Work Text:
I.
Beyond Birthday was under his bed when they came to tell him that A had died, repeatedly flicking a zippo open and shut and counting Roger’s footsteps.
He’d already known something was going to happen today; his eyes had told him the ‘when’ and the birds had told him the rest. He’d laid down in the forest past Wammy’s House and listened, divining how it would happen as he had since childhood– the patterns, the trills, even the silence held meaning for him. Beyond knew he was magic, was different from others. He was a stranger in this world and yet could channel what magic was here using rituals and systems of his own making.
Magic always had a price and he’d gladly paid it in this case, throwing the needed items into a small fire in the woods. Something precious to him– one of his Akazukin Chacha manga. Something from the target– a lock of A’s hair he’d snuck in to clip in the night. Something he’d killed– an enormous spider he’d caught in the attic. And finally, a piece of himself. Beyond pricked his finger with his switchblade and let the blood drip into the fire. Five or six drops should be enough for this ritual since it was only information he needed. Wasn’t like he was trying to make something happen. Powerful magic required a greater sacrifice.
When Roger had left, Beyond grabbed the straw doll he’d prepared for this, the wara ningyo that would absorb evil as A passed to the next world. Equally important was that it would absolve him of the sin of foreknowledge. He couldn’t have saved A, but he knew it was still a very grave sin and one he didn’t want on his conscience. It was nailed to the sacred tree that the birds had told him of years ago, and when he immediately felt better, he knew it had worked.
II.
A few days later, the birds told him someone important was coming to Wammy’s House. Beyond assumed it was for the funeral but when he asked, they said no, the person was coming for him. There’d been murmurs among students in the halls about who would be the next successor to L now that A was dead. Beyond had the next-highest test scores to A but that didn’t mean he was a shoo-in given what Roger liked to term ‘his instability.’ Roger’s opinion didn’t really matter; it would be L that would pick and Beyond had it on good authority that L was also exceedingly odd.
Beyond craved to know the numbers above L’s head, but L had always stayed away. Roger and Wammy had attempted to purge the school of any mention of L– certainly any pictures had been spirited away– but they hadn’t counted on Beyond’s birds tattling on L’s habits. He’d spent quite a lot on sacrifices over the years to hear every detail he could. There were a few old owls that remembered L’s walks in the woods where he would mumble around a lollipop and crouch down to sweep aside leaf litter and draw diagrams in the dirt with sticks. Wild hair, dark eyes, wiry as a willow. Dark crescent moons under his eyes, skin pale as fresh eggs, lips that were constantly worried by a thumb. Beyond laughed when they told him L peed on anthills and once got sick eating the wrong kind of berry. Maybe L was human after all.
It didn’t diminish his distaste for what L represented. Didn’t make his resolve to best the man any less intense. Like A, once upon a time, Beyond had idolized L and this path they’d been corralled into. But like A, he’d gradually become disillusioned by the pressure and the rigid expectations.
Clean as clockwork, Beyond was pulled aside after A’s humdrum funeral and taken to an office with only a laptop on the desk. It was a test and he knew he was being watched by cameras hidden in old portraits or the pompous school regalia on the walls. It was unfair– L’s eyes could see him but Beyond remained blind. The man had been in here, though, and just as his ritual predicted, he thrilled to spot a single short, coarse black hair when he bent to tie his shoes. He pocketed his prize, stuck in a piece of chewed-up gum.
He later found out he passed the test and L had chosen him as his successor. Roger offered it with dry congratulations and Beyond forced a smile, but it made no difference to his plans. The ritual had told him he had to leave Wammy’s House forever. His path was not behind L but over him. Beyond would create a case that would baffle L to the end of his days, and then he would die.
Another wara ningyo was nailed to the tree on his way out, absolving him from the sin of leaving all the others behind (he cut a few corners and only included the hair of the kids who hadn’t been dicks to him. Fuck the rest of them). He had no choice. The ritual was never wrong.
III.
Beyond traveled all over the world but listening was hardest when he ended up in Los Angeles. Car horns and the noise of the city drowned out the songs of whatever unlucky birds lived here. There were pigeons galore but they were too stupid and didn’t know anything of value. They knew L told lies but that was hardly anything new so he didn’t bother making the sacrifice for that.
He’d haunt the pet stores instead, whispering to the parrots and budgies and canaries to find out how close L was to finding him. Some were so tame to have forgotten the meanings of their language and only told him gibberish. Eventually, he scraped together enough money to rent a sordid room in Skid Row and buy a few wilder finches from the shop. Finches were always smart. He slowly befriended them with millet and jam and they were full of ideas and revelations. He made his sacrifices in an old oil barrel in the alley behind his apartment building but he had to be more careful these days. He was running out of things that were precious to him and couldn’t spare as much as before.
As the sweltering days of July passed, he made ten wara ningyo just like the finches said. Four dolls for his first sacrifice, three for the second, two for the third, and one for the last and most important victim– himself. The first nine dolls would banish evil and absolve Beyond, just like the one he’d made for A and the Wammy’s kids. The tenth had a different, opposite purpose, but magic was flexible as long as you knew the rules (his rules). It would be a curse upon L, woven with the strand of the man’s hair he’d secreted away months ago. Beyond didn’t know the numbers over L’s head but this curse would attract some terrible misfortune to L like iron to a magnet. It was the most powerful magic he’d ever attempted but he was giving everything of himself this time; the signs all pointed to success. He would baffle the World’s Greatest Detective and prove himself superior. His magic was something L could never understand.
Beyond released the finches the day he met Misora, hoping their wings would lift them above the smog to somewhere magic hadn’t died. They didn’t know where they would end up and neither did he, he only knew that his magic would work. It always did.
