#razed

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The door slides open, grating metal across metal. A soft pair of footsteps pad inside, before it clangs back shut.

"Man of the hour!" Ryuk crows, but Light knows even before he says it.

L pauses a bit away from him, and Light can practically feel those bottomless eyes raking up his pitiful form. "Hello, Light-kun. How are you feeling?"

Light can't talk, and the bastard knows it. L is just taunting him. It makes Light bristle, but he forces himself to remain calm. He still doesn't have all the pieces yet, and if L wants to play dumb, well...

Light has more experience with it than he does.

"Oh, of course," L says, tone almost absent. He steps forward and unbuckles the strap of leather from around Light's jaw. Spit drips down from the corners of his lips, involuntary, and Light internally cringes at the messy feeling of it.

Outwardly, he makes a show of breathing hard, a whimper seeping into his voice. "L? W-What's going on? I thought that—"

"You can drop the act," L drawls, and oh, he sounds a bit annoyed now. What, did he think he could tie Light down and immediately get him to confess? Light thought he was smarter than that.

"I don't understand," Light cries, indignance and anger and fear singing into his voice. Though Light was hibernating for most of their cohabitation, he still remembers his own thought processes during that time. He can play himself very convincingly. "We caught Higuchi, and you let me out of the cuffs yourself! What is it now? I haven't done anything!"

"You know, Light-kun, I've been pouring over the Death Note for the past day or so, and I found something interesting." L ventures closer, the belt still dangling from his hand. "Several pages from the front of the notebook have been ripped out. A suspicious amount of pages, really. Almost as if something on them would've been incriminating towards Kira—but it couldn't have been the names themselves, no, we already have a log of those Kira has killed, so it couldn't have been that." L leans down, and Light knows that he's staring at him, examining him. When he speaks, Light can smell strawberries and icing on his breath. "You have very elegant handwriting, Light-kun. It's very distinctive."

Flexing beneath his ribs, Kira purrs at the compliment. Light licks the backs of his teeth.

"So now you're accusing me of being Kira based on a lack of evidence?" Light bites out scornfully. "Your insistence on my being Kira is getting a bit pathetic, L. You just can't stand to be wrong, can you? Oh the great detective, brought so low!"