This is not a oneshot, though this part somewhat sounds like one. I just got annoyed with how every girl in Deathnote except for Naomi is kind of an idiot. And so on a whim I wrote this, which will probably end up like most of my whim stories, basically forgotten and not updated for five months. But anyway, I wanted to have an actually intelligent girl in the story. (and this will probably end up twisting around some of the stuff in the books, mostly stuff involving Near and Mello and the last book, but oh well)

review. seriously. please.

No one ever thought I could amount to anything.

Ever.

Which was why I stayed in the shadows while Near and Mello got all the praise.

Well, sure, maybe the guy who thought I belonged in Wammy's House instead of some other stupid old orphanage saw a little of who I was, but still. They all had their attention focused on Near and Mello, even when they were new arrivals in the place. No one sees potential if it's not blaring them in the face. I think it was because they weren't ready to accept that a girl could beat them.

But even Near and Mello couldn't figure out who Kira was. Heck, L couldn't. Although I thought he had enough proof that if he could have just looked harder, he would have seen it. But maybe I had a biased view of it all.

Because I knew. But I told no one.

It was all there, clearly. Kira had to be one of the people Raye Penber was watching. It was one of the people in Aoyama on the 22nd – I had heard someone talking about that. It had to be someone extremely smart, able to control their feelings, intelligent enough to remain somewhat innocent in L's eyes, and confident enough to kill whoever they needed to.

One person met all those things.

Of course, I could only pick up the scraps left behind, and believe me, there were not many. But I heard enough and learned enough to know everything I needed.

If I had told someone, then maybe things would have been different. But I didn't. No one would have listened, anyway. If there had been some direct way to contact L, I might have tried, but if you wanted to talk to him you had to go through Roger, Watari, and by then probably every kid in Wammy's House. As for L… maybe he would have wanted to figure it out on his own, anyway, with solid proof. He probably didn't even know who I was. All anybody cared about was Near and Mello. So I stayed silent.

I knew the others wanted to figure out who Kira was, and help L, but they couldn't. The evidence was in front of them, but to me, it was like they were blind. Even Near, who was supposed to be the best.

All he did there was work on the puzzle. Put it together, take it apart, put it together, take it apart. A blank white puzzle, with the letter L scrawled in black in the top corner. Didn't the kid ever go outside? I stood watching him, as everybody else went to play. He didn't notice me. Nobody did. I was a shadow, waiting at the edge of vision, avoided by everyone. If I really wanted to, I probably could have made them seen that I was smart, but nobody wanted to see.

"Don't you ever do anything besides work on puzzles?" I asked softly.

I caught him off guard. He hadn't known I was there. Of course. Near blinked, looking up at me for a moment, then returned to the puzzle.

"Why would I?"

I narrowed my eyes. "To go outside, see stuff, play games, not be stressed over solving everything perfectly… yeah, that's about it."

He connected a puzzle piece. "No, thanks."

I shrugged. "Well, you should do something else. Sitting there trying to fit together a bunch of cardboard chunks isn't going to help you later in life."

Near looked up again for about three seconds. It was the longest anybody had dared to make eye contact with me. "I'm thinking," he said finally, and glanced back down.

"You can think without being crouched around a puzzle all day," I muttered. I don't think he heard, which was fine. Near was the only person in the orphanage who might have listened to me about the Kira case, but even that was a slim chance. I didn't want anything to do with him, or any of the others.

I had only seen Ryuzaki once. Many years before he had come to Wammy's House, when Near and Mello were somewhat officially proclaimed to be his successors. It was kind of held in secret, but all the kids knew about it, anyway. He was leaving, and everyone was crouching and murmuring excitedly, wanting to see the one person in the world who we admired. L looked up for a second, and I think that was the first time anyone ever actually saw me, as in eye contact, instead of barely glancing at me as they rushed by. Not that he knew or cared who I was, but that didn't matter to me.

Then he was blocked by the other kids crowding around, and then he was gone.

The memory still remains, as clear as water. One glimpse, a spark of hope that I actually could mean something to the world.

I think that's one of two things I will remember forever.

The other thing I will always remember is when Near and Mello were called to Roger's room. I hovered at the closed door, listening. They were speaking in hushed tones, and I couldn't hear, but I wanted, needed to know. It was something bad, I knew it. And even though I couldn't hear them, I could tell what it was, but I didn't want to accept it, because my mind couldn't face the possibility of–

L is dead.

It… it wasn't fair… Not L, not Ryuzaki. Killed by Kira. And finally I decided to do something. I will catch Kira. And he will pay. But L was still dead… and I still was rejecting the thought, because I didn't want it to be true. And in the back of my mind I knew that maybe, if I had tried, I could have made someone listen to me. But I never tried.

For the first time I wished I had told someone what I knew.

I still wish so.