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“Hands where I can see them.”
L looked so upset, leaning back on the endboard of the bed Light had thrown him against, eyeing down the barrel of a gun with the same expression as a slightly wet cat considering the best way to express their misery on the universe.
It was his fault and his stupid mistake. Light felt no pity, as he thumbed the safety on again, then off, sit to watch L’s eyes flicker.
L had been the one to make it easy. He’d thought, after Rem had commanded Watari to tell L to run, saving her own life by preserving the detective’s, that he had truly been granted some kind of second chance. Some kind of higher power, letting him go free like a rat scampering out of a trap, letting him out into the wild for him to hole up and wait for the coast to clear.
Unlucky for him, that higher power had been smiling on Light, and it hadn’t given up on him yet.
It hadn’t been hard, to find L. Light had planted each and every idea for the scheme in Rem’s head, quite enjoying the feeling of trying to delve into a god’s mind. She knew that if she killed L, she would die. Light had made it clear, with half-comments, with double meanings and remarks that she thought she’d dissected herself, that without L, Misa would be saved, but not safe.
Hence, Rem wanted to live. So, she found her own way—what she thought was her own way—using Watari’s dying moments to trigger the silent alarm Light had known he must have going to L, and it hadn’t really mattered what he’d said, what had mattered was that both Light and Rem and been right, that Watari was the one person L trusted enough to turn tail and bolt if he said something was wrong.
With Watari dead, and L gone, Light hadn’t had any issues, taking a few days off to ’grieve’, and hunt down the detective he’d let go running off, just long enough to be dragged back to his place.
The plan from here was simple. Misa still had Rem—unfortunate, but the price Light would pay for him having L—and the Taskforce was currently bereft of a leader. A simple solution presented itself, to Light’s mind.
Obviously, he should be the next L. Yet, of course, he was a young boy with much on his mind, who’d devoted a lot of his valuable youth to the Kira case already. He’d love to spend more time with them, but the excuses hardly mattered, and Light was Kira, now, not some child playing dress up in his father’s clothes and L’s voice. So long as the Taskforce continued to exits, to deter others from wasting time by working on the same case, and so long as it didn’t have L to lead it, Light had no reason to really care.
So, he would quit. Hardly suspicious, especially since L would have suspicion cast on him, now, after fleeing in the middle of the night without a word—all of his own volition, very neat, since Light couldn’t have made it more convincing if he’d faked it—and Light Yagami might suddenly feel cagey about the case he’d been so enthusiastic about helping with having resulted in him being chained to a man now under suspicion for being the world’s greatest mass murderer.
Perhaps it was a sign that he wasn’t destined for the role of L, that Light could imagine balking at the idea, if he had been innocent. He valued his life, or the Light Yagami his family and friends knew would, and he would retreat, and leva this to the adults.
Who those adults were didn’t matter much. Light would leave them Misa, something of a poisoned parting gift, and his own in, since to leave her with the Taskforce would keep them busy with L’s final lead, keep her occupied reporting back to Light, and keep Rem satisfied that Misa was happy in her position half-in and half-out of the spotlight.
Then, with Misa feeding him intel, and perhaps a little cautious assistance from one frightened Light Yagami, Light could keep a vague control of the Taskforce, while letting it fade into fallow wastefulness, wasting its own time, everyone’s hope, and the time the evils of the world had left before they wrecked brought justice.
The gears of Taskforce would continue on, grinding itself into useless wheels with no real intellect amongst them. Misa would be happy, entertained by Mogi and Matsuda, made useful by Light—who might even tell her the full plan, when it was fully arranged—and satisfied that she was valued. Light Yagami would return to his university life, explore his options with one harrowing experience already under his belt.
And Light, Kira, would find himself with a lot more time on his hands, and one detective, who’d made the singular, stupid mistake of trusting one old man enough to abandon his life.
Oh, who knew. L might have won, if he’d truly been the isolated neurotic he claimed to be. Or maybe he’d just have died, since Rem may be stupid, but it had been her own good judgement that had given Light this gift, the one he’d happily traded for another quarter-lifetime with Misa.
Or, not so happily. It had been a reluctant trade. Light had been forced to accept, when he’d decided to manipulate a god, that he’d be condemning himself not just to Misa, but to Rem, insufferable in her plodding idiocy and determined loyalties.
Excuse him for it making him a little emotional, the idea of spending years on end trapped with one Misa Amane and her obsessed guardian angel.
The best outcome would have been to trade Misa for L, threaten L into the eyes trade. But that needed L to have ownership of a notebook, and Light wasn’t giving him that. Not because it would be difficult, no, he wasn’t too worried about giving it to L. It would be the getting it back that would be harder, since it couldn’t be wrestled off him, and he’d have to give it up willingly or die for it, which Light found it hard to imagine he could convince L he was serious about, after he’d gone through this much trouble to have him alive.
Besides, it might have rendered Misa a level of useless even Light couldn’t tolerate, and then he’d be bound to get himself killed by Rem for neglecting her.
No, better to have L alive, as a human shield for Light to throw in front of Rem if she ever began to act dangerously. Light didn’t need him to be anything more than the tool he was, the tool Light would like him to be, because Light wanted his help tracking down the threats to Kira that would take his place, when the Taskforce was finally revealed to be useless, hamsters running in a wheel disconnected from anything meaningful.
Light wouldn’t be killing L. Not if he could use that mind. And he imagined he could, because L should have nothing, or Light would make sure he did, sometime shortly after tonight, and he was pathetic, really. Easily pushed around, so long as he thought there was some reward for him at the end of it.
If Kira could break L to his ideals, the world would fall to bended knee with hardly a push.
Perhaps that was why Light had fixated on the idea, ever since all those months ago when he’d planned how Rem would end the chapter of his life in which L controlled his world. It would be a prideful move, something to prove his capability to himself, and to get a little revenge. Light was not above spite, nor ego. Kira’s spite would fall on all the sinners of the world who had dared to fight back, and ego would be necessary, to rule the uneducated with the firm hand they would need.
L was just a tool, for all of that. Wide-eyed, blinding up at Light in a kind of abstract terror, doubtless long since feeling his world collapse around him for the second time, as his blinding faith in Watari died the same way the man himself had.
Light waited, letting L have the next word. He wasn’t the one with the gun.
“Watari… Kira can control someone’s actions… but you were there, Light-kun, you-“
“That wasn’t Kira.” Light crouched down, gun unmoving from where it hovered in the centre of L’s brow, but now they were on eye level. “That was Kira’s first conduit of godly power.”
“He…”
“He chose the words himself. All he needed to do was make you run. I don’t even know what he said to you, isn’t that funny?”
Light cocked his head, and L’s eyes flickered from him, to the gun, and back again, chest rising and falling slowly. No plan, behind those frightened eyes. For once, he’d taken a single word in blind trust, and thought Watari’s warning was the one thing in his life that wouldn’t need a backup plan.
It was beautiful.
“I… would not call it funny. But- Kira-san-“
“That’s my name, L. See? It’s easy, all the proof you wanted. Isn’t this what you wanted?”
“I… had hoped Light-kun would- would lose to me…”
“Kira doesn’t lose.”
“Light-kun might have.” L measured his breaths, perhaps to Light’s heartbeat, which was so loud in his own ears, pumping adrenaline through his body. “It… was a risk, wasn’t it? Whether to kill me, or let me run? Light-kun wasn’t able to instruct the Shinigami either way, since he was near me… he was prepared for me to die.”
“You have nothing. Come on, L, I’m giving you everything. Are you really stupid enough not to put it together?”
Light pushed the gun forward, letting it press against L’s head, feeling bone beneath pale skin, feeling the exhilarated hum of power and victory and arrogance flooding his body. It was only fair, to give him anything he asked for. Fair, due to his conclusion that L wouldn’t know what to ask, that he really had just been getting lucky, that all of this had been nothing more than a stroke of happenstance, the sort of thing that would make for legend when Kira’s reign came to fruition.
“Apparently.” L stared up at him, and closed his eyes, breathing out and not breathing back in. “Light-kun has earned it, I suppose. Please.”
Light scoffed. It was addictive, the way L’s skin flushed, the steady beat of blood beneath the surface, the fact that he was made of flesh and bone and weaknesses, despite it all.
It was in that moment, that single beat of giddiness getting the better of him, that L moved.
The gun left his hand first, then his feet left the floor, swiped out from under him as Light was kicked backwards, just barely bracing himself on his elbows and feeling the contact jar up his body in grating agony. L followed him, the initial, desperate shove turning to something more practised, as he pulled himself to slightly shaking feet, and levelled the gun back down at Light.
“Please, Light-kun. Tell me what your plan was.”
Light’s eyes flashed, and his heart was a caged rabbit in his chest, caged like L was, already dead, still standing, holding death in his hands and behind his eyes.
“It’s empty.”
It cost Light nothing, to lay his own trump card early. He wasn’t L. He didn’t need to be shot with a blank again, didn’t need to force someone else to pull the trigger just to prove his assumptions. It didn’t matter, in the end, if L truly would kill Light or Kira or anyone.
It was so much better, to see L waver without having the hear that gun-crack go off around his ears again, for pure, relieving certainty to rush through him- yes, L had had no further plan, this was as desperate as he would get.
Light reached up, and relieved L of the gun, relieved he hadn’t gotten to pull the trigger. Neither of them needed to deal with that.
Now, they were both unarmed, and L was cagey, bristling like a street cat real for a fight. Was this how he’d been, Light wondered, before Watari? There was something unkempt about him. His hair was distinctly unwashed, his shoes uneven, his clothes unclean. It was a luxury hotel room, but L was degrading before Light’s eyes.
Something to be fixed, then. Perhaps L would get a happy ending after all, helpless bastard he was, in comparison to the miserable death he’d suffer at his own incompetent hands.
L had only ever been a match for Light when they’d been playing a game. Out here, in the real world, Light’s advantages were revealed. He could hold his own, had ability enough to spare, while L clung to maintaining a functional life like a man drowning in his own mind.
“Go sit down.” Light didn’t meet L’s eyes, head bowed as he worked back up from the floor. It had hurt, to be kicked backwards. “On the bed.”
As he looked up, Light caught L trembling, and turning tail, doing exactly as he’d been told wth a shaking, robotic stiffness. He really did look so alone. Like he needed something. Perhaps Light had really known all there was of him to know, the person of L so small it could be bolted out entirely by the Kira case.
All the better. Light moved closer, to lean on the wall in front of where L was sitting cross-legged on the clearly unslept-in bedsheets, eyeing the floor and rocking like it would save him.
“You’re coming with me. My dad’s renting me an apartment, near the university. A long way from the Taskforce. It has a spare room.”
L nodded. It seemed reflexive. Light wondered if this was an act, except L wasn’t a great actor, he hadn’t even been able to hide his scowling when they’d been fixing Matsuda’s mistake. He was always so bad at hiding his displeasure, when someone didn’t go his way.
Now, he seemed… lost. Light hadn’t really looked at him, until now. Just his eyes, and his defeat, and his fear and what might be left to be feared.
L seemed hollow.
“Watari.” Light crouched, again, hands on his knees, taking pains to keep a better posture than L’s hunched frog-position. “Wammy-san. He raised you.”
It seemed strange, that someone such as L could ever have been raised. Light felt like he should have stepped out of a storybook, wielding the power of the law like a gauntlet of shadows, straight into a hotel room where he pondered over printed photos.
“Light-kun seeking to exploit my mourning would be low, even for… him.”
They both knew it wasn’t beneath him. Except- maybe it would be, for L. For anyone else, their emotions and silly little attachments and over-emotional reactions were nothing more than predictable inconveniences. But L was a full person, someone Light should regard as equal enough for him to see from multiple angles, and perhaps his feelings shouldn’t be entirely disregarded.
“I’m expressing my condolences. I didn’t know how close you were.”
“We were as close as we appeared.”
“Perhaps I didn’t look before, then.”
Light kept pressing. L kept staring at the floor, like he could fray a hole in the fabric of reality with nothing more than the wearing abrasion of his attention.
“Ryuzaki.”
“There is nothing helpful you will be able to use me for. It may benefit Kira-san to know that I am hardly useful to myself, and extremely unwilling to be manipulated.”
L’s hands twitched. Light imagined, if he’d been alone, he’d have reached for a keyboard, or a sugar cube. In fact, the detective hadn’t eaten anything since Light had broken into his hotel room. Perhaps he was going through withdrawals.
Thinking quickly, Light straightened, and took them, pressing his own thumbprints into the backs of L’s clammy hands.
“Sure.”
“He would be better to kill me now. I’ve lost, after all.”
There was a game here, or an absence thereof. Light was meant to think there was something, let his own paranoia lead him to the point of doubting himself, enough to believe L, enough to kill him and live with that doubt forever.
Then again, that earworm of anxiety seemed too small a goal for L to sacrifice himself for.
Perhaps he was just desperate, without Watari to give him a way to keep functioning. Maybe, to L, to have to survive on his own was just as bad as death.
“Then I win.” Light dropped L’s hands, too unmoving to be enjoyable anyway, and went for L’s face, covering his cheeks and lifting his head up towards the lights glaring above them. “Kira can make you useful, Ryuzaki. Don’t worry.”
L still wouldn’t look at him. His eyes were closed, as if in death, and it was annoying. It would be annoying, if Light had gotten this far just to keep L alive, and he refused to even accept defeat and submission.
“L. Look at me.”
“I would prefer not to.”
“Try.”
L’s eyes opened, slowly, and fixed on Light’s instantly. Like he’d known where to find them. Like he’d been watching, in his own way, from behind his eyelids, like making Light touch him had just been part of his plan to get a better hold of his situation, except he had no plan. There was nowhere left for him to run, nowhere he wouldn’t just self-destruct without a keeper.
So, it didn’t matter what L’s little scheme was, as each of their attention fixed fully on the other. Light had won.