—
L fell over from his customary seated position, died in his nemesis's arms, then came to in his customary seated position.
He fell over.
"Richard?" said Wammy, the alias he'd been using four cases ago. "Are you alright?"
"Watari?" he said dumbly, into the floor. Wammy was dead. He hadn't wanted it to be true, but he had been sure when he saw the data kill switch had been flipped, pieces of information slotting together to form a whole even when he didn't want them to. His own hand had carved him into a device that did this process automatically. It was too late to deny facts.
"What?" said Wammy like he didn't recognize the Japanese alias.
L pushed himself up halfway off the ground. "Fuuuuuck this," he said, and fell over again.
"Why me?" he wondered aloud. "Does this happen to everyone killed by the murder notebooks? I can't investigate an infinite multiverse, Weatherby."
"Probably not," conceded Wammy. He was currently humoring L gamely. L had been able to provide multiple descriptions of future events that would confirm he wasn't cracking up, but none of them had happened yet. He had never been much of one for keeping track of the date regarding matters where someone could do it for him, which didn't help. Well. Wammy would come around.
L was humoring himself, too, for now. There was no point assuming his mind wasn't reliable. Using his brain to run diagnostics on itself could wait until it seemed necessary. If he was having an Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge moment it was certainly going on for a very long time.
He ground his molars against each other. The Kira murders had been supernatural, but clearly guided by a hand that either was mortal or thought the same way. So far, this seemed...random.
"I don't like this," he informed the room, and incidentally Wammy. His latest sugar cube tower collapsed and split into two factions, one falling into his tea and the other scattering across his desk. Tea sloshed out of its cup in futile pursuit of the desk faction.
He picked up the teacup by the mostly not sticky handle and sipped it, pursuing the grit at the bottom of its basin. He put it down and but his thumbnail. It was slightly sweet. He needed to wash his hands. He added, "Well. I like it better than being dead."
He sent the party interested in his current case an e-mail with enough key bullet points of the solution for them to clean up what was left of it themselves, which was more than he felt like doing for a rerun of a case. If he were stuck only rehashing already closed cases he might entertain the theory that this was Hell. But the world was wide, he had only lived a year or so beyond this in the first place, and the Kira case was still open.
He tried to console himself that Light Yagami possessed one of the most ruthlessly brilliant minds L had ever encountered. This did not make him feel any better about being beaten by a fucking child. L was an extremely petty man about things like that.
(He had been a worse minor. If he had been eighteen as well when faced with such an infuriating suspect, he would probably have been the one instigating physical altercations. He would have broken Light's perfect nose instead of playing around with him, and then maybe he wouldn't be undead.)
He gnawed his thumbnail, brain too itchy to be content just pressing it against his bottom lip where he could usually stop. He knew on one level of thought he was risking ending up with sore and bloody cuticles, but it was not the level primarily in charge of his teeth and hands when he was stressed. Was he stressed? Extremely, yes. But should he have been? His life wasn't even in danger, nor was Wammy's. Kira hadn't claimed his first kill yet, probably hadn't acquired his weapon, that awful, intriguing, unassuming notebook. And when he did, L could just...
L didn't even have to do anything. He could just ignore it, and stay ensconced in whatever HQ he chose. Name unrecorded, face unknown, existence not relevant to Light Yagami's twisted morals. He already knew all the key mechanics of Kira. The method, the means—he was sure he'd already known the why. He had all the answers he wanted. Light had given him his answers.
His true face... It was all the confession L had needed. An honor, even.
Ha!
L didn't need anyone's sanction to solve the Kira problem, either. He could steal the notebook. He could hire a hitman.
Dull pain and the taste of blood alerted him that he'd bitten through his thumb.
He popped it into his mouth to keep blood off his keyboard. No, he didn't want to kill Light Yagami. He probably should kill Light Yagami, but he didn't want to. He wanted to... To...
Of the many casualties of the Kira case, there was no one he cared to intervene for he hadn't led to danger with his own hand. (Should he have cared more about Beyond? Eh, he'd interfere if Wammy brought it up.) Even Naomi, who he hadn't spoken to in years, should have no reason to return to her home country if L didn't repeat old plays.
...He wondered if he was perhaps taking the wrong lessons about treating people as expendable from the situation.
He tapped his fingers. Naomi. He had liked her.
He spent an hour at the keys confirming where she was. The sun had set around him, at some point, leaving him in a black room with the monitor a white inferno at the center. Moved to Burbank, engaged, retired. She must be bored out of her mind in an empty room of her own making. No wonder she had died over this case too.
He hoped it was exciting first. Light had never mentioned her.
Focusing all of her faculties on her boytoy only for a killer to take him away... She must have gotten very unlucky to have not proved a bigger obstacle.
After it came clear that L was reporting his experiences accurately (or hallucinating his confidant's confirmations), Wammy sat silently for a subjectively long minute and forty-seven seconds.
"What is it like?" he asked at last. "Dying."
"I don't know, I was kind of distracted," L deflected, because this is true.
Wammy gave him a blank yet communicative look.
L bit down on his other, less raw thumb. Why hadn't Wammy come back with him, possessed of his own experience to draw on? Was there another Wammy, elsewhere, who has gone back alone?
Could it be he really didn't die? No. L was sure.
Kira had done that, but even spider-scrabbling blunted fingertips at the bottom recesses of the linty pockets of his heart, L couldn't find it in himself to feel too righteously indignant. L was the one who had wanted to win badly enough he'd anted up his allies in their game. He had been cocky. He had been too cavalier.
"Frustrating," he answered. "Like when you can't stay awake even though you're in the middle of a project."
The brain, whirling determinedly away even as it stopped receiving fresh blood, as the vision narrowed down to a thin line, a screen shutting off uncaring of whether it was the end of the program.
He researched relevant players he hadn't been aware of at this point. All were transpiring to be about where he'd have plced them.
The web of events was elaborate. But that could have been dream logic. He'd tried, but never gotten the hang of, lucid dreaming. He was not sure he would be truly convinced this was happening until he'd discovered a why.
He hovered his overful teacup not quite at his lips. Next, he could find a backdoor into the TCPD systems, but...maybe...
He wormed into Yagami Light's computer instead. After 24 hours of passive data collection this provided him with Souichirou's passwords and how Light concealed he was using them.
It was very amateur, which was the best way to hack an organization that thought it was going to be hacked by professionals. Casual exploitation of loose security.
It was child's play on top of this to get a day-old visual on Light. L looked at the security photo and felt a thrill up his spine. Ah, death really didn't change me for the better at all, he thought.
"What's next in the docket?" asked Wammy, tidying up the workstation they were slated to abandon. (L remained on his computer chair and let this happen around him.) He was content to follow L's lead, even knowing he had led them both to their deaths.
"I want to find out why I've come back in time, and how," said L. "...But I don't have any leads to speak of."
"Except young Yagami," concluded Wammy, who was not an unclever man.
"I don't want to return to the Kira case," L admitted.
"Completely understandable," said Wammy without judgment. He was not an overly moral man, either.
L fidgeted. Flopped somewhat. "The Kira case is the most interesting case on the planet right now," he said.
Wammy waited.
"But I already know how he kills," L sulked. "And dying kind of hurt."
Wammy's mouth pursed at this. But he only asked, "What are you planning, L?"
"I'm going to insert myself," announced L, rising and stepping out of his chair. "What do we have in liquid assets right now?"
"What will this be put toward?" inquired Wammy.
L rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling and thought about it, chewing his lip. "Shenanigans," he declared.
He realized he had forgotten a social step and stopped his creep for the exit. He swiveled his head around. "Though Weatherby, if you want to return to the school for a year or two, or perhaps go on vacation—"
"I'll go where you go," interrupted Wammy, chilly.
L pursed his lips, finding now he'd began it that this was not the perfunctory check-in he'd taken it for. He said, "I would prefer if you didn't die."
Wammy sighed. "A similar sentiment is why I will accompany you."
L turned back around. "I see," he said, nodding. "Emotional blackmail."
"This time I trust you to take the appropriate precautions," said Wammy.
"Ugh," said L. "You're no fun."
To enact his very ingenious and only partially driven by general doubt in reality and spite scheme, L got a job at a pastry chain in Tokyo.
After less than a single afternoon, the manager deemed L unfit to serve customers (this was correct), so he was shuffled onto glazing duty. He accepted this without complain as, due to the pop-up-cum-cart-style layout of the establishment, this still allowed him a clear view of anyone patronizing the establishment. Moreover, he did not especially want to serve customers.
He despised the thin plastic sanitation gloves, which felt like rather than protecting his hands they moved the barrier of contaminated flesh up to his wrists, oils creeping and substances splashing upwards, until he wanted to decontaminate his arms up to the elbows and down to the bone.
It's for the case, he told himself even though there was no case, not really. It was the same process of steeling himself to put discomfort aside for a greater cause.
The greater cause this time was just bullying Yagami Light.
This is a cinnamon roll of great justice, he told himself, then held it up to eye level and examined it, debating whether to eat half of it in front of his manager. For great justice.
His fingers twitched. He solved cold cases from his backlog and sent in tips about them thumb-typed on a PDA on his lunch breaks. He was so understimulated he contemplated playing some stocks, which he was trying to cut back on. He had more money than one person could ever need and than he had any inclination to redistribute responsibly, and also he acclimated to them the way some people did to pachinko.
The manager sat him down. "I have been informed I can't fire you," he said.
"Yes," said L, who had purchased the chain before applying for the job.
"But I want to," said his manager, like it was important L knew.
"That's fine," said L. He pulled an industrial tub of cold icing over, stuck one finger into it, and licked it.
The manager's mouth flexed murderously. L entertained himself briefly by imagining this scheme if Light was his manager.
When Light finally walked in, L had been shuffled back to cashier duty to get him to stop licking the donut icing, where he would remain until customer satisfaction dropped untenably low. With a pull that was gravity-inevitable, they locked eyes across the room, and a realization was clear to L at once:
He's bored again.
Without anyone challenging to oppose him, Kira was already getting bored. A smile spread like an ocean oil slick over L's face. Or perhaps like the mysterious and ever-widening sticky spot under the second stove that no one could seem to mop up.
Everything was falling in line with his loftiest expectations. Light would crawl on his knees right to L. He didn't realize it, but he was desperate.
And L would lead this insufferable man, in his supplication, right through the mystery floor goo.
L favored Light with his (he was told) very unsettling customer service smile. "Welcome to Cinnabon," he said.
—
AO3
230 notes
·
View notes