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L’s profile bleeds into existence.
He is out of place. He doesn’t belong among rusted pipes; his shadow should not be resting against the wall, dyed pink by a fatigued sunset. Thin lances invade the warehouse through a window above their heads, illuminating the detective. Light’s vision swims. He’s read about such phenomena: the apparition is a veridical hallucination, the last thing that Light will see in the prelude to his death. Slumped on the stairwell, he notes the tightness in his chest, the sweat gathering on his cold neck. He has, depending on Ryuk’s mood, thirty seconds left.
L crouches. He looks identical to how he did all those years ago – and the same as he had six months back, when he’d broken into Light’s dream one night and jerkily twisted in his chair to threaten, I am closing in. Those shabby clothes. The black, unkempt hair. The papery complexion. And his judgemental eyes, smudged with exhaustion. L fixates on Yagami Light, placing him under surveillance.
Such a scruffy, squalid disappointment.
A brilliant opponent.
How had he ever troubled Kira?
How had L ever allowed himself to die?
“I was impressed,” L says, adopting that detestable, amicable tone. “When you first formulated your plan, you accounted for the possibility of your personality shifting between the time you relinquished and regained the Death Note. There was a chance, however small, that the Yagami Light who served on the Kira Task Force would be unreliable. Perhaps the trauma of discovering that he was truly Kira would lead him to beg for his execution. However,” L averts his gaze and frowns at the rafters, “in the helicopter, following your initial shock, you rapidly adapted. You set events into motion without any further need to re-evaluate your moral stance. Only Kira would be capable of such a feat.”
Verbose. Insightful. That’s L, isn’t it? Yet, this illusory L is too complimentary. And inconsistent. He had no details of the contracts and therefore could not explain the changes in Light’s behaviour. He should be more like the L who appeared in the dream, who’d bitterly dug a silver spoon into a strawberry cheesecake and scoffed, I thought you’d at least have the decency to end our rivalry yourself.
But Light had. The semantics were unimportant. He'd placed the pieces. The pawns had then acted accordingly.
Light recalls recovering the Death Note from Rem’s ashen dust. Hiding it inside his blazer. And then, sometime later, flicking through the buttery pages, each one drenched in tangy mildew. He saw the foreign name scrawled there, ungainly in the Reaper’s ugly hand. He’d snapped the book shut, fury coursing down his spine. All that trouble. All that hassle. And for what? For whom? The detective hadn’t earned such fanfare. Hadn’t deserved to occupy so much of Kira’s attention. Still wasn’t worth –
L says, “Ultimately, your need to involve others led to your downfall. Your activities grew to an unmanageable scale and Kira was unable to continue working alone. You were foolish to underestimate Mello and Near. Near, especially. That he carries my title should have set you on your guard.”
Again, it’s… too much. Too much praise. L can be gracious when it serves a purpose. He can commend even imbecilic, blundering Matsuda, if there is a need. But his sincere admiration is reserved for Light. His respect is for Light alone.
Certainly not small children.
Present tense? No. Wrong. Stop. L is gone. This ghost is a ghost. This shadow is a shadow. This L is a dead man given life by Light’s imagination. He is a flickering remnant. He will fade when Kira does. His survival is tied to the one who bested him.
How appropriate.
The L in the midsummer dream had sat at his desk in the gloomy control room, methodically pinching sugar cubes and dropping them into a porcelain teacup. A bright monitor had thrown jagged, neon shapes upon his face. He’d said, You cannot simultaneously maintain Kira and L, Yagami-kun. One will give way. The paradox is far too great. It is impossible for both to embody justice.
“Yagami-kun?” Light had smiled. “Why have you dropped the familiarity, Ryuzaki? I was Light before.”
A pause. The bottomless eyes, unblinking, meeting his. Glistening with amusement.
You should hardly find that surprising.
Becoming L was… easy. Everyone who’d remained on the Kira Task Force was an idiot. Light’s own father had demonstrated painful naivety in L’s absence, trusting his son to the very close, despite the evidence that loomed before him. Any passable detective would have –
“Would have what?” asks L. “A normal person couldn’t have coped. You went to extraordinary lengths to preserve the facade. Nevertheless, it eventually amounted to nothing.”
Yagami Light. Kira. L. Inhabiting the same body while failing as a single unit. It didn’t matter. Nothing matters. Despite everything, he will not rule over a cleansed, perfected world.
“You’ve accepted the truth. That’s good.” L is staring at him again. “There’s something that’s been on my mind for a while. Kira. How old are you?”
Light wants to howl. Pathetic! L would not have wasted these pivotal moments on such a pointless question; he would have gloated, found some way to crush Light’s ribs, left him in tatters. They really were fallible copies, weren’t they? Neither of the two Ls that his subconscious had conjured could compare to the L that Kira had killed. The L who had breathed.
He has long enough to oblige the hallucination. Bored, unhappy, Light thinks, You already know that I’m twenty-four.
L smiles. Light jolts at the sight of that saccharine, knowing expression. It spells poison. L runs one index finger across his lower lip and muses, “And I was twenty-five. It seems that I outlived you. Looks like I won, Yagami Light.”
No!
They were coalescing. The last L. The dream L. They were merging, folding into his staggering arrogance. L was intriguing. L was frustrating. He was childish. He was fun. Victori–