There and Back Again

October 28, 1999

Beyond’s fists were clenched in rage as he stormed down the hallway. He’d never felt so embarrassed, so humiliated, in all his life. He’d been in a meeting with Roger. He could never have prepared himself for that meeting.

“We’ve decided to end the program.”

The words echoed in his brain. They wouldn’t stop. Ending the program. Ending his reason for existing. That’s what they should have said. He wasn’t needed, or important, or special. Go find something else for your whole life to be about, Beyond. We don’t want you anymore. Roger had given him poor excuses. The program was too stressful for them. A had died because of that stress. The program had been a bad idea from the start. They should never have tried to make others into L. It couldn’t be done. L was an original. He could never be replicated. The program kept them from, and Beyond loved this part, learning how to be themselves and function in the real world. There weren’t supposed to be learning how to be themselves. They were learning how to be L! That had been the point, wasn’t it?
He saw her walking toward him down the hall. It seemed she was about to be told how useless and worthless she was as well. Those cowards. They couldn’t even tell them together. Giving bad news must be easier when the recipients couldn’t unite as one enraged, indignant force.
She must have noticed the look on his face because she’d paused, waiting for him to close the distance between them. Well, she would be surprised because he had no intention of stopping. He didn’t want to talk, he didn’t even want to prepare her. He certainly didn’t want to have a public airing of his fall from grace.

“B?”

He stormed past her.

“B! What’s the matter? What’s happened?”

She didn’t follow him. He knew that she wouldn’t. He needed to get to his room. He needed to be able to breathe again.
When he reached his room, his own sanctuary, he instantly regretted it. This room was nothing but a reminder of his failures. A reminder of Wammy House, and he now hated Wammy House more then he ever thought he could. And then he felt as though his brain and heart exploded simultaneously.
Books and the bookshelves that had contained them were flung to the floor. The desk, the wardrobe overturned, each time accompanied by screams of primal rage. The computer in pieces, clothing and bed covers strewn about, pillows shredded, the feathers falling in a mockery of winter snow. Everything he could touch he destroyed and as he destroyed, he screamed. He felt as though he’d gone mad, he knew he had gone mad. His destructive journey led him to the bathroom, where towels went flying, shower curtain ripped, metal rods torn from the tile. And then, he saw it. . .his reflection. He looked truly insane. Sweat falling down his face, his chest heaving, trying to take in enough air. But, the true horror was knowing that this face was his face as well.

“This is YOUR fault,” he whispered.

Then his fists began pummeling the glass, shattering his reflection into pieces, taking the image away. He simply kept pounding the mirror, feeling the glass shards embed themselves into his knuckles, his wrists, only stopping when the glass was gone and his hands were slick with blood. He stumbled out of the room and dropped to the floor before his bed, examining the destruction emotionlessly.
That was how she found him. Sitting on the floor, legs splayed out before him uncharacteristically, eyes half open, blood covering his hands and lower arms.

“What did you do?” She took in the trashed room and picked her way to the even worse looking bathroom. She began searching through the wreckage for something, anything resembling bandages. She heard his voice in the next room, softly telling her to be careful, she might cut herself. She found what she was looking for and began picking her way carefully across the wreckage of Beyond’s room. She knelt beside him and began cleaning the blood from his arms.

“Perhaps you should practice what you preach, Beyond.”

He simply looked at her. He was too tired for talking.

“Are you not going to tell me why you did this?”

He shook his head.

“Are you going to talk to me at all?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“I know you’re angry. And you should be, but this is not going to help or change anything.”

“OW!”

“Sorry,” she said after pulling the first of many small glass splinters from his hand. She paused in her work to look into his eyes.

“Why the mirror? Can you at least tell me that much.”

“I don’t like my face.”

She looked back to his hands and continued extracting the glass.

“But, Beyond, you have a beautiful face. I know boys don’t like being called that, but it’s true.”

“It’s not my face.”

She stopped again and placed a gentle hand upon his cheek.

“It seems like it to me.”

He said nothing more to her until she had finished fastening strips of bandage around his hands and wrists. She told him she would call some people to put his room back in order and that he had no choice but to accept her invitation as her guest in her room that night. He had simply nodded at her. When she started to stand, he had threaded his fingers through hers and finally looked at her.

“I’m going to make him pay. I’m going to be better than he ever could.”

********

November 6, 2004

Light hadn’t entirely been expecting the kiss that followed his statement. He hadn’t expected the force behind it, the emotion. He’d dropped the chain and had stumbled backwards till his back hit a wall. Fingers were intertwined with his hair, lips touching lips, lips touching every inch, every centimeter of his face. His own hands pulling Ryuzaki as close as humanly possible. His own fingers gliding softly over Ryuzaki’s warm, pale torso. Gently, but not too gently because he knew Ryuzaki was slightly ticklish on his left side. Ryuzaki, pressing him tightly to the wall, kissing him so deeply. Light felt as though he were being tasted from the inside out. And why did he feel like this hadn’t happened in months, years? It felt as though it were new and comfortable at the same time. Why did he feel as though he lost so much time?
He wasn’t sure how they made it to the bed, he didn’t really care. All he knew was that Ryuzaki was above him ripping his shirt apart. He vaguely registered the sounds of the buttons hitting the wall and sliding to the carpet. And then Ryuzaki was kissing him again. His lips, the crook of his neck, his collarbone, his chest. His own face being stroked by strands of Ryuzaki’s hair. He was completely surrounded, engulfed by this man.

“Ryuzaki,” the whispered moan fell from his lips.

L paused in his ministrations for what felt like eternities to Light.

“No.”

“No?” Light’s brow furrowed in slight confusion.

“Not that name. I don’t want to hear it.”

“But. . .what shou-”

“L,” he said, “Just L.”

“L.”

“Yes. L, you see,” he said, pressing himself slowly into Light, “is my name.”

Light’s eyes widened, from both the pleasure and the surprise. L had just told him his name? He wanted to say so much, but he simply couldn’t. His mind simply overwhelmed by the sensation of his lover inside him. Sweat slicked and gasping, he simply held tight, arms and legs wrapped about the man above him, whispering a single letter over and over. It felt like a chant, a prayer, a powerful secret that only he knew. When his body surrendered and the world disappeared followed by L collapsing onto him, he felt as though some elusive mystery had finally been solved.
They lay there, not moving, the only sound the breathless pants escaping their lips. Light was still confused, about so many things, but he couldn’t break this moment. He wouldn’t. Not for the world. And then he heard the muffled whispers, so close to his ear, but too soft to understand.

“What did you say?”

L lifted himself away from him and rolled beside him. He placed his hand once more to Light’s face, pushing away sweaty strands of hair.

“You’ve been gone for so long.”

“I don’t know what that means. I don’t understand a thing that’s happened today. Are you ever going to tell me?”

“Yes, I will.”

“When?”

“Soon. I promise. But, not now. Tomorrow maybe. You’ll understand everything then.”



********

November 9, 1999

“What are you doing?”

Beyond paused from his frantic packing, a balled up shirt clenched in his hand.

“What does it look like,” he said turning around.

“It looks like you’re leaving,” she said, clutching a small black box to her chest.

“It’s a good thing you’re a genius. You might never have figured that out.”

He resumed shoving his clothes into his duffel bag. Crap, he had been hoping to avoid this. He’d wanted to sneak out, sight unseen, like a shadow or a ghost. He didn’t want to hear her try to give him a reason to stay, try to convince him that leaving wasn’t a good idea. A few moments passed before he realized that she wasn’t doing that at all. She only stood behind him, watching, holding onto that box. He turned to face her once more. She simply gazed intently back at him.

“I don’t have time for this,” he muttered and slung the bag over his shoulder.

“You’ve forgotten something.”

“What?”

She silently handed him the box.

“You forgot this.”

“What is it?”

“Call it an early Christmas present. Well, I suppose it’s more of a going away present now. I found it in a shop today and thought you might like it.”

He lifted the top of the box and peered down at the contents. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“Where did you. . .”

“I told you. One of the shops in town. It’s a Japanese thing, right? I thought you liked that sort of stuff. And the lady in the shop said they were sometimes used to keep demons and bad luck away.” She looked down at her hands. “Who needs that more than we?”

He placed the box in his duffel bag, zipped it closed and prepared to leave again. She pulled lightly on his hand as he walked past.

“Are you sure you have to leave?”

“You know I do. I can’t stay here. I can’t be myself, I don’t even know who that is. I can’t be L. I’m not allowed anymore. I have to go. I have to become greater than he is. It’s the only way I can get my life back..”

She held a hand gently to his cheek.

“I’m not going to ask you to come back. I know you never would. You will be great. I can tell. I do want to ask you one thing though.”

“What is that?”

“Please, don’t forget. Don’t forget this place, or me. Maybe if you don’t forget, we’ll be able to see each other again.”

“How could I forget? How could I forget you?”

She kissed him lightly on the cheek and smiled softly.

“I hope you know, I’m taking your room.”

He gave her a half smile and walked out the door.

She would soon come to regret giving him a wara ningyo.

********

November 7, 2004

Light had once been proud of the fact that not much in the world ever truly surprised him. He’d never once gone slack-jawed or glassy eyed in disbelief. Now, he realized that he could never say that about himself again. The monitor had long since turned off, the black and white images no longer on the screen. He simply sat there, completely dumbfounded at what he had seen. He felt shaky and sick, trying to keep his hands from trembling. It was him. . .him. But, he couldn’t remember it. He remembered being on the roof, but the part after was fuzzy in his memory. But, there he had been, on the monitor, telling L he was Kira. Telling him things he didn’t know now or remember. He looked at L, standing next to his chair, his thumb stroking his lower lip in a thoughtful manner.

“L?”

“Yes, Light?”

“I think. . .I’m going to be sick.”

Light dashed from his chair to the bathroom, his stomach clenching. He just kept thinking of the amount of people he’d just watched himself confess to killing. He thought he wasn’t going to make it to the bathroom, he felt so sick and disgusted with himself. He made it though, and the contents of his stomach were soon emptied. He simply stay kneeling on the floor, panting in between bouts of dry heaving. He ran water over his face, and quickly brushed his teeth. He was so happy L hadn’t followed him. He didn’t think he could have handled L behind him, trying to calm him down. As if he deserved to be calm. He should be locked up, on his way to death. He wasn’t any better than those criminals he had killed. And, oh god, all the innocents he’d. . .
Light couldn’t help it. A choked sob escaped his throat and he sunk back down to the floor, leaning against the wall, legs curled up toward his chest. For a brief second his mind thought that he was in a very L-like position. The thought of L though, was enough to create an unstoppable flood of tears.

“Light.”

He looked up and through his blurry gaze saw L standing above him. His eyes followed L as he too crouched on the floor.

“Light,” he said reaching to push away the hair from the boys eyes. Light’s arm grabbed his and pushed it away.

“Don’t,” he whispered. “How can you touch me? After what I. . .” His eyes grew even wider. “L, I was going to kill you. Why are you still. . .? You should lock me away and leave me.”


L looked at the panicky boy. He knew he had to calm him down or he would very soon have a hysterical teenager on his hands. He also knew, from experience, that hysterical teenage boys were never any fun.

“Light, you need to calm down.”

“Calm down! Calm down? Are you crazy? How am I supposed to calm down? I just watch myself confess to being one of the most prolific murderers ever and you want me to calm down! And you! Last night, you knew. . .you knew what I was and you still. . .What the hell is wrong with you? Is that part of the perks of catching Kira? Getting to fuck him too?!”

L sighed. Well, this wasn’t going as well as he’d hoped. And he really didn’t want to do what had to be done. A couple of days ago, sure, this would have made him immensely pleased with himself. But, this wasn’t Kira anymore, this was Light. And Light was a scared and sobbing teenager. Soon to be a pissed off scared and sobbing teenager.
For the second time that day, something happened to Light that he hadn’t seen coming. He saw L raise his arm, he saw the hand coming toward him, but it didn’t register in his brain what was happening until that hand connected with his cheek. He sat dazed for a moment as realization sunk in. L had just slapped him across the face.

“What the Hell was that for?”

“If you insist on acting like a hysterical woman, then I will treat you as such.”

Light opened his mouth to argue, then quickly closed it. He had been hysterical. He rubbed his red cheek slowly, trying to ease the sting.

“You still didn’t have to hit me,” he mumbled.

L began to slowly brush away the tears that were still falling from Light’s eyes. He knew this boy was going to go to hell and back multiple times and he would have to do the best he could to keep him sane throughout the ordeals to come.

“You should stop crying.”

“Yeah, I should, but I can’t. There aren’t tears enough in this world for what I’ve done. For what I would have done.”

“Don’t think about what you would have done.”

“How can you say that? I was going to kill you. Something has to be inherently evil in my soul to think I could become a god. I just killed people. Criminals, people in my way.” he looked into L’s eyes. “And I can’t remember any of it. That’s worse than knowing I did it, in a way.”

“You don’t have to remember. I will.” L pulled him toward him and just held the boy close. “You found something that no human should ever find. I don’t think you ever really had a chance. I’m just giving you another one.” He placed his lips gently to Light’s forehead. “And you didn’t kill me. I’m still here. Only because you wanted me to be.”

Light held tightly to L, listening to the other man’s heartbeat. A heartbeat that had almost stopped forever, because of him.

********

A/N: Wow, I got that bit done a bit faster then I expected. I also had more time to write then I expected XD. Well, I hope the second chapter is alright.