Chapter Text
This place truly is nothing, but still I search for meaning and purpose here. I fall short time and time again and I look down on the human world and on the people who once mattered to me. I wonder, as I look down at the world, why I ever thought I cared so much about the insignificant mortals down there. But part of me still wants to change it. As a challenge of sorts, just to see if I can. But there is something else I want to do more.
I watch him every day. I am sick, I think. It can’t be normal to be this way. And as I am lying across the ground, looking down at the human world and watching him again, I am interrupted.
“You remind me of Gelus,” Ryuk says. I don’t turn to look at him. I don’t care enough to. Down in the world where mortality gives life meaning, L Lawliet taps away on his laptop, for hours and hours. I have his name now. I have a Death Note in front of me. I want to laugh at the irony. I do get the urge, if I’m being honest.
“If he died now he wouldn’t come here,” I say, mostly just so Ryuk will confirm that to be true. When he doesn’t answer immediately, I turn my head to look at him. He is staring down at me, his face filled with disappointment.
“No. He would not.”
We live in a land of bones and decay and all I have for company are other Shinigami. They were all human once, too, but most of them can hardly remember. Ryuk says he doesn’t remember and is inclined to believe he never was one at all, he feels such a distance from humans, but I can relate to that. I already feel fully integrated with Shinigami in that I feel no sense of fellowship for the human beings. But I still have some qualities, apparently. I have been told they fade with time, usually after loved one’s die and cut off whatever connections to the human world you once had.
“The Shinigami King would like to play dice with you,” Ryuk tells me, and I can’t help but laugh. I’m not kind to the other Shinigami. I don’t like them, I don’t even like Ryuk, but at least I can tolerate Ryuk. The King is interested in me because, of all the Shinigami here, I have the highest death count from being a human. Most Shinigami, when they were Death Note-owning humans, only wrote down a few names. So I am somewhat admired.
“Tell him to fuck off,” I say. Ryuk laughs and sits beside my head so I have to properly look up from where I am to see him.
“I can’t be bothered,” Ryuk says. The King being the King is more of a formality. Nobody is scared of anybody up here, nobody cares about some title you give yourself, we have no King, not really, we’re just a bunch of very isolated, very bored supernatural beings.
“I need to do something. I can’t live like this,” I say, feeling tormented. I don’t like being a Shinigami. I am all bones and my face feels cracked and my eyes are just holes with, apparently, red light occasionally shining through them. There are obviously no mirrors here but I’ve seen my hands and my clothes and I know I look like a monster. I’m not used to looking like a monster. But I carry around a scythe, which no other Shinigami does, just because I think that Shinigami should have scythes and it looks cool. You’ll stop caring about looking cool eventually, Ryuk said to me when I told him, but he doesn’t know anything about what goes on in my head, I think I’ll still care. What else is there to care about? I glance down and L is still at his laptop but now his head is in his hands. What’s bothering him? I missed it. Fucking Ryuk.
“You remind me so much of myself,” Ryuk says dryly. OK. That doesn’t make me feel good. I’ve never looked at Ryuk and thought, I want to be just like him.
“I’m going down to the human world.”
“Gonna get your pretty face back?” asks a voice behind us. Ryuk and I turn and it’s some ugly looking Shinigami I think I’ve met before who has no facial structure, unlike Ryuk and I, no cheekbones or nose or even neck, just roundness, and Ryuk groans in annoyance when he sees him. I sympathise with this feeling. I don’t wanna hang out with this guy either.
“What do you mean?” I inquire. As much as I don’t want to speak to him, I have no idea what he’s talking about and I don’t like not knowing what people are talking about.
“Well, you’ve been complaining about how you’re hideous now and everything. Although I think you look way cooler like this,” the Shinigami says. He doesn’t know anything. And that doesn’t answer my question.
“Is there a way for me to get my pretty face back?” I ask, and Ryuk snorts at my phrasing. I nudge him in irritation and then turn back to the Shinigami.
“If I tell you, can I hang out with you guys?”
“No. But tell me anyway.” It’s like pulling teeth.
The ugly stuctureless Shinigami takes a few uncomfortable steps towards us. “Well, there’s a legend in the Death Note that if a human writes a Shinigami’s name in the Death Note upside down, followed by the words become one with us, that Shinigami will take human form. Although they will, of course, remain a Shinigami in spirit and return to the form once said human is dead or has relinquished the Note.”
A lightbulb goes off in my head. A human with a Death Note. I look down at L. He is now lying on his back, laptop still in his crossed legs, looking suicidal. Hmm. I guess his current case is especially difficult. I have been watching him for five whole years now, I think, which goes by in the blink of an eye up here (and somehow also very slowly, what with there being nothing to do), and I have to say, when I knew him personally he wasn’t this constantly depressed. Well, other than that one time when he thought I might not be Kira and entirely lost interest in the case.
“I know what you’re thinking, Light,” Ryuk says from beside me. I’m certain he does. It’s not a difficult conclusion to come to. “I’m sure that legend is just a story but I encourage you to try it. Perhaps you could bring me up some fresh apples, when you return after your inevitable disappointment?”
“My disappointment is not inevitable,” I say. I stand up and then don’t know what to do with myself. I’ll wait until he falls asleep, I think. If he ever does. His insomnia is so bad, it used to keep me awake, it really did. I have an uncomfortable, sudden flash of memory, our time together when I didn’t remember I was Kira. He was my captor, then. He would speak so strangely to me.
”Sometimes I look beside me and I realise that my own death lies in my bed,” L would say, looking at me while I was trying to sleep and he was keeping me up with the brightness of his laptop, which would sneak past my sleep mask. It annoyed me when he said things like that. “It’s my own fault if I die. They say you shouldn’t keep exotic animals as pets.”
“I’m not an exotic animal, your pet, or your death. Put your laptop away,” I said in response, making a waving gesture like maybe I could just blow the laptop away with my hand. He stared at me, something deep and lonely in his large dark eyes.
“How beautiful you are,” he whispered. I frowned.
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s a reference to an English song,” L murmured, and then returned to his laptop, completely ignoring what I said to him, and I would try to sleep but I would hear him tapping away and then hear him stop, and when he stopped I knew it meant he was staring at me. Once, when he thought I was asleep, he brushed my hair out of my face tenderly and whispered, “goodnight, Kira.” In a voice like he had affection for Kira. At the time I thought, that’s silly, I’m not Kira. But in hindsight it’s quite funny to realise he knew me better than I knew myself already. I didn’t like him much back then.
“What’s your plan, Light?” Ryuk asks me, a question which feels so nostalgic to me and throws me right back to where we were five years ago. Sometimes I want to remind Ryuk that he’s the problem here, the reason we’re dying of boredom. He’s the one who wrote my name in the Death Note.
“I’m going to wait until he goes to sleep and then I’m just going to place my Death Note on his laptop where he’ll find it,” I explain. He’ll know what it is, of course. Maybe he’ll even guess it’s me, if he’s deduced that Death Note users become Shinigami. And if I make him use the Death Note, even if it’s just for the legend, won’t that make him a Death Note user? So when he dies, he’ll come up here to me.
It's the perfect plan. I can’t believe I hadn’t thought to entrap L into becoming a Shinigami with me before. Five years, wasted!
“Oooooh. Fool proof,” Ryuk says admiringly.
“Wow, I can’t wait to watch you work! Last time you were down on Earth was the last time Earth was truly interesting,” says the misshapen Shinigami. I look upon him with disdain even though he speaks the truth and I slam my scythe in his direction. He looks startled by this for some reason.
“Fuck. Off,” I say. Ryuk starts laughing in the background and the Shinigami looks a little annoyed but then he does fly away. He was really getting on my nerves. I can’t believe I dealt with a horde of idiots on Earth and now I have to deal with even more idiots up here. You’d think death would get you a free ticket away from idiots.
“Harsh, Light,” Ryuk says, when I turn back to him, but I can tell he’s merely amused. He still remains fascinated by my behaviour. “You’ve become a lot shorter with people since you died. You used to try so hard to be polite.”
“Well, what’s the point now?” I answer, looking down at L. He’s curling up like he might be trying to sleep, his laptop falling off his lap onto the bed beside him. I’m lucky that I’m not going to need to wait too long, sometimes he seemed to go days without sleeping, I swear to God.
”It’s easier to sleep if you tire me out first.” I hear his voice in my ear and I try to shake it off and try not to feel self-conscious. What if he can’t return me to my mortal form? I’m hideous and he is going to notice and I’m going to hate it. I’ll just take the Death Note back, I guess, and he’ll lose any memories of my hideousness. Or, well, I guess I’ll just continue to ensure that he will one day also be a Shinigami. He’d probably be a weird, round-headed one like that guy before. Since he’s already not an attractive person.
I am slightly lost in remembering the sexual affair that we had for two years straight (which Ryuk often shamelessly watched and I had to just pretend I couldn’t hear or see him saying things like “why do humans enjoy being choked when they are so fragile, doesn’t it freak you guys out?”), from when I was twenty through to when I died (which he played a part in! Thanks, L!), and then I get stuck thinking about how weird it is that I can’t blush now because I don’t have any blood and does that mean I won’t be able to get an erection as a human or will my blood come back, when Ryuk interrupts me. I sort of feel like that was an important line of thinking and I’m going to have to keep it in mind.
“He’s dead asleep now,” Ryuk tells me, as he is now peering down at L and watching him with great intrigue, clearly desperate for the story to get going. I go over and look down as well. Yes, OK, he is definitely sleeping. He’s snoring, another thing which used to annoy me, but right now for some reason, hearing it makes my non-existent heart skip a couple of metaphorical beats. “I wonder if he’s over you? He was a mess right after you died, you remember that? He would apologise to you and stuff, almost like he knew you could hear him.”
I hate and love remembering that. Sometimes he would lie in bed and murmur things such as, Light, if you can hear me from wherever you are, I am so sorry. I couldn’t believe it when Matsuda shot you. I froze. And then everybody expected me to be victorious and so I pretended I was… but what was I supposed to say? Was I supposed to say that I knew you were Kira and I had always said so and I had loved you anyway? That, unlike their relationship with you, my relationship with you and your guilt were not mutually exclusive? That you were the love of my life? Light, they didn’t know. They thought we just liked playing chess together.
He would go on and on. It’s obvious that the guilt plagued him, probably because when I was dying I screamed out for him and he did not come, he stood, frozen, staring at me, behind Matsuda. I expected him to help me and defend me and he did nothing and I was angry at first but the grovelling that he has displayed in his prayers have since softened my heart about it.
“Yes. I remember that,” I say to Ryuk. I need to go down there, I should go down there right now. I look at Ryuk. Ryuk looks at me.
“Poor sentimental man,” Ryuk says. I know he’ll be watching me while I’m down there and, while I’m no longer able to feel things such as being comforted, I am glad to know that he will be there because it is what I’m used to. Overall, I have been conscious for twenty-seven years. He has been there in some form or another for about a decade now. Not an insignificant amount of time by any means.
“I’ll see you when I return, Ryuk. And I’ll probably drag L with me,” I say. Ryuk smirks even wider than normal.
“I have no doubt you will, Light.”
My wings appear, red and blazing, and I fly down to L, to where he remains in the Kira headquarters because he made a whole building and he might as well use it, I suppose. I think he should give it to some kind of business or charity or something but he keeps hold of it, I think because it’s where he and I fell in love, not to be self-absorbed, but I don’t just imagine that things are all about me. They quite often are actually all about me.
I feel large and wicked, like a monster, stood in his room. He seems so small as I look down on him and place my Death Note on his open keyboard. I know I have hours to wait until he wakes up, and I go downstairs to try an apple to see if they affect me as a Shinigami as much as they affect Ryuk. They do not. Then I find a punnet of strawberries, which I did enjoy in life in my fruit salads, and I try some of those. They are delicious. After five years of not eating or eating things that taste purely like sand, the strawberries are otherworldly. I eat all of them, including the leaves, and then put the punnet in the bin. I think how strange it would be if somebody walked in now and saw me doing all those things. Just strawberries floating in mid air and vanishing.
I then do the one thing I did not want to do but feel like I must. I look in the mirror. I want to gag. How do I look like this? Why is my skull so cracked? I have no nose and my mouth is just teeth. I can’t imagine an uglier creature. Despair doesn’t fully hit me only because I’m a Shinigami and it cannot, but I feel an echo of it, and my vanity remains in full, as strong as it ever was. That and my fondness for L seem determined to stay.
I return to L. It has not been long enough. I peer at his laptop to see what he’s working on but it doesn’t interest me and I can see why he looked so sick of everything earlier. I notice he’s wearing my watch, which I hadn’t previously observed, and I can’t help but smile. The room is otherwise quite empty. He never did have very many personal belongings. I sit down on his desk chair and I watch him sleep. For hours. Which, admittedly, I have done many times over the last five years. He always sleeps curled up on his side like that. He often hugs his pillow. When I was there, he would sometimes hug me, which I didn’t like because it made me feel hot so I would give him a pillow and he would always hog the blankets (which he’s doing right now, they’re all curled up around him and nowhere near the other side of the bed) and I wouldn’t say anything because honestly, I didn’t want to wake him. Once you wake him, he never gets back to sleep, and he whines and whines and says, “now I’m awake let’s return to the case” and then he wouldn’t let me continue my sleep as punishment. So I let him hog the blankets.
He looks pale and ill. He looks as sleep-deprived as he always did. His hair is still a complete mess. He looks the same, but older. He was eight years older than me and now he’s thirty-five. He doesn’t have too many wrinkles, probably because he never goes in the sun or makes any kind of facial expression.
He rises at 6am having only gone to sleep at 2am. He still doesn’t take care of himself. He groans slightly as he wakes up and cracks his back and I feel something animalistic within me as I watch this, the way his white shirt runs up his stomach and reveals his utter lack of muscle tone. Mine, mine, mine.
“Time to face the day, I suppose,” he murmurs. I missed his voice, I could hear it from the Shinigami Realm, of course, but it sounds so distorted from up there and it isn’t the same as hearing him speak right here, right in front of me.
He sits up, gets in his usual crouching position and reaches for his discarded laptop. When he pulls it over, the notebook slips from the keyboard to the bed, drawing L’s attention to it, who leans over and peers down at it. After a second his eyes widen.
“Death Note,” he whispers. He reaches for it, hesitates. Then reaches for it and hesitates again and I want to smash something in all my frustration because what is he so fucking frightened of, he’s seen Shinigami before, and then he picks it up, stares at it for a second, and then must feel my presence in the room because he turns his head sharply to look at me. “Shinigami.”
I don’t like being referred to that way. He looks unsettled by me. He always found the Shinigami quite unsettling, even though he was far more willing to believe they were real than I would have been in his position. I would have completely rejected the concept of Shinigami being real and insisted that there must be a logical explanation.
“Usually I go by Light,” I say, and I’m surprised by how flat and emotionless my voice sounds when this is the first time he has looked at me for five years. He gasps softly and his eyes widen even farther and he climbs off the bed.
“It can’t be,” he says, approaching me, staring at me, like he might see some of my human sense in my Shinigami self. “Are you playing with me, Shinigami?”
“Don’t call me that,” I snap. He frowns suddenly and tilts his head, like looking at me from a ninety-degree angle will somehow help.
“It’s really you?” he murmurs, in that way he does. “I struggle to believe you.”
“I need you to do something for me. It will prove it,” I say. I can’t give him any personal memories because, well, as a Shinigami I could have just observed our time together from the Shinigami Realm. “I need you to write my name in the notebook, upside down, followed by the words ‘become one with us’.”
“Why?”
“Just do it,” I say, holding my scythe out to his neck, and he tilts his head away from it and looks genuinely scared because I suppose I am quite a large monster in his room holding a very large scythe to his neck. I use it as a walking stick sometimes. My Shinigami form struggles with a limp from getting shot in the leg.
“Only because I’m intrigued,” L says, after a brief pause, and backs away from me to go and sit in an armchair, picking up a nearby pen. I sit up straighter. I hope so much that this works. I want to appear human again and I want L to believe it’s me and I want L to go to Mu with me and become a Shinigami when he dies.
I watch him write it. Then he stares at me expectantly and I start mentally counting down from forty seconds because, well, I’m just assuming. L must realise that we’re waiting because he doesn’t say anything, just continues to stare at me, and I wonder if my voice sounds that different. I’ve noticed it get deeper, gravellier. But he doesn’t even recognise it so the difference must be more severe than I have observed.
When I count forty, I start to feel the difference. There is blood pumping in my veins again and suddenly I can feel it, I didn’t used to be conscious of it. I have a working heart. I wonder if it stops will I just return immediately to Shinigami form? L’s face is full of wonder. I can feel my lips again, soft, rather than the cold jaw and sharp teeth I had before. I rub my lips together like I just put on lip balm and I enjoy the feeling. I can close and open my eyes again, I have eyelids. My hands are softer and smaller, my whole body shrinks down to a human size. I can feel that a mortal body is only a temporary cage, that I can’t stay here forever any more than any other human can, but for now, I must be beautiful again.
I get up and look in the mirror. I close my eyes and exhale. I’m me again. But my irises are far redder than I remember them being. Does it make me look weird? I frown. But then I look over my shoulder at L, who’s breathing has become strange and heavy and staggered.
“Light… you were- you were- you’re here,” L says. Yes. I am still in the suit I wore when I died. My scythe is gone and I mourn it’s disappearance, I would very much like it back.
“I wanted to come down and see you. Mu really is every bit as boring as Ryuk told me,” I say, forgetting for a second that L barely knows Ryuk, something I struggle to understand given that I was so frequently in a room with both of them at the same time.
“Ryuk? The Shinigami?” L repeats, slightly breathlessly.
“Yes. The one with the dark hair and lack of empathy.” I don’t know if that means anything to him. “He loves apples?”
“Light,” L says. He discards the Death Note, which I glance at, left on the armchair, and he comes over to me and hugs me tightly. I’m not a hugger, especially not now, but I try my best to return it. “I was so certain I’d never see you again. Light, I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am.”
“I know. I know you’re sorry. When you’ve said it before, thinking you were talking to empty space, I heard you,” I say. He looks emotional once I say that which was not the intention and he touches his hand to my face, my lovely clean skin that is sewn across a skull that is very much uncracked. I love this body, this face.
“I can’t tell you how pleased I am to hear that,” L says. Once he’s had enough of admiring my face, he buries his face in my neck. “Did you miss me? Can Shinigami miss people?”
“I watched you every day,” I say. He chokes out a soft laugh, like he is somehow disbelieving. “I really did. Your current case is boring.”
“Everything has been boring since you. Nothing can ever measure up,” L says. I feel quite the same way and I run my hand through his hair, feeling tangles which I gently pull apart the way I used to. We are together again and everything is as it should be. I am as content as I could ever hope to be in my meaningless, endless life. Somehow one of the main things I am thinking about is having regained the ability to sleep. It sounds like such a human luxury. “Light. What are you doing here?”
“I told you, I wanted to see you.” I don’t want to tell him about making him a Shinigami to join me in the Shinigami Realm because he might not want that and it might mess up my whole plan so I’ll just keep it to myself. “I have nothing else to do. Every day is the same up there and you can’t even sleep. I would like to have a good sleep.”
“I want you awake to talk to me. I have so much to tell you and we need to decide what we’re going to do. Can other people see you now?”
Oh. I don’t know. “Probably, I would say so. Nobody’s really done this before. It was just a rumour I heard.”
“Shinigami gossip?”
“We have nothing else to do!” For some reason I feel like he is judging us. His expression at me now is questioning and fond and grateful and I’m so glad I came here already, it’s by far the most interesting thing that’s happened to me in the last five years.
L bites his lip and then says softly, “you were so young when you died, look at you. How tragic.”
I don’t want to discuss how tragic my death may or may not have been because it will just depress the both of us and I don’t want to be depressed. This is a good thing and I’m trying to kill my boredom, not cry softly over missed life.
“What do you have to tell me?” I ask him, going to sit in the bed. Oh my God, it’s so comfortable. I lie out, spreading out my arms, ecstasy is running through me. I have felt nothing but rock for years.
“I want to tell you about the people that you left behind, since they’ll be able to see you,” L says. Yes, there’s no point hiding from them if we come across them because I’m a Shinigami and what exactly can they do to me? Nothing. They’re not threat. “Not that I hang out with them regularly but we do keep in touch. Light, they’re very angry with you.”
“You have no idea how good it feels to be in a bed again,” I tell him. I want to be naked in bed, to feel it against my skin, but I have a feeling that that’s going to have to wait until later. I bet a bath would feel brilliant. The warmth. I have to have one as soon as I can.
“We need to decide how to how to handle this. People will recognise you and will be understandably confused and if it leaks to the press then everybody will question why I, the great detective L, am hanging out with a now-deceased, immortal Kira,” L is murmuring to himself. There are so many things I’ve missed about being human. I’ve always looked down on hedonism but your opinions change so drastically when you become an immortal God of death.
“Who cares what people think? Use the Death Note and then you’ll become a Shinigami like me and we’ll get to be together always. L. I think you using it before will be enough… you’re officially a Death Note owner after all,” I say. He sits on the end of the bed. Properly sits, like an ordinary person, with a shellshocked expression. I don’t understand what exactly has shocked him. I crawl over and wrap my arms around him, holding his arms tight to his body, resting my chin on his shoulder. “What’s bothering you, Mr Lawliet?”
L looks at me sharply. “You know my name now. Please never call me that again.”
I kiss his neck a few times and I feel his body shiver beneath me. “Answer my question.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be a Shinigami when I’m dead, Light.”
That stings. I almost hiss, but I hold it back, because he will be now whether he likes it or not, I am not ever letting him go. I’ll turn him round to the idea but for now he’s alive and here I am with him and what more could I want? What more could he want? He missed me, didn’t he? I know he did. I saw it.
“Well, you’re not dead yet so let’s not worry about that,” I say, and I keep kissing his neck but he’s not really responding to it like he used to. He used to be obsessed with me touching him. It was the one thing I could do to distract him from the case. He was onto me, he used it as evidence I was Kira (although he couldn’t explain this evidence to the Task Force so it was useless), but it still worked successfully, and now all of a sudden he can resist me?! Is it because I’m a Shinigami now? Oh God, this is what true Hell is.
“I’m glad I kept this building because we’re going to have to stay in it. To avoid anybody you know seeing you,” L says. Fuck’s sake, he needs to stop worrying about that, and I’m not staying in here for the next… however long it takes for him to die. But I’ll wait until he’s a bit more comfortable with me being here because right now he is an absolute mess.
“And how are you going to entertain your bored Shinigami while we’re in here?” I whisper, pressing my lips to his ear. He exhales softly. OK, that worked. Good, I still have it. I thought I’d lost my appeal or something, false alarm. He probably likes me referring to myself as his possession, which I can understand because if the roles were reversed I would also adore that. But he is mine. He’s my mortal and I’m his Shinigami. I’m his Death God, doomed to follow him around, doomed to write his name in the Death Note when his time comes. And part of me can’t wait for the day, how long I’ve waited to write down that name and watch him take his final breath… I kiss him with a passion, overcome.
After all this time and everything we’ve been through, I’m still excited by the thought of you dying.
“You’re more animalistic now, there’s something about you,” L mumbles against my lips and I bite his until his blood appears and I can taste it, yes, fuck yes, that was always my favourite, when I could taste his blood. I would like to bite a deeper would and suck all of his blood out of him like a vampire until he’s a lifeless corpse but somehow I don’t think he’d let me go that far.
“I’ve always been this way,” I murmur, and pin him down and he’s beneath me, where he always should be, and this feels so much better than it did when I was human, it’s been so long since I’ve felt warmth and pleasure and soft skin rather than cold bones, he is living and breathing beneath me and it is the most intoxicating thing I have ever experienced.
I fuck him hard and I say his name, his full name, when I orgasm, and in my mind I’m already writing it in the Death Note, thinking of the best way to kill him, because a heart attack simply won’t do. He’ll never know everything that goes on inside my head.
The next morning I’m lazing around in L’s bath, surrounded by sea salt crystals, feeling pretty pleased with myself, a face mask on because I want to take care of this skin while I still have it. I’ve never felt so at peace in all my life until suddenly I hear the flap of wings and I open my eyes and glance to my left. Ryuk stands in the bathroom, looking at me.
“Well, Light. Even as a Shinigami you continue to amaze me,” Ryuk says. I can’t really speak with the face mask on but it’s been long enough so I start peeling it off my face so we can have a discussion. Ryuk watches me do this. “Humans are so weird, aren’t they? With their face masks and everything?”
“I don’t think it’s weird. It’s taking care of yourself. Nobody takes care of themselves in the Shinigami Realm and it depresses me,” I say. Ryuk walks closer to me and I sigh, gazing at the ceiling so I don’t have to look at him. “This is working out perfectly, Ryuk. And one day L will be in the Shinigami Realm with us. Can you imagine? It will be less boring with him there, I’m sure. Hasn’t he always been able to kill our boredom?”
“I just can’t believe you made this work,” Ryuk says, genuine disbelief running through his typically amused tone. “Other Shinigami hear about these legends and dismiss them but you… you go ahead and do them.”
“Astounded by me, aren’t you?” I ask. I grin up at him, an echo of his toothy smile. We are the same, he and I. Well, I’m angrier than he is. I’m more serious than he is. Usually, anyway, but I’m having a good day and I don’t feel as serious as I usually do. “Even to Gods of death I am impressive. That’s why the King keeps on wanting to play dice with me.”
“And I am sure he is observing all of this from the Realm.”
“Sucker. He should come down here and try it one day if he’s so powerful,” I say, and then I check my nails. “Hm. I need a manicure.”
“I thought L wouldn’t let you leave the building?” Ryuk points out. That’s true, he doesn’t want me to, but he can’t really stop me because, well, how exactly would he go about stopping me from doing anything? He has absolutely no power over me at all.
“I’m choosing to ignore him. Just not yet. Give his nervous system a chance to calm down,” I say, then, “I wonder what he’s doing right now? He left his laptop in the bedroom which is so unlike him.” It’s not a request, merely my attempt to pique his curiosity. I look at Ryuk with the world’s most innocent eyes and he sighs as though I am deeply annoying.
“I’ll go check, I guess,” Ryuk says, and flies away to check the building for L. I tip my head back and close my eyes again and I really, really don’t want to return to Mu. It’s so awful there compared to here, there’s nothing to do and our bodies just can’t seem to feel anything good.
Ryuk comes back about five minutes later with an arm full of apples that he must have stolen from the fruit bowl in the kitchen. I look at him in interest to see if he has anything of note to report.
“This is gonna sound kinda weird but stay with me because it’s true,” Ryuk says, and I arch my brow at him. “You remember the Matsuda guy who shot you? He’s downstairs and he’s talking to L.”
What? I know better than to ask Ryuk what exactly they were talking about because he won’t tell me so I quickly dry off, put on a fluffy robe that L has but, I know for a fact, never uses, and head downstairs. I stop at the top of the stairs and sit there quietly, trying not to breathe, a strange sensation when I haven’t experienced the noise of breathing for five years.
“… I don’t understand why exactly this is happening now,” L is saying, his voice filled with a subtle frustration that only I can recognise.
“I don’t know either. Could it actually go to court? I could be locked up!” Matsuda answers. He sounds just as stupid as he always did. He’s about the same age as L, I believe, which is why they always had such a contentious relationship. Matsuda found it difficult to see somebody his age be so much more successful. “Could I explain it was self-defence?”
“But was it, Matsuda? Unfortunately, Light wasn’t pointing a gun at you and you had no reason to believe he was writing your name in the Note,” L points out, and I’m starting to get an idea that this is about me. See what I mean? Everything is about me, all the time.
“But everybody agreed he deserved the death penalty.”
“Mmmm… no, by the point he died most governments had given up on catching Kira, if you recall.”
There’s a silence while Matsuda breathes in a panicky sort of way. Ryuk is behind me, also listening, munching on apples as he does. It’s sort of loud and I turn to glare at him over my shoulder and he just shrugs at me like he doesn’t give a shit. I roll my eyes and return to focusing on listening.
“Kira betrayed us all. I was so caught up in the moment, I… I’m no danger to the public!” Matsuda argues. No, definitely not, he isn’t good enough at anything to be a danger to anybody. “I’m not even a cop anymore.”
“I think in this case, you being locked up is more about punishment. You know Kira’s supporters have always been very angry at the man who shot him,” L says. This is such a crazy coincidence that this would happen right as I return to the human world. I would like to see Matsuda get punished, I wonder if there’s a way for me to escalate the situation?
“I loved him once, L,” Matsuda says, softly. Oh, for fuck’s sake. I hate it when they all act like it was so personal, it had nothing to do with them! “I really believed him, I… I can’t even tell you. I really, really did, even when Aizawa doubted him, even when the Chief had moments of pause, I never faltered. Not about… him.” Why won’t he say my name?
“Yes, Light did tend to have that effect on people,” L agrees in a sort of disgruntled way. Ryuk snickers from behind me.
“Why is everybody in love with you?” Ryuk asks. I wave at him to indicate that he should be silent because I can’t hear. Was Matsuda in love with me? I honestly have no idea, I never noticed if he was, but then I guess if I was stopping to think about everybody who was in love with me all the time I’d never have a moment’s peace. Misa, L, Mikami, Kiyomi, possibly Matsuda… I mean, the time would really just vanish.
“I just wish he was the person I thought he was,” Matsuda says sadly. I have the urge to hit him. He has no control over who I am. “You know, kind and caring, really cared about justice, modest…”
“If you thought he was modest at any point then you definitely weren’t paying attention,” L says. What a dick! I can be modest sometimes.
“I was an idiot,” Matsuda says, and then there’s a silence and then he suddenly groans loudly in frustration which actually startles me slightly and Ryuk goes “oooh.” “I mean, you also cared about him, didn’t you, Ryuuzaki?” They still call him that? “You were sad when it turned out to be true?”
“If I’m honest, Matsuda, I did care about Light but I cared about him knowing he was Kira. I was never anything but certain. I know I had all those percentages but those were the logical likelihood. My mind was made up from the beginning and I started to care about Light only within that context,” L says, and then after a pause, “he was my best friend.”
Ha! Best friend! If only they knew. How many close calls we had with them almost finding out, that time we were fucking in the kitchen and had to lean against the door while I was sucking him off so they couldn’t open it from the other side. We had to be so quiet. They thought the door was jammed. Of course, it wasn’t funny at the time because my dad was one of the people on the other side of the door so I was actually really freaking out.
“I don’t think I could’ve loved him in that context,” Matsuda admits, because he is a lesser human being. Matsuda admitted that he could understand Kira’s thought process and could see why I thought the way he did. I remember that conversation. “I couldn’t have loved Kira.”
“Well,” L says, “you’re the lucky one, then. It was nothing if not incredibly painful.”
I scoff. Our relationship wasn’t painful. Except when he was being a dick but I never did anything, it was just the worst when he would give me the silent treatment sometimes after Kira killed somebody he really didn’t agree with. He would look at me and say, “I know you did this” and then he wouldn’t talk to me and I hated it, because he didn’t literally know. All my hard work to hide evidence and he was just running purely on instinct.
“Did you love him?” Matsuda asks, after a pause.
“With all my heart,” L answers, with his typical sentimentality.
“Kira.”
“Kira. Light. Both. They’re the same, Matsuda. They were always the same.”
Matsuda walks away, I hear his footsteps retreating, and seemingly he leaves. I narrow my eyes and consider how I feel about that and then I decide I feel OK because L is right. I am Kira, Kira is me. We’re the same. His ideals are my ideals, his actions are my actions, is effect on the world is mine. So I should probably stop thinking about myself in the third person like that.
“Light,” L says softly. “I know you’re there.”
I reveal myself, walking down the stairs. Ryuk follows, but L can’t see him, and it’s just like old times really.
“With all your heart,” I repeat, almost mockingly. I would never put it that way when describing my feelings for him. If somebody asked if I loved him- well, my answer would definitely depend on the day. I would probably deny it. I don’t know.
“You’re cruel,” L says. I walk down the stairs, go over to him and kiss him deeply, letting him wrap his arm around my neck, and then I pull away just slightly so I can still feel his breath on my lips.
“You’re a bad person,” I whisper, because he just insulted me and you get what you give. He laughs incredulously and pulls away. Maybe we deserve each other.
“I can’t believe I am making out with a Shinigami,” L mutters, supposedly to himself, and he starts to massage his temples. I watch him. “What has my life come to?”
“You’re a very special snowflake,” I confirm, going to sit on the sofa where everybody used to sit for breaks during the Kira investigation. I never really sat here because L doesn’t take breaks and I was chained to him for a lot of my time here and the room looks so different from this angle somehow.
“You came down here just to be with me, didn’t you?” L asks, turning to look at me. How do I play this? I don’t want him going around thinking he’s my everything or anything, it might go to his head, but offending him doesn’t really benefit me either. I think he wants me to say something romantic but that just isn’t who I am, unless I’m romantically manipulating somebody, and I’m not. I’m involved with L because I actually care about him.
“Obviously. You watched him every day for five years like an addict,” Ryuk says from behind me. I don’t care what Ryuk thinks. He’s always had his opinions and they’ve always been well-informed given that he’s always with me, but as long as he doesn’t tell them to anybody else I don’t care. I did tell L that I watched him every day but in my defence it really is so boring up there.
“Partly, but the Shinigami Realm is also very boring and down here I can bathe and have sex and eat food and lie in bed and I don’t look like a monster anymore,” I say, because I can’t explain how much that bothered me. “I looked like a monster, didn’t I?”
“The outside finally matched the broken, rotting inside,” L agrees. I sigh, looking away from him, and he walks closer to me and grabs me by the chin to make me look up at him. “And now here you are, back on Earth from wherever you came, and you’re beautiful again, not a flaw in you. What a lie it is to look at you when you’re like this. But I love looking at you so much.”
Miraculously, the sentiment is returned. In five years, the only thing that hasn’t bored me is looking at him, even though he really isn’t much to look at. Why should I be fascinated with something so imperfect? It isn’t like me. I like perfection. I seek it everywhere. Everywhere, except within him. I allow him to be as flawed as he wants to be.
“My beautiful God of death,” L murmurs, and reaches down to kiss me again, we just can’t stop today. He tastes so sickly sweet. I missed it. His kiss is soft this time, tender and loving, his hands stroking my face with awe. “To think that not even death itself has separated us.”
“I’ll always find you, L. And you’ll always find me,” I answer. We both should have been utterly hidden, unfindable, and yet we met, we found each other, we lured each other out, and nobody else has ever been able to do so with either of us before or since. He was made for me, I know it, I believe it, I could never love anybody else, only him. My L Lawliet.