AN: I was trying to work on a bigger story and this happened. That's what I get for attempting something other than a short, introspective fic, I suppose. You can take a girl out of the genre and all that.
He is not a ghost.
Light tells himself this, over and over. He turns it 'round in his head until it becomes a chant, then a song, then a prayer. The man behind him is not a ghost because ghosts don't exist, and if they did, surely this man, this spectator with familiar black eyes and inky hair and a burning gaze, would not become one.
(But if he had, wouldn't this be just the thing he'd do? He'd haunt Light until the end of time. He'd make an afterlife of it.)
It is three days after, and Light is in bed. It's nice to relax, to know there aren't any huge, owlish eyes boring into him while he lies helpless and unaware. It's one of the many things he won't miss.
Sleep comes easily but slumber does not. It prods him and dances along his face, it tip-toes around him, but it does not engage him. It is frightened of him.
He is lost, and the only dreams that find him are uneasy, unpleasant, and unrelenting. They smash into him again and again, a chorus of nervous drums that pound through his head, catching the attention of dragons and snakes that growl and slither behind his eyelids.
Light wakes up to a chain that isn't there, struggling against a handcuff that doesn't exist, and he knows it's not real, that it doesn't even make sense because there's no one left to chain him to, but then he looks beside him and it's a corpse, the body, except L isn't dead because it's looking right through him and dead things can't stare and he is not a ghost he is not a ghost he is not a ghost—
In the morning, the shackles are gone, but Light isn't free. He never has been.
For the first few weeks after, there is a kind of jumpiness to him. The team doesn't notice, for they share the paranoia that their deaths could fall upon them at any time, but what they don't know is that Light is different. Light isn't afraid of dying, he's afraid that someone else didn't.
He's being followed by an outline whose shape is indefinite but absolute. He's being followed by a familiar face, the gritty residue of a memory that's overstayed its welcome.
For the first few weeks, even after the funeral, Light will sometimes forget that L is dead because he's still so unnervingly present.
He tries to ignore it, tries to pretend It isn't there, and eventually It disappears, but only after a dozen days of chills and a dozen nights of bells. When he is alone there is no denying It because It (he) ebbs and crests and rises like a wave.
He is not a ghost he is not a ghost he is not a ghost heisnotaghost—
and Light will forget who he's talking about. The man trailing behind him, leaking sighs and ripped at the edges, or himself?
Perhaps they are the same.
Light is used to seeing the past in his reflection, used to the blur where the lines don't quite touch, used to the unsightly mess where the colors overlap. He doesn't know if you can find it in your shadow, too, but maybe it lives better in dark places and Light's shadow is oh-so-black. It's calm and bloody and smooth, but he thinks it's much too small. A god's shadow should encompass the world that he so loves, the earth that he owns; it should swell above the people, the ones he has created and the ones he has destroyed.
The problem is that his throne isn't tall enough yet. That's all. But that's okay.
He thinks he's alone, except for Ryuk in the corner, when it turns up one last time. He cannot see it but he can feel it, can feel the tug of cold metal around his wrist and the warm pocket of air at his back.
"I know you," it whispers, and then
it is gone.
He is not a ghost.
But sometimes, Light isn't so sure.