A/N: Inspired by this picture: dawninhell . deviantart art / L-Lice-in-Wonderland-19939036

Nothingness

i.

"Are you lost? Most every one is lost here."

I'm pretty sure this is a dream, he thinks. If this is a dream, nothing has meaning. If this is a dream, everything has meaning. "Which way do I go?" he says instead to the blank space behind the fang-filled grin.

"This way, that way, they all lead to the same place in the end."

"Which is?"

"Nothingness," says the creature, and laughs, a rough, unpleasant sound that scrapes his skin. "Got any apples?"

ii.

The garden is enclosed by old oak trees twined with ivy and filled with flowerbeds full of poppy crisscrossed by gravel pathways. There is a great table for more than a dozen people covered in teapots and cake waiting in the centre and L is not surprised. Who in their right mind would want to drink tea all day long if there was no promise of cake at the end?

He sits, pulls a large cake topped with whipped cream and strawberries towards him and eats while he waits.

(For what, he's not sure.)

iii.

The Hatter wears pink and black and crosses and chains and hums songs of death and religion under her breath. She slaps him when she sees him sitting at her table. "Pervert!" she says, as he blinks and puts his thumb in his mouth and widens his eyes in a way he knows makes him look ten years too young, too childish and too ridiculous to accuse of perversity.

He notes the pair of eyes hanging on a gold chain from her belt and inquires solicitously why she needs two pairs.

"These aren't mine," she says. "I'm borrowing them."

His mouth full of tea and cake he mumbles a question as to their origin.

"I got them from a shinigami," she says proudly.

"Why would you want to deal with something like that?"

"The King wants them," she says dreamily, pouring tea into her cup and forgetting to stop. L carefully moves his plate away from the tea stain spreading across the white tablecloth. "I borrowed them for Him. I gave half the numbers over my head for them."

"?" says L, and he watches the mark hang in the air in front of his face for a moment before fading. He puts nine sugars in his tea and thinks that's a ridiculous price to pay for eyes that are constantly weeping.

iv.

"I suffer from my own multiplicity," says the boy with amber eyes in the seat across from L. His head nods and sways with the faint breeze; when it brings the scent of poppy to him he will sleep again. "There are too many shades of Me thrown by light onto paper. From moment to moment I dissolve into my other selves."

"I know them all anyway," L says, curling his fingers around his knees, to hold the edges of himself in or to keep the boy's words out.

"Liar," says the boy, and blinks sleep away long enough to give him back the stare he sees so often in the mirror. "Haven't you been listening to a word I've said? You don't know me at all. I don't know Me."

(He has seen him in countless places, an infant, a toddler, a child, a teenager, a student, a man, all with the same hair, same smile, same face, same eyes, same sameness. Two or three photos and he might have been able to say, that is him. The boy is right: he is too fluid.)

"I know you," L says anyway, because he does, a little, guessing around the missing pieces. The picture might not be finished, but it's still a picture regardless.

"Look at this face you've seen in a hundred photos, through a thousand camera lenses. You know me too well to know me. Or too much."

"…perhaps."

"Have you noticed," the boy with amber eyes asks curiously, curling up neat and small (like a dormouse in preparation for colder months, like a human trying to be a letter) "that it always seems to be winter these days?"

The wind changes, the garden fills with the scent of death and dreams.

v.

"Which way do I go to find what I'm looking for?" L asks the grinning mouth, now joined by a pair of yellow eyes.

"Depends what you're looking for, doesn't it?"

"The truth," he says, and it does not sound ridiculous coming from a loosely jointed figure of black-white starkness, only faintly bleak. "An answer."

A hand appears and snatches the apple cupped in his right palm. "There are as many answers as the stars in the sky and grains of sand on the beach, and all of them are true to someone. What's your question?"

Why is the sky blue, what makes plants grow, where do the stars go in the daytime, how did that man die? The thousands of questions L has asked or will ever ask buzz in his head like a hive of bees, thoughts tumbling over and under and around each other. For the first time he wonders if he's missed something, always focussing on the destination instead of the journey.

(This way, that way, they all lead to the same place in the end.)

"Which way to the King?" He asks at last, gnawing at the pad of his thumb, and his heart skips a needed beat beneath his narrow ribs.

vi.

"It's a huge great game of chess that's being played - all over the world," said the Hatter. "Look, there's the Red King-"

An exquisite little figure with a black book instead of a sceptre waved with casual disregard.

"And there's the White," she finished, indicating a slouched figure on the other side of the board who appeared to be writing something with his toes.

"Fascinating," L said, and stole her chocolate cake while she was preoccupied with the chessboard.

vii.

The King of Hearts is made of mirror shards and expectations. People squint against his brilliance and place an angel-shape upon his indefinable form; he conveniently neglects to mention he is an angel of wrath. The crown on his head gleams gold like the last sunrise seen by a condemned man and his eyes shine with the blood of a thousand thorn-pricked fingers seeking a thousand perfect roses.

(He twists the meanings upon themselves. Diamonds for wealth, clubs for happiness, hearts for love and spades for death. No. Hearts for wealth, for amusement, for death. But never for love, which is too much and too little for him.)

The King of Hearts wears red, the deep dark crimson of fresh blood; he keeps a pen in his right hand and a black book by his left. He touches the cover constantly, strokes the supple black leather like a pet cat or a lover's skin.

(A name and a face and he reaches out and)

"Off with their hearts," he murmurs, and laughs, steel and sharp edges, as he counts down from forty.

viii.

"How curious," L says, "that the King of Hearts should have no such organ of his own."

"He keeps it in an egg which is inside a duck in a well inside a church on an island in the centre of a lake. Or maybe he keeps it in a safety deposit box. Or maybe he keeps it inside an apple on a tree in an apple grove. Mmm, apples…" The creature manifests an arm to wipe away its drool. "What do you think?"

"I think I have no need for such a thing anyway."

"You clearly don't read enough fairy tales," says the creature, disappointed. "Just as you have no power over something unless you know its name, you can't destroy something when the most important part is safe and far from harm. Just a hint."

"A hint?" L says, amused for the first time. "That was an anvil."

ix.

"Do you play?" calls the King from the other side of sixty-four black and white squares. He twirls a pen meditatively in his ink(blood)stained fingers as he waits for L's answer.

L studies the chessboard that is the centre of a maze, and nods.

"Let us play." The King smiles, and L's heart is thudding against his ribs one-two-three as he smiles back, lovehate and self-deceiving righteousness lighting up his eyes.

This is the invitation he has been waiting for all his life.

"Yes," he says, and he feels an ache in the hollow spaces emotion has never filled. Please, it says, and L can't decide if it says (please, why did it have to be like this?) or (please, be the adversary finally worthy of my time) or maybe a little of both.

"You know the stakes?"

"Yes."

"Then," the King says, "Choose your side and your place upon the board and we will begin."

(Nothing here has any meaning. Everything here has meaning.)

x.

You can't miss someone you've never met, a flat little voice of electronic disassociation whispers in his head.

Liar, a human voice replies. Where have you been, it asks plaintively. I've been looking all over the place for you and for so long.

(I haven't been looking for you, bloody eyes reply, cold and damning. But I miss you now in the time that I didn't know you existed.

Which one of us is dreaming the other? Do you know?)

xi.

The King cheats from the first move, claiming it's his right as challenger to move first. L lets him because he's not going to lose, no matter what tricks are pulled.

Lollipop in mouth he watches his enemy smile and smile, switching pieces and places so fast even L finds it difficult to follow him. He could swear that the amber-eyed boy once joined them on the board with a white crown on his head, but then he blinked and he was gone.

("You have a taste for nothingness," was the first thing the Dormouse said when he woke to see L sitting the chair opposite. "So do I.")

"You're cheating," he says neutrally, and his gleaming (blackblackblack) opponent laughs and retorts with a devilish smile:

"This is the way you play the game."

"No it isn't," L says as the board shifts once more around him, a blur in the corner of his eye, and suddenly he's in check again when he could have sworn he'd neutralised the immediate threats.

"Of course it is. How else do you expect to win? If you can't keep up, get out of the dance."

("Isn't it funny," an exhausted voice whispers in his ear, "how many worlds end with a misplayed game, with gods dashing the pieces down as if it never meant anything? Isn't it funny? Isn't it hilarious?")

The King escapes from situations a snake would be hard-pressed to wriggle free from. He never backs down, only makes sure he has a sword in hand – to fall upon or to use on L when finally in a corner without an exit, not even he knows for sure. Neither of them truly entertains the possibility that they could lose.

(Moment by moment I dissolve into my other selves. That's why I can't be killed, only put to sleep. There are too many edges and too many pieces in too many people.)

L marks his arrogance and the places where a slender blade might be thrust to leave the wounded to bleed to death in his armour.

They soon get close enough to reach out and touch, and L's breath catches in his throat and

(Fortune is glass and gleams brightest just before it shatters.)

close enough to see the terrible perfection of the King's face he wonders if he might fail.

(This is the most alive he's ever been.)

xii.

"What fun it is! How I wish I was one of them! I wouldn't mind being a Pawn, if only I might join - though of course I should like to be a Queen, best."

xiii.

L hasn't slept in three days. He decides he can put off sleep for a few hours longer.