Sometimes it seemed as though the moment Jubilee managed to cut herself some slack, the ruthless voice of doubt and self-condemnation would come charging in again. Some days she really did believe that she was a new and changed person, living a new and changed life. Other days it felt like she was only proving how incompetent she was at handling second chances, with every step that she took.
This was one of those days.
Today Jubilee sat in her office chair, staring blankly at her computer screen and feeling utterly useless. Yet another video of old security footage was playing on the monitor, this time of Light. Yet again, the black haze shrouded him, and the tall demon glided beside him as he walked in the street. Jubilee simply watched with a vacant gaze of disinterest. It was always the same thing. Old Light covered in darkness. Current Light having none of that; only a faint yellow hue that was perfectly clean, perfectly innocent, and perfectly boring. Old Misa unusually unmarked by any spiritual signature. Current Misa exuding a perfectly normal pinkish aura. Nothing following either current Light or current Misa. Jubilee must have watched over a hundred hours of footage by now, and she was still no closer to understanding what anything that she was seeing meant.
She tipped her chair back and looked upwards despondently. "What's the point?" she asked the ceiling. So she could see angels and demons. So what? She hadn't been able to contribute squat to the case.
Behind her in the lounge area, Aizawa and Matsuda pointedly ignored her pity party as they took their coffee break, having gotten used to her occasional mood swings—and outbursts at thin air—by now.
Beside her, Hellenos tsked. Be of good cheer, child, he said. You know there is always a point and a purpose.
"Everything is meaningless...completely meaningless,"quoted Jubilee under her breath. "Ecclesiastes, chapter one, verse two. Bam."
Hellenos gave her a hard look, before choosing the route of optimism. You've been studying. Well done.
Still lying back in her chair like a ragdoll, Jubilee put her hands over her face. "Much study is wearisome to the flesh," she mumbled through her fingers. "And thus, meaningless. Ecclesiastes, chapter twelve, verse twelve."
"Why the long face, Miss Amachi?" L had rolled his chair down the length of the desk beside hers, his handcuffed arm hanging behind him. A couple feet down Light patiently allowed his arm to hang outstretched as well, while ignoring the two and continuing to scroll through statistics on his computer.
Jubilee barely spared the detective a glance. "It's all meaningless—like chasing the wind," she intoned through her fingers. "Ecclesiastes, chapter one—"
"Verse fourteen," finished L.
Hellenos crossed his arms and gave Jubilee a look. This is very cute, you two bonding over bible study and all that. But might I suggest switching to another section of it for the time being? He looked skywards and muttered, Sixty-six books to pick from, and she just had to choose Ecclesiastes.
Jubilee removed her hands from her face to give both the detective and the angel a sharp glance. "It's apt," she said. "Seeing as how, with everything I can see, it doesn't help the case at all."
"How do you mean?" inquired L, his tone calm.
Jubilee pointed at her computer screen where the video was still playing. "There's Light," she snapped. "He's got a black haze around him and a ten-foot-tall demon following him, as usual. Nothing new. There's a man," She jabbed another corner of her screen, "With two grayish clouds trailing after him. Here's a woman with something that looks like a red serpent coiled around her. There's a little girl with an angel standing behind her." She crossed her arms. "I could go on, but what's the point?"
L gazed at her, his eyes large and dark. "You can see all that?"
"Yes," answered Jubilee, feeling distinctly unproud of the fact. "So what? It's the same thing over and over. People, angels and demons. I can't see a connection between any of them, I can't see it how it relates to the case, and I can't see a way to catch Kira. So," She turned to the detective, agitated, "What is the point of being able to see all that I can see?"
L took her in silently for a moment, before responding, "Never say never, Miss Amachi."
Jubilee quirked an eyebrow. "I didn't. I said—"
"That you can't," cut in L. "Principle, not semantics, Miss Amachi. Specifically, you said that you can't see, three times; which you then contradicted in the next sentence by acknowledging how very much you can see. Has anyone ever told you—" He leaned closer, his eerie eyes boring holes into hers, "That you don't give yourself enough credit?"
Jubilee stared back. She had the sudden vague realization that his eyes—which had always struck her as two soulless black holes rimmed with sleepless dark circles up until this point—were, in fact, gray. "I might have heard that once or twice," she said weakly.
Just once or twice? snorted Hellenos.
"Miss Amachi," L continued, "Might I suggest that you are in fact much more competent and capable than you are making yourself out to be, that you have plenty to contribute to the case—which I can confirm, given the multiple clues you have already provided—and that you ought to, as some would put it, buck up."
She blinked as her brain fought to keep up, and then when it had, warred between feeling flattered or offended. Had that been more of a compliment or an insult?
That would depend on how you choose to take it, said Hellenos dryly, from where he was standing between them. Might I suggest that you choose differently, for once?
Jubilee swallowed down a lump of pride mixed with self-realization. "I—I'm not like you, Ryuzaki," she said at last, softly. "I don't know how to connect all the dots to what I see. And despite all that I can see, I...I still struggle with being able to see the big picture sometimes." She looked away, suddenly unbearably uncomfortable.
There was an intolerably long silence before L spoke again. "Look for patterns," was what he said at last.
Jubilee looked back at him. "Huh?"
"Look for patterns and similarities," L repeated himself patiently, "And then compare and contrast any differences that you find. That is how you see the big picture. That is how you do what I do."
She continued to stare at him uncomprehendingly for a second. Later she would bemoan how slow she seemed to be getting these days. But, perhaps, she would also come to realize that it was more a matter of the heart catching up than the mind—for this was the first time ever that she began to realize L was actually trying to help her. At the moment, however, all she could do was gaze back at him stupidly.
L let out a gentle exhale that could have been a sigh and leaned forward to access her computer. A few feet away Light gave a grunt of mild annoyance as his hand was tugged over even further, and he shifted in his seat to make up for the difference.
"Here," L was saying as he tapped her screen with a finger. "Pull up one of the earliest footage videos of Light that you have viewed so far, as well as one of the more recent ones."
Wordlessly she obeyed.
"Now play them side by side," he instructed.
She did so, and within a few seconds her brow furrowed as she watched. At last she stammered, "It's—he's—"
"What do you see?" L demanded. He had leaned in close to scrutinize her expression like she was a prize lab monkey. Jubilee was simultaneously too baffled and too excited by what she was seeing to be perturbed by his proximity.
"It's—!" she began again excitedly, before casting a sharp glance Light's way and cutting herself short. The other boy was paying no heed to them. She swiveled back to her screen, pulled up Microsoft Word, and began typing furiously.
It's Light, she wrote. The haze around him is darker in the later footage.
She sat back in her seat. "I can't believe I never noticed it before," she breathed.
L was silent for a moment, before commanding quietly, "Look again, Miss Amachi. More deeply this time."
"What do you mean?"
L reached out to maneuver her mouse and pull the two videos up on the screen again, side by side, before leaning in close once more so that only she would be able to hear him. His breath tickled against her ear as he spoke. "You explained that the first time you observed that haze, you looked again, more deeply, and saw...something, underneath it."
Jubilee understood. The knives. But that time, she had been given a glimpse of something beyond her own capacity to see. Taking a deep breath, she nodded and turned back to the screen, before closing her eyes for a brief moment. Dad...she thought, and then faltered. It had been so long since she had talked to Him, instead of just about Him. Would He answer her? I...I'm sorry. I'm sorry I wanted to give up...again. Silence stretched in her mind for a moment as she floundered over how to proceed. A soft warmth whispered through her heart and she found herself continuing. But, if you'll give me another chance—let me see what you see.
She opened her eyes. Onscreen the two Lights, one older by a few months, walked around shrouded in the black haze. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the darkness shifted and sharpened into knives once again. She squinted, despite knowing this would do nothing to help. What she was seeing was a physical impossibility, unfathomable to the human brain. The number of knives in Light, in both videos, was more than could be counted, more than could reasonably be stuck into a human body...and yet Jubilee could see them all, having a clear sense of each one. It became clear to her that the older Light had a darker haze because there were more knives protruding from him—though he himself seemed none the wiser.
Jubilee let out the air she had been holding. "I see it," she breathed.
"What is it?" L prodded quietly, and would've probably gotten even closer to scrutinize her more, except that he was already as close to her as he could possibly be without pulling Light out of his chair. "What do you see?" he asked into her ear.
She pulled up Word again and typed, There are more knives in him as time goes on.
L said nothing for a minute, and Jubilee turned to look at him. It struck her then just how close he was to her. He, however, didn't seem to notice as his mind worked and whirred. Jubilee could see lights and colors dancing and twining together above his head—which, she realized to her surprise, she had never taken the time to notice before. It suddenly struck her that she had never allowed herself to truly look at L and see him, the way she did everything else, until this moment...and it had all been out of sheer prejudice and dislike for him, which blinded her to the glaring fact that she had never bothered to look at him in the spirit before.
What she saw was a heavy grayness the color of his eyes, hanging about him like a veil. But there was something beyond that which made her breath catch. Underneath the gray, there flashed occasional, sporadic spurts of dazzling color and soft light. She caught an obscure flash of something bright and beautiful that her brain couldn't quite fathom. Jubilee suddenly realized that she was staring at the man. Feeling strange, she looked away, blinking hard to dissipate a foreign and unexplainable sensation from her mind.
L didn't notice any of this—or if he did, he did not seem to care. Instead, he lurched forward from where he was crouched in his seat to take hold of the computer's mouse and keyboard, his shoulder knocking hers in the process. She flinched at the contact, suddenly nervous about being so near him. He didn't apologize, however; and instead began to click and type rapidly, until another video popped up on the screen. It was of Light, sitting at the desk in his old bedroom. He appeared to be doing his homework while snacking on a big bag of potato chips. There was a slight haze over him as usual—but much, much lighter than any Jubilee had seen yet. The video was dated to nine months ago.
L turned back to her. "Miss Amachi," he began. His face was expressionless and his tone as steady and steely as ever, but she could detect an underlying tremor of excitement in his voice. Warm waves, of a slightly orange hue, emanated off of him through the gray. "I want you to do what you just did, again, with this video, and tell me what you see."
His tone broached no questioning. She turned to the screen and did as she was told.
Her vision was still as clear as it had been for the last few minutes. The haze quickly shifted itself into the form of knives protruding out of Light's body—but there were much fewer than she had ever seen. As she diligently watched, however...they began to increase. First one, then two, then three appeared out of the ether around the boy and were thrust into him with such violence that it was all Jubilee could do to keep from shrieking. She wondered in horror how Light could not have felt it.
L watched her jerk and go pale, but said nothing until five minutes into the video, when the Light onscreen leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms, apparently taking a break. There were six new knives in him now. L reached out and paused the video. Leaning forward, he prompted her again. "What did you see?"
With shaking fingers, Jubilee typed out a summary of what she had witnessed as best she could. L read quietly beside her as she wrote. When she finished, she turned to him with wide eyes.
"What does it mean?" she whispered.
From above her shoulder Hellenos suddenly spoke up, making her jump. She had forgotten he was there. When one takes a life, life is taken from them, he said. His tone was cryptic but Jubilee realized, with a jolt, that this was the clearest clue he had given her yet. She stared up at him, wide-eyed, then back at L.
"When one takes a life, life is taken from them," she repeated aloud.
The detective's sharp eyes had taken in her every move. He chewed mercilessly on his thumb. "Six," he said softly, "Is the exact number of criminals that were murdered by Kira during the time frame of that video."
Jubilee went cold. "You're saying—that must mean—" Her eyes slid to the person on the other end of the handcuffs that were attached to L's wrist. The sandy-haired young man sat before his computer, the picture of perfect concentration and diligence, working hard on the case. A sweet and innocent yellow glow permeated from him.
"Yes," said L, so softly now that even she could barely hear him. His head was down, his shaggy black hair hiding his face as he spoke. "Light is the first Kira."