Title: Chrysalis
Characters: Light, the King of Death
Rating: PG
Word Count: 940
Summary: The King of Death takes a special interest in Light. Based on the Director's Cut special. Spoilers for end of manga.
There is always a procession of dead souls passing overhead. At a certain point they vanish, gone on to their final reward. Death gods surround them like vultures over a corpse, mocking and shouting, pointing out faces they recognize. To them, the unseen watchers peeking through the spheres, the triumphs and despairs of humanity are very much like a soap opera, if they knew the term.
"Saw him on the whatchamacallit, their tellyvision or whatever, last time on earth. Longest living man in history, huh? I couldn't resist."
"Idiot, his life couldn't have been worth much, then…"
It's one of the few ways to pass the time in death god country.
"Hey—isn't that Ryuk's kid? The one he was bragging about?"
"Looks like that old bugger will be comin' home sooner than we thought, then."
"Wonder what happened? That kid had a fair handful of years left in him."
"You actually curious? Likely Ryuk got bored and offed him. Up for a game of dice?"
Tattered and translucent, fraying at the edges, Yagami Light drifts through the eternal twilight, eyes trained forward, ignoring or ignorant of his fellow dead. After a while, his soul folds up, fades away into nothing.
One of the last great mysteries of human life is death. What happens after death? And so, heaven and hell, rebirth , Valhalla, came into being, spun out of the airy-fairy stuff of human imagination, order imposed on chaos. Death is eternal sleep, say the poets, death is justice, say the priests. Death-is-death-is-not, the debate rages on, no one knows who has not died.
This is what the death gods know: that all dead humans go to Mu, the land of nothingness, and no one ever comes back.
But even death gods (ironically) do not understand death; they are beyond its touch, and the door to Mu is closed to them forever and ever. Sometimes a death god dies, turns to dust from too much dice and drowsiness and not enough killing; but even it does not go to Mu. It simply stops, ceases to exist, dust on the wind. There is no need to wonder.
Life as a death god (if you can call it that) is gloriously and horribly and mind-numbingly simple.
And that is why the King of Death has been keeping note of the events on earth unfolding around the Death Note. He watches Kira enter the warehouse. He watches him being carried out on a makeshift stretcher.
He looks to the sky and waits, until Yagami Light appears forlorn and fading, and with all his willpower drags the soul down into his realm.
The King of Death is the only one who knows the secrets of Mu, and he is not telling; but in his implacable inexorable manner has decided that Light is far too interesting to be shackled to such a fate.
It has been a long time since he has had a human soul as an audience.
Living Light had been vibrant and animated with a carefully controlled charisma; he used his natural gifts like weapons, felling his detractors one by one. Dead Light is colorless, sad and pathetic, echoing back the memories of living in a dull monotone.
"You were Kira." A statement.
"Yes, I was."
"Did you want to die?"
"No." And there it was, a little flicker of emotion, stirring behind the vacant eyes. Light had died a bitter death, and the pain and horror had not all faded yet. Silvery blood shimmers on the crisp white shirt.
"Do you still want to live?"
The flicker grows stronger. "…Yes."
The King smiles. It's not exactly life, it's not exactly death, but what he doesn't know can't hurt him.
"Your wish is granted."
With a wave of one hand he summons a body around the soul—flesh and bone and cloth, wrapping around it in a cocoon. From it Yagami Light emerges like a butterfly from the chrysalis, wet-winged and newborn, shivering and confused. The King of Death can't create life, he can't restore Light to the living, but he can make Light what he truly is.
Light screams with his new voice, scrabbles at the ground with skeletal fingers that are no longer his own long elegant fingers. Into the eye sockets comes a shivering red light, like a candle flame in the breeze. His own mother wouldn't recognize him now. But that's all right, she never knew the real Light anyway, no one knew but those who had been in the Yellow Box that day, and their lips are sealed with the most solemn and sacred of vows.
The King reaches out and slides something slim and black under the grasping claws. Light stills, the glow in his skull flares with a shadow of his old passion. He fingers the velvety-smooth cover of the Death Note, wondering. "...Why?"
He'll never remember everything, but that's the effect of being dead. Without the protection of a body, memories are the first to go, casting off the ties that bind the soul to the living plane. The King is content with that. Light creating havoc in the human world was amusing. Light creating havoc here, in his domain, is another matter altogether.
Yagami Light will never be content with anything less than total domination of whatever world he is in.
"That is for me to know," he says, and sends Light away—with his blessings, or his curse, he isn't too sure, only that letting something like Light disappear without a fight is an awful, awful waste.
If nothing else, Light will be a very conscientious god of death.
-end-