A/N: I've been floating this story on the RXL fans community on Livejournal for a while now and thought I'd post the chapters I have so far on here too. The 'no Death Note' AU cunningly enables me to sidestep a whole load of the angst and also to explore the idea of what Light would be like if he had never had the opportunity to make his new world, and instead had to content himself with living in the old, imperfect one.

Light turned the pages of his newspaper with increasing vexation; there was so much violence and ugliness in the world. Political violence dominated the first pages: riots in holy places, bombings, terror threats from those who thought themselves righteous, who thought that the ends always justified the means. The following pages gave details of the more mundane, random kinds of violence afflicting society: drunken stabbings, muggings, robberies, rapes, gang-related shootings. In the southern states of America a serial killer was still at large: he called himself the ‘God’s Hand Killer’ in a series of taunting notes sent to the police and he had a nasty habit of using the blood and organs of his victims — all of them prostitutes and other unfortunate wretches — to spell out references to Bible chapters and verses. Clearly he considered himself righteous.

Light turned to the back of the newspaper and scowled, because he had decided that the news was mocking him: he was twenty-three years old, rising rapidly through the ranks of the NPA, and had every reason to be pleased with his own progress, but he felt sick to his stomach when he read the news — faced with all of this chaos, who could hope to impose order? No human could hope to make a difference, that was for sure, and God, if he existed, seemed to be ignoring his creation, letting it stew in its own squalor.

The waitress, a heavy-set woman who always spoke to him in a motherly, patronising tone, finally brought his coffee. “There now,” she said and he mumbled his thanks, but she continued to stand, casting her blocky shadow on his newspaper, so Light raised his head to look at her. She was gazing out one of the coffee shop’s large windows at some children of about nine or ten years old playing on the swings of the park across the way. “Ah, aren’t they cute?” she asked with a sort of wistful smile. “So innocent, so carefree!”

“Yeah,” Light agreed half-heartedly, thinking that soon enough those children would be big enough to carry flick-knives.

The waitress moved on in her slow, ponderous way, going to the table in the corner by the window to take the order of the young man who sat there; the young man who always seemed to be occupying that spot. Light watched as the strange, simian figure with the mop of black shiny hair pointed to things on the menu board and talked in a low, husky monotone. The waitress always smiled indulgently but a little sadly at him, as if she thought he was simple and pitied his affliction.

Light often observed this man, who sat perched in his chair with his bare toes curled over the edge of the seat, his palms laid atop his knees. He had the palest skin Light had ever seen — he looked like he had been grown in the dark, like a mushroom — and the dark circles beneath his eyes had made Light originally think that he must wear eyeliner. In the secrecy of his own mind, Light called him The Freak.

The Freak now received three slices of cake and a pot of coffee. He poured himself a cup of the latter and added five sugar cubes; three white and two brown. He slurped the hot liquid noisily before turning his attention to the nearest slice of cake, which happened to be baked vanilla cheesecake drizzled in raspberry coulis. He picked up his fork delicately between finger and thumb and lifted a piece to his lips, closing his teeth over the morsel in a curious, fastidious manner, as if he disliked the sticky confection touching them.

Freak! What a freak! Light thought in outrage. The very sight of the weirdo made him angry — why weren’t people like him kept in locked wards? He put down the news part of the paper and picked up the section which had entertainment listings and the puzzles. Ah, the sudoku and kakuro were his friends: logical, solvable. His pen flew over the neat little boxes, filling them with the correct numbers: how blissful it must be to be a mathematician, he reflected, lamenting that his sense of justice had driven him away from that profession.

He was startled from his mathematical fugue by the high, piercing wail of a fractious baby. His head snapped up and he glared at the offending creature, a little squirming bundle being jiggled by a mother who beamed as if she thought that surely everyone in the coffee shop must be as entranced by her offspring as she was, while her husband gazed on in a placid stupor. The waitress smiled indulgently, encouraging the couple in their erroneous view that their offspring was delightful. Disgusting! Light thought. Why did people keep breeding? They were just adding to the problem! His lip curled as he thought about how his mother kept dropping not-so-subtle hints that she wanted grandchildren, and wasn’t it about time that Light thought about settling down with a nice girl? Sometimes he had to bite his tongue to keep from cruelly disillusioning her: no, mother, that’s never going to happen.

Light felt the remains of his hang-over niggling at his temples as his phone beeped to announce that he had a message. He wasn’t going to look: it would be Mikami, asking in some horrendously gauche way if he wanted to go for dinner, or to a movie. Mikami Teru was one of those pathetic human beings who let others walk all over them: Light had told him it was only sex he was interested in, and he had looked sad and said that was fine with him, though it clearly wasn’t. Now he hung on to Light desperately, languishing in the hope that the sex would eventually morph into something meaningful, and maybe Light would touch him more tenderly, or stay the night, or at least start calling him by his given name. Never going to happen.

He could see Mikami now, sprawled face down on the bed: such a beautiful body, and thick, black, lustrous hair. Light always wanted to take him that way, because if they did it face to face Mikami would look at him with those imploring eyes, eyes that said: love me, love me, why don’t you love me? He was so pliable, such a perfect victim, and Light was frightened when he looked inside himself and found no trace of affection or even pity.

He looked up again as The Freak passed him, his cake-hoard now thoroughly devoured and having left crisp bank notes neatly by his empty plates; his hands were pushed into his jean pockets and he shuffled along with hunched shoulders. For a moment their eyes locked and Light almost gasped to see how perfectly black and liquid the other’s were close up; they weren’t the eyes of an idiot at all, they were calm, evaluating. The Freak gave a nod of recognition and passed on, and Light felt his neck prickle as he determinedly turned back to his logic puzzles. His life was absurd, he thought: his family expected grandchildren; his fuck-buddy wanted his love; and local mental cases were on nodding terms with him.