A little dishevelled.

Thus were the first thoughts of the scrawny little boy that stood stiffly in front of Quilish Wammy. His thoughts were mainly directed towards the mop of black hair that the boy had done all he could to tame. Otherwise, he could have mistaken him for any old urchin from the orphanage down the road.

"Sit down," he said calmly, gesturing the elaborately decorated Victorian chair that faced his writing-desk. The boy started to look incredulously at the elderly man, but jerked back, as if to change his mind, and gingerly sat down as though he was afraid it would fall apart at his touch.

"His name is Lawliet," the woman behind him spat. "Be a good boy, Lawliet. This nice man is offering to take you off my hands!" she smiled queasily, although it didn't reach her eyes.

The boy looked even more uncomfortable when the garishly dressed middle-aged woman spoke in her sickly sweet tones – that was evident to Wammy from the very start. His dangerously pallid face remained expressionless, if not blank. Even if his face expressed calm, his hands were gripping his knees so hard that the small knuckles were white. His feet were also 'scratching' each other – as if he's not used to shoes? Wammy questioned.

"L." he interrupted, remembering the first name on the birth certificate. The boy remained blankly staring at the wall in front of him, screwing up his face every so often.

"Sir, that's not my name." he said quietly, screwing up his eyes, prepared for what was to come.

Sure enough, a sharp crack startled Wammy as the woman knocked the boy on the head. "Don't be foolish, Lawliet! L is your name, whether you like it or not; come back to your senses and do what Mr. Wammy tells you to do," she snapped.

"That is not necessary, Mrs King. Corporal punishment is not under my jurisdiction outside of my orphanage, but could you please refrain from doing so inside the premises," he said promptly, keeping a calm expression on his face.

"Of course, Mr. Wammy," she reverted back to her tones. The boy shook his head a little, but with slightly more care than what was usual. Was he used to this?

"Mr. Lawliet, what do you think of this?" he placed a puzzle under the wide eyes. He bent over, pulling his chair in, again flinching at the scratching sound it made against the marble. After peering down at it for some time, the boy craned his head around the chair frame, much to the anticipation of Mrs King and Wammy.

"This doesn't tell me anything." He mumbled, almost letting his voice trail off. Wammy would have laughed at Mrs King's aghast and absolutely horrified face.

"I am sorry, Mr. Wammy, I have wasted your time, I…"

"On the contrary, you may leave him with me. Give my best to the director." He smiled.

Mrs King gaped. "What?"

"This," he grasped the piece of paper to reveal an obscure pattern. "would not tell you the slightest thing."

"But then, wouldn't I have figured tha----"

"It is a smaller piece of the puzzle." He interrupted.

"What?" Mrs King said again, lost.

"Many of the children who are not so fortunate as to pass through these doors try and wrangle through these, by trying to guess a picture out of these; some have even attempted words. A mark of a gifted child is realising that each piece matters towards the end product, no matter how insignificant, and that the simple truth cannot be denied – this child might make a good detective, madam."

Mrs King narrowed her eyes at the boy, who seemed to be filled with more confidence than ever before – having this prestigious-sounding man back him up was an impenetrable shield blocking him from her. His eyes had a boyish twinkle in them, and a smile was twitching on his face.

Without a word, she gave him the thin file and made for the door.

"Good day." Wammy said lightly.

"Goodbye, Lawliet!" she said in a sing-song tone as he recoiled in his chair. The horrid old woman was gone in his life with a bang of the front door. The boy still stared at the window at the woman as she walked down the road while Wammy made for his newest admission.

"Now, Mr. Lawliet, I will trust you to make yourself comfortable while I get some refreshments. What would you like?"

He took a deep breath. "Tea, please," he replied, waiting for some kind of retribution.

"Okay. How will you take it?"

The boy inched open one eye to face Wammy. "With… sugar, please."

"Alright then." He left the room gracefully, taking the file with him.

Wammy entered the room, tea with a sugar bowl in tow. What greeted him startled him so much he almost dropped the tea.

The previously stiff upper-lipped boy had taken off his shoes and socks and used the advantage of his bare feet to curl his legs under him while he hunched over.

"I've brought tea," he said, with as much calm as he could muster. The boy wheeled around and hastened to put his shoes and socks back on when Wammy insisted that it was alright, and he hesitatingly brought himself back to his position.

"I just want to ask you a couple of questions. They shouldn't be too trying," The boy nodded, staring nervously at the man.

"Is it alright if I call you L for the purposes of informality?" The boy flinched, but said nothing. "You may call me Wammy, everybody here does---"

"It is not so much an issue of formality as an issue of simple accuracy. L is not my real name." he interrupted.

Wammy started, before leaning in close to stare in the boy's eyes. "How do you know that I will not strike you as Mrs. King did but a few minutes ago for your impudence?" He narrowed his eyes for greater effect upon the boy, whose fingers gripped his knees harder.

"If you didn't hit me when I asked for what I wanted, then your generosity would probably extend upon me making myself comfortable, as you said." The boy babbled as he receded further and further into the cushy chair as Wammy closed in on him until the boy started breathing much more quickly than he had at the start of the session.

"What is your real name then?" he promptly asked. The boy was dumbfounded into silence. He stonily stared at the ground, toes curling, his eyelids closing slightly.

"L can be a nickname, you know." Wammy said kindly, leaning back and resting his chin on his clasped fingers, staring at the slight movement of the boy's eyes.

"A nickname?" he said disapprovingly. "I can't have a nickname for all my life, I can't have a nickname when I'm an adult!" he protested angrily.

Wammy was pleased.

"Then it could be an alias, a codename for when you're older. Something to use for convenience."

"An alias…" he said dumbfounded, staring at the floor again, but this time somewhat wistfully. His thoughts were interrupted by church bells in the distance.

"Ah, it's lunch. We can leave the questions 'til later. You might want to make some new friends in the dining hall – I'll show you the way," Wammy straightened out of his seat and beckoned out the door.

L followed warily.

"Hi, what's that?"

L looked up abruptly. A girl had sat down in front of him and was pointing at his food with some interest.

"Um, it's lasagne, or at least I believe it to be lasagne…"

"You haven't had it before, have you? I know the place down the road has horrible food." she interrupted him.

"Um." L replied slowly and somewhat uncomfortably, looking at the girl who was slowly moving a part of her short auburn hair behind her ear as she stared at him intently. "How did you know that I came from St. Geralds'?"

"You pronounced 'lasagne' wrongly, it's not 'lasag-ne', more 'lasanyuh', and you've been hit," she looked up from her lunch. "A lot,"

"That doesn't necessarily mean that I was struck," L didn't know why he was defending his former matron, but the way the girl had known some things, just like that, disturbed him.

"I've never heard of someone pushing a certain place on your head that hard before," she winced, gesturing to a pointedly flat spot in L's eclectic hair. "Death by Squishing. Yucky," L dejectedly stared at the food, suddenly not wanting to eat any more. As if the girl noticed this as well, her face broke out into a genial grin, a startling change from the lethargic weariness in her face earlier.

"What's your name?"

"L." he said defiantly, and a bit too soon.

"Good to meet you. I'm Eve." She replied, stealing some of his lasagne in the process.

L stared at her curiously. What? He tentatively took some of her pasta and ate it. She slightly pushed her plate over towards L's direction, and he did the same.

"Copycat," she muttered, before completely swapping the plates around. However, as soon as she got the lasagne, she ate with renewed force.

"Did you mean to…take it from the beginning?"

"I like lasagne. Tastes good." She said with a degree of childish finality in her voice.

There was a small pause in the conversation, while the two children dug in to their new dishes.

"How old are you?" she said with her mouth full.

"I am 11. And you?" he said with a bit of loftiness in his voice.

"10. You're older than me." She said, gulping lasagne down. "Hang on, are you taking sessions today?"

"Sessions?"

"They're classes, but Wammy feels the proper word for them is sessions." She finished her meal and rested her head on her arms, staring L down, even though she still had quite a bit to go in catching up to the scrawny boy in height.

"I'm not sure. But we would not be together, if you're curious. There is a year different between our ages." He said, slightly condescendingly.

"Uh-huh. But we're not sorted out by age, we're just bundled together in groups. We used to think it was sorted out by ability, but they give people different work. Hence sessions." She shrugged. As she did so, the church bell from before clanged sharply. From that cue, the inhabitants of the hall stood up to clear their trays away.

L made a noise in his throat that indicated confusion and perhaps a bit of culture shock. At his previous orphanage, it took a megaphone and at least three helpers to bustle all the children out of the lunch hall. As he absently stared at the doors where everyone was disappearing into, Eve cleared her throat.

"Time's everything, L." she clucked her tongue at him.

"But it's just a bell…"

"And the people who ignore it miss the sessions, which would mean more catch-up work in your free time. I think Wammy calls it 'gradual accumulation'. It rings every 15 minutes.

L sighed at the new flow of information confronting him.

"Huh? Oh. Gimme your tray, and we put it down over there, the caretakers clear it up later."

As Eve got up, L noticed that unlike the other fairly stylish girls in the room, she wore a slightly-too-big shirt and jeans with sneakers. Her scraggly auburn hair was a bit too short for a ponytail, but a bit too long to be called a bob.

"Wammy?...Wammy!" she called over to the other side of the hall. Eve ran up to the smiling man and grinned up at him.

"Where's L's room?" the girl asked.

"26."

"Right," she gestured L. "Do you want me to take you there?"

"I'm sure I can find out myself," L retorted, still sore from Eve, a younger girl telling him what to do with the trays.

"Right," she looked at him unabashed, a playfully sarcastic look on her face. "I suppose, then, it would be helpful for you to know, that these rooms are not arranged in order, and I am not going to tell you how they are sequenced," she tapped her foot. "Come on, this way." And she took the exhausted boy out of sight.

A year later

It turned out that L did enjoy work here. It was much more enjoyable than in the orphanage down the road.

"So, L, what was your answer to Question 5?"

It was one of the few classes that all of the children took together – it was called 'PPEE (Politics, Philosophy, Economics and Ethics)', an improvement on the course offered at Oxford University.

What is your idea of the afterlife, if any?

"The afterlife, if indeed it does exist, would probably be something attuned to all our individual opinions."

It was an answer designed to avoid and yet answer the question at the same time, after all, he had more complicated maths problems sitting on his lap, just waiting to be answered.

"I see. Eve?"

He opened his ears, interested in what his companion was going to say, even if his face remained impassive.

"I think that if an afterlife exists, it would be one where we lived life again and put right our mistakes." Eve answered.

"Would you mean (here the teacher coughed) the concept of reincarnation?"

"No," she said simply. "Merely to right your wrongs in your own self, rather than stick your wrongs in the mind of a person who has no idea what to do."

There were a few titters from one side of the classroom as Eve leant back in her chair, also to do some other work, but they weren't to do with maths – rather language. She was engaged in the un-translated version of Don Quixote.

As what was commonly known as the most boring class for everyone in Wammy's House droned on and on, L was casually solving A-Level maths problems at the age where one would be taking their secondary school exams.

"Class Dismissed." L let out an annoyed sigh. He had one problem left, and even though his next Maths Session was the next afternoon, the fact that the ends in his Maths homework were not tied up irked him greatly.

Before he could get caught up in irritation too early, Wammy stood in front of L's path, Eve following him curiously.

"You don't need to go to your next session." He said benignly. L stared confusedly at him while Eve's eyes slowly twinkled with anticipation.

"There is a lecture today which will take place in 5 minutes. It is in the assembly hall."

"Um, Mr. Wammy…who is speaking?"

"He is a doctor, a prominent figure in the field of diagnostics." Eve's smile widened suddenly.

"But, Mr. Wammy…I've never been interested in Medicine. I took Further Mathematics and Law as my other two session subjects…?"

"Oh, I forgot one other thing. He is very skilled at employing…deduction…to solve his medical cases. Many patient people find him very interesting. I believe I took Eve to see his lecture two years ago, before you enrolled."

Eve nodded, excitement filling her body.

There were only ten or so people in the assembly hall, and all of them, L had recognised, were in Medicine Sessions.

"The speaker, as all of you should be aware, is a highly prominent figure in the field of medicine, and he recently became head of Diagnostic Medicine in a prominent hospital in the United States. In fact, as his new duties (here he gave a barely-concealed eye-roll) occupy his time so readily, it took quite a bit of persuasion to invite him to speak today."

Eve leaned her arms on the vacant seat in front of her as L tucked his knees and inclined his head vaguely in the direction of the stage.

"Well, without any further ado…I give you…"

Wammy stepped back as a tall wiry man lethargically took the stairs to the stage.

"Dr. Gregory House, M.D.!"

A/N: I'm not crossovering this with House, MD because you don't need to know anything about him to understand what goes on in the next chapter (plus he's only going to be in a few, Death Note is the main fandom here). Hope you like it!