Disclaimer: Not mine.
Dust to Dust
He'd haunted his mind, every waking moment, and several sleeping. He'd been his life.
And killing him had been the easy part. Mourning him had been unnecessary, though he'd done it anyways. It is, really, only the aftermath, the days after the funeral where the ghosts had begun to return. He expects it has something to do with the lack of sleep he's getting nowadays, with his own, as well as L's responsibilities eating away at the dark hours of the night. He doesn't think to consider the many nights he'd spent bobbing off in front of a computer screen, cursing L's insomniatic tendencies, and doesn't consider that perhaps he may not actually be getting more sleep, but at least it's a regular pattern of waking now that he sets his own schedule.
It may have really just been how unexpected it had been. That he could have predicted and manipulated so intricately the hearts of the now dead and once deathless. He's always been clever, but this, he can say with pride, is his masterpiece.
It still doesn't explain why he looks everywhere for his one true dead though. Doesn't explain why he turns his head with every clinking spoon against porcelain. Nor does it explain why he continues to sleep with his left arm extended, and his body firmly lodged onto the right side of the bed. But between his duties and his daily routine, he doesn't tell anyone of the nights when he'll come back home to his brightly lit apartment, loose his tie, put away his shoes, and smell the faint odor of Earl Grey and strawberries, see a hunched figure on his couch, and blink, and it will vanish. It is on nights like those where Misa will comment that he is especially distant. And it is after nights like those he will wash his face the next morning and avoid his reflection in the polished surfaces of his home. He knows. Killing him had not been the end. He rubs at the darkness beneath his eyes.
He haunts his shadows now.