completely swagless

Ten months is a long time in which to kill someone.

Ten months is a long time, so long after the fact, to have a body be unearthed, or to wash ashore somewhere.

And yet, exactly 40 weeks to the day after that phone call reminded him so abruptly of Naomi Misora again, the last time that L had seen her face remained at the bottom of a flight of stairs, in an LA subway station, in the last dregs of summer 2002.

He was looking at it now. Not the real thing, of course, but the image of her, a few years younger than she should be, lingering frozen in time on her FBI profile page. L squinted at the pixels. It was laughably low quality for a government agency, but between the blur and grain he could make out scattered details of her face. She stared at the camera the same way she had stared at him, her hair falling around her eyes like it was framing them, grabbing him by the throat and twisting his face to look straight at them. She wasn't smiling. Letting a breath whistle sharply through his teeth, L tilted his head. He had always been bad with faces- a terrible quality for a detective, he was well aware, but not one he could help. It was for that reason he'd acquired the habit of staring. Excessive studying of the faces presented to him was one of the most well-worn tools he found himself reaching for, more of a protective, anxious habit than conscious choice- and so that was what he did now, just staring, slowly reconstructing the mental image he kept of Naomi Misora from his patchwork of memories and that photograph on the laptop he was resting precariously on his curled-up knees. He had to fit the idea of her back together. He needed to be able to recognise her, if he saw her again.

Misora, Naomi DOB: 11 February, 1976 Service begins: 1st September, 2001 Service ends: 30th September, 2003

He felt his hackles raise. Her agent file was missing a date. The most valuable one there was, out of every little day of her existence they could have jotted down in that file. The one he needed to remember to edit in, when he got a chance.

Disappears: 6th January 2004

If L had been paying attention, he might have noticed he was shaking.

His eyes narrowed on the digital recreation of hers. Calculating. That was why she had made such an exceptional agent, why L has chosen her as his proxy in his most personal case: she observed the world around her, not simply looking at it like the rest of them. If Kira had happened to have crossed her path, she would have seen him in the same way that L was certain he had done, and she would have never let go of the hunch that she felt pulling at her. Not the Naomi he knew. She would have dug her teeth in and bit down, hard, to spill the blood plainly, and not let go- the Naomi Misora of his memories was not the type to give up and disappear. But-

L swallowed. But, 40 weeks had passed by without sight of her.

L didn't mind seeing corpses. There was nothing scary about seeing something that used to be a person, but wasn't anymore. There might be wounds, blood, bones and gore and viscera and organs where they shouldn't be- but that didn't scare him. They were just things, and inanimate objects couldn't frighten him, no matter how hard they tried. Any fear of his stemmed from something else entirely. What unsettled him was the implication. The knowledge that such a thing- anything there was to do- had been done to someone, by another human being. He would take a room of blood and flesh over a person. They were the disturbing ones. They were the ones with this power over him, not the cold, inanimate bodies in their wake. L didn't mind seeing corpses, if they were unfamiliar.

When he watched Hirokazu Ukita keel over, choking, on live television, his mind had gone horribly blank for just one second. For one, nauseating second all of his thoughts had parted silently to make way for the sight of the back of Ukita's head as he folded, so drawn out it seemed almost intentionally cruel, down to rest onto the pavement. L hated guilt, the way it made him shiver and his heart push forwards and up against his chest even with his choices fully justified; he knew why Ukita went out there and he cowered. But he was shaking then, and he was shaking now. He had cowered in 2002, too. The image of Naomi Misora was forcing her way into L's mind, making his skin crawl as he failed to take control from her. He wondered if her corpse looked the same as she had. He wondered if it still had eyes left to stare at him with. He wished he had seen her enough to remember easily what that would look like.

If Naomi had met Kira, and L held no doubt that she had, then the only reasonable explanation would be that he had killed her somehow, before L had even known to look. Why? He turned the familiar word over in his mind like a stone. What could possibly be the point of killing one random woman? Someone who wasn't even an agent herself anymore? He raised his thumb to his mouth and trapped the nail between his teeth. There was one probability presenting itself to him, neatly solving that puzzle given back in the sharp, cold end of December: her late fiancé. A frankly mediocre agent himself, but love did strange thing to other people- before he was even cold she would want nothing more than to avenge him; she was always far more noble than L. And, being a much better agent than her partner had ever been, she would have found Kira. And then Kira would have found her right back.

Naomi Misora, who loved her fiancé; her fiancé, Raye Penber; Raye Penber, an agent on the Kira case; an agent on the Kira case who died just a week after tailing-

-he bit down on the flesh of his thumb.

L knew where Kira was. His head turned the smallest degree. It wasn't like he could get far.

Kira was on the other side of their bed, still pretending to be asleep.

Artificially cooled air stung his eyes as he stared at him, blinking feeling like letting him escape, with every shaking breath in- and he was still shaking, L realised- jittering the chain linking them together and sending ripples of metallic clinks shuddering through it. L knew he was a light sleeper these days; there was no possibility that he could have ever slept through this. And yet, he kept up the act. So petty.

"Why are you staring at me, Ryuzaki?"

Light hadn't turned to face him, but his shoulders hunched just a fraction.

"Why were you pretending to be asleep?" He bit back, with more venom than he had anticipated. Even if the same trick could have passed under his nose on a security camera, he surely wouldn't be able to deceive him so brazenly while only arms-length apart. L was sure that he got absolutely nothing out of faking sleep next to him at this moment in time; still, that only made him even more infuriating. They both knew that charade he had been doing fooled neither of them. But, inescapably, what Light had done before was acute, unignorable, starting to tug at his mind and getting harder to keep hidden as it exposed more and more nerves with each time that it pulled at him. Pretending to sleep in the same bed as him, the innocuous person sighing and rolling over to his back and untangling the chain from underneath him, was the person who had, maybe just once, met Naomi Misora.

Naomi Misora, who didn't shoot a thirteen year old even when it would have solved the case and saved her team's efforts. The only person L knew that wouldn't have.

He wondered how long they had been in contact for. Did he simply discover her, then dispose of her without even knowing what she was? Or was there a process; did he hunt her, two hawks chasing each other, circling, before he swept in for the kill with talons in her neck? L wasn't sure which one made it harder to breathe. He just watched again, an unfocused gaze tracing over Light's face. His doe-brown eyes staring ahead at nothing through half-lowered lashes; lips barely parted; cheeks still blushed; he could be called beautiful, maybe, by other people. But L knew what he had done.

Light shifted under his stare, folding his hands over his chest in an uncomfortable imitation of relaxedness. L leaned closer. The image of Naomi was helplessly slamming her fists into the walls of his brain every second he looked at him.

"Light," getting the word out felt like choking; Kira, he begged to say, murderer, "does the name Naomi Misora mean anything to you?"

There was a second in which L was sure that the room had no air in it at all. Their eyes abruptly meeting. A hitch in Light's heartbeat like its line had stumbled over itself. A light bulb somewhere in his head, momentarily, switching on. Only for one second.

"No." He said, flatly.

His expression a perfect, painted-on blank nothingness again. And L knew what he had done.

"I see," L responded, in the moment before he dived for his neck.

Liar. Liar. Liar. His brain wouldn't let him form any other word than the one he knew was true; his heart was straining at the bars on his ribcage, throwing itself at them again and again like it was trying to break out. Liar. His hands wrapped around Light's throat before he even had time to flinch away from him. He pressed down with something unrestrained, some animalistic simple violence, feeling the way his skin compacted under the weight of his grip- Light's eyes were wide, wider than he'd ever seen them and afraid and it didn't even matter anyway because he was the only one who knew whether or not Naomi had made this same face, and he hoped that this hurt more than she had, and he hoped he knew that.

The chain rested heavy and coiled on Light's chest.

He could only think of one question, the one that had been clawing at him with sharp nails less and less subtly since new year's day. "What did you do to her?", he croaked, through teeth gritted so hard he almost wanted them to chip. He wanted to change himself in his rage. It was his own hands that meant Light didn't respond but that was good, it meant he wouldn't lie. Of course. The only way to stop the snake from spitting venom was to cut off its head. Light should have seen this coming. They were both liars by trade.

His face was getting paler; corpse-pale, he imagined, and the thought made him want to laugh. Did he watch her turn this colour? Does he know what she looks like? Can he match the grainy FBI profile image to a location? Kira's power could control people's actions before death; could he make bodies bury themselves? Hide themselves away in bags? His stomach flipped at the taste of 2002 in his mouth, hospitals and the choice of two apartment block rooms. Could he make them burn? His fingers dug into the skin of Light's throat harder, triggering a dry, breathless gargle from his compressed windpipe.

He's too smart for this, L thought, vaguely, he should know scrabbling at my hands like that won't help. Light should be kicking him, hard in the gut to shock him off. But he wasn't. Fear does strange things to other people.

The task force would ask their questions. The way his hands were contorting under the strain and the agonised sounds Light was trying to make airlessly and the way his eyes were bulging meant that he was bruising the skin, black and purple and red and green and blue circling his throat, undeniably violent hands. People hurting one another. Not wounds and blood and bones and gore and viscera and organs, but one human's hands coiled around another human's throat.

Light's desperate pawing at his hands grew more sluggish as L realised, suddenly, that his greying lips were mouthing something. Had been, probably. Forming three words over and over and over and over and over and over. I don't know. I don't know. His stomach dropped at the same instant he felt his lip curl up with disgust. Light's face was blank with terror, this time, and oxygen deprivation and hatred, eyes wide, glassy and not searching for anything in particular, and L believed him. He pulled his hands off of his throat like releasing a wild animal back to the ground. Why would I believe him?

Light shot up, panting, audibly drinking in gulps of air punctuated by hacking coughs. His hands circled his own throat tentatively as L recoiled.

He should know not to trust a word that Light Yagami said. He should understand that he lied like his heart beat. That was how he had gotten anything he had ever wanted; he was a nesting doll of masks, one after the other after the other until he unveiled the final product of absolutely nothing. There should have been no reason to take his hands off of his throat.

Except that he believed him.

It made him want to scream. He was sitting right there- shoulders raised, staring at him in horrified loathing- having murdered Naomi Misora and the worst part was that he didn't even remember. There was a flicker of recognition. That was all. Just a spark, and it burned out just as fast as it lit. He had put the only FBI agent he'd ever seen worth anything down like a dog who bites, and he didn't know that he'd done anything in particular.

He could be wrong. There was always a chance of that, in theory. But he knew he wasn't.

Robotically, he pushed himself back to his side of their bed, facing mechanically forward with his hands resting limp at his sides. Light's eyes still burned on him in his periphery vision.