Chapter 2 - Fate

"Your room service is here, Ryuzaki. Tonight we have kototoi dango from Mukoujima—" 

Watari, mimicking a hotel waiter, wheeled in a cart and noticed something wasn't right. The sweets piled high on the table, which L would normally devour in one sitting, remained untouched. 

"Is something the matter, Ryuzaki?" 

The Death Note, which was supposed to be under lock and key, lay open in front of L, who was staring intently at it. 

"Kira and I have a score to settle. Too many people have lost their lives already." He held up the Death Note with the edge pinched between his fingers and pointed to the open page. "This is the last name to be written inside of it." 

—L. Lawliet will die peacefully of a heart attack twenty-three days from this date.

L's real name. —The only one he and Watari knew— was unmistakably written by L's own hand. 

Watari was about to open his mouth but stopped and closed his eyes to contain his feelings. He would accept L's every decision and support him however possible. That was what he had resolved to do the very first time he met L at the time of the Winchester Mad Bombings when an eight-year-old L prevented the outbreak of World War III. 

Watari was well aware that L would analyze the facts objectively and determine for himself what he must do at every turn. If he came to the conclusion there was only one move to get him to checkmate, then he'd choose it without hesitation. Even at the expense of his own life. At the same time, L recognized his life and work had saved countless lives. —If that sounds melodramatic, then perhaps countless people were spared from early deaths.—

And yet, this was the choice he had made. How could Watari object? And besides, the fate inscribed in the notebook could not be reversed no matter what anyone said or did. 

Suppressing all emotion, Watari uttered quietly: "So it's twenty-three days later..."

"Twenty-three days. Watari, from now on, you must safeguard the world with the other letters." 

L reached for a snack as if a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. 

"I don't know if any of them can take your place..." Watari shook his head sighing. 

L. At Wammy's house this letter did not signify the twelfth letter of the English alphabet alone. It stood for “Last One”. The one who stood alone without a successor. L also stood for “Lost One”, as in a child dropped from heaven by some omnipotent being. 

Ever since the boy, barely eight years old, made his existence known as the peerless and unrivaled detective L and had been given the power to dispatch the police and intelligent agencies of the world, it became the purpose of Wammy's house to find and nurture a child with the talent to follow in L's footsteps.

"We'll need to restructure at Wammy's as well." 

Watari watched over the rounded back of L as the detective ate the dango and turned his thoughts toward a world after L. L would not only vanish from the world, but from Watari's own life too.