Case File: L Lawliet • L Lawliet x Reader

Chapter 71 | another dose of closure

Tw - mentions of s*icide. 

Folding your clothes and sorting between what needed to be put away and what needed to be washed, you pondered on what B was thinking when he called you. He was a complicated man, but that call made him seem more complicated.

"I don't exactly know what he was trying to get across when we talked, but at least he seemed... more a peace? I'm not sure" L said, sorting through his pile of white shirts.

"What exactly did he say? I mean I get if you don't remember word for word, but what was the general idea?"

L through for a moment, trying to think of a way to summarise it.

"It started as just him asking about the safety of the kids. He was always a bit soft for the new kids so I wasn't too surprised with that" he began.

"Yeah he asked me about that too" you replied.

"Then he asked about the successor program. I left it kind of vague but I told him there's three kids in it and one waiting to join when they're older. I also mentioned we changed the whine build of it after what happened with him and A. He was silent for a moment, and then said something to the effect of 'so there's less pressure on the kids?"

You understood why B would be skeptical of the program. In his eyes the pressure of it being too much for A is what caused his death. But in truth, suicide is a very complicated thing that's not all black and white. While yes the pressure on A's anxiety ridden brain may have contributed, there's never one single reason for it. Everyone in the orphanage has been through awful things before they arrived, that would have contributed too.

"Everything we said was vague enough so that the prison recoding the phone call wouldn't understand it but we could. So the wording was different but when I told him it was significantly different he replied along the lines of 'why wasn't it like that to begin with?' I told him that we just didn't know any better and the program started in a bit of a rush and it definitely could have been done better, it's clear he thinks that the program is the main cause of everything that happened. Then again, he was in love with A, so he'd naturally try and make some sense of the tragedy to feel closure of some kind" L explained.

"Yeah, I expected him to be stuck in the bargaining stage of grief when it all happened since they were just so close" you replied.

Putting your now empty suitcases away, you both sat on the end of the bed to continue the conversation.

"Eventually I asked him straight up if he thought A was my fault. He was quiet for a moment before saying it wasn't ME it was a mix of things. But I can just tell he thinks because the program is for MY successor I'm slightly to blame in his eyes. I told him that even if the program didn't exist, he said himself to you that his lifespan was dropping and rising and very unstable anyway and there was nothing we could have done. We tried but he still did it. That made him think for a moment, I don't think he thought we'd believe his eyes story" L rambled.

"I mean the story was a bit strange but considering he had a psych evaluation when he went on trial and there was no delusions or psychosis... what else could he be seeing if it's not hallucinations?" You replied.

"Exactly. That's why I'm inclined to believe it, there's no other explanation. Anyway, I was blunt and I told him not to worry and that the kids were ok, the program was going fine and no kids had left since he did. The last thing he mentioned before we had to hang up because we had to board the plane was basically that after all these years in prison reflecting on what happened and having to stare his burnt body in the fact every day... he's accepted that A couldn't be stopped, and acknowledged that grief and trauma was what finally made him snap. He seems only half aware there's something wrong with his mind. He admits that he did something horrible, and that there was a breaking point. But he can't seem to admit that he's... well he's always had that buried deep inside him. You know..?"