But everything that used to be stone seemed shattered now. When they were going up a final set of stairs, L had decided that it would be better if he didn't abandon Mr. Wammy's body. He reversed and started back down the stairs.

"Come on, Ryuuzaki... It'll just be harder if you go back down," Matsuda said pleadingly.

"It's not hard, nothing's hard for me," L mumbled hollowly in return.

Mogi was less of a pushover. He wrapped his hand around L's slim arm in an impenetrable grip and said a simple, "Let's keep going." At that point, L was going along regardless with the larger man's intentions. Everything again went hazy as he forgot why his legs were functioning.

When they reached the bedroom, Mogi shut the door behind them and leaned against it, crossing his arms and releasing a sigh along with the youth's arm. Matsuda sat maladroitly on one of the reclining chairs, glancing awkwardly out the small window. L blinked, still unsure what to believe, and stepped deftly onto a bed. He lowered himself into his crouched position, and then threw himself backwards so that he was laying down. He sprawled out on the soft mattress, his gaze up on the ceiling above.

"Are you doing okay, Ryuuzaki?" Matsuda asked in a hopeful attempt to break the silence.

L didn't answer. His brain was very tired right then. He could hardly take in what had just happened. Something about Mr. Wammy, something about the Death Note, something about Lawliet... It just was not registering. What he really needed more than anything was a handful of sugar cubes, or a slice of French silk pie, or even a cup of chocolate milk. Sugar was the electricity that ran the computer that was his mind. Out of fuel. Sustenance required for further operation.

Ha, ha. His lips twisted into a smirk at that thought.

"It'll be okay, Ryuuzaki. Are you feeling all right?" Matsuda pressed on. "I know, I'll make you some tea. Would that make you feel better?"

Again, L had no answer, because he didn't exactly understand the question. What he did notice was that the ceiling had tiles. Rows of six, columns of eight, that made forty eight. Six and eight jumped over the gate, and met at forty eight. That little rhyme made sense in English, anyway. In Japanese it did not. Nothing made sense since he arrived in Japan. Was that where he was, anyway? Where had he been before that? Had it been Russia or Nigeria? Why had he been in Nigeria anyway? Oh, that was three years ago.

Wait... what? Did he even speak Nigerian? He racked his brain, and then laughed inwardly when he recalled that Nigerian wasn't a language. Nigeria hadn't even been 'Nigeria' for a whole century yet. There were several different dialects there. How many of those did he know? Well, he couldn't quite remember what he knew. The logical plan would be to go back to Nigeria and find out. It was a trial and error approach, efficient enough...

Watari wouldn't like that very much though. Watari didn't like staying in Nigeria because of the endless crime, murder, and near civil war. Well, where was Kira then, huh? Where was Kira when it came to how the world truly operated? Why didn't he end civil war and stop political assassinations and bring order and 'justice' to the places that needed it most? Why did he sit in his little Japanese room assuming that everything he saw on TV actually mattered? That in the long run, killing a rapist or a mere murderer really changed anything? The law could handle criminals that were already behind bars. But it had a harder time helping the countries that needed a superhero most... That was because he was just a teenager, with delicate young round eyes that thought they understood because they so usually did when it came to schoolwork and... just a...

Kira... wait... what?

"Ryuuzaki! I have an idea. Let's play a card game. Let's play poker."

"Tota, will you be quiet?" the normally quiet Mogi said with uncharacterized irritability, using the man's first name very informally. Well they were actually good friends out of the uniform, L vaguely recalled, so that would be okay.

Ha, ha. Japan and its strict formalities. Lawliet had learned that back at Wammy's... at... hm, L couldn't seem to recall what he had just been thinking about.

L rolled over onto his stomach. The bed's dull red blankets were also tiled in rows of yellow-green boxes. But they were small tiles, so this would take some counting. Oh yes, but he would not have to count every single tile. Actually, he could count the rows, and then the columns, and multiply them together... that would make for an accurate count. But he couldn't start counting in the middle of the blanket. He crawled over to the edge of the bed and grabbed a side with his fingers and studied it with fervency. One, two, skip a few... three, four, shut the door, nine, ten, a big fat hen... wait, that wasn't right.

"Ryuuzaki?" It was Mogi who interrogated him this time.

"What do you want?" L asked, still studying the tile pattern.

"Uh, pardon? I don't understand..."

L frowned. Those pieces didn't seem to go together. Mogi had said sumimasen, watashi wa wakarimasen. Let's see. That was Japanese. Ah, how silly, he had been speaking in English! Then he must be in Japan, because that's where they spoke Japanese. He didn't think that any other country predominantly spoke that language. So why did it even exist in the first place? Perhaps it would be pragmatic for everyone to have the same language so that they would always understand. Oh, but people would fight over which language to choose, so probably they could just put all the languages together. Wait... no, because then how would they decide where to put the adjectives? Maybe that man would understand English. "Do you speak English?" L asked, but he was sure to use the words anata wa eigo ga hanashimasu ka.

"No, I just said that I didn't..."

"L doesn't look right. Mogi-san, is L okay?" Matsuda asked.

"Oh, I'm okay, thank you," L drawled, putting his finger on the place where had been counting the squares to mark it. Now he would remember that he was at fifty-four. Hold it. Was it fifty-two? It was easy to mix those up because they were both even numbers. "I hope I'm speaking Japanese this time, it seems that's all you can comprehend."

"Of course that's all! Well, I mean, I have taken some Mandarin... how many languages do you speak, Ryuuzaki?" Matsuda apparently was very fond of conversation.

L blinked, trying to focus on the young Japanese man that sat on that chair. He craned his neck behind him to see better. "Why do you want to know? Are you Kira?"

"Ah! Mogi-san! What's wrong with L?"

"Because Kira wants me dead but I'm gonna kill him first," L continued. Probably in Japanese. Or maybe Nigerian... ha, ha, of course not! It was a joke. Though jokes did have to be said out loud, otherwise they weren't funny. Mr. Wammy might like that one, where had he gone off to, anyway? And what about Kira? That was probably more important, but L couldn't for the life of him remember why. "Where did he go? He was Japanese, like you guys. But there are a lot of that type around here, right? Aren't we in Japan? Hm, well, Mr. Wammy knows. Where's Wammy?"

Matsuda was in a stunned silence and gave Mogi a troubled look. Then he peeped out, "He must need some sugar. It's been over an hour since he had some last. Or, no, it's because he's not sitting like he usually does! He says his reasoning ability goes down if he doesn't sit like that..."

Mogi sighed again, and stepped forward to where L was laying draped on the covers. "Ryuuzaki-san, please look at me."

He said 'Ryuuzaki', in reference to me. L looked up with wide eyes at the heavy-set Kanzo Mogi. "Wammy is practiced at keeping track of things. I'll probably ask him where Kira is. I think I met him once, and if I remember right, I liked him a lot. Say, do you sumo wrestle?"

Mogi lifted a hand of iron and brought it crashing down at L's upright face. The lanky youth went falling backwards with a look as stunned as Matsuda's. Mogi then reached forward and grabbed him by his white cotton shirt collar, pulling him upright. "Ryuuzaki-san!" he said firmly. "You need to stop this. Watari, the one you're calling Wammy, is dead. The Shinigami killed him just an hour and a half ago. We still need to catch Kira, with more motivation than ever now. I don't know anyone who could catch Kira except for you, so you can't waste time acting like this."

L's face stung pink from the blow. It felt good. Alien, but good. He couldn't tell if his head felt like it was swimming, or had finally stopped swimming, or... After he had thoroughly enjoyed the peculiar feeling, he went over those words that were definitely in a comprehensible tongue. And suddenly, and unmercifully so, they registered in his mind.

The detective nodded toward Mogi and slowly uncurled the hand that held his shirt with his own fingers. The bigger man complied and L settled down in a sitting position, hugging his legs. "So Watari is dead," he said in what he for sure knew was Japanese.

"Yes."

"I'm so sorry, Ryuuzaki!" Matsuda cut in again.

"How awful..." He couldn't quite find the words that he wanted to say, but he felt as though he did want to say something. There was a perfect sentence in Russian that he thought about uttering, but what was the point in saying something if no one could understand? So he buried his face in his knees instead. His throat suddenly felt very sore, anyway. "It's cold in here, isn't it," he murmured finally, because he couldn't think of anything else to say and it was true.

"Come on, then." Mogi pulled L upwards onto his feet. L was confused momentarily about why it mattered whether or not he was standing up. But Matsuda had taken the blanket from the bed, which had been previously weighed down by the detective's slight form. Mogi lowered L again so that he could sit on the red sheets of the mattress, and Matsuda wrapped the blanket around his shoulders.

"There, is that better now?" Matsuda asked with a warm smile.

L squinted at the two officers, because his eyesight seemed to be blurry. "Thank you." Awkwardly he clasped onto the thick fabric with icy fingers and hugged it close to his body. Wammy always had blankets for L, and a cup of tea, and a card game. But Wammy liked Lawliet. No one else did. The police officers resented him and his harsh methods, but that was okay. They had a business deal, and a common goal. They helped each other and they did not have to like him.

So it was of course nothing personal that Mogi-san and Matsuda-san were acting so unpresumptuously. They required his extraordinary services to capture Kira. He was just a piece of precious technology, a computer that had come across a virus. They couldn't afford to lose him, he was worth too much and nearly irreplaceable. He was nothing more than a half-alive being in a dark office, shut behind thick concrete without anyone to love him. He didn't even have... incomplete, inhumane, no soul, no heart, no... 'so none of these are real, huh?'

So L bowed his head again into his knees again. The denim fabric of his jeans pressed against his cheeks. He turned his face to the side, only to find that the knees of his pants were slightly damp. Come to think of it, his face was damp too, and he detected that there was water in his eyes.

Ah, must've been the rain. Of course, it was such a terrible rainstorm. Outside the window the water fell by the gallon and the wind howled its sad symphony. Even in the shelter of L's high-security headquarters, he couldn't seem to escape the rain. But this time, the bells were hushed. There was nothing calling out to him.

And speaking of pawns... Light stepped into Misa's apartment and ignored its expensive furniture and high class appeal. The hand crafted red oak table and big screen television were just an annoying reminder that Misa was a celebrity. This meant that if she messed up, it could reveal to the world everything about Kira. He had already once been frightened for his life on her account, but thankfully that Shinigami had been atomized.

"Light!" Misa, in dressy Gothic attire and blonde pigtails tied with black ribbons, gleefully wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her face in his chest. "Misa missed her Light so, so very much!"

Light attempted to close the door after him, which was easier said than done with the parasitic female latched on to him. "Where's Ryuk?"

"Oh.." Misa lifted her head and nodded enthusiastically. "Right, Kira business! Ryuk-sama! Where did you go off to?"

"Ah, what's that, is Light here?" In a way, Ryuk, who must have been dozing in the bedroom, sounded almost as excited as Misa to see him. The gangly, dark God of Death wandered into the entryway, an exaggerated grin on his leering face. "My favorite human is here! Hey, buddy, please say you're here to reclaim your Death Note. I can't stand this broad much longer, and she doesn't even have a PlayStation..."

Light took an uninvited seat on a leather couch, crossing one leg over the other. He closed his eyes for a moment to block away the headache that he could see approaching."Ryuk, I need to talk to you."

Ryuk smirked, still standing. A God of Death smirking in his face would never cease to be uncomfortable to Light, even though he more or less (mostly less) trusted the being. "You're welcome to talk all you want, kid, but unless you're telling me more Street Fighter cheat codes, you know I might not answer."

Misa pounced upon the couch next to Light, curling under his arm like a kitten. "Please be nice to my Light-kun, Ryuk-sama! He's had a rough time, and that L is making it awful for him!"

"Hyuk, hyuk!" The Shinigami let a gurgle of a laugh that came deep from his long throat. "I'm not here to coddle any human and I don't give special treatment. I'm sure not like that Rem."

"No, you're infinitely more alive... if that's what you call your existence," Light snapped.

"O-ho! So Rem finally bit the dust, eh?" Ryuk laughed again. "I love that saying, it's so ironic when you're talking about us Shinigami."

"Rem... what happened to Rem?" Misa asked in a sudden, surprising concern. "She didn't-"

"Ryuk. What does it mean when a man has no name?" Light was in no mood to spend time repairing Misa's feelings. She would forgive him later anyway, without a doubt.

"No name, eh?" Ryuk casually strolled over the counter, where Misa had left out a wicker basket of picturesque red apples. He snatched one in to long, pointed claws, and took a gushing bite. "All the humans I've killed have had names."

"Clearly. But what if one didn't?"

"Ahh, you're the genius, why don't you tell me?" There was a darkly jolly twinkle in his bulging round eyes as he regarded the boy. "Why do you think the Death Note kills in the first place? What d'you suppose it is about a name?"

Indeed this was something that Light had wondered on numerous occasions. Being someone who was very logically minded, he had idly wondered what kind of scientific weight a man-made name could have. He hadn't lingered to far into the issue though, because it had never seemed terribly relevant. "I would guess that it has a psychological impact on a person. In which case it would have to be the name that the person thought of his or herself as. Usually we think of ourselves as our legal names, so that's always why those names have killed."

"I dunno," Ryuk shrugged, basically affirming what Light said to be true.

"So if they don't have a name... they are lacking something psychologically?"

"Could be. Misa, do you see names above animals?"

"No... not at all," Misa answered, apparently still trying to cover her composure.

"So I'm right. Names are a man-made thing, and they only work if you feel attached enough to them make them your identity. So L doesn't think of himself as any of the names that Rem tried to write down," Light thought out loud. Another thought passed him with mere curiosity. "Is the Death Note binding to the future, if it unsuccessfully worked in the usual designated time? If somebody started to have a self identity again and associate themselves with a name previously written down, would they die?"

"Light." Ryuk leaned forward, grinning wildly. "You're a riot."

That seemed to be the best he would get out of that demonic creature. As Light walked in the rain back to the headquarters, inwardly he knew that any shot he could take would be a near-impossible gamble as long as L was in such a high-security position. When would it be logical to take a rash move forward? It was a desperate situation. L would test the thirteen day rule again, any time, and Light would again be handcuffed and imprisoned. Misa would too, and they might find Misa's Death Note. The killings would stop and...

It was game over then. He could already see L's leering face looking at him from outside an execution chamber, saying something in a false sympathetic voice about how he wished that Light-kun had been innocent. He hated L all over again, and assured himself that not a single, tiny cell in his being had been relieved that his rival had survived the murder.

Then he noticed his body and immediate surroundings. He must have tossed and turned in the night, because he was curled up in a mess of sheets and blankets. His legs and arms were haphazardly spread around the king sized mattress, and his waist was twisted and bent. Light Yagami had once cursed at him for taking all the blankets when they slept when they had been chained together. Well, what could L say, it was a dog-eat-dog world.

Light Yagami... it's always been either you or me.

L sat up, and out of habit he looked around the bed for some sign of the brunette. But there was no Light to be found. Oh, of course, L had released Light from the handcuff. Because there was no evidence to... wait, why was Matsuda asleep in the reclining chair?

L blinked his wide eyes. The young cop was fast asleep. The jacket of his suit had been neatly laid out on the small table by the chair, and his navy dress shirt was partially unbuttoned. Apparently, Matsuda had been watching over him in the night. Wait, what was that? No one watched over L. L watched over them.

Wait...

"Matsuda-san?" L asked out loud. The cop didn't respond, except for perhaps shutting his sleep-captive eyes even tighter. "Matsuda-san!"

At that, Matsuda's eyes twitched, and slowly an eye opened. He let out a sleepy sigh as he shook his head to wake up, and then he languidly turned fully to the detective. "Uhn... 'morning, Ryuuzaki."

"Matsuda-san, is Watari dead?" There was no point in beating around the bush. A detective just required hard facts without pleasantries and small talk. This was no time to be insidious, and he didn't want anyone to be insidious toward him. Of course, this was Matsuda he was talking to.

Matsuda visibly froze. Hesitantly he answered, "Yes. Don't you...?"

"I remember." L untangled his legs from the covers and slipped off the bed. His feet felt a little numb, but he still thought that the ground was cold. He walked to the door.

"Wait! Where are you going?"

"I don't know. Where there are more answers."

"Ah. Uh! Can you wait? I'll come with you, Ryuuzaki-kun!" Matsuda fumbled with his shirt and the jacket. "Just give me a second!"

L didn't stop though. He exited, shutting the door behind him, and walked down the hallway. He wasn't sure if he exactly wanted to go there, but his feet were leading him to the main headquarters office. Instinct wanted to walk over to Wammy's private office and wish him a good morning. Maybe they could have a quick cup of tea... ah, no. No, logic told him, that couldn't exactly happen now.

Matsuda caught up to him, panting, but L did not acknowledge him. Matsuda actually took the hint and was therefore quiet as he trailed him like an uncertain puppy.

L opened the door to the main investigation room. He must have slept a long time, because Soichiro Yagami and Light and even Aizawa and Hideki Ide were there. Papers and files were sprawled across the large desk and the men drank their coffee (tragically all black, not one packet of sweetener in sight), talking quietly among themselves. But when they saw L, every one of them was silent. Light was the only one who looked away in discomfort. Appropriate.

"Good morning, everyone," L said in his usual polite-yet-detached tone. He walked to the counter where someone had already made the morning tea. He ignored the eyes that stared at him, and poured himself a cup.

"Ryuuzaki, how are you feeling?" Soichiro asked, standing up.

"Mm. I'm adequate, thank you." Someone had put a considerably sized glass bowl, full of sugar cubes, right next to the tea. That was nice. For the last couple of weeks, somebody had always been hiding it or putting the cubes in an inconvenient place. He had derived that the culprit was Soichiro, because he was always hinting that he didn't think L's diet was healthy. Anyway, it was kind that he decided to lay off on that today. Or perhaps he had merely forgotten? Either way, L took a handful of the white crystal cubes gratefully and plopped them, one by one, into the tea. "What's the criminal count for last night?"

Plop, plop, plop.

"There were no deaths." It was Light who said this. L caught some peculiar tone, as if Light were trying to subtly prove some point. The detective decided not to bother analyzing this - it could mean any number of things, but L already knew that he was Kira, and he really just wanted his tea.

Plop.

"Ah. Okay." He popped one extra sugar cube in his mouth, and then took the hot mug and walked to his computer chair. The sugar cube felt so nice as it melted under his tongue. He stretched his sore neck to one side, and then the other. There was a reassuring crack as tension was released. He stepped onto the chair and lowered himself into a crouch. "Who's got the current events? We might as well track who Kira will probably murder next, anyway."

"Wait." Soichiro approached him, and out of the corner of his eyes, L saw a face creased in a frown. "Ryuuzaki... it's all right. We don't need you here today. Nothing has happened that we can't control, and I'd like it if you just took a day off."

"Why would I do that?" L asked in very mild curiosity.

"Because... you've been through a lot. Or are you... still..?" It didn't take the world's greatest detective to detect what the older man was implying.

"Watari's dead," he said plainly, setting the mug on the counter by his keyboard. And with a voice like an arrow directed at Light, he added, "And I think I can pin it more or less as another of Kira's murders. As far as I can interpret things, the Shinigami would have no motivation to kill him, and it was an ever so convenient detail for Kira that he died. The pieces fit together perfectly, all I need to do is find the hard evidence. All I want to do right now is capture Kira and send him to his execution. What do you think, Light-kun?"

Light paused for a split second, but this was long enough for L to know he caught the remark. That was an additional third of a percent as far as evidence of his crime went. "It's brilliant that you were able to deduct such a thing. However, I'm reluctant to assume that we know anything at all about Shinigami and why they do what they do. As you had said before, it would be informative if we could somehow find another to learn more..."

"Yes. And there is at least one more Kira still out there who is active, without a doubt. Higuchi's death proves this. It seems to me a little like we're back at the start again without a lead, but we do have that Death Note now. Somehow, maybe we can use it to bait a Kira..." L bit at his thumbnail, thinking. He removed it to sip the sugary substance that perhaps still could be called 'tea'. The hot liquid felt incomplete. It was missing something... "Matsuda-san, please bring me a doughnut."

"Uh, sure..."

"Aizawa-san, could you please confirm one more time that the deaths in that notebook line up exactly with the deaths we have on record? What we're going to do is check how many of the total victims lost their lives from this particular book. Logically, all of the Kira's have been committing these murders, so which have committed which? Categorize them. If we could find some pattern, we can work out who the Kiras out there are more likely to kill... a shot in the dark, but I don't want to overlook that..."

"We've been checking the names throughout this morning," Aizawa affirmed. "We're not even half way done, but everything is matching up so far."

"Okay. Even so, please keep going. We can't afford to miss a single detail. It absolutely has to be thorough. Ide-san, could you please look into the profiles again of all the victims? Since this one was Higuchi's notebook, I imagine it will have every single one of the business world victims. If it doesn't however, we might perhaps guess that another Kira from some large corporation found a Death Note."

"Ryuuzaki?" Matsuda called from in the kitchen area, a little cautiously. "There are no doughnuts left. There's cheesecake, would you like that instead?"

"No, I want a doughnut," L said with irritation. Of all the people he had worked with, these Japanese cops seemed the most incapable. "Of course there are doughnuts, Watari always keeps plenty of them. Someone call him, please, he'll tell you where to find them."

No one moved.

L glanced backwards at Matsuda. "Please, Matsuda-san. I consider this to be a very important matter..."

Again, Light's eyes were downcast as he pretended to very intently read some document. Everybody else just stared. Matsuda's mouth opened slightly as if he wanted to say something but didn't know exactly what. Aizawa and Ide exchanged glances. Mogi looked toward Soichiro, who watched L with pained eyes.

L felt annoyed all over again at first. It was awkward, especially when one was so used to working alone. Then he realized his mistake. He had quite simply forgotten. That didn't usually happen, but so it did, why were they all staring? He turned back to the monitor, wondering if he were blushing. "It's okay, Matsuda-san, nevermind. I'm not hungry anyway."

Soichiro cleared his throat. "Ryuuzaki, you haven't exactly been sleeping much these past few weeks, and you've been stressed. I would like you to just take today off and rest some more to clear your head."

"If I left, who do you think would lead this investigation? Light-kun?" He hadn't meant to say that name, it just sort of blurted out - another thing that he didn't, as a rule, do. Luckily, his tone was as collected and detached as it always was so it probably didn't sound sarcastic. "There's no benefit at all to me leaving. In fact, this is L's investigation in the first place. So not only is that a pointless hypothesis, I have no intention or desire in doing so."

"You don't even know what's what!" Soichiro said with sudden frustration. He slammed a heavy fist down on the counter, which made a loud noise. "You're never going to be able to recover if you keep pushing this to the back of your mind! You need to take the time to just think about things, before you start worrying about Kira!"

L thought this was stupid, and he didn't much like that Yagami-san was yelling at him, either. "Take time to... think? But I'm always thinking. I can't afford a luxury like not worrying about Kira. Ever since I started this case I knew that at any moment he could potentially kill me. And nothing's changed. I don't have-"

Something else conveniently pushed aside: Looks like she tried to write your name in the Death Note, too. ... But why aren't you dead, Ryuuzaki? Wasn't that the right name? Do you even remember?

L stood up and walked toward the table where Aizawa, Ide and Mogi sat. Among the pile of documents was the Death Note that Rem had, pushed to the side of the other papers like an unwanted outsider. He seized it in his slender fingers like a cat clawing out at a rodent.

"Ryuuzaki..." Light said quietly, looking at him.

L ignored that and opened the note. He paged through it, noticing with an irony how normal the paper looked. It was against all logic that simple paper could kill a healthy old man, not one as strong as... There, at the end of the list, there was Quillsh Wammy. He took this in with nothing more than a vacant expression and a throat void of moisture. But under that name...

It was amazing how many names the Shinigami had managed to write in such a short period of time. Those names meant nothing to L, so he marveled without passion at them. That was why he had fake identities; so killers and gods couldn't touch him. One of them, which one was it, the one that they told him that... told him, what?

Lawliet. The last name, right before unreadable, desperate scribblings.

"I-I thought that..." L stammered out loud, but quietly, and the voice drifted away. I thought that that was my name. No? Resolved: A Shinigami has the eyes to see the names of humans, and this power is transferable to Kiras. This is the only probable explanation as to why Rem could have killed Wammy. She meant to kill me, too... what happened? She wrote the name, didn't she?

What if... L didn't have a name? A lonesome despair filled his stomach, his throat and his eyes. Everybody else had a name. If he didn't have one, what then? If his name couldn't kill him, what then?

No humanity, no soul, no...

He had concluded early on that Kira needed a name and a face to kill. This Death Note was the murder weapon. L had taken care to keep his identity hidden - but no, that was a lie. What identity had he had in the first place? Some orphan child with a mother who apologetically handed him that word before she was gone, dropped him off in the streets. Some word, just a sound. Didn't mean much. He created some new names but he called those his aliases. 'Lawliet' was shrugged off, but even so... he thought that... no, had he even thought anything? That 'Lawliet' never even meant anything in the first place, he knew it was useless because so what if they found out that he was an orphan? The thing was that from country to country he preferred to pick names that matched the language, and Lawliet wasn't a very practical name...

But he thought... he thought... It was supposed to take a name and a face, and he had a face, didn't he? Instinctively he brought a shaking hand to his cheek, and his fingers touched his lips. Yesterday Light had said, 'so none of these names are real, huh, Ryuuzaki' and he had been surprised. Of course if Rem and Kira were to kill Watari they would want to kill L, and if the Shinigami have the power to see a name, like the Second Kira... then... but he thought... wait... what?

He couldn't have thought. He never thought. He always pushed himself and stayed up late and sat crouched so that he would think about the right things in the right side of his brain. If the wrong things came out... he never thought about the wrong things... but if he never exercised that, maybe a real name was in the wrong things, and, maybe he had lost too much of his humanity by always calling himself somebody else that there was nothing original left there.

If L is nobody, then who is fighting Kira? Just a machine? They had given him the most elite of an education, many years ago, and taught him many things about many things. When he had completed they found him detective jobs and told Mr. Wammy that he needed to help out L and make sure he stayed alive. Precious technology capable of doing brilliant things. Don't interfere with that. Just keep him alive and secret... Ahh... L felt dizzy. Lawliet...

Suddenly the Death Note was gone from his hands. Soichiro had removed it, and put a gentle hand on L's shoulder. "It'll be okay, Ryuuzaki," he said softly.

"Yes," he responded automatically. A truth. What was there to not be okay? Only normal humans needed names, and L was not a normal human. He was the perfect detective after all. If he didn't have a real name, that was perfect too, because then nothing, no Kira could stop him. Logically of course this was the greatest hand of cards he could be granted; he was unbreakable. Lawliet was apparently nothing more than a premature baby, born without a heartbeat. That child could be buried along with Quillsh Wammy."When is the funeral?"

Soichiro was oblivious to the words in L's head, and quietly he said, "They're going to call us back about it, but it will likely be in about three days. It'll be a private government funeral, of course, so you'll be hidden from the public..."

"Oh, I'm not going." Another ridiculous notion.

"I think you should. Funerals help bring closure to-"

"No. Security reasons." That answer would have to suffice. Being overcome with weariness, he was tired of having to explain concepts to these fools about why he did what he did. Obviously, being the only Caucasian at a Caucasian man's funeral who was the acclaimed Watari of all people and known conspicuously among the governments of the world and the funeral, which was private, and would be full of government officials... of course even those idiots would figure out that he was L.

Not like it mattered. What did a soulless computer have to fear about his identity? ...Spyware? Now that was a good joke.

"Is your job really so important to you that you can't take a break, even now?" The aging man looked as helpless as Light did guilty, apparently realizing that it would be impossible to order L around.

Of course it was. L didn't say it out loud, but of course it was. Wasn't it? Justice couldn't afford to sleep, not when there were criminals to catch. ... The program couldn't be exited, not while there were viruses to eliminate... not while... It was a string of computer coding. That's all you are, you know. Not even the Gods saw anything else to call you. And Quillsh Wammy isn't here to hide you anymore.

Justice is for humans. I'm the anti-virus.

For some reason, the job felt sour now.

-To Be Continued...