What's In A Name?
A/N -
Hey, this is... something that took me by suprise. To be honest.
While it's not my first attempt at fanfiction, it is my first stab at DeathNote, and at Light/L.
So...
Reviews would be fantastic. Bad, good, didn't follow it, ectera... Let me know!
I do not own DeathNote. It is, however, totally awesome.
For as long as Light Yagami can remember, people have said his name with a certain type of reverence, a sort of high praise bordering on worship. At times, he doesn't mind, (hell, he's only human), but mostly it depresses him.
Light Yagami, Tennis Champion of Japan.
Light Yagami, Son of Soichiro Yagami, Deputy Director of the Japanese police.
Light Yagami, Highest ranked high school student in Japan.
Light Yagami, Top scorer on the To-oh entrance exam.
Light Yagami, head of the Japanese police force.
It's like his own name is a title, the gist, the headliner. The rest of the sentence is just a carry-on; another note on the long list of achievements.
Achievements that, too this day, mean absolutely nothing to him.
But sometimes... he can count the times on (what's left of) one of his hands... sometimes, people say his name differently.
He can't explain it, even though it's something that has never been far off his mind.
The closest he ever came to explaining it was linking it to a type of knowing. A fitting of puzzle pieces. The turning on of a light switch. Two things becoming connected and suddenly making sense.
He wishes, as he tastes blood in his mouth and tries to move his damaged arm, that things would make more sense. But there isn't much time for wishes now. All Light has now are memories; memories that are slowly dripping away like the blood that coats his body.
-_-_-_-_-_-
The first time someone said his name with the something was when Light was a mere three years old. He can't really remember much of the conversation that led to the marvellous discovery, but his parents told him it included results of a personality test, measuring reflexes, reaction times, mental capacity, and the like. He, apparently, had scored the highest marks out of all the others (figures), and the woman conducting the experiments had sung high praises of him. She tells his parents: 'That child doesn't miss a trick! Be very careful, law abiding citizens from now on; this one will be a detective yet!'
Light recalls none of this. What he does remember is hearing his father's voice, all deep boss tones and... the something else.
"Light." Is all he says, and Light can taste it.
While reflecting upon the situation, Light tries to tell himself that the something is pride. Love. Happiness. Anything!
But it's not. It's something much, much deeper, something that hits his soul, bypassing major organs and arteries and aiming right where he can feel it.
Light, even in his young years, right up until he is seventeen, will always force himself to view this as an isolated incident. A child hearing the first words of praise, of love, from a parent. A social norm, a memory to spur on his quest for achievement.
But that all fell away when he met Ryuzaki.
-_-_-_-_-_-
The second time...
Light wants to remember the moment, the feeling of the something in its perfection, in the way it was supposed to be remembered.
The second time was, in actuality, many, many times; the same feeling of the something in the older man's voice, the same feeling of insatiable lust, the same warm, pleasant feeling after the two of them (not to mention their good friend, the chain) fell, still tangled, still moaning, into the blankets of a shared bed, the same blissful nothing that occupied their minds as they laid together, just breathing...
But it only makes Light's soul ache even more.
Because he does remember feeling it, but he can't bring forth the sensations of soul crushing truth, of lips upon lips upon skin, the fire of half lidded onyx eyes that he, Light, has made burn...
He supposes that all died with L, as punishment for doing what he did.
In a way, it's even crueller than what happened to L; Light's memories, not the ones that returned with the Death Note but the ones that he believes have taken their place, memories of feeling the something have been replaced with knowing that he felt the something, and the memories that he did feel the something with L, have faded.
And the fact that he couldn't bring forth such specifics made it that much easier to push the fragments down inside himself, to forget it ever happened, to move on with life and Kira's master plan.
All he has now are shadows and echoes, badly drawn reminders of something that used to be crystal clear.
-_-_-_-_-_-
The third time makes Light want to die.
Because he hadn't realised that the third time was essentially the last time.
He could lie to himself and say things like he didn't realise till he saw him falling off his perch, curling almost defensively as gravity won its battle with his spine.
He could easily leap at the idea that it wasn't till the funeral, when he watched a coffin slowly being lowered into the damp ground.
But Light feels the twisted feeling in his stomach and knows that he hadn't listened (he heard, always heard every word Ryuzaki ever said, but he hadn't listened) to the something in the older man's voice, back when they were both sitting halfway up a staircase inside the now long-demolished building.
He hadn't heard the something till the entire damned circus performance played back every night in his dreams.
Because he can remember it all; every fucking sentence, every fucking movement, every fucking curve of L's lips as the dying man had stared up at him, lips that Light wants so desperately now, but he can never have again.
-_-_-_-_-_-
The fourth time always makes him ashamed.
It was Misa who had uttered his name, after she had helped him with her shinnigami eyes to find the Mafia member who currently held the Death Note.
She had walked over to him dressed in a leather g-string and a corset, bearing the good news and a great deal of flesh. Light had groaned internally as she tittered away, just knowing that he was going to have to have sex with her again.
Sure enough...
"I guess this means I've been helpful to you again, Light." She had cooed, wrapped around his torso and legs. She always said his name like that; with the hidden smoothness and calculation of a woman who knows what she wants.
She always got it.
He had fucked her on the couch that night, because he knew she had lit candles in the other room, the sweet ones that smelt of strawberries.
He didn't tell her to throw them out, because that would mean he would have had a problem with smelling strawberries while Misa ran her long fingernails down his bare back, and admitting that he had a problem with smelling those damned red fruits while Misa screamed his name would have been dangerously close to acknowledgement. Acknowledging something that had never happened.
The thing that made him ashamed was the entire interior battle; from reasons to have sex with her, the where and when of an act best left to the waves of spontaneous whim, to the eventual finale, where Misa would arch her back whimpering, and Light would bury his face into a pillow by her shoulder, biting into the damn thing in a vain attempt to not remember that all other times he had bitten into it to were to stifle groans and not tears.
Sex really was a selfish thing.
-_-_-_-_-_-
The fifth time scares him shitless.
Not because he has been outplayed, not because he has lost the game, not because he knows that he can't kill anyone in the warehouse and escape unharmed...
...Or alive...
It's because of Near. Nate River. The small bundle of white rags that hid behind a mask of L until the final show down.
The final showdown, when he revealed he was more intelligent and forward thinking than L, and much more manipulative and cruel than Mello.
Because, and Light is still convinced of this, even now has he lies upon the steel staircase, colours swirling over his eyes...
Because Near knew that Light was affected by the something.
A trait of the neurotic, he realises with a lashing of self-loathing, thinking that everyone is after them, but it still seems to ring true to his ears. Near knew.
Near had won, Near had known, and he had made Light know it.
Because when Near addressed him as all three personas; Light, L, Kira, he had felt the something hit home with each syllable that fell from those pale, smirking lips.
He couldn't feel the cold iron under his fingertips as he lent against the wall of the warehouse, he couldn't hear the soft, pitiful sniffing of Mikami only two feet away...
He couldn't even feel his blood pumping through his veins anymore.
The rest of the ordeal was a blur; of pain, of screaming, of panicked half thought through plans. Light can taste colours, feel noises, and see sounds. It's surreal how fast his empire has fallen; the bricks falling from Kira's tower of Justice are soaked with so much blood it makes Light wonder if there was anything else holding it up.
He runs from the warehouse, runs until his memories catch up to him, and pass by him forever.
-_-_-_-_-_-
Light: he was Light, a name that had been moaned, kissed, loved. But Light was a name connected to a boy who died a long time ago.
L: he was never L. He had loved the original L; the only L. The name L rightfully belonged to a man long buried.
Kira: was he Kira? He didn't believe he was. At least, not now. That cloak of delusion he had used to obscure his mind, his heart, and his soul had been peeked under by L, rearranged by Misa and burned to ashes by Near.
-_-_-_-_-_-
So...
-_-_-_-_-_-
...He was nothing now.
Shadows lapping at his feet, the man who no longer had a name sees fragments of memories
L?
that he knows are his, flickering badly, like old home movies.
But memories are comforting. And compared to the amount of pain he feels eating into his body, soul and mind, they are a blessed gift.
And so, in the dying light of the afternoon, he closes his eyes, welcoming the twilight.
A/N -
Please review, even if you think it was strange and vague. I'll be thanking you.