a capella one or more vocalists performing without an accompaniment

Light knows his father is helping people when he's not home because his mother tells him when he asks, and sometimes when he doesn't. Helping people is important, everyone knows that, and so Light doesn't complain, even when Soichiro promises to be home early and then misses dinner. Instead, he gives his mother an extra hug when she puts him to bed, and curls up with his blanket and his stuffed helicopter, telling himself his father's helping lots and lots of people.

It's frightening to think of being out in the world without his mother, and Light's rather selfishly glad that Soichiro's brave enough to leave Sachiko at home. Still, though, he wants to be just like his father when he grows up, and if his father accomplishes so much all by himself, then Light had better start preparing for it as well.

So the next night, once his mother's left, he gives Bird the helicopter one last hug, and rubs his cheek one last time against the big fluffy duck on his blanket, and then he wraps Bird in Ducky and carefully drops them on the floor beside his bed. "Good-bye," he whispers to them, blinking back tears his father wouldn't shed.

Hours pass, or so it seems, but the bed still feels oddly and frighteningly too large with just Light in it. Without Ducky, the room seems cold and the sheets flimsy protection against attackers. If Light closes his eyes, he knows, the shadows will grow teeth and lunge at him.

And although he doesn't want to acknowledge it, he's awfully lonely.

Quickly, before anything can bite his arm off, he grabs Ducky and Bird from the floor and clings to them. Immediately, the shadows turn back into shadows, and the night is friendly again.

It's all right, he tells himself later, from his secure position curled beneath the friendly weight of Ducky. He's only two years old, and Soichiro, he knows, is thirty-three. He has years and years to learn how to be alone.

Maybe he should start with the moustache instead.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hi. I was originally going to post this fic all at once, but I'm going to try serializing it instead, in hopes that that will guilt me into actually finishing it. We'll see, I suppose. The chapter titles are prompts from the LiveJournal community 18coda, and I've stolen the definitions from there as well. Hohoho.

If all goes according to keikaku, the fic will provide little snippets of Light's life, from when he's about as young as he can be while still having a perspective to write from (that would be this chapter) to just before he picks up the Note. Everything is inspired in large part by Vashtijoy, who is also my beta-reader.

As for the title, I like Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus, and it reminds me of Light. So yes.

APRIL 27, 2013: I've made a number of small revisions. All changes are either stylistic or incredibly minor, but some were badly needed.