Fic: One Half the World (Death Note)
Fandom: Death Note
Rating: Uhhh Hard R? Light NC-17? I suck at ratings.
Spoilers: Everything ever.
Specifics: Light/L (...), Light/Misa (tiny edge of), 3600 words, sort of dark but it's Death Note.
Author's Notes: Playing with format - 11 sections of 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600 words and back down to 100.
Summary: Light, L and the inexorable pull of obsession.
One Half the World
In his study of ethics, Light aligns with deontology: duty for the sake of duty, goodness for the sake of goodness and, yes, an action is inherently right or wrong in itself. He has no stomach for consequentialists, with their moral relativism, their justifications after the fact. A good result does not justify a failure of principle. Starvation is not an excuse for theft.
Reality is more "forgiving." Light finds that infinitely disappointing.
Sometimes, he thinks the world is in decay.
Then he finds the notebook, and his universe shifts.
He stands on the edge of a new world, laughing.
* * *
He thinks the first death must be a coincidence. After the second, he throws up. By the third, he's smiling.
Destiny calls. Every afternoon he walks home, listening to Ryuk talk about his boredom and Light's console games, about apples and nothing. Then, the soft swish of Light's feet against the stairs as he heads for his room. He locks his door when he's finally "alone" with himself, and his Ryuk. Evening passes in the silver-blue television glow as his dreams spill from his mind into the world.
Light's victims flash across his screen, a parade of the useless, pawns sacrificed to announce his existence, to cleanse the world. Voiceless, weightless, stripped of humanity, reduced to faces in his memory, names in black ink. So irrelevant outside their purpose that even their killer forgets them when they're gone.
God's work is never done. It's tiring, but rewarding; he feels strangely blessed.
(Ryuk tells him for the third time that this is coincidence, that he wasn't chosen. At least not by Ryuk. Light believes him, most of the time. And he doesn't believe in destiny. Still, he can't help but think it must mean something that the notebook came to him.)
* * *
Lind L. Tailor changes everything. A handful of minutes, and a buzzword: "L" calls him evil, and smirks. Light's stomach clenches. He feels the floor shift beneath his feet. 40 seconds, and Tailor dies with his hand to his chest, sucking air between his teeth. The sound of it makes Light's skin tingle. If L had been more intelligent, it could have been a fun little fight.
Light doesn't have time to savor his win.
There are many things Light can tolerate, for long times or for short, like the stupidity of others, the expectations of the world. Conformity and rebellion, debate and dissonance. The crushing boredom of a routine reality where he is never surprised, never outmaneuvered, never out-thought, and he predicts every move and counters it before it's been made.
When Tailor dies, and the true L's voice taunts Kira over the airwaves, exposes him to the world, Light feels a snapping inside his skull.
Come on. Kill me.
Cold rage floods him like ice water in his blood. His muscles tense, and his breath quickens, hitches, catches in his throat. Somewhere nearby, Ryuk laughs, but Light can barely hear the dry leaf voice crackling through the throbbing of his head.
Hurry up and do it.
He presses his fingers against his face and imagines a world where there is more than one of him. Another person who out-thinks and outmaneuvers. Another person who predicts every move.
He tries to imagine a world where he has an equal.
It's something like a revelation: fascinating, intriguing. The thought pulls at him like the inexorable tug of a chain. He watches the screen flash white and then fade away as his mind spins. In another moment, he feels heady somehow, almost high.
Hadn't he just wished for a better fight?
* * *
So these are the tools of combat: plans and plots, mind and thoughts, psychology, police codes, and the sharp contrast of black ink and white paper. The two-colored squares of the chessboard in his mind. Light moves his pieces well, positions L against the police force, the police force against L.
People are so predictable, and so easily moved.
Penbar's appearance is irritating, but not surprising, and he dies like the afterthought he is. Light watches the man writhe on the floor outside the closing train door. He lets Penbar see his face, savoring his victory. He finds that he enjoys the taste. Days later, Penbar's fiancée walks to the metaphorical gallows; that is even sweeter, still.
L is more difficult to manipulate, and almost impossible to predict.
L's appearance is surprising. The reality of him, his presence, and the weight of those eyes on Light, studying, analyzing. "Ryuga" is something alien, a creature sitting like a monkey, watching Light's face with his black ocean eyes. Light flinches on the inside, though outwardly, he never wavers. Ryuga doesn't either - his eyes never close, his gaze never strays. He leaves his shoes on the floor when he sits, and his fingers never stop moving - fiddling with honey packets, little cakes, sugar cubes. Light feels like a bug caught under glass the first time they talk in circles around their war.
But fine then. They'll play this game, pretend they're friends. They'll dance across the tennis court and around each other over calculatedly casual lunches. They'll feel each other out for flaws, prod each other's softest places, and find steel under every inch of skin. Light has never been tense by nature, but now his fingers grow numb from involuntarily clenching, and he wakes with pain in his jaw from grinding his teeth as he slept.
L is in his dreams, in his every waking thought, dictating his victims, his timing, his choices. Before his every move he calculates Ryuga's next one. Ryuga consumes his mind, perched on his shoulder like a devil with his knees against his chest, whispering 7% when he chooses this man to die, 5% if he chooses another.
Ryuk laughs when he asks where Light's mission has gone; Light says it hasn't gone at all. It's still waiting for him on the other end of this battlefield, if he can only reach it intact.
* * *
It takes a few days to grow used to the way Ryuga (or L, or Ryuzaki) moves, and looks, and how oddly pale he is in the light of day. It's like walking with a paper-doll man: L sways side to side a little when he walks, and bends into or against the wind. He's nearly 2-dimensional in his thinness and when he moves Light can see the cut of his collarbone; when they bump into one another, he feels the ripple of ribs, or the jutting knots of Ryuga's spine. This is especially strange, considering the way he consumes empty calories. Light is half inclined to believe that Ryuga is so pale because he's actually malnourished.
With every minute they spend together, Light hates him more, and they spent every minute together that they can. His hands tied by anonymity and knowledge, he envisions Ryuga dying when he's alone: falling on the tennis court, clutching his chest. He imagines Ryuga standing in the elevator, on his way to the latest in a series of hotel rooms, pressing the emergency stop button when the heart attack begins. He envisions that limousine smashing through lanes of traffic and bursting into flames against the side of a truck. Sitting nearby Ryuga in Psychology class, Light diagnoses him with every personality disorder they discuss. Disconnected, lacking in empathy, low or no affect, inappropriate emotional responses, yes, yes, yes, definitely yes.
Between classes, they ride in Ryuga's limousine to a coffee shop and Ryuga eats cake and drinks coffee. Light watches his long, twisty fingers pulling at sugar packets, stirring his drink. There are crumbs on the corner of Ryuga's mouth for a moment before he notices them. They make Light want to punch him in the face.
At night, they ride in Ryuga's limousine again, and Light watches the street stream by - colors and sound and motion all dulled to reflections, blotted out by the window glass. It's unusually quiet, between them - Light watching the street, and Ryuga's eyes on Light, the way they always are. It's become easy to ignore, now.
Ryuga asks what Light is thinking.
In his mind, Light says, You. Your death, your screams, the jerking of your muscles, you closing your eyes, and the twitch of your lips when you know it's over, and that I've won.
Aloud, he says, "How to make you stop thinking I'm Kira." And that's true, too.
Ryuga tips his head at an angle so his hair falls into his face. The shadows brush against his skin. Just sitting there, he's a high contrast photo in black and white. He says, "You cannot make me stop thinking it, Light-kun. But of course, whether you are or are not, we'll find the truth in time."
L lowers his head just a little, and smiles. Another facade, another veil. Light's chest tightens, and he's so angry and he doesn't know why. He squeezes his hand into a fist and imagines L dying again.
* * *
Light feels like half a person, wandering through the cold steel halls of Ryuzaki's skyscraper, pulled along by at the wrist by that too-short length of chain. It's almost poetic - where one goes, the other follows, and they pull each other around like children playing tug-of-war. Ryuzaki seems unphased, the way he was when they first met, or when he greeted Light in the warm, deceptive comfort of that damn hotel room after weeks of pointless captivity. A snap, and the handcuffs went into place, and now Light is never alone. Really, he doesn't know what he was thinking, agreeing to this.
Light has always thought more clearly in solitude. Maybe if he were alone, just for a moment, he could think well enough to remember who he is.
Ryuzaki stays up all night, papers surrounding him, and Light can't sleep. Sometimes he can, and Ryuzaki wakes him with a tug to his arm in the middle of the night and then it's 3am, 4am, and he's trying to remember the answers the questions he shouldn't have to ask. Light has never forgotten anything. Now his mind is filled with fuzz and he can't remember half of the past several months.
Ryuzaki is an impossible roommate, a constant annoyance. He smiles in a way that never touches his eyes, and when he thinks Light doesn't see him, all the warmth falls away like a mask, and his face turns to stone. Sometimes Light wants to grab him, shake him, make him scream. Sometimes--
...4:30 in the morning, and they look over documents, tracing patterns through mountains of data. Ryuzaki says, "Light-kun. If you were Kira-"
Five words in and Light's already bored. "I'm not."
Ryuzaki lifts his head up, into the lamp light. He looks healthier indoors, with the edges of his bones dulled by the forgiving light. He waves a spoon when he says, "Let's pretend."
An hour later, Light lies next to him in their bed - a convenience to avoid the awkwardness of arms half hanging off of single beds, and the danger of nighttime movements pulling someone onto the floor. An inconvenient convenience. Ryuzaki curls beside him, asleep for once, his back turned. His spine is a knotted rope digging into Light's side. Light imagines those eyes, open again, watching him for traces of the monster Ryuzaki thinks he is.
His stomach lurches; he feels sick. A familiar feeling, these days.
Light lies on his side, facing Ryuzaki's back, and brushes his fingers against Ryuzaki's arm. The touch sparks chills through his body. It's strange, and confusing; he tries not to linger with it for long. He tells himself that when they find Kira, it will be over - the handcuffs will be gone, their destinies unchained, and he can walk away, free. He'll have all the time in the world to find his missing pieces, and he'll never have to stand the unbearable weight of Ryuzaki's stare again. The thought is comforting, and sad.
Another day. He endures.
Then his fingers brush against black leather, and the pieces fall together with a rush of nausea and elation.
(Light knows, now, that he spent the first week of captivity shutting out Ryuk's whining, imagining the way the pieces would fit, when they finally fell. He imagined the satisfying snap of a plan coming together, and the thud of Ryuzaki's body when, at last, it hit the ground. The thought made him shiver, and L's "voice" came through the speakers and it said, "Are you cold?")
Now Light knows the final act is about to begin.
* * *
Everything is beautiful before it disappears.
Light finds Ryuzaki (no, this is L) on the rooftop in the rain. The air is cold and filled with mist. There's a thunderstorm starting, though the lightning hasn't yet begun. In the morning, the water will have run away into sewers and into the sea. A new day. A new world washed clean by the rain.
Light thinks he'll call this the point of no return.
And L sees through Light, the way he always has. Usually, it's infuriating - Light has never liked to be seen; today, Light sees through L, too, past the bravado to the sadness. He sees the jaws of his trap closing slowly around L, casting their shadows over monochromatic him.
Inside, on the steps, he feels strange, a little silent. L touches his skin, and there's something different now: an atmospheric shift, and the way L's hair parts under Light's hand when he pushes back the wet locks with a towel. L's eyes are so big it looks as though they could take in all the world. Half-covered by hair, they take in Light, too.
L says, "It's almost time to say goodbye."
It's the midnight of their time together. The final song is playing, and Light watches L's face, droplets running down his cheek, loving the way they dance.
(When L is gone, there will be victory, and peace. When L is gone, Light will grab the world and hold it in his palm, and the sun will need his permission to shine, and the air will fill with the electricity of his power. He will be unopposed. When L is gone, the world will stop spinning, just for a moment. And Light will need to stop and think, and remember how to breathe.)
Light sees it in slow motion: the way he drops his spoon, and his eyes are so wide. Light never knew how wide they could be, even more than they always were. L falls like a ragdoll before his heart stops beating, his face washed red from the glow of the emergency alert. Light cradles his body, savoring his breath as it shudders out of him in waves, the climax of their little war that couldn't last forever. L smells like shampoo and strawberry sauce and coffee; Light wants to inhale it, inhale him - his last hit of a drug he never knew he was addicted to.
L's eyes grow wider one last time, and then they fall. Light watches them close, fingers buried in hair, that's still cold and a little damp against Light's skin. And Light's face twists - in glee, in grief. He's imagined it before, just like this, and L is so beautiful when he's still, when his eyes are closed, when his chest shakes, and his breathing grows shallow.
Light counts the seconds - 1 and 2 and... there's heat in his blood, and he wants to scream.
L's breathing stops.
The world is different, now.
* * *
Light gloats over L's grave like a demon: fingers dig into the dirt over L's corpse, grass stains the knees of Light's freshly pressed suit. Behind him, Ryuk's spindly body blocks the sun. Light squeezes the dirt through his fingertips and laughs.
In the quiet after the end, Light lives in the void L left behind.
He builds his life piece by piece. He brings Misa's eyes into his home, swallowing his disdain when she sets herself on his lap, kisses his face, drowns him in blond hair and expensive perfume. She celebrates his win; he enacts his victory, building a new organization from the broken remains of L's team. Each day he passes the hollowed shell of a tower that was their headquarters. Each day he imagines those eyes staring holes into him from the topmost floor.
He finishes school. He plays his roles. The most powerful person in the world is not a politician, now. It is a university student, laboring in obscurity, controlling the rotation of the planet from beneath a series of masks. Somewhere inside the matryoshka dolls is hidden Light Yagami, brilliant student, humble man. Visionary, genius. God.
(In the years that pass, Light's mind grows numb from the ease of it all, but he's earned the rest, hasn't he? And he wants it... doesn't he?)
Sometimes, he dreams of capture, or dreams of pursuit; he wakes up cold, angry for no reason he can articulate. Misa tries to kiss it away but it only inflames his rage. He turns her face down, pushes her into the mattress. He grabs her throat, and twists her arm when he takes her. She doesn't cry, doesn't question. She never objects. His eyes are closed the entire time.
And L never loses, even in death. When "N" appears, the battle begins again. At first, Light thinks it might be interesting, but L's successors only disappoint. N's electronic voice warps and crackles through speakers and Light glances across the distance between where he sits and where Ryuzaki would have sat, if he were here.
If he were alive, an extra chair would be set in the corner of Light's apartment. L would sit, surrounded by sweets, stacking sugar cubes and empty jelly cups.
Light can almost see it. Listening to N, he thinks, You aren't worthy of his place.
He wonders how much a corpse decomposes in four years.
* * *
(In his dreams they fuck like they never did in life. Light's fingers drag across those endless bony edges, plains of white-grey skin. L's legs tangle against his - the heel of L's curiously uncalloused foot pressing hard against the swell of Light's calf. Light pushes his hands through that thick mass of unkempt hair, and pushes Ryuzaki's head backwards against the pillows, hair obscuring that ubiquitous wide-eyed stare.
It's only a dream, so Light kisses him until his lips are swollen, the way he never did. Light holds him down, and L's breath catches, his heart pounds. Light feels that unstilled heart beating like bird wings inside the cage of his ribs till it seems as though it might break itself, break its bars. He pushes his fingers against the center of L's chest when they move together, noting every beat as he thrusts, and every breath when they kiss. It's suffocating, it's drowning, and Light loses his breath too so he retaliates, pushing L down again, into the mattress beneath them, moving his pliant body, leaving bruises on his wrists. Ryuzaki says Light's name in his ear, and it's music, and it's victory.
He doesn't know why he never thought of it before they said goodbye any more than he knows why he's thought of it now. But in Light's dream, L is burnt up completely inside the fire of them.
Maybe they could have had a million bruising kisses and he would have heard L say his name forever if the world had been different.)
Light wakes up with the cold sting of invisible handcuffs still snapped tight around his wrist. When he sits up, he feels the infinite weight of imaginary chains.
He wonders if he will ever be free.
But really, it's only a dream.
* * *
Even two can't take his place.
Light stands at the window at night, overlooking the city: a tiny sliver of his brave new world. The dream he fought, killed and nearly died for. His shoulders ache, a phantom pain from weeks spent with his arms locked behind his back, screaming at an intercom and the faceless man behind it.
L always did what he had to, always knew when to stop. He was beyond his proteges - so far beyond they'll never catch him, regardless of how they reach, what they resort to.
And how far they've fallen: consorting with criminals, playing games in LA. They lack the courage to meet Light's eyes, to show him their faces. They'll never whisper, "I am L" in the auditorium of Todai. In a game of tennis, they would never score a point.
Light can see L's face from where he's standing - a ghostly vision flickering in the light, out of the successors' reach. If he keeps his eyes on L, he'll pass through the impostors, these children who could never match either of them.
So he watches L in the shadows as he moves.
And he walks right into their trap.
* * *
He stands on the edge of a new world, silent.
The darkness comes, and his eyes are open. He listens to his dripping blood. Seconds feel like hours feel like seconds, and his skin grows cold, like the air, while his head fills with muted throbs, dull like the ache of bullet wounds that can't kill him now. Around him: the fools he used for years, the upstart who foiled God.
Soon his eyes will close.
When the curtain fell, the Wizard was just a frail man, after all.
(Somewhere, far away, he thinks he hears the clink of chains.)
Rating: Uhhh Hard R? Light NC-17? I suck at ratings.
Spoilers: Everything ever.
Specifics: Light/L (...), Light/Misa (tiny edge of), 3600 words, sort of dark but it's Death Note.
Author's Notes: Playing with format - 11 sections of 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600 words and back down to 100.
Summary: Light, L and the inexorable pull of obsession.
One Half the World
In his study of ethics, Light aligns with deontology: duty for the sake of duty, goodness for the sake of goodness and, yes, an action is inherently right or wrong in itself. He has no stomach for consequentialists, with their moral relativism, their justifications after the fact. A good result does not justify a failure of principle. Starvation is not an excuse for theft.
Reality is more "forgiving." Light finds that infinitely disappointing.
Sometimes, he thinks the world is in decay.
Then he finds the notebook, and his universe shifts.
He stands on the edge of a new world, laughing.
* * *
He thinks the first death must be a coincidence. After the second, he throws up. By the third, he's smiling.
Destiny calls. Every afternoon he walks home, listening to Ryuk talk about his boredom and Light's console games, about apples and nothing. Then, the soft swish of Light's feet against the stairs as he heads for his room. He locks his door when he's finally "alone" with himself, and his Ryuk. Evening passes in the silver-blue television glow as his dreams spill from his mind into the world.
Light's victims flash across his screen, a parade of the useless, pawns sacrificed to announce his existence, to cleanse the world. Voiceless, weightless, stripped of humanity, reduced to faces in his memory, names in black ink. So irrelevant outside their purpose that even their killer forgets them when they're gone.
God's work is never done. It's tiring, but rewarding; he feels strangely blessed.
(Ryuk tells him for the third time that this is coincidence, that he wasn't chosen. At least not by Ryuk. Light believes him, most of the time. And he doesn't believe in destiny. Still, he can't help but think it must mean something that the notebook came to him.)
* * *
Lind L. Tailor changes everything. A handful of minutes, and a buzzword: "L" calls him evil, and smirks. Light's stomach clenches. He feels the floor shift beneath his feet. 40 seconds, and Tailor dies with his hand to his chest, sucking air between his teeth. The sound of it makes Light's skin tingle. If L had been more intelligent, it could have been a fun little fight.
Light doesn't have time to savor his win.
There are many things Light can tolerate, for long times or for short, like the stupidity of others, the expectations of the world. Conformity and rebellion, debate and dissonance. The crushing boredom of a routine reality where he is never surprised, never outmaneuvered, never out-thought, and he predicts every move and counters it before it's been made.
When Tailor dies, and the true L's voice taunts Kira over the airwaves, exposes him to the world, Light feels a snapping inside his skull.
Come on. Kill me.
Cold rage floods him like ice water in his blood. His muscles tense, and his breath quickens, hitches, catches in his throat. Somewhere nearby, Ryuk laughs, but Light can barely hear the dry leaf voice crackling through the throbbing of his head.
Hurry up and do it.
He presses his fingers against his face and imagines a world where there is more than one of him. Another person who out-thinks and outmaneuvers. Another person who predicts every move.
He tries to imagine a world where he has an equal.
It's something like a revelation: fascinating, intriguing. The thought pulls at him like the inexorable tug of a chain. He watches the screen flash white and then fade away as his mind spins. In another moment, he feels heady somehow, almost high.
Hadn't he just wished for a better fight?
* * *
So these are the tools of combat: plans and plots, mind and thoughts, psychology, police codes, and the sharp contrast of black ink and white paper. The two-colored squares of the chessboard in his mind. Light moves his pieces well, positions L against the police force, the police force against L.
People are so predictable, and so easily moved.
Penbar's appearance is irritating, but not surprising, and he dies like the afterthought he is. Light watches the man writhe on the floor outside the closing train door. He lets Penbar see his face, savoring his victory. He finds that he enjoys the taste. Days later, Penbar's fiancée walks to the metaphorical gallows; that is even sweeter, still.
L is more difficult to manipulate, and almost impossible to predict.
L's appearance is surprising. The reality of him, his presence, and the weight of those eyes on Light, studying, analyzing. "Ryuga" is something alien, a creature sitting like a monkey, watching Light's face with his black ocean eyes. Light flinches on the inside, though outwardly, he never wavers. Ryuga doesn't either - his eyes never close, his gaze never strays. He leaves his shoes on the floor when he sits, and his fingers never stop moving - fiddling with honey packets, little cakes, sugar cubes. Light feels like a bug caught under glass the first time they talk in circles around their war.
But fine then. They'll play this game, pretend they're friends. They'll dance across the tennis court and around each other over calculatedly casual lunches. They'll feel each other out for flaws, prod each other's softest places, and find steel under every inch of skin. Light has never been tense by nature, but now his fingers grow numb from involuntarily clenching, and he wakes with pain in his jaw from grinding his teeth as he slept.
L is in his dreams, in his every waking thought, dictating his victims, his timing, his choices. Before his every move he calculates Ryuga's next one. Ryuga consumes his mind, perched on his shoulder like a devil with his knees against his chest, whispering 7% when he chooses this man to die, 5% if he chooses another.
Ryuk laughs when he asks where Light's mission has gone; Light says it hasn't gone at all. It's still waiting for him on the other end of this battlefield, if he can only reach it intact.
* * *
It takes a few days to grow used to the way Ryuga (or L, or Ryuzaki) moves, and looks, and how oddly pale he is in the light of day. It's like walking with a paper-doll man: L sways side to side a little when he walks, and bends into or against the wind. He's nearly 2-dimensional in his thinness and when he moves Light can see the cut of his collarbone; when they bump into one another, he feels the ripple of ribs, or the jutting knots of Ryuga's spine. This is especially strange, considering the way he consumes empty calories. Light is half inclined to believe that Ryuga is so pale because he's actually malnourished.
With every minute they spend together, Light hates him more, and they spent every minute together that they can. His hands tied by anonymity and knowledge, he envisions Ryuga dying when he's alone: falling on the tennis court, clutching his chest. He imagines Ryuga standing in the elevator, on his way to the latest in a series of hotel rooms, pressing the emergency stop button when the heart attack begins. He envisions that limousine smashing through lanes of traffic and bursting into flames against the side of a truck. Sitting nearby Ryuga in Psychology class, Light diagnoses him with every personality disorder they discuss. Disconnected, lacking in empathy, low or no affect, inappropriate emotional responses, yes, yes, yes, definitely yes.
Between classes, they ride in Ryuga's limousine to a coffee shop and Ryuga eats cake and drinks coffee. Light watches his long, twisty fingers pulling at sugar packets, stirring his drink. There are crumbs on the corner of Ryuga's mouth for a moment before he notices them. They make Light want to punch him in the face.
At night, they ride in Ryuga's limousine again, and Light watches the street stream by - colors and sound and motion all dulled to reflections, blotted out by the window glass. It's unusually quiet, between them - Light watching the street, and Ryuga's eyes on Light, the way they always are. It's become easy to ignore, now.
Ryuga asks what Light is thinking.
In his mind, Light says, You. Your death, your screams, the jerking of your muscles, you closing your eyes, and the twitch of your lips when you know it's over, and that I've won.
Aloud, he says, "How to make you stop thinking I'm Kira." And that's true, too.
Ryuga tips his head at an angle so his hair falls into his face. The shadows brush against his skin. Just sitting there, he's a high contrast photo in black and white. He says, "You cannot make me stop thinking it, Light-kun. But of course, whether you are or are not, we'll find the truth in time."
L lowers his head just a little, and smiles. Another facade, another veil. Light's chest tightens, and he's so angry and he doesn't know why. He squeezes his hand into a fist and imagines L dying again.
* * *
Light feels like half a person, wandering through the cold steel halls of Ryuzaki's skyscraper, pulled along by at the wrist by that too-short length of chain. It's almost poetic - where one goes, the other follows, and they pull each other around like children playing tug-of-war. Ryuzaki seems unphased, the way he was when they first met, or when he greeted Light in the warm, deceptive comfort of that damn hotel room after weeks of pointless captivity. A snap, and the handcuffs went into place, and now Light is never alone. Really, he doesn't know what he was thinking, agreeing to this.
Light has always thought more clearly in solitude. Maybe if he were alone, just for a moment, he could think well enough to remember who he is.
Ryuzaki stays up all night, papers surrounding him, and Light can't sleep. Sometimes he can, and Ryuzaki wakes him with a tug to his arm in the middle of the night and then it's 3am, 4am, and he's trying to remember the answers the questions he shouldn't have to ask. Light has never forgotten anything. Now his mind is filled with fuzz and he can't remember half of the past several months.
Ryuzaki is an impossible roommate, a constant annoyance. He smiles in a way that never touches his eyes, and when he thinks Light doesn't see him, all the warmth falls away like a mask, and his face turns to stone. Sometimes Light wants to grab him, shake him, make him scream. Sometimes--
...4:30 in the morning, and they look over documents, tracing patterns through mountains of data. Ryuzaki says, "Light-kun. If you were Kira-"
Five words in and Light's already bored. "I'm not."
Ryuzaki lifts his head up, into the lamp light. He looks healthier indoors, with the edges of his bones dulled by the forgiving light. He waves a spoon when he says, "Let's pretend."
An hour later, Light lies next to him in their bed - a convenience to avoid the awkwardness of arms half hanging off of single beds, and the danger of nighttime movements pulling someone onto the floor. An inconvenient convenience. Ryuzaki curls beside him, asleep for once, his back turned. His spine is a knotted rope digging into Light's side. Light imagines those eyes, open again, watching him for traces of the monster Ryuzaki thinks he is.
His stomach lurches; he feels sick. A familiar feeling, these days.
Light lies on his side, facing Ryuzaki's back, and brushes his fingers against Ryuzaki's arm. The touch sparks chills through his body. It's strange, and confusing; he tries not to linger with it for long. He tells himself that when they find Kira, it will be over - the handcuffs will be gone, their destinies unchained, and he can walk away, free. He'll have all the time in the world to find his missing pieces, and he'll never have to stand the unbearable weight of Ryuzaki's stare again. The thought is comforting, and sad.
Another day. He endures.
Then his fingers brush against black leather, and the pieces fall together with a rush of nausea and elation.
(Light knows, now, that he spent the first week of captivity shutting out Ryuk's whining, imagining the way the pieces would fit, when they finally fell. He imagined the satisfying snap of a plan coming together, and the thud of Ryuzaki's body when, at last, it hit the ground. The thought made him shiver, and L's "voice" came through the speakers and it said, "Are you cold?")
Now Light knows the final act is about to begin.
* * *
Everything is beautiful before it disappears.
Light finds Ryuzaki (no, this is L) on the rooftop in the rain. The air is cold and filled with mist. There's a thunderstorm starting, though the lightning hasn't yet begun. In the morning, the water will have run away into sewers and into the sea. A new day. A new world washed clean by the rain.
Light thinks he'll call this the point of no return.
And L sees through Light, the way he always has. Usually, it's infuriating - Light has never liked to be seen; today, Light sees through L, too, past the bravado to the sadness. He sees the jaws of his trap closing slowly around L, casting their shadows over monochromatic him.
Inside, on the steps, he feels strange, a little silent. L touches his skin, and there's something different now: an atmospheric shift, and the way L's hair parts under Light's hand when he pushes back the wet locks with a towel. L's eyes are so big it looks as though they could take in all the world. Half-covered by hair, they take in Light, too.
L says, "It's almost time to say goodbye."
It's the midnight of their time together. The final song is playing, and Light watches L's face, droplets running down his cheek, loving the way they dance.
(When L is gone, there will be victory, and peace. When L is gone, Light will grab the world and hold it in his palm, and the sun will need his permission to shine, and the air will fill with the electricity of his power. He will be unopposed. When L is gone, the world will stop spinning, just for a moment. And Light will need to stop and think, and remember how to breathe.)
Light sees it in slow motion: the way he drops his spoon, and his eyes are so wide. Light never knew how wide they could be, even more than they always were. L falls like a ragdoll before his heart stops beating, his face washed red from the glow of the emergency alert. Light cradles his body, savoring his breath as it shudders out of him in waves, the climax of their little war that couldn't last forever. L smells like shampoo and strawberry sauce and coffee; Light wants to inhale it, inhale him - his last hit of a drug he never knew he was addicted to.
L's eyes grow wider one last time, and then they fall. Light watches them close, fingers buried in hair, that's still cold and a little damp against Light's skin. And Light's face twists - in glee, in grief. He's imagined it before, just like this, and L is so beautiful when he's still, when his eyes are closed, when his chest shakes, and his breathing grows shallow.
Light counts the seconds - 1 and 2 and... there's heat in his blood, and he wants to scream.
L's breathing stops.
The world is different, now.
* * *
Light gloats over L's grave like a demon: fingers dig into the dirt over L's corpse, grass stains the knees of Light's freshly pressed suit. Behind him, Ryuk's spindly body blocks the sun. Light squeezes the dirt through his fingertips and laughs.
In the quiet after the end, Light lives in the void L left behind.
He builds his life piece by piece. He brings Misa's eyes into his home, swallowing his disdain when she sets herself on his lap, kisses his face, drowns him in blond hair and expensive perfume. She celebrates his win; he enacts his victory, building a new organization from the broken remains of L's team. Each day he passes the hollowed shell of a tower that was their headquarters. Each day he imagines those eyes staring holes into him from the topmost floor.
He finishes school. He plays his roles. The most powerful person in the world is not a politician, now. It is a university student, laboring in obscurity, controlling the rotation of the planet from beneath a series of masks. Somewhere inside the matryoshka dolls is hidden Light Yagami, brilliant student, humble man. Visionary, genius. God.
(In the years that pass, Light's mind grows numb from the ease of it all, but he's earned the rest, hasn't he? And he wants it... doesn't he?)
Sometimes, he dreams of capture, or dreams of pursuit; he wakes up cold, angry for no reason he can articulate. Misa tries to kiss it away but it only inflames his rage. He turns her face down, pushes her into the mattress. He grabs her throat, and twists her arm when he takes her. She doesn't cry, doesn't question. She never objects. His eyes are closed the entire time.
And L never loses, even in death. When "N" appears, the battle begins again. At first, Light thinks it might be interesting, but L's successors only disappoint. N's electronic voice warps and crackles through speakers and Light glances across the distance between where he sits and where Ryuzaki would have sat, if he were here.
If he were alive, an extra chair would be set in the corner of Light's apartment. L would sit, surrounded by sweets, stacking sugar cubes and empty jelly cups.
Light can almost see it. Listening to N, he thinks, You aren't worthy of his place.
He wonders how much a corpse decomposes in four years.
* * *
(In his dreams they fuck like they never did in life. Light's fingers drag across those endless bony edges, plains of white-grey skin. L's legs tangle against his - the heel of L's curiously uncalloused foot pressing hard against the swell of Light's calf. Light pushes his hands through that thick mass of unkempt hair, and pushes Ryuzaki's head backwards against the pillows, hair obscuring that ubiquitous wide-eyed stare.
It's only a dream, so Light kisses him until his lips are swollen, the way he never did. Light holds him down, and L's breath catches, his heart pounds. Light feels that unstilled heart beating like bird wings inside the cage of his ribs till it seems as though it might break itself, break its bars. He pushes his fingers against the center of L's chest when they move together, noting every beat as he thrusts, and every breath when they kiss. It's suffocating, it's drowning, and Light loses his breath too so he retaliates, pushing L down again, into the mattress beneath them, moving his pliant body, leaving bruises on his wrists. Ryuzaki says Light's name in his ear, and it's music, and it's victory.
He doesn't know why he never thought of it before they said goodbye any more than he knows why he's thought of it now. But in Light's dream, L is burnt up completely inside the fire of them.
Maybe they could have had a million bruising kisses and he would have heard L say his name forever if the world had been different.)
Light wakes up with the cold sting of invisible handcuffs still snapped tight around his wrist. When he sits up, he feels the infinite weight of imaginary chains.
He wonders if he will ever be free.
But really, it's only a dream.
* * *
Even two can't take his place.
Light stands at the window at night, overlooking the city: a tiny sliver of his brave new world. The dream he fought, killed and nearly died for. His shoulders ache, a phantom pain from weeks spent with his arms locked behind his back, screaming at an intercom and the faceless man behind it.
L always did what he had to, always knew when to stop. He was beyond his proteges - so far beyond they'll never catch him, regardless of how they reach, what they resort to.
And how far they've fallen: consorting with criminals, playing games in LA. They lack the courage to meet Light's eyes, to show him their faces. They'll never whisper, "I am L" in the auditorium of Todai. In a game of tennis, they would never score a point.
Light can see L's face from where he's standing - a ghostly vision flickering in the light, out of the successors' reach. If he keeps his eyes on L, he'll pass through the impostors, these children who could never match either of them.
So he watches L in the shadows as he moves.
And he walks right into their trap.
* * *
He stands on the edge of a new world, silent.
The darkness comes, and his eyes are open. He listens to his dripping blood. Seconds feel like hours feel like seconds, and his skin grows cold, like the air, while his head fills with muted throbs, dull like the ache of bullet wounds that can't kill him now. Around him: the fools he used for years, the upstart who foiled God.
Soon his eyes will close.
When the curtain fell, the Wizard was just a frail man, after all.
(Somewhere, far away, he thinks he hears the clink of chains.)