just a bit of something
Continued from here. As messy as its predecessor.
* * *
Light cried once, rage instead of grief, when local communications finally fizzled out, and they ventured out on foot to find his home in ruins. He didn't recognize the enemies they found there, a new breed, huge and ink-black and vanishing and reappearing with swords that bit like teeth, but they'd fallen eventually, releasing huge hearts to the sky, and in the aftermath he laid in the rubble of his home and held Misa to his chest as L watched over them both. When Light reached out a hand, he'd slunk closer, and then they lay sprawled there for hours watching the sun set and the slow emergence of the stars and the darkness.
"The worlds are going out," L whispered, and Misa reached up a bloodied hand and touched Light's hair and said "You're like us now," and they lay there in the bloated corpse of Tokyo, three orphans staring at the sky.
Maybe none of this mattered, not their world and not his dreams and not the silence, and Light stared at the sliver of the moon in the sky like a scythe and said "We'll just have to kill them all," and that was all and everything, to save this stinking world from the outside in, another kind of purge to purify what still remained.
* * *
The Notes were worse than useless, but they kept them safe under lock and key, and there was a scrap in Light's watch and Misa's locket, and one crumpled in L's pocket, just in case they ever found a human responsible for any of it at all.
They talked about it sometimes, what they would do if they ever found him, and Misa was the first to volunteer the use of her eyes to make sure the suffering would fall on just the right person, make sure they drew things out enough, make sure they didn't actually trip a premature death before he suffered for what he'd done. They would draw it out for days, weeks, months, to the extent of his natural lifespan and longer, but when Light looked out over what should have been his kingdom, he knew that it would never be enough.
* * *
Plans and plots and schemes meant nothing to an enemy with no intelligence, no cunning, no plan, just instinct and hunger and violence, and so they set up what they could, ran weapons and food and planned for crops grown underground, in caves, in still calm holy places where the shadows wouldn't reach, but the world has long since learned that all it takes is for one to fall, and precious few seem to have the power to resist them.
On long dark nights Light sometimes wondered if he should have slaughtered them all when he still had the chance. It would have been kinder than this.
* * *
There were others, to be sure, warriors and decorated generals and housewives and small children who fight back with hand and gun and sword and magic that burned bright-bright-bright in the encroaching darkness. The three of them stuck close to headquarters and patrolled the streets, but so many others wandered, and in his time Light has seen a priestess glowing like a star in a pool of blackness, an old man whose touch cast flame like a sheet around him, and a young girl in ancient armor slaughtering her enemies with a calm efficiency that clashed with the bloodstained clothes beneath it. Humanity was still filthy, foul and disgusting, and those were always the first to fall, the ones who deserved it and the ones who didn't, but the outside threat made them stronger, and fighting for life always makes it infinitely precious, so they could organize and share and band together, and once in a while life wasn't made of suffering, but mostly Light hated it all.
* * *
Three quarters of the task force had died within the month, and he'd held his father's hand and felt nothing when he died.
* * *
L's foot had slammed through the coalescing shadow even as Watari's body dissolved, and he clasped the crystal heart in trembling hands and kissed it with the reverence of a child before letting it go to drift slowly into the sky.
Every once in a while Light wondered why that image was burned into his memory, when he could only recall his own father's death in a blur of numbness and endless gray.
* * *
If there were any blessings in all of this, it was that L's headquarters were ridiculously well-stocked, still well-connected even though half the population of the planet had perished, and when they weren't asleep or fighting they spent their days organizing trade, moving supplies around to all the survivors, negotiating and rebuilding and setting up patrols, bringing back order to what once was anarchy and before that was one of the most technologically gifted societies in the world.
* * *
"Where have my children gone?" L hissed, low and black and terrible and ugly, and the thing in his grasp wiggled and shook, and then the shadows were moving, swift and sure, and Light felt Misa gasp beside him, but he had always known that L was infinitely crueler than Kira could ever be.
A crippling shriek rent the air when thing fell from L's hand in a blur of shadow, and Light ignored the bite of Misa's nails into the back of his hand, breathed in deep the scent of burning and smiled.
* * *
Light blinked up through the debris and took a breath that tasted like ash. "L, you're not gonna believe this, but I think Matsuda's still alive."
"Idiots and children," L murmured, and leaned down and shoved roughly at a block of concrete roughly the size of Light's old house. It shuddered an inch to the left before stilling. "...we're going to need more help."
* * *
Matsuda's magic burned white-hot and blinding, and their enemies threw themselves into him, maybe trying to snuff it out, maybe trying to steal it, maybe suicidal, and it was a little bit cruel of them to use him as bait, but there was a danger in crossing an idealist who had lost everything, and he'd glittered with temper the one time Light had offered a single scrap of the Note, a sizzle like ozone in the air, and he'd slipped away from that encounter on quick, swift feet, not ashamed, but wary.
"Did you know?" he asked L once, later, safely curled between the lean sprawl of his body and the softness of Misa's, and L had hummed thoughtfully and drawn the shadows around them like a cloak, and maybe that was answer enough, after all.
* * *
Eleven and a half months after the world ended, Light was ambushed on a routine patrol by a scrawny blond brat holding a gun too big for his hands and an albino standing behind a redhead with a chainsaw.
"Take us to L," the blond hissed in broken Japanese, and Light caught his breath, because he'd never mentioned names or appearances, but--
Along the way, they wiped out five clusters of heartless, the blond and redhead with wild war yells and disturbingly gleeful smiles, and the albino with calm, precise strikes of a magic so cold it burned.
The children broke off when they reached headquarters, all three of them running, even the albino, and when Light finally made it up the stairs to their living quarters, Misa met him with a radiant smile and tears brimming in her eyes, squeezed him tight enough that his breath caught, and he thought wildly that nothing could be more ironic than this, of all things, that seeing his once-enemies like this left warmth burning in his chest and relief flooding his veins like a drug.
Abandoned weapons scattered all around them, L's heirs clung to him in a messy tangle of arms and legs and too-long hair, all blinding smiles and half-sobbed babbling, and Light pulled Misa close, settled his cheek against the curve of her shoulder, and remembered Sayu for the first time without feeling like he needed to scream.
* * *
* * *
Light cried once, rage instead of grief, when local communications finally fizzled out, and they ventured out on foot to find his home in ruins. He didn't recognize the enemies they found there, a new breed, huge and ink-black and vanishing and reappearing with swords that bit like teeth, but they'd fallen eventually, releasing huge hearts to the sky, and in the aftermath he laid in the rubble of his home and held Misa to his chest as L watched over them both. When Light reached out a hand, he'd slunk closer, and then they lay sprawled there for hours watching the sun set and the slow emergence of the stars and the darkness.
"The worlds are going out," L whispered, and Misa reached up a bloodied hand and touched Light's hair and said "You're like us now," and they lay there in the bloated corpse of Tokyo, three orphans staring at the sky.
Maybe none of this mattered, not their world and not his dreams and not the silence, and Light stared at the sliver of the moon in the sky like a scythe and said "We'll just have to kill them all," and that was all and everything, to save this stinking world from the outside in, another kind of purge to purify what still remained.
* * *
The Notes were worse than useless, but they kept them safe under lock and key, and there was a scrap in Light's watch and Misa's locket, and one crumpled in L's pocket, just in case they ever found a human responsible for any of it at all.
They talked about it sometimes, what they would do if they ever found him, and Misa was the first to volunteer the use of her eyes to make sure the suffering would fall on just the right person, make sure they drew things out enough, make sure they didn't actually trip a premature death before he suffered for what he'd done. They would draw it out for days, weeks, months, to the extent of his natural lifespan and longer, but when Light looked out over what should have been his kingdom, he knew that it would never be enough.
* * *
Plans and plots and schemes meant nothing to an enemy with no intelligence, no cunning, no plan, just instinct and hunger and violence, and so they set up what they could, ran weapons and food and planned for crops grown underground, in caves, in still calm holy places where the shadows wouldn't reach, but the world has long since learned that all it takes is for one to fall, and precious few seem to have the power to resist them.
On long dark nights Light sometimes wondered if he should have slaughtered them all when he still had the chance. It would have been kinder than this.
* * *
There were others, to be sure, warriors and decorated generals and housewives and small children who fight back with hand and gun and sword and magic that burned bright-bright-bright in the encroaching darkness. The three of them stuck close to headquarters and patrolled the streets, but so many others wandered, and in his time Light has seen a priestess glowing like a star in a pool of blackness, an old man whose touch cast flame like a sheet around him, and a young girl in ancient armor slaughtering her enemies with a calm efficiency that clashed with the bloodstained clothes beneath it. Humanity was still filthy, foul and disgusting, and those were always the first to fall, the ones who deserved it and the ones who didn't, but the outside threat made them stronger, and fighting for life always makes it infinitely precious, so they could organize and share and band together, and once in a while life wasn't made of suffering, but mostly Light hated it all.
* * *
Three quarters of the task force had died within the month, and he'd held his father's hand and felt nothing when he died.
* * *
L's foot had slammed through the coalescing shadow even as Watari's body dissolved, and he clasped the crystal heart in trembling hands and kissed it with the reverence of a child before letting it go to drift slowly into the sky.
Every once in a while Light wondered why that image was burned into his memory, when he could only recall his own father's death in a blur of numbness and endless gray.
* * *
If there were any blessings in all of this, it was that L's headquarters were ridiculously well-stocked, still well-connected even though half the population of the planet had perished, and when they weren't asleep or fighting they spent their days organizing trade, moving supplies around to all the survivors, negotiating and rebuilding and setting up patrols, bringing back order to what once was anarchy and before that was one of the most technologically gifted societies in the world.
* * *
"Where have my children gone?" L hissed, low and black and terrible and ugly, and the thing in his grasp wiggled and shook, and then the shadows were moving, swift and sure, and Light felt Misa gasp beside him, but he had always known that L was infinitely crueler than Kira could ever be.
A crippling shriek rent the air when thing fell from L's hand in a blur of shadow, and Light ignored the bite of Misa's nails into the back of his hand, breathed in deep the scent of burning and smiled.
* * *
Light blinked up through the debris and took a breath that tasted like ash. "L, you're not gonna believe this, but I think Matsuda's still alive."
"Idiots and children," L murmured, and leaned down and shoved roughly at a block of concrete roughly the size of Light's old house. It shuddered an inch to the left before stilling. "...we're going to need more help."
* * *
Matsuda's magic burned white-hot and blinding, and their enemies threw themselves into him, maybe trying to snuff it out, maybe trying to steal it, maybe suicidal, and it was a little bit cruel of them to use him as bait, but there was a danger in crossing an idealist who had lost everything, and he'd glittered with temper the one time Light had offered a single scrap of the Note, a sizzle like ozone in the air, and he'd slipped away from that encounter on quick, swift feet, not ashamed, but wary.
"Did you know?" he asked L once, later, safely curled between the lean sprawl of his body and the softness of Misa's, and L had hummed thoughtfully and drawn the shadows around them like a cloak, and maybe that was answer enough, after all.
* * *
Eleven and a half months after the world ended, Light was ambushed on a routine patrol by a scrawny blond brat holding a gun too big for his hands and an albino standing behind a redhead with a chainsaw.
"Take us to L," the blond hissed in broken Japanese, and Light caught his breath, because he'd never mentioned names or appearances, but--
Along the way, they wiped out five clusters of heartless, the blond and redhead with wild war yells and disturbingly gleeful smiles, and the albino with calm, precise strikes of a magic so cold it burned.
The children broke off when they reached headquarters, all three of them running, even the albino, and when Light finally made it up the stairs to their living quarters, Misa met him with a radiant smile and tears brimming in her eyes, squeezed him tight enough that his breath caught, and he thought wildly that nothing could be more ironic than this, of all things, that seeing his once-enemies like this left warmth burning in his chest and relief flooding his veins like a drug.
Abandoned weapons scattered all around them, L's heirs clung to him in a messy tangle of arms and legs and too-long hair, all blinding smiles and half-sobbed babbling, and Light pulled Misa close, settled his cheek against the curve of her shoulder, and remembered Sayu for the first time without feeling like he needed to scream.
* * *