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"What happens when Kira is caught?"
Light isn't asking because of any particular ulterior motive. There aren't any chess games going on in the back of his mind, aside from the simple urge to get to know L better. Knowing thy enemy is an ulterior motive in itself, if he's really grilled on it, but aside from that, he's not attempting to make any headway one way or the other in regards to the investigation.
"For you, I mean." Light clarifies, after half a moment of silence, just long enough that it's a little awkward. He doesn't like sitting in silences of his own creation, not when there's no game to play. He should practice that, perhaps. It's a tell. L has almost certainly noticed it- Light curses himself silently for tacking onto his own question and tipping his own hand.
L, in lieu of answering, takes another spoonful of his dessert. It's a deep purple, flavored with either ube or blueberry based on sight alone, and textured like some kind of mousse. Light, on the contrary, has no such dessert, instead satisfied with a cup of black coffee that he intermittently sips from.
Finally, L takes his spoon out of his mouth and sets it on his plate. He swallows the no-doubt overly sweet mush, and answers.
"I will remain in Japan until the verdict is given, as I have needed to testify with regards to my investigative process in the past. I've found that adjusting timezones is a chore, so I'll stay until I'm no longer needed. Then, I'll go back to England until the next case takes me somewhere new." He sounds bored, like he's delivered the same information a thousand times before. For all Light knows, he has, just swapping out different countries and different cases. This is the world's greatest detective, after all, so he's surely proved his merit in other countries aside from Japan.
It's just a pity that he will meet his match in Kira. That sort of life seems exciting, in spite of the dull tone that L speaks of it with, and he's sure that L must look forward to each new case. Light certainly would, after all; even now, as Kira, each name brings its own spark of victory as each and every one leads him to the bright future that he envisions for the world.
L must feel the same, regarding bringing the other criminals to justice. It's just a pity that Kira is justice, in its purest karmic form, and L trusts too much in the disparate systems of various countries to dole out appropriate consequences.
Case in point, the idea that L would speak in court. That he would need to speak in court. Why should the world's greatest detective have to prove himself? Why does such a brilliant- eccentric, certainly, but brilliant- man have to justify his actions to a jury of laymen? Why should some plumber or street vendor be able to decide if L is correct? That doesn't seem very just to Light. He's making sure that true justice is served, by outsourcing it to nobody at all. Light knows what is correct, so he is best poised to be judge, jury, and executioner. Kira is the truest form of justice there is.
"You'll continue doing that forever?" Light asks, instead of saying anything revealing. He knows that his own views on the matter are biased in favor of Kira, of himself, and he's loath to give L the upper hand.
L shrugs, dispassionately. He looks Light over, almost as though he's sizing him up for something, then looks back down at his mousse.
"Until one of the perpetrators of one of these atrocities eventually kills me, yes," L replies, which Light takes as a little morbid. Certainly cynical, if nothing else, to decide that he'll eventually be bested by one of the criminals he hunts. It makes sense, especially because Light is fully intending on being that criminal, and the thought process is sound. After all, L has to win the case each time; it only takes one criminal one time to end it all for him.
"So violent, Ryuzaki," He teases anyway. "No retirement plans for you?" He does find it a little odd, that such a meticulous person would leave his future up to chance. What if he doesn't die, has he ever thought of that? He's obviously wealthy, but that can't last forever, especially with how much he spends it all on desserts and new hotel rooms and dozens of other things that he clearly isn't billing the government for. Doesn't he have any sense of fiscal responsibility?
Light shouldn't be bothered by this. After all, he knows that it's a hypothetical, because L will never live to retirement. L will never see another case. Still, something about how lackadaisical L is about it all irks him, just a little. It irritates the same part of him that studied so hard for To-Oh, the same part of him that's thinking of his career, that asks beyond being a god of the new world, what will he do with his own life?
"I would get too bored if I retired. No, I think I'll just kill myself if nobody steps up to do it for me." L is very even and matter-of-fact, the same as he is with everything else he says. He's so flat and plain about it that Light's irritation dies on the spot. He abruptly understands that L isn't serious, because why would he be? He suspects that Light is Kira. Killing someone who sincerely believes that he will live a long and varied life would be more satisfying than killing someone who seems dispassionate about the difference between living or dying, at least to the image of Kira that L has created in his head.
He doesn’t want to give Light the satisfaction, that’s all. It’s a self-defense mechanism born of spite.
"Don't joke about that," Light scoffs, and rolls his eyes for good measure. See, Ryuzaki? He's saying silently. I don't believe you. Your little trick failed. I'd be just as happy to kill you whether or not you care about going on beyond my case.
"Alright. I won't," L agrees, just as mildly as ever, and takes another spoonful of his mousse. Light sips on his coffee, and wrinkles his nose at the taste. It's gone cold and sour while he was busy talking.
Light's shoes squeak against the filthy airport linoleum.
The building is warmer than the winter outside, but not by much. His hands are shoved deep into his pockets, and he walks in close formation to the remaining members of the Taskforce. He, and the others, are all wearing dark clothes and sickness masks. In case Kira happens to be here, walking up to an airline luggage check-in counter at eleven in the morning on a Wednesday. They can never be too careful. Light is nearly amused by the concept.
Watari leads the party by a half-step margin, gripping the handle of a rolling suitcase in one hand and a small box in the other. The suitcase is clean, and if not new, then well-kept. The box is wrapped in plastic and packing tape, with the label written in stark black on multiple sides, in both Japanese and English. It's impossible to miss.
Watari alone stands at the counter, and Watari alone is the one who deals with ensuring that the ticket information is correct and all luggage has been registered and checked in correctly. Light and everybody else stands politely back, pretending as though they can't hear what's being said, though in all fairness, the negotiation is happening in English. Light is proficient in the language on any other day, but he can't be bothered to mentally translate it at the moment.
Instead, he allows his focus to drift back to the box. "HUMAN REMAINS," it announces itself, in every language it needs to.
It's not human anymore, not really. It's a wooden box, cheap by L's standards, with a plastic bag of ash sealed tightly inside. The ash itself consists of whatever was left over from the corpse that used to be L. It's not human- the body wasn't human, it ceased to be when L ceased to breathe, and this, by weight, is less cremated remains than packaging- and it shouldn't be holding Light's attention in the way it does.
Light jolts when the worker grabs the box, indelicately, slaps a label onto it, and practically throws it onto the conveyor leading to the cargo hold. The conversation doesn't stutter or pause. Light suppresses the urge to pull out the scrap of the Death Note that he keeps in his wallet and learn the worker's name by force.
He stares, unblinking, as the conveyor steadily sends L into the abyss behind the black plastic flaps that constitute something like a curtain. This is the burial. This is the funeral. Light is, by all accounts, free to go.
He turns on his heel and walks outside, back to where an anonymous escort car is waiting. He knows that he'll have to wait- there are only enough cars for each of them to come in pairs- but that's better than staying in this building for even another minute. He does not wait to acknowledge Watari's departure. If anybody else from the Taskforce says anything while he stalks away, he doesn't hear it.
The car is, of course, unlocked. It's idling near the drop-off zone, with a police officer who isn't on the Taskforce sitting in the drivers' seat. He, too, is wearing a mask, like being seen driving someone who may-or-may-not be fighting Kira will draw that kind of attention. He doesn't say anything when Light rips his own mask off and shoves it into his coat pocket. In fact, he hasn't said anything at all on the way here, and Light doubts that he'll say anything on the way back.
He slides to the far side of the backseat bench, directly behind the driver, and hangs his head low. He stares at the carpet between his feet, unblinking, as he thinks.
This time last week, L was alive and Light had been no closer to finding out his name. Light hadn't had any particular plans of killing him in the immediate future, instead more focused on evading suspicion and attempting to figure out a way to permanently throw Kira accusations to the wayside.
This isn't to say he wouldn't have liked killing L, of course, but in that, as in many other things, L beat him to the punch.
He doesn't know the method, exactly. He doesn't care, either. All he cares about is that it was not a heart attack, it was not Kira's signature, which means that Kira receives no credit. Kira did not kill L Lawliet- which, as an aside, is a name that Light only learned when L was already dead, and for a moment Light had mourned that his method of killing had made people so conscientious of their names, because he'd wanted nothing more than to stare at L and tell him, wordlessly, exactly his opinion of what was going on there- and Kira is utterly unconnected from the death.
L's self-inflicted death was uncharacteristic, in that there was no note. No directive. Nothing at all except for a body, and the unspoken and unwritten message that everybody else could figure it out for themselves. There was investigation, obviously, just in case it had somehow been Kira, but it wasn't. Obviously. That much was clear enough from the start, even to people who were neither L nor Light, because if Kira had done it, there would be no possible way to attribute it to anything other than a heart attack.
He didn't believe it, at first; thought it was some trick on L's part, like any of the other things he's pulled to try to get Light to admit to being Kira or narrow down the suspect pool outside of Light, but that was proven wrong soon after.
Light saw the body. At least, the face. No amount of budget in the world could have achieved it. Granted, Light hasn’t seen many corpses in his time, but he's seen living people. L looked hardly different, except for something about the texture of the skin. He's not sure if there was anything absent from the eyes, like they say in books, because L's eyes were already closed. Light refused to touch the body, even for the sake of his own curiosity.
Satisfied after his initial look at the body, Light allowed his emotions about the whole thing to settle into what they are now: carefully subdued glee. He views the whole thing as a gift that was dropped into his lap at no provocation, perhaps a sign that L decided that Kira was right and the best thing that L could do to further the cause was to die.
That's wishful thinking, though; the most likely option is that L's other problems, whatever they may be, caught up with him at a time that happened to be very convenient for Light. This, again, doesn't bother him in the slightest; he's grateful for the victory that he received through no particular effort of his own. Of course, there's the added bonus that L was the greatest detective in the world; if L didn't solve the case, he doubts that anybody else could.
L has conceded. Kira has won.
He's had the same thought several times in the last few days. He always kept the laughter at bay, in spite of how it was always threatening to bubble up out of him at inopportune moments, like when Watari- as L's only family member- decided that L's body would be going back to England, where the burial and other services would be held, or when he was told that there would be nothing at all in Japan for L, in terms of the usual kinds of funerary arrangements. It meant that Light did not need to attend a funeral or anything of the sort, just a fifteen-minute detour to the airport before getting on with his life.
Now that even that is over, he lets the laughter loose. Just a little, at first, enough that he could disguise it as crying if anybody questions it, but he loses control of it quickly. In only a matter of moments, he's laughing so loud and so hard that he's nearly screaming, tears streaming down his face, arms wrapped around himself to try and ground something, still staring down at the thin carpet beneath his feet. There's no audible reaction from the driver. Even Ryuk, hovering nearby as always, says nothing.
Light had asked him about it, back when it first happened. After he'd seen the body. He doesn't trust Ryuk not to lie to him, so he only asked after he'd reached his own conclusions, and Ryuk had simply confirmed what he'd thought: nobody wrote L's name in any Death Note. L's death was the result of his own hand, nothing more. His clock had run out at the predestined time. There was nothing unnatural about it at all.
Ryuk had then proceeded to snicker about how Light would've known this if he'd taken the deal, he'd have been able to prioritize better, and at that point Light had tuned him out. He didn't need the Shinigami's eyes then, and he doesn't now. It's a bad deal, end of story.
Now, of course, the sound of his own laughter drowns everything else out. He doesn't know if Ryuk has decided to speak up, and wouldn't care if he did, because he's laughing so hard he's choking on it. Tears and snot are dripping down below him, making a disgusting and childish mess of him, but Light doesn't care. L is dead. That's all that matters.
He's so absorbed in himself that he jolts at the feeling of a hand on his shoulder. He snaps his mouth shut in an instant, clamming up almost completely, terrified that he's been caught out, when the hand moves towards his other shoulder, pulling him towards the other person in the backseat. The familiarity of the motion tips him off that it's his father next to him, and he allows himself to move bonelessly to where he's being manipulated.
He falls easily into a half-hug, constricted by the dimensions of the backseat, and while he allows his dad to hold him awkwardly like this, he doesn't return it. He won't do anything without knowing exactly where he stands. Besides, his face is disgusting. Letting his snot and tears get on his father's jacket like he's a five-year-old is beneath him.
"It's alright to grieve," His dad solemnly intones. "You've been remarkably stoic through all of this, even though all of us know that the both of you were..." He hesitates, searching for the word that describes whatever relationship Light and L appeared to have from the outside. "Close." He settles on, which is an accurate enough descriptor.
Light lets out a shaky sigh of relief. His laughter must've sounded enough like crying to get him out of suspicion, and more than that, his own father wouldn't suspect that L was right because of this. Another member of the Taskforce might think that he's laughing because L is out of the way, but not his dad. He has far more reason to believe in Light than in the suspicions of a dead man.
"We clearly weren't close enough," Light says, voice sounding more raw than he'd thought it would, and his dad responds by patting him on the shoulder. It's a quiet comfort, the kind that reminds him of when he'd occasionally lost a tennis match in middle school. His words echo his thoughts; he thought he knew L as well as L clearly knew him, but that's evidently immaterial. He can't take a gift like this for granted, and bitterness about any part of the circumstances definitely feels more like ungratefulness than reveling in opportunity, but he can't help it. Light is, and apparently always has been, alone.
"This was out of your control," His dad tries for some measure of comfort, something that would've helped if Light were genuinely grieving a friend. "Watari found some files in his computer that show he was thinking about this for a long time. Many of them date back to before he came to Japan. None of this was your fault, and none of it was something you could have fixed on your own."
Light wasn't present for the finding of these mysterious 'files.' In fact, he doubts the veracity of their existence, because L would not be so careless as to leave evidence of what he was thinking. Light certainly wouldn't, if he were suicidally inclined.
But that's the point, isn't it? Light didn't know L. If he did, he wouldn't have considered him a threat, because he was destined to die before ever finding out that Light is Kira. He can't base his conjectures on what he thought he knew about L, because evidently, his own analysis of L's character is unreliable.
Furthermore, if he takes the notion of these so-called files as truthful, it opens up an entirely new problem. It tells him exactly how consequential L believed Kira to be; this could've been figured out by the fact that L left no instructions regarding continued investigation, but it's confirmed when he takes into account that this was a plan that L had before Kira was ever on his radar.
It tells Light that Kira didn't matter. Not to L. Of course, L's opinion is immaterial. Why should Light take into account the values of a man who didn't even value his own life?
Still, it stings more than it reasonably should. Kira is meant to be the god of the new world, after all, and he doesn't even rate as a blip on L's radar. He's not worthy of five minutes taken to direct the Taskforce in the event of L's death. For all he knows, he might not have mattered to L as a case, more as a convenient excuse to die somewhere that wasn't England.
"What a selfish bastard," Light sighs. L had called Kira the same thing, but he's certainly one to talk. L had strung Light along, making him think that he'd finally met someone on the same wavelength as him, and then went off and died. Kira never lied about what he is, and Light fully plans on revealing himself when the time comes.
"He left us high and dry. We're still here, thinking that he's going to- to..." He glances at the driver. He's a cop, yes, but he's not in the Taskforce. In all likelihood, he doesn't know who they're sending off, though he can certainly make an educated guess. Light doesn't know if L's death will be made public. That's not his decision to make, either.
"And he goes and kills himself instead." He finishes, the harsh phrasing tearing its way out of him before he can clamp down on the impulse. Nobody else has said it like that- the closest description was simply the word 'suicide,' relayed once, and all the rest of the time it's simply described as passively dying- and hearing that terminology in his own voice is jarring. He's angry, though, and he doesn't try to hide it. Being angry is normal for people who are grieving. He doesn't need to hide the emotion, just the root cause beneath it.
"I know," His dad sighs. "I'm disappointed about it, as well. We lost a prime investigator. We don't have nearly as much defense against Kira, now, and that means we're all in far more danger than we were before. On that note, Light..."
"I'm not leaving the investigation." Light anticipates what his father is going to say before he says it. While it's true that the investigation will move far slower without L, and its progress will likely be more predictable, it's still an advantage that he's loath to give up.
"I want you to take a break from it, then. You're still young, and I'm sure that this has rattled you." His father tries to angle for a compromise, his words tinged with pity, and that- the pity, more than the old argument- scrapes against Light like sandpaper.
"Are you saying I'm fragile?" He can hear the bitterness in his own voice. He doesn't care. Sometimes, he thinks he's allowed to sound like a belligerent teenager, and now is as good a time as any.
"I'm saying that you've never buried a friend." His dad's voice is sharp, nearly reproachful, and Light swallows any further argument. He remembers more than one occasion, several in childhood and a few more recently, of his dad being out late or being gone on the weekends because he's busy attending a funeral. Light had never gone.
"Fine." Light can admit when he's lost. At no point does he move away from the half-hug, leaning against his dad's shoulder, though he's not entirely sure why he doesn't get up. He's fine. Annoyed, even, at his dad. So why does he stay? Why does he prefer to be quietly comforted than to sit on his own as he normally does?
He doesn't investigate his own behavior further. He doesn't care to. Instead, he focuses on the feeling of the car shifting out of park, and watching out the windshield ahead of him. The sky is grey, threatening rain, and the weather outside is suitably dreary. Something about that seems fitting, in spite of Light's thoughts on how perfectly everything is going.