Lies On Ch 19 To Rule In Hell

[reaperlight]

A/N: This is a Death Note fanfic. I don't own Death Note.
***



Light sat at the edge of the hotel’s bed, working to control his breathing as he stared out into the darkened room. He did not care to ponder what that mysterious wetness around his eyes might be. Light had had plenty of nightmares since becoming Kira but that one seemed so real. Normally his dreams faded upon waking but not this time. The events of his nightmare remained, replaying in his mind, as vivid and true as any of his true memories. What if… what if it was real? Perhaps I somehow managed to send my consciousness back to this time with demon powers that I possess and am not yet aware of? A do-over? Normally he would never entertain such an absurd idea but really, Light concluded it couldn’t have been anything else by the flawless logic that he, Kira, would never get so scared over a simple nightmare.

But then if it was real…

Light felt the hot bile rising up his throat and covered his mouth against the coming dry heave. Once his stomach had somewhat settled again he took a moment to stare down at his clawed fingers.

Monster.

I-I’m a monster!

Next to him L whimpered slightly in his sleep.

Ryuuzaki…

Light forcibly sheathed his claws and carded his fingers through Ryuuzaki’s dark mane. That seemed to calm the detective of his night terrors and the older man snuggled into the blankets, sucking on his thumb in his sleep.

No matter how careful I am, no matter how much I hold back… the fact of the matter is, I’m killing him slowly.

L slept soundly in the presence of the monster, curling into the warm space once occupied by his lover on the bed, as said lover silently got up, got dressed, and shut the door.

***

As soon as he stepped out onto the street it began to rain; as if the skies opened up just for him. Well that made perfect sense to Light. He, the God of this world, was miserable and so it was only natural that his world would be too. Light wandered the streets in a daze, anguished thoughts echoing in his head as he was… searching, trying to find the metaphorical light at the end of the tunnel; for a moment he thought he saw it…

No, wait-it’s only a bus.

But he was currently so very miserable he couldn’t even summon the will to get the fuck out of the way.

The demon lay there for a while, eventually getting around to rearranging his rib cage so it was in the right order when the sensations of it healing wrong became irritating, and he regarded all the so-called “good people” he had been fighting for, that he sacrificed so much for didn’t stop to help or indeed pay him any mind and Light wondered if perhaps they were all rotten.

As despair gave way to anger Light found the will to drag himself, bleeding, up onto the pavement.

Perhaps there’s no redeeming this world! The idea that he might off the entire human race like in his dream suddenly seemed like a very real possibility.

“Light?” And then Yamamoto was there to offer a helping hand-blissfully unaware that he just saved the human race from Kira’s current adolescent meltdown. “Hey, what happened to you, buddy? …and what the hell did you do to your hair?” Yamamoto asked in a bewildered tone, his eyes going comically wide behind his glasses. Light sucked in a sudden, fearful breath as he realized that Yamamoto was touching his horns. His demon parts were out! How embarrassing. He must have reverted thanks to the shock of being hit by a bus. Light quickly changed back to human form but he was sure that the damage was already done.

Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! I have to kill him!

Yamamoto just blinked a couple of times and looked away but Light heard him mutter to himself. “Huh… I guess I’m still a bit stoned.”

On the inside Light was breathing a sigh of relief on the outside though he was making a big show of being a self-righteousness stick-up-the-ass that he didn’t really have to put much effort into faking.

“Yamamoto!”

“What?”

“What were you thinking doing stuff like that?! I thought you wanted to be a detective someday and… and what about Kira?!”

Yamamoto laughed but led his irate friend inside so that they could continue their conversation in the secretive sanctuary of the coffee shop just in case someone did care he smoked a joint and it somehow got back to Kira...

“Light, do you really think Kira is going to bother with me for just smoking a joint?” Yamamoto laughed to reassure them both.

“I…”

Yamamoto reached across the table and patted Light’s arm in a condescending manner. “Really, Light. You need to loosen up a bit. I just tried it once to see what it was all about, that’s all. It’s not like I’m going to go crazy over it. And you know what? I got a screaming headache, I vomited, I got a horrible craving for chips. I’m never doing it again. I just figured it would be good to have some real world experience before I started working vice.”

“Wait you want to work in vice?!”

“Well I was considering applying to the NPA when I graduate but then I thought-do I really want to be stuck at a boring desk job filling out paperwork for the rest of my life? Do you for that matter?”

“Uh…”

“I mean you’re bored now with school and shit! I know the pay isn’t that great compared to the NPA but hey, you’re smarter than me-I bet you could be like James Bond or something! Hell, you could probably be like the next L!” Yamamoto moved on when it seemed that for some reason it seemed he was making Light uncomfortable. “Anyway doing the actual police work-that just seems more exciting, you know? More glamorous…”

“More dangerous,” Light pointed out.

“Yeah, but at least it’s not boring. I mean, shit. Have you ever been to a ride along?”

(Light fidgeted he always wanted to but with his father it was always “later.”)

“Have you seen vice? I mean you know you can’t always be straight-laced when it comes to taking out bad guys-sometimes it’s a bad idea to look like a cop. You’ve gotta have tried it at least once just to fit in.”

“But that’s… That’s not how it’s supposed to be!”

“Well duh. That’s just the way things are.”

“But… the world is changing…What if vice division is gone by the time you graduate… Kira…”

“Kira or no Kira crime is never going to disappear. People have always been afraid of dying. That hasn’t stopped them before-it’s not going to stop them now. Criminals are just gonna get smarter about it, that’s all.”

“But the crime rate…”

“Hasn’t improved. Kira has only monopolized murder. You pointed that out to me yourself, remember?”

“Oh… right.” Dammit. This was Yamamoto who went to school with him and told him how brilliant he was and hung onto his every word. He couldn’t just write him off as an enemy of Kira when really it was his own words coming back to bite him in the ass.

“If you think about it, there’s plenty of ways to exploit the Kira situation. What if you want to get rid of your enemies fast? Just frame them for murder and get their name and photo on the six o’clock news…” Unnoticed by Yamamoto, Light was looking more and more distressed. The righteous killer attempted to mask the emotions trying to break through by calmly taking a sip of coffee.  “Yeah, people are always going to seek cheap thrills. Drugs, prostitution….The world’s oldest profession-I think our job is safe.”

Light choked on his coffee.

“What?!”

“What? I was just saying Kira or no Kira, vice isn’t going away. There will always be work for cops. Why… do you have a side job you haven’t told me about, Light?” Yamamoto smirked.  “I bet you could do it too.”

Light steepled his fingers like a stereotypical movie villain and glowered at him from across the table. Sure he had posed as one plenty of times to lure his prey so he could have sex with strangers but that didn’t make him one!

“Yamamoto, you know if you weren’t my friend…. I would kill you for that.”

The other boy laughed unconcerned. “Yeah, I don’t suppose you’d ever work vice. You dress too nice. I swear the dress code for the vice detectives is like baggy shirts and jeans and ratty sneakers, kinda like Ryuuzaki… Heh. Hey where is Ryuuzaki? Oh no, don’t tell me the two of you have had a spat?”

Light was about to deny it but then again he was fairly certain that Ryuuzaki was in fact L. That meant that their entire relationship was “a spat” of epic proportions.

“Yeah…”Light sighed resignedly.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Light…”

Light sulked.

“You know I can keep a secret.”

Yamamoto looked so hurt that Light found himself relenting. “He’s… he’s great. It’s just. It’s me…” Light sighed. He couldn’t believe he was talking about this. In all honesty he’d rather be having a root canal than be talking about feelings lke this but then he’d never felt this strongly for anyone before Ryuuzaki and he found himself stupidly blurting out “I... I really like him but I don’t think I can…  I’m... afraid. I’m afraid I’m going to screw this up. I’m terrified I'm going to hurt him. You might have noticed but me and Ryuuzaki… we’re very different people. We clash… in numerous ways. The more I think about it, the less it seems like a good idea. I don’t…. I don’t deserve him.”

“He’s probably wondering where you are. Just what happened between you two anyway? You seemed to be getting along great… You know, I bet this is just something stupid.”

Oh it’s nothing big, Yamamoto. He’s just my sworn nemesis. “Well you see… there’s this project we’ve been working on for school and we’re both very excited about it but Ryuuzaki… he doesn’t like the way I’m doing it. He wants to do things his way! He’s so stubborn!”

“So in other words… he’s just like you.”

“What?!”

“What?” Yamamoto gave him a searching look which Light ignored for the sake of taking a dignified sip of his coffee. “I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Yamamoto rolled his eyes. “Of course you don’t.”

“I just don’t understand why he has a problem with the way I do things-it’s efficient, it’s perfectly logical, it’s working…“ Isn’t it?

Is the Kira plan really working as a deterrent? Sure wars have stopped and the crime rate is down…It is down but naturally there are others who don’t see it that way. To the misguided who view Kira’s actions as criminal instead of acting in the service of humanity… well, it’s as I explained to Yamamoto and Ryou earlier-if you count Kira’s actions as crimes than the crime rate has actually gone up with Kira dwarfing all other crime. But crime is still very much present even with the threat of Kira. Honestly I thought it would be trickling off by now but no, it’s all so rotten! Even worse Kira’s judgments seemed to encourage the degenerates. Many of Kira’s “fan sites” are basically hit lists made by normal citizens. The “please kill my parents-girl” on Sakura TV comes to mind. Some are even going so far as to become murderers themselves, attempting to emulate Kira. It’s worrying-even though I’m always swift to punish these copycats it doesn’t seem to discourage this behavior.

Yamamoto was alarmed by the sound of his friend’s forehead hitting the surface of the table.

“Light? What’s wrong?”

“I screwed up… I’ve screwed up bad.”

Yamamoto was unnerved. He had never seen Light looking so miserable. “Aw, c’mon. I’m sure it’s not that bad. Look, everyone make mistakes!”

“I don’t!”

Yamamoto blinked. Come to think of it he had never seen Light screw up at anything. He never got an answer wrong, he always got to class on time, and he never had embarrassing pratfalls. He was always suave, and sociable, and seemingly too perfect to be real. Perhaps Light really had never screwed up before this current vague problem he was having and come to think of it, that must have been devastating-he would be totally unprepared to deal with failure.

“So? I guess all this means is that the great Light Yagami is human after all…” Yamamoto’s good natured ribbing didn’t have the desired effect and the way Light was glaring at him-honestly it was kind of scary. “Aw c’mon! Look whatever this is I’m sure you can fix it! You’re a genius! I mean, surely it’s not the end of the world!”

Yamamoto startled when his friend gave out a broken laugh that made his hair stand on end.

“Shit! I’ve screwed up! I’ve screwed up epically! And Ryuuzaki hates me.”

“Er… What if you asked Ryuuzaki to help you?”

“That would never work! Dammit! I-I don’t want to fight with him but I owe it to everyone to finish what I started! Why does he have to be so stubborn?!”

“Surely there’s a solution but you’re too emotionally invested to see it. I mean isn’t there a way you can finish your project and make Ryuuzaki happy?”

“That’s not possible!”

Yamamoto sighed in exasperation “Light… Listen. Just… take a step back for a minute. You love him right?”  Light grunted and nodded slightly from beneath his fringe of bangs as he focused his attention on his clenched fists on the table top.  “Are you sure it’s not just a case of getting cold feet and are second guessing yourself?”

“I don’t ‘second guess’ myself!” Light hissed.

Yamamoto sighed again. “I think you need to hear this. My older brother once gave me some invaluable advice when I was having girl trouble…”

Light looked up at that. “Ryuuzaki isn’t a girl.”

“Yeah, I noticed” Yamamoto adjusted his glasses as he replied sardonically “But I imagine the same principle applies.”

Light sighed. “I’m listening.”

“#1 Apologize, even if it wasn’t your fault and you’ve done nothing wrong. Man up and take responsibility.

#2 Just accept the fact that in any argument she’s always right, even when she’s not.”

“But what if she isn’t right?”

“She’s always right. Just accept it, man. Of course you know you’re right but you must concede small victories. That way you get laid-or so my brother told me.”

“You’re no help at all,” Light groned from the tabletop.

“#3 Relationships are all about compromise, you know give and take, finding common ground. C’mon, that should be easy for you guys. I mean I know you’re brilliant and Ryuuzaki seems really smart too. You should be able to make this work. I mean, I’m sure he must do things that annoy you but think… do you do anything that annoys him?”

Killing people… I gather that annoys him even though it’s totally justified.

Light sighed again. I have to compromise, huh?

Well… Evil people deserve to die but L doesn’t like that. Dammit, now if they would just stop committing crimes than I wouldn’t have to punish them!

But Yamamoto’s right. Ryuuzaki and I… we’re a lot alike, superficial differences aside-we’re passionate about the same things we even think alike. Hell. If such a thing as a soulmate exists (they don’t of course, that’s utterly stupid) but if they did mine would have to be Ryuuzaki …

I imagine it’s just the killing part of my righteous Justice that he’s squeamish about. I was too, before…

“Yamamoto, I could kiss you.”

“Uh…. I’m flattered, really but I really only like girls!” Yamamoto insisted awkwardly, his face going red as a tomato. “Really, I’m not gay! Not that there’s anything wrong with that! And I’m sure you can fix things with Ryuuzaki!”

“No, no. Not like that! I just meant you’re a genius! Thank you.”

“Er… thanks. Anytime. What were we talking about anyway?”

“Yeah, I’vegottago-catchyalater.” Light called over his shoulder as he rushed out the door.

When I started this plan the Death Note was my only tool, it was the only way. But I also knew from the beginning… the Kira plan could only go so far. I could only encourage people to do the right thing by setting up examples, warnings to others. But now? Now that I’ve been blessed with this, my… birthright I’ve extended my arsenal! If the ends justify the means then it should be the goal not the means that are important! Have I really lost sight of what I…? Dammit, it was so foolish to stick to the same plan when I could’ve…

No, regrets are useless! I’ll fix it! I’ll make the perfect world yet! Just watch me… L, Ryuuzaki …

I’ll give you the world.

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