Fic: [Nathan Barley/Death Note] The Secret of Sound (PG)
Title: The Secret of Sound
Fandom: Nathan Barley/Death Note
Characters: Jones, L, Mello, Dan, Watari
Rating: PG
Warnings: SPOILERS for Death Note up to Chapter 59/Episode 26
Word Count: 4150
Disclaimer: Nathan Barley belongs to Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker. Death Note belongs to Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata.
Notes: Written to fulfill MY OWN (DX) booshbattle Crossover Scuffle prompt, "Nathan Barley/Death Note, Jones was an orphan at Wammy's House."
For Nathan Barley fans: You shouldn't really have too much trouble with the Death Note references. I tried to make it pretty easy to understand in the context of the story. There will be a few notes at the end.
For Death Note fans (on the off chance any of them read this): Er, I think the only thing I can say is this is Jones. As I said on Twitter earlier today, he basically looks like an Obata character come to life. XD He reminds me of Matt in some ways, actually. I think I like Matt and I like Jones for pretty similar reasons.
The Secret of Sound
1.
His earliest memories were of music. The young piano teacher who lived in the downstairs flat would practice early in the morning, and he'd wake up to the sound of it. Once, his mother asked her to watch him for an hour and she played for him, while he laid his ear against the side of the instrument to feel the vibrations. While she was in the kitchen making tea he piled up two boxes to climb on so that he could reach inside the piano, and tugged at the strings, trying to figure out where the noises came from.
After his mother died there wasn't much music for awhile, so he learned to find it in unexpected places. The hum of a television set. The beeping of cars in the street. The thumping of kids' shoes on the steps going up to the dormitories. The sound the metal bars of his bed frame when he pinged his fingers against them while he was trying to fall asleep -- the many, many hours while he tried to fall asleep.
His quest to figure out where sounds came from led him into trouble more often than not. He took things apart, things he wasn't supposed to take apart because they were precious. And when they were in pieces, he still didn't have any answers. They'd lost their magic. The sounds had died.
The people who ran the place he lived in didn't like him doing it, either. "You're going to hurt yourself," they told him. "You're going to get electrocuted!" He did get shocked a couple of times, not too badly, but he didn't mind. They were the only ones who cared. In desperation, they gave him educational science kits for kids - "Build a Battery out of a Potato!" and that sort of thing - but he assembled them and got bored and moved on.
One day, a man visited the orphanage. The man spoke with the adults and watched the children. Late in the day the man came over and watched him quietly, while he unsuccessfully tried to pry off the back of a toy robot he'd stolen from another boy's bed.
"Do you like breaking things?" the man asked.
"No."
"Then why do you take them apart?"
He shrugged. Then he said, "Because I want to find out how they work. So I can make stuff too."
"Your teachers say you don't do very well at school. Except for mathematics."
"It's all boring. Even the numbers are boring."
The man nodded slowly. He reached into the inside pocket of his coat and took out a flat box, and from it he selected a tiny screwdriver, which he handed over. "I run an orphanage. It's not much like this one. You might like it better there."
The back of the robot came free, revealing a mass of electronic guts. "What's so different about it?"
"The other children there want to know how things work, too, and we try to help them figure these things out."
"Why?"
"Because they're special. You're special, too. You're destined for something great."
He turned the robot on. It sparked and fizzed and fell over, broken.
"Would you like to come and live there?"
Cradling the broken robot in his hands, he remained silent for a minute. "Is there music there?"
The old man looked surprised. "Of course. There's a music room with every type of instrument you could imagine. Do you like music?"
He nodded.
2.
At Wammy's House, they told him to pick a name for himself. "Any name you like," they said, "just remember not to use your real name anymore. It's your secret now."
He picked the name Jones. It was the last name of the piano teacher who had lived downstairs. He couldn't remember her face anymore, but he remembered calling her Miss Jones.
As Mr. Wammy (for that was the old man's name) had promised, he was allowed to take anything he wanted to apart. And there was indeed a room with all sorts of things to make music with. The first few weeks he played around with everything, making an unholy racket. Then the teachers asked if he would like to learn how it all worked. He could still try to figure things out on his own, but if he wanted to be taught they would be happy to teach him. Faced with so much sudden freedom, he was a little stunned at first, and unsure of what to do, but he wanted to learn, so he said yes.
Jones went through one instrument after another with remarkable speed. Once he figured out how to play something and had mastered a few songs he wanted to try it on something else. Then he wanted to make his own noises on them - to replicate all the sounds he'd been saving up in his head for years. It was hard though. It never sounded right.
He was so wrapped up in sound that for awhile he didn't really pay attention to the other children. For the most part they left him alone, being wrapped up in their own studies and obsessions. They were each peculiar in their own way.
He also wasn't forced to go to bed when he didn't want to at this place, though after he spent three days awake once and collapsed he was taken to the infirmary, where the nurse explained to him exactly why his body needed sleep, and talked to him about why he didn't like to sleep. The next day he was given a record player for his bedroom. Somehow, listening to music made it easier to fall asleep at night.
3.
After he had been at Wammy's House for around a year, Mr. Wammy came to visit. He brought with him a very strange boy. He was older than Jones, and he wasn't new; he knew the place well. He went straight upstairs to a room in a wing of the building Jones had never visited before. Jones couldn't resist being curious about this boy; he hung around the fringes of the other children to see if they knew who he was.
The older kids did know. They said his name was L, and that he was the real reason they were all here.
"You'll meet him soon," one girl said. "He usually speaks to each of us when he visits. I've met him twice."
Sure enough two days later, Jones was brought up to L's room. It was a peculiar room, as there wasn't a great deal of furniture. Computers and equipment were set up on the floor, along with scattered pillows and blankets, but on one side of the room there were two chairs and a table set up, in deference to unusual guests. On the table there were cups, a coffee service, and plates of sweets. L was seated at one chair, his legs drawn up. He was barefoot.
"Jones, isn't it," L said. "You're new." He rested one thumb against his bottom lip and looked at Jones expectantly, his eyes wide as though he was perpetually startled.
Jones sat down on the other chair, resisting the urge to curl up in his chair like the boy opposite him. He nodded curtly, not sure what to say.
"Coffee?"
Jones blinked. "I can't have coffee," he said, checking the longing in his voice. He'd always thought coffee smelled like heaven. "I'm not old enough."
"How old are you?" Despite the blithe question, Jones had the impression that L already knew.
"Nine."
"Well, I think that's old enough. Just don't tell anyone." He handed a full cup of the stuff to Jones, and pushed the sugar bowl and the milk over. Jones ignored it and took a sip of it, straight, and his eyes widened at the bitterness, and immediately drank more. When I grow up I'll drink this all the time.
L watched him with some amusement, then took the sugar bowl back and placed one cube on his tongue, humming as it dissolved.
"Who are you?" Jones asked abruptly, emboldened by the coffee and L's weird childishness.
L washed the sugar down with his own coffee - pale white with milk and no doubt filled with sugar as well. "I'm a detective."
Jones confused. "A detective? That's a bit odd, ain't it? You're not that much older than me. How can you be a detective?"
"I'm not just any detective. I'm the best detective in the world, Jones. And to answer your question, I can be a detective at my age because no one knows my age. No one outside of this house, and the people in it, know that I am L."
Jones cupped the hot cup in his hands, oddly uneasy. "Why do we get to know then?"
L smiled then, a huge and overwhelming, perhaps even slightly mad, smile. "Because one day, one of you will be L. When I'm gone."
"Gone?"
"It's a dangerous job, being me."
Jones' mind flashed, irrelevantly, to the broken and disassembled toys that littered his bedroom here. "I don't want to be you." The vehemence of his words startled even himself.
L's smile loosened into something a little more sane. "That's all right. It's not something you have to worry about at the moment." He began to delicately pick apart a fruit tart, separating each type of fruit into tidy sections. "There's no rush. There used to be ... but not anymore." He sighed. "The first children they brought in here didn't turn out so well. I made them change how things were done after that." He ate a strawberry, and his gaze, which had wandered off to the distance, suddenly refocused on Jones. "Still, I think it's time for you to start attending regular classes with the other children."
Jones scowled. He knew most of the other kids went to classes, of their own volition, and that they took a lot of tests - he saw them crowded around talking about the results all the time. But no one had ever told him he had to as well, so he'd hoped to avoid it. "I don't want to."
"You're smart enough."
"That stuff's boring."
"It'll be interesting if you make it interesting."
"What's that mean?"
"Why do you enjoy pulling things apart?" L said this in a very calm voice, as though it were the logical response to Jones' question.
"Because ... I want to figure out how it works."
"And?"
"So I can figure out how to put it back together!"
"And?"
"And? There ain't any other reason. I just like it! It's fun."
L chewed on his thumbnail contemplatively and said around the digit, "If you approach everything else with the same mindset, then it will be fun too." He raised himself from the chair and climbed off it, weirdly animal-like, and, stooped over almost like an old man, headed to his computer. "We all have to do things we don't necessarily want to order to do the things we want. That's how you get around it ... when you're the way we are."
Jones watched him silently as he crouched down in front of the computer, clacking at the keyboard, his face impassive and emotionless. He finished the rest of the coffee. "Should I ... should I go now?"
L nodded slowly, his eyes distant. "I'll be back in a few months. We'll speak again soon. Good luck, Jones."
4.
Jones started to go to school. He took the tests that everyone else took, and after a few months, he did very well on them. But time passed and he still didn't want to be L. He thought a lot of the other kids felt the same, but most of them didn't talk about it. There were some who took the whole thing very seriously; they were terribly competitive, and Jones soon discovered that if he distinguished himself in certain ways that attracted their attention, he earned himself enemies. After awhile he learned to cultivate a preoccupied, absent-minded attitude; detached and distant, yet amiable and harmless. He was friends with everyone, but close to no one. It generally kept people off his back while at the same time leaving him free to focus on what was important. And what was important was his musical projects.
If anything, his progress in that area had grown in leaps and bounds once he'd started taking school seriously. He soon had learned all sorts of things about electricity and engineering. With spending money that he carefully saved up he had soon assembled a respectable library of music. No genre bored him. He wanted it all. He read books on music theory and practice. He needed to know everything. He was even fascinated by the process of recording, and he learned how music settled into the plastic grooves of a record, or into flimsy, seaweed-like magnetic tape. All those sounds, trapped in there, playing over and over again - like ghosts.
Meanwhile, as he grew older, he watched younger children enter, and older children - now properly adults -- leave, most of them to university, which Wammy's House kindly paid for. Every once in awhile, there was a kid who just disappeared. Some said they ran away. Jones thought this was entirely possible. Despite all of the comforts and kindnesses of this place, it wasn't an easy place to live. Everyone seemed constantly tense, as though waiting for a guillotine to strike. You had to be strong to survive it.
Not long after Jones' seventeenth birthday, L made a visit. Not a boy anymore, a man, as Jones nearly was himself, though he was barely aware of it. Normally L spent most of his time at Wammy's House up in his room, but that night Jones - who hadn't gone to sleep at all - heard someone climbing down the stairs. He stuck his head out of the music room door. It was L.
L hunched over the banister, his pale skin seeming almost translucent in the dim light of the hallway. "I'm going to play tennis. Do you want to join me?"
Jones felt a shivery tingle pass through him, and nodded. Like all of the Wammy kids, he yearned for L's attention. It was hard to come by.
He followed L out onto the grounds. L had put on a raggedy pair of trainers. They looked out of place on him. Jones had been bemused by the idea of L playing tennis, but when they reached the court, and L took up a racket and started pounding a ball against the practice wall, it became clear to him that this was as natural to L as setting the pitch of a circuit was to Jones. He sat down on the ground near the edge of the court and watched as L danced around the court after the ball, like a jangly scarecrow. L played with a single-minded intensity for about 30 minutes straight. Then he wandered over to sit on the ground next to Jones. He kicked off his sneakers and opened the flask he'd brought outside with him and poured himself some lukewarm, no doubt sickly-sweet tea, his hands fluttering as he carefully held the cup with two fingers, as little contact as possible. He offered the flask to Jones, who declined.
"This might be the last time I see you," L said. "You'll be leaving here soon, I think."
Jones nodded.
"You know," L said, and slurped noisily at his tea, "you've never asked what rank you are. That's what almost everyone asks as soon as they see me. Even the ones who don't care."
With a shrug, Jones shrugged. "Would you answer even if I asked?"
L stared at him, his blank expression unnerving. "Not entirely. But I'd tell you that you're quite close to the top of the list."
"Why? I don't even want to succeed you."
"That's exactly why," L said, and smiled.
Jones wasn't sure what to say to this. "I'd be the worst person to succeed you. I ain't got what it takes."
L shook his head. "We're not that different, you and I. We're both obsessed with uncovering secrets."
Later, when they were walking back to the orphanage, L stopped for a second, and Jones followed his gaze to a window on the fourth floor. There was someone standing at the window, watching them. It only took a second for Jones to conclude it was one of the younger kids; he'd recognize that long, blond hair anywhere. The boy stared at Jones with a poisonous look of envy and then disappeared from the window.
"He, however, is a bit higher on the list than you," L said.
"Ain't he been causing lots of trouble since he got here?"
L nodded. "He's an ambitious little viper." His thumb drifted up to his mouth and he bit down on the pad of it, his lips twitching with excitement. "Unfortunately, I'm afraid that might be exactly what's called for in this job."
5.
Many years later, Jones was unexpectedly reminded of that night. He was leaving Old Street Station when he looked up and saw that face again. He looked exactly the same, that ambitious little viper, even now in the grips of adolescence. The kid should still be at the orphanage. He was way too young to have left. Had he become one of the notorious runaways?
As if to prove exactly that, the kid turned around and took off down the pavement. Jones only allowed himself a minute to make his decision, and then ran after him. The boy was fast, but Jones was faster. Within a few minutes he'd caught him.
"Leave me alone," the kid said fiercely. His accent, which had been rougher, kind of Eastern European, when Jones had known him, had normalized in the intervening years.
"Mello," Jones said. "That's your name, ain't it? Or the one you picked, anyway."
The boy said nothing, only narrowed his eyes defiantly.
"What are you doing here?" Nothing. Jones sighed. "Are you hungry?"
This at last provoked a response. Mello gave a slow, distrustful nod.
Jones brought him back to the house, and the kid made a beeline for the box of Cocoa Puffs still sitting on the counter. He ate like an animal, slopping cocoa-tinted milk over the sides of the bowl. Jones recalled that he had loved chocolate.
"How'd you remember me?" Mello asked, when he was halfway through his second bowl of cereal.
"How could I forget you? Ain't you the kid who broke a window in the classroom with your calculus textbook after you took your first test?"
Mello wiped milk from the corner of his mouth. "And you're Jones, aren't you? The weird one who practically lived in the music room. You haven't changed much." He nodded to a half-engorged Casio keyboard which currently occupied one side of the kitchen table.
"Why ain't you in Winchester? Did you run away?"
The kid, who'd raised the cereal bowl to drink up the rest of the milk, lowered it. "I didn't run away! I told them I was leaving."
"But why?"
Mello's face settled into a more serious, less indignant expression. "You don't know then? L is dead."
Jones went silent, and was suddenly overwhelmed by the ambient noises all around him - the ticking of the clock over the stove, the branches of the tree outside banging against the window upstairs, the warning beeps made by a truck driving in reverse out in the street. He let out a harsh breath. "Who'd he name as successor?"
Mello's face soured again. "He hadn't decided yet."
Jones was surprised. L had always seemed so infallible, so unconquerable. Despite the fact that the entire premise of Wammy's House was founded on the inevitability of his death, that death had seemed somehow impossible to Jones. The fact L had not seen it coming and hadn't prepared sufficiently for it was even more astounding. "What's going to happen then?"
Mello shrugged. "They offered it to the person who seemed most suitable." He scowled; there was untold, secret jealousy and pain in the set of his mouth. "You wouldn't know him. He arrived after you left. The little shit."
"I thought it might have been you."
He lowered his head and was silent, as though debating what to say next. "They asked if we would share the job. Him and me. I said no. It's a one person deal, don't you agree?"
Jones shrugged. "What are you going to do, then?"
Mello looked relieved that the topic had been changed from the past to the future. "I'm going to America," he announced.
"How're you going to get there?"
"I've got money."
"Then why do you look like you've been sleeping in Shoreditch Park?"
"I'm saving it for when I really need it. Right now I'm still finalizing my plan."
Christ, he's like a little Napoleon. "Stay here then," he said, almost regretting it the minute he said the words.
Mello blinked, and an unexpected vulnerability flashed through his face.
"It's all right," Jones added, emboldened by the sudden chink in Mello's armor. "You just gotta sleep on the couch. I kind of collect strays anyway. Speaking of which, my housemate'll be home soon, so you'd better come up with a plausible story for who you are."
Mello pushed the empty cereal bowl around with the spoon, and then said, in a slow and measured voice, "I'll say I'm a family friend."
Jones raised an eyebrow.
Mello didn't meet his gaze. "We're practically family anyway," he whispered.
6.
Dan, for reasons Jones couldn't quite fathom, accepted the "family friend" explanation, even going so far as to say that there was a resemblance between them, though Jones suspected he was being sarcastic. That night, as Dan scowled and shuddered his way through a draft of another unpleasant article for SugarApe, and Mello used Jones' laptop to do research for his plans, Jones thumbed through his records, looking for inspiration. His fingers stopped on David Bowie Live in Santa Monica '72. A few minutes later the melancholy chords of his cover of Jacques Brel's "My Death" flooded the room.
My death waits like a Bible truth
at the funeral of my youth
we drank for that
and the passing time ...
My death waits like
a witch at night
as surely as our love is bright
let's not think of that, or the passing time.
He took some samples he'd ripped months ago - bits of rhythm, parts of horn and accordion from Neutral Milk Hotel's "The Fool" - and began to layer and cut and match things, losing himself in the process. He felt like he was unearthing something, deep and sad, buried inside of himself. We're not that different, you and I. We're both obsessed with uncovering secrets.
When he looked up again, Dan was asleep over his notepad. Mello was watching Jones, his face a mixture of recrimination and grief, all conflicted and stopped-up. Jones turned off the decks.
"You want a blanket?" he asked.
Mello nodded. Jones fetched one for him and one for Dan, which he spread over his sleeping form, pulling the notebook and pen out from under him so he didn't wake up with ink all over his face. He turned out the light as he left the room. He hadn't meant to sleep that night, but he felt inexplicably exhausted.
The next morning Mello was gone, and so was the laptop. He'd left behind a thumb drive with all of the hard-drive data saved on it, and a stack of bills. He'd also finished off the box of Cocoa Puffs.
Jones woke Dan up. "Oi, you, sleepy bugger. Let's go out and get some breakfast, I'm starved."
Dan sat up and stretched. "Where's that kid? Your 'family friend'? Gone back to his family?"
Jones shrugged. "I dunno. He's a law unto himself. He'll be fine, don't worry about it."
Dan lit a cigarette. "God, I needed this so bad last night. Didn't think I should smoke around him."
Jones snorted with laughter. "He's a teenager, not a baby. Lord, Dan, you've got some weird principles." He picked up Dan's notepad from where he'd put it away before bed. "What's this one about, anyway? You looked well put out about it."
With a scowl, Dan pushed the pad away from him and stood up. "Horrible. They've got me writing about some crazy cult."
"Cult? That seems a bit heavy-handed for SugarApe."
"It's really big with the idiots, I guess."
Jones frowned. "Maybe one of them should write about it, then. Seems a bit dangerous."
"Better than the other shit they wanted me to write on."
Jones looked closer at Dan's notes, and a little warning shiver went through him. He threw the notepad aside. "Don't write about it. It's bad news. Okay?"
Dan looked at him in confusion, then shrugged. "Right. I won't write the article ... but you pay for breakfast, right?"
Jones smiled, relieved. "Yeah. That's fine. Let's go."
The End
David Bowie - My Death (Jacques Brel cover)
Neutral Milk Hotel - The Fool
My knowledge of music, mixing, circuit bending, and electrical engineering is nearly nonexistent. So sorry for any errors/inconsistencies/just plain bullshit!
Quick Death Note Primer
L - The world's greatest detective, an eccentric genius who shields his identity from the world and solves impossible mysteries because it's the only thing that challenges him.
Quillish Wammy, aka Watari - A wealthy former inventor who founded Wammy's House as a home for gifted children. After L was discovered, it became a training place for his successors.
Mello - One of L's potential successors. He was second in line to become L. He's very impetuous and prone to rages. Huge inferiority complex. He also idolized L.
Near, aka "the little shit" - L's successor. He was first in line to succeed L but was for some reason never formally picked by L. Mello hates him, but he doesn't seem to hate Mello. Extremely childish, but also cool and logical, with very poor social skills. Near is said to have a "natural genius" while Mello is "a hard worker".
Kira, aka Light Yagami - The protagonist/anti-hero of Death Note, a teenage genius and son of a police officer who acquires a supernatural notebook that can kill people. He decides to use it to cleanse the world of evil by murdering criminals, and considers himself to be a god. His actions attract a large amount of followers, who call him "Kira" (killer) and eventually form a sort of cult. Though L suspects him of being Kira, he can't prove it, and Light even works with him to catch Kira for a time. He eventually brings about L's death.
Fandom: Nathan Barley/Death Note
Characters: Jones, L, Mello, Dan, Watari
Rating: PG
Warnings: SPOILERS for Death Note up to Chapter 59/Episode 26
Word Count: 4150
Disclaimer: Nathan Barley belongs to Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker. Death Note belongs to Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata.
Notes: Written to fulfill MY OWN (DX) booshbattle Crossover Scuffle prompt, "Nathan Barley/Death Note, Jones was an orphan at Wammy's House."
For Nathan Barley fans: You shouldn't really have too much trouble with the Death Note references. I tried to make it pretty easy to understand in the context of the story. There will be a few notes at the end.
For Death Note fans (on the off chance any of them read this): Er, I think the only thing I can say is this is Jones. As I said on Twitter earlier today, he basically looks like an Obata character come to life. XD He reminds me of Matt in some ways, actually. I think I like Matt and I like Jones for pretty similar reasons.
The Secret of Sound
1.
His earliest memories were of music. The young piano teacher who lived in the downstairs flat would practice early in the morning, and he'd wake up to the sound of it. Once, his mother asked her to watch him for an hour and she played for him, while he laid his ear against the side of the instrument to feel the vibrations. While she was in the kitchen making tea he piled up two boxes to climb on so that he could reach inside the piano, and tugged at the strings, trying to figure out where the noises came from.
After his mother died there wasn't much music for awhile, so he learned to find it in unexpected places. The hum of a television set. The beeping of cars in the street. The thumping of kids' shoes on the steps going up to the dormitories. The sound the metal bars of his bed frame when he pinged his fingers against them while he was trying to fall asleep -- the many, many hours while he tried to fall asleep.
His quest to figure out where sounds came from led him into trouble more often than not. He took things apart, things he wasn't supposed to take apart because they were precious. And when they were in pieces, he still didn't have any answers. They'd lost their magic. The sounds had died.
The people who ran the place he lived in didn't like him doing it, either. "You're going to hurt yourself," they told him. "You're going to get electrocuted!" He did get shocked a couple of times, not too badly, but he didn't mind. They were the only ones who cared. In desperation, they gave him educational science kits for kids - "Build a Battery out of a Potato!" and that sort of thing - but he assembled them and got bored and moved on.
One day, a man visited the orphanage. The man spoke with the adults and watched the children. Late in the day the man came over and watched him quietly, while he unsuccessfully tried to pry off the back of a toy robot he'd stolen from another boy's bed.
"Do you like breaking things?" the man asked.
"No."
"Then why do you take them apart?"
He shrugged. Then he said, "Because I want to find out how they work. So I can make stuff too."
"Your teachers say you don't do very well at school. Except for mathematics."
"It's all boring. Even the numbers are boring."
The man nodded slowly. He reached into the inside pocket of his coat and took out a flat box, and from it he selected a tiny screwdriver, which he handed over. "I run an orphanage. It's not much like this one. You might like it better there."
The back of the robot came free, revealing a mass of electronic guts. "What's so different about it?"
"The other children there want to know how things work, too, and we try to help them figure these things out."
"Why?"
"Because they're special. You're special, too. You're destined for something great."
He turned the robot on. It sparked and fizzed and fell over, broken.
"Would you like to come and live there?"
Cradling the broken robot in his hands, he remained silent for a minute. "Is there music there?"
The old man looked surprised. "Of course. There's a music room with every type of instrument you could imagine. Do you like music?"
He nodded.
2.
At Wammy's House, they told him to pick a name for himself. "Any name you like," they said, "just remember not to use your real name anymore. It's your secret now."
He picked the name Jones. It was the last name of the piano teacher who had lived downstairs. He couldn't remember her face anymore, but he remembered calling her Miss Jones.
As Mr. Wammy (for that was the old man's name) had promised, he was allowed to take anything he wanted to apart. And there was indeed a room with all sorts of things to make music with. The first few weeks he played around with everything, making an unholy racket. Then the teachers asked if he would like to learn how it all worked. He could still try to figure things out on his own, but if he wanted to be taught they would be happy to teach him. Faced with so much sudden freedom, he was a little stunned at first, and unsure of what to do, but he wanted to learn, so he said yes.
Jones went through one instrument after another with remarkable speed. Once he figured out how to play something and had mastered a few songs he wanted to try it on something else. Then he wanted to make his own noises on them - to replicate all the sounds he'd been saving up in his head for years. It was hard though. It never sounded right.
He was so wrapped up in sound that for awhile he didn't really pay attention to the other children. For the most part they left him alone, being wrapped up in their own studies and obsessions. They were each peculiar in their own way.
He also wasn't forced to go to bed when he didn't want to at this place, though after he spent three days awake once and collapsed he was taken to the infirmary, where the nurse explained to him exactly why his body needed sleep, and talked to him about why he didn't like to sleep. The next day he was given a record player for his bedroom. Somehow, listening to music made it easier to fall asleep at night.
3.
After he had been at Wammy's House for around a year, Mr. Wammy came to visit. He brought with him a very strange boy. He was older than Jones, and he wasn't new; he knew the place well. He went straight upstairs to a room in a wing of the building Jones had never visited before. Jones couldn't resist being curious about this boy; he hung around the fringes of the other children to see if they knew who he was.
The older kids did know. They said his name was L, and that he was the real reason they were all here.
"You'll meet him soon," one girl said. "He usually speaks to each of us when he visits. I've met him twice."
Sure enough two days later, Jones was brought up to L's room. It was a peculiar room, as there wasn't a great deal of furniture. Computers and equipment were set up on the floor, along with scattered pillows and blankets, but on one side of the room there were two chairs and a table set up, in deference to unusual guests. On the table there were cups, a coffee service, and plates of sweets. L was seated at one chair, his legs drawn up. He was barefoot.
"Jones, isn't it," L said. "You're new." He rested one thumb against his bottom lip and looked at Jones expectantly, his eyes wide as though he was perpetually startled.
Jones sat down on the other chair, resisting the urge to curl up in his chair like the boy opposite him. He nodded curtly, not sure what to say.
"Coffee?"
Jones blinked. "I can't have coffee," he said, checking the longing in his voice. He'd always thought coffee smelled like heaven. "I'm not old enough."
"How old are you?" Despite the blithe question, Jones had the impression that L already knew.
"Nine."
"Well, I think that's old enough. Just don't tell anyone." He handed a full cup of the stuff to Jones, and pushed the sugar bowl and the milk over. Jones ignored it and took a sip of it, straight, and his eyes widened at the bitterness, and immediately drank more. When I grow up I'll drink this all the time.
L watched him with some amusement, then took the sugar bowl back and placed one cube on his tongue, humming as it dissolved.
"Who are you?" Jones asked abruptly, emboldened by the coffee and L's weird childishness.
L washed the sugar down with his own coffee - pale white with milk and no doubt filled with sugar as well. "I'm a detective."
Jones confused. "A detective? That's a bit odd, ain't it? You're not that much older than me. How can you be a detective?"
"I'm not just any detective. I'm the best detective in the world, Jones. And to answer your question, I can be a detective at my age because no one knows my age. No one outside of this house, and the people in it, know that I am L."
Jones cupped the hot cup in his hands, oddly uneasy. "Why do we get to know then?"
L smiled then, a huge and overwhelming, perhaps even slightly mad, smile. "Because one day, one of you will be L. When I'm gone."
"Gone?"
"It's a dangerous job, being me."
Jones' mind flashed, irrelevantly, to the broken and disassembled toys that littered his bedroom here. "I don't want to be you." The vehemence of his words startled even himself.
L's smile loosened into something a little more sane. "That's all right. It's not something you have to worry about at the moment." He began to delicately pick apart a fruit tart, separating each type of fruit into tidy sections. "There's no rush. There used to be ... but not anymore." He sighed. "The first children they brought in here didn't turn out so well. I made them change how things were done after that." He ate a strawberry, and his gaze, which had wandered off to the distance, suddenly refocused on Jones. "Still, I think it's time for you to start attending regular classes with the other children."
Jones scowled. He knew most of the other kids went to classes, of their own volition, and that they took a lot of tests - he saw them crowded around talking about the results all the time. But no one had ever told him he had to as well, so he'd hoped to avoid it. "I don't want to."
"You're smart enough."
"That stuff's boring."
"It'll be interesting if you make it interesting."
"What's that mean?"
"Why do you enjoy pulling things apart?" L said this in a very calm voice, as though it were the logical response to Jones' question.
"Because ... I want to figure out how it works."
"And?"
"So I can figure out how to put it back together!"
"And?"
"And? There ain't any other reason. I just like it! It's fun."
L chewed on his thumbnail contemplatively and said around the digit, "If you approach everything else with the same mindset, then it will be fun too." He raised himself from the chair and climbed off it, weirdly animal-like, and, stooped over almost like an old man, headed to his computer. "We all have to do things we don't necessarily want to order to do the things we want. That's how you get around it ... when you're the way we are."
Jones watched him silently as he crouched down in front of the computer, clacking at the keyboard, his face impassive and emotionless. He finished the rest of the coffee. "Should I ... should I go now?"
L nodded slowly, his eyes distant. "I'll be back in a few months. We'll speak again soon. Good luck, Jones."
4.
Jones started to go to school. He took the tests that everyone else took, and after a few months, he did very well on them. But time passed and he still didn't want to be L. He thought a lot of the other kids felt the same, but most of them didn't talk about it. There were some who took the whole thing very seriously; they were terribly competitive, and Jones soon discovered that if he distinguished himself in certain ways that attracted their attention, he earned himself enemies. After awhile he learned to cultivate a preoccupied, absent-minded attitude; detached and distant, yet amiable and harmless. He was friends with everyone, but close to no one. It generally kept people off his back while at the same time leaving him free to focus on what was important. And what was important was his musical projects.
If anything, his progress in that area had grown in leaps and bounds once he'd started taking school seriously. He soon had learned all sorts of things about electricity and engineering. With spending money that he carefully saved up he had soon assembled a respectable library of music. No genre bored him. He wanted it all. He read books on music theory and practice. He needed to know everything. He was even fascinated by the process of recording, and he learned how music settled into the plastic grooves of a record, or into flimsy, seaweed-like magnetic tape. All those sounds, trapped in there, playing over and over again - like ghosts.
Meanwhile, as he grew older, he watched younger children enter, and older children - now properly adults -- leave, most of them to university, which Wammy's House kindly paid for. Every once in awhile, there was a kid who just disappeared. Some said they ran away. Jones thought this was entirely possible. Despite all of the comforts and kindnesses of this place, it wasn't an easy place to live. Everyone seemed constantly tense, as though waiting for a guillotine to strike. You had to be strong to survive it.
Not long after Jones' seventeenth birthday, L made a visit. Not a boy anymore, a man, as Jones nearly was himself, though he was barely aware of it. Normally L spent most of his time at Wammy's House up in his room, but that night Jones - who hadn't gone to sleep at all - heard someone climbing down the stairs. He stuck his head out of the music room door. It was L.
L hunched over the banister, his pale skin seeming almost translucent in the dim light of the hallway. "I'm going to play tennis. Do you want to join me?"
Jones felt a shivery tingle pass through him, and nodded. Like all of the Wammy kids, he yearned for L's attention. It was hard to come by.
He followed L out onto the grounds. L had put on a raggedy pair of trainers. They looked out of place on him. Jones had been bemused by the idea of L playing tennis, but when they reached the court, and L took up a racket and started pounding a ball against the practice wall, it became clear to him that this was as natural to L as setting the pitch of a circuit was to Jones. He sat down on the ground near the edge of the court and watched as L danced around the court after the ball, like a jangly scarecrow. L played with a single-minded intensity for about 30 minutes straight. Then he wandered over to sit on the ground next to Jones. He kicked off his sneakers and opened the flask he'd brought outside with him and poured himself some lukewarm, no doubt sickly-sweet tea, his hands fluttering as he carefully held the cup with two fingers, as little contact as possible. He offered the flask to Jones, who declined.
"This might be the last time I see you," L said. "You'll be leaving here soon, I think."
Jones nodded.
"You know," L said, and slurped noisily at his tea, "you've never asked what rank you are. That's what almost everyone asks as soon as they see me. Even the ones who don't care."
With a shrug, Jones shrugged. "Would you answer even if I asked?"
L stared at him, his blank expression unnerving. "Not entirely. But I'd tell you that you're quite close to the top of the list."
"Why? I don't even want to succeed you."
"That's exactly why," L said, and smiled.
Jones wasn't sure what to say to this. "I'd be the worst person to succeed you. I ain't got what it takes."
L shook his head. "We're not that different, you and I. We're both obsessed with uncovering secrets."
Later, when they were walking back to the orphanage, L stopped for a second, and Jones followed his gaze to a window on the fourth floor. There was someone standing at the window, watching them. It only took a second for Jones to conclude it was one of the younger kids; he'd recognize that long, blond hair anywhere. The boy stared at Jones with a poisonous look of envy and then disappeared from the window.
"He, however, is a bit higher on the list than you," L said.
"Ain't he been causing lots of trouble since he got here?"
L nodded. "He's an ambitious little viper." His thumb drifted up to his mouth and he bit down on the pad of it, his lips twitching with excitement. "Unfortunately, I'm afraid that might be exactly what's called for in this job."
5.
Many years later, Jones was unexpectedly reminded of that night. He was leaving Old Street Station when he looked up and saw that face again. He looked exactly the same, that ambitious little viper, even now in the grips of adolescence. The kid should still be at the orphanage. He was way too young to have left. Had he become one of the notorious runaways?
As if to prove exactly that, the kid turned around and took off down the pavement. Jones only allowed himself a minute to make his decision, and then ran after him. The boy was fast, but Jones was faster. Within a few minutes he'd caught him.
"Leave me alone," the kid said fiercely. His accent, which had been rougher, kind of Eastern European, when Jones had known him, had normalized in the intervening years.
"Mello," Jones said. "That's your name, ain't it? Or the one you picked, anyway."
The boy said nothing, only narrowed his eyes defiantly.
"What are you doing here?" Nothing. Jones sighed. "Are you hungry?"
This at last provoked a response. Mello gave a slow, distrustful nod.
Jones brought him back to the house, and the kid made a beeline for the box of Cocoa Puffs still sitting on the counter. He ate like an animal, slopping cocoa-tinted milk over the sides of the bowl. Jones recalled that he had loved chocolate.
"How'd you remember me?" Mello asked, when he was halfway through his second bowl of cereal.
"How could I forget you? Ain't you the kid who broke a window in the classroom with your calculus textbook after you took your first test?"
Mello wiped milk from the corner of his mouth. "And you're Jones, aren't you? The weird one who practically lived in the music room. You haven't changed much." He nodded to a half-engorged Casio keyboard which currently occupied one side of the kitchen table.
"Why ain't you in Winchester? Did you run away?"
The kid, who'd raised the cereal bowl to drink up the rest of the milk, lowered it. "I didn't run away! I told them I was leaving."
"But why?"
Mello's face settled into a more serious, less indignant expression. "You don't know then? L is dead."
Jones went silent, and was suddenly overwhelmed by the ambient noises all around him - the ticking of the clock over the stove, the branches of the tree outside banging against the window upstairs, the warning beeps made by a truck driving in reverse out in the street. He let out a harsh breath. "Who'd he name as successor?"
Mello's face soured again. "He hadn't decided yet."
Jones was surprised. L had always seemed so infallible, so unconquerable. Despite the fact that the entire premise of Wammy's House was founded on the inevitability of his death, that death had seemed somehow impossible to Jones. The fact L had not seen it coming and hadn't prepared sufficiently for it was even more astounding. "What's going to happen then?"
Mello shrugged. "They offered it to the person who seemed most suitable." He scowled; there was untold, secret jealousy and pain in the set of his mouth. "You wouldn't know him. He arrived after you left. The little shit."
"I thought it might have been you."
He lowered his head and was silent, as though debating what to say next. "They asked if we would share the job. Him and me. I said no. It's a one person deal, don't you agree?"
Jones shrugged. "What are you going to do, then?"
Mello looked relieved that the topic had been changed from the past to the future. "I'm going to America," he announced.
"How're you going to get there?"
"I've got money."
"Then why do you look like you've been sleeping in Shoreditch Park?"
"I'm saving it for when I really need it. Right now I'm still finalizing my plan."
Christ, he's like a little Napoleon. "Stay here then," he said, almost regretting it the minute he said the words.
Mello blinked, and an unexpected vulnerability flashed through his face.
"It's all right," Jones added, emboldened by the sudden chink in Mello's armor. "You just gotta sleep on the couch. I kind of collect strays anyway. Speaking of which, my housemate'll be home soon, so you'd better come up with a plausible story for who you are."
Mello pushed the empty cereal bowl around with the spoon, and then said, in a slow and measured voice, "I'll say I'm a family friend."
Jones raised an eyebrow.
Mello didn't meet his gaze. "We're practically family anyway," he whispered.
6.
Dan, for reasons Jones couldn't quite fathom, accepted the "family friend" explanation, even going so far as to say that there was a resemblance between them, though Jones suspected he was being sarcastic. That night, as Dan scowled and shuddered his way through a draft of another unpleasant article for SugarApe, and Mello used Jones' laptop to do research for his plans, Jones thumbed through his records, looking for inspiration. His fingers stopped on David Bowie Live in Santa Monica '72. A few minutes later the melancholy chords of his cover of Jacques Brel's "My Death" flooded the room.
My death waits like a Bible truth
at the funeral of my youth
we drank for that
and the passing time ...
My death waits like
a witch at night
as surely as our love is bright
let's not think of that, or the passing time.
He took some samples he'd ripped months ago - bits of rhythm, parts of horn and accordion from Neutral Milk Hotel's "The Fool" - and began to layer and cut and match things, losing himself in the process. He felt like he was unearthing something, deep and sad, buried inside of himself. We're not that different, you and I. We're both obsessed with uncovering secrets.
When he looked up again, Dan was asleep over his notepad. Mello was watching Jones, his face a mixture of recrimination and grief, all conflicted and stopped-up. Jones turned off the decks.
"You want a blanket?" he asked.
Mello nodded. Jones fetched one for him and one for Dan, which he spread over his sleeping form, pulling the notebook and pen out from under him so he didn't wake up with ink all over his face. He turned out the light as he left the room. He hadn't meant to sleep that night, but he felt inexplicably exhausted.
The next morning Mello was gone, and so was the laptop. He'd left behind a thumb drive with all of the hard-drive data saved on it, and a stack of bills. He'd also finished off the box of Cocoa Puffs.
Jones woke Dan up. "Oi, you, sleepy bugger. Let's go out and get some breakfast, I'm starved."
Dan sat up and stretched. "Where's that kid? Your 'family friend'? Gone back to his family?"
Jones shrugged. "I dunno. He's a law unto himself. He'll be fine, don't worry about it."
Dan lit a cigarette. "God, I needed this so bad last night. Didn't think I should smoke around him."
Jones snorted with laughter. "He's a teenager, not a baby. Lord, Dan, you've got some weird principles." He picked up Dan's notepad from where he'd put it away before bed. "What's this one about, anyway? You looked well put out about it."
With a scowl, Dan pushed the pad away from him and stood up. "Horrible. They've got me writing about some crazy cult."
"Cult? That seems a bit heavy-handed for SugarApe."
"It's really big with the idiots, I guess."
Jones frowned. "Maybe one of them should write about it, then. Seems a bit dangerous."
"Better than the other shit they wanted me to write on."
Jones looked closer at Dan's notes, and a little warning shiver went through him. He threw the notepad aside. "Don't write about it. It's bad news. Okay?"
Dan looked at him in confusion, then shrugged. "Right. I won't write the article ... but you pay for breakfast, right?"
Jones smiled, relieved. "Yeah. That's fine. Let's go."
The End
David Bowie - My Death (Jacques Brel cover)
Neutral Milk Hotel - The Fool
My knowledge of music, mixing, circuit bending, and electrical engineering is nearly nonexistent. So sorry for any errors/inconsistencies/just plain bullshit!
Quick Death Note Primer
L - The world's greatest detective, an eccentric genius who shields his identity from the world and solves impossible mysteries because it's the only thing that challenges him.
Quillish Wammy, aka Watari - A wealthy former inventor who founded Wammy's House as a home for gifted children. After L was discovered, it became a training place for his successors.
Mello - One of L's potential successors. He was second in line to become L. He's very impetuous and prone to rages. Huge inferiority complex. He also idolized L.
Near, aka "the little shit" - L's successor. He was first in line to succeed L but was for some reason never formally picked by L. Mello hates him, but he doesn't seem to hate Mello. Extremely childish, but also cool and logical, with very poor social skills. Near is said to have a "natural genius" while Mello is "a hard worker".
Kira, aka Light Yagami - The protagonist/anti-hero of Death Note, a teenage genius and son of a police officer who acquires a supernatural notebook that can kill people. He decides to use it to cleanse the world of evil by murdering criminals, and considers himself to be a god. His actions attract a large amount of followers, who call him "Kira" (killer) and eventually form a sort of cult. Though L suspects him of being Kira, he can't prove it, and Light even works with him to catch Kira for a time. He eventually brings about L's death.