Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Light was twelve, he already had his life planned out (rather, it had been planned out for him, but he told himself it was what he wanted and pushed away anything that suggested he might want something else). Light was going to go to university, like his father. Light was going to become a policeman, like his father. Light was going to be someone his family could be proud of, like his father.

When Light was fourteen, the future he'd spent his life being groomed for was stolen from him forever.

He wakes up with a splitting headache, thoughts muddled. He doesn't recognise the room he finds himself in. He doesn't recognise the smells, he doesn't recognise the noises, he doesn't recognise the voices he can hear outside and he can't focus enough to make out what they're saying.

He does recognise that he's naked. His first thought is to find clothes. Maybe if he calls for help...

The door opens before he can decide whether that would be a good idea. The man who looks through it smirks at him, eyes lingering on his body in a way no one has ever dared before. "I'd say he's ready."

Ready for what, he wonders for a moment, but then he can feel her and it explains everything.

She's alone, and she wants her pack, she wants a partner, she wants to fight-hunt-kill, raise-voice-and-call-for-pack, she wants to not-be-alone and he does too, and their feelings merge, the loneliness and anger and he shares hate and she shares need because this, this is why their captors have taken them, because she is in heat and he can no more resist her body's cravings than she herself can.

He doesn't remember what happens to him after that. Not clearly.

He's grateful.

She thinks that he'll blame her, once it's over. His mind touches on old learned prejudices - that bondwolves are merely animals, that to share a bond with one is to be reduced to an animal yourself - and she knows them, recognises them from far too many other boys whose minds she's been forced to share. But he is lonely; lonelier, perhaps, than those other boys. More clever, certainly. More cunning. And more willing to accept a connection he has been taught to despise, because animal or no she's the only one to ever see past his masks and care about him anyway.

They escape. She shares what she can tell of their prison, and he uses the knowledge to work out guard shifts and location and many other things that she doesn't understand, and they flee side-by-side and leave behind them a brothel-cum-porn-studio in flames.

They're still in Japan. He hugs her neck tight, thrilled that the two of them have conquered such a mighty foe - and for a fourteen-year-old and single wolf a criminal gang is a mighty foe indeed - and starts planning a route to the nearest embassy, to protect her from the laws that will look so harshly on their bond.

Their luck runs out before they find one.

"...As an acknowledged sentient being, you are responsible for your influence on the defendent. As something other than human, you are judged to have reached the legal age of majority for your species. Therefore, you are charged with multiple instances of rape. You are charged with kidnap. You are charged with arson. You are charged with treason..."

"...As the accused cannot be hanged, punishment is to be death by electrocution..."

Sachiko hugs her son tightly as he screams and writhes, taking vicious satisfaction in the destruction of the devil-creature that has done this to him.

Soichiro stands and observes with bitter pleasure as the young bitch is electrocuted.

Light screams, driven to near-madness as he suffers the death of the only person to ever really accept him - and knows that she's dying because of him.

Chapter Text

L frowns, annoyed at having incomplete information. "Watari."

Watari comes up behind him with the light steps of a wolfsbrother, though his partner died before the two of them met. "Sir?"

L doesn't bother to look around. "Make preparations for travelling to Japan. Yagami is hiding something that relates to the revenge murders, with the cooperation of his department. We need to find out what."

"Very good, sir."

'Probability of it being related to Yagami's prodigal son, Light? Given how thoroughly he's been excised from the family...' L's frown deepens. There is no date of death recorded for the boy. In fact, from his midteens onwards, there has been absolutely nothing recorded about the boy. For the past three years and seven months, Yagami Light officially has not existed.

Normally, L would expect this to be from kidnapping, whether criminal or government. This seems different, though; the complete acceptance of this shown by the Yagami family and their friends doesn't fit. Something happened. Something that everyone with even the faintest connection to the family has agreed to completely bury.

In L's experience, when something is that deeply buried, he needs to unearth it to make sense of a case.

The revenge murders came to L's attention by chance. The first death seemed a random act of insanity - someone attempting to summon a demon or similar creature with a human sacrifice. L would have dismissed it completely, except for the pawprints.

Size and shape combined proved that a bondwolf had been at the murder scene.

Bondwolves are and have always been banned from Japanese soil. The mutation responsible for Canis Lupus Sapiens never spread to Japan, so while Japanese folklore depicts their own wolves as kind and noble, bondwolves are seen as foreign demons who force unnatural connections on humans. Japanese law denies all right of entry to any bondwolf or wolfpartner; even after the Second World War, every treaty involving Japan has included clauses giving this prejudice legal status.

There hasn't been so much as a whisper of a bondwolf disobeying that law since an infamous case somewhat more than three years ago, which led to the bondwolf in question being executed without her pack ever claiming her - though reading between the lines, L is sure they never had a chance, if they even knew of her presence there. Some more enterprising than usual criminal ring managed to find and kidnap a single bondwolf bitch, brought her to Japan, and... well.

Looking into the history of the victim, L found that he'd been part of that gang. The pawprints seemed to be explained as an attempted misdirection.

Then the next two bodies were found. One had been part of the ring, the other had possibly done some minor jobs for them.

There were prints at that site, too.

The third site had more prints and another body, this time a fairly low-ranking police officer. Looking into his financial history, L found unexplained payments which fitted far too well with the criminal ring's movements.

The fourth, fifth and sixth sites: three more members of the ring.

The seventh site: the judge who'd sentenced the bondwolf to death by electrocution, another dirty officer, and another part-time connection, this one a chemist known for creating and providing illegal drugs.

That was the point at which the Japanese police realised this was serious and officially asked for L's help. He didn't bother to mention that he'd already been looking into the cases when he accepted. He was too intent on seeing whether the police would admit they were connected, or try to prevent him from finding out how.

More deaths, more bodies, more prints, and yet L still hasn't found that vital link - but he has found that the police are aware of it. Specifically, the Chief of the NPA is connected. Personally.

L wonders what he's done that ties to these murders.

L goes to personally inspect the latest crimescene, curious to see whether the police will actively hide things from him.

His eye catches on a handsome face among the bystanders. It's vaguely familiar, somehow.

He's humiliated to only recognise hours later that the face could well belong to an older version of the missing boy he's been studying photographs of.

He goes to an older crimescene. The circle is still there, carved into the ground, but the symbols he remembers from the photographs have been cleaned away.

A familiar face passes him on the street as he leaves. L promptly turns and follows.

They end up in a small coffee shop, L following the teenager into a booth in the corner of the room. The young man doesn't seem concerned at being followed by a complete stranger. He just looks at L, calculating brown eyes analysing every facet of L's appearance. "Hello."

L decides to be blunt. "Are you Yagami Light?"

The teenager flinches. "Just Light. I don't have a right to a second name."

L stares. Familial exile? Almost unheard of -

His mind pulls the facts of the case together. A criminal gang known to have kidnapped a lone wolfbitch, one with no partner; a shady chemist who could have provided drugs to cause false heats - or widen a person's openness to bonding - or both; a beautiful teenage boy who disappears from all legal records at the same time as a bondwolf is executed for crimes including multiple instances of rape... a boy who has somehow shamed his family to the point they deny his existence....

L is sat with the murderer. And has no evidence. Yet.

Light sees his understanding, and smiles coldly. "Catch me if you can," he murmurs, and leaves without drinking the coffee he's paid for.

L's eyes hood as he glares at the innocent coffeecup. He has to track down the people involved in Light's kidnapping and subsequent assault, protect them long enough to use as bait to draw Light out so he can capture him. He's fairly sure there are still some; nothing about these cases suggests Light to be the type of criminal who randomly visits the scenes of his past crimes, so he has to have been keeping watch for investigators, and the most likely reason is to take advantage of them to find the people he hasn't.

It's easy for L to find the last two people Light is looking for - one who recorded what happened while Light was captive, one who participated.

L ignores their blustering attempts to deny responsibility for what they did or claim it wasn't really a crime. His only interest is catching Light.

Light catches L first.

Chapter Text

L wakes groggily to find himself sat against - and chained to - a wall, wearing unfamiliar clothes and covered with a pile of blankets. It's dim, but he can see far enough to tell that he seems to be in a large building - a barn, possibly, or more likely an empty warehouse.

The air smells metallic, in a way he recognises as fresh-spilled blood. The space in front of him is mostly empty, except a small pile that he hopes is not more dead bodies.

He doesn't want to have failed so humiliatingly.

"You're awake?"

L considers pretending to still be asleep, but decides against it - Light seems to want an audience, and if L can distract him then he'll have more chance of disrupting Light's plans for him - whatever those are.

He raises his head to find that Light is offering him a bottle of water. "No after-effects, I hope?" L considers his current state, and agrees, wondering what exactly Light drugged him with.

Light smiles. "Good. I thought I had the mixture I wanted, but you'd be surprised how much of a pain it is to extract the right ingredients from those over-the-counter sleep aids."

L blinks, disconcerted by the casual attitude towards such a complicated effort. "Surely there would be easier ways to obtain what you required?"

Light's smile grows to a smirk. "Ah, but I know that L is after me. Why give the World's Greatest Detective such an easy trail to follow?" His eyes rake over L. Does he even know who he's talking to? "That's why I changed your clothes, by the way - the last thing I want is some tracking device leading people here too early."

"Too early?" None of the implications are good.

Light just smirks at him and turns to the pile on the ground. "This is it. The final part." He glances back, and adds condescendingly, "Don't worry. You're just here to bear witness."

"And afterwards?"

Light doesn't answer, stepping carefully on the ground. L suspects that the same bizarre circle that showed up in previous crimescenes must have already been drawn, and he is trying not to disrupt it.

He reaches the bodies of the men L found for him, and kicks them awake, drawing pained groans that tell L they have been gagged somehow. L can't see Light's face, but every line of his body screams disdain. "'Come on, now. Don't think you'll be allowed to rest yet'," he says, voice poisonous, and L is sure he's quoting something one of them said to him - over three years ago.

Light picks up a hammer. L stares, speechless, as he systematically smashes each man's hands, shoulders, feet, and hips. "There. 'Gonna try escaping?'" Having rendered them both helpless, Light takes his time digging a circular trench into the concrete around the two men. Once it's complete, he kneels between them and - of all things - starts to pray.

L's first urge is to scoff, but the sound never leaves his throat.

When L was twelve, Wammy took him to a well-known pack, to see if he might be a wolfpartner. He didn't form a strong enough bond for any of the pups to choose him, but L has never forgotten the sensation of another person's emotions pressing against his mind. This, now, is similar, affection-welcome-gratitude filling the air, but he can feel a conflicting layer underneath of malice-amusement-hunger that makes him shudder and huddle into the wall.

He stares in disbelief as the shadows seem to rise up in front of Light and congeal into a wolfshape. Trapped in the circle with it, the two criminals Light has chosen as his victims scream in panic, trying - and failing - to get away from the monster.

Light relaxes, dropping to his knees and hugging the shadowform. "I miss you," he says, and it's a confession made in a tone of voice L has only ever heard from wolfpartners talking to their bondwolves, loving knowledge of someone that can only be had by sharing their mind. The shadow responds with a badly-fitting mask of agreement-love that shades into anticipation-eagerness-greed instead of covering it.

Light doesn't seem to notice any more than he notices his victims' screams, smiling and happy as if he really were talking to the shade of his partner. "I'm sorry it took me so long, but these are the last two."

The shadow's ears perk up. Oh?

Light's voice goes from joy to vicious bloodlust. "Kill them."

The men shriek, but their deaths are swift.

Light sits on the floor, ignoring the blood and viscera, and buries his face in the shadow's not-quite-fur. "Thanks." He shifts, and L can see the expression on his face again for the first time since Light dug out the trench that is now filling with blood. Tears are pouring down his cheeks, he's smiling, lines of pain etch his face, and yet his eyes are blank and dead. "Thanks for letting me pretend." He hugs the shadow harder, and turns to L, unthinkingly scratching behind the shadow's ear. "I guess you'd like an explanation now?"

L has no idea what to say, but he can tell he doesn't need to; Light wants an audience. This is why he's here in the first place.

"They ran a porn circle. And a brothel. They caught my partner and they kept her in a cage, fed her drugged meat to keep her in heat. They caught boys, too - pretty boys." Light's smile turns disgusted. "Like me. They'd catch us one at a time and feed us drugs to soften our minds, so we felt what she felt, and then they put us in a room with one chipboard wall between us and her and - I don't know how many men were with me." He's starting to shiver, leaning into the shadow, and L wonders if it even comforts him or if he's just hoping that it will. "I guess I could try to find out. They recorded it. All of it. I'm pretty sure the fire didn't get all the recordings."

His voice snaps with triumph as he mentions the fire, though his eyes are as dead as ever. "They underestimated us. They thought I was going to blame her, I was going to push her away, but she's - she was -" He falters, trying to find the words, and L is horribly reminded of the one time Wammy tried to describe what having his own wolfpartner had been like. Everything he sees here says that Light's bond with the wolf would have been permanent, not the temporary result of drugs. And L knows how this story ends - but he didn't know the middle, the part Light is now filling in.

"She wanted me," Light finally settles on, voice soft with memory. "She wanted me, and I didn't have to be perfect for her to keep wanting me, I was perfect enough without having to meet her standards all the time, she wasn't disappointed by how I felt or how I thought and she shared everything with me and she helped me get out and she helped me get us both away and all I had to do was find an embassy before my father found us and I failed and they killed her AND IT'S MY FAULT SHE'S DEAD!"

The scream rings against the empty building's walls as Light pants. "It's my fault," he repeats softly. "And I had to feel it. They electrocuted her, because that's supposed to destroy the soul as well as the body." L jumps, looks at the shadow beside Light. Light smiles tiredly at him. "I know this isn't her. But it's all I've got. It's all I had."

He turns to the shadow. L thinks he can finally see something in Light's eyes. He hopes he's wrong, because after what he's just heard he does not want to find out why Light would be feeling anticipation.

He isn't wrong.

"Thank you," Light says, with a sincere gratitude that makes bile rise in L's throat. "Thank you for letting me pretend. But it's over now."

Querying-hungry-interested

Light just smiles. "I gave you a lot of sacrifices, didn't I? Everyone responsible for what happened to me. Now there's just one left."

The shadow turns its head to stare at L with nonexistent eyes.

"No!" Light scolds it. "Not him. He's the witness. That's why I drew the circle so carefully, to keep you from escaping and harming anyone outside it."

The shadow looks back at Light. Then...?

Light actually rolls his eyes, then tilts his head to bare his neck. "Please. Isn't it obvious? She's been completely destroyed." His voice softens. "I want to join her." L wishes he didn't hear the last word. "Please." This boy who could have - should have - had every advantage, reduced to begging for nonexistence.

The shadow grinned, revealing pointed black teeth. Sure.

"Thank you," Light whispers, moments before it tears his throat out.

L cringes against the wall, watching as the thing feasts on Light's corpse, losing its wolfshape to become a formless blob. Once it finishes, and finishes amusing itself by desecrating the body, the shadow drifts to the edge of the circle Light had drawn, half-heartedly trying to find a gap in it. As if sensing L's regard, it changes shape again, becoming a stretched-out parody of a human figure. "Hey. Don't suppose you'd let me out of here?"

"No." L huddles under the blankets Light must have oh-so-thoughtfully provided, watching in reluctant fascination as the demon in front of him prowls its cage.

"Damn. The kid always was too smart for my own good. Didn't let me get away with half the stuff I thought I would."

"And yet you kept answering his call," L probes, still looking for clues, for explanations, even though the case is over.

The shadow laughs. "Of course I did! You got any idea how many people he sacrificed to me? If I hadn't someone else would have got all that stuff. It was one Hell of a feast! Got no idea how you humans are so deaf; that kid was screaming for his partner, all raw and open. He was just begging to be used up. Hell, he thanked me for it - you heard him do it!"

L can't disagree.

"Eh, might as well get going now the kid's gone. You'll probably wanna have a word with his father."

"Why would I want to do that?"

The shadow's grin is hideous. "Oh, didn't you know? There's a couple of webcams set up in here, beaming all the footage to daddy dearest's e-mail." Its laughter is worse. "Guess the kid maybe wanted to share one last 'fuck you' for killing that wolf and then telling him it was for his sake, huh?"

The shadow is gone before L can come up with a response. He focusses all his attention on unchaining himself.

L will always remember Light as the only case he has ever failed.