Warnings: AU, character death, angst, spoilers for L's name, dark!fic, future slash/yaoi

Characters (main): L, Light

Characters (secondary): Rem, Misa

Chapter Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: Owned by Ohba Tsugumi, Obata Takeshi, et al

Summary: "As I was going up the stair / I saw a man who wasn't there / He wasn't there again today / I wish, I wish, he'd stay away."

A/N: Be forewarned—this is a peculiar child of a peculiar brain. Whether the reader may find anything worthy of approbation, the author cannot say—except that zie hopes the reader will show enough human respect and dignity to refrain from sacrificing zir upon the alter of the reader's indignation. Thank you most kindly for your time and for, if you may be so inclined, a memento of your visit in the form of a review. The author is, as always, the humble and pitiable servant of your entertainment.

A/N 2: Solely for the apparatus of this fiction the age difference between the two is ten years, unlike the manga's seven year gap. Other adjustments and changes have been made as well. Only a ghost of the canon clings to this naked endeavor. Additionally, there will be no actual chan/shota, though a discourse on it may arise. If/when L and Light become physically intimate, Light will be above the age of consent in Japan.

:Put Out the Light:

"Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men.
Put out the light, and then—Put out the light?" (V, ii, 6)

L Lawliet knows Kira to be full of childish conceit; he didn't know the creature to be a child in years as well.

Seven years old and far too young, too beautiful for the sins piled up before his small, delicate feet, Yagami Light stares at him with mockingly guileless brown eyes, unconcerned by the Browning Hi-Power pointed at the smooth skin between his brows. Kira, this child sitting demurely at his desk in empty classroom? L's heart rebels. Kira, the most prolific mass murder of this era—possibly ever—caught between bars of shadow and sunlight, transported above the fading shouts of his peers as they pelt out to the freedom of a summer's afternoon. His mind quails. Kira, seven years old and unconscious of the guilt of several hundred deaths, murderer of murders.

L, with seventeen years hanging off his own slouched shoulders, experiences the sensation of some great ideal slowly crumbling within himself. A little death. A slowly hemorrhaging wound. His hands remain steady; the gun never wavers from that forehead yet unwrinkled by experience, by life. All evidence points to the boy.

"How?"

Why?

Six months of hunting, six months of cat-and-mouse, and all that comes to this, this horrifying moment. The boy's slender, cream-pale fingers stroke across the shiny red flap of his school-issue backpack, already full with his books and supplies in preparation for going home. This is an evil that no jury, no judge will ever see in court. All that evidence and human, adult blindness will declare it impossible: no seven-year-old is capable of doing such things.

The safety has been off and the hammer cocked since L watched the harried looking teacher leave. One bullet. Bang. The end of a killer's reign in a place that smells of paste and chalk and aging wood.

The boy's honey-dark eyes—eyes that reflect the twinned image of the Browning's matte gleam—shift briefly to peer over his left shoulder and then slide back to him. The child smiles gently, compassionately.

"It was fun. Maybe we can play again sometime, L-niichan."

Then the small frame shudders violently, thin limbs seizing in rigid arrest. One choked, aborted breath, and Yagami Light, seven years old, tumbles sideways off his seat.

:To the Dark Tower Came:

"My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby" (I, 1-6).

It is the first time the Shinigami Rem has ever experienced the sensation of being cold. Or perhaps this is fear? A first, then, as well.

"Why are neechan's eyes all puffy?" Small, slender fingers tipped with diamond claws gently trace the air over the sleeping human's cheek, a mere breath away from vulnerable, all-too-fragile flesh. A sudden vision of crimson whispers in her mind. "Is it because of me, Rem-san?"

Honey-dark, slit-pupil eyes peer up at her through a tidy fall of bronze bangs. The creature's wickedly gentle mouth purses in thought. A shinigami like her, but not at all like her. She must choose her words carefully.

The young woman, pulled deep beneath the waters of somnolence, sighs and turns in her luxurious bed, long blonde hair feathering about her in a golden halo. The other raises his hand just enough to keep from slicing open the woman's face. The space where Rem supposes her heart would be clenches with anxiety. She never liked the child, Yagami Light, in life, and in death he is…

Horrifyingly beautiful and so pure it almost hurts to look upon him.

"She cries herself to sleep more often than not," Rem answers. "Your death is a source of great sorrow for her."

You were like the little brother she lost reborn, but what was she to you, Yagami Light?

"She still has possession, doesn't she?"

"Yes…" What are you planning? What more will you put her through?

The child-shinigami hops off the bed, leaving not a trace of his presence upon the twisted bedding, and glides silently to Rem's side. Maybe this sensation is helplessness?

"I'm not dead, though. Not entirely." He tilts his head, a flash of pearly fangs, and lets the wan moonlight catch in silver phosphorescence upon the pattern of scales that march up his slender neck and down beneath the collar of his peculiar outfit—a combination of what appears to be thin chains and frayed ribbons of the material humans call satin.

What was the King thinking in letting such a thing exist?

"Take care of her, Rem-san."

He turns from her and from the young woman who sleeps with grief and wakes with a brittle pretense of careless joy. Rem cannot help it: her voice reaches out and clutches at his attention.

"What do you intend?"

He turns his head to cast her a look over his shoulder. For a moment she swears she can see something ancient and wholly alien staring at her from behind the screen of his eyes.

"Take care of Misa-neechan," he repeats, and it sounds more like an order.

:Shadow Walk:

"As I was going up the stair

I saw a man who wasn't there

He wasn't there again today

I wish, I wish, he'd stay away."

Of its own volition his hand continues to move towards the stack of reports and the object, which had not been there minutes before, resting atop the precarious pile. Glistening and dark, like a rectangular pool of black ink, the slim volume pulls upon a cord of dread buried deep within his lungs—and yet his hand advances, reaches out, fingertips yearning for it, desiring it, while his brain sends out flares of distress. Molasses-time bears down upon him, sucking out the air in his lungs. He touches it, the notebook.

Expecting dampness, but finding none.

Dry and cool to the touch, no different from any other notebook, but still…

Something, something in L Lawliet shifts, twists and drops into his stomach. A hard ingot of… of… Fear, perhaps? Horror? And why would such an innocuous thing evoke a response like that? He has never been prone to irrationality, not even during the semi-credulous years of adolescence. Yet, here he is at eighteen, full of gnawing apprehension over a singularly peculiar sheaf of bound paper—paper, of all things!—that Wammy most likely added to the stack while L was immersed in the electronic case files. Yes, that is what reason tries to nudge into the forefront of his brain. After all, notebooks don't manifest from nothing. Spontaneous generation was disproved centuries ago.

And yet…

His fingertips press against the unmarred cover and begin to stroke it, reveling in the velvety texture of the hand-pressed paper. The glow of the monitors wavers over the surface of the volume, rippling, lambent, and yet that should not be possible. Tactile sensation wars with visual. His eyes tell him that it should be wet, slick—it is not "like" ink, it is ink—and his fingers tell him it is no more, no less than heavy paper. Which sense has been deceived? Both? Neither?

And why can he not stop touching the thing? Why does it seem like if he is only patient, he will feel the gentle throb of a reciprocal heartbeat within the bound pages?

Then he catches it, a scent that sends his mind tumbling back through a sudden torrent of memories: paste, chalk and aging wood. And there, underlying those subtly mingling odors, a faint trace of tamarind and raw milk.

A small body, a murderer in the sweet flesh of a child, so… so very still in his arms. Slender limbs limp, beginning to cool. Silent lungs. Silent heart. Dead at the age of seven from a heart attack—not the Browning Hi-Power that has not been touched since. Kira. Kira. Kira.

How many religions across the Earth have deified children? Perhaps they are the only ones worthy of being Gods.

Tamarind and raw milk. Stronger now. The hairs on the back of his neck prickle. His fingers continue their languid, hungry caress of the notebook. Tamarind and raw milk. Kira. Kira. Kira. Yagami Light.

He does not pull his gaze away from the slim volume, even as a small hand curls about his throat.

Chapter End