Chapter Text
November 25th, 2004
You were in your suite in Rome, Italy, where the afternoon light drapes itself across the smooth, marble floor. Your apartment was slightly messy, though it was clean and elegant for the most part, just the way you liked it. An assorted bouquet of white peonies, pink and white lilies, and a couple fresh roses lay on the dresser, beside a stack of novels. At the top of the stack was a copy of La part de l’autre, your current read. Your bedsheets, a light pink silk with black polka dots, looked inviting, especially after a long day at work consisting of studying case files and speaking to annoying clients.
However, you cannot rest. Even if some shut-eye was all you wanted, your mind, soul, body, and especially your heart could not rest. You didn’t think it ever could as Roger’s call still echoed in your ears:
“L is dead.”
You whispered, “That’s not possible…”
You already knew that it was Kira who was the culprit behind this atrocity, this tragedy, this… Gosh, you couldn’t even think of any more synonyms, so much everything ached. You sank onto the bed, clutching yourself as if memory alone could keep you outright.
L’s small smiles, his quiet scrutiny, the impossible tenderness of his gentle presence flickered through you like fading film, black-and-white, but your moments together hadn’t been in black-and-white. They’d been colourful, lively, and ever-so real. They weren’t meant to become gray so soon.
“No, this can’t be real…” you breathed, gripping the phone as though it could resurrect him.
The room tilted, and Rome outside continued its indifferent music of life. Even if grief was causing a collapse within yourself, you continued to hold on to him, as if love could bargain with death for a moment longer only.
You couldn’t sleep that night. Especially not in your bed. ‘What do you mean I have to go to bed every night knowing I’ll never get to speak to him again?’ repeated inside your mind. You had to pull yourself together, trying to remind yourself that you knew this day would come. When he’d first announced he was about to investigate the infamous Kira, you knew deep inside your heart that this was the end, that from then on, every moment would become a core memory, would be classified within a folder of ‘our last moments together.’ And yet you let yourself believe that he’d come back.
Despite the pain, you had to remind yourself one thing: that you had promised him you wouldn’t give up. Never, never again would you run away from life. That had been one of your last promises to Lawliet. That you would never run away from love and the world, that you would live each moment he could not, each moment that being ‘L’ had prevented him from experiencing.
‘To be in the world and of the world.’
——
The name ‘Camille’ is derived from the Latin name Camillus or Camilla. In ancient Roman religion, ‘a camillus’ was a term used for a young person, often of noble birth, who served as an acolyte or ritual attendant to a priest during sacred sacrifices and religious ceremonies. The name, in the feminine sense, referred to words like ‘perfect’ or ‘of unblemished character,’ becoming highly popularized in France later on.
The name ‘Camille’ was given to you with gentle certainty when you were born. No one told you how cruelly the definition of the name would one day echo against your life.
You were born on February 19th, 1981, in the French countryside, where winter light lay thin over the fields like a veil and springs were beautiful. You remember almost nothing of those earliest years except softness: a wide, cozy house surrounded by gardens and a lake; a pet deer you named Angel; and two cats that moved through your world, always there to comfort your cries as a baby. Your mother, an Algerian civil rights lawyer, carried justice in her voice like a second pulse; your father, a French inventor, built impossible miracles.
For five years, your life was uncomplicated in the way only early childhood can be. That was until the car accident on the road back from Paris, rewriting everything in a single absence. Your parents did not return, though you waited in that house, all alone and worried.
An old man with spectacles and a gray Englishman suit arrived. You recognized him as your father’s old friend and mentor from his studies in England: Quillsh Wammy. He was an inventor himself, also building orphanages in the same manner with which he built his creations and curated his philosophies. One of them, in Winchester, was said to be designed for children just like you. In other words, children whose futures bent strangely toward probability and pattern. Children who were likely to succeed in life, so their potential ought to be maximized. And so, at five, you were placed into Wammy’s House.
You adapted quickly, not resisting. You were kind, almost disarmingly so, soft-voiced and easy to trust. You quickly made friends. You learned the rules of rooms before you learned their names. And then, you sometimes asked when your parents would come home from their work trip; too young to understand what death meant, that death was a permanent thing that couldn’t be undone.
Wammy’s House taught you how to belong without ever truly being held. You learned to move through its halls, how to never be too loud, too bright, always just enough to be permitted to stay. You excelled in the arts, as well as in reading moods before words were spoken.
You were six when winter arrived early, pressing its pale hands against the windows of the House. That was the day he came.
A boy of seven, a year and three months older than you, unnamed in any way that mattered, though the others began calling him Lawliet after hearing Watari say it. His hair was thick, black, and uncombed, falling into his eyes, often obscuring his face. His expression rarely changed, being mostly a blend of neutrality and being puzzled. You often looked at him and assumed that he saw the world like a riddle written in a language he hadn’t yet mastered. He bit his nails absentmindedly quite often, constantly testing reality.
The other children did what children often do with what they cannot categorize: they ignored him, some even treated him like an inconvenience that had learned how to walk. He, in turn, ignored almost everyone. Only almost. He spoke little and trusted only the orphanage’s founder, the man who brought you here, Watari. Observant, withdrawn, Lawliet seemed to drift at the edges of the House and refused to commit to a single source of light.
Yet, when his eyes first landed on you, something in him stilled. It wasn’t understanding or affection, but recognition. Recognition of what? Well, who knew what went on inside his head. You certainly didn’t.
You remember seeing him first in the dining hall, not because he made any particular impression but because he didn’t. He sat alone at the far end of a table, eating as if food was just data, not really pleased or inconvenienced. When someone dropped a tray nearby and laughter broke out, he didn’t look up. That, more than anything, made him strange. Who didn’t find such things funny? Was he not human? Who was this kid?
Later that week, in the library, you reached for a book on a high shelf and misjudged the distance. It slipped, just barely out of reach, before a hand appeared and steadied it back into place. You turned.
He was there, close enough that you hadn’t heard him approach, far enough that it didn’t feel like intrusion, boundaries still intact. It was Lawliet, watching the book rather than you.
“Thanks!” you said, smiling.
“You were going to drop it,” he replied.
“I know,” you chuckled awkwardly.
A silence filled the space between, and you found it so painfully awkward. But also awkward in a cute way, kind of? You didn’t know what to think. Most of the kids here were either too silent to have even spoken in the first place or so loud they would’ve started a conversation with you right then and there. Lawliet hadn’t done either. Instead, he seemed to consider whether anything further was necessary, then added, almost as an afterthought:
“That would have been inefficient.”
You blinked at that, eyebrow raised. “Books being dropped is inefficient?”
“It interrupts sequence,” he responded.
“You talk like a machine,” you drawled, a smile creeping up your face.
“Mistakes are useless.”
“Sounds exhausting, to think that way,” you said as you held the book to your chest.
He didn’t answer immediately. After a solid minute, he replied quieter, “It is normal. To me, at least.”
And then he walked away, leaving you with the odd impression that you had not quite been dismissed, only filed somewhere for later reference.
After that first interaction, the boy remained peripheral. He was never kind in any conventional sense, since he didn’t feel warm or familiar to you yet. Yet whenever something seemed to upset you, he’d often leave his little bubble to let out a comment, one that would go unspoken, or a glance that made you reconsider the meaning behind it. He was awfully confusing, you found. Nonetheless, you never asked what he was really thinking of, mostly because you didn’t care enough (yet) to do so, and he never explained.
However, you did start to notice that when you entered a room, his attention, rarely given to anything, was already there, waiting, as if you were one of the few variables he had decided not to ignore in this Institution.
The first seven months passed quietly, though not because Lawliet suddenly became social, nor because you somehow cracked through his walls. If anything, he remained as peculiar as ever. He spent most of his time reading, solving puzzles far above his age level, or sitting in corners with that distant expression of his. Still, over time, you found yourself sitting near him during lessons. Sometimes you spoke, sometimes you didn’t. He never seemed to mind either option.
One snowy afternoon, shortly before dinner, you were sitting in one of the common rooms, sketching absentmindedly in a notebook. A shadow fell across the page, so you glanced up and saw Lawliet standing there, hands tucked awkwardly behind his back.
“... Hey, Lawliet.”
Without a word, he held something out toward you. It was a small package. You blinked.
“What’s that?”
“Mochi.”
You stared. “Mochi?” You carefully opened the package. Inside were several pieces of lychee mochi. For a moment, you genuinely thought you were imagining it. “Wait! Wait, wait, wait!” You looked up at him, eyes wide. “Where did you even get these?!”
“Watari asked if I wanted anything.”
You looked down at the mochi once more. “And you asked for this?”
“Yes.”
“For yourself?”
“No.”
“No?”
Lawliet shifted slightly, his toes (you just noticed he was barefoot now… uh, kinda weird, but you could ignore that) rubbing against each other.
“It was for you,” he admitted.
For several seconds, your brain simply stopped functioning. The orphanage never had mochi, especially not lychee mochi. Your face immediately lit up.
“Oh my God, seriously?!” Before thinking, you jumped from the couch and threw your arms around him. “Thank you!”
The hug lasted only a second because immediately afterward, you felt him go completely rigid, not hugging back. Just freezing in place. You stepped away instantly, realizing perhaps he didn’t respond well to physical touch. Such a phenomenon wasn’t completely out of the ordinary in orphanages, since some kids came from abusive households before being orphaned or taken here by social services.
“Oh my gosh, sorry! Sorry, sorry!” Heat rushed to your face, embarrassed by what you considered to be inconsiderate behaviour from yourself. “I totally should’ve asked first!”
Lawliet adjusted his sleeve. “It is fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
His voice stayed flat, as it always was, but there was no irritation in it. You relaxed slightly, relieved that he wasn’t annoyed at you for the sudden hug-attack. Then another realization hit.
“Wait. How did you even know I liked lychee mochi?”
For once, Lawliet appeared almost confused by the question. “Well, you prefer lychee-flavoured sweets,” he simply replied.
“... I do?”
“Yes.”
“You noticed that?”
“You choose them and strawberry-flavoured desserts approximately seventy-eight percent of the time when available. I would’ve gotten you macarons, but you had some only a few days ago, so I felt it wouldn’t have been as significant as mochi.”
You stared, speechless.
Lawliet continued, “You also seem happier when consuming them.”
A laugh escaped you, your smile unable to disappear. “Oh my God,” you shook your head, “that’s actually so sweet!”
“It is merely an observation.”
“Uh-huh, still counts,” you drawled, grinning.
For the first time since meeting him, you noticed the smallest hesitation in his posture, as though he wasn’t entirely sure how to respond. That made the gesture surprisingly thoughtful, even more meaningful in an odd way. But then again, the boy was odd, so it all fit nicely. After all, this wasn’t merely a gift; it was proof that Lawliet had been paying attention. That while most people looked past details, he had noticed yours.
You picked up a piece of mochi and smiled. “Thanks, Lawliet. Seriously.”
He looked away, looking down at his hands. “I am glad my deduction was correct.”
Standing there with the lychee mochi in your hands, snow drifting beyond the windows, you realized that somewhere between library shelves and quiet afternoons, the strange boy had become your friend. It had been this moment that marked the beginning of your friendship.
—
March 1987
By the time spring started to creep into Winchester, most of the children had settled into their opinions regarding Lawliet, their theories and statements concluded and officialized. The boy was strange, quiet, best left alone.
You knew he preferred eating by himself, as everyone pretty much did. At lunch, he always occupied the same end of the table, separated from the others by a comfortable distance nobody seemed interested in crossing. Naturally, that was exactly where you headed. You never liked seeing others alone, for loneliness felt too gray, too… cold. You hated the cold, you always preferred when the air was warm and light, when everyone was smiling and content, for everything felt sweeter and safer that way.
You arrived carrying a small box behind your back. Lawliet glanced up as you approached.
“I come bearing a peace offering,” you announced dramatically.
“A peace offering?”
“Yep!”
You placed the box on the table between you. It was a box of chocolate bon bons. His eyes lingered on them.
“You can continue being a loner if you want later, but I figured I should pay a toll for invading your personal space. And also for the mochis the other day; they were really yummy,” you explained cheerfully.
For what felt like forever, the boy simply looked at them, then, surprisingly, he reached forward and took one. Curiosity, perhaps. You watched him eat it. Then after taste-testing the first one like some gourmet food critic, he took another, then another. Soon he had completely forgotten to pretend he wasn’t interested.
A laugh escaped you.
“What?”
“You looked at the first one like it might be poisoned,” you retorted.
“It was an unknown variable.”
“Where would I get poison?”
“Rat poison from the janitor’s closet.”
“Oh. Anyway, what about now?”
Lawliet grabbed another bon bon. “It appears acceptable.”
Never had you ever heard someone talk in such a way! It was endearing to say the least. Hence, it all only made you laugh harder. The sound came easily to you, bright and unrestrained.
Lawliet blinked. He found it interesting. ‘Laughter: genuine amusement response, frequent occurrence, pleasant auditory quality,’ he noted.
You continued talking while he ate. “Roger says we’re supposed to get rain tomorrow. Oh! And I saw one of the cats in the garden trying to steal a sausage from Adrien, the other day.”
“Was it successful?”
“Very successful!” You grinned, giggling. “Adrien was devastated, though. I didn’t like that; I felt bad for him.”
Lawliet nodded thoughtfully, as if this cat-stealing-sausages talk was important information. “The cat demonstrated competent planning, then.”
“Oh my days,” you let out as you laughed once more.
For the next twenty minutes, you carried most of the conversation yourself, drifting between stories, observations, and completely random thoughts. Lawliet rarely spoke, but he listened. He really listened. As a matter of fact, he was an excellent listener, you found!
By the end, only two bon bons remained. You stared at the practically-empty box.
“Wow. Someone was hungry,” you smiled. “Glad you liked them!”
Lawliet looked down, then back at you, a small smile forming. “Thank you, Camille.”
The sentence had been simple, yet somehow felt unusually sincere. Once lunch ended, he found himself watching you leave. He was hoping you would sit beside him for the next meal and that this would become a pattern.
‘Camille is a good companion. I wouldn’t mind sitting beside her at meals.’
Then on, he always made sure the seat beside him or across from him was empty at the dining hall.
—
The orphanage courtyard contained a small playground that most of the children outgrew eventually. You and Lawliet never did, of course. Of all the games you could have played together, tag remained your favourite. Mostly because it was one of the few opportunities you had to challenge him physically, seeing as physical education classes weren’t mixed-gendered.
You were fast. Really fast, actually! Whenever the game started, you would take off running with complete confidence, darting between branches and climbing frames while laughing over your shoulder. For several glorious seconds, victory always seemed possible. Then Lawliet would somehow appear beside you, behind you, or directly in front of you, as though the laws of space had briefly stopped applying to this anomaly of a little boy.
“HOW?!” you shouted one afternoon after he tagged your shoulder.
“You were moving toward the swing set.”
“That doesn’t explain how you got there first!”
“It does.”
“No, it absolutely doesn’t!”
A tiny smile tugged at the corner of his mouth before disappearing. You narrowed your eyes.
“You’re weird, you know that?”
“I am aware.” He then paused, realizing he wasn’t sure if you meant it unkindly or not. “Is that a bad thing?”
You shrugged, smiling. “Nope. It’s cool.”
A few minutes later, the game resumed. You sprinted across the courtyard, laughing as several other children chased after you. As you looked back to make sure nobody was catching up, you failed to notice a patch of uneven ground. Your foot caught, and suddenly you were on the ground, the impact stinging. Several children immediately stopped running.
“Camille!”
“Are you okay?”
You pushed yourself upright with a groan.
“Yeah, I think so…”
When you rolled up the leg of your trousers, however, a collective wince spread through the group. Blood was already running down your scraped knee. Before anyone else could react further, Lawliet was kneeling beside you.
“Are you dizzy?” he pressed.
“Nope.”
“Did you hit your head?”
“No.”
“Can you walk properly?”
“Probably?”
His eyes narrowed. “Probably is not an answer.”
You couldn’t help smiling. “I’m fine, Lawliet.”
“How much pain are you experiencing?
“Seriously?”
“Can you stand?”
“Lawliet.”
He continued as if you hadn’t spoken. “Do you feel nauseous?”
At that point, irritation slipped into your voice: “It’s just a scraped knee. It’s not a big deal.”
That stopped him, and a silence followed.
You stood, testing your weight. Your knee hurt, but not enough for it to stop you from walking. The game resumed shortly afterward. Yet, for the rest of that afternoon, Lawliet found himself distracted.
His reaction had been completely disproportionate to the situation, objectively so. The injury was minor; his concern had been major. That inconsistency bothered him, almost as much as you fascinated him. Because somehow, despite everything life had taken from you, from that little girl named Camille who didn’t avoid him like the plague, you remained smiling, resilient, and impossibly difficult to discourage. And without consciously deciding to, Lawliet began seeking you out more often than ever before.
—
May 1991
You were ten when Wammy’s House stopped feeling entirely like a playground and started to become a prison.
Lawliet found you in a corner of the library, your knees drawn close, papers scattered like a failed attempt at order. Your expression tightened when you saw him. He was eleven now, unchanged in all the ways that mattered, yet you slightly (only slightly!) envied his ability to stay unaffected by what was now tormenting you.
“What’s wrong, Camille?” he asked.
You hesitated, then sighed. “They’re changing my name to ‘Cami’ for some dumb alias.”
Lawliet raised an eyebrow. “How come?”
“They put me in the prototype successor program.”
His head tilted slightly, confused.
You gave a humourless laugh, dry. “For L. That detective. I don’t even know who L is, I’ve been here half my life, yet I have no clue! Watari says he’s ‘exceptional.’ Apparently now we’re all… being tested. Ten to thirteen year-olds. Like we’re drafts or lab rats.” Your fingers tightened around the edge of the paper you’d picked up and held in your hands. “It’s harsh. I can’t even keep up and I hate that. Half of this is psychological terminology I don’t understand properly, and it’s all in old English words I’d never heard before, let alone am able to think through. It’s like they want us to think like adults before we even get to be teens in the first place.”
Lawliet had listened without interruption. That, more than anything, made the silence feel heavy, though you appreciated how thoughtful and careful he was being with this. You knew he wasn’t the best at giving comfort or advice, but you appreciated that he stayed by your side regardless.
“I do not understand the emotional difficulty,” he said at last, “but I understand the structure of the issue.”
You glanced up at him, exhausted. “That’s not exactly comforting, sorry.”
He didn’t reply, out of fear of saying the wrong thing. He then added simply: “Then I will assist you.”
“Really?” Your shoulders loosened at the thought.
“Yes.”
You blinked, then gave a small, tired smile. “Fine. And in exchange, I’ll help you with your French!”
He raised an eyebrow, thumb pressed against his lip. “Why, may I ask?”
“Because,” you said, leaning back, “for someone who’s part French, your French is honestly atrocious. Sorry!” you giggled.
He smiled faintly. “Fair enough.”
—
You were sitting across from Lawliet, papers spread between you. Ten minutes earlier, everything had been intact: your notes, his precise annotations, the candies, the thin stack of evaluation sheets you weren’t supposed to have access to but had acquired anyway through the usual quiet channels of curiosity and persistence… You know, the usual stuff.
Now one file was gone. It wasn’t misplaced, just gone. You frowned.
“That’s weird.”
Lawliet didn’t look up at first. He was already still in the way that meant he had noticed it before you did and was simply deciding if he should inform you or not.
“What is?” he asked.
“This.” You tapped the space where the document had been. “The First Wave Successor evaluation sheet. It was right here.”
He took a beat before responding too casually, “It was removed.”
By then, you knew that when he tried saying things quickly or too casually, it meant something else was happening beneath the surface.
“Removed how?”
Lawliet finally looked at your eyes with his. “Watari removed the file.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Why would he take it?”
He didn’t answer immediately once again.
You sighed. “It’s always like this with him, isn’t it?”
Lawliet tilted his head, biting his nail.
You gestured vaguely. “Watari is… careful with you. Like, excessively so! Not just normal caretaker careful. Something else.”
His expression didn’t change, but you noticed how he didn’t deny what you were implying.
You lowered your voice a tiny bit. “Nobody else gets that. Not even close. And nobody talks about it either.” You hesitated, then said what had been sitting at the back of your mind for years, shaped but unspoken. “Do you ever wonder why?”
“No,” he lied.
You exhaled, half-laughing. “Very on-brand. Anyway,” you scanned the remaining papers, “this is a mess. I’m going to fail the whole prototype thing at this rate.”
Lawliet picked up your pen without asking and began rewriting one of your notes in cleaner structure. “You will not fail, I can promise you that, Camille.”
Even after your named had been changed to ‘Cami’ (a way for the orphanage to recreate and curate the identities of those in the first wave of the L-Successor program here at the House), Lawliet continued pronouncing the last three letters of your real name.
“That sounds suspiciously confident,” you replied, smiling.
“It is statistical. You are smart, anyone can see that.”
You groaned. “Okay, I like the compliment, but you can’t just turn everything into statistics and expect me to feel better.”
“I am not attempting to improve your emotional state,” he replied calmly.
“Wow, thanks,” you chuckled dryly.
“You aren’t being efficient. We have a lot of studying ahead of us.”
You blinked at him. “That’s your version of comfort, hm?”
He didn’t respond, but he did keep writing. For a while, the missing file stayed unspoken between you. Nevertheless, you wondered what exactly Watari seemed to be ‘protecting’ (was that even the right word?) from and why.
The missing file remained forgotten for the rest of the study session. Mostly because your attention span wasn’t that cooperative at only ten. You were halfway through rewriting your notes when a hypothetical occurred to you (you enjoyed asking hypotheticals, they were always random yet endearing). You glanced up from the table and inspected the dark, focused eyes of your friend.
“Hey, Lawliet?”
“Hm?”
“If I left tomorrow, would you notice?”
The question was quite casual and thoughtless, the sort of thing you asked simply because there was a little too much silence filling the air. You expected him to ignore it, tell you that it was ‘statistically improbable’ as he always did,’ or ask why you were asking such useless hypotheticals once more. Instead, he provided you with a genuine answer.
“Yes, I would.”
The certainty of his response caught you off guard.
“That was fast!”
“It was a simple and easy question.”
You stared at him; he stared back, waiting. A strange warmth settled somewhere in your chest. You laughed awkwardly and glanced away.
“Okay, wow! Good to know, I guess.”
It was then that you realized that afternoon had turned into evening, and the library had emptied. Quickly, you gathered your books, grateful for an end to the awkward discussion, waved goodbye, and disappeared through the doorway.
“See y’a tomorrow, Lawliet!”
“See you tomorrow,” he replied.
The library doors clicked shut behind you. For several moments, Lawliet remained where he was, where you had left him.
“You spend a great deal of time with Cami.”
Lawliet looked up at the new voice. Well, it wasn’t a new voice, now was it?
Watari stood nearby, carrying a stack of documents. The older man’s expression was calm, though there was observation behind it. Lawliet returned his attention to the papers in front of him.
“That is incorrect.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
Watari smiled faintly. “Well, it seems that you seek her company rather frequently.”
“She is frequently present.”
“Hm.”
“Our interactions are efficient. She studies well and enjoys pursuing the humanities.”
“Of course.”
Watari’s smile widened ever so slightly, the response feeling suspicious. Lawliet disliked suspicious variables. He disliked anything suspicious. He despised not being able to fully trust something or someone.
After a moment, Mr Wammy turned toward the door.
“Good night, L.”
‘L.’ That was who he was, yes. That was his first name, though all his peers only knew him by his last name, as the loner Lawliet. Nobody knew he was L. Not even Camille.
“Good night, Watari.”
Once Watari left, the library fell quiet once more, even more than it had earlier. Yet instead of returning to his work all alone, Lawliet found himself staring at the empty seat across from him. The one you had occupied only minutes earlier.
Watari’s observation replayed in his mind. ‘You spend a great deal of time with Camille.’ Yet, for reasons he could not properly quantify, he found himself thinking about it long after the library lights were turned off.
L didn’t understand everything, in spite of his high intelligence. He didn’t know how to properly seek friendship, nor did he properly know how to be quite himself. He’d never admit it in fear of sounding insane and clinically unstable, but he oftentimes didn’t feel human. Most of the time, he felt like a tool, a weapon, an anomaly, and a symbol.
The rare moments in which he felt human happened to be when he was with you. He wanted to know why. What was it about you that made him feel so at ease, so alive? Why did he always feel the need to check up on you daily? Why had he been so willing to learn French when you offered? Why did he never feel socially drained when with you, as he often lost all energy with practically the entirety of this world?
For now, all he knew was that perhaps Watari was right.
L Lawliet did spend an awful amount of time with Camille ‘Cami’ Beaumont.