Chapter Text
Chronos meandered through the dead realm he'd been calling his home for a little while. There wasn't much to do here so often he chose to explore, even though nothing ever changed. He was still known as the "new one" to the other Shinigamis. He'd been assured early on that because their kind lived virtually forever, it would be quite a long time before he lost that moniker.
Chronos didn't remember anything before awakening in the dead realm. Evidently, none of them did.
Chronos was the only one who seemed to care. None of the other Shinigami cared about what they had been before or if they had been at all. In truth, they seemed not to care about much of anything, even if it was finding meaning in existence. Chronos was still a large point of curiosity for most of them it wasn’t every millennium that a new Shinigami was born - but the average Shinigami’s life was still perpetual boredom. It was only accentuated by the conversations they had amongst themselves and...gambling. Just gambling.
At least, Chronos thought to himself, Shinigami make excellent company. And they did. Chronos found his fellow death gods to be both affable and friendly. Except for some good-natured teasing, they’d been exceedingly helpful to Chronos when he’d first appeared and there seemed to be a quiet understanding amongst all of them.
Perhaps it was because he was so much younger, but even as he shared in his fellow’s boredom, Chronos seemed to find more meaning in his existence than the others did. It wasn’t easy, living in their dead realm, but where there was a will, there was a way!
He explored every inch of their realm in the way only a new being could. He talked with the others, discussing all manner of things he could think of, which became the thing that alerted the other Shinigamis - and him - to the fact that he had exceptionally high intelligence, even among his own kind. Only Nu was able to keep him on his toes during a discussion.
And then there was the majority of his time which he began to spend in front of the portal to the human realm. People-watching became his new favorite hobby. That was how he met Ryuk, the Shinigami that he quickly learned was even more of an oddball amongst their kind than he was.
Early on in his attempts to hold back the tedium of Shinigami life, Chronos had heard stories about this Shinigami, Ryuk, who left for the human realm once not long ago with his and another Shinigami’s Death Note to assuage his own boredom. He’d come back to their realm, his fun over, shortly before Chronos had been born, but evidently, he did have quite a bit of fun while he was gone.
Their realm, although dying, was quite large and the combination of Chronos often doing things and Ryuk seemingly keeping to himself more often than not, led to Chronos only meeting this infamous Shinigami for the first time as they both stood over the portal. Watching the humans.
One human, in particular, Chronos felt drawn to and he watched them religiously, seldom going a day without seeing them.
~ 🅚 ~
Chronos decided to crawl back to the portal where he often viewed the same young man. A boy, really, in human terms. He was so terribly young among his kind and yet he shouldered massive responsibilities like they were nothing and with not a word of complaint.
Maybe he even enjoyed it, Chronos couldn't be sure.
Regardless, Chronos felt for him. He felt for him in a way he didn't for any other human. He felt an odd... responsibility ...towards him. Poor boy.
Guilt? Is that what Chronos really felt? Guilt for what, he wondered?
Ryuk perched on a rocky outcropping somewhere behind Chronos, as he so often did. Whether he did this because of how interesting he found humans or because he was just following him, Chronos also didn't know. After they’d talked a bit over the human realm, he and Ryuk had simply clicked and begun spending most of their time together.
“Looking at that human again?” Ryuk called amusement hovering clearly within his voice, as always.
“Of course,” Chronos responded casually, not taking his eyes off of the frail-looking boy laying spread out on the floor of his abode. Was it a home? It looked more like a human office than a home, but he did sleep there…
“Why do I care about this child so much?” Chronos whispered to himself.
“Beats me.” Ryuk evidently heard him. For some strange reason though, Ryuk kinda sounded to him like he did know. Like he was privy to some substantial information that Chronos didn’t know. He didn’t ask. “Why you care for any human is beyond me.” Ryuk continued, uncaringly.
Chronos watched as the white-haired human calmly twirled his long hair with one finger, as he was in the habit of doing. The hair had been somewhat short - perhaps a bit long for his gender - when Chronos he’d first taken to watching him, but since then, the human had allowed it to grow unimpeded until it ran down to his lower back.
How peculiar. How different. Maybe that was why Chronos watched him so much? But then why the vague feeling of guilt in his gut as he watched the small human live his life? Regardless, Chronos had learned a great deal about human culture from watching him and other humans. From his observations, the Shinigami learned that the young man was a detective and apparently was one of great renown. Strangely, the boy didn’t show much emotion ever, despite his great success in life, which was something that made Chronos sad for him. He didn’t seem to enjoy existence and just went about the motions, unlike Chronos who mostly succeeded in finding happiness. It was tragically ironic, he thought, given the respective worlds they inhabited.
“Hyuk!” Ryuk gave that distinctive laugh of his. “Hey, L﹘Chronos, why don’t we go for a fly? I can tell ya’ more stories while we do!” The other Shinigami tried to bribe him, but despite how much Chronos enjoyed the act of flying, he remained unmoved.
“Not now, Ryuk. I’m watching Nate.” Chronos murmured.
“That’s not the name he goes by, is it?” Ryuk asked, as if he didn’t already know, and slid down from the tall rock to stand beside him.
“No, he goes by the strange nickname ‘Near’ , but Nate River is his name, no matter what he may desire it to be.” Chronos returned, readily. Although he had been trying to ignore it this whole time, his red pupils dragged themselves up to the negative space above the young human’s head. Ryuk saw this.
“He doesn’t have much time left, does he?” Ryuk commented.
There was a short, weighty silence. “No, he doesn’t,” Chronos said, at last. 10668 was floating in red above the boy’s head; three human days left in his lifespan. Just three human days. “It doesn’t seem fair.” Chronos found himself whispering, almost unconsciously.
Ryuk looked at him with curiosity and no small amount of surprise as Chronos continued. “He’s so young among humans and he does so much for his world. Yet, he’s barely begun to live his life, at all. He needs more time…” Chronos drew off. His thinking was reaching truly uncomfortable territory now.
There was nothing he could do, after all. It was forbidden to use their Death Notes to extend a human’s life - Chronos didn’t even know how Nate was going to die - and Ryuk had even told him the secret about how to kill a Shinigami! He couldn’t…
He could do nothing to help.
“Hey!” Ryuk started suddenly, causing Chronos to jump a little as he was wrenched quickly from his depressing thoughts. “This is getting sad, how ‘bout we write some names down? I bet it’ll get your spirits up!”
Chronos looked at the other Shinigami - his friend - before slowly turning to stare at Nate for a few long moments. Then he sighed lightly and turned back to his friend to give Ryuk a tired smile. “Sure, Ryuk, sounds fun.”
Chronos reached out languidly with a long, slender finger and touched the surface of the portal. Like a mirror covered in water, it rippled and its appearance changed, reacting to the young Shinigami’s will. In Nate’s place, appeared several mafia members, having some kind of meeting in their lair.
Ryuk chuckled. “You know, at first I didn’t see why you particularly cared about what humans you killed; whether they were innocent or not. Why bother killing criminals as if that was going to solve the world’s problems? I still don’t get it completely, but I will admit there is definitely more fun to killing criminals.”
Chronos couldn’t remember having that conversation. Oh well, it wasn’t like he could expect Ryuk to always tell him what he was thinking at the moment. “It won’t solve the human world’s problems, Ryuk, but it may make it a better place.”
“Humans scurry around like little ants, lying and stealing and that won’t change. You’re young, but you’ve been watching humans enough to know that. Humans have all sorts of laws, rules, and professions meant to control the chaos they create, for all the good that’s done them. You’re always the optimist, aren’t you?” Ryuk said.
Chronos scoffed lightly. “We don’t know it won’t help. We can’t see the future, after all, Ryuk. Besides, when killing career criminals, it is nearly impossible not to do at least some little good. Maybe a little is enough.” His voice sounded wistful at the end a small, barely there, a smile tugged at his lips.
Ryuk didn’t seem to quite agree, but he gave a smile of his own to accompany it, anyway. “Well, at any rate, it provides some good entertainment. Although it would be more interesting if you had them all die of heart attacks instead of writing their deaths as accidents.” Ryuk said, peering curiously into the portal as Chronos began writing down the names of all the men in the lair.
“Why is that?” Chronos asked, mildly. For some reason, when Chronos had been told that he’d need to kill humans to lengthen his own life and gotten started on that, he’d been reticent to have even one of them expire due to heart attack, so he’d ended up making them all look like accidents. Of course, he was careful never to kill one as they were in the act of killing someone else, lest he accidentally extend a human’s life and off himself by accident.
Ryuk chuckled. “I bet they’d panic if a bunch of criminals started dying of heart attacks.” There was that sound of knowing in his voice again.
Chronos sighed but didn’t ask again. Sometimes Ryuk liked to keep things to himself for entertainment purposes, Chronos could let his friend have that. Chronos snapped his book shut and hooked it onto his belt, on the same side as Ryuk kept his, and turned back to the portal to watch the results of his work.
The mafia men continued to lounge around, unaware of their fate, and then without warning, an explosion ripped through the building and destroyed everything in its wake. The men’s bodies were thrown from the force of the explosion, but they were already dead before they could have reacted. There were no survivors.
“And that’s that.” Ryuk smiled, watching as his friend’s lifespan shot up. He could probably have gotten more years out of them if they hadn’t been criminals but taking out the whole group had certainly done him a favor. His friend had only been dead a very short time, even by human standards, and he was already doing better as a Shinigami than anyone else, but maybe that was to be expected.
“That’s that.” Chronos agreed. He looked dazedly at the portal for a second and seemed to be fighting against the urge to turn the visual back to the human boy he was so interested in, before deciding against it and taking flight.
Ryuk smirked and jumped into the air after him.
~ 🅚 ~
“Today’s the day,” Ryuk announced unhelpfully, although his tone was far more somber than usual. He felt something for his friend over this, he really did. He may not feel the human was at all important, but Chronos did. Still, there was nothing they could do about it. Chronos knew what would happen if he attempted to help the human.
The reason that extending a human’s life causes a Shinigami to die is because it’s an aversion to nature. Death and even murder is a natural thing, unfettered by conventional human morality, and albeit a little aimless in their execution, a Shinigami’s duty is to feed into that nature by adding more to the funeral pyre. So a Shinigami dies when they try to go directly against their role of an agent of the world’s chaos, only able to avoid this fate if they’re given an okay by their king first. The King had once told Ryuk this, himself.
It’s a deterrent to the others that might try this foolishness, not that Ryuk ever understood why any Shinigami would want to help a human, but it had been done before.
Humans in their foolishness have come over the centuries to insist that all death and murder is wrong, but they also seek to needlessly bring order to the chaotic world and nature itself. To do what can never be done. Thankfully, their attempts to tame the untamable have never been successful, because the catastrophe of the natural order righting itself would be a massive bloodbath.
How will he die? Chronos couldn’t help but ask himself repeatedly as he watched the numbers above Nate’s head whittle down to almost nothing. Soon. Far too soon.
As the time in the boy’s life got down to a minute left, Chronos saw movement in the corner of the room. As always, Nate was in his office space/home and as was usually the case as well, he had a handful of his employees standing around at his disposal. One was new, though, and that was the individual who moved.
Chronos wouldn’t have at all viewed it as important if it wasn’t for the fact that Nate now had fifty seconds left in his life. Almost faster than the eye could see, the “employee” whipped out a gun and yelled something that seemed nonsensical to Chronos, “For Kira!!” and took the shot. Chronos’s heart skipped several beats - huh, he didn’t know it could do that - but another attendant lunged forward and took the bullet for the widely-staring boy. They fell to the ground, dead, and Chronos…
...Chronos, for a flash, saw the image in his mind’s eye of the white-haired boy laying sprawled out on the ground like his worker, eyes staring up open yet unseeing. Chronos felt terror and revulsion as if he might throw up and cry all at once, which was strange because he didn’t believe he’d ever done either of those things.
The movements of his own body caught him by surprise as Chronos pulled his Death Note from his side. His motions were fast and fluid as the Note was flipped open to a random page and his pen was placed to it. Beside him, Chronos saw Ryuk flinch sharply out of the corner of his eye, but he didn’t let it distract him from his mission.
“Chronos?? What do you think you’re doing?!” Ryuk gasped, his clawed arm jutting out to grab Chronos’ Note away from him, which the younger Shinigami dodged.
“Breaking a natural law,” Chronos responded calmly, eyeing the name hovering over the murderous human’s head. Said human looked angrily down at the dead man who had unexpectedly taken the bullet before looking back at his target and lining up for another shot at Nate. The boy’s wide eyes stared straight down the barrel in what appeared to be shock.
“Chronos, no!” Ryuk sounded unexpectedly desperate and Chronos would likely have been staring at his friend in shock if he wasn’t a Shinigami on a mission at the moment.
If he just wrote down the human’s name, there would be nearly a minute of wait time for their death to take effect and Nate didn’t have that. There wasn’t time! As soon as Chronos finished the name, he wrote down the means and time of death, five seconds from then.
“No!” Ryuk lunged at Chronos again, this time with his whole body, but it was just too late. Chronos had already finished as he was knocked to the ground with the older Shinigami on top of him and his Note was ripped from his claws.
On the portal, the assassin was stopped halfway through pulling the trigger by a heart attack. Chronos let out a sigh of relief. Nate stared at the slumped body of the assassin in utter shock. Ryuk stared at the slumped body of his friend in utter shock.
“Why…?” Ryuk whispered, his claws shaking from where his one hand pinned an unmoving Chonos to the ground. “ Why? I knew he meant a lot to you, but﹘”
That was a lie, even Chronos didn’t understand what he was feeling. All he knew was that he had to save this particular boy’s life now. He had to make it up to him. And he did. The thought brought a small smile to the young Shinigami’s face as he let out a petal-soft sigh. His body tingled, almost numb, and a quick glance downwards with crimson eyes alerted Chronos to the expected sight of his body turning to some kind of sand. Soul sand? Whatever.
Chronos chose to spend his last few remaining moments as his world began to turn black around the edges looking between the shocked human in the portal and the shocked Ryuk still hovering above him. Similar red eyes gazed into his own with such surprising despair that Chronos could think nothing but, I’m sorry, Ryuk. He wished he could say it, but his mouth no longer worked.
He could move no part of his body and his consciousness was starting to fade. His vision was just about completely dark now and he could barely think. Where was he again?
“Chronos! Light! Light-o!” Chronos heard Ryuk’s voice call out mournfully and in his last seconds of awareness, Chronos was confused.
Who was Light?
~ 🅚 ~
Light opened his eyes.
And he remembered.