Well, here's a little oneshot in honor of L's birthday! Spoilers for episode 25 and L's real name. I'm rather happy with this piece, considering I don't usually write oneshots.

In any case, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Death Note is not mine. I wish it was, but it is not.

The 31st of October was the absolute best and absolute worst day of the year in L's world. A day utterly jam-packed with sweets, and a day absolutely bent on reminding him of his own supposed humanity.

L had long ago come to the conclusion that he was not human. How could he be? He didn't have the conscience of one, nor the same intellectual capacity. He was something else, shaped to look like a human and bound by human society's rules.

When the child L Lawliet died in a car crash at the age of eight, L disappeared off the map and saved himself from the destructive meddling that people do on one's mind. All the taboos, all the mindsets, everything that evolved from being human 24/7 for one's entire life- L had escaped.

He began trying to defy his own human weaknesses at an early age. When he was nine, he began to go without sleep, first a day, then a weekend, then a full week. He trained his body not to have the same urges as ordinary ones, and in turn, it learned to avoid things like sleep.

He began taking vitamin supplements at the age of ten, first avoiding meats, then vegetables, then fruits, until his diet was down to the bare minimum, and L only consumed sugar.

Whilst researching human techniques, he discovered yoga, and while he didn't care for it, the idea of moving one's body to change one's mental health fascinated him. Perhaps he could alter his own body and, in doing so, create even less human weakness than before. He tried many different poses, but L found that sitting on his feet whilst thinking simulated his brain flow and eventually he adopted the pose permanently. It became comfortable to his body as common sitting became awkward and unpleasant.

Even at an early age, L had known he was different. While other children were learning their shapes in kindergarten, L was sneaking off to the school library and immersing himself in knowledge. By the time his mother died and left him an orphan, L had already learned and processed all the knowledge that an elementary level library had to offer.

He had lived in an orphanage in the middle of a Wilkshire for less than half a year before he and his seemingly impossible mental capabilities had been discovered by Quillsh Wammy and he was moved to The Wammy's House in the countryside of Devon. He had been six.

At the age of seven, Quillsh had begun giving L small local crimes to attempt to solve. When L performed brilliantly in his analysis of each, Quillsh had recommended a detective as a career option for him. L had seized this thought, and on the 5th of November, young L Lawliet died in a car accident and was reborn as the mysterious and brilliant detective L.

But the 31st of October…

L hated his birthday, hated it with a passion, because it reminded him that no matter how much he tried to fight it, tried to deny it, he was still human and human weaknesses could still bring him down. He could avoid sleep, healthy foods, common manners, and ordinary postures all he liked, but that wouldn't change the fact that he was born to a human and had been raised as a human until he was eight.

Working with the Task Force had been a horrifying experience. L could be L whilst hiding behind a computer monitor and voice scrambler, but when confronted with human beings, other creatures so like him and yet so foreign, L was, for once in his life, at a loss. He could get inside criminal minds and discover their twisted motives, their horrifying reasons for killing, for destroying, for ruining hopeful lives. But with the complete opposite end of the spectrum, the policemen, the enforcers of the law, L could not fathom, could not hope to understand their reasons for doing what they did.

He was a detective because that was all he could be without being human. They were investigators because they wanted to stop crime and support their families and make the world a safer place.

After seeing only one other human in person from the time he was eight until he was twenty-four (and that was just Quillsh, who had been dubbed Watari), it was a shock to his system to try and understand the "good guys" after spending sixteen years concentrating on the bad.

Maybe that was why Light had caught his attention. It was nothing he had done himself, but delving explicitly into criminal minds for sixteen years had given L a sense for when one had the mindset of a killer, even if he didn't act it. He knew, he had always known, that Light was Kira, but there had been never any evidence to back up his knowledge.

For the first week when Light had been confined, he had positively radiated (to L anyway) pure evil. But he had talked about his pride, and how he wanted to be rid of it (a strange comment that drew L's attention; was there a double meaning?), but nothing noticeable had happened except L suddenly felt that Light was not Kira after all. The way he had acted after that, he could not possibly be Kira, or L would have noticed inconsistencies in his behavior. He was not a murdurer, that much was certain.

The moment Light screamed after touching Higuchi's Death Note, L knew, again, that something had happened and Light was in the mindset of Kira once more. And L, the greatest and most inhuman detective of all time, began to fear for his life. His poor, mortal, distinctly human life.

For the past three days, the change in Light had been profound, but no one could seem to tell but L. And on his birthday, the day that reminded him that he was twenty-four, that he was human, that his life could be counted in human ways, L tried to rid himself of the little bit left in him that made him what he was. Human. While all he had strived to be, all he had ever cared to be, all that he had ever wanted to attain in exchange for his own human weakness-

On his birthday, L decided that when Kira killed him, he would be glad for it. When Light Yagami came for him, eyes flushed red with the blood of those killed at his hand, L would accept it. He would never achieve his goal, never break totally free of the curse he was born with. His humanity.

On November 5, 1987, L Lawliet died in a car crash. On November 5, 2004, L joined him.

Well, there it is! I hope you guys liked it! Please review and tell me what you think!

-- Stace