Title: To My Father
Characters: Light, Soichiro
Rating: PG
Word Count:412
Summary: Somewhere there is a letter that Light wrote to his father but never sent. One-shot.
Notes: Apparently I need to go through my LJ more often, because when I do I keep finding scraps I always intended to finish but never did until now.
"Sometimes they were letters that hadn't been written, or might have been written, or were meant to have been written, or letters which people had once sworn they had written but hadn't really, but which nevertheless had a shadowy existence in some strange invisible letter world..."
~Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett
Yagami Light is as eloquent on paper as he is in speech. He writes each kanji with as much care as he might pronounce every syllable of a speech before an audience of hundreds, because he understands the importance—and the necessity—of appearance.
But he can't write this letter to his father. It starts out To my father, Yagami Soichiro, in neat strong flowing characters, but by the end the letter is half-crushed and stained with ink and frustration, the words smeared and scored into the paper by the weight of his conviction—Kira is right, the world needs Kira—conviction so strong that it becomes trivialised when shaped and confined by mere words. Of all the people in the world, he wants his father to understand. You helped made me what I am, he writes. I once believed in you and then he tears the paper, because the pain of loss of innocence is still fresh even after his hands have been covered with blood many times over.
And these are the things, half-formed in his heart, that falter when pinned to paper.
(The old rules didn't work so I had to make up new ones, you can see that you can see that can't you Father he thinks but does not write.)
Light writes, instead, Good luck in finding Kira, Father, and justice always prevails in the end—for Kira will persevere, and he dreams of a time when his father, the symbol and representative of the Law, will bow his head to Kira and admit defeat to the new world order. There would be reconciliation. There would be forgiveness—Light, saying to Soichiro, It's all right, you had to stand for what you believed in, but now we can finally work together.
There is a little boy buried in his soul who still wants his father's approval, and so Light shreds the letter to pieces, and lets them fall into the fire, until the ink is indistinguishable from the ashes. Soichiro will never be given the dreadful choice between his son and his ideals. Light is too afraid that Soichiro will choose the latter, and—yes, too practical to give himself up so easily.
He'll come around eventually, he tells himself, looking at his father's bent, weary back and the white strands intermingled with the white hair. He'll see them die and live as they deserve it. He'll learn.
He dreams all this and knows it will never happen.
-end-