – something about fear and motivation, obviously – then Raito had damn well learnt something as well.

Namely, the rather liberating ability to accept the existence of other people.

The next morning, a few pedestrians helped them walk to the side of the road, where they sat, resting, for hours on end.

"I need that bath." Raito muttered at some point, as he realized he couldn't even move his facial muscles properly, because of the dried blood on his cheeks.

Ryuuzaki didn't speak for a while. Then, finally, a completely defiled, unrecognizably deep voice came, which indicated complete and utter exhaustion. "Yes." The detective simply said.

Raito, feeling he should promote this idea somehow, tried to elaborate.

"Maybe we can just…go to one of the nearby houses. They shouldn't be occupied now…" he said, having seen various people exit some houses earlier that day.

Ryuuzaki stayed silent for a few more moments. Raito brought his palm to his own swollen eye, patting it experimentally in order to see exactly how deformed it was. He was lucky not to have broken any bones, he thought grudgingly, cursing Ryuuzaki's sudden decision to be the hero of the day. He failed, of course, to question himself about why he'd followed L's lead.

However, even though he superficially scorned L's newfound courage, secretly, he felt rather amazed by it. How could a man change so much…had he changed so much himself, in the eyes of others?

He would never know.

Now that he'd almost forgotten who they were, and had become so whole-heartedly focused on the fact that he'd been reunited with something he hadn't remembered forgetting, the awkwardness had almost begun to fade. And this could almost manage to become a nondescript conversation….like the one Raito had had with Nayuko – or whatever her name was – the other day…

Perhaps he and L would finally manage to just talk, and, at some point, maybe Raito would even have the chance to discreetly make L understand why he had done the things he'd done, and the reasoning behind Kira, and the fact that he'd improved this reasoning. Raito didn't like to think, of course, that he was trying to justify himself to L, since L hadn't asked for a justification.

But at least, even if none of this happened, Raito could finally have a decent conversation with someone of his own mental caliber. And, now that he reconsidered the whole idea of talking to L, he found that he might as well render to L the entire story of how Near and Mello had replaced his job as detectives. Unwilling to admit it to himself, perhaps Raito was looking forward to the prospect of having someone – even if that person was L – listen to him eagerly.

Perhaps it was that small element that suddenly made Raito feel a bit more secure than before and, perhaps, even a bit excited about the day's prospects.

However, as always, L would not let him be content and calm.

"You don't like the water outside, do you?" L's voice rung again, slightly better than last time, since the detective's vocal chords had probably become a bit reaccustomed to speaking. Raito remembered the first few days he'd stayed with L, and that he'd been troubled with his oral syntax at first, since, during his long months of isolation and private thinking, he had quite literally gotten unused to verbally expressing himself.

"Call me unconventional, but no." a slightly irritated Raito said, not expecting a real answer to that. But, as always, L surprised him.

"For me it's mousetraps."

The chestnut haired man stiffened instantaneously.

A few beats of silence went by. Raito thought he'd heard incorrectly, not really wanting to acknowledge what he thought he'd heard.

"What?" he asked rather rudely, not keen on the idea of thinking about this, but unable to stop now that he'd started.

"Mousetraps. The water is."

Raito did not speak again. His knuckles had turned white from fisting his hand so hard on the edge of the pavement.

Time passed. The silence once more became oppressive, to the extent that Raito almost regretted all his former thoughts about the other. If L was expecting Raito to offer a similar confession, then he would be sorely disappointed, the Japanese man thought, trying to justify himself to himself, as always.

After all, he thought, he had never provoked L to reveal this secret.

Although it certainly was a helpful source of comfort, for Raito, to know that…at least on this aspect, he wasn't the only one.

But…mousetraps?

In his nervousness, he'd forgotten to analyze the nature of what L had said, and was only just now realizing it. Mousetraps? And yet, Ryuuzaki had been washing himself with it…? How was that…possible? Raito considered the possibility of shedding a bucket of cockroaches on his head and almost flinched openly.

Seriously…mousetraps? That sounded a bit silly, didn't it? Not that female-headed cockroaches were any better, mind you, Raito pondered with self-depreciation.

He was sorely tempted to ask L for specifications, of course, but on the other hand he didn't want to display the level of his curiosity. So he simply contented himself to wonder in private.

As such, more time passed. When the time came to go in search for food, the two of them looked rather comical, limping in the middle of the street, breathing heavily, trying to reach that God-forsaken fruit on the trees' branches. In the end, a kindly stranger, who had no doubt noticed their predicament, had been gentle enough to cut a few for them.

And this was how, a few hours later, with their bellies as full as they could get and their legs marginally more stable than before, they treaded toward the side of the street. Even though Raito need to find a house to sleep, bathe and recuperate in, and even though he was cursing Ryuuzaki for forcing him to undergo this trouble, he simply bore with it.

He was probably still preoccupied with trying to understand the puzzle of these mousetraps, which L had mentioned before.

They had done no further walking that day, and as such, they found themselves in the same resting place that they had enjoyed the night before. Ryuuzaki found his usual place, leaning against the wall and curling his knees to his chest, and Raito duly followed, seating himself directly opposite the other, with his thighs slightly bent and open.

They looked at each other for a while, in the verge of falling asleep.

Then, just as Raito was about to open his mouth, his curiosity finally having gotten the better of him, they heard a small sound from the distance. Temporarily distracted, they both sat up, looking toward the direction of the noise.

As they were looking at a pile of rusted metal nearby, they saw a large, complex-looking vehicle materialize and drop over the others.

"New arrival." Ryuuzaki said, studying the contraption as best as he could, in this darkness. Raito watched the detective for a few moments, seeing L's pronounced interest in the advanced technology, which reminded him of his own.

"Which power source do you think they're using?" he asked, referring to the strangely shaped vehicle and its unknown engine. "Solar or hydraulic?"

L considered for a few moments "Possibly both at the same time, only much better than they did in our time…maybe even electric, as in magnets." He looked at the vehicle again "I've seen different kinds."

"Both? But water resources are limited as well…" Raito said in a pondering voice "Unless they've found ways to utilize seawater, or the melting ice from the poles."

"Or unless they've colonized other planets." Ryuuzaki offered, his voice more thoughtful and less a drawl.

A few moments of silence went by. Then, finally, Raito answered.

"You really think it's been so long?" he asked, trusting L to understand what he was referring to without specification.

"It's definitely been longer than it feels to us." The detective concluded, nodding slightly toward the trashed machines "The alloys used for these machines are unrecognizable. I doubt they were discovered during my time, or else I would have studied them, surely"

"Really?" Raito asked, his tone rather conversational "I haven't had the chance to approach these metals so as to study them yet, lest I be presented with the full view of someone's death."

"Yes indeed…that is frustrating, isn't it?" Ryuuzaki nodded, and it took a moment for Raito to realize what was happening, and that he was having an unperturbed, voluntary conversation…with his greatest enemy.

In fact, this sudden realization was so utterly perturbing, that he decided to end it right here. He did not want this kind of doubt in his mind right now. He was exhausted, he was in pain, and he was confused, both about Ryuuzaki and about himself.

As such, he didn't speak again and it soon became clear that the discussion had ended. Even though he still had things he wanted to discuss…

The last thing his troubled eyes saw, before they closed peacefully for the night, was Ryuuzaki's face, turned upward, toward the sky.

The next morning, they went about their routine rather awkwardly. It felt as though something in the atmosphere had changed last night, during those short five non-hostile sentences they'd shared with each other.

"''Morning" Raito muttered, not looking at L's direction, per se. He patted at his hurt eye, realizing that it was slightly flatter than yesterday and that, if he tried, he could open in just barely and see through it. Ryuuzaki's own bruises had reverted from fiery reddish purple to the distinctive blue-green.

"Good morning, Yagami-kun"

Raito raised his head slowly, noticing that L had called him by his surname. This, in turn, made him realize that, all this time, L had been calling him by his first name…which, in retrospect was strangely genial, considering that Raito was the man who'd ended up killing L…And why was L calling him by his surname now, all of a sudden? Was he angry, or-?

"Where are you going?" Raito asked, his voice and expression a testament of his underlying anxiety, as he watched Ryuuzaki start putting on his shoes.

"…Just to get some water." L said, and Raito was tempted to ask whether the detective was annoyed with him about something, but realized he'd sound like a young child if he gave into his insecurities. He therefore restrained himself as best as he could, only to realize belatedly what L had told him.

"But…mousetraps…?" he said, probably unaware of how stupid he sounded. L didn't seem to blame him, however, as he turned to the other man with hollow black eyes.

"If you bear with it, it cleans you." He stated simply, and started to walk away. But Raito, who was feeling rather rejuvenated despite his injuries after a whole day of continuous rest, shot up and started following Ryuuzaki quickly.

"How do you mean?" he asked, and noticed that L's shoulders stiffened lightly, as he realized that Raito was coming with him. Only then did Raito realize that it was the first time he was doing this – following Ryuuzaki to the well in the morning. He wondered if he should perhaps leave L alone, but decided to abide to his initial actions, now that he had started them.

"Even though it doesn't look it, it has the consistency of water." L answered, still starting forward, away from Raito. He was carried the yellow bucket on his left hand, and Raito realized, rather curiously that Ryuuzaki was tapping his fingers on the handle of the plastic thing. Could it be a sign of…nervousness?

"Oh" Raito answered, rather stumped by L's rather withdrawn conduct this morning, especially compared to the talkativeness of last night. And here Raito had though that if-

'If' what? Raito cursed himself as they reached the well, and L started tying the bucket to a rope, in order to pull up some water.

After that, they both remained silent, as L dumped the container in the mouth of the well, waited for it to fill, and then started pulling it up. Raito regretted coming along.

"I'll just go get the coat." He said to no one in particular and kicked off the sides of the well.

"Yes." L started saying. "I'll come when I'm done."

As chance would have it, however, he'd just roughly pulled the bucket – which was now filled to the brim with water – from the well. But just as he'd pulled it, Raito had been passing behind him.

"Watch ou-!" Raito started saying, and the next thing he knew, he heard a splashing sound, and something came in contact with his body. Some water from the bucket had just hit him.

For a few moments, he thought he felt the disgusting touch of a hundred short insect feet running over his skin. He squeezed his eyes closed, writhing wildly and shaking his body, in the effort to shake off the horrible cockroaches.

He shuddered, the goosebumps running over his skin over and over. But suddenly, he felt something solid grab his shoulder and shake him. And then, as though brought back to the world, his sense of hearing returned.

"-aito-kun! Raito-kun!"

Raito opened his eyes, meeting L's strained face. Then, coming back to his senses from the shock, the chestnut haired man looked downwards at his torso, where he expected to meet the sight of a dozen cockroaches fighting each other for a piece of him.

But the only thing he saw was water.

He raised his eyes again, staring straight into L's black orbs.

"Are you-?" Ryuuzaki started saying, but Raito spoke before him.

"Do that again!" Raito ordered suddenly, his voice a harsh bark. L was obviously taken aback, since he didn't immediately understand what Raito was asking.

"What-?" L, with the half-full bucket still in his hands, started asking for specifications, but Raito had no time for this. Without thinking about it, he grabbed Ryuuzaki's wrists, and forced them forward and upward.

Raito looked upwards, as a spiral of water, as clear and fresh as rain, splashed against his face. Unable to stop his face from turning into an expression of unadulterated ecstasy, he held L's wrists in place, forcing the detective to hold the bucket over his head, until his chestnut hair had turned into the colour of acorns from the wetness.

Finally, when it was over, and there was no more water, Raito let Ryuuzaki's hands go, and L lowered them, staring at the other man's look of utter bliss.

Then, as the impact of the realization started to fade away, Raito realized the implications of what he had just done. L was looking at him now, with a gaze combined with confusion and surprise.

"Raito-kun," the detective started, his knuckles turning white around the edges of the bucket he was holding "You mean that-"

Without a word, Raito brought one of his hands, still dripping from the water, and flicked just in front of L's face, causing water droplets to pop into the detective's face. And indeed, just as Raito had thought, instead of flinching, or wincing from seeing imaginary 'mousetraps', L's eyes widened.

Then, he grabbed Raito's hand, looking at it as a starving man would have looked at a chicken fillet, and buried his nose in it.

Gasping reflexively from the unexpected contact, Raito pulled his hand away. L looked up immediately, seemingly coming back to reality.

Then, they looked at each other, both their jaws half-open, and their eyes unblinking.

a/n: Hope you enjoyed it, and are anxious for the continuation! Please remember to leave some feedback!! Sorry for the lack of long a/n in the end, but I'm just SOOOO wasted!!

Ezan