Death Note Fan Fiction ❯ Going to Marrakesh ❯ Psychobabble ( Chapter 13 )

Disclaimer: Not mine.

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Psychobabble
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There are questions once the shock starts to dissolve, Aiber and Wedy demanding instructions for dealing with Higuchi, the investigative team turning down the breakfast they've been sharing, and Light finds himself missing the chain, missing having his hands free, and deeply resenting the fact that he can't reach for him anymore, can't slide his hands in his pockets or down his spine, can't poke and prod him into dealing with their annoyances instead of keeping his nose buried in the notebook and leaving him mostly on his own to deal with the desperate incomprehension of the investigation team. At least Matsuda's finally stopped crying, though his eyes are still red and glazed with what's either shock or horror or both, and as always, it's nothing but annoying.

"I'm first Kira, of course," Light says placidly, deliberately staring somewhere past his father's left shoulder, ignoring the tension threaded throughout every body in the room save for his own and L's. Trembling shoulders, clenched teeth, and he lets his lashes droop and briefly entertains a thought of curling himself around L just to watch them stare. Stupefied horror is stupefied horror, but he's been a suspect long enough to know that the force of L's unsubstantiated suspicions would be enough to damn him in any court in the world. "And be careful of Misa, she's got the eyes like Higuchi, although she seems to be cooperating with us with a minimal amount of fuss."

He turns a thoughtful gaze towards the detective still perched beside him, still the same as he ever was, and just watches him for a long moment's silence. They haven't planned anything so far, at least not out loud, but... "I assume we'll be turning him in in our place?"

L glances up, nods, and promptly returns to scanning the notebook and stacking sugar cubes. It looks like he's building a castle, but Light watches the layout and knows it's a fortress to bind him. It doesn't matter - the walls are for protection as much as isolation, and no one but L will ever be able to be his keeper and his kept. My choice, he thinks smugly, my choice and my future and my dreams are still alive.

"You deserve the death penalty you've earned, of course," L says softly, dark eyes flickering between notepaper and his ever-growing tower, spiraling now to either arch delicately towards heaven or crash to the ground, "but I won't waste your mind."

"Mmm," he agrees softly, and glances back at the sound of his father's half-muffled exclamation, frowning at his puzzled face. "What?" he asks quietly, straightening up a little, trying to throw off the sense of lazy satisfaction that's been keeping him half-dreamy even as he spells out the obvious for the sake of the rest of the team. "You think he'd let me be a martyr to my own cause?"

Isn't this obvious? he thinks in disgust, Pay attention, open your eyes, look! You thought you could ever reach me?

"If I am exposed as Kira, if I am executed, then my cause will never die, regardless of whether or not it's a private or a public execution. My followers" - the thought is delicious and pitying all at once - "will believe anything to keep their faith alive." Taken up by fools and madmen, pale imitations of his own grace, but it's only now he's realizing what mortality means, and Kira will not go to heaven or hell in the end. L probably will just to spite him, because he's a bastard like that, so if he doesn't hold on now his sacrifice will be for nothing, for all that Kira is immortal.

"Light..." His father sounds so old, and his hair is streaked with gray, and Light eyes him through his lashes and wonders why he can't quite catalogue the expression on his face. Shouldn't he of all people be glad at this surrender? Shouldn't he be proud, for what he's done, for what he's changed, even for yielding to the forces of the law? I didn't want to hurt you, he thinks but doesn't say, but if you're not going to be of any use to me then I don't have time to bother with you.

"I make a much more inspiring god than Higuchi ever could, you know," Light points out, calm and matter-of-fact, and ignores the way they all flinch at the reminder of what he's done. Fools and idiots, he thinks, and knows that they still can't quite believe it, not of their golden boy, so bright and brilliant and beautiful. It's not acting if it's true, but L has always been the only one to see him. "I'm young and attractive and I've given people hope. Kira will live forever no matter what happens, but if I died now they'd love me even more - every religion loves its tragedy."

Fanaticism is fanaticism, however misguided, and Misa is living proof of his own divinity. He doesn't need to race anymore, and the adrenaline thrill of changing the world has softened these past months into calmness and certainty and carefully curbed passion, of curling up beside him and trailing his fingers down his body, trying to feel out where the dagger has been hidden, and he's long since realized that his weapon of choice is sugar-sweet poison, so he's adjusted accordingly, clinging ever-closer and offering back his own. It's perfect, it will be perfect, and L will never ever let him go. I did this to myself, he thinks, soft and sleepy and self-satisfied, glancing through his lashes back at his couchmate and smiling. I did this for me and I have never been wrong.

"Kira is a selfish, spoiled child." L's answering smile is small and secretive and cruel, but his voice is utterly bland as he abandons the tower for dropping sugar cubes into tea in a delicate saucer. Congratulations on the fine son you've raised, Chief Yagami, he doesn't say. I'm sure you must be proud of all of his success. "But the masses will only see an idiot child trying to save the world by destroying it."

Light's toes curl slightly, annoyance and amusement warring with smug contentment and the urge to slam his cuffed fists into the side of his head. "The numbers don't lie, Ryuuzaki," he says softly instead, looking away like he's shy and ashamed and admitting a painful truth only because that's the kind of good, honest boy that he is, the one his father is so proud of raising, the one they'd been longing to admit into their fold once he was old enough. He's stolen kisses with this pose, from him and Misa both, but right now it's a show for the others, unappreciative audience that they are. "No matter what I think of it now, I had more of an effect on the crime rate than you ever will."

"You are also a serial killer," L says flatly, "and thusly I am not inclined to listen to your self-delusional justifications for your homicidal rampages." He pauses for a moment, fingertips hovering over the sugar bowl, before a cube crunches to powder in his grip. "Also, you are a magnificent liar. Anyone would think you might feel remorse for you actions."

Light gives him a pretty, careless smile, a lie to a liar to a lie. He has never rampaged in his life, and the bastard knows it. "I gave myself up to you, didn't I?"

L smirks back at him, eyes laughing, and flicks crystal sugar-dust off of his fingertips. "Perhaps you are finally growing up."

Light desperately stifles a laugh of his own, because everything is so ridiculous, because there's so much denial flooding the room that it's hard to breathe, because everyone's so blind but the truth is so clear, because the path to godhood has gone so convoluted that the only way up is down and the only way to divinity is mortality. Truce is truce is war engaged, and he's never seen such magnificent hypocrite - if he weren't so amused it would be appalling, and L has always been the only enemy he's ever wanted. He knows if he starts laughing, he won't be able to stop, and that's pathetic and hilarious but he can't let his father and the other idiots know just how fragile his sanity is, because his only regret is that he had to confess to make it work, but L is the only one who deserves the truth, because L is the only one who knows it, and neither one of them is entirely sane, probably, but he can't quite bring himself to care anymore.

His facade is falling to pieces, and for once he can't be bothered to put it back together again. There are better ways to spend his time, because the only times L has ever believed him were when he was forced to, and even then he'd still known that he was a liar.

L turns back to his castle, but glances back up to where Soichiro - My father, Light reminds himself, this man is still my father and he's just had a severe shock and I should be making overtures of comfort and reassurance that are hampered by my obvious guilt and shame - is still slumped in his chair, head in his hands. Light blinks, frowns a little, and idly hopes he doesn't have another heart attack - the irony would make Ryuk laugh, if it ever got back to him, and for all that he's been an interesting companion, his shinigami has what is perhaps the most annoying laughter in this or any other world.

"You may lie to your family, if you like," L says suddenly, still staring at Soichiro like he's a rather uninteresting bug under a microscope, like he's poking him in an effort to make him do something interesting instead of just sitting there, playing dead while his world collapses out from underneath him. "I'm certain they would feel better about the situation if they did not know that your son is a serial killer."

...his family? Sayu. His mother. Strange, to think of them now, after so long apart, after hardly thinking about them at all these past few months. They'd be horrified - at least his mother would be, but Sayu has always idolized him, so maybe not...? He can't quite picture her an avid supporter, but he can't see her pitted against him, either, and she's always been a good girl, if a little silly and terribly uninteresting in the way that most almost-teenage girls are. Light shifts uncomfortably, swallowing an inappropriate giggle and the thought of his little sister founding a fan club, and pointedly says "Was. I'm not Kira anymore, Ryuuzaki, we all know that now. I won't be, not even for you." I will never not be Kira, and you will never not be L.

He can feel the strangeness of the statement in the way that his father shifts his weight, the way that Matsuda flinches, but it's like breathing or dreaming or both, and there's nothing he wouldn't do for him, nothing nothing nothing nothing at all.

L just hums a little, off-key and childish and strange. "Liar, liar, pants on fire~" he singsongs, and Light stares at him, because the English words make no sense whatsoever, and L just smiles. If they were alone, he would probably blow him a kiss, and the thought of immolation really isn't that bad, all things considered, so long as he can take L with him.

The thought makes him pause, and blink, and frown, remembering laughter and an idle dream, and yes, yes, he does still want to die together, he does want to cling to him while he breathes his last, he does want to be the one to break that fragile shell and crush that beautiful mind, he does, he does, he does. He wants to die with him, only with him, and if Misa pleads for it they can take her too, murder-suicide and the most perfect way to end a perfect life.

Immortality sounds like it would be awfully boring, anyway.

He's shaken out of his reverie when L speaks again, a low drawl that proves he's just as bored with the others as he is. "Killing him would serve no purpose. I believe that Light would be much more useful as an assistant to me - to pay his debt to society, at least a little bit. Of course he will be kept in detention, as any other prisoner would be." The sarcasm is thick enough to breathe in, and L pauses for a moment, apparently relishing the way they all seem to gag on it. "Also, should he attempt to turn back to his Kira-like ways, I can snap his neck with relative ease assuming he is close by me."

Light eyes the delicate lengths of his fingers, remembers the brush of their coolness against his throat, and the smoothness of the skin stretched over his spine when he runs his hands up his back, and thinks of gleaming steel and ruby-bright blood. "Has anyone ever told you that you're a complete freak of nature?" is what he says instead of laughing and drawing a counter, instead of painting the world in black ink. He doesn't think it's a coincidence that his world has shifted to encompass the starkness of white and black, and the impossibility of the two coexisting.

"Often."

Light snorts, shaking his head chidingly, more habit than deliberate act, though the words are meant to sting unpleasant truths home to the investigation team. This is the man you chose to follow when you could have had me. "You're not going to kill me because then you'd be bored, that's all," he drawls, but inside he's preening at the reactions they can't quite stifle, at the dark look Aizawa flashes L, who just stares back at him guilelessly.

"You needn't sound so incredulous, Light-kun. After all, you did the same thing."

Touché, he acknowledges, the faintest of smiles curling his lips. "...I suppose," he says, careful to keep his voice mild and half-ashamed, careful to look away, and promptly has to stifle an inappropriate snicker at the look on his father's face. Hadn't he said once, early on, that he was happy that Light was finally acting his age? Brawling with L has always been the one thing that makes them both something approaching normal, but now that the dance is open for viewing, the audience is starting to learn just how raw it is, and as always, they're flinching away.

"Light..." His father's voice sounds very far away.

He closes his eyes for a long moment, tilting his head to look younger and resigned and tragic, and offers his father a pained smile. "...it's been difficult, father," he murmurs theatrically, "if Ryuuzaki hadn't been with me when I got the Note back, I don't think I could have fought off its influence... it's evil, father." He opens his eyes wide, bites his lip like a child. "I... I know that makes me weak, that I couldn't handle it on my own..."

Soichiro stares at him. Light stares down at his shoes. "...I just feel like... being around Ryuuzaki gives me a purpose, a reason to fight it off..." He hunches in on himself, projecting shame and awkwardness, just a teenager drowning in confusion and a tinge of homoerotic frustration. "I couldn't kill my best friend. Not even being Kira could make me hurt-" a hitch of breath, a glance upward as if seeking salvation, "make me hurt anyone I care about..."

Soichiro is wavering, he knows, wanting to believe him, believe in him, like he was only confused, like the Note itself could have seduced him into becoming a killer. Like it wasn't his choice to cleanse the world of evil, like it wasn't a great dream of peace and prosperity, like he wasn't actually a god. His father's face is a portrait in tortured confusion, and it's so hard not to laugh.

"I wanted to save people," he says softly, "I wanted to make the world a better place, but..."

He chances a glance over at L. His eyes are dark and cruel and laughing, and Light tilts his head just slightly to curl him a secret half-smile bubbling with mischief and something close to glee. "It's easier to think this way," he says, shamelessly making it up as he goes along, "I can see now how everything went wrong, but I don't think trying to change the world is wrong."

"...Light..." his father murmurs, and his eyes are tired and terribly old. Light knows he's the one who etched those lines in his face, and feels no guilt for it. His father made the decision to stand against him, and while it's sad, it mostly reinforces how thinly worn the world has made him. Saving it will save him, too, but now his path is shrouded, and the golden way is dead. He's always known that L is anything but justice. "...do you really believe that?"

"I'm not wrong," he says, and folds his bound hands peacefully in front of him. Breathe, he thinks, breathe and know you're still alive. And don't laugh, don't laugh, don't laugh while L is watching you, don't spoil the game just to win his smile.

There's a long moment of silence, his father's fists clenching, a flicker of something in his eyes that Light can't quite identify. "Are you lying to me, Light?" he asks, slow and evenly, a tone he hasn't heard since the age of seven. A year or so ago, it might have mattered to him, might have sparked indignation or embarrassment, but it's been a very long time since his father's opinion has really mattered, and maybe he never really was the son his father had wanted after all.

"I could be," he says softly, and lifts a soft, appealing gaze towards his father, widening his eyes just so and drawing on all the acting skill he possesses, the memory of a conviction he'd never really felt at all. "Why, father? What do you want to believe?"

Behind his teacup, L is chuckling, dark and soft and husky. Light glances at him through lazy eyes and smiles, a little giddy, a little thrilled, warmth curling low in his belly, pooling in his insides and flooding him with slow heat.

I love you, he mouths silently in English, and L puts down his cup and laughs outright, jagged around the edges and just mad enough to be appealing.

The way the investigation team collectively cringes back in blatant horror is the funniest thing he's seen all month.

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