Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dear L,

I sincerely hope this letter finds you well. Although Father has forbidden me from writing to you these past five years, I have thought of you often, and not a day has gone by that I have not prayed most fervently for your continued safety and good health. I hear that you have recently been granted a letter of marque, and I offer my sincerest congratulations.

I wish I could say that fortune has favoured me as kindly as it has favoured you, but that would be quite far from the truth. A number of troubling events have befallen me recently, and it is on account of these that I am writing to you. To put it plainly, I find myself in dire need of help, and I do not know who else to turn to.

Three months ago, accompanied by my dear friend Anthony, I undertook a voyage to Australia to visit our sister. We had scarcely set sail when we were attacked by pirates. Anthony and I were captured, and given the choice between death and joining the crew of the Spectre, the pirate ship that had captured us, naturally, we chose the latter.

Upon signing the articles, Anthony and I were welcomed into the crew. The captain treated us with surprising civility, as did the rest of the men and women aboard the ship. I learned that many of them, like Anthony and I, had been forced to join the crew, but that they had chosen to stay of their own volition, even when given opportunities to leave. They spoke of life aboard the Spectre as if it were a sort of paradise, and at first, I did not find it difficult to believe them.

I quickly began to suspect, however, that not everything aboard the Spectre was as it appeared to be.

Shortly after Anthony and I joined the crew, the Spectre was attacked by another pirate ship. Although we were victorious, the captain was badly wounded in the fighting. As the only doctor aboard the ship, it fell to me to tend to him. He recovered eventually, but not before spending nearly three days and three nights delirious with fever, speaking to someone who wasn’t there. When I asked him who he was talking to, he said it was a Shinigami. A god of death.

I was disturbed by this answer, but at the time, I foolishly dismissed it, telling myself that the captain was clearly ill, and did not know what he was saying. Then, less than a week later, Anthony died. He threw himself overboard and drowned. Having retired to my quarters early that evening on account of a migraine, I did not witness his death myself. Those who did said that he had gone stark raving mad, foaming at the mouth and screaming about a devil attacking him, a devil no one could see but him.

When I heard these words, an icy chill of fear went through me. The others agreed that Anthony had lost his mind, but I knew my friend, and I assure you, he was completely sane. My suspicions were only confirmed when the captain pulled me aside and asked if he had said anything strange while I had been tending to his wounds. Suddenly afraid of what he might do to me if I said yes, I lied and told him that I didn’t remember him saying anything out of the ordinary. I do not think he believed me, and ever since that day I have lived in fear that he will find some way or another to get rid of me.

I am begging you, if you receive this letter, come quickly.

Your brother,
Nathaniel

The sky was on fire.

At least, that was what it looked like.

The setting sun illuminated a glowing path across the water, bathing the ocean’s waves in shades of burning red and orange. It was the kind of sunset, L thought to himself, that his sister Linda would have liked to paint. It was a shame she wasn’t here to see it.

Or maybe not, considering the bodies floating in the water and the smoldering, half-sunken wreck of what had once been the most infamous pirate ship on the seven seas.

The Spectre.

The ship Nathaniel had been on.

It was a scene L knew would haunt him for the rest of his life. The blazing inferno of colors in the sky, the bodies floating face-down in the ocean, the ship his brother had been on slowly slipping beneath the waves.

He couldn't look away from it.

Naomi, his quartermaster, came to stand beside him. “Tell them to search for survivors,” L said, without looking at her. “If they find Nathaniel’s body…I don’t want to see it. Weigh it down and let it sink.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

She withdrew from him and relayed his orders to the rest of the crew. As they lowered ropes from the side of the ship and paddled out in rowboats through the sea of corpses, L turned away.

He could already tell they would find no survivors.

He’d been too late.

He’d been too late, god damn it, and now his brother was dead.

They never found Nathaniel’s body.

They did, however, find a survivor.

A boy, even younger than Nathaniel by the look of him, half-drowned and bleeding sluggishly from a wound to the head. They brought him onto the ship unconscious, wrapped in blankets to ward off the chill as the sun slipped beneath the horizon and the moon and stars rose in the night sky.

“Why you?” L wondered aloud as he looked down at the boy sleeping in his bed. The ship’s doctor, Quillsh, had bandaged his head, but it was still bleeding slightly, forming a vivid red dot on the white fabric of the bandage. L touched his index finger to it, pressing down slightly on the wound.

“Why not Nathaniel?”

The boy, of course, did not answer.

Disgusted, L turned away. Outside the window of his cabin, moonlight glittered upon the surface of the ocean. The ship was quiet tonight, the crew clearly shaken by the enormity of the tragedy they had seen.

By now, the Spectre must have sunk completely beneath the waves.

The bodies of its crew, on the other hand…

Those would probably float for a while.

Maybe even wash up on some distant shore.

L couldn’t shake the feeling of roiling unease in his stomach. Why hadn’t they been able to find Nathaniel’s body? Had he somehow survived the explosion which had killed everyone else aboard the ship except for the boy who was now sleeping peacefully in L’s bed? Or had he been murdered months ago by the captain of the Spectre as he’d feared he would be?

The letter Nathaniel had written to him lay on the desk just a few feet away, but L couldn’t bring himself to read it again.

Instead, he crossed the room once more to the bed, looking down at the boy sleeping in it. “You’re going to wake up soon,” he said, his voice low enough to be a whisper. “And when you do, you’re going to tell me exactly what happened to my brother.”

Chapter Text

The boy slept for over two days.

By the time Quillsh brought him the news that the boy was awake, L’s patience had worn thin. It took every ounce of self control in his body not to snap at the old man to just shut up as he blathered on and on about not questioning the boy too harshly, remembering that he had just been through what was likely a frightening and traumatic experience, and—

To be honest, L had stopped listening at that point.

Normally he respected the advice of his crew. But this was a personal matter. Quillsh had no right to tell him how to conduct himself in a situation like this one, and damn him if he thought he could stop L from doing whatever he needed to do to get answers.

“Thank you for the advice,” he said curtly, coming to a stop in front of the door of his cabin, “but I’ll take it from here.” Without waiting for a response, he stepped inside and shut the door.

The boy, who up until that moment had been sitting on the bed, looking out of the window, turned to face him. Warm, almond-shaped brown eyes flickered over L’s tattered clothing, wild, uncombed black hair, and the patch covering his missing right eye with—

Curiosity?

Interest?

Definitely not fear.

“What’s going on?” he asked, before L could say a word. “Who are you, and what am I doing here?”

His voice was soft, his gaze open and disarming. It was almost as if he expected L to—simply explain the situation to him, as if he thought that all of this was something that could easily be explained. Was it possible, L thought, with a feeling of sudden trepidation, that he…didn’t remember what had happened?

Part of him wanted nothing more than to cross the room and shake the boy until he broke down into tears and told him everything, but—

From the look of the kid he couldn’t be any older than fifteen or sixteen, and if he really didn’t remember, then—

Well, that would hardly accomplish anything.

Pulling up a chair beside the bed, L sat down in it. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Light,” the boy said, after the briefest moment of hesitation. There was a hint of apprehension in his eyes now; he had, perhaps, noticed that L had avoided answering any of his questions. He opened his mouth to speak, but L interrupted him, leaning in with his elbows on his knees.

“Light…do you really not remember what happened? You don’t remember anything at all?”

“No.” Light shook his head, eyes wide. “I…I’m sorry, but I don’t, I…What do you mean what happened…? Did…did something happen?”

He doesn’t remember, L thought, with a sinking sensation in his gut. He really doesn’t remember. So that’s it. My best chance at finding out what happened to my brother…gone, just like that.

Standing, he threw open the door of the cabin and walked out, ignoring Light’s increasingly desperate pleas to tell him what had happened, where he was, how he had gotten the wound on his head. Let someone else explain the situation to him; L really wasn’t in the mood right now.

Nathaniel… he thought, crossing the deck to the railing and staring out at the ocean. Salt spray dampened his hair and his shirt, but he hardly noticed. What happened to you? Where are you?

Your brother came for you…but you’re nowhere to be found.

L didn’t leave his cabin for the next month.

He delegated most of his duties as captain to Naomi. She was more than capable of handling anything that was thrown at her, and he had more important things to worry about.

Like finding out what the hell had happened to his brother.

He barely ate; barely slept. He reread the letter obsessively, jotting down notes on scraps of paper that inevitably ended up being crumpled up and thrown across the room when he realized how stupid all of his theories were. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t make sense of it. Gods of death? Devils? What the hell? He didn’t even believe in those things. He never had.

There had to be a rational explanation for all of this—Anthony’s death, Nathaniel’s disappearance, the destruction of the Spectre—but if there was one, L couldn’t think of it. The fact that Light apparently had no memory at all of the last six months only strengthened L’s conviction that he was missing something.

Something big.

If he could just figure out that one thing, the entire mystery would untangle itself. He knew it would.

According to Quillsh, Light’s amnesia was highly unusual. The fact that he had amnesia wasn’t; people who suffered wounds to the head often had trouble remembering things afterwards, especially events that had occurred right before they’d sustained the injury in the first place. But for Light to be unable to recall a single event from the past six months of his life was…extraordinary.

That was the word Quillsh had used, anyway.

For the first time in his life, L considered the possibility that maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe supernatural creatures did exist. Gods, devils, whatever you wanted to call them…maybe they did exist, and maybe they did have the power to influence human lives—to drive men mad, to steal human memories away and to take human lives.

For nearly a week after he had this revelation he jumped at every shadow, his sleep-deprived mind conjuring monsters in the corner of his vision, horrible things with too many teeth that disappeared as soon as he turned to look at them. You have to stop this, he told himself finally one night, too exhausted to stay awake any longer but too paranoid to go to sleep. You do realize you’re making all of this up, right? There’s no evidence that supernatural creatures exist. You’re just afraid to face the fact that Nathaniel’s dead. Just because you didn’t find a body doesn’t mean he’s alive. He’s dead and it’s your fault.

You’re just unwilling to admit it, because you’re too much of a coward.

And unlike all the other theories he’d come up with over the course of the past few weeks, this one rang true.

Because L hadn’t come as quickly as he could have, when he’d received the letter. He’d hesitated for nearly a week, wondering if it was a trap. He was famous for having never lost a battle at sea. The captain of the Spectre, the one that people called Kira, wouldn’t have been the first to see that as a challenge. To tell the truth, he’d doubted the letter’s authenticity. It had seemed authentic enough, but then again L hadn’t seen his brother in over five years, hadn’t received a single correspondence from him in all that time. Who was he to judge whether Nathaniel had really written the letter or not?

In the end he’d gone looking for his brother anyway. But when he’d gotten there, it had been too late.

To make matters worse, there was another letter tucked away in a drawer in his desk, addressed to him from his sister, Linda. He’d received it just a week ago. After everything had already happened.

She’d written to him to tell him that Nathaniel had been planning to visit her, in Australia, earlier that year—only he’d never arrived. She’d learned months later that his ship had been attacked by pirates, and that he’d been taken by them, forced to join their crew, when they found out he was a doctor.

It turned out that the letter had been authentic.

And if L hadn’t hesitated, he would have gotten there in time.

The wreckage of what had once been the most infamous pirate ship in the world had still been burning when he arrived. It had still been sending up smoke. God, they had even found a survivor.

L had been so close to getting there before it happened. He’d been just slightly too late.

And now here he was: locked up in his cabin, huddled in the corner like a scared little child, imagining monsters in the dark.

He almost wanted to laugh at the irony.

You let him die, was his last thought before falling asleep. You bastard, you let your own brother die.

Chapter Text

It was bright outside when he woke, sunlight streaming in through the window of his cabin and warming his skin where he lay half-sprawled across his desk, surrounded by crumpled up pieces of paper covered in his spiky, nearly unintelligible handwriting. He had a dizzying headache and someone was knocking on his door.

Stumbling to his feet, he yanked open the door, expecting either Naomi or Quillsh, both of whom stopped by regularly to give him updates on various things and to express their concern for him, and neither of whom he harbored any particularly strong positive or negative emotions toward. Instead, in a moment of dizzying emotional vertigo, he came face to face with Light.

Whatever Light saw on his face in that moment must have taken him aback, because the first words out of his mouth were an apology. “I’m sorry. Are you…busy right now?”

L carefully schooled his expression into one of nonchalance. “It depends,” he said, leaning against the doorframe. His fingers itched to draw his rapier and run the boy through for no reason at all besides the fact that he was standing there, alive, when Nathaniel wasn’t. “What do you want?”

“I thought we should talk.” The nerve of the kid. “Or, I mean, I’d like to talk to you. If you’re not too busy.”

You can’t avoid him forever, L told himself firmly. You might as well get this conversation over with now rather than later. “Fine,” he said, stepping aside to let the boy through. “Just keep it quick. I don’t have all day.”

He did, in fact, have all day, but Light didn’t call him out on the lie. He didn’t comment on the mess L had made of his cabin, either, just crossed the room and sat down across the desk from L, his hands folded neatly in his lap, his shoulders prim and straight. My old tutor would have loved him, L thought, surprised to find himself even thinking about that. He was always scolding me for slouching.

He’d been dreaming of his childhood, he realized, before Light had knocked on his door and woken him up. The rolling green hills of the English countryside, a tutor that was always scolding him for one thing or another, a pony with a soft, brushed, white coat. His childhood, that is, before Nathaniel had been born.

Things had changed after that, of course.

But that’s all in the past. I left that all behind me a long time ago.

“So?” he said, slouching now into a chair opposite Light with his knees pulled up to his chest. “What did you want to talk about?”

“Well—” Light looked up from his hands, a trace of nervousness in his eyes. “First of all, I wanted to thank you, for saving my life.”

“I would have let you die if I’d known you would be so utterly useless to me,” L said bluntly. He was well aware he was being cruel, perhaps even unreasonably so—but then again, why should he pretend to like this boy when he didn’t have any sort of connection to him, any reason to like him? He was not, by nature, a charitable person, and he saw no reason to pretend to be.

He might as well make his feelings clear from the start. It would be easier for both of them, that way.

Light looked back down at his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

“Why should I care whether you feel sorry or not?” L challenged.

That made Light look up at him again, not so much affronted as astonished. “Second of all,” he said after a moment of silence, apparently having decided it was pointless to argue with L, “well…I assume Quillsh has told you that I can’t really remember the past six months very well?”

“He told me that you can’t remember the past six months at all.”

“It’s—frustrating,” Light said, obviously choosing each word carefully, “but I can’t remember anything that happened during those months. I can’t remember anything that I did, or a single conversation that I had with anyone during that time. That said, it’s not entirely accurate to say that I don’t remember those months at all. I remember time passing. And I remember some people who I could only have met during those months, because I know I didn’t meet them before that.”

“Nathaniel,” L said. His heart was beating far too fast.

Light nodded.

“I could tell you about him,” he said, very gently, “if you want.”

“If you really do remember him then why is this the first time I’m hearing about it,” L said, forgetting to inflect the sentence properly, to make it a question. He—

He’d thought he’d never find out what sort of person his little brother had grown up to be.

And now here Light was, offering it to him on a silver platter.

He felt—overwhelmed, to say the least.

“I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure,” Light said, meeting his gaze steadily. “At first I thought I really didn’t remember anything from the past six months. I mean, I remember practically nothing, but—when I heard you had a brother I suddenly thought—well, I thought that there was something familiar-looking about you, the first time we met. I just couldn’t place it. But now I’m sure. I do remember him. And you saved my life, so I’d like to be able to offer you something in return. I know it’s not much, and I’ll never be able to repay my debt in full, but—”

“Fine,” L said, cutting him off. “Fine. Tell me about him.”

“He…looked a lot like you,” Light said gently. “He was shorter, though. About…half a head shorter than I am, maybe more? He was a bit plumper than you are, too. His hair was white, strangely enough, I mean like pure white, and he wore it long, almost to his waist, curled and powdered. As for his character… please, don’t take this the wrong way, but he always struck me as somewhat spoiled. I don’t remember how or when I met him but I do remember that my initial impression of him was that he’d been coddled his entire life, that he’d never interacted with anyone outside of his social class. Don’t take my word for it, though; after all, I’m just a…”—he shrugged, gave a self deprecating smile—“…a coarse, uneducated pirate.”

If you’re coarse and uneducated I’d like to see what people call me, L thought, a bit dizzily. So Nathaniel had grown up to look more like him. Like their father. As a child he’d always looked more like his mother, with his thick, curling white hair and his delicate little hands. It was…strange, hearing Light say all of this. L still remembered his brother as that child…but, of course, while he’d been gone, Nathaniel had grown up. It wasn’t as if L had thought otherwise, but…

It was still strange, hearing all of this. Strange in a terrible, sad sort of way.

Because Nathaniel was dead. And if L had—

If L had done some things differently, he might still be alive.

“That’s not to say that he was a bad person,” Light continued. “I mean, I don’t think I knew him very well, and he was always quiet, withdrawn…but his profession was centered around helping people, so that says something about him, right? He was a doctor, and a skilled one at that. An educated man, even though he was younger than I am. That’s all I remember about him. I’m sorry, I wish I could tell you more, but—”

“He wasn’t younger than you are,” L interrupted. “He would have been eighteen by now.”

If I had just done some things differently, he would be eighteen by now.

Light blinked at him. “I’m eighteen,” he said, after a moment of silence. “I’ll be nineteen in just a few weeks.”

“Oh,” was all L could think to say. “I assumed you were younger.”

The truth was, he had already lost interest in Light. Why should he care if Light was older or younger than his dead brother? Why should he care about Light at all? What was this boy to him, besides some stranger who had just happened to survive a shipwreck? It wasn’t as if he were anything special.

Reaching for his quill and ink pot, he began to jot down some of his thoughts on a blank sheet of paper. Light was of no interest to him, but what Light had said, about how he could remember time passing during the six months that he otherwise had no memory of, the fact that he could remember Nathaniel? That changed everything.

Previously, he had been working under the assumption that Light had lost his memories as a result of the wound to his head, or—maybe—because they’d been…taken from him, after the fact. But what if it were the formation of memories during those six months that was the problem? What if Light, and everyone else aboard the Spectre, had been influenced, or perhaps even controlled, by…something…during those months, that had prevented them from forming certain types of memories in the first place?

It was…a little far-fetched, maybe, but it would certainly explain why Light seemed to be able to remember some things perfectly while not being able to remember other things at all. The only problem with the theory was that it presupposed the existence of a supernatural creature that could influence human minds—but then again, Nathaniel’s letter already suggested the existence of such a creature. A god, a devil, that had driven a sane man to throw himself overboard and drown.

What if it—whatever it was—had also caused the Spectre to be destroyed? Maybe it fed off death…maybe that was why it had killed Anthony, and maybe, not long after, it had grown hungry again, and killed everyone else aboard the ship too.

Everyone else except Light, who had, by some miracle, survived.

Except it hadn’t been a miracle. If L hadn’t been there, looking for his brother, Light would have drowned. He would have died like everyone else aboard that goddamn pirate ship like he should have. It was just as much L’s fault that this boy he cared nothing about was alive as it was that his brother was dead.

“Light,” he said, without looking up from his notes.

Light, halfway to the door, turned to look at him.

“Yes?”

If he caught on to anything from L’s tone, he didn’t show it. He remained as pretty, as composed as ever.

L hated him.

He knew it was unfair of him, but—

He wanted, so desperately, to see his brother just one more time.

He did not want to see Light.

“If you truly care about repaying your debt,” he said, “you’ll stay away from now on. I’d remind you that the punishment for piracy is death and that I’ve already been incredibly generous by allowing you to stay on my ship instead of having you thrown in prison or executed for your crimes. Don’t make yourself a nuisance or perhaps I’ll rethink that.”

“I understand,” was all Light said. A moment later, L heard the door open and shut again.

The next day, Light was back.

It was past dark this time and the warm yellowish glow of the oil lamp L had been working by cast long shadows across his cabin, shadows that shifted constantly with the movement of the ship beneath him. He was embarrassed to admit that he’d been spooked by the knock on his door. He was spooked by everything, these days. It was impossible not to be when he was considering the very real possibility that an entire ship full of people had been murdered by some supernatural entity that could, as far as he knew, be in the same room with him at any moment.

He was almost relieved when he opened the door, felt cool, humid night air on his face, and saw that it was just Light.

“Hi,” Light said, and L almost wanted to laugh. Had he really thought, for a second, that the monster he was chasing would just…knock on his door? He really was going insane.

“What is wrong with you,” he said, flatly. “Do you really think it’s wise to test me? Because I assure you, it’s not.”

“You could just shut the door if you really don’t want my company,” Light pointed out mildly, “it’s not as if I’m going to kick it down and force my way inside. I may be a pirate, but I do have manners. Or, I mean, you could throw me in prison, or have me executed, but I’d really prefer it if you just shut the door. I actually like being alive, you know?” He laughed, rubbed a hand sheepishly across the back of his neck. Then he grew more serious again.

“But in my experience,” he said quietly, “it’s better, at times like this, to not be alone.”

L had no explanation for the way his heart kicked in his chest when Light said alone, no explanation for why he didn’t just shut the door immediately, or have the boy thrown in prison or executed, instead of just—standing there, frozen to the spot. “Fine,” he muttered finally, shoving the door open further so that Light could come in. “Just don’t disturb me. I’m working on something.”

The smile Light gave him was a thing of beauty, and L had no explanation, either, for why that of all things made his heart beat even faster.

Chapter Text

“Light.”

“Hm?”

“Come here for a moment. I have some questions I want to ask you.”

Light, sitting cross-legged on the bed, looked up from the book he was reading. In the wavering light from the tallow candles his hair glowed soft as honey. Under different circumstances, L thought, he’d very much like to watch Light read for hours. That ever-so-slight furrow between his brows as he concentrated, the way he turned the pages with a certain...reverence, almost, as if he thought the book might disappear from his hands if he treated it too roughly…

As it was L had neither the time nor the leisure to indulge in such activities. He returned his attention to the letter as Light put down his book, crossed the room, and sat down across from him.

When I asked him who he was talking to, he said it was a Shinigami. A god of death.

That was the part of the letter he kept on coming back to, these days.

Was it possible that Shinigami actually existed?

If so, what exactly were they?

Light probably didn’t know, but—

It was worth a try, at least.

“I’m sorry,” Light was saying as he sat down, “but I still don’t remember anything from those six months. Anything besides what I’ve already told you, I mean. I’m not sure how helpful—”

“Your memory loss won’t be an issue,” L interrupted. “Not in this conversation, at least. What I’d like to ask you is if you know what a Shinigami is.”

He’d hoped to catch the boy off guard with the question, but Light’s only reaction was a long, slow blink. “A Shinigami?” he said. “Honestly, I’m surprised you’ve even heard that word. It means ‘death god’ or ‘death spirit.’ I’d say it’s similar to the Western idea of a Grim Reaper. In Japanese tradition, it refers to a spirit which invites humans toward death. For example, if a man commits suicide, some people might say—figuratively, of course—that he was possessed by a Shinigami.”

“I see,” L said, chewing on his thumbnail. That certainly fit with the description of the creature he’d been imagining so far. “Would you say it’s a distinctly Japanese legend, then?”

“I don’t know if I’d say that, exactly. I’d say it’s…a Japanese word used to describe a myth common to many cultures. Grim Reaper, Shinigami, what’s the difference? People are afraid of death, so they invent these stories to make the actual concept of dying less scary, less real to them.”

“Hm.” L bit harder at his thumbnail. “You know, not long ago I would have agreed, but…”

Now, I’m not so sure.

“What do you mean?” Light was frowning slightly now. “Are you suggesting that—”

“I’m not suggesting anything. Let’s move on. You said that you had sailed with Kira for several years before all of this happened, correct?”

Light nodded. The furrow between his brows was still there. “L,” he said hesitantly, “What… I mean, all of these questions, I just…don’t understand where they’re coming from. What are you getting at, exactly?”

“I’m just curious about a number of things, that’s all.” It was an unconvincing answer, maybe—but then again, L couldn’t afford to waste time explaining his thought process to Light. If the boy wasn’t quick enough to catch on then that was hardly his fault. “Tell me about him. Kira. What was he like? Were you aware of his past at all, like…where he came from?”

“Kira…” Light hummed thoughtfully. He leaned forward to put his elbow on the desk, propping his chin up on his hand. “He was…cunning. Dangerous. He had a reputation and he earned it. That said, I…I don’t know how to say this, exactly, but…the stories are exaggerated, if you know what I mean. Mihael asked me the other day if he really bathed in human blood, but I mean, I lived on the same ship as him for years and I never saw him bathe in anything but water like the rest of us. And he hated being called Kira. He said that people had started calling him that because it sounds like the English word ‘killer,’ and that’s not who he was, or at least that’s not all that he was. He said—I remember it very clearly, actually—he said that he was just a man trying to find his way in the world like everyone else, and that we shouldn’t make him out to be someone he wasn’t.”

“What a strange thing for a pirate to say,” L muttered. “The most feared pirate in the entire world, much less.”

Light laughed at that, leaning back in his chair. “Pirates aren’t all bad. I mean, I’m a pirate, and I’m not so bad, right?”

L ignored him, glancing back down at the letter on his desk. If Nathaniel was to be believed, the captain of the Spectre had had some sort of connection to the creature aboard his ship. He’d spoken to it. He’d attempted to hide its existence from the rest of the crew. Most interestingly, he’d called it a Shinigami—a Japanese word, one that Light had been surprised L had even heard before.

“And where did he come from? Kira? How much do you know about his past?”

“Not much. I’m sorry, I wish I could tell you more, but… He was Japanese, I think. Like me and a few others aboard his ship. But he never talked about his past, so I’m not sure if I’m even right about that. He was…a very private person. None of us even knew his real name.”

“Why do you think he was Japanese then?”

“Well—” Light sighed. “To tell the truth, I got on his ship in Japan. I was running away from home and I stowed away on the first ship I saw. That’s how I became a pirate, actually. I got caught one night, sneaking around trying to find something to eat, and the pirates told me I could either make myself useful or walk the plank, so…I mean, obviously, I chose the first option. Anyway, since piracy isn’t really a big thing in Japan, I figured the captain was probably just visiting home or something. Maybe he had family there. I don’t know.”

“I see,” L said, biting his nails. His cuticles were bleeding; he could taste the blood in his mouth. “That’s all,” he added after a moment, without looking up from the letter. “You can go back to reading your book now. Or whatever else you were doing.”

Truthfully, he didn’t feel any closer to figuring out what had happened to the Spectre, but he couldn’t think of anything else to ask Light either. He had the feeling that he was still missing something, something big, something that would unravel the entire mystery if he could just figure out what it was, but paradoxically, the more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that it was simply impossible to figure out. The facts just…didn’t fit together. They didn’t make sense.

Even if he supposed that Shinigami did exist… Light clearly didn’t believe that they were real. Either he’d never been aware that there was such a creature aboard the same ship as him or he’d lost his memories of it. Furthermore, what Light had said about Kira… Cunning, was the first word that he’d used to describe him. So why had he asked Nathaniel if he’d said anything strange while he’d been ill? If he’d truly wanted to hide the existence of the creature, surely he would have said nothing. It was possible he’d been trying to frighten Nathaniel into remaining silent, but that didn’t make sense either. Because Nathaniel had written a letter. He’d been unable to leave the ship, but somehow he’d managed to send a letter describing this creature that the captain didn’t want anyone to know about?

What if Shinigami didn’t exist? What if Kira had just been trying to make people think they did? But no, that didn’t account for all the facts either: Light’s memory loss, the death of the Spectre’s entire crew…

“L.”

Light’s voice broke his reverie. L looked up to find that Light had not, in fact, gone back to reading his book. Instead, he was studying L from across the desk, chin cupped in the palm of his hand.

“What?” L said.

“I just wanted to say that…if you ever want someone to talk to, about anything, I wouldn’t mind listening. That’s all.”

L stared at him, and Light met his gaze steadily. In the end, L was the first to look away.

We’re not friends, he wanted to say, bitter and angry, defensive. And it was true; they weren’t friends. But despite the initial hatred he’d felt toward Light—which, even he had to admit, was entirely unjustifiable, and in many ways not dissimilar to his father’s hatred of him—he’d gradually warmed to the boy. In the weeks that had passed since Light first knocked on his door, L had grown…not fond of him exactly, but at least…comfortable around him.

Besides, would it be so bad to actually let himself be vulnerable to someone for once? Everything was so…heavy, these days. Everyone else, it seemed, had forgotten entirely about the Spectre. L couldn’t blame them; it wasn’t the kind of thing anyone would want to spend much time thinking about, but…he couldn’t. He couldn’t forget about it. He needed to find out what had happened to his brother. Only it seemed more impossible, with each day that passed. It was so frustrating, and he was so tired, he was tired of all of it, and—

Maybe opening up to someone for once in his life would help ease some of the weight off his shoulders.

Maybe not, but—

It was worth a try, at least.

“I’m the oldest of three children,” he began haltingly, avoiding eye contact with Light. “Linda, my sister, she’s two years younger than I am. Nathaniel…Nathaniel was five years younger than her.”

It was more difficult than he’d thought it would be, just to say that much. He hadn’t spoken to anyone about his past in so long. He’d tried his best to leave it all behind him years ago.

Maybe he hadn’t been as successful as he would have liked to believe.

“In truth, though, I’m only their half-brother. My father is a high ranking nobleman in the English court. His official title is the Duke of Bridgewater. My mother was a shoemaker’s daughter. She died bringing me into the world, and I don’t think my father ever forgave me for it. He loved her despite her low birth; there were rumors that he was actually going to marry her. In any case, she died, and he married a different woman, one more befitting of the title of Duchess, at least in the eyes of the people around them. She had some difficulty conceiving, so it wasn’t until I was seven that Nathaniel came along.

“My father wanted nothing to do with me, but for the first seven years of my life I was legally his heir, and as such I…enjoyed certain privileges, all of which disappeared the day Nathaniel was born. I don’t…I never resented him for it. He was my brother, and I loved him. Which isn’t to say I didn’t feel resentment. I grew up full of resentment. Mostly for my father but also for…society, as a whole. Which is why the day I came of age, I left.

“Linda was old enough to understand that our father wouldn’t pay for my education, wouldn’t support me in any way—hell, he wouldn’t even acknowledge me as his son—but Nathaniel wasn’t. He just…he didn’t understand. He was upset, he begged me to stay. I didn’t. I only saw him once more after that, five years ago, and now…well, now, he’s dead.

“I remember thinking at the time that I was making the rational decision. But the truth is, I was just…I was so angry, so…determined to prove everyone wrong. ‘Even if the entire world is against me, even if Father never sees me as anything but a worthless bastard, I’ll make something of myself.’ That was my thought process, my real thought process, at the time. Looking back now it seems so stupid. If I hadn’t been so…obsessed with myself—”

“You would have done what exactly?”

L froze. “What did you just say?” he said, looking up sharply at Light. Truthfully, he felt more astonished than angry, but even so…

Light met his gaze steadily. “If you had stayed with your brother like he’d asked you to…you would have done what exactly? Remained at his side every hour of his life, protected him from schoolyard bullies and highwaymen and freak accidents of nature alike?” The derision in his words was obvious. He might as well have spat in L’s face.

Before L could get truly angry, though, Light leaned across the desk and—actually put his hand over L’s. His voice grew quieter, more fervent. “You made the right decision, L. And you know it. People like you and me…there’s no place for us in their world. So we leave. We find new people to call family, new places to call home. And there is nothing wrong with that."

L wanted to be angry. He really did. Instead he felt it drain out of him, bit by bit.

“How childish,” he muttered, averting his gaze. “The world isn’t that simple. Life isn’t that simple.”

“Of course it’s not.” Light sighed. “I just mean that…you shouldn’t blame yourself for something that’s not your fault. And like I said, I think you did the right thing. At the end of the day, you’ve got to look out for yourself, because who else will?”

L was silent.

“What did you mean when you said ‘people like you and me’?” he asked finally. Light was right; he was just didn’t want to admit it. Better to change the subject.

“Oh, I…” Light hesitated, seeming surprised by the question. “I’ll tell you about it another time, if that’s alright. It’s just that it’s getting late, and Naomi will kick my ass if I’m not up bright and early tomorrow, scrubbing the deck or something. I swear, she has it out for me.”

L resisted the urge to roll his eye. “Naomi does not ‘have it out for you.’ From what she’s told me I believe she rather likes you.”

“Of course she does,” Light said, smiling—a charming, roguish expression that never failed to make L’s heart beat faster. “I’m very likable.” And then, more seriously, “Naomi has been…very kind to me. Really. She works us hard, and it’s not what I’m used to, is all I meant.”

“And what are you used to?” L said dryly.

“Oh, you know. Lazing about all the time, getting drunk, gambling with other people’s gold…” There was a forced lightness to Light’s voice, a deep and not entirely repressed melancholy in his eyes. “I didn’t set out to be a pirate, but it…it wasn’t such a bad life. I don’t know why I’m talking about that, though, I should really be going… Goodnight, L.”

“Goodnight,” L said.

He expected Light to leave immediately, but instead the boy hesitated at the door. “L,” he blurted out, turning suddenly to face him, “you know I want to find out what happened just as much as you do, right? If there’s any way, any way at all, that I can help out…”

L looked at him for a long moment, silent.

“I suppose a fresh pair of eyes couldn’t hurt,” he admitted at last, grudgingly. “I will warn you, though. I don’t work well with others.”

“I don’t care,” Light said immediately. “I just…I need to know what happened. If there’s even the slightest chance that we can figure it out by working together, I don’t care about anything else.”

L sighed. “Go, get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Light nodded, expression determined. “Tomorrow, then.”

“Tomorrow,” L agreed.

Despite himself, he felt the stirrings of something like hope in his chest.

Working together with Light probably wouldn’t help him figure out what had happened, but—

It was worth a try, at least.

Anything was, at this point.

“Do you know something I don’t?” were the first words Light said to him, the next day. There was an eagerness, perhaps even a desperation, in his eyes. He felt it too, L thought.

Hope.

“It’s just that you were asking me all those questions last night, about Shinigami, and I…The only reason I know that word is because I’m Japanese and I like to read. Where did you come across it? Do you think that…the reason all of this happened, and I lost my memory, has something to do with…the supernatural?”

“I thought you didn’t believe in the supernatural,” L said.

“I don’t. I mean, I don’t believe in anything that there isn’t solid evidence for. I’m not religious or anything like that. But I was thinking about it last night and…honestly, I just can’t think of a rational explanation that doesn’t somehow involve the supernatural. You think so too, don’t you? That’s why you were asking me all those questions about Shinigami, right?”

“I would prefer not to share any of my theories just yet.” L stood, picking up the letter with careful fingers. Crossing the room to where Light was standing, he held out the piece of paper to him. “Here. Take a look at this and tell me what you think.”

Light made no move to take it. “What is it?” he asked, frowning slightly.

“A letter. From Nathaniel to me. I’m almost certain it was written during the period for which you’ve lost your memories.”

“Oh.” Light seemed relieved by this answer; L wondered what else he could possibly have imagined it could be. “Well, alright then,” he said, and took the letter from L’s hands.

L wasn’t quite sure what happened next.

It all happened so fast.

One moment, the letter was in his hands. The next, it was in Light’s.

And Light was stumbling backwards.

Screaming.

Chapter Text

Light screamed and screamed and screamed, and L—

L stood, frozen to the spot, staring at his hands. The hands that, up until a moment ago, had been holding the letter.

What was happening?

Why was Light screaming?

He didn’t understand.

Clutching the letter in his hands, Light stumbled backwards, eyes open but unseeing. A nearly inhuman sound left his mouth; the blood-curdling shriek of an animal in pain. L had seen a hare slaughtered, once, when he was very young. Its screams had haunted him for days afterwards.

The sound Light was making now wasn’t entirely dissimilar.

It wasn’t until Light’s back hit the wall and his legs gave out from under him that the screaming finally stopped.

L took a tentative step toward him.

“Light…are you alright?”

Light didn’t respond.

Breathing raggedly, face lowered, shoulders curled in on himself, he remained silent. When he finally looked up and met L’s gaze, his eyes were glossy with tears, wide and fearful and confused.

“I don’t know…what happened, just now. A second ago I knew something, but I don’t anymore.”

L extended a hand to him. Taking it, Light climbed shakily to his feet.

“Give me the letter and then take it from me again,” L said, after a moment of consideration. He didn’t want to cause Light unnecessary pain…but he had to know. He had to know what had happened to his brother, and this—

This was the closest thing to a lead he’d gotten in months.

Light nodded and handed him the letter. The moment the paper left his fingers, his eyes widened.

“What happened just now?” L asked, watching him closely.

Light shook his head, clearly confused. “I don’t know. I feel like…a second ago I knew something…but I don’t anymore. I…I’ve forgotten it.”

L frowned. That’s exactly what you said a moment ago. Word for word, in fact. But you were touching the letter then. You’re not now.

Was I wrong? Does this…whatever this is…not have anything to do with whether you’re touching the letter or not?

He held out the letter again to Light. “Take it.”

Light did.

He flinched, a little, as if expecting it to hurt, but he didn’t scream this time, or show any other sort of reaction. “Nothing,” he said after a moment. “Sorry.”

“Again,” L demanded.

They passed the piece of paper back and forth several more times. Light showed no reaction at all.

“I’m sorry,” Light said finally, looking embarrassed, “but I don’t think whatever happened the first time is going to happen again. Maybe I just…imagined it, the first time? I don’t know. I mean, I was pretty…worked up. I…well, to be honest, the idea of anything supernatural really scares me. Maybe it was all in my head?”

“Maybe,” L said, looking at him skeptically. “In any case”—he sighed—“I don’t think we’re accomplishing anything by passing the letter back and forth like two idiots. Go on, sit down and read it.”

Light did as he’d said.

“Is it alright if I take notes?” he asked after a moment. L nodded and pushed his ink pot and a piece of scrap paper across the desk to him, pacing uneasily around the room as Light began to read the letter.

A minute passed, the silence in the cabin broken only by the soft scratch of Light’s quill against paper.

Not knowing what else to do, L circled behind the desk to read over Light’s shoulder.

“Japanese?” he asked, surprised by the foreign language Light was apparently taking notes in.

Light glanced up at him. “Yeah. Sorry, I can write in English if you want. I mean, I know how to write in English. It’s just that…” he laughed a bit sheepishly, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck, “my spelling isn’t…”

“No, no,” L waved him off, “whatever you’re most comfortable with is fine.” Light nodded and went back to reading the letter. L pulled up a chair for himself on the opposite side of the desk and sat down in it, bringing his knees to his chest and nibbling absentmindedly at his thumbnail.

For a moment, when Light had started screaming, he’d thought—

But no, Light seemed fine now. He didn’t seem…possessed…or anything.

Still…

There seemed to be something different about him.

L couldn’t put his finger on it, exactly, but…

“Do you still not remember anything from those six months?” he questioned.

Light looked up at him. “No. I’m sorry. I wish I could remember, but…I don’t.” He looked back down at the letter, frowning slightly. “L,” he said after a moment, “are you sure your brother wrote this letter? It’s just that…I don’t know. It seems like the sort of thing someone would write if they wanted to…make you think that Shinigami exist when they actually don’t.”

“I assume by ‘someone’ you mean Kira?”

Light nodded.

“Does that seem like the sort of thing he would have done?”

“I don’t know. Maybe?” Light frowned at the letter. “To tell the truth, I didn’t really understand him. None of us did. He’d come up with these plans all the time and expect us to just do what he told us to, even if we didn’t understand why. That’s just the way he was. I don’t know, I think it’s…a possibility, at least.”

“Hm.” L was silent for a moment, thinking. So Light, too, thought the letter was suspicious. But there was Linda’s letter to take into account, not to mention the fact that Light did remember Nathaniel, even if he couldn’t remember when he’d met him. “To answer your question, yes, I’m certain that Nathaniel was the one who wrote this letter. There are certain details contained in it that only he could have known.”

“I see.” The furrow between Light’s brows was still there. “I just…I don’t remember any of this stuff happening. I mean, if someone on the same ship as me jumped overboard while screaming about a devil attacking him, I think I’d remember that. Unless…”

“Unless you were also being influenced or controlled by the same creature.”

Light was silent for a long time.

“You don’t actually think that’s what happened, do you?” he said finally.

L’s heart sank at his tone.

Light looked at him for a moment longer, then laughed scornfully. “I can’t believe this,” he muttered, as if to himself. “All this time I thought maybe you knew something that I didn’t…but it turns out you’re just completely insane.” Pushing the letter across the desk to L, he stood with the clear intention to leave.

L stood too, blocking Light’s path with his larger, stronger body. “Am I insane,” he said, unable to hide the scorn in his own voice, “or are you just too scared to consider the possibility that I’m right?”

Light had been so adamant, just yesterday, that he wanted to find out what had happened to the Spectre.

And now he was just going to leave L to figure it out on his own?

“I’m not scared,” Light fired back. “I want to know what happened just as much as you do. It’s just that it’s obvious to me, even if it’s not to you, that that’s impossible!”

“Nothing’s impossible.”

“You—” Light took a deep breath in an obvious effort to calm himself. Neatly folding up the piece of scrap paper he’d been taking notes on, he tucked it into his pocket. “I’m not saying that it’s impossible for Shinigami to exist or for humans to be influenced by them. What I’m saying is that it’s impossible for us to figure out what happened. We just don’t have enough information. That letter, alone, is not sufficient proof of anything. And even if we supposed that Shinigami do exist, what then? They’re the stuff of myth. Every depiction of them is different. Many are contradictory. How exactly do you think you’re going to get any reliable information about them?”

L had to admit he had a point. Still…

What was he supposed to do?

Just give up?

“L…” Light’s voice softened. He took a step forward, took L’s hand between his own. His palms were warm against L’s skin, his brown eyes steady and sincere. “I’m sorry about your brother. I really am. I admire you for wanting to find out what happened to him, but I… I just don’t think there’s enough evidence to prove your theory. And personally, I would rather hold onto what happy memories I have than imagine…some monster controlling me and killing my friends.”

L looked away, feeling suddenly ashamed. “I understand,” he said.

Why had he thought there was something different about Light?

Light was the same as he’d always been. Kind, thoughtful, and…practical.

L was the one slowly going insane. He was the one infecting both of them with his guilt and his paranoia.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, avoiding Light’s gaze. “I…haven’t been thinking clearly. I shouldn’t have—”

“Don’t start apologizing now. It’s not like you.”

L looked up, startled by the hint of laughter in Light’s voice and the easy affection in his tone. Under different circumstances, he thought, they could have been friends. Maybe even more than friends.

As it was…

He didn’t have the emotional capacity to care about anything besides finding out what had happened to his brother.

“I’m sorry I can’t be of more help,” Light said quietly, “but I hope you find the answers you’re looking for. And, L…” He hesitated. “Just…take care of yourself, alright?”

L stared at him. “Why are you…Are you planning to leave or something?”

“Of course not. After all, I do owe you a life debt. I don’t know…why I said that.”

L wasn’t entirely sure he believed him, but he nodded anyway, stepping aside so that Light could get to the door.

Light held his gaze for another moment. Then he smiled, ducked his head, and slipped out of the door.

L sighed heavily and turned to look at the letter lying on his desk.

What was he supposed to do now?

Chapter Text

Maybe Light was right, L thought to himself, tossing and turning in his bed that night, unable to fall asleep despite the exhaustion that wracked his mind and his body. Maybe it just wasn’t possible for him to find out what had happened to the Spectre. To Nathaniel.

Maybe he should just…give up.

If he kept obsessing over it like he’d been doing this past month—month and a half, now, almost two months—he was going to drive himself insane. He was halfway there already.

But if he gave up…then what?

Was he supposed to—just accept the fact that his brother was dead and that he’d never even know what had happened to him?

How could he do that?

Still…

He had to face the facts, sooner or later.

Nathaniel was dead.

If he’d somehow managed to escape the Spectre before it was destroyed, he would have reached out by now. He would have written to L, or at least to Linda, who would have let L know. But L hadn’t received any communications of the sort.

He was dead, and nothing L did or didn’t do would change that.

So why was he trying so hard to find out what had happened? It wasn’t as if he was even accomplishing anything—besides slowly losing his mind, that is. Light was right; they just didn’t have enough information to figure out what had happened.

When he looked at it that way…

It seemed obvious what he should do.

But could he?

Could he really just give up?

He’d never given up on anything in his life before. He wasn’t sure he even knew how to.

Maybe he should think of it as moving on rather than giving up? That was what people did after they lost loved ones…right? They grieved for a while. Then they…moved on. They held onto what happy memories they had of the person they’d lost and, somehow, they kept living.

That seemed to be what Light had made up his mind to do, anyway.

Light…

L sat up in bed, tossing off the stifling, sweat-soaked covers and swinging his bare legs over the side of the mattress.

Light.

All this time, he’d had this feeling that he was missing something. Something important, something that would unravel all the tangled up threads of this mystery. All this time, he’d never asked himself, why Light? At least, he’d never asked himself that question without immediately following it up with, why not Nathaniel?

But really…

Why Light?

Why had Light survived the shipwreck when no one else had?

He’d been injured, true, and he would have died if L hadn’t been there…but everyone else had already been dead by the time L had arrived. And he hadn’t been badly injured at all. He’d made a full recovery—aside from the fact that he seemed to be missing a large chunk of his memory.

Maybe L was jumping to conclusions, but…

Light…

Light had screamed when he’d touched the letter. He’d tried to play it off afterwards, claiming that he’d just been scared by the idea of Shinigami or something like that…but L wasn’t entirely sure he believed that. Why had Light screamed? L had read the letter hundreds of times, picked it up and examined from every angle, and he’d never felt anything out of the ordinary. So why had Light started screaming the moment he touched the paper?

Also…there was the fact that, afterwards, Light had started acting…different. He’d started acting like he didn’t believe Shinigami existed when the day before he’d said that he couldn’t think of a possible explanation for everything that had happened that didn’t somehow involve the supernatural.

Maybe he’d just been scared.

Or maybe he’d just wanted L to think he was scared.

“Damn it,” L muttered, and got out of bed.

Fumbling to light a candle, he held the letter up to it so that he could read it.

When I asked him who he was talking to, he said it was a Shinigami. A god of death.

And then, later on:

My suspicions were only confirmed when the captain pulled me aside and asked me if he had said anything strange while I had been tending to his wounds.

What if…

What if Light was Kira?

It seemed preposterous, but…

What if he was? What if the reason he’d been trying to convince L that his theory was wrong was because he knew, for a fact, that Shinigami did exist, and he’d been trying to hide it from L the same way he’d been trying to hide it from everyone aboard the Spectre?

There were other explanations, of course. More reasonable explanations.

But L had always trusted his instincts, and—

He could feel it. With a cold, clear certainty deep in his gut, he knew—

He wasn’t wrong about this.

“God damn it,” he muttered, sinking back onto the bed with his head in his hands. “God damn it.”

No one in their right mind could possibly suspect Light of being Kira. Light, who was always so…kind, so compassionate. Light, who was always trying to be helpful. Naomi liked him. Everyone liked him. Even L liked him.

So why was L so sure that he was right?

Why did it make so much sense for Light to be Kira?

Flopping onto his back, L stared up at the ceiling.

He was probably wrong. He hoped he was wrong.

But he had to be sure.

And unless he could prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Light was innocent…he had to assume he was guilty.

Morning dawned grey and cold. They were getting closer to England now, and the weather was growing cooler by the day, despite the fact that the winter was over and spring was in full swing.

L sat on the edge of the bed, his rapier balanced across his knees, and carefully oiled the blade. It was, by far, the finest thing he owned, and he always made sure to take proper care of it, even when he forgot to take care of himself. A family heirloom, passed down from generation to generation, it was the only thing he’d taken with him when he’d left home, all those years ago.

Some people would have called it theft, but…

He was his father’s firstborn son, not Nathaniel. And even as a child, Nathaniel had been…timid, non-confrontational. What use would he have had for such a thing—a weapon, meant for killing?

Outside his cabin, he could hear voices. His crew was getting up, breaking their fast. Getting ready to get to work.

L stood, taking a moment to wipe down the blade with a soft cloth before sheathing it at his side once more. Then, hand on the hilt of his rapier, he walked to the door and—for the first time in nearly two months—stepped outside.

On the starboard side of the ship, Naomi was doing her morning exercises, a wooden sword in her hand and sweat glistening on her skin. Her fiance, Raye, stood a safe distance away, sipping coffee from a rusty-looking tin cup and watching her with open admiration.

Merrie, halfway up the rigging, spotted L as he came out of his cabin and tipped her triangular pirate’s hat to him cheekily. L spared her the barest hint of a nod before returning his attention to the deck of his ship.

Near the stern, Mihael and Mail were talking animatedly, grinning at each other with mouths full of bread and jam. Lounging against the railing beside them with his own piece of jam-covered toast, Light looked…very young and very happy. Mail had one arm thrown around Light’s shoulders, Mihael was making an obvious effort to include him in the conversation, and—

Something about the way three of them looked, all standing there together, laughing and joking with each other, made something twinge unpleasantly in L’s chest.

What if he was wrong?

What if Light wasn’t Kira?

Guilty until proven innocent, he reminded himself firmly, and strode across the deck towards them.

Light saw him coming and stopped smiling immediately.

Ducking out from beneath Mail’s arm, he met L halfway across the deck. “L,” he said, looking concerned, “is…everything alright?”

L didn’t respond; just looked at him expressionlessly, fingers tight on the hilt of his rapier.

Was it just his imagination or was there a flash of understanding, then, in Light’s eyes?

“L,” Light tried again, “what…”

“Spar with me,” L said abruptly. “Just a…friendly sparring match. Well, how about it, Light?”

Light blinked at him. “Sure,” he said mildly.

Everyone around the deck breathed a collective sigh of relief.

That was, until L drew his sword.

Light recoiled. L had to give it to him; if he was just pretending to be innocent, he was a very good actor. “L,” he said, laughing a bit nervously, “I…I’d be happy to spar with you, but don’t you think we should use wooden swords? So no one gets hurt?”

“Why?” L asked, eyeing the cutlass at Light’s hip. Theoretically, he should have the advantage. The cutlass was a crude weapon, made only for hacking and slashing. His rapier, on the other hand, was thinner and lighter, capable of thrusting as well as slashing—not to mention the fact that it could be wielded with one hand, giving him better reach. “Are you scared? I never imagined that Kira would be such a coward.”

He’d deliberately spoken loud enough for everyone to hear him, and there was a moment of shocked silence before they all reacted. Merrie laughed raucously from up in the bird’s nest. Mail scrambled belowdecks, presumably to tell the rest of the crew that their captain had gone completely insane. Mihael took half a step forward, obviously about to say the same thing to L’s face, before Naomi said his name with enough force to stop him in his tracks.

L knew he was walking a fine line; Naomi would only back him up as long as he didn’t cross certain lines. She was…annoyingly scrupulous, and it was her job as quartermaster to check his authority as captain. Still, he expected that as long as he didn’t seriously injure or kill Light, she wouldn’t step in.

Light, for his part, was silent.

“What are you talking about?” he said finally. “I’m not Kira.” He took a step toward L, making no move to draw his sword. “I don’t know how you could think that, but if you do, can we please just talk about it, instead of—”

“I’m done talking to you.” L raised his rapier, testing the weight of it in his hand. “Either draw your sword, or stand there and let me cut you down. It’s your choice.”

“I’m not going to—”

Light took another step forward, and L cut him across the face.

It was a shallow blow, barely deep enough to draw blood. It would have been deeper if Light hadn’t leaped backwards at the last moment, a fine arc of bright red droplets falling through the air where he’d been just a second ago.

Hissing, fingertips pressed to the cut on his face, Light finally drew his sword.

“Have it your way, then. I’ll slice you to fucking ribbons.”

“Is that a confession, Light?”

“No! But if you’re dishonorable enough to—attack me when I don’t even have my sword out—”

L moved in on him again before he could finish…whatever he was going to say. The less talking he allowed Light to do, the better.

“He who strikes first wins. Besides, what would a pirate know of honor?”

Gripping the hilt of his cutlass with both hands, Light deflected L’s first thrust and neatly sidestepped the second.

“More than you do, apparently,” he said, eyes narrowed.

L’s entire crew had gathered on the deck by now, watching all of this unfold. L paid them no attention. It was important for them to be here, of course, as witnesses to this farce, but—

Naomi would keep them in line.

And he couldn’t afford to take his eye off Light.

Raising his hand to his face, Light wiped away the blood trickling down his cheek. “You want to spar?” he said. “Fine, let’s spar.”

Their swords met with a clash, steel ringing against steel. Light fought with more ferocity than L had anticipated, closing the distance between them almost immediately and pressing hard enough that L didn’t have a chance to regroup and get enough distance between them to use his height or longer sword to his advantage. Light’s fighting style was…infuriating. Ducking and weaving past each of L’s strikes, he was nearly impossible to hit. His sword, however, made contact with L several times. Within the first few seconds of the fight his cutlass had already nicked L’s elbow and the outside of his thigh, leaving shallow, stinging cuts behind.

Even close up, though, L still had one advantage: he was stronger than Light was. If he couldn’t hit Light, well, then, he would just have to hit Light’s sword hard enough to knock it out of his hand or force him backwards. So that was what he did. Focusing his attention on putting enough force behind each strike to keep Light off balance, he drove Light backwards step by step, each clash of their blades forcing Light to take another step back, toward the railing, the edge of the ship.

Back hitting the railing, Light seemed to realize for the first time that he was trapped. He made as if to drop his sword, and then—just when L thought he had won—kicked L’s legs out from under him.

By the time L found his footing again, his rapier was several feet away and Light’s cutlass was leveled at his throat.

“I should have known you’d resort to an underhanded trick like that,” he said, and Light sighed, stepping back and lowering his sword.

“L…what is this about, really? I know we argued last night, but I thought… Look, I’m sorry I called you crazy, I didn’t mean it, I just…Honestly, I find the idea of—”

Oh no, L thought.

Oh no.

If Light said the word ‘Shinigami’ in front of his entire crew—or even worse, the word ‘possessed’…

He did the only thing he could think of.

He punched Light in the face.

Light reeled back, blood spurting from his nose, hand clamped to his face, and L scrambled for his sword.

“What this is about,” he said, turning to face Light, “is you being Kira.”

“I’m not Kira!” Light raised his sword, and then they were fighting again. Light scored a long slash across L’s chest and shoulder; L caught Light in the ribs with the very tip of his blade, making Light hiss and stumble backwards. Light switched to using his cutlass one-handed, using his other hand to attempt to staunch the blood flow. Having discovered that Light was particularly good at avoiding thrusts, L switched to mostly slashing with his rapier, relying on the weapon’s inherent speed and flexibility to fend off Light’s attacks. He knew that he was bleeding from multiple places, that it was slowing him down, but what he could do about it?

He could barely feel his wounds anyway. His entire focus was on Light. Light’s sword, arcing through the air, Light’s eyes, blazing with the same determination to win that he felt…

Back and forth, along the length of the ship, they dueled, whirling and slashing at each other, retreating and attacking. Finally, with a desperate lunge and a flick of his wrist, L sent Light’s sword flying through the air. The cutlass disappeared overboard with a splash, and, panting, dizzy with exhaustion and blood loss, L placed the tip of his rapier beneath Light’s chin.

“I’m only going to ask you this one time, Light. I would suggest that you tell the truth. Are you, or are you not, Kira?”

Light, the lower half of his face covered in blood, looked at him silently. Then, very abruptly, he laughed.

Tilting his face up to the sky, he laughed with all the merriment of a nineteen-year-old boy with nothing to lose. “Oh, L…”

“…Didn’t I tell you I hate being called that name?”

Chapter Text

Guilty until proven innocent. That was what L had told himself. But truthfully, deep down…

He hadn’t really believed Light was Kira.

He hadn’t wanted Light to be Kira.

But there was no mistaking it now. Face tilted up toward the sky, blood dripping from his nose to his chin, Light laughed—and L had no choice but to confront the truth. The boy he’d grown to like so much was none other than the most infamous pirate the world had ever seen—and, in all likelihood, his brother’s murderer.

Betrayal, oddly, was the first emotion that hit him. He and Light hadn’t been friends, exactly, but L had trusted him. He’d trusted him.

He’d taken a risk, for once in his life, and opened up to another person. And this was how he was repaid?

“Restrain him.”

Stepping back, he slid his rapier into its sheath. Naomi came forward with a coil of rope to do as he’d said.

“Turn around, Light. Put your hands behind your back.” Quickly and efficiently, she bound his hands and feet with the rope. Light made no move to resist. Looking over his shoulder, he met L’s gaze—

And smiled.

Amusement danced in his gaze, his brown eyes dark with satisfaction. To think, L thought to himself, that, once, that expression had made his heart beat faster. Had made him desire.

Now, it filled him with nothing but disgust—and anger at his own stupidity.

“One of you”—he addressed his crew without turning to look at them, keeping his voice flat and emotionless with an effort—“bring a plank here.”

Behind him, there was an awkward shifting of feet.

No one moved.

“Thierry.” Spinning on his heel, L snapped at the first person he saw. The other man, cowed by his gaze, hurried to obey.

A minute later the plank he’d asked for landed on the deck of the ship. A ten foot long piece of wood, less than a foot wide, jutting off the edge of the ship over the water. Light looked at it, then at L, silent. He was no longer smiling.

“You can’t be serious,” he said finally, incredulous. “L—”

“I’m going to give you a choice, Kira. Either confess what you did to your crew”—to my brother—“or walk the plank. Make your decision. Now.”

Light’s gaze flickered from L to L’s crew, gathered around the deck of the ship, watching silently as all of this unfolded.

“I don’t remember,” he said, after a long moment of silence. “I told you, I don’t remember what happened. But if you’re implying that…I killed them, or something, then you’re wrong. I would never have done something like that. I’m not that sort of person.”

L regarded him expressionlessly.

“Blindfold him,” he said, after a moment.

Did Light think he was bluffing? Did he really think he could confess to being Kira and still claim that he had no memory of what had happened to the Spectre and its crew? Glancing away from Light, he met Naomi’s gaze. She gave him a grim nod and stepped forward to do as he’d said.

“I swear I don’t remember what happened!” Blindfolded, Light’s composure finally seemed to break. “I swear—”

“How can any of us believe a word you say after you lied for months about who you are?” L spoke over him. “Either confess to what you did, or walk the plank. It’s your choice.”

“I don’t have anything to confess to! Besides, can you blame me for not telling you that I’m Kira when this is the way you’re reacting? L, please—” Light fell to his knees, face lowered. “Is this what you want? Me, begging for my life? Because I am. I’m sorry I lied, I shouldn’t have, just…please don’t kill me.” His voice sunk to a whisper. “We…we’re friends…right?”

If his crew hadn’t been watching L would have strangled him to death right then and there.

“Get up,” he snapped, and when Light didn’t move, strode forward and hauled him up by the front of his shirt. “Walk the fucking plank,” he hissed in his ear. “Or I’ll stab you in the gut and throw you overboard myself.”

There was no mistaking the soft huff of breath against the side of his face as anything but a laugh.

“Don’t lose your composure now, L.” Light spoke softly, close to his ear. “You’re making a scene.”

L threw him onto the deck, hard, and drew his sword.

Slowly, shakily, Light got to his feet. “Fine,” he said. “Fine. I…I understand that I can’t prove I didn’t do anything wrong. I guess…” Here his voice trembled slightly. “I guess I’d rather die at sea than be hanged in front of some crowd in England, anyway.”

He really was very convincing. If L hadn’t known full well that he was just acting…

But he did know.

He was exhausted, bleeding from multiple places, on the verge of fainting entirely, and Light—

Light was a fucking liar.

It didn’t matter how much his voice trembled or his face contorted with fear. He was lying. He’d been lying, this entire time, and he was still lying now.

Just tell me what you did to my brother, damn you.

Raising his sword, he prodded Light with it, forcing him to shuffle down the plank until the thin wooden board was the only thing preventing him from plunging into the waves below. “Any last words, Kira?” he asked, once Light had reached the very end of the plank.

Light lifted his face, jaw clenched. “You know, L… you’re a real bastard.”

L kicked him over the edge.

There was a collective gasp from the deck of the ship as his boot made contact with Light’s chest, sending him plummeting into the water with a loud splash.

In the ensuing silence, L turned and walked away.

He tried to, anyway.

He made it all of two steps before Naomi ran after him and stopped him by forcefully gripping his arm.

“Captain—”

“Let go of me.” L wrenched his arm out of her grasp and kept walking.

He just—

He wanted this to be over.

Everyone was staring at him, and they didn’t understand, none of them understood, and he was just…so tired.

He just wanted this to be over.

“With all due respect—” Naomi continued to try to reason with him.

L spun to face her.

“What about this is so difficult to understand? Do you honestly believe that he just happened to be the only one to survive that shipwreck?” She opened her mouth to respond, but he spoke over her, raising his voice so that he could be heard by his entire crew. “You all saw the bodies. Who do you think fucking killed them?”

“We don’t know if that’s what happened,” Naomi protested. Although none of the others dared to speak up, L could tell from their expressions—the way they were all looking at him as if he had gone completely insane—that they agreed. Scoffing under his breath, he turned away and began to walk across the deck to his cabin again.

They were idiots. All of them.

And right now, he just wanted to be alone.

The moment he turned his back, though…

“Mihael!”

L turned to just in time to see him jump over the side of the ship. Mail, halfway over the railing, cast L an apologetic glance before dropping, too.

Naomi, who’d shouted Mihael’s name—presumably to stop him from jumping overboard without so much as a rope to pull himself back up with—fell silent, biting her lip. “Captain,” she said quietly, after a moment, turning to look at L.

“Throw them a rope,” L said, because—what choice did he have?

A few minutes later, all three of them were back on the ship. Mihael stood in front of the other two, glaring at everyone and no one in particular as if daring them to take so much as a step in his direction. Behind him, Light curled up against the railing of the ship, coughing and retching up seawater while Mail awkwardly rubbed his back. One of them had cut the rope binding his wrists and he raised one hand to tear off the blindfold in a weak, shaky movement before doubling over and coughing up more water again.

L advanced toward them, knuckles going white from how tightly he was gripping the hilt of his rapier.

“Mutiny, is it?” he said, very softly.

Mihael lifted his chin, blue eyes blazing. “You can punish us however you want. But Kira or not—Light’s our friend. Besides, since when is it lawful to murder a helpless prisoner who, as far as we know, hasn’t done anything wrong?”

He didn’t say it, but L heard what he was saying perfectly well.

You’re being irrational.

You’re going against everything we stand for.

You’re just lashing out because you’re angry.

So what if he was? Didn’t he have a right to be angry, when Light had sat across from him night and night and listened to all of his most private thoughts and pretended to care, only to use those secrets against him the moment L exposed him for what he actually was?

And it wasn’t as if he had acted solely out of anger. He’d given Light chance after chance to tell the truth. But he hadn’t. He’d just—mocked him, the entire time, while putting on an innocent act for everyone else watching.

How could none of them see what he did?

Were they really that stupid?

“And you?” He turned towards Mail. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Mail scratched his chin sheepishly. “Look, man, I just jumped because Mihael did. I didn’t really think it through, to be honest.” And then, when his friend turned to glare at him, “I agree with him, though! And…like he said, we’ll accept whatever punishment you think is right.”

L forced himself to relax his grip on his rapier. “Merrie. Take them to the brig. And make sure Kira can’t escape, would you?”

“Aye, aye, Captain!” Merrie gave him a small, cheeky salute and sauntered off to do as he’d said. “Come along now, boys.”

Mihael rolled his eyes as he followed her. Mail hung behind, helping Light along. Light had stopped hacking up water, but still looked decidedly unwell, pale as death and shivering from the cool temperature of the water. As he passed L, though, he made eye contact and gave him the faintest hint of a smile.

L just stared at him, expressionless.

At this point…he felt too defeated to muster any sort of response.

Two months. Two months that he’d spent isolating himself from the rest of the world, just trying to figure out what had happened to his brother. But Light…

Light had used that time to turn his entire crew against him.

He’d regroup, tomorrow. Even if he’d lost this battle, he wasn’t going to lose the war. But right now…

Slowly, everyone dispersed, disappearing belowdecks one by one until L and Naomi were two of the only ones left on the deck. She looked at him as though she wanted to say something, but Raye took her by the hand, and she let him pull her away without saying anything to L.

Alone at last, L stumbled to his cabin, pressing a hand to the tattered remains of his shirt where Light had sliced his chest and shoulder open. His hand came away dark and sticky with blood.

The relief he thought he’d feel from being alone, free from the expectations and judgment of his crew, didn’t come.

The book Light had been reading just a few nights ago—a collection of Shakespeare’s plays that L had bought several years before, in England, but never gotten around to reading himself—sat innocently on the bedside table. Flopping onto his back on the bed, L picked it up, looked at it for a moment, then hurled it across the room.

Take care of yourself. Why had Light said that to him? Had it just been to get into his head? Make him doubt himself?

He shouldn’t even be thinking about it. The last thing he needed right now was Light in his head. But now that he’d started, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. His mind, obsessive at the best of times, lodged itself on those four words, ran through possibility after possibility of what they had meant.

Curling up on his side, he drew his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around his calves, squeezing to make himself as small as possible, the way he’d always done when he was a child.

“Damn it,” he muttered to himself, not even knowing exactly what he was cursing. Himself, maybe. Light. His…feelings for Light, anger, and hatred, and…the ghost of an affection he had never really let himself develop in the first place, but felt acutely now—a dagger lodged deep inside him, piercing through his back into his heart.

“Damn it, damn it, damn it…”

Chapter Text

“So what’s your plan? Regarding Kira, I mean.”

The quality he liked most in Naomi, L thought to himself, was that she was always direct and to the point. At the present moment, though, he almost wished she’d be less forthright, less certain that he did have a plan. The truth was, he didn’t. He felt…somewhat like a broken compass, the needle spinning and spinning but unable to find true north.

He’d always relied on his intuition to make decisions. But he wasn’t so sure anymore whether his intuition could be trusted. Maybe he was losing his wits; maybe he was just too stricken by grief and guilt to make reliable decisions right now.

The truth was that he’d let Light make a complete and utter fool of him. Not just once or twice, but night after night—Light had lied to him so many times, and he hadn’t noticed. He hadn’t even suspected that Light might be Kira, that he might know much more than he was letting on. He remembered calling Kira ‘the most feared pirate in the entire world.’ He remembered Light laughing as if he had paid him a compliment.

He’d just overlooked it, like he’d overlooked so many other things.

“Let me ask you something, Naomi. Do you really believe he’s innocent?”

If she noticed the fact that he was avoiding her question, she didn’t show it. “I thought about what you said and… I don’t know. It is suspicious that he was the only one to survive the shipwreck. The wound to his head, too, and the memory loss… Something about it doesn’t line up, in my opinion. But if he actually does remember what happened, why would he swear he didn’t even when he thought he was about to die? Maybe it’s just that I want to believe he’s innocent, but… yes, I suppose I do.”

“I see,” L said. He stared at her a moment longer, then looked away.

The sky was blue today, the sea calm. They stood on the deck of the ship, watching the crew do their work—swabbing the deck, trimming the sails, and managing the rigging. Like all ships, the Leviathan required constant maintenance to stay in good condition. Under the watchful gaze of their captain and quartermaster, the crew was working hard, hurrying back and forth across the deck, hauling ropes and buckets of seawater with them.

Near the bow of the ship, Mihael and Mail were cleaning the head—a necessary but unpleasant chore that they’d been assigned to as punishment for their insubordination. L watched them for a moment, hands tucked into the pockets of his rather threadbare waistcoat, standing still by the railing as a light, salty sea breeze ruffled his hair.

Kira or not—Light’s our friend.

Maybe if he were their age, maybe if he wasn’t captain of this ship, he could afford to be as naive as they were.

But he was no longer as naive as he’d been at eighteen. He’d fought his fair share of battles, bloodied his sword and his face for the Crown. Along the way he’d lost not only his right eye but also the reckless, borderline suicidal stupidity of his youth. And as captain of this ship, he had a responsibility to keep harm from falling upon his crew, to keep them from starving or being drowned during a storm or being murdered by a pirate who had, for whatever reason, decided to sneak onto their ship and pretend to be their friend.

“…Captain?”

Naomi was looking at him, her expression worried. L realized, belatedly, that he had been biting his thumbnail rather viciously, to the point that there was a thin stream of blood running down his hand.

He lowered it quickly, affecting emotionlessness as he turned to her.

“If he is innocent I suppose we’ll find out soon enough. Let him sit in a cell for a while. He’s no danger to anyone there, and maybe it’ll encourage him to be more forthcoming. At the present moment I don’t believe it would be wise to let him walk around free.”

It was annoying, having to lie to her. The truth was, he knew Light was guilty. There was no question in his mind about who had murdered the Spectre’s entire crew, leaving a sea of corpses and the burning wreckage of a ship for him to find. If it were up to him, he’d just torture Light until he confessed to what he’d done, both to his crew and to Nathaniel—but he couldn’t, that was the problem. As a privateer he was supposed to follow a strict code of morals. He didn’t care much about things like that, but Naomi did, and, right now, he needed her support.

During the sword fight, she’d been the one who’d kept the others from interfering. They respected her; they liked her, probably more than they liked him, if he was being honest with himself. They respected, him, sure—it was why they’d voted for him to be their captain—but, honestly, he’d never really taken the time to get to know any of them. The closest relationship he had was with Merrie and Thierry—and that wasn’t even a relationship, really, just a…drunken mistake, several years ago, that had resulted in him waking up in an empty bed above a tavern with all his coin missing. He’d tracked them down, offered them a choice between being punished for their rather numerous crimes or working for him, and they’d never spoken about the…mistake again.

The dilemma was: he needed Naomi’s support, but he also needed to deal with Light somehow. He needed to know what had happened to his brother—and if Light had murdered him, as L suspected he had, he’d stop at nothing to bring him to justice. The problem was that Naomi thought he was innocent…and it wasn’t as if L could explain his theory about why that wasn’t that case. It was clear Naomi was already worried for his mental well-being; the last thing he needed was to start talking about Shinigami and make her think he’d actually lost his mind.

Naomi’s gaze was sharp and assessing. “So you think he could be innocent?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“I see.” Naomi looked away, obviously deep in thought. After a moment, she looked back at him, meeting his gaze with steady resolve. “I trust you, Captain. And…I mean, if it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t even know that he was Kira. To be honest, some of the crew have their doubts about all of this, but I’ve always trusted you, and I won’t stop now.”

And that was Naomi’s worst quality, L thought to himself. She was far too trusting. Fortunately, in this situation, it worked in his favor.

He gave her a curt nod, shoved his hands into his pockets, and strode off. He had work to do, a plan to devise.

Friend, he thought again, bitterly, as he stalked past Mihael and Mail on his way to his cabin.

He and Light had never even been friends.

So why did thinking about him for too long make his chest feel like this? Like he couldn’t breathe, like someone had reached into his chest and torn his heart out?

Why did he feel so betrayed?

“You’re sure no one saw you?”

“Relax, Captain.” Merrie’s golden hair shone in the lamplight as she propped her foot up on the seat of L’s chair, drew a dagger out of her boot, and started using it to clean her fingernails. “I sneak out of my bunk in the middle of the night all the time, to smoke up on the deck, or—”

“I don’t want to hear about what you and Thierry do to each other in the dead of night. Do you have anything to report or not?”

Merrie sighed dramatically. “This whole Kira business has got you really worked up, huh? You didn’t use to be like this, Captain.”

She leaned in close, her breasts pushing together in front of his face. L pushed her off and rose to his feet.

“Well?” he snapped, pacing back and forth across his cabin, gnawing nervously at his thumbnail.

“Well…” Merrie drew out the word, as if for dramatic effect. “According to mon amour, the entire time those three were in the brig, all they talked about was treasure hunts. Apparently there’s two hundred pounds of gold buried on an island almost directly south of here, if that’s of any interest to you?”

“It’s not.” L pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers. Treasure hunts? It wasn’t as if he’d expected Light to give up any truly useful information to Mihael or Mail—but treasure hunts? That was the only thing Thierry had been able to find out? “And you?”

“I searched him today, while I was on guard duty, like you asked. He didn’t seem to enjoy my fingers up his ass, which is disappointing. Didn’t have anything hidden up there, either.”

“Did he have anything hidden on him at all?”

“The only thing he had on him was this. Wasn’t exactly hidden, though, it was just in his pocket.”

She tossed it to him. L caught it, examined it carefully.

It was… just a watch. Silver, finely made, and obviously well-loved. The only particularly interesting thing about it was that it was a pendant watch. Pocket watches were considered the only fashionable choice for men; pendant watches were for women. A souvenir from a lover? L wondered, turning it over in his fingers. Carefully, he pulled the crown, just to see if anything would happen.

Nothing did.

Frustrated, he sat down on the edge of the bed, letting the thin silver chain of the necklace slip between his fingers. There had to be something more to this. If it was the only thing Light had had on him, surely there had to be something more to it. He tried turning the crown clockwise, then counterclockwise.

Still nothing.

“Try pulling it three times,” Merrie suggested, far too innocently. Mischief laced her voice. L looked up at her, frowned, then looked back down at the watch in his hand and did as she’d said.

A hidden compartment popped open.

Inside, there was a needle. Beneath it, a small scrap of paper—and in the center of the paper, written in what looked like dried blood, four Japanese characters.

The characters were unintelligible to him. Fortunately, there was one other person aboard the Leviathan, besides Light, who could read and write in Japanese—Naomi, who had been born and raised in Japan herself. And whatever this was, whatever Light had written on this hidden piece of paper…

L had the feeling that it was important.

Chapter Text

Late into the night, long after Merrie had left, L pored over the letter.

Now that he knew Light was Kira, was there anything he could glean from it that he hadn’t before? Were there any clues he had missed?

Shortly after Anthony and I joined the crew, the Spectre was attacked by another pirate ship. Although we were victorious, the captain was badly wounded in the fighting. As the only doctor aboard the ship, it fell to me to tend to him. He recovered eventually, but not before spending nearly three days and three nights delirious with fever, speaking to someone who wasn’t there. When I asked him who he was talking to, he said it was a Shinigami. A god of death.

Had that been where all of this had begun? Had Light’s close call with death caused him to encounter the Shinigami? Had he made some sort of deal with it? Or had the Shinigami been aboard the ship for much longer than that?

This would have been less than six months before L found the burning wreckage of the Spectre, which suggested that Light had encountered the Shinigami at least…two or three months before the incident described in the letter—that was, if his theory about Light’s memory loss being related to the Shinigami was correct. At this point, he couldn’t be sure that it was.

Setting the letter down on his desk, next to Light’s watch, L paced the length of his cabin, gnawing anxiously at his nails.

Light’s apparent memory loss was…perplexing. During their first encounter, he’d been sure that the boy had been telling the truth when he’d said he couldn’t remember what had happened. But when Light had been revealed as Kira…when he’d claimed that he didn’t remember what had happened then…

L was almost certain he hadn’t been telling the truth.

Rubbing a hand tiredly across his face—when was the last time he’d slept? He honestly couldn’t even remember—he stopped pacing, crossed the room, and looked down at the letter on his desk, illuminated by the dwindling light of an oil lamp. Was it even a reliable source of information? Light had suggested that it wasn’t, that Kira was the one who had written it. What was he supposed to make of that? Either the letter was real, and Light had been trying to mislead him, or it wasn’t, and the suggestion had been—some sort of double fake, intended to make him reveal his thoughts on the matter so that Light could strategize around him.

L suspected it was the former…but again, he couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t be sure about anything, really. He just didn’t have enough information. Picking up the watch from his desk, he pulled the crown three times and looked down at the secret compartment that popped out, the needle and the scrap of paper hidden inside.

Light…Kira…what are you playing at?

What does this mean?

Daybreak found Naomi on the deck of the ship, doing her morning exercises. She wiped sweat off her brow and came to his side when she saw him, wooden sword hanging loosely from her hand.

“It’s a name,” she said, after a moment of peering down at the watch. “Higuchi Kyousuke.”

“Higuchi Kyousuke,” L repeated. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.” Naomi looked up at him curiously. “Why? Whose watch is this?”

“Kira’s,” L said shortly. Higuchi Kyousuke…Where have I heard that name before?

“Maybe it’s his name?” Naomi suggested, after a moment. She peered down at the watch again. “Although…I’m not sure why it looks like it’s written in blood.”

“It’s not his name.” I’ve met Higuchi Kyousuke. Years ago, but I remember now.

He’d been tracking down Thierry at the time. When he’d found him, the other man had been drinking in a tavern with a rather sleazy-looking man of Asian descent, apparently a slave trader who’d been trying to offer him a job. Higuchi…yes, that was what the man had said his name was.

How strange. Why would Light have the name of a slave trader written on a scrap of paper in his watch?

And did it have anything to do with the letter—how he’d screamed when he’d touched it?

A theory, nebulous and indistinct, began to form. The scrap of paper in Light’s watch didn’t appear…otherworldly, or anything—in fact, it looked just like an ordinary piece of paper—but then again, so did the paper the letter had been written on. And Light had screamed when he’d touched the letter, although he’d had no good reason to. In fact, he could have avoided suspicion by not screaming. Was it possible that something as innocuous as mere paper could contain some otherworldly power, something that Light, for whatever reason, was the only one who had access to?

Naomi was still frowning down at the watch. “What do you think…?”

“I don’t know.” L slid the hidden compartment back into place, concealing it within the watch, before pocketing it again. “I suppose,” he said, gazing out at the horizon, his thoughts faraway, “I’ll just have to ask him about it.”

The brig was nearly pitch-black, even at midday. The flicker of a candle and the faint stream of light from the cracks in the floorboards above were the only sources of illumination. Behind the bars of his cell, Light was sitting on the thin, narrow cot that served as his bed, leaning back against the wall with his legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles, his eyes closed.

He opened his eyes when he heard the door open, then scrambled to his feet when he saw L. “L,” he said.

“Kira,” L returned evenly. He made no hurry of making his way to stand before Light’s cell.

Light looked annoyed for all of a second before his expression turned neutral again. “I told you I don’t like being called that, but…whatever. Look—”

“Let me guess.” L made no effort to hide the sardonic tone in his voice. “You’re innocent, and I have no right to keep you locked up down here. In fact, I should let you out this very second despite the incredibly suspicious circumstances surrounding the deaths of your entire crew and the fact that you yourself confessed to being the most notorious pirate on the seven seas—is that what you were going to say?”

Light was silent. “I understand that you have no reason to believe me,” he said finally, his voice measured, “but I really am innocent. I don’t know what exactly you’re accusing me of, but I didn’t do it, I swear. Please, you have to believe me.”

“As you pointed out just a moment ago, I have no reason to believe anything you say. Besides, it’s well known that a pirate’s word means nothing.”

“You’ve known I was a pirate from the day you met me,” Light argued. “The only thing that’s changed now is that you know I’m Kira, but that doesn’t change anything, not really. I can understand if you’re angry at me for not telling you that I’m Kira, but you trusted me, before. All I’m asking is that you don’t immediately assume I’m lying just because I didn’t tell you that one thing.” He was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice had taken on a pleading tone. “You understand why I didn’t, right? I’m not saying it was the right thing to do, but…you get it, right? I…I was just scared, I didn’t want to lose our friendship.”

L looked at him expressionlessly. “If you believe that appealing to our ‘friendship,’ as you call it, will get you out of here, you’re wrong.”

“Okay.” Light sighed. “Let’s talk about this rationally for one second, alright? Mihael and Mail told me what you said, about how you think I killed my entire crew and sunk my own ship and all of that. Setting aside the fact that I would never do that, because I’m not a murderer—what kind of sane person would do that? What is your theory, exactly? That I killed dozens of people and destroyed my own ship and nearly died myself just so I could end up locked in a cell on your ship? Why would I do that? Can you name even one thing I gained in this hypothetical situation where I’m…some monster who would kill that many people without remorse, and, apparently, also suicidal enough to do something utterly insane like this?”

L had no good answer to that. He hesitated just a moment too long; Light’s expression turned disgusted.

“You don’t have a shred of proof, you don’t even have a working theory. You’ve imprisoned me based off of what, a hunch?” He laughed sharply. “Is it just because I’m a pirate that you think you can do whatever you want to me?”

“Are you angry with me?” L asked tonelessly.

Being here, face to face with Light, was bringing all sorts of unwelcome feelings to the surface. No matter how hard he tried to push them back down, he couldn’t quite manage it. He’d stayed away for a reason.

Light looked for a second like he was going to laugh, or spit in L’s face. Instead, he just looked away. “No,” he said, after a moment. His voice was quiet. “I didn’t mean that, I’m sorry. Obviously I don’t like any of this, but…I know it looks suspicious. I know you’re just being cautious.”

“Is that so.”

“Yeah. Honestly, I’d probably do the same thing in your situation, so it’d be hypocritical of me to be angry at you.” Light hesitated slightly before continuing. “I know I reacted badly when you told me your theory about why I’d lost my memory, but…things are different now. I’m not sure I want to find out what happened, not if the truth is as terrifying as I think it might be, but I do want to prove that I’m innocent. You don’t have to trust me, or even like me, but”—he looked up and met L’s gaze, his eyes hopeful—“we could work together. To find out what happened. I want to get to the bottom of this, just as much as you do, if only to prove that I’m not the monster you think I am. Please, just…give me a chance.”

L considered for a moment, then drew the key ring out of his pocket and unlocked the door to Light’s cell.

Light looked relieved, then confused when he took a step forward and L didn’t move out of the way to let him out of the cell. “…L?” he said hesitantly.

L stared at the shadows on the floor of Light’s cell for a long moment, thinking of Light sitting across his desk from him, chin cupped in the palm of his hand, Light saying, if you ever want someone to talk to… “I miss him,” he said softly, the words meant for only the two of them. Looking up, he met Light’s gaze. “The boy you’re wearing.”

Light jerked back as if he’d been slapped.

For a long moment, they both just stared at each other. Then Light lowered his face and smiled, the expression mocking. “Do you?” he said, regaining his composure as smoothly as if he’d never lost it in the first place. “That’s too bad.”

“Yes,” L agreed. “Although I suppose the boy I thought I knew was too good to be true.”

That made Light fall silent again. After a moment, he looked away with a rueful laugh. “You know,” he said, retreating back into his cell of his own volition, “I used to look up to you. When I was younger. They say you should never meet your heroes, but…honestly, you’re really something. I’m glad we met, even if it was just by accident.”

“By accident?” L said, narrowing his eye. As if you didn’t orchestrate this entire thing. I don’t know why you did it, but you did—I’m certain of that much.

Was it possible Light had done all of this just to meet him? L found that hard to believe. For one thing, as Light had pointed out himself, his actions were too drastic. Even if he did admire L, no sane person would have gone to such lengths just to meet someone they admired. Besides, all of it could just be a lie. He had no reason to believe that Light was telling the truth, about any of it.

Honestly…the boy that stood before him was a total stranger—so different from the other Light that L could hardly reconcile the two in his mind. It was strange. Light looked the same as he always had. He sounded the same as he always had. His mannerisms, the way he carried himself, the way he spoke—they were all the same. But something about him was different. L had suspected it for some time, but the way Light had reacted to what he’d said had just confirmed it.

Had touching a piece of paper really brought about such an uncanny change?

Taking Light’s watch out of his pocket, he held it up between them, dangling it between his thumb and index finger. “What is this?”

“My watch?” Light leaned against the back wall of his cell, looking amused.

“Is it yours, really?”

Light seemed annoyed by the question. “I didn’t steal it, if that’s what you’re asking. It’s mine. It was a gift. Can I have it back now?”

“If it’s yours,” L said, ignoring him, “then surely you know about the secret compartment that opens if you pull the crown three times in less than a second?” He watched Light carefully for any signs of a reaction. “Tell me, Light, why would you hide a piece of paper and a needle inside your watch?”

“I didn’t. I didn’t even know there was a secret compartment until you said so just now.”

He didn’t seem particularly surprised by the question, L noted. Maybe he’d assumed when Merrie had taken the watch from him that L would figure out how to open the secret compartment? The mechanism wasn’t particularly complicated. It was unlikely that anyone would find it by accident, but to anyone who was actively looking for something like that, it would hardly be a challenge. Merrie had figured it out just by fiddling around with the watch for a few minutes, after all.

But why would Light tell such a bold lie? Why would he claim he had no knowledge of the secret compartment at all? Did the paper really have some kind of supernatural power that he was afraid of anyone else discovering? Bringing his thumb to his lower lip, L thought for a moment before asking his next question.

“When you were reading the letter that Nathaniel wrote to me, you asked if you could take notes. When you left, you took that sheet of paper with you, and, at some point between then and now, destroyed it. Why? What were you really writing, on that sheet of paper, that you didn’t want anyone to see?”

“You saw it,” Light pointed out. “It’s not like I was hiding anything. I even offered to write in English if you wanted me to. It’s like I told you, I was taking notes. And I didn’t destroy it. I took it out of my pocket to read it as I was walking across the deck and the wind blew it right out of my hands into the ocean.”

“You took it out of your pocket to read it,” L said flatly, “in the dead of night. When it was too dark to see. And windy enough that it blew out of your hands into the ocean.”

“Yeah. Kind of a stupid move on my part, right?” Light laughed. “If you don’t believe me…well, I don’t know if either of them will remember, but Naomi and Raye were both up on the deck when it happened. I think they were stargazing, or something? Raye made a joke about how I should hold on to my possessions more tightly on windy nights like that, or something like that—he definitely saw it happen and commented on it, anyway—so if you think I’m lying you could just ask him.”

Light’s insistence that he was telling the truth—when he obviously was not—made L suddenly irritated. “I think you are lying. Even if you’re telling the truth about how you lost that sheet of paper, you’re lying about everything else. Do you think you’ll ever leave this cell if you—”

“I think it’s unjust of you to have imprisoned me in the first place when there’s no proof that I did any of the things you’re accusing me of.” Leaning against the wall of his cell, Light smirked. “And I think as long as I continue to say I’m innocent—because I am—you’ll have to let me out eventually.”

L stared at him, nostrils flaring. “Thierry,” he called, after a moment.

The other man came in a moment later from where he’d been standing guard outside. Scratching at the stubble beneath his chin, he gave L a questioning look, his gaze lingering on Light for a second too before he turned his attention back to L.

“See to it that Kira here doesn’t get any food or water today,” L said, without breaking eye contact with Light. “He’s being uncooperative. I don’t believe he deserves rations.”

“Sure,” Thierry said with a low chuckle. The sound only made L more irritated than he already was. What do you find so amusing? he wanted to snap at the man. What about this is amusing in any way? “You won’t hear me complaining about extra rations.”

Light looked back and forth between them silently. “You can’t do this to me,” he said, the moment Thierry had gone back outside and the door had shut behind him. “You have no right to do this to me.”

“I think you’ll find that I can do whatever I want.” L turned away, pocketing the keys to Light’s cell. “If I were you, I would think long and hard about the situation you’re in before the next time I come to question you. Also, I’ll be taking this with me.” He dangled the watch in the air by its chain for a moment before pocketing it as he strode towards the door.

“Keep it if you want,” Light called after him. Even with his back turned, L could hear the mockery in his voice. “I’ll take it off your dead body, when I get out of here.”

L didn’t dignify that with a response, just slammed the door on his way out and swept past Thierry without a single word. He wasn’t sure he’d ever felt so angry, or frustrated, in his life. The full-bellied laugh that left Thierry’s mouth when he saw L’s expression only made things worse.

What the hell did he think was so funny?

Chapter Text

In the weeks that followed L found himself returning to the brig again and again. Asking the same questions. Receiving the same answers.

It was beyond frustrating, the way Light kept insisting he was innocent, even though L knew he wasn’t. What was even more frustrating was the fact that everyone else aboard the ship seemed to believe that he was the one being unreasonable by continuing to have Light confined in a cell. No one openly challenged him, but he heard the whispers—or, rather, Merrie and Thierry, who were acting as his eyes and ears among the crew, heard them and conveyed them to him. Mihael and Mail, in particular, were Light’s staunchest defenders. Considering their previous behavior, L wasn’t particularly surprised by this. More worrying was the fact that the others were increasingly beginning to listen to them and to agree with them. He supposed he could see things from their perspective…

But they didn’t know Light, not like he did. They hadn’t heard Light’s taunts, whispered in his ear. They hadn’t seen the way Light smirked when the two of them were alone.

It was enough to drive anyone insane. Everywhere he went, he could feel their gazes on him. Sometimes he thought he could hear them whispering about him while he was still within earshot, although he knew that this was probably only in his imagination. Even Thierry and Merrie seemed to have some sort of inside joke regarding him and Light; whenever the subject was brought up, the two of them were always glancing sidelong at each other and smiling as if they found something in his manner particularly amusing.

Part of him wanted to ask if—

If Light had spoken about him, during the time he’d been barricaded away in his cabin trying to figure out what had happened to his brother. If Light had implied or if the others had somehow come to the conclusion that he and Light were…involved in some way.

But if he was right and that was the reason Merrie and Thierry were acting the way they were, asking them something like that would probably only confirm their suspicions. And the last thing he needed was for a rumor—a completely false rumor—like that to start making its way through the crew, so he said nothing.

In a confined space like a ship it was impossible to ignore the whispers, imagined or not, and day by day L felt his sanity fraying at the edges. His only consolation was that Light was trapped, too; trapped in a cell that never saw sunlight and was barely large enough to walk two paces in either direction, deprived of food and water and human contact save for L.

Maybe his sanity was fraying at the edges, but Light was the one who was going to break first—L was sure of that much.

In the first two weeks of his confinement Light seemed to be under the impression that all he had to do was wait and he would be set free. He seemed confident that his imprisonment would be over soon, indignant that he was being subjected to it in the first place but unconcerned by L’s threats to keep him in a cell until he confessed to what he’d done.

In the third week he took to pacing his cell like a caged animal and glaring at L whenever L showed his face.

“This is ridiculous. I’m innocent. You can’t do this to me!” he all but shouted at L’s back as L left the brig, having stayed only long enough to ask his questions and take away Light’s food privileges when he didn’t receive any useful answers.

L turned. “Don’t you ever get tired of telling lies, Light?” He didn’t bother to hide the mocking tone in his voice and Light’s eyes narrowed.

“You don’t have any proof.”

“I don’t need proof.” L turned away again, pushing open the door of the brig. He spoke with his back turned. “I know what you did.”

I just need you to confess to it.

I need to know, for certain, what happened to my brother.

The next time he returned to the brig, Light refused to speak to him. In fact, he refused to even get up from where he was lying on his cot, just curled in further on himself, his back facing L and his expression hidden.

“You do realize that acting like a petulant child won’t get you out of here any faster,” L said after several minutes of attempting, unsuccessfully, to get Light to speak to him. Frustration built inside him—how much longer would Light withhold the truth from him? “It won’t earn you any sympathy from me, either, so save the crocodile tears.”

A slight stiffening of Light’s shoulders was the only response.

“There’s fresh bread, butter, and eggs for supper tonight,” L tried again. They’d made port in England just a few days ago, although he hadn’t gone ashore himself, instead leaving the buying of provisions to Naomi and the rest of the crew while he remained on the ship. “Pork chops, too. If you talk, I’ll see to it that a plate is set aside for you.”

Light just coiled in tighter on himself, silent.

L stood there a moment longer, fingers clenched around Light’s watch in his pocket, then left.

He needed answers.

But as loath as he was to admit it…

He didn’t have any way of figuring out what had happened by himself. There were too many unknown factors. The Shinigami, the letter, the scrap of paper in Light’s watch…

He had his theories, but unless he could convince Light to talk, there was no way to confirm whether he was right or not.

In other words, he needed Light to talk.

In one sense, all he had to do was wait. Solitude wasn’t good for anyone, and Light would break down eventually—was probably starting to already. All the same, L’s patience was wearing thin. It had been over three months now since he’d found the burning wreckage of the Spectre; he was tired of…this, of wondering what had happened to Nathaniel, fixating on it, not eating or sleeping in his desperate hunt to find out what had happened to his brother.

For the better part of a week Light refused to talk or even acknowledge L’s presence. He ate and drank when food and water was left for him; otherwise, he remained curled up on his cot as if trying to disappear altogether. L’s frustration grew and grew—how much longer would he have to wait?

Then, at the beginning of the fifth week, came the storm.

Although the sea had been calm when L descended the stairs to the brig, by the time he emerged, a line of clouds had begun to form on the horizon, heavy and dark and swirling in a way that made the waves churn, tossing the ship back and forth before the storm had even set upon them. Thunder rumbled threateningly in the sky.

Naomi was running back and forth across the deck, shouting orders at the crew. She looked noticeably relieved when she saw him.

“Man the wheel, keep our course steady,” L told her, then raised his voice to address the rest of the crew. “Batten down the hatches and secure the sails!” From the look of it, there was no chance they could outrun the storm, and if they couldn’t outrun it, they couldn’t risk having the sails open. Storms out on these waters could tear sails and masts alike, and a broken mast would spell almost certain doom for the entire crew. It took half of the crew to secure them, leaving the rest floundering to douse the lamps and other hazards around the deck.

It was pandemonium in the minutes before the storm surrounded the ship in darkness.

Thunder and lightning flashed through the sky. The heavens opened and the ship was flooded with a torrential downpour so heavy L could hardly see two feet in front of his face. The wind howled like an angry chorus around them.

The storm didn’t abate in a matter of hours; instead, it raged on for days, exhausting both L and his crew. It wasn’t until nearly five days later, when the wind and lightning and torrents of rain had finally died down to a steady downpour, that L returned to the brig. He’d hardly had time to think of Light at all—he’d been too busy trying to see his crew safely through the storm—and was irritated, to say the least, to find Light apparently still unwilling to talk to him, sitting on the floor of the his cell with his back to the wall, his knees drawn up to his chest, and his face buried in his arms.

“What’s the matter, frightened of a little lightning and thunder?” L couldn’t resist taunting him.

There was no response.

“What is the purpose of the piece of paper hidden in your watch?”

Silence.

“What did you do to your crew? To Nathaniel?”

Still nothing.

L took a deep breath through his nose and turned for the door.

He was nearly there when Light’s voice came from behind him.

“Wait. Just…wait.”

L turned slowly. Light had lifted his face to look at him, although in the gloom of the brig his expression was inscrutable, hidden by the shadows.

There was a long moment of silence.

L’s heart thudded in his chest.

“If you want to know what happened so badly,” Light said finally, his gaze skirting away from L, “then I guess I’ll tell you.” Here, he hesitated, just for a moment. “Just don’t act like you weren’t the one who asked.”

Chapter Text

“Do you remember when I said that…people like you and me, there’s no place for us in their world?”

Impatient, L bit at his thumbnail. “What does this have to do with what you did to your ship and your crew? I could care less about whatever sob story you’ve concocted. Just tell me what happened to the Spectre and its crew.” To my brother.

Under other circumstances, he would have been more patient, but under the current circumstances…he had no patience left for Light’s lies. Light had proven himself to be a liar again and again, first concealing the fact that he was Kira and then continuing to insist that he had no idea what had happened to his crew, even when L knew perfectly well that wasn’t the truth. No, he had no patience left for anything but the truth. He just wanted to know what had happened to his brother, god damn it. Was that too much to ask, after all these months of mind games and deception and clues that, no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t unravel on his own?

Light was silent. “I’m trying to tell you something,” he said finally, his voice tightly controlled enough that L suspected he was hiding some kind of emotion. “I don’t know how to tell you this if you’re not going to listen.”

“I’m listening,” L said, curtly.

From within the darkness of the cell, there was nothing but silence for a long moment. “I really don’t know how to tell you this at all,” Light said finally, “so I guess I’ll just say it. I…have tits and a cunt. When I was born, my parents gave me a girl’s name. They raised me as a daughter. It’s…why I left home. There was no place there for—me. I’m a man, just like you are, but some people wouldn’t see it that way. If they knew. That’s the only reason I don’t tell people, it’s not—what you said, it’s not something I’ve concocted like a scheme or a lie.”

L took this in in silence. Physically speaking…he supposed it made sense. He was only surprised he hadn’t seen it sooner. Then again, the concept itself was foreign to him. He’d always seen Light as a man—a boy, really, considering his age—so it had simply never occurred to him to think that Light might have tits and a cunt. But now that he knew…what was he supposed to make of it? Was he supposed to see Light differently? The truth was, it made little difference to him. What, then, was Light’s purpose in telling him this?

“Let me reiterate, I want to know what happened to my brother. If something about this is important, then elaborate on it. If that’s all, then keep talking.”

“What?” Light seemed confused by his response. “Do you believe me or not?”

L exhaled slowly through his nose. “I don’t see what there is to believe. I don’t think you’re lying about having tits and a cunt, if that’s what you’re asking. As for whether you’re a man or not, you would know better than I do, and you said you are. If that’s all, then keep talking.”

Light made a sound that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. “If I’d known you would react this way, I would’ve told you months ago, the first time you asked.” He seemed…relieved. “Alright, then. I guess...I’ll start at the beginning.

“I ran away from home when I was thirteen. I stowed away on a merchant’s ship, then, when we made port somewhere else a couple weeks later, I got off that ship and onto a different one. I knew it was a pirate ship, I had seen the pirates, but I thought the risk was worth taking. They were short on ship hands and I figured a pirate ship wasn’t a bad place to learn some useful skills, maybe even make a life for myself, eventually. You know, see the world and all of that. When I was discovered, they told me I could either make myself useful or walk the plank, so I made myself useful. I was always a quick learner, and when the captain was killed a few years later, I became the new captain. I wasn’t the one who killed him, but I killed the one who did, and a couple of the other pirates who were trying to seize power. No one challenged me after that.

“I renamed my ship the Spectre. I made a reputation for myself, won some battles against people far too stupid to go up against me, wiped some slave traders and other scum like that off the face of the earth. People who heard about these things started calling me Kira, after the English word ‘killer.’ For a while, things were good. Pirates…most of us are outcasts from society, in one way or another. I mean, why would anyone choose a career that’s punishable by death if they have other options? Most of my crew, they didn’t have any other way to support themselves. If they hadn’t been pirates, they would have been starving to death on the streets. But on my ship, there was always enough to eat. We didn’t just eat gruel and drink watered-down grog, either. We stole expensive wine from merchant ships and drank it like water. There was always enough gold when we made port for everyone to eat meat and gamble to their heart’s content. Maybe you think that’s dishonorable, but I was happy. I was happy with the life I’d made for myself. When you grow up thinking you’ll never have any of the things you want…even being a coarse criminal, a pirate, that’s still a life.

“Then, one day, this…book fell out of the sky. And the moment I touched it, I saw it. A Shinigami. He told me about the world he came from. The Shinigami Realm. A world of dust and bones where Shinigami, Grim Reapers if that’s what you want to call them, live. Shinigami are…well, they’re giant vultures, essentially. They kill humans by writing names in what they call their Death Notes, and then they take those humans’ lifespans for themselves. The Shinigami I saw, Ryuk, he’d gotten ahold of another Shinigami’s Death Note, and decided to drop it into the human world, where it fell into my hands.

“At first, I didn’t use it much. I mean, the Death Note…it’s impractical, for a human, that is. Shinigami can see large portions of the human world at once, and any human they can see, they immediately know the name of. So it’s easy for them to kill with it. But for me, if I want to kill someone, I need to see them up close, because you have to picture their face while writing their name, and I also need to know what their name is. In my hands, the Death Note was pretty much useless—at least, that’s what I thought at first. But then I was nearly killed when the Spectre was attacked by a different pirate ship, and I realized something. Because I was so well-known, as a pirate, I’d become a target. And it didn’t matter if I could outsmart or outmaneuver them every time, there’s no accounting for pure bad luck. If I kept being attacked, I’d be killed eventually, even if it was just by a stray cannonball or something. So I came up with a plan.

“Anyone who’s touched the Death Note can see the Shinigami attached to it. Nathaniel…he was aboard my ship, then, and I knew about…his relation to you. My plan was to make him write to you, asking you for help and suggesting that there was something supernatural happening aboard my ship. So I touched his friend, Anthony, with a piece of the Death Note, in passing. I figured he would be frightened by the Shinigami he suddenly saw everywhere around the ship, and confide in Nathaniel, who would then write to you with this story of this…devil following me around, a devil no one could see but him. I also ‘let slip’ the existence of Shinigami to Nathaniel, hoping to frighten him enough to beg for you to come to his rescue. When you did, I’d hand you—your first defeat ever, apparently, but let the two of them escape onto your ship. Then, after the battle, you and your crew would suddenly start seeing the devil, too. Ryuk agreed to haunt your ship for a few weeks, just long enough to scare the shit out of everyone aboard and make sure you spread the word far and wide that I had some kind of supernatural power on my side, maybe even that I had made a deal with the devil. For me, it would be a double victory. Not only would I have defeated you, I would also have made sure that anyone who heard about this thought twice before trying me, in the future.”

“That’s not what happened,” L said. “So what did?”

He thought he had some idea; he’d read Nathaniel’s letter, after all. Anthony hadn’t confided in Nathaniel about the Shinigami he’d seen. Instead, he’d thrown himself overboard and drowned.

“You know what happened.” Light sounded tired. “I…didn’t expect for it to. I mean, I was scared, when I saw Ryuk for the first time, but I didn’t—throw myself overboard and die. I thought…afterwards, I still thought it would be fine. I underestimated the effect it would have on my plans. Anthony died, but Nathaniel didn’t, and he wrote to you just like I’d planned. I still thought I could pull it off, even though I’d miscalculated about that one thing.”

He fell silent again after that.

“Your plan backfired on you,” L said, chancing a guess at what had happened. “You meant for your enemies to think you had a supernatural power on your side. Instead, your own crew grew afraid of whatever devil it was that Anthony had been seen. They were afraid the same thing would happen to them.”

“Not at first.” Light shook his head. “You’re forgetting that these people had known me for years. They respected me, trusted me. Anthony, on the other hand, was a stranger to them. The consensus after he died was that he had gone mad. For all that they knew, he had been a complete madman before he ever stepped foot onto the Spectre. The real problem was, Nathaniel blamed me for his death. If I made one mistake, it was…not realizing how much of a threat he posed to me. I knew he thought I had killed Anthony, but I thought he would be too afraid of me to try anything. I mean, it was my ship, my crew. I was Kira, the most feared pirate on the seven seas, and he had every reason to believe that I had a Shinigami on my side. I…misjudged his character. I thought he would wait for you to come to his aid. He didn’t.

“I don’t know if…he didn’t think you would come, or if he just decided that he needed to avenge his friend’s death himself. Whatever the reason, he confronted me. He accused me, in front of my entire crew, of killing Anthony. He listed out the same evidence that he did in the letter. I had spoken of a Shinigami, a god of death, while I’d been feverish; Anthony had been raving about a devil attacking him before jumping overboard and dying; after his death, I had asked Nathaniel whether I’d said anything out of the ordinary while he’d been tending to my wounds. He listed out all this evidence, and then he appealed to my crew and said that I would kill all of them too if they didn’t do anything about it.

“I denied it, of course. He didn’t have any proof, and it was my word against his. No one believed him. I was their captain, and he was just some…spoiled nobleman’s son who clearly thought he thought was better than all of them. I thought that would be the end of it, but then he said—he said, that’s not the only thing your captain has been lying to you about. Your captain is actually a woman.

“That accusation, by itself… Among pirates, it’s not uncommon for women to dress as men, for their own safety, or to be taken more seriously by the men around them. If I had said that…I was a woman, that I just dressed as a man for reasons like that, nothing would have come of it. My crew would have lost a little respect for me, maybe. But I didn’t say that. I said that I’m not a woman, because I’m not. I don’t know how to explain it. Imagine that…you’re born an illegitimate child, and you grow up and move somewhere far away where no one knows that about you. Then one day, someone approaches you, in front of everyone you know, and calls you a bastard. But they don’t stop there. They name your mother and say that she was a whore, they say completely untrue things about her. Do you calmly explain to all your friends that while it’s true that your mother and your father weren’t married, they loved each other and she wasn’t a whore? Or do you deny all of it call the person who just said those things a filthy liar? I…maybe you would have made a different decision, but for me it wasn’t even a decision. I denied it, I said I’m not a woman, I’m a man. And he said, then prove it. If you’re a man then it should be easy to prove.

“I didn’t see the trap he’d laid for me until it was too late. He knew no one would believe him about the Shinigami. His plan was never to convince them that I was a liar by accusing me of being a woman. It was to convince them that I was delusional, insane. Insane enough to actually believe I was a man when I was clearly a woman. He was the ship’s doctor, he had seen me naked, everyone knew that, they were all wondering why he would accuse me of being a woman unless I actually was. But I had already denied it. And why the hell would I strip in front of them? They had no right to see that. But when I tried to say that, it only made them more suspicious of me. I…wasn’t calm about this entire thing, either, and that only made them more suspicious. I could see the trap closing around me but there was nothing I could do stop it. One of my crew, she, ah, tried to tell me that it was alright if I was a woman, none of them would think any less of me or believe any of Nathaniel’s other accusations just because I’d admitted to that one thing, and I just…I guess I lost my mind, because I said that having tits didn’t make me a woman. I actually thought, for a second, that I could make them understand. Let’s just say that no one believed a word I said after that.”

“What happened after that?” L asked, when it became apparent Light wasn’t going to say anything more.

“Nathaniel had his way. They were convinced that I was insane enough to…sell my soul to the devil, or whatever it was he said. I don’t remember. They marooned me. I used the Death Note to kill them.”

“That doesn’t explain…” What I found. The sea of corpses, you half-drowned among them. The burning ship. Nathaniel, nowhere to be found.

“I forgot to mention earlier, the Death Note can be used to control someone’s actions before death. I used it to make them come back for me. I wrote that they would follow all of my orders without question until they died. When your ship appeared on the horizon a week later, I ordered them to rig the ship to explode, killing all of them. I gave up my memories and Ryuk hit me over the head with a loose piece of wood and dumped my unconscious body in the water among the corpses, where you found me.”

“And Nathaniel?” L asked, after a long moment of silence.

“He’s dead too.”

“You killed him, is what you mean.”

“We dueled with swords. It was a fair fight. I just happened to be the one who won.”

Was it a fair fight, really? L resisted the urge to ask.

“Why didn’t you use the Death Note to kill him?”

“Honestly? It would have been too easy.” There was a pause. “For him, I mean. I’ll admit it, I underestimated him. But he knew I had a Shinigami on my side, he could have guessed I had some sort of supernatural power, and he still thought he could turn my entire crew against me and leave me to die on a sandbar in the middle of the ocean? You should have seen how smug he looked about it, too, when he told me I was nothing and that I was getting exactly what I deserved. I wanted him to live long enough to see what he’d done, and I wanted him to realize with a sword in his hand that he couldn’t beat me.”

“What did you do with his body?”

“Weighed it down, threw it overboard.”

L closed his eye, remained still for a long moment. Finally, he crouched in front of the bars of Light’s cell, at eye level with where Light was sitting with his back to the wall. He drew Light’s watch out of his pocket.

“Tell me your name, Kira.”

Light remained silent.

“You can either tell me, or stay locked up in here until you’re willing to. I don’t mind making you suffer.”

Light was silent for another long moment. “It’s Light,” he said finally. “Yagami Light. You’ll need to write it in the kanji. Yagami is written with the characters for ‘night’ and ‘god.’ Light is written with the character for ‘moon.’”

L looked down at the watch in his hand. “One last question,” he said, without looking at Light. “The letter. Did Nathaniel write it or not? If he touched the paper, he should have been able to see the Shinigami. But from what you’ve said, it doesn’t seem like he was able to.”

“He wrote the letter. I just copied it onto a page of the Death Note.”

Up close, in the shadows of the brig, Light’s eyes were so dark a shade of brown that they almost appeared red, like blood. L gazed at him for a long moment, then stood.

All this time, he’d thought the letter had been written in Nathaniel’s handwriting, when, really, it had been Light’s.

Turning, he walked towards the door. Light remained silent behind him, but L could feel his gaze fixed on his back.

Chapter Text

The storm had passed, but the sky was still covered with a thick layer of grey clouds. A light drizzle dampened L’s hair and clothes as he emerged from the stairs leading up from the brig to the main deck of the ship. He paid little heed to it.

Nathaniel is dead, he thought, over and over again. He’s dead. His body is at the bottom of the ocean.

And Light is the one who killed him.

His brother, who would have been eighteen now, but who he still remembered as a small child with curling white hair and wide eyes, clinging to him and begging him not to leave…

And Light.

Wicked, clever Light, who he’d stupidly grown to like so much before he began to suspect the truth…

They’d fought, Nathaniel and Light.

And Light had won.

L felt sick to his stomach.

It wasn’t as if he’d thought…He hadn’t thought that Nathaniel might be alive, or that Light might be innocent. But actually knowing what had happened…that was a different thing entirely from merely suspecting it.

“Naomi. May I have a word?”

She followed him to his cabin. “What is it, Captain?”

L closed the door behind her, then crossed the room to his desk, where he pushed a piece of scrap paper towards her. “I’d like to learn how to write a few words in Japanese. Specifically, ‘moon,’ ‘night,’ and ‘god.’”

It was a strange request, but then again, it was well known that he was a strange person. He didn’t expect Naomi to question him; she never had, before. Out of all the people he had ever met, she was one of the few who seemed to accept that that was just the way he was.

But instead of doing as he’d asked, this time, she just stood there.

“I didn’t want to believe it…” she said softly.

It took L a moment to understand what she had said.

“He told you? When? And why did you not mention this to me?”

The answer, though, was obvious to him. Because even though she’d said she trusted him…she hadn’t. At least not enough to believe his word over Light’s.

Naomi shook her head. “I…brought some food and water to him, a few days ago, during the storm, because it seemed like you were too busy to. I thought I would help you out. While I was there, he said he wanted to tell me the truth. I would have told you immediately, but he said that he wanted to tell you himself, and that he would the next time you went to see him. He also said that when you found out what had happened, you would most likely try to kill him using the Death Note. I didn’t believe him, I didn’t want to believe that you would murder someone in cold blood like that…but now I don’t know what to think anymore.”

“He murdered his entire crew in cold blood. He doesn’t deserve to live.”

“That’s not for either of us to decide. If we hand him over to the authorities—”

L couldn’t hold back his annoyance any longer. “England is a Christian country. If we try to tell anyone about Shinigami and Death Notes, we’ll likely be executed as heretics. I don’t trust the ‘authorities,’ as you call them, to administer any sort of real justice. He’ll say he was forced into piracy, and because he’s young and well-spoken, they’ll likely let him off with a prison sentence instead of execution. That’s far better than he deserves.” Naomi opened her mouth to protest, but L continued without giving her a chance to speak. “I am the captain of this ship, not you. I don’t care if you disagree with my decisions. Either do what I tell you to, or put it to a vote with the crew, ask them to make you their captain instead.”

He didn’t expect that would happen. Not because the crew preferred him over Naomi—in truth, most of them probably liked her better—but because Naomi had no desire for that to happen. She performed her duties as quartermaster excellently, but had made it clear on multiple occasions that she didn’t want any more responsibility than that. She wanted to marry Raye and have his children, not to be captain.

Naomi was silent for a long time.

“There’s already been a vote,” she said finally. She looked…almost apologetic. “It was unanimous.”

L could only stare at her.

There was no question as to whether they had voted for or against him. He might have expected that Mihael and Mail and a few of the others who agreed with them would vote for Naomi, but all of them? Even Thierry and Merrie, who he’d explicitly told to inform him if something like this ever occurred? They’d turned against him too?

Another thought was fast on the tail of this one.

“So you never trusted me.”

Naomi wouldn’t have known yet whether he would attempt to kill Light or not. But she’d gathered the crew anyway and held a vote.

“I did trust you,” Naomi said. “Before I learned that you’d been lying to me this entire time. You tortured Light behind my back while telling me to my face that you believed there was a possibility that he was innocent. Thierry told all of us all the things you’ve been having him and Merrie do. Including watching all of us for signs of disloyalty.” She shook her head. “Honestly, L…I don’t know how to excuse any of your behavior in these past couple months. Being captain doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want while lying to everyone else about it.”

“When?”

Naomi frowned. “What?”

“When did Thierry tell you all of this?”

“Two days ago.”

L barked out a laugh. “And you don’t think that’s a bit of a coincidence? After months of denying everything, Light suddenly wants to tell you the truth, then so does Thierry? How can you not see that you’re being blatantly manipulated?”

“I think Light is doing whatever he can to survive,” Naomi said, a bit stiffly. “Besides, it doesn’t matter. I swear I won’t let him escape justice. I’ll hand him over to the authorities when we get to England, and you’ll never have to see him again. I can promise you that much.”

That’s not enough, L thought, but didn’t say. He remained silent.

Naomi’s voice softened. She laid a gentle hand on his arm. “I know this has been hard on you. When I lost my sister a few years ago…I couldn’t even get out of bed for a month. Grief…is hard. Take some time and rest. I’ll take care of everything, you just focus on taking care of yourself for now. You know I don’t want to be captain, not long-term. This is just temporary. Take as much time as you need, and all of us will still be waiting for you when you’re ready to be captain again. And…I hope you know that if you ever need anything, even if it’s just someone to talk to, I’m here for you.”

For some reason, Naomi’s earnest sympathy only made L feel worse. Maybe because her words reminded him too much of something Light had said to him once.

Light, who had killed his brother.

“I don’t need your sympathy. I don’t want it, either. Don’t touch me.”

Naomi left soon after that. L hardly noticed, staring blankly at the pieces of paper scattered across his desk. Nathaniel’s letter and his own disorganized notes. He’d spent so long just trying to figure out what had happened, but now that he knew…

What good did it do?

In a sudden fury, he swept all the papers off his desk onto the floor. It did little to ease his anger.

“Damn you, Kira,” he muttered out loud.

Chapter Text

When L emerged from his cabin, two days later, he immediately saw him.

Light, hands shackled, standing by the railing at the edge of the ship.

Naomi and Raye stood a short distance off, conversing with each other. From time to time, Naomi cast a watchful glance in Light’s direction.

L almost turned around and went back into his cabin. But Light’s gaze had already swept in his direction, and going back into his cabin would have seemed too much like admitting defeat, so, instead, he approached, hand on the hilt of his rapier.

Naomi hurried over immediately, followed by Raye. “I’m sorry,” she said to L, looking genuinely apologetic, “I thought it would be cruel to keep him in confinement for several more weeks. But if you—”

“It’s fine,” L said, interrupting her. “There were some more questions I wanted to ask him anyway. It would be good for you to hear them, too.”

The current situation was not, in fact, fine with him, but he couldn’t afford to lose any more of Naomi’s goodwill. A part of him wondered why he was even bothering—it was unlikely he’d have a chance to kill Light in the time it would take for them to get to England, and if he couldn’t do that, if he couldn’t even avenge his brother, what was the point of anything?—but here he was anyway. He supposed that once he finished this, all the responsibility would rest on Naomi’s shoulders, not his, and he could crawl back into bed to lick his wounds. Wonder about the brother he’d never watched grow up. Hate himself for ever feeling any sort of affection toward his murderer.

He resisted the urge to bite his nails, which he’d already chewed ragged and bloody.

“Explain the name written on the piece of paper in your watch.” He directed the words at Light.

“It’s a piece of the Death Note,” Light answered readily, “and I used it to kill a man named Higuchi Kyousuke. A slave trader. Scum that didn’t deserve to live, in my opinion.”

His posture was relaxed, his voice even more so, as if admitting to murder was something he did quite regularly. Of course now he ditches the innocent act, L thought bitterly. Now that he’s already made sure no one aboard this ship trusts me.

“When did you kill him?”

“The same day I got my memories back. Although, that’s not exactly…” Light sighed. “How can I explain this? I gave up ownership of my Death Note, that’s why I forgot everything. When I touched the page from the Death Note, I remembered. But the moment I handed it back to you, I forgot again, because I hadn’t reclaimed the Death Note yet. I killed Higuchi because I had to kill someone in order to regain ownership and restore my memories permanently.”

Naomi, who had been listening intently to all of this, frowned. “That doesn’t add up. If you only remembered that the Death Note existed when you were touching the page, then how did you kill Higuchi? Did you somehow do it while holding onto the page?”

L remembered Light asking to take notes as he read the letter and thought he knew the answer.

“Writing Higuchi’s name on the page or on the smaller piece of paper in my watch while I was holding the page would have worked, but I’m sure L would have found that suspicious. What I did was write myself a note on a separate piece of paper. I wrote in kanji and told L that I was taking notes on the letter. Then, later, when I was sure no one would notice what I was doing, I wrote the name on the scrap of the Death Note in my watch.”

Light was bragging. L saw that clearly enough. Disgust and hatred roiled in his stomach; he stayed silent, for fear that he might say something that he’d regret saying in front of Raye and Naomi.

“Where is the Death Note now?” Naomi questioned further.

“I left it on the island where I was marooned,” Light said. “I didn’t want it anymore. I’m sure you can imagine why.”

Naomi and Raye both seemed to accept this. “I don’t believe you,” L said abruptly.

Light scoffed. “I know you think I’m a monster but I didn’t want to have to kill my entire crew. I didn’t want for any of this to happen, and…I thought, if I gave up my Death Note, destroyed my ship, lost all my memories of what had happened, I could make a fresh start.”

“Then why kill Higuchi?” L challenged.

“You were too close to finding out the truth,” Light said simply. “I was afraid of what you’d do to me if you found out I was Kira, but I couldn't tell you what had happened to my ship and my crew because I didn’t remember.”

L had nothing to say to that. He stared expressionlessly at Light, ignoring Naomi and Raye’s presence entirely, gripping the hilt of his rapier so tightly his knuckles turned white.

If he drew his sword now, he wondered, could he run Light through before Naomi and Raye stopped him?

“Is there anything else you want to know?” Light asked, looking at Naomi. She glanced at Raye before shaking her head.

“There’s nothing more I can think of, at this moment.”

“May I speak with L privately, then?”

Naomi and Raye exchanged glances, clearly both surprised by this request. “I don’t see why not,” Naomi said finally, hesitant. L could feel her gaze on him as she and Raye walked off to the other end of the ship, leaving him and Light standing by themselves by the railing of the ship.

Both of them were silent for a long moment, just looking at each other. “You’re angry,” Light said finally. “I don’t see why, though. You did this to yourself.”

L barely restrained himself. “I certainly didn’t kill my own brother,” he said coldly.

“He went up against me and he lost. That’s no one’s fault but his. Besides, it’s not as if I’m escaping justice entirely.” Light looked down at the shackles around his wrists before returning his gaze to L. “In a few weeks’ time, I’ll likely be in prison, and you’ll never have to see me again. Isn’t that what you want?”

I don’t want to never see you again. The thought was like a knife twisted inside him. What I want is—nothing less than to send you to Davy Jones’s locker myself.

But he couldn’t very well kill Light while he was unarmed and Raye and Naomi were watching, so instead he just turned wordlessly and walked away. I’ll kill you somehow, Kira. I don’t know how—

But I will.

Three days passed without consequence. On the fourth day, there was a knock at his door.

L almost didn’t get up and answer it. In the end, though, he did.

Naomi stood outside, looking neat and well-dressed in contrast to his unkempt appearance. Thankfully, she didn’t comment on the fact that he looked like he’d spent the past week being completely and utterly miserable in bed—which he had—just got down to business right away.

“Mail’s on lookout, and he says he’s just spotted a ship. Looks like a small merchant vessel. They’re flying the Spanish colours.”

It took L a second to realize what she wanted from him. Crossing the room to his desk, he opened the drawer where he kept the letter of marque, took it out, and held it out to her. As English privateers, they were authorized to attack and capture Spanish ships. However, they were legally required to show a letter of marque to the other ship’s captain to prove that they weren’t pirates.

Naomi didn’t take it from him, at least not immediately. She opened her mouth to speak.

L could guess what she was going to say.

“You’re the captain,” he said tiredly. “Do what you want, it doesn’t matter to me.”

Naomi closed her mouth again.

After a moment, she nodded, took the letter of marque from his outstretched hand, and left. L closed the door behind her and went to sit in the edge of his bed, head in his hands. Within minutes he could hear the crew gathering outside, on the deck of the ship, talking excitedly among themselves. There hadn’t been an attack on another ship since before—

Before—

Nathaniel’s letter.

Kira.

Everything that had happened since then.

It had been nearly four months. He couldn’t blame his crew for wanting to return to their normal lives and forget about the massacre they’d seen—but he couldn’t. His brother was dead and Light, who had killed him, was still alive. Was still on the same ship as him.

It was that thought that spurred him to get up, sheath his rapier at his side, and stride out of the door. On the deck of the ship, the crew was busy rolling out the cannons, securing them with rope, and passing bags of gunpowder to each other. On the horizon, the other ship—a small merchant vessel, as Naomi had said—was clearly visible. It’d be in range in no more than three or four minutes, L estimated.

Naomi strode back and forth among the crew, checking their work and handing out orders as if she’d been born for it, black hair whipping in the wind. In one hand, she held a spyglass. The other hand rested on the hilt of her sword. She hurried over to L when she saw him.

“L…” She looked concerned.

“What can I do?” L said.

At this point, he wasn’t sure he had any pride left to swallow. But he’d be damned if he let Light—Kira—isolate him from his crew any more than he already had. If he had to win back his crew’s trust bit by bit, if he had to follow Naomi’s orders as if he hadn’t been her superior just a few days ago, then that was what he would do.

Naomi hesitated. L followed her gaze to where Light was standing in the middle of the deck. “Could you keep an eye on him?” she asked. “I would do it, but I’m already splitting my attention…”

“I’ll do it,” L said. Naomi nodded and turned her attention back to the rest of the crew, giving them orders to fire a warning shot at the merchant vessel. As they loaded the cannons and lit the gunpowder, he made his way across the deck to Light.

Light glanced at him as he approached, but said nothing. He was looking out at the sea with an unreadable expression on his face.

“Thinking about running?” L said.

“Where would I go?” Light said, without looking at him. “We’re in the middle of the sea, and your crew is going to board that ship, so it’s not like I can escape that way, either.”

The warning shot had been fired, the smell of gunpowder filling the air. The merchant ship raised the white flag of surrender.

As the distance between the two ships grew shorter and L’s crew prepared to board, Light turned towards L. He opened his mouth as if to say something—then froze, eyes darting to the space behind L’s left shoulder. “Ryuk?” he said.

L turned instinctively, mind seizing in panic. The Shinigami? Hadn’t Light said his Shinigami’s name was Ryuk?

There was nothing there.

By the time he realized his mistake, Light was already running.

The gap between the two ships was very small now. Light jumped it, landing on the deck of the other ship. “Kiyomi!” he shouted as he scrambled to his feet.

Shit, L thought.

That was no merchant ship.

The Spanish flag went down; the Jolly Roger went up. A grappling hook flew through the air, landing in the rigging. Seconds later, the deck of the Leviathan was swarming with pirates.

Chapter Text

Chaos reigned aboard the Leviathan.

Clouds of gunpowder smoke hung in the air, obscuring L’s vision and turning friend and foe indistinguishable in the haze. To his right, there was the clang of steel on steel — swords clashing against each other. To his left, the sharp retort of a pistol. All around him there was shouting.

L’s crew, having expected an easy victory over an unresisting merchant ship, had been caught off guard by the pirates’ attack. Still, they were well-trained, and many of them no stranger to battle. The pirates, too, had perhaps expected weaker prey than what they came upon. They had the element of surprise, and they fought viciously, but all things considered, L would have wagered the two crews were about evenly matched.

Despite the chaos all around him, L’s mind was fixed on one thing and one thing only.

Kira.

Where is Kira?

If there was one thing that could end this battle quickly and decisively…

It was unusual, for a pirate ship to raise the black flag and reveal themselves so last minute. By doing so they greatly increased the risk of inducing a panic and greater resistance from the ship they were attacking. The more common strategy was to get close enough that the other ship could no longer flee, then raise the Jolly Roger and see if their target would choose to fight or surrender.

No, L was certain, they had deliberately waited. And as for what they had been waiting for… It could only have been for Light, for Kira, to make it to safety.

Whoever these people were, they were clearly allies of Light’s. And they clearly, at least to some degree, valued his life.

Well, L could mend that easily enough.

Nathaniel’s death was an injustice—one only he could right. All these months, and his brother’s murderer had been right there. No one could blame him if, in the heat of battle, he so happened to enact…justice.

Light had made himself their enemy. He had confessed to the murder of his entire crew, and when the consequences of that had come for him, he had somehow arranged to have them set upon and ambushed by a vicious gang of pirates—

A flicker in the corner of his vision, and he spun just in time to see an unfamiliar man, one of the pirates, leveling a pistol at him. He ducked behind the mast of the ship. Wood splintered as the shot went wide.

Another pirate came at him, from his good side this time. Clumsy. He ran this one through with his rapier, and the man went stumbling back, clutching his shoulder where the sword had pierced him, his own knife falling from nerveless fingers to the deck of the ship.

Through the haze, he saw, for a moment, Naomi and Raye fighting back to back, surrounded by half a dozen pirates. Naomi was easily holding off at least four of them on her own, her swordsmanship as good as ever.

Another blink, and Merrie was running past, heading belowdecks, a pair of woman pirates in pursuit.

His crew could handle themselves. L kept moving.

Where…is…Kira?

The two of them had unfinished business, and L would be damned if—

There, on the quarterdeck of the pirate ship, face tilted up to the sky…

L saw him.

Fighting his way through the melee, L pushed his way to the edge of his ship. It would be a small matter to leap across the gap, and then—

Before he could make good on that thought, several things happened at once.

Although the weather was fair by English standards, the sun was covered by a layer of low clouds. But in that moment, one cloud drifted to the side—and the sky parted, just for a moment, revealing what should have been a ray of sunlight…but was instead a shadow the likes of which L had never seen.

Light saw him. Their eyes locked.

And from the gap in the clouds, a book bound in black fell, pages fluttering, and Light reached out and caught it.

For a long moment, L could only stand stock still, warring impulses preventing him from taking a step in either direction. His rapier hung in his grip, blood still dripping from the tip from the pirate he'd run through.

Then he was whirling about, searching the deck frantically for Naomi.

She had seen too. Her eyes had gone wide with realization.

What was it Light had said?

A name and a face.

He had lived among them for months. He had learned their names, their faces.

To Naomi, L said, “Surrender.”

She clearly understood, even from across the deck—but she hesitated.

“Surrender!” L pressed harder, shouting now.

He may have been captain of this ship once, but it was her now. It needed to be her.

Naomi hesitated for another long moment. Then, after what seemed like an eternity, she gave the command, raising her voice to be heard over the din of the fighting.

She laid down her sword. Held her hands up in surrender.

Across the deck, the other members of L’s crew followed suit.

Sick to his stomach, unable to so much as look in Light’s direction, L too dropped his weapon.

And just like that, it was over.

The battle had come to its conclusion, and they had lost.

It took some time for the pirates to round up L’s crew, confiscate their weapons, and put them under armed guard. Fortunately, it seemed that none of the crew had been killed in the fighting, although there were injuries on both sides, and Quillsh was soon separated from the others and forced to tend to the pirates that’d been wounded in the battle, even as his own crew sat bleeding—or, in Mihael’s case, lay unconscious—on the deck.

What would happen to them now? L wondered.

Pirates had little honor, but they often spared ships if the crew surrendered without a fight. In those cases, they would take anything of value, but leave the crew with their lives. That was…not what had happened, but they had surrendered eventually…

But then there was Light…Kira to think of.

Kira who was called Kira after the English word “killer,” who was infamous for showing no mercy to his enemies.

Watching the pirates, L determined quickly enough which one of them seemed to be the captain: a tall, cold-looking woman with short black hair. And her second-in-command: a woman, a girl really, who was dressed…rather like a harlot, but with more skin, more lace, and more jewels on display, bangles and bracelets jingling on her slender wrists as she flounced about the deck, apparently in high spirits.

They spoke among themselves in languages L didn’t understand—Japanese for the most part, although he caught a few snatches of French and Spanish and some other language he didn’t recognize among the pirates. Had he been within speaking distance of Naomi, she could perhaps have translated most of what they said, but she was some distance away, and when he made as if to shuffle closer to her, the pirate standing over him put his hand on the hilt of his cutlass, and he gave up that effort for the moment.

And there was Light.

L had lost track of him in the initial time after the end of the battle, but there he was now, jumping the gap between the two ships and approaching the pirate captain with an easy confidence in his step. The shackles around his wrists were gone, the Death Note nowhere to be seen for that matter, either.

Everyone aboard the Leviathan went quiet, watching with bated breath—not only L’s crew, but the pirates too. Now that is interesting, L thought. They don’t know what’s about to happen either.

There can only be on person in charge here— but who will it be? The leader of the pirates…or Light?

The woman dressed like a harlot made an aborted movement when she saw Light coming. L would have believed wholeheartedly that she was about to throw herself on him, but she seemed to control herself just in time. The captain of the pirates, the dark-haired woman, was, in contrast, very still.

“Kiyomi,” Light said to her as he approached, then looked at the other. “Misa.”

There was a long moment of silence, then the pirate captain—Kiyomi, Light had called her—bowed to him, clearly deferring to his authority. Straightening, she said something in Japanese that L didn’t understand, although her meaning was clear enough from the way she looked at L’s crew.

Light turned his gaze toward them as well, then headed directly for L.

A word from him and one of the pirates stepped forward, offering him L’s rapier.

L seethed, seeing it in Light’s hand.

Stopping just in front of L, Light looked down at the sword in his hand, turning it and studying the family crest emblazoned on the hilt in a gesture so mocking it made L’s teeth ache from how tightly his jaw was clenched. Then, in one fluid movement, he extended the sword so that the tip rested under L’s chin, only a hairsbreadth from cutting his throat, and flicked his wrist up so that L had no choice but follow the movement of the sword and look up at him from where he knelt on the deck of the ship.

He had never hated anyone so much in his life. He felt as though he might burn up from it.

He could hardly breathe, hardly feel the trickle of warm blood down his neck where the tip of the blade had broken the delicate skin beneath his chin, hardly see or think of anything else beside Light and how desperately and violently he hated him with the entirety of his being.

“I win,” Light said softly, the words meant only for the two of them, and there was no mistaking the satisfaction in his voice or the smirk on his face.

L couldn’t tear his gaze away.

“You fucking traitor!”

They both started at the sudden, enraged screaming from close by.

Mihael, L realized with belated horror.

You idiot. Be quiet.

But Mihael kept going. “We should have let you fucking die—”

Light was no longer smiling.

He withdrew the sword from L’s neck. Turned abruptly on his heel.

“Take them to the brig for now,” he said, with his back turned. “I’ll deal with them later. Right now, I think I’d like a bath.”

When none of the pirates moved, not until Light repeated himself in Japanese—presumably leaving the last part out—L realized he’d spoken not for their benefit, but for that of L’s crew.

Then they were being herded to their feet, forced at cutlass-point to file slowly belowdecks.

The last thing L saw before being shoved by one of the pirates into the darkness was Light walking away, L’s rapier at his side, the pirates Kiyomi and Misa falling into step behind him.

Chapter Text

Light had a twisted, vindictive sense of justice, L thought. Although an outsider might have thought that keeping L’s crew confined in the brig was a matter of necessity, a temporary holding place while Light decided what to do with them, L saw it for what it was, especially as the hours dragged on and the anxiety of those trapped inside multiplied in mutters and eventually silence. They’d kept him caged in this small, dark space, so now he was doing the same to them.

An eye for an eye, hm, Kira?

As for himself, he hardly minded. He’d spent so much time in the brig over the past few months, descending into the darkness over and over to interrogate Light, that it felt strangely almost like coming home. Although he supposed he was on the wrong side of the bars now. In any case, it gave him time to think things over.

I’ll deal with them later, that was what Light had said. He could have meant he’d have them all summarily executed later…but L didn’t think so. No, Light would want to treat with them. As for what they had to bargain with…

“They’ll come soon, I think,” he spoke quietly to Naomi from where he was crouched with his back to the wall of the cell. “When they do, I’ll go.”

In the darkness, he could see little of Naomi except the wideness of her eyes. “Are you sure that’s the wise thing to do? You’re the one who he has the most reason to hate. Maybe I can—”

L cut her off. “I’m the one he wants.” He bit at his thumbnail. “You saw him earlier.”

Besides, I’m the one who knows him best.

Naomi was silent for a long time.

Truthfully, L had only been guessing at when the pirates would come for them, but only a few minutes later, the door to the brig was thrown open, and a trio of pirates entered. L recognized none of them from earlier. He stood at the same time Naomi did.

“Don’t be an idiot,” L said to her flatly.

“I’m sorry,” Naomi said quietly, and L saw that he’d convinced her after all. Her fingers twined with Raye’s through the bars of their cell. “This is my fault. I should have believed you.” There was almost a waver in her voice, but then she raised her chin. “Good luck.”

There were quite a few things L could have said to that, but he just nodded, and turned to face the pirates.

They didn’t even shackle him. He supposed there was no need, given the fact that he was outnumbered and unarmed and his entire crew was still under lock and key in the brig. He might have thought it was out of kindness if not for the fact that as soon as they brought him to the cabin, a boot was planted in his back and he was violently kicked to the floor. When he tried to get up, a sword at his throat stopped him.

“Don’t be so dramatic, Teru.” Light’s voice was amused, but when a moment passed and the sword didn’t move, L heard him sigh. “What I mean is let him up.”

L surveyed the room as he sat back on his haunches. After a moment, he decided that since Light had said to let him up, he might as well get to his feet too. He put his hands in his pockets as he stood.

He’d almost forgotten about Light’s watch, for all the good that it did him, coiled in the pocket of his coat.

The leader of the pirates he’d seen earlier—Kiyomi—sat behind the desk in the chair, stiff and straight-backed. The other woman pirate, Misa, swung her legs from the edge of the bed, looking him up and down with wide eyes. She turned and said something to Light in Japanese that made him make a strange expression L had never seen before, almost a scowl.

And Light…

L had grown used to seeing him grimy and disheveled, in the same threadbare, plain black clothes he’d been wearing for months, ever since L’d had him imprisoned. He’d clearly bathed, and had changed into clean clothes. L was taken aback by how closely he resembled the boy who’d first woken up in the bed in this very room, only more gaunt, and with a wicked glint in his amber eyes that L had never seen until the moment Light tilted his head back and laughed and admitted to being Kira.

He had tied a scarlet sash around his waist. He was wearing L’s rapier. Ruby earrings gleamed in his ears, and his hair had been braided back.

The sight of him made L hot and cold with violence. But he restrained himself. There were negotiations to think of, a crew that he had a responsibility to. He was acutely aware also that the pirate at his back—Teru—had not sheathed his sword, and was staring him down as if he’d very much like nothing more than to run L straight through.

So he only stared at Light, and Light looked back at him.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Light said finally. “Alone.” He gave L a smile then, and swept a hand toward the door. “After you.”

The sun was beginning to set, streaking the sky in swathes of red. L looked over the side of the ship at the rowboats bobbing in the waves, secured by lengths of rope. There were more pirates now than there had been earlier, faces he hadn’t seen in the fighting earlier. That and the rowboats… He didn’t see another ship besides the smaller pirate vessel that had ambushed them earlier, but there must have been one nearby.

All that meant was that there was even less of a chance of them surviving this if they fought—even if he was able to get the Death Note from Light somehow and if his crew was able to escape from the brig—not that those odds had ever been in their favor in the first place. Another crew in the mix could have meant more division among the pirates, but from what L had seen of the newcomers, they were as obedient to Kira as those led by Kiyomi and Misa.

“I wanted to apologize,” Light said, surprising him. He’d stopped walking and was leaning against the railing of the ship, looking at L. “I said some things to you that I didn’t mean, to antagonize you. But obviously it was because you wanted to kill me, and you had the power to kill me, and I didn’t want to be killed, so…”

L stared at him. What new game was this?

Light sighed when he didn’t respond. “Fine, then. Let me ask you this. If I ran, now, and left you all alive, as you no doubt came up here to convince me to do, would you come after me?”

To the ends of the earth, L thought. “No,” he said.

Light laughed aloud. “Liar." He sounded almost fond. “Don’t worry. I’ll save you the trouble. What do you say…we come to an agreement, one that benefits both of us?”

“On what terms?”

“My friends leave. You and your crew keep your ship and your lives. We might drink some of your liquor, but you can keep everything else. You can even be captain again—as long as I am too.”

“You want to be captain, of this ship,” L said slowly. “You want to be captains… together."

“Mmhm.”

“What happens when we disagree?”

“We won’t.”

“And if I say no?”

“You don’t actually have a choice, L.”

“…What do you get out of this?” L said, after a long silence. He closed his eye briefly; in the red of his eyelid, he could almost see another sunset, four months past now. Bodies in the water, the charred wreckage of a ship. He wasn’t sure he’d slept at all since then. Every time he’d tried, he’d dreamed either of his dead brother, or of Light, who’d killed him.

“Maybe I’m tired of piracy,” Light said. “You do the exact same thing I do, only you don’t hang or get thrown in prison for the rest of your life if you get caught.” He shrugged. “It’s a nice deal, why wouldn’t I want in on it?”

L didn’t believe him for a second.

It hardly mattered in the end, though. Light was right; it did benefit him to agree. He only had to bide his time, untangle whatever scheme it was Light was trying to pull off this time, and beat him at his own game.

“I assume your friends will take a hostage. Raye?” Naomi was going to be angry with him. But Raye was the most logical choice, and Light would have thought of it already.

Light smiled. “I knew we’d agree.”

L studied him, waiting.

“Oh, and one other thing… If this is going to work, the crew should probably like at least one of us.” Light shrugged offhandedly. “I don’t think they like either of us right now, and they won’t like you any more than they do now, once they find out you made this deal with me and sold Raye out without a second thought…”

“Just call it what it is,” L couldn’t help but sigh, “Kira.”

“Let's call it two birds with one stone,” Light said.

What followed was not exactly what L would describe as pleasant, although he’d had worse beatings, even as a child. A few of the pirates knocked him down and took turns kicking him, not hard enough to seriously injure but hard enough that when they stopped and he tried to get to his feet he wasn’t immediately able to. Light took his watch back before they started and knelt by L after they were finished. “Told you I’d take this from you by the time we were done,” he said, and then, “See you in the morning.”

They dragged L back down to the brig after that and threw him unceremoniously into a cell.

The night passed slowly. In the morning, Light nearly blinded them all when he opened the door, unlocked the cells, and let them out into the still, morning brightness. They were drifting eastward with wind in their sails, and the sea was lively and sparkling all around them. The pirates were long gone, Raye with them.

Light seemed to be in good spirits, waiting for L on the deck with a playful smile. He drew the rapier from his sash and offered it to L hilt first.

“The ship is ours…Captain.”

L took his sword and sheathed it wordlessly at his side. It was a new day, a new battle.

In the war so far, they’d both won and lost some battles—but this time, L intended not only to defeat Kira, but to defeat him for good.

Chapter Text

The first thing L did when he had a moment alone was to shut and latch the door of his cabin and upend it entirely.

He’d given his crew strict instructions not to let Light out of their sight, not even for a moment—he and Naomi had agreed that at least one member of the crew should stay within six feet of Light at all times, and report back to them with anything and everything he did—so while Light played captain and Naomi watched him, L slipped away and rifled through his things.

Two important pieces in their game were yet unaccounted for—the Death Note and the Shinigami. L had seen neither, save for that brief glimpse when the book had fallen from the sky into Light’s waiting hands… from that, and the story Light had told about how he’d used the book to kill his crew when they marooned, he guessed that, most likely, the Shinigami had possession of the Death Note, giving it to Light when it was needed. Another possibility, less likely but not impossible, was that Light kept it hidden it on his own person. L certainly didn’t expect that he would leave it laying around, but he’d have to be a fool to not at least check.

Even aside from the book itself, he knew that a page or even a fragment of a page torn out of the book possessed some, if not all of, the power of the entire book. There was the piece in Light’s watch. The paper that Nathaniel’s letter was written on. And L wouldn’t put it above Light to use the same trick again, so there might well be other pages hidden among his things.

The Death Note was key. Taking Raye as a hostage was one thing, but a larger part of Light’s leverage over them was the otherworldly book that gave him the ability to kill anyone whose face and name he knew by only writing their name. As long as Light was the only one with the ability to use the Death Note, he was at an advantage.

The piece in the watch was in Light’s hands now, but L found Nathaniel’s letter weighed down beneath a silver letter opener on the desk, exactly where he’d left it. He briefly considered the possibility that it was a fake—but picking it up and examining it, he was certain that it was the same letter, penned by the same hand on the same paper, that he’d read thousands of times. There was the same smudge of ink on the corner of the page where L had fallen asleep with a quill still in his hand and smeared the ink. There was the same flourish in the way Light had written L’s name as he masqueraded as his brother.

Dear L.

He gripped the wood of the desk until his knuckles turned white.

How careless of Kira to leave the letter here. Or more likely, it was a taunt. Because even if L had this page of the Death Note, he couldn’t use it. Not only because of Raye, for who he cared little, but because he didn’t know how to write Light’s name — if Light was even his real name.

Kira was a liar through and through, after all.

L searched the rest of the cabin—even going so far as to check for loose floorboards and rifling through each article of Light’s clothing he found in the chest by the foot of the bed—but found no other suspicious pieces of paper. Among Light’s things, he found two cloth-bound books: one in English, one in Japanese, and a checkered wooden box, that when opened, revealed a small chess set with painted pieces. Upon examination, it looked new; he’d be surprised if it had ever been used.

L thought about it for a minute, chewing on his thumbnail. In the end, he took the chess set out of the chest, cleared a space on his desk, and set the pieces on the board. He made the first move.

Let Light know L had been through his things. Let him know he could do nothing without being watched.

When he left the cabin, Light looked at him immediately from where he stood across the deck of the ship, leaning against the railing with the tail of the red scarf he wore as a belt fluttering in the breeze. His expression smoothed when he saw L, but not before L saw the expression of annoyance he’d been wearing, and it took L only a glance to see why. The crew had been tasked with cleaning up the ship and repairing the damage from the battle with the pirates. L was fairly certain they hadn’t made any progress in the time that he’d spent searching Light’s things; every single person that he saw was dragging their feet, shooting glares and muttering curses in Light’s direction whenever his back was turned.

Normally, it would have been the role of the quartermaster to ensure that the crew obeyed the captain’s instructions. But although Naomi stood nearby, she was pointedly silent and unhelpful.

A few weeks ago, perhaps, L would have felt vindicated. But they’d disbelieved him for too long, and seen Light for what he was too late. Now, they were all playing the game on Kira’s terms. Still—

He strode over to Light and spoke sarcastically to him.

“Do you need to get out your cat of nine tails?”

That made Light turn toward him with a glare, but L didn’t stay to hear his retort, which he had no doubt would injure Light’s fragile pride even more than the taunt itself. Instead, he spoke to Merrie and Thierry, “You two, take a break and come with me.” It was hardly as if Light could contradict him—on his own terms, he had declared them of equal authority. Captains—L had never heard something so ridiculous in his life.

For now, though, it worked in his favor.

He ducked belowdecks without waiting to see if the two former thieves were following—he knew they were.

In the dim light of the storage space, a single lamp casting the barrels and crates into shadow, L hunched his shoulders and leaned his back against the wall with his hands buried in the pockets of his waistcoat. He waited, staring at the two of them, in silence, long enough for the usually raucous and mischievous duo to also fall into a nervous silence.

“Do you remember how we met?”

Merrie and Thierry exchanged glances. “Well, Merrie and I were in a tough spot, so we were living in taverns at the time, thieving and taking on whatever work we could find,” Thierry begun carefully, scratching his stubble awkwardly. “We thought you might be an easy mark, but we were wrong. And when you…found us again and offered the deal you did, we took it.”

This was neither an entirely true nor a complete recounting of events, but L would take it for now.

“What was that deal?”

“Work for you and you wouldn’t have us thrown in prison,” Merrie said with an offhanded flick of her wrist. She laughed, high, “and, well, we’re really grateful—”

“Then why is it that I find lately you’ve been working for Kira instead,” L said.

Merrie trailed off. “Look, Captain—” she said again after a moment, “It’s not what you’re thinking. He threatened us—”

L bit at his thumb. “Are you saying you’re more afraid of him than you are of me? Never mind, don’t answer that. Let me ask you this instead: how long have you known he’s Kira?”

He’d caught Merrie off guard. Her expression, in the split second before she controlled it again, told him what he’d needed to know. So his hunch had been right. “No need to answer that either,” he muttered. “Now that I know, there’s no need for him to threaten to you with whatever I might do if he were to tell me the truth, is there?”

Slowly, both of them nodded.

“You work for me,” L said, and both of them nodded again. “If he asks what we talked about, just say I threatened you a little, or say whatever you want, as long as you tell him you’ll do what he asks.”

It was a dismissal, and both of them knew it. L pinched the bridge of his nose with two fingers and sighed once they were gone. He had only himself to blame for things having gotten to this point; he’d been distracted, by Light, Light’s never-ending schemes, Light’s murder of his brother.

Not anymore.

Truthfully, it didn’t even matter if Merrie and Thierry worked for him now, although he thought he’d convinced them that it was in their better interest. He’d only needed Light to see them going off together, to make him wonder what they’d talked about.

Death Note aside, Shinigami aside, the key piece of the puzzle here was Light himself. What Light wanted, why it was that when given the choice to do whatever he’d wanted, he’d chosen to stay aboard the Leviathan and carry on this farce.

Well—whatever he’d planned, L would find out. Let Light think that he’d escaped justice.

He wouldn’t escape L in the end.

He barely saw Light the rest of the day. Light was busy ordering the crew around—and eventually, Naomi reported later, doing the work himself when he became frustrated with the progress they were making—while L worked on the ship’s accounts and logbook, which he’d neglected for the better part of months.

At least, that was what he told the others he was doing. In reality, he stared blankly at the pages, chewing on the end of his quill, and thought about the Shinigami.

Where was it?

He should be able to see it, since he’d touched the page of the Death Note. Could he speak to it? Turn it against Light somehow?

Death god…Death spirit…

As dusk fell, he stepped out to see Quillsh, mostly to get an account of how many among the crew had been wounded in the fighting and how serious their injuries were, only to be forced to sit down, endure an examination even though he already knew nothing was broken, and drink a cup of some bitter-tasting tea.

When he returned, he was unpleasantly surprised to find Light inside, paging through a book. One of L’s books, L noted, not the ones he’d found among Light’s things earlier. Light had left his boots by the door and was sitting on L’s bed with his bare feet crossed beneath him. He looked up when L opened the door; the corner of his mouth curled into a pleased smile.

“Hi,” he said.

L only stared for a moment, then stepped inside and shut the door behind him. “What are you doing here,” he said flatly.

He’d assumed—well, he’d thought Light had only left his belongings in here out of convenience. Or perhaps he’d imagined that Light would come in and out as he pleased. But Light seemed to be making himself at home, almost as if he planned to…

“You know…” Light blinked at him and stretched with a lazy smile. “It’s not as if I made myself captain because I enjoy lording it over everyone else and telling them what to do.” Liar. “Honestly…the part I missed the most about being in charge is getting to have my own space.”

“…Except this isn’t your own space. Is it.”

Light shrugged. “Right, I guess we’ll have to share.” He looked back down at his book for a moment, then back at L. “I thought you’d be happy with this arrangement. It’s on your orders that I’ve been followed around all day, right? This way you can watch me sleep yourself.”

L considered it for a moment. It was true, he’d be able to keep a closer eye on Light this way. There were other alternatives to sharing his living space with Light, but he’d be damned if he’d back down now. He crossed the room to his desk and crouched in his chair. “As long as you’re not worried I’ll slit your throat in your sleep, that arrangement is fine with me.”

Light just looked at him. “I’ll take my chances.”

For whatever reason, Light’s lack of belief in his murderous intent irked L enough that when, not long after, Light announced his intent to turn in for the night, L stood up, shrugged off his long coat, and slung it haphazardly over the back of the chair. This time, it was Light’s turn to stare at him as he stepped closer.

“What are you doing?”

“I thought I might sleep as well,” L said. He smiled with mock innocence.

Two can play at that game, Kira.

There was a hammock he could have slept in, if he wanted. But Light had made them both captains—there was no reason L should give up his own bed, in his own room, in his own ship. If Light wanted to sleep there, then L would too.

Light’s eyes narrowed. “Fine. Whatever,” he said, after a long moment of silence. “Since you’re sleeping too, blow out the candles, will you?”

L did.

Light huffed, tossed an article of clothing to the floor with a soft thud, and turned his back to L. L lay down too, turned his face to the side to look at Light’s shape in the darkness. He’d intended to make Light uncomfortable enough that he wouldn't be able to sleep, but Light must have been exhausted; it was only a matter of minutes before his breathing evened out and he was asleep.

The bed had been made for one person, not two grown men. Light shifted only slightly in his sleep and his elbow pressed into L’s side. He was close enough that L could feel the warmth of his skin and the silky texture of his hair.

He was pure evil, and—It was just another battle, L reminded himself. One he intended to win.

He wasn’t sure how long he kept his eye open in the darkness, watching Light sleep. Although he hadn’t meant to fall asleep, at some point he must have.

When he woke it was morning, and Light had moved one of the black pieces on the chessboard while he slept.

Chapter Text

“You kick in your sleep,” Light said to him in passing, the next day.

L blamed the medicine that Quillsh had all but forced down his throat. He swore that he wouldn’t take it again—nor would he make the mistake of falling asleep next to a murderous pirate.

Well. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

So, the following night, and the nights after that, while Light slept, L rose like a ghost and studied his papers by lamplight. That, or he’d stare at the chess board and the pieces for hours, thinking through every move Light could make next. Sometimes if his eyelid grew heavy he’d nap for short stretches still crouched in his chair, lulled by the steady motion of the ship, the creak of the wood.

Other times he just watched Light sleep. This was less useful than he’d initially hoped. Light didn’t talk in his sleep, didn’t admit aloud to any devious plans. Still, L continued to watch, from time to time. Just to be sure.

Light didn’t bind his breasts when he slept. In his sleep, he looked…like any other sleeping person, really. Almost innocent. But L knew that was far from the truth. Light had taken Nathaniel’s life. Stolen it, unfairly cut it short.

He’d murdered the rest of his crew too. But L didn’t care about them, only about his brother. The brother he’d failed to save.

Sometimes he thought he thought about Nathaniel only to torment himself.

For a brief moment in time, he’d taken a measure of comfort in Light’s insistence that he shouldn’t blame himself for leaving all those years ago. But that was before he’d learned Light was Kira. And of course Kira didn’t want anyone to be blamed for Nathaniel’s death, seeing as he was the one who’d murdered him.

So while Light slept, L plotted how best to kill him.

In the first week after the pirates left, he beat Light soundly in not one, not two, but three games of chess. Although they mostly moved the pieces while the other wasn’t present, to L’s satisfaction, he happened upon Light at the very moment the other realized he’d lost the third game. Standing at the board with his back to the door, Light seemed unaware that L had followed him inside. L came up behind him as quietly as he could, and was rewarded by Light looking both alarmed and, very briefly, embarrassed when L brushed past him.

“Again?” L murmured with his finger pressed against his lips, and without waiting for Light to answer, started replacing the pieces on the board. “…And to think your great plan to strike fear into the hearts of anyone who heard your name depended on you defeating me in a battle of wits.”

Light colored, almost imperceptibly.

Like L had thought—he was childish and hated to lose.

Stubbornly, Light met his gaze. “Well, I’m still here and I’m breathing, aren’t I? So it doesn’t seem like you won after all.”

“Hm.” L finished placing the last of the pieces on the board. “I suppose we should say you won, then, even if your pirate friends had to come and rescue you. Or should I say it was because of the supernatural killing book that a death god happened to, out of pure luck and no achievement or skill of your own, drop in your lap one day?”

Light glared.

His gaze was so heated that L felt almost cold when Light broke his gaze.

“Let’s play again, then,” Light said. He pushed one of the pieces forward like it was a challenge. With a sigh, he sat in L’s chair, leaning his elbow on the desk and cupping his chin in the palm of his hand. “I haven’t played this game much before, to tell the truth. I’ve only watched others play, and none of them were as good as you.” A smile, almost rueful. “I’m sorry if I’m boring you.”

L didn’t dignify that with a response. He only moved one of his pieces before stalking out, leaving Light to consider his next move. Unlike some, he had work to do.

Boring him? What bullshit.

Others might be fooled by the act he put on, but Light was like no one he’d ever met. L would have had to be either stupid or suicidal to be bored by him.

The Shinigami, L decided, had to be at the center of their strategy to defeat Light. The Death Note was important, but they only had to prevent Light from writing down any names in it, which would be easy enough to accomplish at least for a short period of time. But the death god itself was a mystery.

Its name was Ryuk, apparently, but L had never seen it, knew nothing about it besides the limited information Light had told him—that was assuming anything Light said could even be believed. Why had it dropped the Death Note into the human world? What was its motivation? Did it even have thoughts and motivations, or was it a creature of pure instinct?

It could speak. It was frightening enough in appearance to be mistaken for a devil. It was attached in some way to the Death Note. It seemed to obey Light’s wishes at least some of the time, whether from force or free will.

It was invisible to most, but could be seen by anyone who had touched the Death Note, or a piece of the Death Note.

Where was it now? That was maybe the most important question. The most direct way to learn more would be to see and speak with it.

Assuming his knowledge was correct, he should be able to see it. So should Naomi, since he’d shown her the piece of paper in Light’s watch and she had touched it. But neither of them had seen it, this entire time Light had been aboard their ship…

Had Light been talking with it before? Was he talking to it now?

It was impossible for either L or Naomi watch him at all times. L had ordered that someone watch him at all times, but if any other member of the crew were to see Light interacting with the Shinigami, they might think he was only talking to himself. Or he could even talk to himself to fool them—they’d have no way of knowing whether the Shinigami was actually there.

Not that they’d even suspect that to begin with; out of the others, Naomi was the only one who knew the secret: that Shinigami even existed.

Sailors were a superstitious lot, and ships were a prime place for ghost stories to spread. While L’s crew of privateers was generally level-headed, the last thing they needed was fear of some supernatural creature running amok aboard their ship. Not on top of the fact that they’d already been, for all intents and purposes, taken over by pirates.

L briefly considered taking more drastic measures. He doubted he could throw Light back into the brig without there being consequences for Raye…but perhaps he could shackle Light to himself, so that he could watch him at all times.

In the end, he decided against it. That would prevent Light from doing anything without his knowledge, but the opposite was also true.

Better to take him by surprise where he could.

If the Shinigami was around, he needed to talk to it, without Light’s knowledge.

“Touch this.”

Mihael looked at him suspiciously and made no move to touch the letter. Beside him, Mail reached out his hand, then drew it back. “…Why?” he said, glancing sidelong at Mihael.

“If you touch that, I’ll have to kill you,” Light’s voice came from above, up on the deck of the ship.

Damn it, L thought.

So much for Naomi keeping him distracted.

That seemed to make up Mail’s mind, at least. “Yeah, actually, I don’t care. Why not—”

Light appeared, looking rather annoyed. From the sound of it, he’d skipped climbing down to the crew quarters using the ladder and had instead just jumped down directly.

L turned slowly to face him. “Hello, Kira.” The letter he palmed and slid back into the pocket of his coat.

Light looked at him, then at the other two. “Get out of here. L and I need to talk.”

Mihael made a face. “What about…fuck you?”

So much for the two of them and Light being friends, L thought. Then again, Mail was still on crutches after one of the pirates had shot him in the leg during the battle, and Light was a liar and a murderer, so he could hardly blame them. Still… “Just go,” he sighed, “Kira and I do need to talk.”

They did, although not without spitting at Light’s feet on the way out.

Light stared at him all the while.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing,” he said to L, once they were gone.

L shrugged. “Is it not obvious?”

Light advanced on him. L eyed the cutlass at his waist. He could only assume Light didn’t have the Death Note, or at least that he wouldn’t try to use it in such close quarters. He did hope it didn’t come to a physical fight, though, not when Light seemed to be this upset. As certain as L was that he would win, he’d hate to accidentally condemn Naomi’s fiance to a tragic fate.

“Did it not occur to you,” Light said, “what a stupid idea that might be? Or that it might be dangerous for whoever you chose to involve? Do you think if it came down to it, and one of your crew was going to rat me out to you, that I wouldn’t kill them if it’s what I needed to do?”

The possibility had crossed L’s mind. Although Light seemed to have forgotten that it might also be dangerous for other reasons. For example, if one of his crew saw the Shinigami, they might, like Nathaniel’s friend, lose their mind with fear and leap overboard.

In any case, L had thought of the potential dangers. He’d just decided the risk was worthwhile.

“Tell me, Light… Are you always so quick to turn to murdering the people who saved your life? Was all that talk of repaying your debts just another lie?”

He saw the moment Light realized.

“Oh, you’re a piece of work. So this was some messed-up test to see how far I’d go?” Well—not entirely, L thought. Had he been successful, he would have gotten Mihael and Mail to touch the page of the Death Note without Light catching on. Although this reaction was telling, even if he hadn’t achieved his initial goal. But Light was still talking, and L doubted it would be wise to interrupt him at this point. “In case you forgot, I did kill every last one of my former crew. You saw their bodies, didn’t you? Do you want to see their names in my Death Note too?”

“I didn’t forget how you came here, no.” By killing my brother, L thought, but didn’t say.

For a moment, the space was silent except for both of their breathing.

Finally, Light turned away. “Then you already know how far I’d go. Don’t do this shit again.

“Also, to answer your question… I never meant any of that that I said about repaying my debts. I never owed you anything, because you didn’t save my life. You pulled me out of the wreckage of my ship, but I knew you would. I planned on it.” Light’s back was turned, but L heard him laugh. “All that to say, that version of me, without my memories, just made something up about owing you. Because I wanted to spend time with you.”

Chapter Text

L thought about letting Light walk away. Swallowing his anger and biding his time.

At the same time…he fervently wished to take the opposite course of action, and kill Light right then and there—or at least cut out his lying tongue. There was only so much provocation he could be expected to take, so many lies; and this the worst of all, that even now, after everything, Light would still pretend at friendship.

He thought of closing the distance between them in two strides. He thought of pinning Light against the wall, putting his hands around his neck, and squeezing until he saw the last glimmer of life leave his eyes.

It wasn’t until Light’s back collided with the wood that L realized he hadn’t simply thought; his body had moved, almost on its own. His hand fisted in the fabric of Light’s shirt, shoving him into the wall. His forearm pressed, hard, against Light’s throat.

Light, the fool, went not for his cutlass, or even the dagger that some careless member of the crew had left laying in the bunk beside his head, but for the watch in his pocket. Still moving more out of instinct than conscious thought or decision, L grasped at his wrist and slammed Light’s hand as hard as he could against the wall. Light’s hand opened; the gold chain tangled between both their fingers, the body of the watch slipping through and dangling below.

Light’s heart beat hard and fast under L’s grip. Before, he’d spoken with his back turned, so L hadn’t been able to see this expression, but now face to face, L saw his eyes were bright and furious.

L thought of dueling him to get him to admit he was Kira, the same look in Light’s eyes then.

He thought of Light all but laughing at him even as he walked the plank. Of Light smirking at him from inside a cell.

It took every ounce of self control that he had never believed himself to possess to let his arm fall from Light’s throat and to take a step back.

He’d expected Light to look smug but instead he looked, for a moment, almost…disappointed.

But as quickly as that expression appeared, it was gone.

Light touched a hand to his throat. He looked away, scoffed. When he spoke, it was taunting, scornful. “What were you going to do, L?”

For once, L wasn’t sure that he believed this performance.

“I might ask you the same question.” He looked at the watch still dangling from Light’s grip. “Were you going to kill me, Kira?”

“Of course not,” Light huffed. The watch disappeared back into his pocket. “I…”

“Lost your temper and acted without thinking?” L said. “You do seem to do that often.”

He was thinking of Light saying, Do you want to see their names in my Death Note, too? Kira was a heartless monster, but if Light wanted to keep pretending he felt guilt about killing his old crew, then L wasn’t above reminding of him of what he’d done. He was thinking that for whatever reason Light was clearly off-balance—perhaps he hadn’t thought L would actually attack him—and that he should press whatever advantage he had.

Never mind that he was the one who’d lost his temper and acted without thinking. He should never have let Light get as close to him as he had; that had been his first mistake. But how did the saying go? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer—and Light was his enemy. If only it wasn’t so difficult for L to think rationally when he was around him.

Light stared at him for a long moment. It was clear he understood L’s meaning, because when he spoke again, his voice was cool. “Maybe you’re right. I think sometimes that I shouldn’t have killed them all…Maybe there was another way, if I hadn’t…lost my temper. If that’s how you want to describe it.” His eyes narrowed. “But I don’t regret killing your brother for a moment. I would do it over again if I could.”

He spun on his heel and left without another word, and L watched him go, feeling cold all over.

L retreated to his cabin early that evening and latched the door. It turned out that he might as well have not bothered, since the next day, Light was nowhere to be seen. In fact, no one had seen him all night, either.

L couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this degree of panic.

They were on a ship in the middle of the sea; it should have been impossible for Light to simply disappear. But Light had impossible tools at his disposal: a book that killed anyone whose name was written in it, a death god that could presumably spirit him away if he so desired.

He hardly wanted his brother’s murderer, much less his brother’s murderer who had just admitted to not even having any remorse for the crime, to be aboard the same ship as him, but having his whereabouts be unknown was perhaps even worse, and there was Raye to think of. As long as Light was around, Raye’s safety as a hostage was guaranteed, but if—

Light reappeared from seemingly nowhere at midday, ducking out from belowdecks and talking to Naomi briefly as if nothing had happened. He didn’t speak to L, or even look at him that entire day.

This continued the next day.

And the next.

By the third day, Naomi had not only noticed but decided it was important enough to ask him about. “Did something happen between you and Light?”

They stood side by side on the quarterdeck, watching as a few of the crew worked on repairing a section of the rigging, Naomi with her hands clasped primly behind her and L with his shoved deep into the pockets of his favorite blue overcoat.

“No,” L said. “Why?” He was watching Light. Light had glanced up at the two of them from the main deck when they’d first started talking, but hadn’t looked at them since.

Light’s hair had grown long during his months in imprisonment. It nearly brushed his shoulders when loose. It shouldn’t have suited him, L thought, but it did. It made him look less like an innocent schoolboy and more like a pirate.

“He has a bruise on his throat,” Naomi pointed out mildly, “and the two of you aren’t speaking.”

“Perhaps we simply don’t have anything to speak about,” L snapped, then thought better of it. It was only logical for Naomi to be concerned when all the signs did point to Light and him having had…an altercation. “I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize Raye’s safety,” he muttered, trying to sound less angry this time. “And if it were in question, I would tell you, Naomi.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Naomi said. When he looked at her, surprised, she sighed. “Look…Captain. Light said that you had a quarrel, and it was nothing to worry about. So I’m not too worried about Raye, at least not any more than usual. I mean, I love him and I miss him and I want him back, obviously. But he’s not the only person on this crew I care about.”

I wish you’d stop caring, then, L thought, but he bit his tongue. Naomi had good intentions, he was sure; he was just too tired to entertain them today. He hadn’t been sleeping well, lately. And he had no idea why she should be concerned for him just because he and Light weren’t speaking.

When he said nothing, she sighed and changed the subject. “How is finding the Shinigami going?”

Across the deck of the ship, Light was seemingly talking to one of the others. L couldn’t entirely tell; his face was turned away. L bit at his thumbnail.

“He seemed upset about the plan to have the rest of the crew touch the paper…which suggests the Shinigami is here, and he’s meeting with it when we’re not watching. It could have been an act, though. When we next make port, I’ll gather some materials, for research. It’s a slim chance, but there may be some truth in stories and myths…” He also planned to take an accounting of the ship’s stores, in case the Shinigami was consuming any food or drink, but there was an even slimmer chance that he’d find anything that way. “…And you?”

Naomi shook her head. “Nothing yet.”

“You’ll tell me if you find or hear anything?” From Light, he meant, seeing as he appeared to be the only person aboard this ship Light wasn’t speaking to at the moment. Not that he wanted to speak to Light. In fact, he was avoiding the pirate too.

“Aye, aye, captain, ” was all Naomi said.

It was drizzling lightly outside the following night and L lay flat on his back on the bed, trying to convince himself that he could sleep, when Light threw open the door.

L sat up and stared at him.

“Your quartermaster is a meddling—” Light said, then broke off.

“Your quartermaster,” was all L could think to say.

He really needed some sleep. It was the chess, he thought. He’d gotten too used to playing chess at night, or at least studying the chessboard, and now he couldn’t sleep without it. How idiotic.

“Right, our quartermaster,” and Light was coming in now, as if he hadn’t spent the better part of the week pretending L was invisible, “Since I’m captain now, I should just replace her with someone else. Oh wait, I can’t, since that would completely defeat the purpose of taking her fiance as a hostage. And I can’t trust anyone else aboard this ship anyway because everyone wants me gone, or dead—”

“I’m trying to sleep. Light.”

“Sure,” Light said easily, “sorry.” So easily that L wondered if he’d ever really been frustrated in the first place, or if it had all just been another pretense. “Go to sleep then, I’ll try not to disturb you.” He sat in the chair behind L’s desk, and propped up his feet on another of the chairs. Then, reaching under his damp shirt, he pulled out a small dark shape. A book in black binding, which he placed on the desk.

L was on his feet in an instant.

As if he’d needed any confirmation of what the book was, it said, in English letters on the front, Death Note.

“Yeah.” Light said. “I thought you might be interested in this.”

He hadn’t closed the door behind him. Tiny needles of rain slanted in through the open door, the darkness beyond.

He and L just stared at each other for a long moment. Then, slowly, L turned and went to the door, and shut it.

Chapter Text

The small black book lay innocuously on the desk. L peered at it from every which direction while Light looked on.

“Do you want to touch it?”

L did, but he was hardly so stupid as to do that without asking further questions. It was rather suspicious of Light to suddenly show up and offer the supernatural book for his examination. What did Light want? What was he hoping to accomplish?

L picked up the flint from its box on the desk, struck it, and busied himself with lighting some candles. If they were going to look at this thing, they would want some more light in the cabin.

“Why should I?” he asked as he worked.

Light gave a short laugh. “Has anyone ever told you you’re crazy and paranoid?” He leaned back in his chair. “I didn’t say you should. I was just offering. You’ve already touched the pages I tore out of it, so it won’t do anything to you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Hm.” L made a noncommittal sound. If what Light had told him before was true, then touching the book now should have no effect. Then again, Light could have lied, or left out parts of the truth. Given his history, that was actually the more likely possibility. “Before…when you lost your memories, how did you accomplish that?”

“I just gave them up,” Light said. “Look, as convenient as it would be for you and Naomi to forget that this exists, I couldn’t force you or trick you into forgetting it."

So there is a way for those who have touched the Death Note to forget it. Light was the owner, and he’d spoken in the past of giving up and then regaining ownership, but L had little information of how others, those who had never owned the book itself, could gain and lose their memories. “Explain, then. If I did wish to lose my knowledge of this cursed book, how would I do so?”

Not that he had any intention of doing so. Knowledge was power, after all.

“As far as I know, the only way for you to forget, now that you’ve already touched it, is for you to become the owner. Right now, it belongs to me, so you’d either have to kill me, or I could willingly give it to you. That’s why I said I couldn’t trick you into it; you’d know, because I’d lose my memories as soon as I gave it up. And then once you were the owner, you’d have to give it up too in order to forget.”

“And when you say ‘give it up’…?”

“You’d have to clearly state your intention to relinquish ownership. In a way that Ryuk understands, since the Death Note is his if no human claims it.”

L had to stop himself from looking over his shoulder for the Shinigami. He wasn’t a child, to jump at shadows whenever the creature was spoken of.

He thought he heard a note of amusement in Light’s voice. He looked from the book to him, and saw Light’s mouth quirk up. “Have I answered enough of your questions yet?”

Not remotely, L thought. There was no way to know beyond a reasonable doubt that touching the book wouldn’t play right into whatever evil plot Light was cooking up. But all things considered, he didn’t mind using himself as a test subject. There was always Naomi if needed a point of comparison.

“You seem to know quite a bit about this.” He ran his fingers over the cover of the book, then flipped it open carefully.

The front cover of the book was cool to the touch, the leather smooth beneath his fingers; the back cover slightly warmer. He thought of Light pulling it from beneath his shirt. The warmth rolling off Light’s body while he slept at night. How interesting that Light would carry it that way, close to his skin, like a part of him.

“I did some experimenting over the years,” Light said. He was watching keenly. “I don’t always have it on me, by the way. In case you were thinking you could take it from me.”

“The thought never crossed my mind,” L said dryly.

If he wanted to use the Death Note, he already had the page of the letter. Not to mention the scrap inside Light’s watch, which he’d picked out of Light’s pocket one night while he was sleeping, and replaced with a piece of ordinary paper. But Light didn’t need to know about that yet.

On the inside of the cover, rules explaining the use of the notebook, including some that Light hadn’t mentioned before. Interesting, if they were true.

He turned to the next page. Names, now. Pages and pages of them, most written in Japanese characters, some in English letters. None he recognized. There were more than he’d expected, but he perhaps shouldn’t have been surprised that Light had murdered so many people.

And on the final page that wasn’t blank—ink turned into blood, Light’s previously neat handwriting spiraling into an uneven scrawl. Drops of dried blood dotted the page as if dripped from an open cut.

L hadn’t realized until he arrived at the end of that page that he’d half expected, dreaded, seeing Nathaniel’s name on the paper.

Something in his silence must have given away what he was thinking, because Light said, “I told you before, I didn’t write his name.”

L’s jaw clenched. “No, just every other member of your crew. Be honest with yourself, Kira. You killed him with this book whether you wrote his name or not. He beat you, and you cheated, then claimed it was a fair fight.”

“If he beat me, then he should have finished the job by taking the Death Note or killing me. But he cared more to gloat.” Light’s expression twisted momentarily in disgust. “And anyway, he could still have killed me in the end. What’s more fair than two men with swords facing one another? No one else interfered. He just lost.”

“Of course, I should believe you,” L said, “while the very proof is before us that you’re a mass murderer, that you’ve killed endlessly without any thought for the lives you’re—”

“Because you’ve never killed anyone and are so innocent,” Light said, “Please. Like you lost your eye in a friendly duel between gentlemen or some bullshit.”

“Unlike you, I’ve killed only when I needed to. In defense of myself, those I have a responsibility to, the crown—”

Light stood, slamming the palms of his hands into the desk. “No one is stopping you from being a—shoe-shiner, or a baker, or any of the other thousand occupations that don’t require killing people in self-defense or whatever other reasons, L. You’ve murdered just as I have to get where you are, so don’t act like you’re better than me.”

I don’t think I’m better than you, L thought. You’re evil, and I’m justice. It’s that simple.

Aloud, he said, “And I suppose every single one of the names written here was necessary?”

“Well—no, but the others deserved it,” Light scoffed. And then, after a moment, sounding almost childish, “You’d do it too if you had the notebook.”

L considered it for a moment. What would he do if the Death Note had fallen into his hands, instead of Light’s? He hoped that he wouldn’t have turned into a monster like Kira. Perhaps he’d use it once, out of curiosity and nothing more. After that, he’d put it in a locked chest and drop it into the depths of the sea. Better for such a thing to not exist where anyone could find it and use it.

His gaze drifted down to the open pages and Light’s followed.

They both looked at it silently for a moment. Then Light reached out his hand, and closed the book’s cover before sitting down again.

“Why show me this?” L asked, despite his doubts that he'd get an honest answer.

“I thought you’d be interested in seeing it,” Light shrugged. He hesitated, just briefly. “Earlier, when you called it…a cursed book, did you really mean that?”

That gave L pause. “Do you believe it’s cursed?” He’d only meant it as a figure of speech. The notebook was dangerous, without question, but…

“Ryuk said something like that to me once. He said any human who comes into contact with a Death Note is cursed to nothing but misery and misfortune. That’s not to say that I believe that. I think, at the time, I laughed in his face.”

If you don’t believe that it’s cursed, L wondered, why not just say that? Rather, Light’s answer suggested that he no longer believed the idea to be so laughable.

The way he’d worded it, too…Not any human who uses the Death Note but any human who comes into contact with a Death Note.

“Mm,” was all he said in response.

If Light was looking for reassurance that the curse wasn’t real, then L had none to give. Whether the Death Note was cursed or not, Light had made his own decisions, and L wouldn’t absolve him of the consequences.

And if it was cursed… well, L had come in contact with the Death Note too. Let it drag him down and the rest of this ship with it, if that was what it took to bring Light to justice. That was the decision he’d made and the consequences he was willing to face.

When he said nothing else, Light sighed, got up, and paced across the room. He sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, then swung his legs up and laid down, lacing his fingers together behind his head and staring up contemplatively at the ceiling. He was bareheaded and his hair, still slightly damp from the evening drizzle, fell around his face in a honey-colored halo.

L picked up the Death Note with two fingers and crossed the room as well, standing over Light. Sharp brown eyes shifted over and met his.

“Would you like to hear a story?” Light said.

L had a feeling that no matter what he answered, Light was going to tell the story anyway.

Sure enough, although he said nothing, Light began.

“Pirates, we really only look out for ourselves. But a few years ago, a friend sent me a message, asking for a favor. Their cousin was a rich man with two children, a daughter and a son. The girl was six and the boy was four. They’d been kidnapped and were being held for ransom by a Spanish privateer who was down on his luck, and noticing the children’s fine clothing, thought he could make some quick money. You know, they looked as though their father was rich and would pay a ransom.

“The father had just lost all his money in a gambling incident the week before. He had nothing to pay the ransom with. The kidnapper refused to return the children without the money.

“Like I said, none of my business. But I happened to owe this friend a favor, and I had just looted a massive prize off a Dutch ship a week before, so my crew was happy and rich beyond their wildest dreams. I had nothing better to do, really.

“We hunted down the kidnapper, took the ship, subdued the crew. But the kidnapper himself, when he saw that all was lost, fled and barred himself in a room with the children. He was armed, and threatened to kill them if anyone attempted to force the door.

Here, Light smirked. “He let me in, though—alone and unarmed, or so he thought, when I promised to meet his demands. He held a loaded pistol to the girl’s head. I wrote his name down right in front of him, promising him that it was a deed to all the riches he could desire. He was eager to give me his name when I explained that. Later I’d tell people that the stress of the situation must have gotten to him, because he turned the pistol on himself. The children were returned safely, of course.

“He was the first one I killed that way. The rest…you can see their names in the book you’re holding.”

“What would you have done if it hadn’t worked?” L said.

Light blinked. “What?”

“If he was the first, then you had no way of knowing that writing down his name in the Death Note would actually kill him. He must have been an ‘experiment,’ as you described it earlier. So what would you have done if the experiment failed?”

“It didn’t,” Light dismissed the idea with a roll of his eyes.

“What if it had?”

“I guess I’d have had no choice but to actually pay the rather exorbitant ransom I’d agreed to.”

“So you resorted to a risky murder using a supernatural notebook that might or might not work…rather than just paying the man out—which you admit was within your means—and guaranteeing the children’s safety.”

Light stared at him, then huffed out a breath and looked away. “Like I said, it worked. There’s no need to bully me about it.”

“I’m only pointing out the flaws in your plan. If you didn’t want me to criticize it, perhaps you should have told a different story.” L lifted the notebook pincered between his fingers, studied it for a moment, then dropped it on Light’s chest. “Have your murder weapon back. By the way, I was sleeping before you interrupted to tell me that senseless story. Perhaps you should take your leave again?”

“It didn’t look like you were sleeping to me,” Light muttered. He didn’t move. In fact, he closed his eyes as if planning to go to sleep himself.

Not only was he a murderer, he was an insolent brat, too. L stared at him. He should dump a bucket of water over Light’s head and hope that he drowned, only then his own bed would be soaked with seawater too.

In the end, after considering his options, he slapped Light across the face instead.

Light’s eyes shot open. “What the fuck? Oh, I’m going to—” He started to get up, a murderous expression quickly forming.

“I apologize,” L said with mock innocence. “It seemed like you were about to fall asleep, and I wanted to remind you of something it seems you’ve forgotten.”

“What could I possibly have forgotten.”

L pointed to the chess set. “It’s your move.”

Light’s gaze slowly moved across the room to the chessboard, eyes narrowing. He got up. Moved the white queen on the board. Stalked back across the room to face L.

“The next time you take too long to move one of your pieces, I’m going to make sure everyone aboard this ship asks you what the fuck happened to your face. Watch your fucking back, L.”

A weak threat at best, L thought. But he meant his reply.

“You should be watching yours.”

Light turned his back. After a moment, he laid down again, speaking with his eyes closed. “I know. If I’m not careful, one of these days you’ll kill me.”

He said nothing more, and after a few minutes, his breathing had evened out in the way that indicated he was asleep. L watched him for some time longer, then retreated to his desk and papers and the chess board.

He had work to do, plans to make—and perhaps now he could catch a few hours of sleep himself.

He briefly wondered what it was Naomi had said to Light that had made Light appear in his door at that hour at night with the Death Note. But when he woke near dawn Light was gone again; and by the next time he saw him or Naomi in the light of day, it no longer seemed important enough to ask.

Chapter Text

“I’ve called for a meeting.”

“What?” L said.

“I’ve asked everyone to gather on the main deck at midday today. I think we should address them,” Light said with deceptive calmness.

“We?” L said, raising an eyebrow.

Truthfully, he’d already heard about this plan of Light’s. The whole ship was abuzz with it. Everyone was wondering the same thing: what business did the pirate who’d commandeered their ship have, calling a meeting of the crew like this? Such meetings were usually only held when voting on important matters or distributing pay, but there was no pay to distribute and Light almost certainly did not plan on allowing the crew—the crew that he knew full well hated his traitorous guts—to vote on anything of importance.

Even more so, L was curious as to why Light had sought him out in the middle of his breakfast to tell him personally. What role was he hoping L would play in this farce?

He dropped the sugar cube he was holding into his cup of coffee and stirred carefully with a spoon. This was the last of their sugar stores. They should buy some more the next time they were in port.

Light sat on the edge of the table and watched, legs swinging. When L set the spoon down, Light reached out and pulled the cup of coffee toward himself before L could stop him. He took a sip, then made a face and pushed it back across the table to L.

“I’ve never understand why people like that stuff. Or why it costs so much, for that matter.”

“Coffee?”

“Coffee, sugar, all of it,” Light waved a hand. “I took a ship once that was carrying some coffee stores, and I made a fortune off it like you wouldn’t believe. Imagine my surprise when I sampled some and discovered it tasted horrible.”

Coffee, L thought, he could live without. He drank it more out of habit than anything. In the social circles that he’d worked hard to infiltrate, it was sign of luxury. He took a kind of pleasurable spite in knowing that the people who had always looked down on him because his father hated him, or because he was a bastard, couldn’t afford it, and he could. Sugar, on the other hand, that he liked.

Not that there was any need to share that information with Light. In fact, he wasn’t sure what Light was trying to accomplish with this conversation. Surely he hadn’t sought L out just to talk about the prices of coffee and sugar.

He took a sip of his coffee. “You sure do talk a lot, don’t you, Light?”

Light choked.

At that moment, Thierry, who was on cooking duty for the day, walked past with a sack of potatoes in his arms. He was whistling and stopped to wink at them on his way past. L didn’t react. Light just looked mildly furious.

“I thought you Englishmen liked tea more anyway,” he said after a moment, when Thierry was out of sight. “Although I’m pretty sure you stole that custom from…more refined countries.”

After a moment of thought, L decided to play along. Keep your enemies close, after all. If that meant discussing his drink preferences with Light, then he would do that. “I can’t speak for all Englishmen, but I do personally enjoy tea more than coffee, especially when it’s served with sugar and milk. It goes well with sweets, like scones.”

“I’ve never had a…scone,” Light said.

“Mm. You’re missing out, they’re very tasty.” L downed the rest of his coffee in one gulp, then set down the cup. “I’ll make sure you get to try one sometimes. Perhaps I’ll put in a special request with your jailor the morning before you go to the noose.”

Light’s eyes narrowed, but he laughed. “How kind of you.”

Do you think I’m joking? Light’s continued nonchalance in the face of any threats to his life set off warning bells in L’s mind. There was the hostage, and the Death Note, but surely Light couldn’t be that confident that those things would stop L forever. Was there something else he was missing here? From what he knew of Light, he wasn’t the sort to take threats to his life lightly.

“You never answered my question,” he said, changing the subject for now.

Light blinked. “Oh. Well, what I was going to say is, I want to address everyone as their captain. Since you’re captain too, I want you there by my side, and I want you to support me. It’d be a bad look for the two of us to disagree, don’t you think?”

“That’s contingent on what it is you’re going to say.”

“No it’s not.” Light hopped off the table. “That’s why I kept you around.”

L stood too, meeting Light’s eyes as the younger man smirked. He waited.

“All this talk of killing me, L. Maybe you should remember that I could have done what I wanted with you and with the others, and I still can.” Light turned to go, but looked over his shoulder. “All that to say…I think you should agree with whatever I’m going to say today.”

He left and L rubbed his knuckles against his bottom lip, deep in thought.

Light’s words seemed insincere to him. He didn’t believe for a moment that Light had ‘kept him around’ for a moment like this, and Light would have to be stupid to believe L would blindly agree with whatever his demands were. It was a test, then. Both of them were testing the other, seeing how far they could go, what thinly veiled threats they would or wouldn’t concede to.

Well, that was fine by him.

He’d just have to see just what it was Light planned to say to the crew.

Despite the crew’s attitude towards Light as of late, no one was absent, come midday. Curiosity had won out, or perhaps it was spite. L stood in the shade, leaning against the mast of the ship with his hands in his pockets, and watched as Light walked out, composed as anything, into the circle of hostile faces.

Light…Kira…what is your plan now?

For all the time he’d pretended at innocence, no one was fooled now. L remembered him saying once that he disliked being called Kira, that he didn’t want to be known as just a killer. Would he take on that mantle again? Rely on fear now that trust was gone?

L almost wanted to see him try. For all that his crew could be idiots…he’d handpicked them himself for a reason. They wouldn’t be cowed so easily.

“This ship is a democracy,” Light began, his voice ringing out clear in the silence. “Each one of you has a voice here. As such, as your captain, I wanted to gather us together today so that everyone’s voice is heard. If anyone has any complaints, requests, or motions…now is the time to speak.”

An interesting start, L thought. Clearly the rest of the crew was taken off guard too, because no one spoke up.

They were, perhaps, all thinking this was a trap.

“No one?” Light waited, then continued talking. “That’s strange, because I know for a fact that at least one of you has been putting sand in my food. One of you ruined a pair of perfectly good boots by fucking pissing in them. And a few nights ago, some of you—supposedly on accident—shoved me into a corner and struck me several times with the butts of your pistols. On accident, I’m sure.”

With each sentence, Naomi paled. L supposed she hadn’t known. He hadn’t known exactly, either, although he’d suspected something of the sort was happening. He’d thought Light would be too proud to admit it.

Naomi started to step forward as if to say something, but Light cut her off, barely glancing in her direction.

“That’s alright. I know, historically…well, L and I haven’t been the most in touch with you all, have we? That’s why you voted L out as captain before… and I haven’t been your captain for very long, so maybe you don’t have any confidence that I’ll listen to your thoughts and opinions. That’s why we’re all gathered here today. The past is forgiven—but if anyone has something to say, now is the time to say it.”

A risky approach, L thought. If no one spoke up now…

“Unless, of course,” Light said, dropping his voice to a silky quiet, “these are just the actions of cowards who are unwilling to speak up in the light of day—”

“I have a motion.” Mihael elbowed his way to the front. Mail, his ever-present shadow, followed, still on his crutches. “Since you said this is a democracy.” He leered. “Unless those were just the words of a liar.”

“Go ahead,” Light said.

Mihael turned to face the others. “I motion that this motherfucker walks the plank.” He pointed, in case there was any doubt who he was referring to. “He’s a lying traitor and I definitely didn’t vote for him to be captain. Oh wait, no one did. I say we get rid of him.”

“Done?” Light asked, after a moment. “Alright, let’s vote on it then. Those in favor, say aye.”

A chorus of ‘ayes.’

“Those not in favor say nay.”

“Nay,” Naomi said.

Light looked at L.

“Nay,” L said. I have other plans for how to kill you, Kira.

Light smiled. “I also vote ‘nay’. I already did that once, and don’t particularly feel like repeating the experience.” He shrugged. “Sorry, Mihael, looks like your motion’s been overruled.”

“Then I challenge you for the captaincy,” Mihael said without hesitation. “Duel.”

“I’m not going to duel you.”

“Why, afraid you’ll lose?”

“I have nothing to gain by winning.” Light turned away in dismissal, leaving Mihael practically fuming, glaring daggers at the back of his head. “Does anyone else have a motion they’d like to put forward?”

Silence.

Light started pacing slowly back and forth, looking at each of the crew in turn. “Are you thinking that it’s unfair that I overruled the vote when the majority voted in favor? Or perhaps you agree with Mihael that I shouldn’t be captain of this ship, only L, since none of you voted for me. Let me remind you of a few facts. One, you have a captain and a quartermaster that you voted for of your own free will. You appointed them to a position of authority over you, and put your trust in them to make decisions in your best interest. Two, you put me in chains and would have delivered me to prison or to my execution for no other crime than being a pirate, so I don’t see why you should be surprised or offended that I took a chance on freedom, rather than fighting on your side against my fellow pirates. Three, to the victor goes the right to do whatever the fuck they want. When you capture a Spanish merchant vessel, do you give in and leave if they say that their cargo belongs to them and that you can’t take it? I don’t think you do. You surrendered to me. Your captain and quartermaster made a deal with me under the current terms, which I think are rather generous. If you think differently, perhaps you should have volunteered to parley with me instead.”

A few of the crew glanced guiltily at L and Naomi, no doubt remembering Raye, held hostage by pirates in god-knows-where. Or L walking out of his cell and being thrown in later after being beaten nearly unconscious by the pirates. Never mind whether that had been related to the deal they was made or not; they knew only what they had seen and what they could infer.

“Still…” Light cleared his throat. “I understand if you’re angry at me. I know maybe you resent the positions we’ve found ourselves in. All I ask is that you give me a chance to prove that we can work together.”

L thought he could guess what Light was about to propose.

“From what I’ve heard, you all are England’s finest privateers.” Light smiled. “I have some experience in the business too, although what I’ve done in the past has been…more illegal. I motion that we work together. I know I’ve disrupted your work, your lives, these past months. How long has it been since you all have been paid? Let’s make up for the time lost. I say we take a ship from the Spaniards every fortnight. We go after the biggest prizes. Those in favor, say aye.”

The crew murmured among themselves.

Light paid them little attention. Instead, his gaze found L where he stood with his back against the weathered wood of the mast.

It would take more than a little flattery and bribery to win the crew over, L thought. Although regardless of their feelings for Light, they’d likely vote in favor of finally earning some money. As for him…this plan was, at best, a distraction. He and Light would need to work alongside each other, with each other, if they wanted to succeed, even as they plotted on each other’s demise in secret. But while he’d be distracted, so would Light.

L made his decision. He strode forward until the distance between him and Light was close enough to touch. He extended his hand.

Light reached out and clasped L’s hand, and his smile was a thing to behold.

Chapter Text

The crew, as L had expected, voted in favor of Light’s motion.

After months of sitting around and waiting, stewing in the uncertainty of whether their captain had gone completely mad and the discovery that the pirate they’d taken in as one of their own was actually the infamous Kira, L expected they were all glad for something to do, a return to a normalcy of sorts.

Even if that return to normalcy was being proposed by none other than the one who’d plunged them all in this situation to begin with.

In any case, there was a current of excitement, or at least anticipation, aboard the Leviathan in the days that followed. The crew sharpened their swords, checked their pistols and their purses. L, Light, and Naomi unrolled maps across the desk in L’s cabin and discussed the routes that Spanish merchants ships were most likely to take this time of year, and where best to hit them.

And since they were somewhat low on provisions, they headed for port. It was somewhat of a tradition among their kind, privateers and pirates both— in fact, many of the port towns catered to both those on the right and the wrong side of the law—to spend a few days on land before a long journey, to drink and spend their money on their vices of choice while the ship underwent any necessary repairs and stocked up on provisions and weaponry.

The preparations kept them all busy, and L saw little of Light during the daytime. When their paths crossed, they talked mostly of the ship’s business, the plans that needed to be made. At night, though, Light always returned to the captain’s cabin, to sleep, to page through a book, to talk or to play a round of chess.

As loathe as he was to spend time in Light’s company, L made it a point to accompany him at these times.

The more he could learn about Light’s motives, the easier it would be to destroy him.

And Light did like to talk. Although, L reminded himself, much of what he said was surely a deception. That didn’t mean there was nothing to learn from what he said. Even a liar like Kira could give himself away at times.

“I can’t believe they all voted to have me walk the fucking plank,” Light complained, the first night after the vote. He frowned at the chessboard between them. “I know Mihael and Mail feel betrayed and hate me now, or whatever, and probably most of the others don’t trust me either, but everyone? A unanimous vote aside from you and Naomi? And you two don’t even count, since I know how you really feel.”

“Has Kira considered that he is less likable than he thinks he is?” L suggested, and was rewarded with a glare before Light looked back down at the chess board.

“People tell me all the time how likable I am, just so you know. And how many times do I have to ask you to call me by my name and not that…idiotic nickname?”

He finally moved one of his pieces. L, who had already thought through half a dozen potential moves based on what Light decided, made his move, then replaced his thumb against his lower lip.

“I think it’s rather fitting.”

Really, though, he wasn’t sure why exactly Light was complaining about the vote. The meeting had gone about as well as Light could have expected—almost too well, L thought. Like a play that Light had scripted, one where everyone played their parts exactly as he’d desired. Perhaps he only meant to distract L by pretending to be insulted by the outcome of the vote.

“It was just something people started calling me because they were frightened. Or I think some of the pirates I knew used it out of…admiration? Jealousy?” Light shrugged. “Which was all well and good back then, but it’s not really fitting anymore, since my fearsome crew of pirates is dead and the Spectre is a wreck at the bottom of the sea…along with any influence or fear I might have once wielded.” He glanced at L, sighed. “But why do I even bother, you just call me that because I said I hated it, don’t you?”

I call you Kira to remind myself what you are. Although the reason Light had proposed wasn’t untrue, either.

“Was that pitiable story you told about being attacked by some of the crew really true?” L returned to the subject at hand. There were other matters to interrogate Light about; he wouldn’t be sidetracked so easily this time.

“What,” Light said, “you think I would make something like that up?”

They exchanged another set of moves on the chessboard.

Light was a quick learner, and he was improving quickly at the game. Although L was still winning more than he was losing. He was winning this time, although he thought if Light played his pieces right he might be able to force L into a stalemate, given the current position of the pieces on the board.

“I think,” L said, “you either invented it entirely or you provoked them into striking you in the first place.” He had no real reason for thinking so; it was only a hunch. It was entirely possible that certain hotheaded members of the crew really had just attacked Light without being provoked, and he had noticed Light wincing a few nights ago and looking like he was trying to hide it. But his instincts were usually correct, and they were telling him something was amiss here.

“So what if I did?” Light said, shrugging. “What was I going to do, accuse them all of bearing me ill will without any actual proof?” How easily he admitted it. “Besides,” he continued, “I wasn’t worried that I’d get seriously hurt, since I have Raye as a hostage. So it was perfectly safe, really.”

Another three moves, and Light was going for the stalemate, L thought.

Why provoke them? L wondered. What is your end game?

That was the question, wasn’t it. What was Light doing here? He could have fled, or killed them, or done anything he wanted, really. Instead he’d chosen to stay aboard L’s ship and appoint himself as co-captain. Why? L still didn’t understand what it was he hoped to gain. And how did this new strategy of his—first provoking the crew into attacking and voting against him, then giving some speech about reconciliation and sending them on the hunt for Spanish merchant ships to raid—fit into the larger puzzle?

He had assumed Light was going to force a stalemate, but as he watched, Light instead reached onto the board and tipped his own king over. “I’m tired, I think I’ll go to sleep,” the younger man said by way of explanation, standing and stretching slightly. “And I hate stalemates anyway, so let’s just call it your win.”

Annoyed despite himself, L swept the pieces off the board to the side. They’d set them up on again in the morning, as was their custom lately.

“One last question, Kira.”

“Hm?”

“What do you want from them? The crew, I mean. To go so far to manipulate their actions, their feelings…”

To his surprise, Light laughed. “That’s where you’re wrong, L. I don’t want anything from them. All of this…” He bent and spoke close to L’s ear.

“It’s for you.”

Light’s words echoed through L’s mind long after Light had fallen asleep.

Not for the first time, he thought of a possibility that he didn’t want to consider—that Nathaniel’s death was even more his fault than he was willing to admit. Not only had he all but abandoned his brother all those years ago, and failed to arrive in time to save him from being murdered by Light…what was it Light had said to him, all those months ago? Never meet your heroes. What if Light had taken Nathaniel in the first place just to get to him?

That would make his brother’s death well and truly his fault. Just the thought made him feel sick to his stomach.

No, it was—his mind playing tricks on him. How could Light have even known of their relation? No one even knew he was his father’s bastard. It was a dishonorable stain on his family, a secret not likely to be discovered by some pirate with no interest in the English court or its nobility. And how could he have known Nathaniel would be on a ship to Australia at the time that he was?

No, surely that wasn’t what Light had meant.

And to be entirely honest with himself…even if it was, L didn’t want to know.

The possibility had occurred to him before. Months ago. He could have forced the truth from Light then, when he had him locked in a cell and at his mercy, but he hadn’t been able to make himself ask the question.

He didn’t want to hear the answer. Whichever way he looked at it, whether it was a coincidence or not that had brought them here, Nathaniel was dead and Light had killed him and the only justice there was left was that L would kill him for it.

Perhaps one day he’d find it in himself to ask. For now…

He forced himself to think of more practical matters.

What all else had Light said?

What information could he glean?

Distractions, lies… but surely there was something useful in there.

L bit at his thumb as he thought it over.

Light was never outright reckless with his own safety, but he had proved more than once that he was willing to use himself as a pawn in his own games. He’d bashed himself in the head and nearly drowned just to get aboard this ship in the first place; he’d used the memory-less version of himself to get close to L, to touch the letter and remember again. Now he had trapped himself on a ship of privateers who he had betrayed and who hated him, but why? He’d even admitted to provoking them into attacking him…

Moreover, he could claim it was all part of the game between him and L and that it had nothing to do with the rest of the crew until he was blue in the face, but only a fool didn’t learn from his mistakes, and L was no fool. He had to consider the others because Light could and would use them for his own purposes. So what was it that Light was trying to accomplish now? He’d made his speech more convincing by drawing out the opposition; but was that all there was to it? Just giving himself an edge in winning back the favor of the crew?

Light exhaled softly in his sleep, and L stilled as a sudden thought occurred to him.

If Light meant to make a move, now was the best time to do so, when the crew was stirred up by the speech he’d given and distracted. And he hadn’t realized it until this moment, but—there was one member of the crew who would be more distracted than the rest, wasn’t there?

One who Light had made sure would be affected by his speech.

He thought of how the blood had drained from Naomi’s face as Light spoke. No doubt thinking about her poor fiance, being held hostage by the pirates.

Naomi was the most capable person among L’s crew, which was why she was his quartermaster. She was keen and missed nothing. The question was, what did Light want her distracted from? Or even if that hadn’t been his primary goal—what could he capitalize on?

What would be one of the first things she did since Light’s motion was voted through? L thought he knew. Which meant Light likely did too.

It was all conjecture, but he had to check now that the thought had occurred to him.

Late as it was, he went to Naomi’s quarters and woke her. Together, they surveyed the list of supplies she had drawn up to be purchased when they were in port.

It took them some time. Light had been clever with the numbers, and it was impossible to tell from a glance whether he’d altered the list at all. But in the end they found some differences.

They were buying less sand, and less lemons than they thought. Instead—

“Gunpowder,” L murmured, bending close to the paper to read it in the lamplight. Barrels of gunpowder.

Naomi’s eyes widened with surprise as she read the final line on the paper. “And…apples?”

Chapter Text

At Light’s insistence, rather than returning to England for supplies, they headed for one of the…less official port towns nearby. As they dropped anchor, L surveyed the other ships docked nearby. He had no doubt that several of them were pirate ships, but if the small “Spanish” vessel that the pirates had attacked them with was here, he didn’t see it.

He supposed nothing could ever be that easy.

As soon as the gangplank dropped, Light was off. Naomi exchanged a look with L and followed. She’d agreed to trail Light for the day, since L had other matters to attend to.

L had made a habit of staying aboard the ship even when they made port, leaving Naomi and his crew to do as they would, but today he lingered only long enough to appoint some of the crew to guard the ship—those on guard today would switch with the others the next day, so everyone had some free time before they sailed again—before he departed as well. His boots hit the wooden dock with a thunk as he set foot on solid ground for the first time in months. He’d forgotten how disorienting it was to walk on land after months of the sway of the ship beneath his feet.

His first order of business was to send a letter. Linda had written him again, some time ago. It had been while he still had Light imprisoned in the brig; before Light had confessed the whole story. Linda hadn’t heard from Nathaniel for a while, not since he had written to let her know he’d been taken captive by pirates—had L heard anything, did he know if their brother was safe? L had penned his response just last week in the dead of night while Light slept.

I’m sorry. I only learned what happened to him recently. Our brother has gone to be with the Lord.

He didn’t believe that, not truly, but Linda was a devout Christian and perhaps she’d find some comfort in his empty words.

He was murdered by the pirate known as Kira. I will avenge him—I swear it.

He’d sealed the letter with dark blue wax and pressed it with his personal seal. Now he sent it on its way. It would exchange hands and go on a voyage of its own until it made its way to his sister in Australia.

His next order of business was to find any materials he could on Shinigami or death gods. Being something of a haven for pirates, there were more taverns and brothels than book stores or other establishments of the like, but L had spent his fair share of time in ports like this one. There was information to be found everywhere, even in crime-ridden places like this.

He spent all afternoon hunting down anything he could find. A barmaid told him a local legend about death spirits. A drunk at that same tavern argued with her, telling a more familiar story about the Grim Reaper being a dark, hooded figure with a scythe. He found a somewhat legitimate-looking bookseller who happened to have a book or two on the subject, and another black market seller who wasn’t sure if he did, but he did have several books in Japanese which he thought might contain myths or something of the sort. Neither he nor L could read Japanese. L purchased them just in case; he’d have Naomi glance through them later.

Finally, he returned to the Leviathan where it was docked and began to arrange for the buying of provisions and other supplies. Despite he and Naomi’s discovery, they had decided not to make any changes to the final list that Light had created. For now, better to conceal that they had noticed anything amiss at all.

Apples and gunpowder. He wondered what it was Light meant to do with those things.

Gunpowder could be used as an explosive. Did Light mean to blow their ship up like he had done to his own? L could think of no reason he would want to, but… And apples? Did he mean to poison the crew like in a certain children’s story? Or were the apples for the Shinigami to eat? That was making some assumptions, though, namely that the Shinigami ate food at all, or that it ate the same food humans did. He might as well consider the possibility that the gunpowder was for the Shinigami to eat too.

Perhaps Light had just thought they would need more gunpowder than Naomi had originally noted down, seeing as they would be hunting Spanish ships in the foreseeable future. Perhaps he just had a taste for apples instead of lemons. But if that was the case, why go to such lengths to hide it? No, there had to be something more nefarious at play here…

The sun slowly sank towards the horizon. Night fell. As the moon rose in the sky, Naomi returned, although Light hadn’t yet.

“Where is he?” L rose to his feet to meet her, and Naomi explained.

She had followed Light for most of the day. He had gone from shop to shop at first; he bought a scarf and a wide-brimmed hat at one, a set of quills at another, a pair of bracelets at another. “Bracelets?” L questioned. Light had taken to wearing a pair of ruby earrings lately, but L had never seen him wear any other jewelry besides that, and weren’t bracelets rather feminine—

“I think they were gifts,” Naomi explained, and L bit the inside of his cheek as she continued her story.

Throughout this all, Light had seemed aware that he was being followed. He’d seemed vaguely annoyed but hadn’t made any real effort to shake his tail. Then he’d gone into a tavern, had some food and drink. When he was finished with his meal, he got to his feet, then looked directly at Naomi and said, loudly enough for several others in the room to hear, “Hey, isn’t that Misora Massacre?”

Shit, L thought.

Before she had joined his crew, Naomi had made a name for herself in the English navy, catching pirates and other criminals. She’d been so scarily competent that they’d nicknamed her Misora Massacre. Raye had been an officer in the navy at the same time; that was how the two of them had met and began courting. But they’d had to leave not long after. Few men would tolerate a woman being better at her job than they were, and so Naomi had to leave the navy, and Raye followed her, all the way until L found them and extended an invitation to join his crew of privateers instead.

He hadn’t known Light was aware of Naomi’s history. Neither had Naomi, apparently.

The tavern, which was full of pirates, all turned to look for Misora Massacre, and Naomi had no choice but to flee for her own safety. But not before she saw Light go up the stairs and disappear into one of the rooms above the tavern. There were two women waiting for him; Naomi saw him link arms with one while another kissed him on the cheek.

“It was the pirates from before,” Naomi said, “Kiyomi and Misa.”

“Both of them?” L said, before realizing there was a more important question. “They’re here?”

If Naomi noticed his temporary lapse of judgement, she didn’t mention it.

“I did something…you might say is ill-advised,” Naomi said.

“What?”

“I tracked down their ship—a different one than the one we saw before, that must have just been a decoy, or maybe they just got rid of it. I hid and waited, overpowered one of the pirates who was coming back to their ship, and forced him to take me aboard.” As L stared at her, she sighed and looked down on her hands. “Raye wasn’t there. When I twisted the pirate’s arm, he said that some of their ‘friends’ had the hostage, but he didn’t know where those ‘friends’ were sailing.”

Naomi wrung her hands, looking anxious.

L took this information in in silence for a moment. “We’re going to find him and bring him back safely,” he said finally. “I promise, Naomi.”

“I know,” Naomi said quietly. “I just…I had to know. If he was here or not.”

L couldn’t fault her for that.

“And as far as you know, Light…?”

“Oh! Right, sorry,” Naomi apologized, looking embarrassed. “Well, I couldn’t stick around, but I found Merrie and Thierry and they said they’d keep watch from the tavern across the way. If Light leaves that room, they’ll know and one of them will report back.” She hesitated. “I also thought—well, if you want, we can drag him back here, but I thought we wouldn’t want a fight to break out unless absolutely necessary.”

L wasn’t sure why she was looking at him like that. He wasn’t sure either why his heart felt like it had dropped into his stomach, thinking about Light—whatever he was doing now—

“No, you’re right,” he said, “It’s not worth the bloodshed.” If Light wanted to scheme with his pirate ‘friends’ there was little L or anyone else could do to stop him. He’d been able to talk freely with them anyway when he’d commandeered their ship and locked them in the brig. And if he was doing something other than scheming now—that had nothing to do with them.

As long as they knew where he was—

“Thank you, Naomi. You’ve done well. I’ll take it from here.”

Tomorrow, he resolved, he’d stay by Light’s side himself.

Chapter Text

L spent the night in the hold of the ship with only a single lantern for company, back against one of the newly acquired crates of apples. Exhaustion tugged at him, but he forced himself to keep his eye open, waiting.

He wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway. Lately, rest had a habit of ebbing away like the tide whenever he drew too near to it.

No Shinigami appeared, but L resolved to try again the next time he could give Light the slip. There was something here. He was sure of it.

Near dawn, Thierry reported back. Light’s ‘lady friends’—as the former smuggler described them—had left the inn. They’d boarded their ship, and it looked like they were making preparations to sail.

Light himself was headed back in this direction.

L met him, only for Light to barely even glance at him on his way to the cabin, where he kicked off his boots, deposited his belongings on top of his trunk, and promptly fell asleep.

And stayed asleep until the afternoon.

L amused himself by looking through Light’s things. There was a scarf and a hat and a set of quills, all matching the descriptions Naomi had given. Light had also brought back a new sword with him—a saber, similar to the cutlass he’d dueled L with, but slightly longer, with better reach, and less crude. A twinkling red ruby was set in the hilt. There was also a sealed porcelain bottle that sloshed when L turned it upside down. Liquid—alcohol, if he had to guess. A pair of small porcelain cups nested in paper completed the set.

Gifts, L thought, tossing the hat aside in disgust. It landed on Light’s face; Light stirred momentarily but then kept sleeping.

L smelled his breath. There was some liquor on it but not an excessive amount. Not drunk then, just…tired?

The sun had completed over half its arc over the horizon by the time Light sat up and picked the hat off his face, blinking sleep from doe-brown eyes. “Hey,” he said.

“Tired yourself out last night?” L deadpanned, setting down the pamphlet he’d been reading. “You slept like the dead.”

Light gave him an odd look, but after a moment, he just sighed. “Sure? I guess I didn’t sleep last night. Normally it would be fine, but I get exhausted easily around this time of the month.” He stood, stretched. “Before you say anything, it’s not a lack of a guilty conscience or whatever. Just a side effect of…having the body parts I do.”

Normally, L might have taken more interest in the topic. Today he had no patience for it. “You’ve missed half the day,” he said shortly, “and half the time we have left in port too.”

Light blinked. “You didn’t have to stay and watch me sleep, you know. If there was anything you wanted to do…” He shook his head. “Fine, okay. Give me a minute to wash up, then we can go.”

Light seemed to be in high spirits as they strolled through the streets of the port town an hour later. In contrast, L’s mood had only soured.

Light asked what he wanted to do. “I don’t care,” L said, and left it at that.

“Are you hungry at all? What do you like to eat anyway, besides scones? I looked around yesterday, but didn’t see any places selling those… Or maybe you want a drink?” When L ignored him, Light went on blithely. “Well, if you really don’t care, I wouldn’t mind wetting my throat. Maybe we can talk to some people while we’re at it, see if anyone knows about any prizes that are worth going after.”

Light chose what appeared to be a tavern of middling repute. Although it was only late afternoon, chatter and drunken laughter spilled out into the street outside. Sailors and pirates and privateers all liked to drink in towns like this, regardless of the time of day, taking advantage of their time on land to get as shit-faced as possible. Even L had participated in this tradition in times past, although not for some years now.

Light glanced inside then stopped the two of them in the alley outside. “You don’t seem like you want to talk to people today,” he said. What an acute observation, L thought. He couldn’t even be bothered to say the retort out loud, though. “Well,” Light sighed, “I guess I’ll take care of it. You can just sit in the corner and watch or whatever else you want to do.”

Something seemed to occur to Light then. He took off his hat—the one he’d bought yesterday, with a wide brim and a feather sticking out of it—and held it out to L.

L looked down at the hat. He made no move to take it.

Light rolled his eyes. “Just put it on, okay? I don’t think the people here will recognize my face, but they might recognize yours.” Without waiting for further argument, he set it askew on top of L’s unruly hair, smirked over his shoulder, and stepped through the tavern door. L chewed on his lip. After a minute, he straightened the hat and pulled the brim down further over his face, trying not to think about how ridiculous he likely looked wearing Light’s idiotic hat, with its idiotic scarlet plumage, and went inside as well. He took a seat in the corner alone at the most shadowed table he could find. When a maid hurried over to serve him, he paid for a cup of wine, solely for the sake of appearances.

Across the room, Light had bought himself a drink too and appeared to be trying to ingratiate himself with the busiest table in the place. As one of the men seated there got up to get a refill on his drink, claiming the barmaids was too slow, Light slipped into his seat and introduced himself to the others.

“I’m Light. Of the Leviathan.”

Heads turned at that.

“Oh, fuck off,” said one of the few women seated at the table. She looked to be a weathered sailor; in her forties, at least. “Brag as you want, lad, but at least pick something believable—”

“But I’m telling the truth,” Light said.

More talk around the table. Finally, one of the men admitted he’d seen a ship docked at port that matched the description. “..You mean L’s here? The L?” one of the others said into his cups.

“What I want to know is, how did this one”—the man seated next to Light thumped him on his back—“get lucky enough to get a spot on that crew?” Agreement around the table.

Light smiled and rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, faking sheepishness. “Good luck, I guess,” he said, “And lots of hard work.”

More like murder and lies and betrayal, L thought, and took a draught of his wine, teeth gritted.

“What about all of you? Where are you here from?” Light asked, looking around.

As Light continued talking to the others, L watched and listened in on the conversation from his shadowed corner. It made him sick how easily Light lied. How he made those around him like him and trust him with just a well-placed word or smile. Something had been bothering him all night and all day, and now, watching Light work over an unsuspecting audience with his lies, it was clear to L what it was.

He was such a fool.

He’d learned not to trust a word out of Light’s mouth. But all the same he’d let himself fall so easily into the…burning hatred he felt whenever he thought of Light. The obsession. He’d grown used to the evenings playing chess, the nights that Light spent sleeping in his bed while L plotted how best to destroy him, Light seeking him out and talking to him about anything and everything, showing him the Death Note and telling him stories about how he’d used it.

And meanwhile Light… L thought of him running off to his pirate ‘friends’ the moment the ship docked without a backwards glance. The gifts they laved on him. For now, L’s crew distrusted Light, but there was a time when they, too, had loved him.

Only to Light, none of it meant a thing, did it? Or if it did, it was certainly not L’s crew or L that mattered to him.

He was using the same tricks now on these people that he had once used on L, pretending to be some innocent, friendly, boy, and how had he ever been so stupid as to fall for this? Or to believe that Light thought of him, that all the time they spent together was anything but another lie? Somehow, without realizing it, L had grown accustomed to him and Light being enemies, but until now he hadn’t realized how plainly one-sided—

“The captain?” Light was saying, and L realized suddenly that they were talking about him. “What is he like?” Light thought for a moment. “Scary,” he said at last. “Scary smart. People talk, but I didn’t realize until I met him. He’s even more of a genius than they say.” He smiled, taking a drink from his tankard of ale. “And just plain scary. That too.”

“In what way?” One of the others wanted to know.

Light shrugged. “You’d know what I meant if you met him. He’s intense and…really single-minded, I guess? Like…for example, he gave me this scar.” He smiled, gestured to the thin line on his face where L had cut him during their fight. “And we were only sparring. And—” He lowered his voice, quiet enough that L had to focus to hear him from where he was sitting. “Well, I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell anyone this, but…”

Of course, now everyone at the table was hanging onto his every word. Even one of the barmaids was lingering by, trying to listen in.

Light sighed and pretended to give in. “I only joined the crew recently, so this would have been before I joined, but rumor is… Well, you all have heard of the pirate…Kira. And you all know how he and his ship have disappeared.” He paused to let this sink in. “The rumor I heard is, he’s dead, and L’s the one who killed him.”

L had heard enough.

He finished his drink and slammed his empty cup down on the table, harder than he perhaps meant to, then stalked out of the tavern. Outside, he leaned against the wall of the alley, ducking his face beneath the brim of the hat so no passerby would recognize him, and gripped the hilt of his rapier until his fingers whitened. He thought of punching the stone wall or even better, going back inside and bloodying Light’s face instead. Or maybe just running him through with his sword.

He should never have let Light put his hand over his, that night that felt so long ago now.

He should have killed him the moment he admitted to being Kira.

Before he’d met Light, he’d never known it was possible to hate someone this much—so much that he thought he might be entirely consumed by it.

Now he did.

Some time later, Light and his newly made ‘friends’ came out of the tavern. The others headed down the street; Light made an excuse about meeting someone in the opposite direction, doubled back, and fell in step with L.

“Reports of your death appear to have been greatly exaggerated,” L said flatly.

Light just laughed.

“Exaggerated? Maybe,” he said after a moment, sounding thoughtful, “but not entirely untrue. It’s like I told you, L. The pirate known as Kira is gone. He might as well be dead.”

Lies, lies, and more lies, that was all that came from Light’s mouth.

‘Might as well’ be dead? Let me make that a reality, then.

As they walked, Light told him of what he’d learned—the others he’d been talking with were also privateers, and had some information about a Spanish merchant ship that was supposedly heavily guarded, indicating that it might be carrying a rich prize—but L was only half listening. He was too furious, too sick with all the various unpleasant feelings that’d been swelling in him all night.

By coincidence, they had once again crossed paths with the group Light had been talking to earlier. L saw them out of the corner of his eye. He stopped walking, put a hand on Light’s shoulder and stopped him as well.

He was angry for too many reasons to count. But he was sick of biding his time. He might not be able to kill Light yet, not while keeping his promise to Naomi that Raye would be returned safely, but he’d spite Light where he could in the meantime. And since Light found it so amusing to taunt him while using L’s name to brag—

Evening had fallen, but there was enough lamplight spilling from the door of a nearby gambling den to illuminate the street. L was still wearing Light’s hat. He took it off, pressed it into Light’s surprised hands. Turning so that his face was visible to the group in the street, he said, “You all should know that I’m L.”

He had only a moment to relish the shocked expressions of the other privateers and the confused expression on Light’s before pressing Light against the wall of the building and moving in close so that their mouths met.

Light was utterly frozen for a moment. Then he shoved L off, hard, and in the next breath had his sword drawn.

L had done it for the benefit of their audience, but they quickly fled like rats into the dark at whatever they saw unfolding before them. He didn’t entirely blame them. In all the months he’d known him, he’d never seen Light look so murderous.

The street was suddenly empty aside from the two of them. Light moved so that his back was no longer to the wall, raising his sword arm to level the blade at L. “Try that again,” he said, every line of his body promising violence.

Rather than bringing L any gratification, though, Light’s reaction only made him angrier in turn.

L laid his hand on the hilt of his rapier. He wanted, more than anything, to just draw it. The two of them could end this here; he wouldn’t just leave a scar this time. Instead, he took a step back and let mockery creep into his voice, “What do you find so offensive? Is it only entertaining when you do it? Or”—he hadn’t mean to say this part, but it was too late to stop once he’d started—“is it that you draw the line at kissing pretty women?”

“What?” Light said.

L thought of his old suspicion that Light had told the others in his crew that they were more than friends. How else could he explain the way his crew looked at the two of them when they were together? And that was a lie that would certainly serve Light, wouldn't it? Painting L as not only mad from grief but as a scorned lover. But admitting that whatever lies Light had spread about him nettled him suddenly seemed like an admission of weakness.

“What?” Light said again, when L said nothing. “Okay—” He ran a hand over his face. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, because I’ve never… Everything I said in there was to get information for us, so don’t get so pissed about nothing. And actually I don't give a shit what some random strangers think of me, so what you just did was pointless. And if this is about…what the crew thinks, they made that shit up on their own, I had nothing to do with it. And—” He blinked. “I…don’t kiss women. Pretty or not.”

“Oh, you don’t,” L scoffed. “You just spend the night with them.” And buy them bracelets. And come back with your arms full of gifts from them. And run to them the moment—

“You mean last night? Misa and Kiyomi are friends of mine. Friends.” Light still had his sword raised, although his expression was edging more towards incredulous than angry, now. “They’re together, you know? They like each other, not me. And I—don’t…not with women. I like men.”

“You like men,” L repeated slowly. What was it Light had said? They made that shit up on their own. “But not me.”

He shouldn’t have said that, maybe. Definitely not. But what did it matter? He could just kill Light here and flee before Naomi found out.

Strangely, Light’s expression cleared at that, smoothing over into an emotionless mask again. He lowered his sword.

“How could I?” he said, eyes glinting as he stepped forward. Their shoulders brushed as he stepped past where L stood in the street, and somehow L found his hand stayed, whether by self-restraint or just by the fact that he couldn’t strike Light down now that he’d lowered his sword. Of course, he regretted this a moment later, when Light finished, “After all, you really are such a bastard.

“You like chocolate, right?” Light was already walking away as L turned to look at him. “I really want some drinking chocolate right now, and I saw a place yesterday where we could get some.” Apparently, he’d had enough of the previous topic of conversation. “Coming?” he said over his shoulder.

L followed. He’d never say no to chocolate, and truth be told…he didn’t want to speak of other matters anymore either.

Chapter Text

Secretly, L felt a sense of relief when they set sail from the port, and the coastline became nothing but a fading smudge on the horizon that slowly disappeared as the wind in their sails carried them further out to sea.

He was glad to leave the events of their time at port behind him.

Light made no mention of it either, and secretly, L was relieved by that too.

Besides, now that they were back at sea, there was nowhere for Light to escape to, and no immediate allies for him to rely on. And L could focus his attention on drawing the trap around him ever closer.

Light had the Death Note and the Shinigami, but L still had some advantages as well. Light could proclaim himself captain all he wanted, but this had been L’s ship first, and L’s crew. And as of yet, Light had no idea his sleight of hand with the gunpowder and the apples had been noticed. L intended to conceal that from him as long as possible.

In addition, Naomi had gathered some crucial information too during their time at port: Raye was being held hostage not by Kiyomi’s crew of pirates—not at the current moment, at least—but by their ‘friends.’ Perhaps the overly zealous pirate who’d kicked L that one time they’d met—Teru—and whatever crew he was a part of?

He’d set Naomi, Merrie, and Thierry to find out whatever they could during their second day at port, while he kept Light occupied. He still didn’t entirely trust the pair of former thieves, but they had certain skills, such as mingling with the type of criminals that others among his crew might not be able to, that he’d be amiss not to put to use.

Once they were back at sea, he had Merrie report back to him and Naomi. Heads huddled together in a corner of the ship where Light might not come across them.

Of course, Merrie might still go running and tell Light everything behind L’s back. She and Thierry had seemed cowed enough by their last conversation that L thought they probably wouldn’t betray him this time, but it was always a possibility. In this case, though, L almost thought that might benefit them. Even if Light found out that they were plotting against him… Well, L wanted him paranoid. Wanted him glancing over his shoulder so that he would exhaust himself out jumping at shadows and miss whatever it was L actually wanted to conceal from him.

As rumor went, Merrie began, Kira commanded a fleet of a hundred pirate ships. Hundreds, depending on who was telling the story. "So, in short, total horseshit,” she said, waving her hand desultorily. “Having, ah, been around plenty of pirates in my time, you couldn’t get a hundred ships’ worth of them in the same place if you offered them free grog.”

But when she and Thierry had asked for names of known pirates who were associated with Kira, they’d heard one story over and over again, of a bloodthirsty pirate called Mikami, captain of the pirate ship the Bloody Justice. Most pirate ships flew some variation of the Jolly Roger, but it was said that the Bloody Justice flew the same infamous flag as the Spectre herself. Mikami had even been mistaken as Kira once, to which he had apparently replied that he was nothing but ‘the sword and servant of Kira.’

“Again, this is all hearsay…” Merrie finished with a shrug.

Naomi and L looked at each other. It was possible, L thought.

“Any mention of Kiyomi or Misa?” Naomi asked.

Merrie shook her head. “Mon amour even tried asking for them by name, but no one had heard anything of them being involved with Kira. No one seemed to know much about them at all.”

When it seemed she had nothing else to say, L dismissed her back to her normal duties, chewing over this information while Naomi looked at him hopefully.

“…Do you think this Mikami is the one who is holding Raye hostage?” she asked.

L had told her, of course, of the second crew of pirates that had appeared after Kiyomi’s crew had ambushed and overtaken them.

“That would be the obvious conclusion,” he agreed. Yet, if he were Light… “Which makes me believe it may also be the incorrect one.”

“But if it’s not Kiyomi, and it’s not Mikami…”

“No,” L shook his head, biting at his nail. “It’s almost certainly one of them. If you think about it, Light was never in more danger than after he confessed the truth about what he’d done. He would have played all his cards then. The fact that not one but two pirate ships were waiting nearby to ambush us is all but certain proof of that. If he had more allies, they would have appeared then, too. The question is which one of them it is. The evidence certainly suggests that it’s Mikami. The only reason I say it might be Kiyomi is because it’s too obvious. Light allowed me to see them… he had to have known we’d hear about Mikami if we asked around…If I were in his position, I’d hide the hostage with my lesser-known friends instead. That said, that’s all conjecture. We would need to know more to determine…”

Naomi was giving him a strange look.

“What?” L said.

“It’s nothing. You just reminded me of something he said, that’s all.” L stared at her, waiting, and Naomi sighed. “He said I could never catch him, because we think differently. But that you could, because you and him think the same. Because you’re the same. Or something like that.”

L almost asked her whether she believed that—then decided he didn’t want to hear the answer, whatever it was.

He found Light, mid-afternoon, sitting in L’s chair behind L’s desk with his boots propped up on the wood, flipping listlessly through one of the books L had bought during their time ashore. He shut the book and slipped it back into its stack of companions when L came in.

It was a hot day, one of the hottest of summer, and most of the crew was belowdecks, either sharpening their swords in anticipation of the coming hunt, or just sleeping or enjoying the shade from the sun. Even L had grown bored of having no actual work to do, and had decided to spend the afternoon doing some research on Shinigami instead—only to find Light in his seat.

“Have a nice chat with Naomi and Merrie?” Light said, watching him with a mocking half-smirk as he came inside. “What were the three of you whispering about, anyway?”

“Did you read anything true about Shinigami in that book?” L returned.

Light just looked at him for a moment, then said, “No. Your turn.”

“We were plotting how to rescue Raye from your clutches,” L said. “Where is the Shinigami? Ryuk, was it?”

Light shrugged. “I’m not his keeper. I’m sure he’s around somewhere.”

It wasn’t until Light lifted his hand, which had been hidden from L’s line of sight by the desk, that L saw the half-eaten apple in it. Light lifted it to his mouth, and L saw the bite mark in its flesh matched Light’s pearly whites.

Hmm, well, it seemed no Shinigami had been eating this apple. Unless the Shinigami somehow had the exact same bite size as Light. That wasn’t to say that—

“What?” Light said with his mouth full. “Do you want a bite?”

“No thank you,” L said. “What was the last lie you told me?”

Light’s eyes widened. “Do you want a bite was not my question,” he said with mock outrage, kicking his feet off the desk and standing. “And I’m bored of this game anyway. Want to spar? I’m finally feeling a little better, and I could use some practice, especially after all that time you had me locked up.” He glanced back over his shoulder, snorted a little. “Let’s do practice swords this time, please. I don’t need you to injure my good looks any more than you already have.”

“I’m sure your vanity was injured,” L said, “but as I remember it, you could have avoided the injury by drawing your sword the first time I asked you to. Or the second, or the third…Or by admitting to being Kira, which you did anyway when you lost.”

Light’s expression darkened. “I won’t lose this time,” he said, making it sound like a threat.

L thought about denying him a bout just to see the expression on his face, but to tell the truth, the idea wasn’t entirely unwelcome. He tossed his rapier onto the bed, since they wouldn’t be using it anyway, and used a strip of leather to tie his hair back in a quick, messy ponytail.

“Very well then. Practice swords.”