Lawliet - Chapter 4/?

[evandar]

Title: Lawliet
Chapter: 4/?
Author: Evandar / yamievandar / hikarievandar
Rating: T (will get higher)
Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note and I make no money from writing this FanFic.
Warnings: AU, yaoi, shonen-ai, shota.
Spoilers: L's real name and Mello and Near's existence.
Summary: Lawliet is an autistic, genius super-detective, hidden from the world under the moniker of L; Light is an indigo child struggling under the expectations of his family; Mello is a Mafia brat who wants both to get out and keep his life; Near is a mute orphan ripped from everything he knows by the horrific death of his father. When fate throws them together, the consequences will echo around the world.
Notes: This took longer to get out than I had anticipated due to the unexpected death of my Near muse and his recent resurrection. This is the fourth rewrite of this chapter and I'm finally satisfied. I'd like to note that some of Near's behaviour is a bit weird for a little kid, but that's just how I imagined he would act under the circumstances.

Prologue, 1, 2, 3

Crossposted to yamievandar, deathnote_fics, dn_yaoi, mxn_lj and rxl_fans.

Chapter 4

 

 

Near – adjective; close to.

 

Never was there a more inappropriate name for a boy than mine. The definition of my name is the exact opposite of my own tendency to push people away. There are exceptions to this rule and people who have managed to grow close to me; ignoring the hostile façade that I use to keep others away. They are the few people that I trust with my life and my heart; to the rest of the world I might as well be an ice sculpture: cold, distant and untouchable as I am.

 

Near was not always my name. A long time ago, my father called me Nathanael. That name means “God has given” and is another irony since I have no belief in God whatsoever. It is long redundant now, anyway, as only my father called me that, and only one person calls me Nate, and even then the nickname comes rarely because he only uses it in retaliation to me using his name. As far as I am concerned, Nathanael “Nate” River could be dead.

 

I am Near.

 

And thus, I am a paradox. I am dead, and yet I live; I am weak, and yet I am stronger now, surrounded by the few I allow to be close, than I have ever been; I am Near, and yet my own personality dictates that I live my life hidden away from the outside world; I am the world’s greatest private detective, but I am not the only one.

 

Near

 

25^th August 1991

New Orleans

 

The room where his wife was giving birth was far too quiet. Aaron River sat stony faced on a plastic chair in the hallway and waited as he had been doing for the past hour. He had been informed that the doctors would have to perform an emergency caesarean if even one of them was to survive, but that had been a while ago now.

 

He didn’t know who to pray for. He didn’t know how he would cope without his quiet, gentle Ruth by his side to help calm his temper, but he did not want his child to die either. He clasped his large hands together and bowed his head, praying for God to do whatever he thought was wise.

 

Half an hour later, a thin wail filled the air and Aaron sighed. God had chosen his child to live, and the duty of raising the baby was now Aaron’s alone.

 

The presence of a nurse at his side roused him from his chair. He got up slowly, towering over the woman’s slight build and followed her into the room. There was a sheet over his wife’s face and he averted his eyes from the sight. One of the midwives stepped forward, a small bundle cradled in her arms; tiny fingers curled over the edge of the blue blanket.

 

Aaron took the child gingerly and peered down at the small, sleeping face. The child resembled Ruth more than him, and for that he was glad. At least he would have a way to see her now that she was gone.

 

“Nathanael,” he said quietly. At the sound of his deep voice, the child stirred in its sleep but did not wake up. “Nathanael River.”

 

Near

 

Before I was even born I had claimed my own mother’s life. She carried me for eight and a half months and I repaid her by taking her life. I can not say that I miss her as I never knew her, but I do know that I missed never meeting her when I was a child. Father told me that she was an angel when he showed me her picture as soon as I was old enough to understand, and I always imagined her to have wings as white and feathery as my hair.

 

I only saw that picture once. It is one of the few memories I have from outside the Wammy House.

 

My father died when I was very young. We had been driving home after a football match, and we were driving behind a truck carrying pieces of scaffolding. It was a fluke that the straps holding the scaffolding broke, sending steel poles hurtling towards our car. My father swerved, trying to avoid it, but it was no use. He…died.

 

I should have died a well, and if I had been sitting in my seat like I was supposed to have done then I would have. Instead I was on the floor of the car, looking for one of my toys, which had fallen only moments earlier. I did not get away unscathed, however, as the metal pole that skewered my father scraped over my upper back, ripped open my skin and muscle and embedded itself in the back seat, pinning me to the floor of the car.

 

I can’t remember how long I was there, unable to move from the pain and fear, with my father’s blood dripping on me from above. I can remember the sound of the saw as the fire men cut me out of the car, and the pitying expressions on the paramedics’ faces. I wanted to cry, but I found that I couldn’t, and when I tried to yell for my father, nothing came out. My voice had gone.

 

I can remember the hospital I was taken to, where no one seemed to want to tell the little boy with the white hair and eyes that stared too much that he was an orphan now and that there was no one who could take him in. I knew, of course, I had seen them take my father’s body from the car so there was no need for the psychiatrist to come and tell me. I wanted to hit her when she did: she had this look on her face that screamed pity and a gentle voice, and she touched my hand – the one without the IV – and I couldn’t understand for the life of me why this stranger was so upset over my father’s death.

 

Near

 

Nate sat up on the hard mattress, leaning on the wheeled table that had brought in his lunch. The food sat untouched on its tray, ignored in favour of the piece of paper next to it and the pencil in Nate’s hand. Nate’s free hand was twisted into his feathery white hair and one of his legs was drawn up to his chest. It was only recently that he had been able to sit up again, having had to lie down while his back healed.

 

The pencil made a soothing scraping noise as it passed over the paper, graphite leaving its trace in the shapes of neatly formed letters. The psychiatrist had wanted him to write down his thoughts, or draw them, or anything that would let him release his emotions – apparently it worked on patients who could speak, too, but Nate couldn’t do that any more. He didn’t pause when the nurse came in, and didn’t look up when she asked him why he hadn’t eaten. He would have thought that the answer was obvious: he wasn’t hungry.

 

He only looked up when she sat next to him on the bed and placed a warm, calloused hand over his, stopping him from writing.

 

“Nate?” she said softly. “I know this is hard for you honey, but you’ve got to keep your strength up. Your daddy wouldn’t have wanted you to starve yourself, now would he?”

 

Nate stared at her. He usually unnerved the other nurses by staring at them like this, but not this one. She just smiled at him and squeezed his hand.

 

“God didn’t want you to die sweetheart, and that’s why you’re here. He’s got something big planned out for you, and He doesn’t want you to starve yourself either. God’s got a plan for everyone, and yours says that you have to keep living so that you can grow up, settle down and start a family of your own one day. Do you think you can do that honey? Can you help make God’s plan work out?”

 

Nate looked away for her and down at his piece of paper again. He heard her sigh, as if from a distance and felt her lips brush his cheek. She stood, smoothed down her uniform, and smiled down at the little boy on the bed. All she could do was pray that he would listen.

 

Near

 

In retrospect, she was trying to help me, and I can appreciate that now. After all, I could well have starved myself to death if I had been given the chance to continue and not convinced to give in to my hunger, even if I did it only to shut her up. I didn’t want to hear about “God’s great plan”, but I couldn’t tell her to leave me alone. The only thing I could do was do as she said if I wanted a quiet life.

 

“God has given”. My name. I hated it back then. It reminded me that while God had given me to the world by saving my life, that He – in all his ineffability – had taken everything from me in the process.

 

I didn’t really understand as much as I do now, but back then that was still more than what was expected of me. I was determined to stop believing in God, but if I did, then where were my parents? If God didn’t exist, then could Heaven still be where you went after death? I had no way to get these thoughts out: I couldn’t speak, my art is and always has been atrocious, and my vocabulary was far too limited at the time for me to write down what I was feeling. Instead I kept everything locked up inside of me and focussed my attentions, not on God or this “great plan” he had laid out for me, but on not feeling anything. Over time it worked, and my emotions became distant to me, as if everything I felt was just an echo of a real emotion.

 

The nurse was right about one thing though. She said that one day I would settle down and have a family, and it’s true: I have. Only I think that what she had in mind – no doubt a pretty wife, two children, a dog and a white picket fence – is very different from the reality.

 

As for how I got here? I suppose I have my psychiatrist to thank for that.

 

Near

 

Amanda Wyatt loved children. She always had loved them, and it had broken her heart to find out that she couldn’t have them herself. She had, instead, decided to use her career and her degree in psychology to work with them and help troubled kids get over their difficult pasts.

 

But in all her years as a child psychiatrist she had never met a child like Nathanael River. The boy was small for his age and pale – it would have been unhealthy if you discounted the fact that he was an albino – and he had been traumatised into silence by the road accident that had killed his father. He was also, as it turned out, about as emotional as a brick.

 

And he was very, very intelligent. It was almost scary to see the calculations going on behind his pale eyes. His writing and his cognitive skills were far above the levels that a normal three year old should be at. So while it was scary, it had also given her an idea. She had read online about a place in England called The Wammy House: an orphanage for children with genius IQs. It would, she thought, be perfect for Nathanael.

 

That was why she had arranged the meeting.

 

Quillsh Wammy was a tall man, with greying hair and a bushy moustache. He looked like your stereotypical English gentleman, and he was as well mannered as one too. He also had a dimple in his right cheek that showed when he smiled.

 

She allowed him to sit in on her session with Nathanael, who proved to be just as responsive o her as he usually was, although he did seem – for a brief moment – curious about Mr Wammy’s presence there.

 

“What do you think?” Amanda asked when the boy had left: led back to the Childrens’ Ward by one of the nurses. “Do you think you could help him?”

 

“It’s possible,” Wammy said. “We have several difficult cases at the Wammy House. In fact, he reminds me of one in particular. Have you had him tested for Asperger’s Syndrome?”

 

“He’s been tested for everything under the sun,” Amanda said with a harsh laugh. “Even Anti-Social Behaviour Disorder. As far as we can tell he’s just emotionally scarred, possibly for life.”

 

Wammy nodded. “May I talk to him?”

 

“Of course,” Amanda said. “I warn you though, he won’t answer back. The poor thing lost his voice in the accident.”

 

“His vocal chords were damaged?” Wammy asked, looking concerned.

 

“No,” Amanda sighed. “He’s a selective mute through severe psychological trauma. Only his is the most extreme case I’ve ever heard of: it’s not like he can talk in some occasions; he can’t talk at all. He can’t scream, cry out, whimper or anything. It’s…”

 

She broke off and Wammy laid a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll talk to him and see what he thinks about coming to The Wammy House,” he said. “If he agrees then I can guarantee that he will be taken care of.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

Near

 

My meeting with Mr Wammy – as I knew him then – was fairly uneventful. He asked me several questions, getting me to write the answers down for him. One of the questions he asked me was if I would like to live with other children like me. I didn’t know what to write; I wondered if there really were children who were “like me”, and so I wrote what I thought he wanted to read: yes.

 

That one little started off the adoption process, and before I knew it I was sitting in the window seat of a plane, next to Mr Wammy and heading for England. The orphanage, The Wammy House, was by the sea, apparently, in the South of England, and it looked pleasant enough in the pictures he showed me. I think I was excited to be going; happy about leaving America and flying away to a strange new place, but I can’t be sure.

 

I think I might have been frightened too.

 

Near

 

Nate scrambled from the car as soon as it pulled to a stop outside of the sprawling Victorian mansion. He had struggled against Mr Wammy when he had got in the car and had been decidedly uncomfortable throughout the journey. His efforts to get out of the car as quickly as possible made him look far more enthusiastic about moving to The Wammy House than he actually felt, but Nate didn’t care. As soon as he stepped outside though, the bright sunlight hit his eyes, causing him to flinch and raise a hand to shade them. The nurses at the hospital had always kept the lights low when he was around, but daylight made no such efforts to protect his sensitive eyes.

 

My Wammy placed his wide-brimmed hat on Near’s head, shading his eyes far more effectively than the boy’s slim, pale hand could – even if the hat was far too big – rested his hand on Nate’s shoulder.

 

“Is that better?” he asked kindly.

 

Nate nodded.

 

“We’ll have to see about getting you some tinted contact lenses to help you see better,” Mr Wammy said. “Would you like that?”

 

Nate nodded again. Mr Wammy crouched down in front of him and looked Nate steadily in the eyes.

 

“At The Wammy House, none of the children keep their real names,” he said softly. “It’s something of a rule here as some of them come from dangerous backgrounds. Do you understand?”

 

Nate nodded again.

 

“Good. From now on then, you will be called Near.”

 

Near. Nate mouthed his new name, imagining what it would sound like being spoken with the voice he used to have: soft and girlish with a decidedly Cajun twang. It sounded interesting, and even though he realised that it didn’t really suit him very well, it was better than keeping the name he now hated. He followed Mr Wammy up to the house, clutching his little bag to his chest, ignoring the curious looks he was getting from the other children. Some of them had been playing on the lawn, but had abandoned their game in favour of investigating the new arrival.

 

‘They aren’t like me,’ Near thought. ‘But that doesn’t matter. I’m here now and for now I’ll have to stay. When I’m bigger I can leave; after Mr Wammy has taught me everything I need to know.’

 

Near

 

Back then, my greatest ambition was to leave The Wammy House. I couldn’t possibly have imagined that my being there would introduce me to the three most important people in my life. I didn’t want to imagine it: after my father died I was terrified that anyone else I cared about would end up exactly the same way.

 

Looking back, I know that I was wrong, but as a small child with no real outlet for my emotions, I couldn’t help but feel that way. As I lie here now, with him by my side, waiting to write another part of the story, I can smile at my own misconceptions, but back then they were all too real, and that is what matters.

 

I am Near, and that was the person I used to be.