Disclaimer: I don't actually own DN. If I did, trust me. You'd know.

'Lo, all! Well, I'm working on the next chapter of Silence (and it is absolutely DELIGHTFUL so far), but right about now, my muse handed over THIS new idea, and I really think you'll like it.

FYI, all tense changes and odd grammar stuff is intentional. Misspellings are not, so if you find 'em, lemme know.

In case you're wondering, the title, Ceteris Paribus, means, "All other things held equal." Don't worry, it'll make sense soon.

Now, on with the show! Enjoy:

Published 10.26.11

It all started with a spark.

No, Quillsh reasoned, that wasn't right.

What it all started with, truly, really, started with, was Laura.

Beautiful, laughing, sometimes-too-quiet Laura.

He'd seen her, he'd met her, he'd spoken with her, he'd watched her.

And then there was that spark.

He'd been a young man then—well, not young exactly. 32. Young enough, though older than either of his (deceased) parents would have liked to have seen him marry.

But he did marry her, because he loved her and, impossible as it seemed to him, she'd loved him.

Laura had been 24, exactly. They'd married on her birthday, and Quillsh still feels a twinge of guilt for the fact that he had married someone so young (only 8 years younger than him, yes, but he meant young, the sort of youth that doesn't fade with age).

Laura was everything he was not. She was silly where he was serious. She was spontaneous where he was steady. She made mistakes, laughed, tried again, and laughed again when it still didn't work. He was careful—his mistakes were quiet, not to be aired or discussed.

Except with her—always, Laura was the exception to the rule. Had to be the exception to the rule.

He wasn't without his charms, he supposed. He was well-mannered, and devoted. But Laura was always the one to draw attention, even when she wasn't actively engaged in doing so. The eye just followed her, followed her grace and her understanding and her laugh.

He still remembered her laugh.

Well, that's not quite what he meant. He remembered everything, because Laura had been everything to him. But her laugh was especially familiar, especially raw, even years and years after her death. He could still hear her laugh sometimes, echoing around in his mind when he stayed still for too long.

That wasn't to say he was wasting away from the loss. It wasn't as though Laura's illness and subsequent death had unraveled him, he wasn't dying.

But he was pining. He was, to put it simply, missing her. He had a suspicion that he always would.

But.

It wasn't as though he had nothing to fill his time; it wasn't as though Laura had left him with nothing to remember her by.

Not a child—at least not their child, their flesh-and-bone child. They had tried—and with a fresh ache, he remembered that. Remembered the bewilderment, the doctors, the treatments. The adoption papers. The disappointment, again and again and again until finally Laura had said, sobbing in that too-quiet way of hers, No more.

He'd agreed with her. Instantly. What she wanted was what he wanted, especially when he could see her hurt.

It had hurt for years after that. Well into the time she was 30, and then 40. And it wasn't as though they weren't happy—they were, he stressed in his mind. He knew they were.

But sometimes—when she would wander the halls of his manor (inherited from his father, and his father's father before that), she would look at the closed doors of all the empty, dusty rooms. And sigh.

And then, well after their first meeting, their wedding, and well before the cancer set in, there was another spark.

Quillsh thought that it had been Laura who'd come up with the idea, but years afterwards, she'd insist that it was him.

And maybe it had been.

They couldn't conceive, they couldn't adopt—but with Quillsh's money and resources, they could still have children.

The idea of an orphanage began to take place. It had been shaped around late-night dinners and early morning walks. It had slowly squirmed into their lives, their thoughts, their very beings until they were consumed.

It wasn't a bad thing to be consumed by.

Papers were the first things to be taken care of. So many papers—licenses, inspections, permissions, meetings, investigations.

Next, the house itself. It was already large—enough to house perhaps a half-dozen children with some room to spare—but Quillsh and Laura took some of his funds (pocket change, really, after his successful inventions and patents) and expanded the building until it was a veritable mansion. 28 rooms, 20 bathrooms, two dining rooms, three living rooms, grounds twice as large as the house itself. A few secret passageways, some sliding doors in the walls, an attic and a cellar, just for fun. Orphans would need all the fun they could give them.

The house was completed and they were ready to file papers to began receiving children when Quillsh's old friend—his oldest friend—Roger had stepped in with another idea.

With another spark.

He and Quillsh had spent many late nights studying the deteriorating state of the world. And although Roger, who had no one to distract him, to show him some of the world's fading beauty, had always been more passionate about it, Quillsh could never find any reason within himself to disagree with Roger.

Roger was right. The world was rotting. It was in chaos. Everything good seemed to be fading, and even to two jaded old men, innocence was no longer really innocent, and purity was really no longer pure.

At first, Quillsh had objected to Roger's idea outright. There were no such things as superheroes, he'd said. The orphanage had been designed to help children, to help them keep their innocence for as long as they could.

But then Laura had heard Roger's spark, and she had waited, and listened, and watched. And in the end, she had nodded and turned to her husband with a light in her eyes that he had never really been able to refuse.

And so Wammy's House for Extraordinary Children had been born.

They would have to be very careful, the three of them realized. Someone in the government would have to know what they were doing, yes, but not everyone. Luckily, Quillsh had a lot of money, and he did not object to using that money to fund a campaign or two.

They would have to keep the children secure, always hidden. Everything about the children had to be secret, or all of them would suffer for it.

There were no superheroes, yes, Quillsh had been right about that. But there were superhumans—men and women with intellect so great it almost frightened people. And while the idea of a vigilante or a "hero" physically taking on crime, physically pursuing villains and the ugliest, darkest parts of the world could never really work, the idea of an intellectual—a brilliant, determined, trained mind with a heart dedicated to justice and a brain dedicated to criminology—stopping crime was not nearly so laughable.

In fact, it was outright plausible. Possible, even, for them.

And then it wasn't just possible—it was happening.

The curriculum was brutal, the schedule was unyielding, and Quillsh knew that if he were the one attending the school, he wouldn't stand a chance. But then, he'd never classified himself as a genius.

Fairly brilliant, yes. But more creative and inquisitive and determined than anything else. The young minds that they would be training here would be so much more than that—they would be geniuses, pure intelligences, completely transcending normalcy and bursting into a realm all their own.

Finally, with everything in place, they began to explore their world, searching for the best and the brightest—all orphans—who they could mold into the world's greatest detective. In his mind—in all of their minds, really—it didn't matter that they'd never raised children before.

This child, they reasoned, would be different. These children would be so brilliant that it would be like raising tiny adults.

(And when Quillsh thinks back on that thought, he almost chokes on his laughter.)

And just as they'd started getting responses, just as they'd begun to interview children and administer the IQ tests and the EQ tests, tests for languages and for mathematics, suddenly, Laura was in the hospital.

Quillsh was there as well, naturally, and Roger joined them often, all their beautiful, shining plans put on hold. Even as Laura scolded him for staying with her through her illness instead of working on the orphanage, for once Quillsh ignored her wishes and stayed.

It was a short—a brutally short—cancer. Many can take years, decades to fully develop and destroy the host from the inside out.

But Laura had been sick for a very long time, and ovarian cancer isn't known for its kindness.

She had lasted a month.

A month and four days, Quillsh thought to himself. It wasn't long enough. No amount of time could have been . . .

It is over now, he'd told himself a year after she'd died, looking down at the young boy standing before him. It was over and all he could do was honor Laura's memory by finishing what they'd started.

He'd watched the pale-faced child, who was still swaying from his own loss just weeks earlier. Just five—he was only five-years-old, and he was listening and nodding to Quillsh's words like he understood, but he couldn't understand because he was just a child.

But he did. Quillsh knew he did. He could see the gleaming intelligence in those sharp eyes. He could see how the boy stood straight as a rod when Quillsh mentioned the rigor of his training, how little he'd be able to rest, how little he'd be able to play.

And that was all right, the boy had told him, because he'd never played much anyway.

And when Quillsh added that the boy would have to leave everything behind—including pictures, letters, clothes, even his own name, the boy hadn't even flinched. He'd listened the letter they gave him and swallowed and nodded.

The boy . . . he was perfect. He was everything that Quillsh and Laura and Roger had imagined. Brilliant, of course. Brilliant and multi-lingual (English, Spanish, Japanese, and French, with a few others on the way if Quillsh had anything to say about it) and serious and determined. The boy, despite his loss, held himself with a quiet confidence—which, Quillsh thought, if it couldn't be shaken by losing everyone he'd ever known, it wouldn't be shaken by anything.

He was exactly what they'd needed. Quillsh and Roger had looked at each other and in their shared glance, they'd agreed. This boy would be their first—and probably their best—addition to Wammy's House.

So Quillsh Wammy—soon to be known as just "W" for the sake of safety—smiled at the little boy and extended a hand, which the boy gingerly shook, as though he wasn't quite used to the gesture.

Which, Quillsh knew, he wasn't.

"Welcome to Wammy's House, Raito Yagami," Quillsh murmured.

And Raito Yagami had smiled back at him and said, "My name is R."

A/N: So yeah, I'm pretty psyched out of my mind about this one! Sorry about the brief intro, that was just the friggin' prologue! Other chapters should be 2-3 times longer, if I keep up with my regular style. And, if not . . . meh. I'm doin' my best here. Let me know if you have questions!

Oh, and as always, PLEASE REVIEW! :D