Title: Decaying Attempts

Author: Cold Steel Night

Rating: T for suggestive (?) themes; mainly just to be safe.

Summary: Oneshot: Spoilers for 58 and a little beyond. Raito envisions the final effects of his revenge on L, but the world's greatest detective still has a hold over Kira. Raito/L implied, dark-ish.

Re-uploaded, several things are changed, thanks to my friend Sarui! XD I'm even more proud of this fic than I was before; I think I cleared up a lot of things. So let me know if there's still something that irks you about it; if they're OOC, my style's annoying, anything.

Decay, decay, decay decay decay—

He kept telling himself that, in his mind, hoping that maybe it will sink in and he could see it in his mental eye. But it wasn't happening.

So many things he imagined as a child, a little boy scared in his dark bedroom, watching the shadows move around his tiny, lone form, doing their nightly dance and growing closer to his bed, starting at the foot and slithering nearer, nearer, until he cried out, but they kept coming, over the blankets that he clutched like a lifeline, drawn toward his innocence; until they were stopped, the room illuminated in a warm yellow glow and he himself encased in the warmth of his mother's arms, the shield, the bubble that was placed around him, the force field that the shadows, the creeping dancing demons bounced off of in their lazy, twisting way and retreated to his closet, to return the next night.

If things as simple and vague as shadows could dance around his bedroom, why couldn't it waste away?

Because he wasn't four years old. Fifteen years past it, in fact. His imagination wasn't so vivid—even then, when he'd barely reached his father's waist in height, he had lost it quickly. Dreams gave way to plans, cries of terror to negotiations with the specters of his room, pulling himself closer to his mother to bargaining with the monsters under his bed.

He almost wished for it back, just to be able to see this one thing.

He wanted to watch the body begin the cooling process, the bitter chill of death that sickens so many. He wanted it. And with it came the discoloration, the livor mortis that was ever so gruesome, but meant that the heart truly had given up, ceased its continual, steady drumming and left its host to rot. Which was what it promptly did.

Though, not so much promptly as agonizingly slowly, taking years and humiliating the person that once inhabited the corpse even more.

Then again, Raito had no idea if L ever actually "left" his body—but he found that he didn't really care. If L was feeling every bit of it, all the better. If he was looking down from above (though it should be below; Ryuuzaki deserved no more than the pits of Hell for his sin against God, the real God), then that was fine, too, because he could observe Kira's rise to ultimate power, what could only have been achieved thanks to his untimely (for L, anyway) demise.

Raito really didn't mind either way, he found, but he wanted to bear witness to L's decay, be it physical or mental (maybe spiritual, but Raito preferred to believe that it was one's mind that was preserved, not one's spirit, because that wasn't going to do much good after death). He wasn't stupid or delusional enough to believe that he could contact L in the afterlife and ask how he was enjoying the show, but he wouldn't mind being told where the bone-thin body was buried. He might even go dig it up himself, just to watch—the process would go faster, after all, if the body was exposed to air as opposed to earth, he might get a nice show—but he had things to do, and a world to conquer and transform.

So he would imagine.

Or attempt to. His efforts were fruitless, so far.

He pictured L's body, simple enough, laid out as it had been in his arms that day, though more organized, peaceful. The elbows straight, lying beside (not touching, Raito knew Ryuuzaki's torso wasn't wide enough to touch his elbows if laid as Raito was seeing it) the ribs that were almost prominent under pale skin, but were a distant dream under a comfortable-looking white sweater. Legs straight: Raito would never give his hated enemy the comfort of his preferred position. He saw the thin neck, vulnerable-looking, soft, and ever-so-sensitive (though this wasn't the time to think about that, not when he was trying to picture the man dead). Ryuuzaki's head was tilted back, as though the body was on a table but the head was hanging just slightly off the edge, the chin pointed more directly toward the sky than would be the norm. The wide, pale mouth that was so very often occupied by something sweet (or something salty, but that was never to be mentioned again) was closed, not quite a frown, but far from a smile. The haunting, piercing, analyzing, calculating, (arousing,) searching, knowing, empty eyes were thankfully shut, as they had been that day, as they had become shortly after gazing upon Raito's face with grim satisfaction, with morbid irony. The black smudges were still visible, of course, making him look as though the cause of death was a freak eyeliner accident and not a heart attack (planned by Kira himself, the one thing that stood between the God and his throne).

He looked like he was sleeping, not deceased, not out of Kira's way forever.

Like he would awaken, return to never give Raito Yagami peace again—No! That's just stupid.

Maybe he did have a better imagination than he thought.

This was encouraging, and he renewed his efforts to make the mental L decay. He could easily picture the baggy sweater fading into nothingness, though in real life it hardly happened like Raito imagined, but he didn't care—it was a start. He (knew what the firm chest beneath looked like, with and without tiny discolorations formed in fits of passion) could guess Ryuuzaki's chest's appearance, judging by his approximate size and strength, and naturally the chest would not have received any freak rays of sun that the face and hands were awarded every so often, so it was much paler (by deduction, not because Raito had teased the detective about it, suggesting playfully now and then that the two of them should sunbathe for a while, not because he had always received the response of "We could be working on the case, wasting precious time trying to contract skin cancer."). He even, somehow, imagined wild black spikes disappearing and leaving a nice curve (the only one Ryuuzaki had, and Raito would know) with a bit of a shine to it. But this was unacceptable, because it made the baldness seem intentional, and Raito knew L didn't care enough about the collection of protein on top of his head to bother changing his style (or lack thereof). But it remained, because it was another way to make L's body unrecognizable.

However, every time Raito tried to envision moonlight skin falling away from taut muscle, it would, but always return to its original position. Raito set his jaw and tried a few more times, but the image was just not forthcoming.

Why? Like L would reemerge from the grave, have his revenge when the time was right—That kind of thinking has to stop! I'm an optimist, I know I am for a fact. That's the entire reason why I'm doing what I am. So I have to stop thinking such negative—and impossible—thoughts.

L's hair grew back, like so many tiny black weeds on fast-forward. Raito's eyebrows lowered, huddling toward one another to consult. The shirt wasn't replaced, but Raito knew L wouldn't really care. Not that it mattered if L cared or not.

The legs moved before the eyes did. Bending, knees drawn to a flat chest like magnets, feet flattening themselves even when there were no chairs to perch upon, no bare wooden floor.

Black eyes, bottomless pools of nothing snapped open, taking in every bit of his nonexistent surroundings before deciding it was safe to move.

The figure sat up on his nothing-floor, in the same position—some things never change. He looked all around him, apparently seeing things in the abyss that Raito did not, but he found no danger, and risked standing. He turned to face Raito, their eyes locking in that same way, that way that Raito despised. Those eyes mocked him: "I know your secret, and others will soon enough; don't worry, Yagami-kun. You'll enjoy being conquered by true Justice."

Raito narrowed his own in response, no longer worrying about keeping up the façade of innocent police chief's son. He was Kira, and L knew it. He would act accordingly. And that was to present L with a taunt of his own: "How's death, Ryuuzaki? You enjoy being right, you're so used to it, but don't you find it ironic that this time, it would have done you well to have been wrong?"

L's simply spoken response was another question. "You think your job is done, Kira-kun, that you have won by getting rid of me?"

"Kira-sama, to you," Raito quickly snapped. He would not tolerate that title any longer; he didn't have to. "And yes, I have won." He allowed himself a quick smirk; just claiming victory sent a surge of pride through his veins. "Do you think otherwise? Going to tell me a tale, Ryuuzaki?" 'Dead men tell no tales.' Raito liked that phrase, it was catchy. But he knew enough about forensic science to know that it was untrue. It was amusing, nonetheless, to imagine that Ryuuzaki could, should he desire it, literally tell Raito a tale.

It never occurred to him that this Ryuuzaki was supposedly a creation of his own mind; L was taunting him as always, and that was what mattered. He would fight back, now that he finally could. Those piercing eyes meant nothing now. They saw right through him, and he wanted them to.

Raito was taken from his reverie by a drastic change in his surroundings, namely the man before him.

L's hair was stark white, shorter, curling lazily over the crown of his head. Nothing else changed, not even L's position. He didn't even blink.

Raito's eyes widened; what was the meaning of that?

He wasn't given time to ponder it further; L's hair grew once more, straightening itself into gold. It kept one last curl, at the very ends, and Raito heard a mild but distinct snap, though from where he didn't know. Raito took involuntary steps back, mind racing at how little sense this was all making. So what if L's appearance could change, right?—

Raito was pulled back to (reality?) the present by his chair, along with the back of his skull, making not-so-pleasant contact with the carpeted (but not much softer) floor below him.

"Raito? Are you okay?" he heard an ever-eager, presently alarmed voice ask; Matsuda's face, still maintaining most of its youth, hovered above Raito, bouncing around, bodiless. A square, determinedly stern face floated in next to it, both looking at the sandy-haired younger man with concern.

Raito blinked up through the swirling clouds, willing them away. Soon Matsuda and Mogi, bodies returned, stood above him, moving to his sides and holding out their hands to assist him up. He accepted the help without thinking, though later he would be thankful he did, and stood between the older men, brushing himself off absently. "I'll be fine; the chair just snagged when I tried to push it back."

The altered images of L wouldn't leave his mind for the rest of the day, though thankfully they didn't cause him to trip again. A sigh, and a pajama-clad god dropped onto the welcoming mattress beneath him, eyes staring at nothing in the physical world before him.

White, wavy hair… Yellow and straight… And the snap… None of it makes any sense. What does L's hairstyle changing have to do with my being Kira?

It seemed L had stumped Kira finally, though he was decidedly late.

Like I said, I think it's a lot better now, but what I think doesn't matter nearly as much as what you think! And how am I going to know what you think if you don't review!

Lovelove!