Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note, or anyone in it. I own my siblings when we play Continental, though.
Requiescat in Pacem
Matsuda said, "Sayu doesn't know I'm here."
He had climbed the stone stairs on weary feet, ignoring the pain in his knee; up the sharp incline that led to the steepled stone building. The plaque on the stone wall that encircled the graveyard said that where God's Work Church now stood there had once been a Buddhist shrine; there were dates and the surnames of the families who had built the church years after the shrine had burned to the ground. Matsuda had stopped to read it, as he did every time he came; as if the plaque bore the words: "The End of the World" instead of its simple, unpretentious history; as if steeling himself for the departure from the world of cars and hurrying feet into the world of silent gravestones and fading, hopeful flowers.
There were never any flowers on the grave he sought.
"I brought you something."
It had caught his eye as he left: a gaudy bouquet of foil-wrapped chocolate roses and candy-centered daisies with plastic leaves. He had not decided to buy it; only, when he saw it, a picture of the lonely, weed-covered grave in the corner nearest the church building had flashed through his mind. He had been in the shop handing the price of the bouquet over the counter before the mental reverberations of that stark image had faded enough for his cerebral processes to be called "thought."
Now he knelt at the foot of the grave, awkwardly, for his injured knee was protesting again, and placed it in front of the plain headstone; remained kneeling, with his fists on his knees: half because he knew it would hurt to get up again, and half because it seemed an appropriate posture.
"Sayu thinks I've gone to visit Light's grave."
(How ironic.)
"She thinks that's where I've been going all this time – all these five years since I found out where they buried you. I didn't know she did... she said 'I know you must miss him' as I was leaving today, trying to comfort me; and then she said 'I miss him too'."
The afternoon sun cast the shadow of the gravestone over the bouquet he had bought, dulling the bright colors. It was a plain stone, and there was no name; only a date that was already beginning to fade:
November 5th, 2004
"It was inevitable, wasn't it?"
(The silence was unbearable.)
"It's almost a compliment to have been killed... by Kira. None of the rest of us were enough of a threat that he had to murder us regardless of the suspicion it would throw on him."
Matsuda's fingers dug into the fabric of his pants, his knuckles whitening.
"There wasn't anything we could have done... was there?"
"There wasn't."
Matsuda's breath caught in his throat. He scrambled to his feet, barely noticing the pain in his knee, and turned to face the speaker. His eyes fell on feet first – feet clad in socks and nothing else; then loose white pants that fell in folds around the ankles. A white shirt, hanging as loosely as the pants on a thin figure: only the tips of the fingers were visible under the sleeves. Tousled white hair, half-lidded eyes, an impassive expression.
"Near?"
It was a rhetorical question, and Near made no answer. He blinked, once, and looked up from the grave, fixing his blank stare on Matsuda's face.
"How long have you been here?"
Near twisted a lock of his hair around his forefinger, still looking steadily at Matsuda. "The whole time. Since before you got here."
"I didn't see you."
"You weren't looking."
"No," said Matsuda, wearily. "I wasn't."
"You come here often."
It was a statement, not a question; Matsuda nodded once, mutely, and turned back to the grave.
"I had to have surgery on my knee," he said, after a pause. "There was a... man. He was dealing in illegal substances. We didn't know he had a gun."
Near was silent, but Matsuda could feel the boy's gaze on his back.
"He shot me first... he was going to shoot my colleague. They were too close. My colleague was unarmed. He would have been killed, without doubt... so I shot first."
He didn't say, I shot many times; or, I panicked and emptied my gun into him until he passed out.
"He was injured badly. He nearly died... and I was in a bad way, too, with a bullet in my knee and another in my shoulder... but all I could think of while they were helping me was how afraid I was that the man would die."
Matsuda turned his eyes upwards, away from the grave.
"I've never killed anyone directly. But indirectly... Light... And ..."
Still nothing from Near. The silence pressed down on him.
"Sometimes I wonder... if it was our fault L died."
He had to stop for a moment before he could speak again; he clenched his fists and lowered his gaze back to the nameless grave before him.
"We all liked Light. We didn't want him to be Kira. I think... we might even have wanted Ryuuzaki to be wrong out of childish envy or spite. We acknowledged his superior intelligence and admired his intellect, but his manner toward us was never calculated to please."
The silence was like an accusation.
"It's contemptible ... I think we were offended that he didn't value us enough to try to be more pleasant. I also thought that L wanted Light to be Kira simply because he didn't want there to be two people with intellects matched with his. Now I don't think L would have been jealous like that, but then it seemed likely."
A pause.
"Sometimes I wonder... did we miss something?"
Is it our fault?
"Was there something we would have noticed if we hadn't been prejudiced?"
Did L die because of us?
"Was his death truly inevitable?"
"No," said Near.
Matsuda closed his eyes.
"He could have lived, but he revealed his face. That made his death inevitable."
Matsuda's eyes snapped open. "But you also – " he began.
"I also – but only when the circumstances were as completely controlled by me as they could ever have been by any mortal. The previous L's action was a gamble in a rigged game. Mine wasn't."
"What..."
"The previous L had a regard for his opponents – a fondness, for lack of a better word. Certainly a respect, if they were his equals mentally. He would analyze them, but it was more out of interest than anything. He preferred to defeat them with his own strength. I, on the other hand, analyze my opponents so that I can use their own strength to defeat them. If their spirits are broken by it..."
Matsuda shivered.
"It was a challenge for the previous L to defeat a criminal without breaking him. It was a part of the game he played. He never broke the rules he set himself for any reason."
"He died senselessly."
"No," said Near. "He died without breaking his rules."
"Imaginary rules are not more important than life!"
"They were to him."
Matsuda drew his breath in sharply and half turned away from the grave. "I'm sorry," he said.
The silence lengthened again.
"You've been here before?" asked Matsuda, at last.
"No," said Near.
"Why... why did you come?"
For answer, Near turned his head slightly and raised one thin hand to point to at a grave two spaces down from the one they stood before. "Mello." The hand shifted to indicate the nest grave. "Matt."
There was nothing different about the boy's voice; and his movements were as unobtrusive and careful as ever.
"I'm sorry," said Matsuda.
"The priest was a friend of Wammy's," said Near, passively, his eyes lowered under his white bangs and one finger twisting a lock of hair. "All the graves in this row are the graves of men and women who worked with me or the previous L against Kira."
Matsuda said, "Oh."
It was not a long row: eight – nine – ten graves at the most. The headstones were all small, some overgrown with weeds; two of them were completely blank, and on a third the words Requiescat in Pacem had been scratched clumsily. The shallow, spiky letters looked as if they had been made by a pocket-knife.
"If," said Near, "the previous L had had a fraction of the resources that I had because of his death, I believe he could have caught Kira – without breaking him as I did."
The wind rustled the long weeds and grasses at their feet; it made a sound like a small, contented sigh.
"Thank you."
Near raised his eyes without moving his head. He did not look at Matsuda or at the grave, but at the cloudless sky: blue shot with pinks and purples as the sun neared the horizon.
He said, "I won't return."
Matsuda did not watch the boy leave. He stood silent and still, and his shoulders were squared, the weight of many years lifted off of them. He waited until the last footsteps had faded away, and then he knelt again and reached out with one trembling hand.
The gravestone came out of the earth without resistance. Balancing it on his aching knees was harder, but somehow Matsuda held it there while he dug into his pocket for his pocket-knife; while he carved a dozen careful, painstaking words into the hard stone. He straightened it methodically when he repositioned it in its place; he packed the earth down firmly around it and ripped away the tall weeds so that the words on it were visible:
L Lawliet
October 31st, 1979 – November 5th, 2004
"The Lord upholdeth them that fall"
When he left, he did not look back.
A/N: Well, my first Death Note fanfiction. I wrote this in about five hours (I guess) divided between two days. Abundant thanks go to my mother, who obligingly went over the original manuscript with a red pencil and gave me several inferiority complexes; also to my friend Miwaza-chan, whose name is the same as the church in this fic.
I suppose I should apologise for my long absence - and it's not even a Detective Conan fic! I'm very sorry! I can't even promise it'll get better... but I may have another Death Note fanfiction up in the next few days.
Ja ne!