Title: Dainashini (SPOIL)
Rating: T [for now]
Summary: L might have forgiven Light for killing him, but Light never forgave L for dying. Canonverse (with altered details) and post-canon divergence, L x Light, also sometimes one-sided Ryuk x Light in a strange sort of way.
Warnings: slash, language, not beta'd
Notes: Bits and pieces of this fic have been sitting on my computer for literally years. I'm not sure I'll ever fill in the gaps, but I just found it again and figured I'd post! It is meant to be canonverse with purposefully altered details, but I think I had actually forgotten a lot of the canon details when I wrote this so some of the mismatches in later parts are just...there. Oh well. My bad. Don't question timelines, because you will find no answers~ :D
Please read and review.
...
Oh man, I can't believe that you did what they said you did—
and to this day I've still gotta say that in my mind I question it —
I wish
I knew
what you had meant before you went and left me wondering to just an echo of your voice —
'Listen...'
...
It wasn't one of Ryuk's habits, to visit births in the human realm.
The whole event was completely disgusting, in fact, the way mortals expelled offspring from their bodies. The sweat on the mother's face, the bloody mess gushing out of her...the slimy, wrinkled progeny writhing and screaming as its cord was cut...the terror on the father's face at this final, undeniable proof that his responsibilities had just increased tenfold... No, there was nothing at all that was even slightly desirable about observing such an event.
And yet, here he was.
It was an instinctual thing, really. Ryuk had always been drawn to the unusual and interesting, even subconsciously.
The pale, fragile thing popped out, messy and loud and flailing around. It was still safe at this point, still anonymous and toxic, life so raw and new that no shinigami was yet allowed to touch it. Ryuk's bulbous yellow eyes watched the chaos that ensued, the monitors that beeped and the humans that shrieked and the lights that flashed.
"We're losing her! Get her husband out of here! Someone get that baby in an incubator! Move people, MOVE! She's dying!"
The shinigami left the woman disinterestedly, for with a glance over her head he knew she would be dead within the hour, and followed the child as it was rushed down the hall in a machine.
Ryuk wasn't sure what it was about this baby that was pulling him, that had him so curious, but death gods do not question their instincts.
A few hours later the stabilized baby was swaddled up in the nursery, thumb in his mouth, a little bundle of life in a long row of many others. Its eyes were huge and dark, flecked with gray and shining like mirrors.
It stared at Ryuk like it could see him.
Ryuk stared back, watching, waiting, until finally a red light began to shimmer over the tiny baby's head. Flickers condensed into Roman alphabet letters, twisting and shifting, numbers glittering and ticking and changing until the thread of fate was tied and this little bundle, this human, had a name and a life span.
L Lawliet.
Ryuk grinned his shark's smile. L Lawliet, now officially mortal and vulnerable, went to sleep.
...
L doesn't like looking at that boy. Going about his perfect little life with his perfect grades and perfect looks and perfect manners. L thinks he might even hate him a little.
L's job is to watch him, but he needn't work very hard not to see him because there are ten other monitors in front of his face and sixty-four available angles and all the images are a bit fuzzy anyway.
L infiltrates his school as easily as he has infiltrated his life, and he watches but doesn't look because he doesn't want to or need to or have to, except when he does because Light has turned around to stare him straight in the eyes.
L has never looked away since.
...
A few years later, according to human measurements of time, Ryuk felt the pull again.
It was stronger this time.
This birth was much quieter; there were no complications, no frantic beeping and screeching and panic. There was only peace and joy as the child was cleaned and placed in the outstretched arms of its mother, smiling and gurgling and twitching its limbs experimentally.
The nurse said something and Ryuk's brain quickly flipped through its store of dialects, matching the sounds and nuances of her speech to a language that was then immediately integrated into the death god's thought processes.
Japanese.
"—chosen a name for him yet?"
The husband beamed down at his wife, who was glowing with maternal content and cooing at her son, running a soft finger over his cheek. "Yes, Sachiko picked the name. We're going to call him Raito, spelled with the character for 'moon.'"
The nurse smiled and nodded knowingly. "Ah, an English word. It sounds very beautiful; what an excellent choice!" Then she copied something down onto some documents, and the familiar red mist began to twinkle and congeal over the baby's head.
As Ryuk stood, gazing down at the bright and curious eyes of Yagami Light, he felt his Death Note burn against his leg.
In that moment, he knew.
He knew that one day the healthy, happy, innocent boy before him would be no more. He knew that this Raito, this Light, was going to lose himself in boredom, in despair, in pain and manipulation and eyes that shone like mirrors.
This little human was going to lose himself in a notebook.
Ryuk sat back to watch, and to wait.
...
"My mother died giving birth to me," L says casually. The clacking of Light's fingers on his keyboard freezes as their owner stiffens, but does not turn.
Light's hair blocks his eyes.
"I was raised by my father until I was four," L continues, directing his words at the ceiling, "but he never really took a liking to the task. He always thought I was…well, he always thought there was something wrong with me. I think he blamed me for killing my mother."
Light hasn't moved a muscle. L cocks his head, continuing to monologue at his immobile suspect.
"I never got the feeling he loved me a great deal, as far as I can recall. One morning he hugged me before I left for preschool and told me that my mother might have loved me very much. I wondered why he used the word 'might' instead of 'would,' but I never did get to ask him."
L is balancing marshmallows on a spoon, and the tower is wobbling and wobbling.
"When I got home that afternoon, you see, the house was in flames. They found my father's remains inside it. One hour later, I met Watari."
The whole investigation room is quiet by that point. No one on the team knows what to do, what to say, especially when L looks so nonchalant about the whole thing. Or maybe it is because they all know that if anyone has any idea what to say, it's Light.
The silence grows into tension, thickening the air with anxiousness, curiosity, suspense. They wait for almost one whole excruciating minute, and then…
And then the clacking of keys under Light's fingers resumes without a single word.
...
L Lawliet and Yagami Light grew up a world away from each other, each the star of his own surroundings and each always feeling half empty, like there was a hole somewhere there should not have been.
Ryuk was there through it all; he watched them when they finally met, when they talked, when they recognized that gravity was never going to let them stop orbiting each other.
Ryuk watched when Light laughed and brushed against L for too long, when Light grit his teeth against his feelings at night, when Light screamed his lungs out.
Ryuk watched L fall from his chair, and he watched Light leap to catch the body.
Ryuk watched Light fall from glory, from sanity, watched Light lapse into the silent grin of death.
Ryuk watched Light's chest give a violent spasm as his heart beat for the final time…
And Ryuk watched as Light awoke to a gray expanse of dust and ash stretching in all directions, opened his mouth in a demonic howl of rage and fury, and wheeled around to face his former possessor with murder in his eyes.
...
Thick eyebrows, white with age and wisdom, descend to their owner's bespectacled eyes in a gaze that is both sad and serious.
"L, would you miss him?"
A shuddering breath, the rough sound immediately registered and analyzed by sharp, wizened ears. Scared? Excited?
Lying.
"No."
...
For Light to have ever met L, there had to be extreme circumstances. There had to be hatred, there had to be exploitation, there had to be pain.
There had to be a notebook.
Ryuk wishes Light would understand that.
...
TBC.