FIC: Prayers of Confession

[ficwize]

Title: Prayers of Confession
Fandom: Death Note
Pairing: L/Light (implied)
Prompt: 234 0 mea culpa at tamingthemuse; also written for 17. Eto...; Hmmmm... (~engulf by darkness) at 30_angsts;
Warnings: None.
Rating: Gen.
Summary:
Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note. I'm not that smart.
A/N: Unbetaed.

As always, feedback is welcome and appreciated.

*************


Confíteor Deo omnipoténti et vobis, fratres, quia peccávi nimis cogitatióne, verbo, ópere et omissióne: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea máxima culpa. Ideo precor beátam Maríam semper Vírginem, omnes Angelos et Sanctos, et vos, fratres, oráre pro me ad Dóminum Deum nostrum.

L hadn’t been in a church in years. Sitting straight, for once, he looked around the tiny Japanese church and listened to the litany that was familiar, despite being nearly forgotten. His mind translated the words, even as his lips whispered the Latin. There was something to be said about keeping the services in Latin, L thought idly, knowing that the Priest would switch to Japanese in a moment.

Staring at the crucifix mounted over the head of the Priest, L locked his eyes on the wooden ones of the man nailed to the cross and wondered if Jesus truly forgave the ones responsible for killing him. The carving looked blankly at the nearly empty seats and L stifled a sigh.

He had never really believed, which is why being in a church at all was startling in many ways. To his left, Whammy shifted slightly, pointedly not looking anywhere but ahead. Other than the two of them, there were only half a dozen people in the room. An elderly couple sat in the front row, their gray heads bent together as they prayed. A middle aged woman sat with two children midway down the aisle on the right. The children shifted and moved constantly, unable to sit still on the hard seats. They whispered together, their voices muted enough that L couldn’t hear the words. He watched as their mother reached over the head of the little girl to tap the boy on the shoulder, her expression stern.

The Priest, standing at the front of the room, turned and offered a bow to the altar, cueing the worshipers to rise to their feet. L stood with them, politely following the liturgy he did not take solace in and wondering what the gathered would say if he told them he were in Japan to capture Kira.

The moment the Kira case had broken, L had followed it with an obsession that worried him to some degree. Most of the time, capturing criminals was a game and L was good at games. This case offered him something else; his prey wasn’t a man or a woman, despite the fact that L knew the perpetrator to be human. Try as he might, L could not pinpoint the source of his desire to know Kira, other than a jaded amazement that anyone in this world would use power as Kira did; even if L did believe that Kira’s targeting of criminals and lowlifes was a misguided attempt at self-aggrandizing, rather than any real desire to make the world a better place, as Kira’s followers already claimed.

In a way, given power by the whispered words of praise on the lips of humanity that saw Kira as a savior, L faced a deity. That thought drew L’s eyes back to the crucifix again. When he won – and L had no doubt that he would win – would people be grateful? Or would they blame him for the death of another god, as guilty as those who so many years ago drove stakes through the wrists and feet of an innocent man?

Abruptly, L decided to leave the service. He picked up his jacket and eased into the aisle. Whammy, as always, followed without a word. Never again, would L give Kira more power than he deserved. Kira was human. Kira was a coward. Kira was a murderer.

And, on the day of judgment, if L had to face the world and explain why he had taken yet another savior from them, he would bow his head and whisper, “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea máxima culpa.”

Comments

[pinkuro.livejournal.com]

I loved this! I love your writing and your version of the facts! I wish it was longer though! but this great story!

[pargoletta.livejournal.com]

This is a mostly excellent story. I love the description of the church and the atmosphere -- do they still do the Tridentine Mass in Japan, or does the vernacular Mass still have some Latin in it?

The only thing that gives me pause is this line: Or would they blame him for the death of another god, as guilty as those who so many years ago drove stakes through the wrists and feet of an innocent man?

Particularly with Sarah Palin's latest bit of idiocy bringing the blood libel to the greater consciousness again, it's a little disconcerting to read a statement like that, knowing that the people who really did drive in the stakes weren't the ones who ended up getting blamed for it.

[bewize.livejournal.com]

I will confess that I guessed that there are masses in Japan that are still in Latin, at least in part. There are churches here that do that, so I assumed (perhaps erroneously) that there would be churches all over the world that still do it.

As for your hesitation, I will confess that I'm not completely sure that I am grasping it totally and would like to ask you to expand your thoughts a bit? I confess to a knee jerk reaction that if anything I wrote makes you think of Sarah Palin I must have done something horribly wrong, but when it comes to actually applying the analogy of Jesus' crucifixion to this case here, if L had succeeded in finding Light and bringing him to "justice," Light would have been hanged.

L wouldn't have done anything with the actual execution (except attend, I suspect), but he would have been responsible for it, all the same.

Also, can you expand on your statement that the people who drove in the stakes weren't the ones to get blamed for it? I confess that I have moved far away from my religious upbringing (which wasn't Catholic, by the way), but the years of it still haunt me.

Also, I wrote this story in a remarkably short period of time. I'm trying to flex my writing muscles and get back on the scene again. :) So, it is VERY likely that I screwed something up here.

[pargoletta.livejournal.com]

that there would be churches all over the world that still do it.

There's one not too far from my house, but I have no idea how many there are in the world. And, to be honest, what I know about Christianity in Japan wouldn't half fill a teacup. I guess we just have to be confuzzled together.

Also, can you expand on your statement that the people who drove in the stakes weren't the ones to get blamed for it?

Jesus was crucified under Roman law, by Romans, using a Roman form of execution. But for centuries, it's been the Jews who have been reviled as "Christ-killers." The Roman Catholic Church only dropped the deicide charge during Vatican II, not so very long ago. The blood libel -- the belief that Jews kill Christian children for their blood -- stems from this charge of deicide, and the blood libel was one of the myths that drove the persecution of Jews for centuries.

So when I see L here talking about as guilty as those who so many years ago drove stakes through the wrists and feet of an innocent man, I have to wonder who he's thinking about. The Romans, who actually did do the stake-driving, or the Jews, who didn't drive any stakes, but who were blamed for the stake-driving and murdered for it?

Sorry, I didn't mean to dump on you. I really did like the story. It's just . . . I don't know. Sarah Palin bringing up the blood libel in such an inappropriate way kind of had me thinking about it, especially because I had to explain it to a Chinese friend, so I think I'm maybe kind of oversensitized to the whole question of who killed Jesus and who should bear guilt for that.

[bewize.livejournal.com]

You're not infodumping. :) Or at least it's not an unwelcome conversation on my end.

I can also see why the topic is possibly triggering at the moment. I grew up in a nondenominational Bible church, where the fact that the Jews were God's chosen, was stressed, as was the fact that it was the Romans who actually carried out the crucifixion.

In this case, probably because I didn't think about it too hard, I don't know if L would have been thinking in terms of the blood libel, or thinking of himself more like Pontious Pilate (not Harod, which I said above). I suspect he would have been comparing himself to Pilate, though, as the figure behind the scenes who indirectly caused the death of the "god".

[sashocirrione.livejournal.com]

I can see how this would upset some people, but I suspect that most of those people wouldn't read, since the story obviously has a religious theme from your header, so anyone who was sensitive could avoid it easily.

I like the idea that L is mildly disturbed by Kira's attempt to set himself up as a god, and that such thoughts would wander into topics like the falseness or not of other religions and other deities, and the blame games played by worshipers.

As to Christianity in Japan, the only things I know about it is that it is quite small, often looked down on, and often thought of as magical and mysterious by outsiders (sort of like the pop culture view of Voodoo that Americans have). Christianity is big in Korea, though.