Lightning Strikes Twice, Chapter 1
Title: Lightning Strikes Twice
Rating: R
Genre: Angst
Summary: AU from near the end of the Yotsuba arc. A tissue of coincidence and an obsessive heir to a criminal syndicate half-unearth the name of a dead teenager and a corresponding event in L’s past, and both L’s shaken mind and Light’s curiosity won’t allow it to be simply reburied afterward.
Author’s Notes and Warnings: This is in the same continuity as two fics on the Death Note kink meme - “Because No One Will Believe What They Say,” written by yours truly, and “Remorse,” the sequel written by a different anon. I can't leave well enough alone. Reading those beforehand shouldn’t be necessary to understand this one, but FYI, especially if “should” doesn’t line up with “is.”
Contains language, violence, rape, general dark themes, etc. Please note that the views of characters herein certainly don’t always match my own.
Chapter One
All told, L would reason out, it had been a singularity of luck, and a singularity that quickly exhausted itself. A few small-time criminals had reached too high and managed to snatch a prize that proceeded to detonate in their faces. It would be distinct hyperbole to say it had ruined his life; there was still plenty of life left to be had if one knew where to look. All in all, in itself it was a fairly minor incident.
Not that it seemed so when he was strapped down, a cloth over his eyes, a gag stuffed in his mouth, listening to the voice coming through the headset.
***
No one, thought Light, would blame him if his brain had shut down for a while. He had to think this because his brain had in fact shut down sometime in the whirl of struggling and brandished guns and cars speeding off, and the situation was bad enough without also envisioning the thinly veiled disappointment on everyone’s faces when it turned out his vaunted mind had failed him at a critical time (the idea that he would not live to see their faces again he refused to contemplate). It might have shut down before then, when they’d gone outside at all, but L had agreed to it so it was a double failure, which was something.
He was pretty sure, however, that they would blame him for what he’d thought first, after. They might not say so but they would give him incredulous looks that communicated everything. He might give himself an incredulous look in the mirror for thinking, as he noticed the absence of the cuff around his left hand, I hope L doesn’t think I set all this up just to get away from him!
***
29 October 2004
“Hello, L. It’s very nice to meet you, though you probably haven’t met me just yet, all things considered. You’re gagged because I’m sure you have a clever argument, and I’m positive you won’t want to admit who you are, and I don’t want you to waste your breath until you hear everything I have to say. This is recorded because I’m not the best speaker. I make slips. I want our first meeting to be perfect.
“Because of that, you’ve probably had about three or four days to come up with a lot of questions about your situation. Even as isolated as you’re supposed to have been if my people were doing their jobs, you might have picked up enough to answer some of these questions for yourself. When I’m done, I look forward to hearing your conclusions.
“Now, allow me to explain.
“I’ve been following your career since the start, the Mad Bombings. I was a kid then and you were probably even younger at the time, which really impresses me. From then on, you’ve been my greatest hobby.
“I’m not one of those deranged celebrity stalkers. I’ve always managed a life outside of you. Quite a nice one if I do say so myself. But I’ve always found you fascinating, on the side.
“You might already know who I am, or you might just have a good idea. When I’m done, I look forward to seeing if you guessed right. I do feel pretty proud of myself right now, because if you’re listening it means I outwitted you on one thing.
“Now, where was I? Oh yes. So I followed your career with great interest, including, in 1996, a certain rape case. I wondered why you’d take on such a small thing. I should think even if you were that bored with the Gold Mine Ripper you’d at least do another murder.
“Then, though it hasn’t been confirmed until very recently, I found my answer with Kay Ellis.
“Are you surprised, L? Have I just heard you suck in a breath? Are your eyes bigger under the blindfold? Or have you worked it all out already, and were waiting for me to say?
“I have to say it was really brave of you to step into the public eye, file a police report, let yourself be photographed, have your undistorted voice played at trial. Even if it was under a false name - is it a false name? Kay Ellis. I like the sound of it. It’s very… alphabetical.
“Ahem. As I was saying, even if you faked your own suicide after the deposition, and those photographs and other things were ‘misplaced,’ it still shows your dedication to justice, your taking such a risk. If those people who make snide comments about body quotas and coin-counting knew, it would make their heads spin.”
A laugh.
***
Light had previous experience being locked in a small cell, with hands and feet bound. This time there was the addition of a blindfold, but on the upside his hands were tied in front of him so he didn’t have to eat like a dog.
“What’s your name?” a woman with broken command of Japanese asked him.
“Raito Asahi,” he answered.
A while later she came back and said “No. Light Yagami.”
“No,” he replied automatically, in English, though if they knew that he was lost already, and flinched in spite of himself, awaiting retaliation. He’d been suspicious that nothing had happened yet; it seemed buildup for especial calamity. Say another gun to his head, without blanks. And he didn’t even know why. When locked up by L he’d at least had a rationale for it, even if it was a completely wrongheaded one.
No blow came. Instead she said, in much better English, “Wise of you to use a false name in these times.”
They’d taken his watch, early on, and his wallet. He’d protested and been ignored. He wondered if they were being mailed to his father, with ransom demands or something of the kind.
“Where’s my friend?” he asked when she returned, later.
They’d found the key in L’s pocket, he remembered, and unlocked the handcuffs and replaced them with sets of their own while dragging the two of them apart, both trying to fight their way toward each other in the absence of any clear escape route to fight toward instead.
She chuckled. “Don’t worry, Yagami, we’re taking care of him.”
***
“Of course, at the time it was only a theory. No, actually, more of a hunch. But I managed to scoop copies of some of the information they collected, and I had the knowledge and resources to note some interesting things over the next eight years.
“And of course I saw the rerun of that broadcast - I applaud you for that, as do my associates. So I began to scope out Japan. I started my own side search for Kira, because if I found Kira I’d certainly find you.
“Still no luck on Kira, but I’ve found you anyway. There weren’t photos in the student file but there were cameras and camera phones at the To-Oh University opening ceremony. There were shots of the stage. When they captioned it they tended to go on about the contrast of the two freshman speakers. When I saw the second speaker, I was sure, and I downloaded the pictures before they disappeared. Was that your doing? In any case, To-Oh University. Perfect score, I heard. That goes to show how clever you are.
“Now I’m completely sure.
“Because, you see, by now the DNA testing results are back. Sorry if they hurt you taking the blood sample. But anyway, by now I have a comparison to the sample from Kay Ellis. Since you’re listening to this, it’s a perfect match.
“Now why would L take such a small-time case? Why would Kay Ellis fake his death? Why would he then turn up in the middle of Kira’s stomping grounds, where you’d expect L to be?
“I know you know the answer.
“So you see, with evidence like that, among other things, there’s little point in denying it. It’ll only embarrass you.
“… oh! I just thought of something. If you were going to say you have an identical twin? That you’re only a decoy, or Watari’s apprentice or something? Well, we can’t disprove that, and if it’s somehow the truth please say so, because the eventual disappointment will be painful and probably lethal if not. But either way, then my associates might believe you, and they’ll want to use you to find the ‘real’ L. Things’ll get tricky at that stage. They’ll probably go badly for you until he’s found, though not as badly as if you say you’re L when you’re not. If you’re not my pet project I won’t be able to protect you. If you’re the real L, please, save us all some trouble and own up.
“You might be scared, right about now. You might think if you say you’re L you’ll be taken straight out and shot. But, you see, we already know that. That is, I already know that, and the others’re very sure. If we were going to shoot you we’d have done it by now whether or not you said it. To tell the truth, some of them wouldn’t mind killing you, but since you’re L you’re mine, and it won’t happen. And we do know that Kira’s still at large. If anyone’s going to put him away, it’ll be you. We have great motivation to help with that however we can.
“I believe in you.
“Now, nod if you understand me and I’ll take out the gag. Then you can say it for yourself to the gentlemen and ladies who’re in attendance at this moment.”
***
“Where is he?” Light asked again, several meals later. He’d been told he was going out; he rejected his caretaker’s offer of help and climbed to his shackled feet himself.
“L?” the woman’s voice said after they’d gone a few meters out the door and up some steps. “You’ll see him soon. But first we need to clean you up.”
“Wait,” said Light a few steps later, “I meant my friend -”
“Yes, your friend, the one you were handcuffed to. You knew him by something else?”
“Well, yes,” said Light.
“What?”
“Ryuuzaki.”
“Well, you can keep calling him that.” He disliked the increasingly amused note in her voice. “If you like.”
***
Misa kept turning her cell phone over in her hand. She’d played the recording on it half a dozen times for the task force, and it had been transferred to computers and transcripted. They reprimanded her for the risk she’d taken but still said yes, thank you, it was very useful. But it was useless to her. Wedy had scoured Kyosuke Higuchi’s properties and found no trace; he almost certainly wasn’t the one behind it. She knew he wasn’t directly responsible, because she’d still been in his car proving she was the Second Kira while Ryuuzaki and her Light were being grabbed off the street by masked gunmen in vans.
Light’s father said it had looked organized. Was this all part of the plan Rem had talked about? She could only hope.
***
“Let me say again,” he said when the blindfold came off, “it’s very nice to meet you.”
His voice was pleasantly stronger this time. “Gabriel Foxfield, I take it.”
Gabriel felt his smile stretch as wide as it had when he’d turned to the faces looking through the glass, saw the looks on those faces. “You guessed. Where did you get it? Maybe Eraldo Coil’s files? It’s all right, I know you killed him.”
“I didn’t kill him,” said L, off the gurney they’d wheeled into his room and crouching in an overstuffed chair. “He did keep some records of your limited dealings with him, which I studied.”
But apparently not enough.
Dirty and disheveled and bruised, to Gabriel he remained striking. Calvin Walker, one of the defense attorneys involved, had over drinks (considerable drinks) described Kay Ellis as a “gawky slouched bug-eyed little thing.” He stood, or would stand, five feet nine without slouching (maybe he’d had a growth spurt in the last eight years), but otherwise the description fit. Still, the first adjective to come to mind was striking. Maybe it was because he knew that behind the façade, unpromising in itself, was a brain going a mile a minute, no, a mile a moment. It probably was that, he thought. He’d hankered after L for years without any idea of his face, and now that he’d seen it he wasn’t let down. He felt even better about himself at this revelation, proof he wasn’t some shallow stalker who didn’t care about the inner workings.
“Your friend Yagami’s been asking after you,” he said.
“Has he.”
“Tomorrow we’ll be calling up your group in Tokyo.”
One side of L’s lip twitched upward. “To inform them that from now on they will work with criminals.”
Well, if he knew who Gabriel was it was only a hop-skip-jump to his father and the Reynard syndicate. No, just a hop. “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.”
L shrugged and looked around again. It was as well-appointed as any luxury hotel room aside from the lack of windows and the obvious cameras, in fact much better than Gabriel’s own bedroom. That was fine. Gabriel was intending to spend a lot of time in here.
He showed him into the bathroom, showed him the toiletries, and after being summarily dismissed he went back into the main room, opened dresser drawers, and pulled out a set of fresh clothes, which he laid out over one of the chairs.
As he was straightening the legs of the jeans, Gabriel was seized with a sudden fear that when he walked back in the bathroom would be empty. That L would have devised an escape using a bar of soap and a toilet paper holder, or simply melted away as with any good dream. There was no door to the bathroom, let alone a lock, so he simply went back in. Minutes passed as he watched the blurred figure inside the stall and assured himself of its reality. Then L turned off the water, said “Mr. Foxfield,” and what seemed like a malevolent spell was broken.
“Please, call me Gabriel,” he said, presenting him with a towel as the frosted glass stall door opened slightly.
He reached out and took it with two fingers, as if doubtful of its cleanliness. “I would rather not, Mr. Foxfield.”
Later Gabriel would wonder if his idea, his awful mistake, hadn’t started there, in that moment.
When he was outside and surveying the fresh clothes, Gabriel stood there with the old ones draped over his arm and said, “I didn’t know what you liked, so I got those. If you want anything else just say.”
At least this time L rubbed his palm over each item, testing the feel of the fabric maybe, before doing the two-finger thing again, saying “This will do,” and going back into the bathroom. When he’d dressed he stood in the doorway and asked, still looking through him, “What are your intentions after I find Kira?”
“Intentions? My God, I told you, we’re not going to kill you. That would be such a waste.”
“Then you want to put me to work for you? Reconstructing what I’ve destroyed of your operations?” He thought there was a hint of rue in the last question.
“My father wants that. Me, I don’t mind if you keep putting away creeps, long as you don’t get us arrested. That is, you’re definitely going to go to Interpol over being carried off like this. If we let you go.”
“That’s true. And Light Yagami?”
“Oh, we’re thinking we’ll send him back once we’ve got Kira. Not much of a reason to keep him.”
L was looking, not away from him, but seemingly right through him. “I see.”
Gabriel left, and after making preparations squeezed into the security station and watched L as his dinner arrived. He watched L heap sugar in his tea and eat the dessert first, then wander the room for a few minutes, Gabriel watching with some anxiety, before returning to finish the entrée. Gabriel ate his own dinner, emptying two glasses of wine in the process. Evened things out a bit, he thought, since they were both in need of relaxation.
***
All things considered, L thought, there could be worse.
He could be dead, of course, riddled with bullets and dumped in an unmarked grave. Or he could be in a situation like Misa Amane’s had been, blindfolded and heavily restrained in perpetuity. But such a situation would not be conducive to clear thinking, which he would need if he was going to pursue Kira. They probably knew that. On the one hand they would be concerned about restricting him enough so that he wouldn’t escape. On the other, if conditions were too harsh it would negate part of the reason they were keeping him captive.
However, he understood how many other reasons they had to keep him. They could well start to lean toward harsher conditions, because even if his mental functioning was decreased by a significant margin they still had him, and he would be nearly as much a trophy if he were comatose or a corpse. There was a high probability they would start leaning that way once he found Kira and the pressing danger to the international underworld was ended. Would it then be in his best interest to stall the investigation? That would be a novelty.
L continued to explore, half-discreetly, the possibility of escape routes. He observed the location of each of the visible cameras, estimated the probability of more subtle ones strewn about his prison. He noted the odd fixtures and the chains hanging off the bedposts, each ending in an open cuff for easy four-point restraint if they decided to employ it. He browsed the contents of the bookshelf. He was reviewing what he knew of the Reynard syndicate, the various alleged exploits of Timothy “Reynard” Foxfield, what he remembered of Timothy Foxfield’s son from Eraldo Coil’s client data (terminated years ago, he remembered, from lack of client funds. Coil had asked for quite a lot considering how assiduously he pursued that line of inquiry on his own time), when he noticed how much his thoughts had slowed, how they kept wandering to topics like the bio-terror case and French folklore.
So the food had been drugged. He’d already been administered sedatives and muscle relaxants at several points over the last four days, particularly early on, probably to stop him making trouble at delicate points, and he recognized the symptoms. He’d calmed himself already; now, even calmer, he made his way to the bed (a double bed - he was used to them from hotels but it started to raise nascent questions) and slid under the covers, curling on his side and watching the door.
Some time later, it opened. “Hello,” Foxfield called, slamming a hand against the light switch. The lights in the room went out, leaving only a wedge leaking in from the open door.
“Mr. Foxfield.”
Foxfield adjusted the lights so they were dim but not entirely extinguished, moved further in, and shut the door, then locked it. “Tired?”
“It seems so.”
Foxfield laughed, pulled a chair over to the bed, and sat down facing L. “It’s all right, you can relax.”
“Please arrange for a higher proportion of sugars next time. They improve my reasoning ability.”
He leaned forward, still smiling. L was glad he’d positioned himself in the center of the bed. “Sure. I can do that. A bit more weight won’t hurt you.”
“Accompanied by the appropriate vitamin supplements, naturally. And I doubt I will gain weight. As a matter of fact, considering my previous intake levels, it is more likely that I will lose it.”
Another laugh. Foxfield’s face seemed even closer. “Sure. Sure.”
L drew his head away, too slowly it seemed. “At least until my metabolism adjusts. Which will take -”
Still another. “You’re a character. How old are you? Twenty, twenty-one?”
He considered his answer, whether he should answer. It took longer than it should have. “How old would Kay Ellis have been?” Kay Ellis had actually been some seven months older than L on paper.
He whistled. “Still, like I said, I’m impressed.”
“Are you?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I am. I jacked off thinking about you.”
It was some time before he could get his lips to move again. “Pardon?”
“When I was seventeen. I was imagining you maybe six or seven years older than me, and you looked like a rock star. My sister said you were probably more like fifty. God, the look on her face! I guess we were both wrong about that, but I was closer. They need more rock stars like you around.”
“… Mr. Foxfield. I - ”
“Shh. Relax.”
“I -”
The blankets were pulled away, too quickly. Then Foxfield was on the bed, turning him onto his back, pulling his legs from his chest. “Mr. Foxfield -” It came out softer than he wanted.
“Shh, shh.” His legs, down against the sheets, were being moved apart.
“Mr. Foxfield,” he persisted. Something was wrong, even with his thoughts drifting through mental molasses now he knew that much. “Stop touching me.”
Foxfield’s upper half abruptly descended and his mouth covered his, pressing almost gently, temporarily knocking both mind and body into stillness as he inhaled the alcohol on his breath. When Foxfield’s tongue began to work in, when his hands set about undoing the button at the top of the jeans, L’s deductive ability caught up in a twinkling.
He let out an abortive scream, small to begin with and muffled further by the mouth over his, and his body jerked up into the hand and then back and to the side, pressed into the mattress. His own hands started up but Foxfield’s met them halfway, caught them, and pressed them down over his head, their grip light but nonetheless sufficient. His feet scraped clumsily against the sheets, unable to summon the strength for any of the kicks he’d practiced or aim for the body straddling his. “No,” and it sounded too drowsy, too lackadaisical, there was no strength left in his voice either, he felt so dizzy, “stop it, stop -”
“It’s all right.” He said this as a cuff snapped shut around the right wrist. “It’s okay.”
“No.”
The left wrist now, leaving his arms outstretched as Foxfield hauled his body further down the bed, drawing the chains at the headboard taut. “You don’t have to be scared.”
“Get... off me, Mr. Foxfield.”
Quite calmly, returning his attention to the jeans button, “I said call me Gabriel.”
Without knowing quite why he said “You are not my friend. Not for me to call you that.”
He believed it even less than he’d believed Light. He would have been a fool to, an even bigger fool than he’d been at sixteen, sitting on a bench outside a bakery, eating a pastry while someone walked up and - no.
“I want to be.”
The jeans came off his hips. He tried to scream again, but again most of the sound seemed lost in his throat. A mewl emerged.
“It’s all right. Don’t worry. Relax.” His voice stayed mild, tender, as he carefully tugged off the jeans and then the underwear, ignoring the weak flailing of the legs and the faint rattling of the chains. He could afford to ignore it. He could be afford to be gentle now because with his victim drugged to such a degree there was no need to be violent.
Why couldn’t he have used something inducing anterograde amnesia or else outright insensibility, why couldn’t Foxfield have laced the food with such a dose of such a drug that he could wake up with no idea what had happened - though maybe Foxfield had used it, maybe he wouldn’t remember this. His detective’s instincts rebelled at the idea of not knowing, of being ignorant of his own rape (cases involving a drugged victim, he remembered, are especially problematic to discover let alone prosecute), but in this moment the prospect was so tempting…
His bared legs were over Foxfield’s shoulders and Foxfield was reaching down. It was happening so slowly, yet inexorably.
Inexorably? Surely not. Surely not. He couldn’t give up. Not now.
L’s next words came together with equal slowness, emerged only when Foxfield’s hand was moving up his inner thigh. “I can’t have you incarcerated under the circumstances,” he said, concentrating on keeping his speech straight, “but circumstances change, Mr. Redding.”
Foxfield’s hand remained on his thigh but it was no longer creeping upward, or trying to caress him. “Redding?”
Redding?
He realized his mistake but did not trust himself to address it, for fear of making the same one twice. “I assure you raping me will not be conducive to the clear thought I will require to track down Kira. In which case there is a high chance I will see you dead.”
He stared. “What - what - no, no, it’s not.”
“It’s not difficult to conclude.”
“It’s not.” His hand was moving up again. “You’ll like it. You’ll see.”
“I do not like it and I will not.”
“Give me a minute. Just give me a minute. You’ll like it.”
“Arousal is an involuntary. An involuntary physiological response. It has no relation to my opinion on the matter. That opinion is not going to change. My opinion of you, however, is changing. It is changing for the worse as we speak.”
His hand was nearly there now, fingers stroking at the sensitive skin just short of the perineum. “It’s all right, it’ll be all right, just relax,” and the tone was as if he was talking halfway to himself.
“No. It won’t. It won’t be. It won’t.”
“Shh.” And he was leaning down again.
If he kisses me again I am lost. He couldn’t have said what brought him to think what was likely a grossly erroneous overreaction, but that served as another jolt. “They did that,” he said, pressing himself backward into the sheets away from the descending face as though he could push himself through them, and the mattress and the box spring and the bed frame, to the dubious safety underneath. His tongue seemed to trip over itself and land in tangles but just as long as he got it out. “They said I liked it. I never did. I never.”
“I… but… I never.” Foxfield formulated another rationale. “They didn’t know anything about you,” he said, and he took his hand away from the thigh but replaced it on the shoulder, which at least still had the shirt over it. “They thought you were just some weird Brit. I know who you are. I can appreciate you for that.”
“No you can’t. At least use a condom.” The weeks he’d waited to undergo the last tests, waiting until what they tested for would be detectable. “Unless it’s too late. If you raped me. While I was unconscious. I wouldn’t know.”
“I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t. I just want you to relax.”
“No.” His vision blurred. “No, don’t.”
“Come on,” Foxfield said, sounding less sure of himself, “come on. Come on, it won’t hurt. I’ll be careful.”
“Hurt?” He blinked and there was liquid running down his face, down the sides of his face, soaking his ears. What am I doing, he thought, and on seeing Foxfield’s face thought do it more. His legs were still hoisted up over Foxfield’s shoulders. He needed more of a push. “Put me down. I haven’t…” A memory, flickering, of Misa’s indignant voice making suppositions that were justified but untrue. “I haven’t even. With... Light.”
“… with Yagami?”
The tears kept coming, without conscious effort. “We were handcuffed together.” He continued to fight the mental effects as they crept in. “Stop. Stop - ” He began to sob.
Foxfield ducked out from under his legs and they dropped splayed to the mattress. Foxfield moved back, to the end of the bed. He twisted round best as he could with his arms chained apart and his body still sluggish, pulled his legs up, turned back on his side, closed his eyes - his mind raged that he shouldn’t, that it made it easier to give in, that he wouldn’t be able to open them again and then Foxfield would be free to do as he wanted without anything to spoil his delusional fantasy - and trembled, cried unrestrainedly, as if he’d already lost, was already broken. Aren’t you? Haven’t you? The first and last time (and it would stay the last time, it would) he hadn’t cried until two of them were already starting to -
“I… I’m sorry, I’m sorry, L, I’m so sorry -”
“Go away,” and he heard his own voice thick with drugs and what else, he didn’t want to know what else. “Don’t touch me. Go away.”
Perversely thankfully, Foxfield didn’t go away immediately. First he unlocked the chains at each wrist, which L drew down to the rest of his body as fast as he could. Then he stumbled out, from the sound of it walking into a wall on the way, and the door opened and closed.
L counted to five before he curled around, opening his eyes, and half-slid, half-crawled down the length of the bed, then looked over the side to find his jeans and underwear discarded on the floor. He reached down, nearly crashing into the carpet despite the care he took leaning over the side, and fished them up to stick his legs back into them, to pull the waistband back up, to clumsily refasten the button and redo the zip. He fumbled again for the blanket. Most of it was still on the bed and the rest could be hauled back up without danger of falling off. This time he swathed himself in it like a chrysalis or a shroud, then went back into his curl and closed his eyes again, giving in to sleep, wondering if he would remember any of this.
***
He returned to the hotel sometime past five, in time to see Mr. Wammy standing at the elevators. He raised his voice, still hoarse from its exertion, remembering the cover story. “Grandfather?”
Mr. Wammy turned around, looking ruffled for the first time in... a long time. But he, too, remembered. “Kay?” He had any number of reasons to be surprised. There was his presence in the hotel lobby instead of being cloistered up in their suite reviewing the evidence. There was the tape still wrapped around each wrist. There was his staggering gait. Perhaps there were already bruises visible on his face.
“I,” he said, walking forward, “I.”
Next he would recover from his temporary stammer and say he needed a doctor. Then, in the car, he would explain what had happened. There would be an examination at the hospital. Kay Ellis would give an initial statement to police.
But now it was as though the memory had snagged on something. His voice had caught, a stuck record. “I,” was all he could say, “I,” and Mr. Wammy was looking at him strangely now. “I.” He felt tears running down his face. “I. L. I.”
He would not remember this in the morning.
Rating: R
Genre: Angst
Summary: AU from near the end of the Yotsuba arc. A tissue of coincidence and an obsessive heir to a criminal syndicate half-unearth the name of a dead teenager and a corresponding event in L’s past, and both L’s shaken mind and Light’s curiosity won’t allow it to be simply reburied afterward.
Author’s Notes and Warnings: This is in the same continuity as two fics on the Death Note kink meme - “Because No One Will Believe What They Say,” written by yours truly, and “Remorse,” the sequel written by a different anon. I can't leave well enough alone. Reading those beforehand shouldn’t be necessary to understand this one, but FYI, especially if “should” doesn’t line up with “is.”
Contains language, violence, rape, general dark themes, etc. Please note that the views of characters herein certainly don’t always match my own.
Chapter One
All told, L would reason out, it had been a singularity of luck, and a singularity that quickly exhausted itself. A few small-time criminals had reached too high and managed to snatch a prize that proceeded to detonate in their faces. It would be distinct hyperbole to say it had ruined his life; there was still plenty of life left to be had if one knew where to look. All in all, in itself it was a fairly minor incident.
Not that it seemed so when he was strapped down, a cloth over his eyes, a gag stuffed in his mouth, listening to the voice coming through the headset.
***
No one, thought Light, would blame him if his brain had shut down for a while. He had to think this because his brain had in fact shut down sometime in the whirl of struggling and brandished guns and cars speeding off, and the situation was bad enough without also envisioning the thinly veiled disappointment on everyone’s faces when it turned out his vaunted mind had failed him at a critical time (the idea that he would not live to see their faces again he refused to contemplate). It might have shut down before then, when they’d gone outside at all, but L had agreed to it so it was a double failure, which was something.
He was pretty sure, however, that they would blame him for what he’d thought first, after. They might not say so but they would give him incredulous looks that communicated everything. He might give himself an incredulous look in the mirror for thinking, as he noticed the absence of the cuff around his left hand, I hope L doesn’t think I set all this up just to get away from him!
***
29 October 2004
“Hello, L. It’s very nice to meet you, though you probably haven’t met me just yet, all things considered. You’re gagged because I’m sure you have a clever argument, and I’m positive you won’t want to admit who you are, and I don’t want you to waste your breath until you hear everything I have to say. This is recorded because I’m not the best speaker. I make slips. I want our first meeting to be perfect.
“Because of that, you’ve probably had about three or four days to come up with a lot of questions about your situation. Even as isolated as you’re supposed to have been if my people were doing their jobs, you might have picked up enough to answer some of these questions for yourself. When I’m done, I look forward to hearing your conclusions.
“Now, allow me to explain.
“I’ve been following your career since the start, the Mad Bombings. I was a kid then and you were probably even younger at the time, which really impresses me. From then on, you’ve been my greatest hobby.
“I’m not one of those deranged celebrity stalkers. I’ve always managed a life outside of you. Quite a nice one if I do say so myself. But I’ve always found you fascinating, on the side.
“You might already know who I am, or you might just have a good idea. When I’m done, I look forward to seeing if you guessed right. I do feel pretty proud of myself right now, because if you’re listening it means I outwitted you on one thing.
“Now, where was I? Oh yes. So I followed your career with great interest, including, in 1996, a certain rape case. I wondered why you’d take on such a small thing. I should think even if you were that bored with the Gold Mine Ripper you’d at least do another murder.
“Then, though it hasn’t been confirmed until very recently, I found my answer with Kay Ellis.
“Are you surprised, L? Have I just heard you suck in a breath? Are your eyes bigger under the blindfold? Or have you worked it all out already, and were waiting for me to say?
“I have to say it was really brave of you to step into the public eye, file a police report, let yourself be photographed, have your undistorted voice played at trial. Even if it was under a false name - is it a false name? Kay Ellis. I like the sound of it. It’s very… alphabetical.
“Ahem. As I was saying, even if you faked your own suicide after the deposition, and those photographs and other things were ‘misplaced,’ it still shows your dedication to justice, your taking such a risk. If those people who make snide comments about body quotas and coin-counting knew, it would make their heads spin.”
A laugh.
***
Light had previous experience being locked in a small cell, with hands and feet bound. This time there was the addition of a blindfold, but on the upside his hands were tied in front of him so he didn’t have to eat like a dog.
“What’s your name?” a woman with broken command of Japanese asked him.
“Raito Asahi,” he answered.
A while later she came back and said “No. Light Yagami.”
“No,” he replied automatically, in English, though if they knew that he was lost already, and flinched in spite of himself, awaiting retaliation. He’d been suspicious that nothing had happened yet; it seemed buildup for especial calamity. Say another gun to his head, without blanks. And he didn’t even know why. When locked up by L he’d at least had a rationale for it, even if it was a completely wrongheaded one.
No blow came. Instead she said, in much better English, “Wise of you to use a false name in these times.”
They’d taken his watch, early on, and his wallet. He’d protested and been ignored. He wondered if they were being mailed to his father, with ransom demands or something of the kind.
“Where’s my friend?” he asked when she returned, later.
They’d found the key in L’s pocket, he remembered, and unlocked the handcuffs and replaced them with sets of their own while dragging the two of them apart, both trying to fight their way toward each other in the absence of any clear escape route to fight toward instead.
She chuckled. “Don’t worry, Yagami, we’re taking care of him.”
***
“Of course, at the time it was only a theory. No, actually, more of a hunch. But I managed to scoop copies of some of the information they collected, and I had the knowledge and resources to note some interesting things over the next eight years.
“And of course I saw the rerun of that broadcast - I applaud you for that, as do my associates. So I began to scope out Japan. I started my own side search for Kira, because if I found Kira I’d certainly find you.
“Still no luck on Kira, but I’ve found you anyway. There weren’t photos in the student file but there were cameras and camera phones at the To-Oh University opening ceremony. There were shots of the stage. When they captioned it they tended to go on about the contrast of the two freshman speakers. When I saw the second speaker, I was sure, and I downloaded the pictures before they disappeared. Was that your doing? In any case, To-Oh University. Perfect score, I heard. That goes to show how clever you are.
“Now I’m completely sure.
“Because, you see, by now the DNA testing results are back. Sorry if they hurt you taking the blood sample. But anyway, by now I have a comparison to the sample from Kay Ellis. Since you’re listening to this, it’s a perfect match.
“Now why would L take such a small-time case? Why would Kay Ellis fake his death? Why would he then turn up in the middle of Kira’s stomping grounds, where you’d expect L to be?
“I know you know the answer.
“So you see, with evidence like that, among other things, there’s little point in denying it. It’ll only embarrass you.
“… oh! I just thought of something. If you were going to say you have an identical twin? That you’re only a decoy, or Watari’s apprentice or something? Well, we can’t disprove that, and if it’s somehow the truth please say so, because the eventual disappointment will be painful and probably lethal if not. But either way, then my associates might believe you, and they’ll want to use you to find the ‘real’ L. Things’ll get tricky at that stage. They’ll probably go badly for you until he’s found, though not as badly as if you say you’re L when you’re not. If you’re not my pet project I won’t be able to protect you. If you’re the real L, please, save us all some trouble and own up.
“You might be scared, right about now. You might think if you say you’re L you’ll be taken straight out and shot. But, you see, we already know that. That is, I already know that, and the others’re very sure. If we were going to shoot you we’d have done it by now whether or not you said it. To tell the truth, some of them wouldn’t mind killing you, but since you’re L you’re mine, and it won’t happen. And we do know that Kira’s still at large. If anyone’s going to put him away, it’ll be you. We have great motivation to help with that however we can.
“I believe in you.
“Now, nod if you understand me and I’ll take out the gag. Then you can say it for yourself to the gentlemen and ladies who’re in attendance at this moment.”
***
“Where is he?” Light asked again, several meals later. He’d been told he was going out; he rejected his caretaker’s offer of help and climbed to his shackled feet himself.
“L?” the woman’s voice said after they’d gone a few meters out the door and up some steps. “You’ll see him soon. But first we need to clean you up.”
“Wait,” said Light a few steps later, “I meant my friend -”
“Yes, your friend, the one you were handcuffed to. You knew him by something else?”
“Well, yes,” said Light.
“What?”
“Ryuuzaki.”
“Well, you can keep calling him that.” He disliked the increasingly amused note in her voice. “If you like.”
***
Misa kept turning her cell phone over in her hand. She’d played the recording on it half a dozen times for the task force, and it had been transferred to computers and transcripted. They reprimanded her for the risk she’d taken but still said yes, thank you, it was very useful. But it was useless to her. Wedy had scoured Kyosuke Higuchi’s properties and found no trace; he almost certainly wasn’t the one behind it. She knew he wasn’t directly responsible, because she’d still been in his car proving she was the Second Kira while Ryuuzaki and her Light were being grabbed off the street by masked gunmen in vans.
Light’s father said it had looked organized. Was this all part of the plan Rem had talked about? She could only hope.
***
“Let me say again,” he said when the blindfold came off, “it’s very nice to meet you.”
His voice was pleasantly stronger this time. “Gabriel Foxfield, I take it.”
Gabriel felt his smile stretch as wide as it had when he’d turned to the faces looking through the glass, saw the looks on those faces. “You guessed. Where did you get it? Maybe Eraldo Coil’s files? It’s all right, I know you killed him.”
“I didn’t kill him,” said L, off the gurney they’d wheeled into his room and crouching in an overstuffed chair. “He did keep some records of your limited dealings with him, which I studied.”
But apparently not enough.
Dirty and disheveled and bruised, to Gabriel he remained striking. Calvin Walker, one of the defense attorneys involved, had over drinks (considerable drinks) described Kay Ellis as a “gawky slouched bug-eyed little thing.” He stood, or would stand, five feet nine without slouching (maybe he’d had a growth spurt in the last eight years), but otherwise the description fit. Still, the first adjective to come to mind was striking. Maybe it was because he knew that behind the façade, unpromising in itself, was a brain going a mile a minute, no, a mile a moment. It probably was that, he thought. He’d hankered after L for years without any idea of his face, and now that he’d seen it he wasn’t let down. He felt even better about himself at this revelation, proof he wasn’t some shallow stalker who didn’t care about the inner workings.
“Your friend Yagami’s been asking after you,” he said.
“Has he.”
“Tomorrow we’ll be calling up your group in Tokyo.”
One side of L’s lip twitched upward. “To inform them that from now on they will work with criminals.”
Well, if he knew who Gabriel was it was only a hop-skip-jump to his father and the Reynard syndicate. No, just a hop. “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.”
L shrugged and looked around again. It was as well-appointed as any luxury hotel room aside from the lack of windows and the obvious cameras, in fact much better than Gabriel’s own bedroom. That was fine. Gabriel was intending to spend a lot of time in here.
He showed him into the bathroom, showed him the toiletries, and after being summarily dismissed he went back into the main room, opened dresser drawers, and pulled out a set of fresh clothes, which he laid out over one of the chairs.
As he was straightening the legs of the jeans, Gabriel was seized with a sudden fear that when he walked back in the bathroom would be empty. That L would have devised an escape using a bar of soap and a toilet paper holder, or simply melted away as with any good dream. There was no door to the bathroom, let alone a lock, so he simply went back in. Minutes passed as he watched the blurred figure inside the stall and assured himself of its reality. Then L turned off the water, said “Mr. Foxfield,” and what seemed like a malevolent spell was broken.
“Please, call me Gabriel,” he said, presenting him with a towel as the frosted glass stall door opened slightly.
He reached out and took it with two fingers, as if doubtful of its cleanliness. “I would rather not, Mr. Foxfield.”
Later Gabriel would wonder if his idea, his awful mistake, hadn’t started there, in that moment.
When he was outside and surveying the fresh clothes, Gabriel stood there with the old ones draped over his arm and said, “I didn’t know what you liked, so I got those. If you want anything else just say.”
At least this time L rubbed his palm over each item, testing the feel of the fabric maybe, before doing the two-finger thing again, saying “This will do,” and going back into the bathroom. When he’d dressed he stood in the doorway and asked, still looking through him, “What are your intentions after I find Kira?”
“Intentions? My God, I told you, we’re not going to kill you. That would be such a waste.”
“Then you want to put me to work for you? Reconstructing what I’ve destroyed of your operations?” He thought there was a hint of rue in the last question.
“My father wants that. Me, I don’t mind if you keep putting away creeps, long as you don’t get us arrested. That is, you’re definitely going to go to Interpol over being carried off like this. If we let you go.”
“That’s true. And Light Yagami?”
“Oh, we’re thinking we’ll send him back once we’ve got Kira. Not much of a reason to keep him.”
L was looking, not away from him, but seemingly right through him. “I see.”
Gabriel left, and after making preparations squeezed into the security station and watched L as his dinner arrived. He watched L heap sugar in his tea and eat the dessert first, then wander the room for a few minutes, Gabriel watching with some anxiety, before returning to finish the entrée. Gabriel ate his own dinner, emptying two glasses of wine in the process. Evened things out a bit, he thought, since they were both in need of relaxation.
***
All things considered, L thought, there could be worse.
He could be dead, of course, riddled with bullets and dumped in an unmarked grave. Or he could be in a situation like Misa Amane’s had been, blindfolded and heavily restrained in perpetuity. But such a situation would not be conducive to clear thinking, which he would need if he was going to pursue Kira. They probably knew that. On the one hand they would be concerned about restricting him enough so that he wouldn’t escape. On the other, if conditions were too harsh it would negate part of the reason they were keeping him captive.
However, he understood how many other reasons they had to keep him. They could well start to lean toward harsher conditions, because even if his mental functioning was decreased by a significant margin they still had him, and he would be nearly as much a trophy if he were comatose or a corpse. There was a high probability they would start leaning that way once he found Kira and the pressing danger to the international underworld was ended. Would it then be in his best interest to stall the investigation? That would be a novelty.
L continued to explore, half-discreetly, the possibility of escape routes. He observed the location of each of the visible cameras, estimated the probability of more subtle ones strewn about his prison. He noted the odd fixtures and the chains hanging off the bedposts, each ending in an open cuff for easy four-point restraint if they decided to employ it. He browsed the contents of the bookshelf. He was reviewing what he knew of the Reynard syndicate, the various alleged exploits of Timothy “Reynard” Foxfield, what he remembered of Timothy Foxfield’s son from Eraldo Coil’s client data (terminated years ago, he remembered, from lack of client funds. Coil had asked for quite a lot considering how assiduously he pursued that line of inquiry on his own time), when he noticed how much his thoughts had slowed, how they kept wandering to topics like the bio-terror case and French folklore.
So the food had been drugged. He’d already been administered sedatives and muscle relaxants at several points over the last four days, particularly early on, probably to stop him making trouble at delicate points, and he recognized the symptoms. He’d calmed himself already; now, even calmer, he made his way to the bed (a double bed - he was used to them from hotels but it started to raise nascent questions) and slid under the covers, curling on his side and watching the door.
Some time later, it opened. “Hello,” Foxfield called, slamming a hand against the light switch. The lights in the room went out, leaving only a wedge leaking in from the open door.
“Mr. Foxfield.”
Foxfield adjusted the lights so they were dim but not entirely extinguished, moved further in, and shut the door, then locked it. “Tired?”
“It seems so.”
Foxfield laughed, pulled a chair over to the bed, and sat down facing L. “It’s all right, you can relax.”
“Please arrange for a higher proportion of sugars next time. They improve my reasoning ability.”
He leaned forward, still smiling. L was glad he’d positioned himself in the center of the bed. “Sure. I can do that. A bit more weight won’t hurt you.”
“Accompanied by the appropriate vitamin supplements, naturally. And I doubt I will gain weight. As a matter of fact, considering my previous intake levels, it is more likely that I will lose it.”
Another laugh. Foxfield’s face seemed even closer. “Sure. Sure.”
L drew his head away, too slowly it seemed. “At least until my metabolism adjusts. Which will take -”
Still another. “You’re a character. How old are you? Twenty, twenty-one?”
He considered his answer, whether he should answer. It took longer than it should have. “How old would Kay Ellis have been?” Kay Ellis had actually been some seven months older than L on paper.
He whistled. “Still, like I said, I’m impressed.”
“Are you?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I am. I jacked off thinking about you.”
It was some time before he could get his lips to move again. “Pardon?”
“When I was seventeen. I was imagining you maybe six or seven years older than me, and you looked like a rock star. My sister said you were probably more like fifty. God, the look on her face! I guess we were both wrong about that, but I was closer. They need more rock stars like you around.”
“… Mr. Foxfield. I - ”
“Shh. Relax.”
“I -”
The blankets were pulled away, too quickly. Then Foxfield was on the bed, turning him onto his back, pulling his legs from his chest. “Mr. Foxfield -” It came out softer than he wanted.
“Shh, shh.” His legs, down against the sheets, were being moved apart.
“Mr. Foxfield,” he persisted. Something was wrong, even with his thoughts drifting through mental molasses now he knew that much. “Stop touching me.”
Foxfield’s upper half abruptly descended and his mouth covered his, pressing almost gently, temporarily knocking both mind and body into stillness as he inhaled the alcohol on his breath. When Foxfield’s tongue began to work in, when his hands set about undoing the button at the top of the jeans, L’s deductive ability caught up in a twinkling.
He let out an abortive scream, small to begin with and muffled further by the mouth over his, and his body jerked up into the hand and then back and to the side, pressed into the mattress. His own hands started up but Foxfield’s met them halfway, caught them, and pressed them down over his head, their grip light but nonetheless sufficient. His feet scraped clumsily against the sheets, unable to summon the strength for any of the kicks he’d practiced or aim for the body straddling his. “No,” and it sounded too drowsy, too lackadaisical, there was no strength left in his voice either, he felt so dizzy, “stop it, stop -”
“It’s all right.” He said this as a cuff snapped shut around the right wrist. “It’s okay.”
“No.”
The left wrist now, leaving his arms outstretched as Foxfield hauled his body further down the bed, drawing the chains at the headboard taut. “You don’t have to be scared.”
“Get... off me, Mr. Foxfield.”
Quite calmly, returning his attention to the jeans button, “I said call me Gabriel.”
Without knowing quite why he said “You are not my friend. Not for me to call you that.”
He believed it even less than he’d believed Light. He would have been a fool to, an even bigger fool than he’d been at sixteen, sitting on a bench outside a bakery, eating a pastry while someone walked up and - no.
“I want to be.”
The jeans came off his hips. He tried to scream again, but again most of the sound seemed lost in his throat. A mewl emerged.
“It’s all right. Don’t worry. Relax.” His voice stayed mild, tender, as he carefully tugged off the jeans and then the underwear, ignoring the weak flailing of the legs and the faint rattling of the chains. He could afford to ignore it. He could be afford to be gentle now because with his victim drugged to such a degree there was no need to be violent.
Why couldn’t he have used something inducing anterograde amnesia or else outright insensibility, why couldn’t Foxfield have laced the food with such a dose of such a drug that he could wake up with no idea what had happened - though maybe Foxfield had used it, maybe he wouldn’t remember this. His detective’s instincts rebelled at the idea of not knowing, of being ignorant of his own rape (cases involving a drugged victim, he remembered, are especially problematic to discover let alone prosecute), but in this moment the prospect was so tempting…
His bared legs were over Foxfield’s shoulders and Foxfield was reaching down. It was happening so slowly, yet inexorably.
Inexorably? Surely not. Surely not. He couldn’t give up. Not now.
L’s next words came together with equal slowness, emerged only when Foxfield’s hand was moving up his inner thigh. “I can’t have you incarcerated under the circumstances,” he said, concentrating on keeping his speech straight, “but circumstances change, Mr. Redding.”
Foxfield’s hand remained on his thigh but it was no longer creeping upward, or trying to caress him. “Redding?”
Redding?
He realized his mistake but did not trust himself to address it, for fear of making the same one twice. “I assure you raping me will not be conducive to the clear thought I will require to track down Kira. In which case there is a high chance I will see you dead.”
He stared. “What - what - no, no, it’s not.”
“It’s not difficult to conclude.”
“It’s not.” His hand was moving up again. “You’ll like it. You’ll see.”
“I do not like it and I will not.”
“Give me a minute. Just give me a minute. You’ll like it.”
“Arousal is an involuntary. An involuntary physiological response. It has no relation to my opinion on the matter. That opinion is not going to change. My opinion of you, however, is changing. It is changing for the worse as we speak.”
His hand was nearly there now, fingers stroking at the sensitive skin just short of the perineum. “It’s all right, it’ll be all right, just relax,” and the tone was as if he was talking halfway to himself.
“No. It won’t. It won’t be. It won’t.”
“Shh.” And he was leaning down again.
If he kisses me again I am lost. He couldn’t have said what brought him to think what was likely a grossly erroneous overreaction, but that served as another jolt. “They did that,” he said, pressing himself backward into the sheets away from the descending face as though he could push himself through them, and the mattress and the box spring and the bed frame, to the dubious safety underneath. His tongue seemed to trip over itself and land in tangles but just as long as he got it out. “They said I liked it. I never did. I never.”
“I… but… I never.” Foxfield formulated another rationale. “They didn’t know anything about you,” he said, and he took his hand away from the thigh but replaced it on the shoulder, which at least still had the shirt over it. “They thought you were just some weird Brit. I know who you are. I can appreciate you for that.”
“No you can’t. At least use a condom.” The weeks he’d waited to undergo the last tests, waiting until what they tested for would be detectable. “Unless it’s too late. If you raped me. While I was unconscious. I wouldn’t know.”
“I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t. I just want you to relax.”
“No.” His vision blurred. “No, don’t.”
“Come on,” Foxfield said, sounding less sure of himself, “come on. Come on, it won’t hurt. I’ll be careful.”
“Hurt?” He blinked and there was liquid running down his face, down the sides of his face, soaking his ears. What am I doing, he thought, and on seeing Foxfield’s face thought do it more. His legs were still hoisted up over Foxfield’s shoulders. He needed more of a push. “Put me down. I haven’t…” A memory, flickering, of Misa’s indignant voice making suppositions that were justified but untrue. “I haven’t even. With... Light.”
“… with Yagami?”
The tears kept coming, without conscious effort. “We were handcuffed together.” He continued to fight the mental effects as they crept in. “Stop. Stop - ” He began to sob.
Foxfield ducked out from under his legs and they dropped splayed to the mattress. Foxfield moved back, to the end of the bed. He twisted round best as he could with his arms chained apart and his body still sluggish, pulled his legs up, turned back on his side, closed his eyes - his mind raged that he shouldn’t, that it made it easier to give in, that he wouldn’t be able to open them again and then Foxfield would be free to do as he wanted without anything to spoil his delusional fantasy - and trembled, cried unrestrainedly, as if he’d already lost, was already broken. Aren’t you? Haven’t you? The first and last time (and it would stay the last time, it would) he hadn’t cried until two of them were already starting to -
“I… I’m sorry, I’m sorry, L, I’m so sorry -”
“Go away,” and he heard his own voice thick with drugs and what else, he didn’t want to know what else. “Don’t touch me. Go away.”
Perversely thankfully, Foxfield didn’t go away immediately. First he unlocked the chains at each wrist, which L drew down to the rest of his body as fast as he could. Then he stumbled out, from the sound of it walking into a wall on the way, and the door opened and closed.
L counted to five before he curled around, opening his eyes, and half-slid, half-crawled down the length of the bed, then looked over the side to find his jeans and underwear discarded on the floor. He reached down, nearly crashing into the carpet despite the care he took leaning over the side, and fished them up to stick his legs back into them, to pull the waistband back up, to clumsily refasten the button and redo the zip. He fumbled again for the blanket. Most of it was still on the bed and the rest could be hauled back up without danger of falling off. This time he swathed himself in it like a chrysalis or a shroud, then went back into his curl and closed his eyes again, giving in to sleep, wondering if he would remember any of this.
***
He returned to the hotel sometime past five, in time to see Mr. Wammy standing at the elevators. He raised his voice, still hoarse from its exertion, remembering the cover story. “Grandfather?”
Mr. Wammy turned around, looking ruffled for the first time in... a long time. But he, too, remembered. “Kay?” He had any number of reasons to be surprised. There was his presence in the hotel lobby instead of being cloistered up in their suite reviewing the evidence. There was the tape still wrapped around each wrist. There was his staggering gait. Perhaps there were already bruises visible on his face.
“I,” he said, walking forward, “I.”
Next he would recover from his temporary stammer and say he needed a doctor. Then, in the car, he would explain what had happened. There would be an examination at the hospital. Kay Ellis would give an initial statement to police.
But now it was as though the memory had snagged on something. His voice had caught, a stuck record. “I,” was all he could say, “I,” and Mr. Wammy was looking at him strangely now. “I.” He felt tears running down his face. “I. L. I.”
He would not remember this in the morning.