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[Near hadn't expected L to contend what he'd said, but sometimes the expected response is still a bothersome one. "Infatuated" is exactly the right word, or he wouldn't have used it.]

Your past challenge is over. It will never be the way it was. Please keep that in mind.

[If L thinks it might be a better experience here he's deluding himself as far as Near is concerned. It's the same song and dance and he needs new material, however much he might get out of this.

As for what he plans to do...]

He can only age so far. [There is no decade worth of time in Light's future the way there had been in his.] If he ages it will be immediately apparent. If he recalls memories without aging it will also be apparent. Yagami Light is a good actor, but there will be no hiding a certain look in his eyes. The man is tainted.

If or when that happens I will do whatever I have to. He will want to confront me in some way.

[He nods silently. So much is over. It's sullen and plaintive every time L reflects on it for long. It seems rosier for the distance. The future seems uncertain and dark by comparison, but didn't he know exactly where they were, exactly what they were doing, down to the color of the shirt Light was wearing on any given day during that case?

You can cherish something that's over. Others do; it's acceptable to keep memories, even mementos...

L doesn't see why Light Yagami, himself, can't be such a memento.

When the conversation turns to the uncertain and dark future that L avoids by glancing over his shoulder at the past, only a people-reader of their particular ability and skill could perceive just how much some of Near's word choices are difficult for the main to hear. "Tainted", especially, strikes a nerve that subtly tightens the edges of L's eyes for a brief moment.]

I've given up trophies before. For a greater good.

[Niles' eyepatches had felt heavy when he'd handed them over to Myr, but he had done it. Can he do the same with Light when it's time?

More importantly, can he do it without giving himself up as well? Does he even have faith that anything of himself will remain, after giving up Light?

The problem, such as it is, grows ever clearer. L still doesn't want to confront it for what it is.]

If you come to feel that killing him is necessary... will you do it in a way I can see?

[The words are carefully chosen. L hasn't asked to help, or even to be present. Perhaps it's to allay any concern, or awkward looming possibility that L may interfere or try to prevent Near doing "whatever he has to".

Maybe it's too much, even, to suggest to Near that it's deeply important to him to witness Light's death, if it must come to that.]

Edited 2021-06-06 04:06 (UTC)

[L existed before Light. L continues to exist, in a form, after Light. If Near could be at all aware of what his bonded was thinking it would infuriate him. He's already unsettled as it is. He hates being unsettled.

The talk of Light as though he's an object, a prize of some sort, is frankly disgusting to him. Not because he believes the murderer's humanity should be respected, but because of how unhealthy those thoughts are and how difficult they may make his tasks in the future.]

Acquiring a trophy requires winning. You did not.

[Nothing L does here will change the fact that he will cease to be back in their world. If it did, Near's memories of the incidents would surely change as well. Time is immutable like that, or should be. It will not happen because it did not.

Even if his mentor is merely making a comparison, it's a poor one.]

But I do want you to see his end if that's necessary. [Which it almost definitely will be, if you ask him.] I need you to see his face when he's the most genuine.

[When all of that inner demon is spread across his features.]

I'm only concerned you'll attempt to think of an excuse to stop it.

[L's existence is, in a way, independent of both of them, bigger than both of them as individuals. It might be why L's expression turns bemused at Near's blunt admonishment.]

L won.

[He speaks with eerie detachment that Misa lacks when she speaks of herself in the third person. He both is, and isn't speaking in the third person, just as he both is and isn't L. It's not Schrödinger's victory, however; L, as a concept or a team or an ideology, had triumphed.

The thin, shabby man who had held the title once believes he's the only one who wants the trophy he's designated quite so badly.

He also believes that he has seen Light genuinely. Through mirrors around corners, perhaps, refracted, distorted, but not fake, for one who knows how to mentally adjust for it. He has grown so used to compensating for distrust and managing the expectation that those who come close have done so to destroy him that it feels normal, almost comforting.]

I don't believe your judgment regarding this matter to be heavily emotional or biased. Therefore... any excuse of mine, "tainted" by those things, would be unreliable.

[In spite of L's insistence, will this become a tug-of-war for Light Yagami's fate? Uneasily, he thinks to lonely moments and illusion practice, the face he chose to conjure to sit beside in soothing silence. If Light was gone, would that start up again? Aside from the Bond they have in this world, is there another one that can pull Near's predecessor right along with him, however compliant he might be according to the successor's (victor's) wishes?

Or is it just the same impulse that had caused Light Yagami to reach for him as he fell in a future neither of them has lived through, gripping him in twisted vigil as he breathed his last?

Will you do it in a way I can see. Just that; he doesn't need to hold Light's body or his hand. At the very least, he can't ask.]

If I trust you to make the call, I need you to trust that I'll stand aside.

[The promise feels unreal, some phantom sensation that hasn't fully registered yet. He vaguely recalls having felt this way when he vowed to stake his life on the Kira case. Was he really considering that it could result in his death, the way he had when Ukita's death had set his limbs trembling?]

Edited 2021-06-08 04:42 (UTC)

[The problem is, Near can't trust L to stand aside. The trade is fair but the track record isn't. L is attached. He hasn't yet proven that this won't hold him back. How can his successor make an agreement he won't be able to stand behind?

The naga crosses his arms over his chest. His displeasure with the conversation is clear.]

I'll trust that you'll stand aside. I can't trust that you'll stay there.

[The victory of L as a concept does not mean that the man they defeated is now a prize for the name's former owner. If anything, Near could argue that they won the case in spite of him, not because of him. After all, what had he left them to work with? His efforts had left Light in charge of the team that should have been working to take him down. It had given him resources he shouldn't have had.]

What have you done to prove otherwise?

[Insult and injury smack simultaneously. Maybe Near intends it; maybe not, but L struggles to understand why Near wants to remain close when it seems so clear that there's no love lost between them. His patience and grace only extends so far, because they are, after all, so much alike.]

I haven't been in a situation like this before. You're asking me to prove what hasn't had a fair elicitation frame in the past.

[Because Near is harsh? Because he expects better from L? Because he wants to hear the man say that he failed?

That's probably it.]

Is it true that you can't even trust that I did what I had to? I left you witnesses. Task force members who would have offered you key information. You couldn't have done it without Aizawa and Mogi, right?

I could have. I did, for the most part.

[Had they been integral to his victory? Possibly. Not as helpful as his own people, and it had taken some time for them to come around. It had taken effort that could have better been used elsewhere had they been on his side to begin with.]

You left those men in the hands of the enemy and you expected them to come to me? If not for Yagami keeping his cover they wouldn't have lived through the investigation.

[Even if they had - even if they'd come to his side willingly - what knowledge they had wouldn't make up for all that L had destroyed.]

Maybe you haven't been in this situation before, but there doesn't always have to be a precedent for something for an outcome to be predicted. You know this.

[L doubts, visibly, that cooperation with the task force hadn't helped Near tremendously. But he wasn't there; for reasons both of them know, he couldn't be.]

Let's backtrack for a moment. A thought experiment... a lark.

[As though this is fun for him, and not the kind of torment he expects from his enemies and allies alike. Is that why his ability to differentiate between them seems compromised, at times?]

What would you have done in my place?

Not have gotten so close to Yagami, for one thing.

[Possibly to his detriment, but he's saying it like it is. Who knows how things would have gone if their interaction had remained from a distance. L approaching him like he had forced Kira's hand in interesting ways. Had he not done that, perhaps the man would have gotten more complacent. It's impossible to say now.

But even had he approached him, he wouldn't have gotten close the way L did. Far too close.]

I want you to know that your deletion of the information never bothered me.

[He would have taken similar precautions in that situation - but the situation itself is the problem. With Kira in the inner circle able to follow anyone's movements it would be difficult to send the files anywhere they couldn't be traced. And what's worse, the company he kept couldn't be trusted not to report back to the suspect.]

It's that you left him full access to what was left.

[A strange expression flickers over L's face. Deadened dismay, like the ashes after a furious fire... and maybe pride, in the skill of one he respects.]

He wasn't meant to have that information. It was the point of erasing it, when I realized that I had a limited window in which to act. But if anyone could restore it... or trace the path of a copy...

[Light Yagami had managed to hack into the police's database, after all.]

I replay that last day constantly in my mind. In some part of it, it's always on repeat. Even with time and distance, I haven't thought of a way I could have saved my life or preserved those files. Actually, before I found myself here, I was--

[Holding a guardrail, thinking, thinking]

It doesn't matter. There was one way out, and... I know, based on what I've been told of the future, that it didn't happen that way.

Not the information itself. Anyone who could have remembered it.

[One of the most annoying aspects of dealing with Light had been how he bad been viewed by everyone else. He was the good guy and that was a problem. How do you convince fools that he's playing them for exactly what they are?]

With your death he was left with a full team at his disposal and access to anything the police could get their hands on. He had the trust of the police and we had to work around that.

[It's another thing he's at risk of repeating here.]

You left him too much power and he took full advantage of it.

[L seems tired without quite being reproachful. He reminds himself often, at this juncture, that Near's criticisms are fair, while still being criticisms of things that happened after L had died and could no longer control.

A wish expressed as a bluff had been taken at face value, by idiots. Light had inherited his title, functionally, for years before Near was ready to step up against him.]

I'd expect both of you to use what advantages were available to you, after...

[A pause. This is bothering him. However it might have seemed, however he might have felt in a weak and solitary moment...]

I was killed. My departure was an involuntary one, following the unprecedented revelation of a god of death and a murder notebook. You must stop speaking as though I chose death and loss.

[And as though I'm choosing it again, now.]

You placed yourself directly next to the man you considered the murderer. Even if you'd had doubts in your theories at any point, inviting someone who'd been a suspect to work on the case alongside you was taking a big risk. You put your life on the line and you knew this. You chose the potential of death.

Had your confidence been so high that you didn't take into account what might happen should you die while all those doors were left open to Yagami?

[Near isn't emotive. He doesn't shake his head in disapproval, he doesn't clench his fists. He twists his finger in his hair as he always does to keep his hands busy, so he isn't still and awkward while attention is upon him.]

Don't act as if what happened is a surprise to you - something unforeseen.

[Conversely, L is very still. Perhaps it's awkward. He's occupying several very different moments in time, and it leaves him feeling stretched, thin, almost transparent.]

My evaluation of the risks associated with the case looked very different on the case's first day. My last day was unforeseen.

[It was such a strange day.]

I can only think of one scenario in which you'd simply accept the notion of a god of death.

[Someone you trusted would have to tell you; Mello would have to tell you.]

I had to see it with my own eyes to believe it when we apprehended Higuchi. By the time we did, there was only time to close one door.

[He sighs shallowly.]

You might not think so, now. Knowing what you know about the case and the way it ended. But I tried to read my case notes through the eyes of an outsider, and the last part sounded as though the author had broken with reality to invent an absurd fiction. If I'd forwarded that to the House without explanation, without Watari alive to corroborate the events, it never would have made it past Roger's desk and into your hands, anyway.

[Embarrassing, really, to see the deceased original's final broken ramblings. Certainly not for the eyes of the next generation.]

I refuse to believe that in all your years as L, you've never been in a situation where your understanding of a case was based on a shadow, and the bear behind you casting that shadow got close enough to hurt you.

[Like the time Mello took out Near's task force with a death note. L would mention it specifically, if he knew.]

Edited 2021-07-05 04:03 (UTC)

None of this changes the fact that you allowed yourself to get too close.

[The same way he is now. Near shouldn't need to repeat this. He's said it enough, but it needs to be driven home. L continues to set this point aside when it's the most important one.]

What happened happened. I wasn't there. It may not be fair for me to make any calls on what you should or shouldn't have done. And your actual notes remain the least important thing.

[They hadn't been needed. It had taken some time, but he'd made his own. What was more valuable would have been the trust of the police, which he didn't have.]

God of death or no, you knew Yagami wasn't trustworthy. Am I wrong?

[Had L truly allowed his suspicions to weaken enough to where Kira had slipped in and made himself a space at the detective's side? Had his mentor really believed him?]

[So it didn't distract or divert. L wonders if he'd ever believed that it would, or even if he'd wanted it to. Is he just saying things that are true, hoping that a confession will eventually stick and be adequate?

Near's conceded, at least, that he wasn't there. That it's done; that it may not be fair. It's possible that's all L wanted, truly, and this will permit them to move on with their difficult conversation.]

He wasn't trustworthy. Isn't trustworthy.

[Near's not wrong.]

A bold stroke and constant surveillance was necessary. I knew that before I even met him, after I determined that Kira could control the time of death. If I enjoyed his company... it was incidental, and not a deciding factor in how I treated him, or how I was willing to resolve the investigation.

[I enjoyed him. You mustn't think that's why I lost. L still doesn't think so.]

[It might not be the main reason L lost, but Near does strongly believe it was a contributing factor. Reading people and situations comes with the job description. What he's seen of the way L talks about Light, even without seeing much of their interaction, speaks for itself.]

Your view is extremely biased.

[Narrowing his eyes had been so much easier when he still had eyelids. He doesn't miss those as much as his legs, but he is occasionally reminded that they're not there.]

It was hardly incidental. You can continue to believe you were unaffected by your attachment, but the only way to prove otherwise is to act appropriately going forward.

[A squirming, mottled, gnawing part of L realizes that it's probably true. Near might not be a people-person, but he's had many years of experience doing a job that requires an unrivaled ability to take apart human beings, study their motives, and predict their next actions. Near knows, or at least gets the gist, of what L feels toward Light. What they've done, what they could do, given the right mood and opportunity.

Not his business, is the knee-jerk retort, but they're Bonded, just as much as L and Light are Bonded. In hindsight, is it unfair for L to think that it was nothing more than a dirty trick for Near to attach to him like a lamprey to psychically spy on him?

Better to confirm and to at least imply hard lines and boundaries. Better to know.]

"Acting appropriately" is subjective. Everyone has a different idea of it. I'd like to know yours.

[So he can respect it, or reject it, but it's a kind of dishonesty L likes to believe he's grown beyond, to glibly agree without understanding what he's agreeing to, use ignorance as a later defense.]

It's true that everyone has a different idea about it, but I feel as though you should be able to make an educated guess.

[So dry. Having to literally spell this out for L isn't giving Near any more confidence about the situation. But he can understand, to a point, wanting things in writing. Common sense isn't something he can rely on in this case.]

Acting appropriately. As in showing me that your relationship won't affect your judgement, just as I've said. Just as I'm asking. Perhaps I'm asking too much.

[It certainly feels like it, when it comes to Light.]

Do you?

[He seems surprised, both brows raised under his shaggy bangs.]

I always thought that of all my successors, you came closest to seeing me for what I was.

[Someone, in other words, who has no notion of what's appropriate and what isn't aside from what he's learned by rote, who outsources all such matters to his handler, keeping human affairs at arm's length. Easy to see why, when they're so messy, so fraught.

Truly a terrible and sorry excuse for a man.]

I can promise my best. To borrow the surplus might be inappropriate, from those who would lend it.

[There's acting appropriately in a social aspect and acting appropriately when it comes to handling ones emotions in a case. Near is fully aware of both their failings in the first matter.]

You're twisting the issue and you know it.

[He needs to remind himself regularly that if he and Mello are two sides of L's persona then his mentor is just as capable of being as emotionally irrational as his rival. It's the half that's more familiar to Near that makes the other part more irritating.]

Just be aware that if you hesitate I will not.

[L's eyes are downcast. He probably does know that he's twisting the issue; it comes so naturally. He likes to get what he wants.]

I might hesitate. If I do... I know that you won't.

[Acknowledgment of the problem, resignation toward the solution. He knows what it will do to him, mentally and emotionally. He has relinquished that to the Greater Good, and for that, he calls himself brave.

Does Near call anyone at all brave? L wonders. L's aware that to care, even a little bit about what Near thinks or believes, is probably masochistic.]

I won't be angry, if you do.

[He might throw his life away, but it's not as bad as being angry. It's not as bad as being heartbroken, it's not as bad as feeling at all.]

Edited 2021-07-19 03:33 (UTC)

You being angry isn't what concerns me.

[Near can deal with angry. It won't be that simple when it comes to this man. He's likely to something stupid, or even many somethings, afterward. This relationship is a lost cause with him.]

You need to realize who he is, what he is, who you are, and what you're doing.

[Somewhere along the line he thinks the man has forgotten.]

I can't tell you that you're better than this, because I honestly don't know if that's the case.

[L pinches the bridge of his nose. He doesn't expect Near to treat him like someone who feels and would grieve, beyond how it could make him a liability. In some ways, that keeps things simple; in other ways, it makes him angry, and it makes him angry that Near doesn't find that concerning.

Deep, calming breaths. Quiet enough that they're not obvious.]

Say that I realize. Enough, if not all.

[He can't, after all, claim to have seen what Near has, or fully understand it beyond what he's been told. A story only carries so much with it.]

My choices may still be the right ones for me, made for my own reasons. All of us have something we hold and choose, and... maybe more tightly and earnestly, if we've accepted that it's temporary.

[His dark eyes, not looking directly at Near, seem dimmer than usual.]

You're under no obligation to tell me what you don't believe. I get that from him, you know.

[Clever. Comrade. Contender.]

I've only seen a few films in my life. There wasn't time for it... and I wasn't interested. I'm not sure that it's the same for you.

[He assumes that Near isn't interested, now. He says his piece, anyway.]

The first one I remember is The Wizard of Oz. An orphan, caught in a storm, chasing always after a man who only tells lies and offers cheap trinkets. Do you know it?

[Dim, still. He doesn't expect Near to, expects an admonishment even from a man who sees nothing wrong with his own childish things.]

I know the Wizard of Oz.

[It's an important pop culture reference. He would only be keeping useful information out of his knowledge base if he didn't see it.]

But if you're making a comparison between yourself and Dorothy, it's a poor one. Dorothy was a naïve child with no idea of what she was getting into. She was blind to the Wizard's lies. You're not.

[At least he shouldn't be, though Near can't help but question how true that is lately.]

I'm sorry for your terrible preferences. But you're in love with a murderer with delusions of godhood. A murdered who killed you, no less. I can offer you very little sympathy over his potential loss.

[Perhaps Near isn't a paragon himself, but he has limits. There should be nothing to grieve here, as far as he's concerned. Their viewpoints on the matter vary too greatly.]

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