Lupercalia Horror
L wakes groggily to find himself sat against - and chained to - a wall, wearing unfamiliar clothes and covered with a pile of blankets. It's dim, but he can see far enough to tell that he seems to be in a large building - a barn, possibly, or more likely an empty warehouse.
The air smells metallic, in a way he recognises as fresh-spilled blood. The space in front of him is mostly empty, except a small pile that he hopes is not more dead bodies.
He doesn't want to have failed so humiliatingly.
"You're awake?"
L considers pretending to still be asleep, but decides against it - Light seems to want an audience, and if L can distract him then he'll have more chance of disrupting Light's plans for him - whatever those are.
He raises his head to find that Light is offering him a bottle of water. "No after-effects, I hope?" L considers his current state, and agrees, wondering what exactly Light drugged him with.
Light smiles. "Good. I thought I had the mixture I wanted, but you'd be surprised how much of a pain it is to extract the right ingredients from those over-the-counter sleep aids."
L blinks, disconcerted by the casual attitude towards such a risky endeavour. "Surely there would be easier ways to obtain what you required?"
Light's smile grows to a smirk. "Ah, but I know that L is after me. Why give the World's Greatest Detective such an easy trail to follow?" His eyes rake over L. Does he even know who he's talking to? "That's why I changed your clothes, by the way - the last thing I want is some tracking device leading people here too early."
"Too early?" None of the implications are good.
Light just smirks at him and turns to the pile on the ground. "This is it. The final part." He glances back, and adds condescendingly, "Don't worry. You're just here to bear witness."
"And afterwards?"
Light doesn't answer, stepping carefully on the ground. L suspects that the same bizarre circle that showed up in previous crimescenes must have already been drawn, and he is trying not to disrupt it.
He reaches the bodies of the men L found for him, and kicks them awake, drawing pained groans that tell L they have been gagged somehow. L can't see Light's face, but every line of his body screams disdain. "'Come on, now. Don't think you'll be allowed to rest yet'," he says, voice poisonous, and L is sure he's quoting something one of them said to him - over three years ago.
Light picks up a hammer. L stares, speechless, as he systematically smashes each man's hands, shoulders, feet, and hips. "There. 'Gonna try escaping?'" Having rendered them both helpless, Light takes his time digging a circular trench into the concrete around the two men. Once it's complete, he kneels between them and - of all things - starts to pray.
L's first urge is to scoff, but the sound never leaves his throat.
When L was twelve, Wammy took him to a well-known pack, to see if he might be a wolfpartner. He didn't form a strong enough bond for any of the pups to choose him, but L has never forgotten the sensation of another person's emotions pressing against his mind. This, now, is similar, affection-welcome-gratitude filling the air, but he can feel a conflicting layer underneath of malice-amusement-hunger that makes him shudder and huddle into the wall.
He stares in disbelief as the shadows seem to rise up in front of Light and congeal into a wolfshape. Trapped in the circle with it, the two criminals Light has chosen as his victims scream in panic, trying - and failing - to get away from the monster.
Light relaxes, dropping to his knees and hugging the shadowform. "I miss you," he says, and it's a confession made in a tone of voice L has only ever heard from wolfpartners talking to their bondwolves, loving knowledge of someone that can only be had by sharing their mind. The shadow responds with a badly-fitting mask of agreement-love that shades into anticipation-eagerness-greed instead of covering it.
Light doesn't seem to notice any more than he notices his victims' screams, smiling and happy as if he really were talking to the shade of his partner. "I'm sorry it took me so long, but these are the last two."
The shadow's ears perk up. Oh?
Light's voice goes from joy to vicious bloodlust. "Kill them."
The men shriek, but their deaths are sudden.
Light sits on the floor, ignoring the blood and viscera, and buries his face in the shadow's not-quite-fur. "Thanks." He shifts, and L can see the expression on his face again for the first time since Light dug out the trench that is now filling with blood. Tears are pouring down his cheeks, he's smiling, lines of pain etch his face, and yet his eyes are blank and dead. "Thanks for letting me pretend." He hugs the shadow harder, and turns to L, unthinkingly scratching behind the shadow's ear. "I guess you'd like an explanation now?"
L has no idea what to say, but he can tell he doesn't need to; Light wants an audience. This is why he's here in the first place.
"They ran a porn circle. And a brothel. They caught my partner and they kept her in a cage, fed her drugged meat to keep her in heat. They caught boys, too - pretty boys." Light's smile turns disgusted. "Like me. They'd catch us one at a time and feed us drugs to soften our minds, so we felt what she felt, and then they put us in a room with one chipboard wall between us and her and - I don't know how many men were with me." He's starting to shiver, leaning into the shadow, and L wonders if it even comforts him or if he's just hoping that it will. "I guess I could try to find out. They recorded it. All of it. I'm pretty sure the fire didn't get all the recordings."
His voice snaps with triumph as he mentions the fire, though his eyes are as dead as ever. "They underestimated us. They thought I was going to blame her, I was going to push her away, but she's - she was -" He falters, trying to find the words, and L is horribly reminded of the one time Wammy tried to describe what having his own wolfpartner had been like. Everything he sees here says that Light's bond with the wolf would have been permanent, not the temporary result of drugs. And L knows how this story ends - but he didn't know the middle, the part Light is now filling in.
"She wanted me," Light finally settles on, voice soft with memory. "She wanted me, and I didn't have to be perfect for her to keep wanting me, I was perfect enough without having to meet her standards all the time, she wasn't disappointed by how I felt or how I thought and she shared everything with me and she helped me get out and she helped me get us both away and all I had to do was find an embassy before my father found us and I failed and they killed her AND IT'S MY FAULT SHE'S DEAD!"
The scream rings against the empty building's walls as Light pants. "It's my fault," he repeats softly. "And I had to feel it. They electrocuted her, because that's supposed to destroy the soul as well as the body." L jumps, looks at the shadow beside Light. Light smiles tiredly at him. "I know this isn't her. But it's all I've got. It's all I had."
He turns to the shadow. L thinks he can finally see something in Light's eyes. He hopes he's wrong, because after what he's just heard he does not want to find out why Light would be feeling anticipation.
He isn't wrong.
"Thank you," Light says, with a sincere gratitude that makes bile rise in L's throat. "Thank you for letting me pretend. But it's over now."
Querying-hungry-interested
Light just smiles. "I gave you a lot of sacrifices, didn't I? Everyone responsible for what happened to me. Now there's just one left."
The shadow turns its head to stare at L with nonexistant eyes.
"No!" Light scolds it. "Not him. He's the witness. That's why I drew the circle so carefully, to keep you from escaping and harming anyone outside it."
The shadow looks back at Light. Then...?
Light actually rolls his eyes, then tilts his head to bare his neck. "Please. Isn't it obvious? She's been completely destroyed." His voice softens. "I want to join her." L wishes he didn't hear the last word. "Please." This boy who could have - should have - had every advantage, reduced to begging for nonexistence.
The shadow grinned, revealing pointed black teeth. Sure.
"Thank you," Light whispered, moments before it tore his throat out.
L cringed against the wall, watching as the thing feasted on Light's corpse, losing its wolfshape to become a formless blob. Once it had finished amusing itself by desecrating the body, the shadow drifted to the edge of the circle Light had drawn, half-heartedly trying to find a gap in it. As if sensing L's regard, it changed shape again, becoming a stretched-out parody of a human figure. "Hey. Don't suppose you'd let me out of here?"
"No." L huddled under the blankets Light must have oh-so-thoughtfully provided, watching in reluctant fascination as the demon in front of him prowled its cage.
"Damn. The kid always was too smart for my own good. Didn't let me get away with half the stuff I thought I would."
"And yet you kept answering his call," L probed.
The shadow laughed. "Of course I did! You got any idea how many people he sacrificed to me? 'Sides, if I hadn't someone else would have got all that stuff. Got no idea how you humans are so deaf; that kid was screaming for his partner, all raw and open. He was just begging to be used up. Hell, he thanked me for it - you heard him do it!"
L can't disagree.
"Eh, might as well get going now the kid's gone. You'll probably wanna have a word with his father."
"Why would I want to do that?"
The shadow's grin is hideous. "Oh, didn't you know? There's a couple of webcams set up in here, beaming all the footage to daddy dearest's e-mail." Its laughter is worse. "Guess the kid maybe wanted to share one last 'fuck you' for killing that wolf and then telling him it was for his sake, huh?"
The shadow is gone before L can come up with a response. He focusses all his attention on unchaining himself.
L will always remember Light as the only case he has ever failed.
The air smells metallic, in a way he recognises as fresh-spilled blood. The space in front of him is mostly empty, except a small pile that he hopes is not more dead bodies.
He doesn't want to have failed so humiliatingly.
"You're awake?"
L considers pretending to still be asleep, but decides against it - Light seems to want an audience, and if L can distract him then he'll have more chance of disrupting Light's plans for him - whatever those are.
He raises his head to find that Light is offering him a bottle of water. "No after-effects, I hope?" L considers his current state, and agrees, wondering what exactly Light drugged him with.
Light smiles. "Good. I thought I had the mixture I wanted, but you'd be surprised how much of a pain it is to extract the right ingredients from those over-the-counter sleep aids."
L blinks, disconcerted by the casual attitude towards such a risky endeavour. "Surely there would be easier ways to obtain what you required?"
Light's smile grows to a smirk. "Ah, but I know that L is after me. Why give the World's Greatest Detective such an easy trail to follow?" His eyes rake over L. Does he even know who he's talking to? "That's why I changed your clothes, by the way - the last thing I want is some tracking device leading people here too early."
"Too early?" None of the implications are good.
Light just smirks at him and turns to the pile on the ground. "This is it. The final part." He glances back, and adds condescendingly, "Don't worry. You're just here to bear witness."
"And afterwards?"
Light doesn't answer, stepping carefully on the ground. L suspects that the same bizarre circle that showed up in previous crimescenes must have already been drawn, and he is trying not to disrupt it.
He reaches the bodies of the men L found for him, and kicks them awake, drawing pained groans that tell L they have been gagged somehow. L can't see Light's face, but every line of his body screams disdain. "'Come on, now. Don't think you'll be allowed to rest yet'," he says, voice poisonous, and L is sure he's quoting something one of them said to him - over three years ago.
Light picks up a hammer. L stares, speechless, as he systematically smashes each man's hands, shoulders, feet, and hips. "There. 'Gonna try escaping?'" Having rendered them both helpless, Light takes his time digging a circular trench into the concrete around the two men. Once it's complete, he kneels between them and - of all things - starts to pray.
L's first urge is to scoff, but the sound never leaves his throat.
When L was twelve, Wammy took him to a well-known pack, to see if he might be a wolfpartner. He didn't form a strong enough bond for any of the pups to choose him, but L has never forgotten the sensation of another person's emotions pressing against his mind. This, now, is similar, affection-welcome-gratitude filling the air, but he can feel a conflicting layer underneath of malice-amusement-hunger that makes him shudder and huddle into the wall.
He stares in disbelief as the shadows seem to rise up in front of Light and congeal into a wolfshape. Trapped in the circle with it, the two criminals Light has chosen as his victims scream in panic, trying - and failing - to get away from the monster.
Light relaxes, dropping to his knees and hugging the shadowform. "I miss you," he says, and it's a confession made in a tone of voice L has only ever heard from wolfpartners talking to their bondwolves, loving knowledge of someone that can only be had by sharing their mind. The shadow responds with a badly-fitting mask of agreement-love that shades into anticipation-eagerness-greed instead of covering it.
Light doesn't seem to notice any more than he notices his victims' screams, smiling and happy as if he really were talking to the shade of his partner. "I'm sorry it took me so long, but these are the last two."
The shadow's ears perk up. Oh?
Light's voice goes from joy to vicious bloodlust. "Kill them."
The men shriek, but their deaths are sudden.
Light sits on the floor, ignoring the blood and viscera, and buries his face in the shadow's not-quite-fur. "Thanks." He shifts, and L can see the expression on his face again for the first time since Light dug out the trench that is now filling with blood. Tears are pouring down his cheeks, he's smiling, lines of pain etch his face, and yet his eyes are blank and dead. "Thanks for letting me pretend." He hugs the shadow harder, and turns to L, unthinkingly scratching behind the shadow's ear. "I guess you'd like an explanation now?"
L has no idea what to say, but he can tell he doesn't need to; Light wants an audience. This is why he's here in the first place.
"They ran a porn circle. And a brothel. They caught my partner and they kept her in a cage, fed her drugged meat to keep her in heat. They caught boys, too - pretty boys." Light's smile turns disgusted. "Like me. They'd catch us one at a time and feed us drugs to soften our minds, so we felt what she felt, and then they put us in a room with one chipboard wall between us and her and - I don't know how many men were with me." He's starting to shiver, leaning into the shadow, and L wonders if it even comforts him or if he's just hoping that it will. "I guess I could try to find out. They recorded it. All of it. I'm pretty sure the fire didn't get all the recordings."
His voice snaps with triumph as he mentions the fire, though his eyes are as dead as ever. "They underestimated us. They thought I was going to blame her, I was going to push her away, but she's - she was -" He falters, trying to find the words, and L is horribly reminded of the one time Wammy tried to describe what having his own wolfpartner had been like. Everything he sees here says that Light's bond with the wolf would have been permanent, not the temporary result of drugs. And L knows how this story ends - but he didn't know the middle, the part Light is now filling in.
"She wanted me," Light finally settles on, voice soft with memory. "She wanted me, and I didn't have to be perfect for her to keep wanting me, I was perfect enough without having to meet her standards all the time, she wasn't disappointed by how I felt or how I thought and she shared everything with me and she helped me get out and she helped me get us both away and all I had to do was find an embassy before my father found us and I failed and they killed her AND IT'S MY FAULT SHE'S DEAD!"
The scream rings against the empty building's walls as Light pants. "It's my fault," he repeats softly. "And I had to feel it. They electrocuted her, because that's supposed to destroy the soul as well as the body." L jumps, looks at the shadow beside Light. Light smiles tiredly at him. "I know this isn't her. But it's all I've got. It's all I had."
He turns to the shadow. L thinks he can finally see something in Light's eyes. He hopes he's wrong, because after what he's just heard he does not want to find out why Light would be feeling anticipation.
He isn't wrong.
"Thank you," Light says, with a sincere gratitude that makes bile rise in L's throat. "Thank you for letting me pretend. But it's over now."
Querying-hungry-interested
Light just smiles. "I gave you a lot of sacrifices, didn't I? Everyone responsible for what happened to me. Now there's just one left."
The shadow turns its head to stare at L with nonexistant eyes.
"No!" Light scolds it. "Not him. He's the witness. That's why I drew the circle so carefully, to keep you from escaping and harming anyone outside it."
The shadow looks back at Light. Then...?
Light actually rolls his eyes, then tilts his head to bare his neck. "Please. Isn't it obvious? She's been completely destroyed." His voice softens. "I want to join her." L wishes he didn't hear the last word. "Please." This boy who could have - should have - had every advantage, reduced to begging for nonexistence.
The shadow grinned, revealing pointed black teeth. Sure.
"Thank you," Light whispered, moments before it tore his throat out.
L cringed against the wall, watching as the thing feasted on Light's corpse, losing its wolfshape to become a formless blob. Once it had finished amusing itself by desecrating the body, the shadow drifted to the edge of the circle Light had drawn, half-heartedly trying to find a gap in it. As if sensing L's regard, it changed shape again, becoming a stretched-out parody of a human figure. "Hey. Don't suppose you'd let me out of here?"
"No." L huddled under the blankets Light must have oh-so-thoughtfully provided, watching in reluctant fascination as the demon in front of him prowled its cage.
"Damn. The kid always was too smart for my own good. Didn't let me get away with half the stuff I thought I would."
"And yet you kept answering his call," L probed.
The shadow laughed. "Of course I did! You got any idea how many people he sacrificed to me? 'Sides, if I hadn't someone else would have got all that stuff. Got no idea how you humans are so deaf; that kid was screaming for his partner, all raw and open. He was just begging to be used up. Hell, he thanked me for it - you heard him do it!"
L can't disagree.
"Eh, might as well get going now the kid's gone. You'll probably wanna have a word with his father."
"Why would I want to do that?"
The shadow's grin is hideous. "Oh, didn't you know? There's a couple of webcams set up in here, beaming all the footage to daddy dearest's e-mail." Its laughter is worse. "Guess the kid maybe wanted to share one last 'fuck you' for killing that wolf and then telling him it was for his sake, huh?"
The shadow is gone before L can come up with a response. He focusses all his attention on unchaining himself.
L will always remember Light as the only case he has ever failed.