A/N: I don't often do DN fics with Light Yagami, much less with Light as a focal character. I just don't identify with him, it's hard to get into his mindset. But while kicking around some ideas for a RP session ages ago I came up with this. Too interesting to pass up.

Betas: SkyTurtle

Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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B Driven Mad

Raven Ehtar

…

Light Yagami was not superstitious. Despite all he had seen, all he had done, and all that he had been forced to admit as being well and truly real over the course of events, there were some things he categorically refused to believe in. Ghosts being one of those things. A world of logic and reason simply didn't allow for them.

Yes, he'd come to see the truth and accept – capitalize on, really – that shinigami were real, alive and just chock full of charming personality. And with the death gods came their singularly useful notebooks, books that could kill in any way you wanted so long as you had a face in mind and a name to write down. These were things he had not only come to believe in, they were a part of his life in so integral a way that he couldn't remember now what it had been like to be a normal teenager. They fell outside what he would have once considered possible, but once he got over the initial shock it had all made a certain amount of sense. It all ran on its own set of rules and laws, its own logic that made it all fit the general framework of reality he already lived with. It wasn't so hard to adjust to – especially when he had so much undeniable proof to confirm what had once been impossible.

But where, in all that was logical and rational were ghosts meant to fit in? Stories abounded in every country of the world about disembodied spirits, of course, but quantity did not guarantee veracity. The idea that a spirit, driven by some undeniable need or unfinished business such as revenge, despair, nostalgia or even love, that they could defy death and remain amongst the living long after the body had given up, was ridiculous. It was a childish fancy meant to thrill the gullible and easily frightened. Even as a child he had never believed in the ghost stories that circulated amongst his friends at school. They were just another kind of game: "See Who Gets Scared First." Light never participated.

The only 'real ghosts,' so far as Light Yagami was concerned, were the ones that people conjured up in their own minds. It was either those who watched too much TV and were all too eager to see the supernatural in every shadowed corner, or it was literally one's own ghosts come to haunt them. It was the guilt, despair or love of the living that brought forth the specters of those already passed on. If anything, Light's 'supernatural experiences' with the death note and the shinigami Ryuk had cemented his views on this point.

The dead were dead. Once the heart stopped and you were given your very own pine box to while away eternity in, there was no coming back, not in any form. Only the memories of them existed after death.

But then, how did Light explain the spirit that seemed to be haunting him?

Light was not prone to imagining things, just as he was not superstitious. He couldn't afford to be either, not if he valued his own skin, let alone his freedom. As Kira, God of the New World, he had to be able to see clearly, to distinguish fantasy from reality, his personal illusions from what was really there. His goals were so high that some might have considered it a delusion, one of the single greatest delusions that had ever been conceived, but his goals were all pinpointed, planned out and attainable. His dream of a perfect world was possible, if he could only keep a level head. It was a dangerous game he played, and losing sight of reality was a good way to lose one's head.

Light knew his own mind, and it was clear.

Though in his quietest moments, Light had to wonder if his vehemence on the point was all simply due to the shape the spirit was taking. Would his views have been so firmly set as a disbeliever if it had been anyone else's shade dogging his heels?

This… figure that he had caught a glimpse of through the press of a crowd could not be the person his first, fleeting impression insisted that it was. He'd barely seen him through the people jostling on every side, body in profile, the face turned away so only the slight curve of a cheek could be seen… there was no way to be certain if who he had seen was male or female. In his own rush to get through the crowds, he might have seen no one there at all, but allowed his eyes to fool him into thinking that he had. Certainly there was no one there when he'd whipped around to look back, shocked, to confirm the sight.

Obviously, then, what he had thought he'd seen was just a mirage, a result of all the stress he had been under. A little by-product of overtiredness. A trick of the eyes; too many people crammed together and a quick, passing glance. Nothing more.

Light did his best to put it not of his mind. There were much more important things to concentrate on just now than a case of mistaken identity. There was his life to set up for a start. He was moving in with Misa Amane, and while living with her would provide him with more privacy than living with his family had done, it was still not freedom, not quite. As Kira, he would never be able to completely relax his guard. New methods of concealment and new fail safes had to be invented and implemented. There was also the little matter of the investigation force. With L gone – and he was, most emphatically, gone – Light was now the leader of the team meant to track down Kira and bring him to justice. Or some version of justice, at any rate. It was going to be his pleasure to use his position of power to hunt up clues to Kira's identity, while actually steering them and any other agency away from his trail. He could see other advantages to his double role, and other ways to use the team to the betterment of Kira, he just had to consider the best way to do it first, to capitalize without tipping his hand to the rest of the investigation force.

Honestly, he didn't think that was going to be an issue. The team had, with the barest nudges of encouragement from him, appointed him as the head of their miniscule force. They did so because he was intelligent, and because L had said that Light would make a worthy successor. It never occurred to them that he might be too intelligent, nor did any of them seem to see that L's mention of making Light an successor was just a test. A test initiated because L had greatly suspected his being Kira for so long. They were a dull bunch, not nearly up to the par Light had come to relish, but it paid to be cautious.

He had more to worry about than a would-be ghost.

Except that ghost – or whatever – wouldn't let itself be forgotten. Rather than a single incident that would disturb him for a time and then fade from memory, it reappeared. More than once. As a passing figure in a press of humanity, the glimpse of a distinctively messy head of black hair in a shop, half an outline seen of a stooping man with rounded shoulders on a bus, and once, the full on view of him. In rumpled, overlarge jeans and white shirt, knees slightly bent as he stood, head thrust forward and shoulders rounded like a gargoyle, hands jammed deep into the pockets of his denim pants, his tousled hair falling across his pale face, his eyes.

Even with the distance, Light knew he was staring right at L. And L was staring right back.

There was very little else the familiar yet impossible vision could be staring at, and there was fixedness in his manner, a tension in his posture that belied simple lounging.

It was distracting, unsettling, and after a time he began seeing this figure everywhere, at any time. If he had been in any doubt that what he saw was some sort of product of his own imagination that was soon changed. There was no way a man could move so fast that Light could find him practically every corner of his journey through the city. Bits and pieces of other people became as he in Light's mounting paranoia. A hand delicately holding a coffee cup became his hand, a white sleeve was his arm, a snatch of conversation spoken in a soft monotone became his voice…

Until it felt as though he were surrounded on all sides by him, by L, unable to escape.

If anyone on his team noticed how tired and distracted he was becoming they didn't mention it, doubtless putting his haggard face down to grief and difficulty sleeping. The loss of sleep was true enough, but grief was as far from the truth as was possible. He was not mourning one who was dead, but attempting to outrun one who was, apparently, unaccountably alive.

It was all his own mind, though, not a spirit causing the problem. He was simply seeing the dead detective in every other person who looked anything like him. It was the only logical explanation available. But that was before he caught sight of that familiar, hated face close enough to know that it was him, and no product of an overactive imagination.

It was through the window of a bus that Light saw him, just waiting at the stop, the bent frame of his body, the rumpled clothing, the mussed hair…

Except that there was something terribly wrong with this vision of his old, deceased adversary. He was skeletally thin, the sharp angles of his bones visible at his wrists, his bony fingers, even through his clothes at his shoulders and hips. His hair was overlong, concealing much of his face until he turned towards Light, as though he could feel the younger man's gaze on him, studying him through the dirty bus window. Light remained frozen as he turned, unable to tear his eyes away. As the apparition faced him, Light's breath left him, his mind going blank.

The man's face, which he always remembered being pale and smooth, was covered in great, twisting welts of scar tissue. A little more than half of the man's face was a distorted mask, red and ridged and monstrous, stretching from above his left eye down, and then across as they reached his chin, diving below his loose shirt collar. His head came up until he was looking up at the bus, up at Light sitting in his window seat, and the young killer felt his skin prickle all over with goose flesh.

This man's eyes had always been dark, flat and unreadable, like black marbles set in his eye sockets. If the eyes were a window to the soul, then his soul was blank, a calculating wall that took all in and gave back nothing at all. But this—

This man's eyes were like holes in his head. Pitch black with not a glimmer of light or activity; they were twin hollows leading to a cold void. This window of soul, it led to a place where there ought to be a soul, but there was nothing.

For a few moments that stretched on for hours, the two stared at each other, the killer and his victim. Light was in no doubt that the man, or ghost, or demon, was looking at him. There was no question, and he dared not look away for even the briefest moment in case. In case of what? It didn't matter, just in case.

Then the bus moved on. The waiting man continuing to watch him as it did, his empty eyes following until they turned a corner and the apparition was lost to sight.

Lost to sight, but not to Light's mind. Whether right before him or not, he couldn't take his thoughts away from the specter. He couldn't take his thoughts away from L, the detective.

Light Yagami was not superstitious. He did not believe in ghosts. He didn't believe in souls crawling out of whatever pit they had descended into or coming down from on high to muddle through a mortal existence. Such were the beliefs of the ignorant, the common men that peopled the world with fairy tales and shadows.

He did not believe. But that didn't seem to be making a bit of difference.

Light Yagami was being pursued by his dead enemy, L the detective. Rue Ryuzaki, the remarkably laid back young man and consumer of sweets, the man who was ultimately killed by Kira, his true name written in a death note, his body encased and buried beneath the earth. But how was it possible? Was L really so stubborn that he would defy death itself in his mission to bring Kira to justice?

He berated himself for such thinking, calling himself a fool, a simpleton, a worrisome old woman. It was a lookalike, that was all. Just a flesh and blood man with no connection to L that he was seeing from time to time, not a spirit from the land of the dead.

But then, who was he? If he were a mere lookalike, then why was Light seeing him everywhere? He ran across him too often and in too many places for coincidence to account for. If he were a random but familiar face in the crowd, then at most he would see him in one or two areas in the city, not all along his path, at his every destination. Mere chance wouldn't account for that. And there was his very specific attention to Light more than any other to take into account, as well. No stranger would stare at him like that. That was the gaze of one who knew him, knew who and what he was and looked on him with a concentration and disgust that no passing stranger could hope to emulate.

And those scars, the eyes like portals to the depths of the earth… what did it mean?

Light saw the strange creature many more times, though never so close as he had that one time at the bus stop. It was always at the corner of his vision, a brief catch of him in a crowd or at a long distance. Now that he knew just what he looked like, though, even without a clear view of him there would never again be any doubt about what he saw. The scars would be visible to him on the blackest of nights – and frequently were. His dreams had long before any of this turned to nightmares. Now those nightmares came to be populated with the spirit of L, his face twisted and grotesque.

There was no doubt now that his team saw how much distress he was in. It all showed in his behavior and in his looks – the bags under his eyes, the dullness of his hair, his snappishness, his tendency to twitch at only slight provocations. They worried over him, his father insisted that Light take some time for himself, to recover his energy and spark for the work. All of it was repugnant to him, their clinging attentions and cloying sentimentality. It lessened him; they saw him as fallible and in need of their help, their care and concern in order to function. But at the same time there was little he could do about it. He couldn't demand that they leave him alone, as that would be a break in his carefully cultivated persona, and would likely only make matters worse in any case. The thought of confiding his troubles to any of them was downright laughable – it was his own concern to deal with, no one else's.

There was only one 'person' he could speak to on so delicate an undertaking, and he wouldn't have described it as taking someone into his confidence, but as an interrogation. He asked Ryuk if he saw the scarred man, whether or not there existed such things as ghosts or spirits, if it were possible, just possible, that L survived the blow meant to take him. To those questions and the many more he put to the recalcitrant shinigami the answer was always the same: "I really couldn't say."

Light was learning to hate shinigami, for all the good that hate did him.

The one who most often received the brunt of his frustrations was Misa, who probably deserved it the least out of anyone he could think of. She didn't pester him with her worries, though he knew that she was worried for him, very much so. He could see it in her expressions, in the careful way she spoke to him, in the way she moved around him, even in the way she arranged her limbs in the bed they shared at night. She was worried, but didn't want to antagonize him. He would have thought it remarkably perceptive of her, as well as diplomatic, except that he had already given her reason to know his mood was dangerous. He never struck her, but had lashed out verbally more than once. He figured that the reason he had 'chosen' her as his escape was because out of anyone in the world, she was the one creature that he could say what was on his mind. He could curse and rant and berate without compromising himself. What was more, he could do so to Misa without the fear of absolute rejection, whatever he said. Misa's dedication to him was overwhelming, and held her to him more firmly than any artificial bond he could have forged.

The current state of affairs could not be allowed to continue. He couldn't spend his life being followed around by the lifeless vision of a former enemy – but how did he stop it? He'd already killed the bastard once, was he supposed to kill him again? Was it even possible to kill a spirit? How baffling was it that those were both valid questions he had to ask anymore?

He didn't know what to do if the figure he kept seeing was a spirit, but if he were a flesh and blood man, then he had a pretty good idea of what he could do to deal with him and get his life back on track. The first step was going to be in proving that the man was real and alive. Once that was firmly established then he could move on to some highly practical questions, beginning with 'who' and ending somewhere around 'how' or 'why,' depending on the answer to the first one.

He became even more watchful of his surroundings, or more pointedly, in the people he passed and could see. He was on the lookout for his spiritual stalker. He intended to turn the tables on the ghost and follow him around, proving when he followed it all the way back to its lair that it was no spirit, but a live mortal that dogged him. For what kind of ghost needs a place to hole up in when its daily routine was wrapped up? From there he could work on finding out the man's identity.

It seemed, however, that as soon as he wanted to see the strange apparition, he was nowhere to be found. He watched for him on his bus rides, when out shopping, walking through town, even when just staring out his apartment window onto the streets.

Not a glimpse of the L-like shade with the scarred face could he see.

Possibly more than if he had continued to see it, this sudden and inexplicable disappearance of the figure further convinced him that it had all been in his mind. An imagining of an overtired and possibly reproachful mind. After a few days of peace and not a single sign of the man, he gave himself a good mental shake and tried to laugh it all away, casting it off of him disdainfully as the fantasy it was. He was a practical man, a new God, this was a mere aberration, and now he had work to do.

Everyone was glad to see him make strides to returning to his old self, and it was a tossup who seemed more so, the team, his father, or Misa. They all had their different reasons, and all of them were valid, it was only a question of who felt it the most.

Light was just glad he could go through the day without wondering if he was insane or seeing dead people follow him around.

About three weeks after losing sight of the burned, hollow eyed bogie, Light felt he had made a huge amount of progress in forgetting about the incident. The memory of the apparition no longer troubled him, either as a question of identity or as a lingering impression. His nightmares no longer starred that particular vision and he only very occasionally scanned the crowds for faces that he might, possibly, recognize.

So his guard was down that night when he decided to pull a late night at the team's new headquarters.

And his guard might well be down. While the security on their new base of operations wasn't as elaborate or foolproof as their old ones – the ones they had enjoyed when L had been the leader of the team – they were enough to deter all save the most persistent – and since the advent of Kira, there were very few of that sort left. He felt as safe, secure and untroubled as he hoped one day the entire world might feel.

This was why the sound of a clearing throat just behind him nearly gave him an ironic heart attack.

He should turn around. He wanted to turn around, and he very nearly did so as his heart leapt up into his mouth, but something stopped him, a kind of dread. He knew what would be standing behind him; or rather, he knew who, but not necessarily what. Therein lay the whole trouble. He knew for a certainty what it was he would see, but what it was was still a question, as was what it might mean that he was seeing it. Pursued by an avenging ghost, an enemy not as dead as he had believed, or a descent into true madness? Turning around would provide answers, and he wasn't prepared for any of them.

But there was no way he could stay the way he was, aware of the presence at his back but not seeing it for himself. Like a child that refuses to look where he thinks the monsters are hiding because they might gobble him up. He was no child, and he would not hide. Still, it was the weight of the other's gaze on him that finally made him turn. It was the burning itch of an accusing stare sinking into the space between his shoulder blades, and not his own sense of pride that had him swivel in his chair away from the computer and face the thing that had come to visit him.

He almost expected to see nothing but darkness. The large office was plunged into shadow, all the machines shut down and most of the lights flipped off to conserve power. He expected it, for the cough he had heard to have been nothing but a strange kind of auditory hallucination, and to find himself alone and jumping at nothing. It was the way things always worked in the films and on television; surely it would be that way in real life as well?

It was an expectation – and a hope – that Light was to be sorely disappointed in. As he turned he kept his eyes aimed downward, fixed to the floor. In that way it took some time to spot the feet that had walked their way right up behind him in his own office. He almost missed them, almost allowed himself to breathe out in relief when he didn't see the feet that had to be there if there was a person there as well. But something, a movement, a sound, made him lift his gaze ever so slightly, and he saw them. A pair of naked feet, on the edge of a chair, the toes curled and the legs folded so the man could crouch in the seat like a bony gargoyle. It was very much the man Light had known, had respected and had killed. He froze.

For a few moments he remained like that, all of his attention focused on the naked feet in the chair, as though they would disappear if he just concentrated on them long enough. If he just kept repeating to himself how impossible it was that they should be there, then they might disappear, like smoke or mist in the rising sun.

But no, no such luck. The feet remained, and Light forced himself to look up, following the legs in the overlarge jeans, up to the rumpled white cotton tee, up past where a pair of painfully pale, bony hands clutched at his knees, the fingers wrapping themselves around the caps. The clothes were all dirty, he noticed in the hyper aware way one always notices the minute details of what was in front of them when adrenaline is pumping through their veins. The clothes were dirty and so were the hands. And thin – so thin! He never noticed L being as skinny as this apparition was. The detective had certainly been slim, especially so when one considered his peculiar diet, but never so much as this. The skin around every joint in his fingers was stretched tight, almost no flesh lying between the skin and the bone beneath. Would a ghost look so emaciated? Would a man who was meant to be dead?

At last Light looked on the face, the face that had been haunting him for so long, that had been pursuing him during his waking hours and which refused to leave him when he slept. It was L's face, one he knew well even before the afterlife appeared to take an interest in him and began stalking him. But it was terribly changed.

The cheeks were hollow, the hair long and straggling, one side of his face was a twisted, welted mass of scars that set even those features that were near but untouched askew. And his eyes… At a distance Light had thought of them as just two empty pits, hollows into an empty hell, but up close was worse. His eyes were sunken deep into his head, those distinctive dark rings beneath them having deepened and spread to surround them, so it was like looking into the face of a living skull. Deep within those staring sockets were L's eyes. In life they had been a dark gray, very nearly black as his pupils. Now, in this after or half-life, they were an impossible, angry red, glaring out of the darkness of his head.

"Hello, Light," the apparition said, and it was L's voice, roughened to a point where gravel would seem smooth. "Forgive me for interrupting your evening, but you see I wanted to share a few words with you."

Light was no coward. There were many that would swear to that and have anecdotes to back up their claims, but caught alone with this creature that had been L, to have it speak to him, made the sweat begin to prickle along his flesh. He swallowed hard and cleared his throat. "Is that so?" he croaked, cursing his own failing voice. "What about?"

The twisted L's head tilted slightly, so the man was now glaring at Light from under the messy fringe of hacked black bangs. Light discovered that having such a creature glaring at you was no better than it simply staring at you. "I think you know perfectly well, Light Yagami."

Light blinked, then swallowed again, feeling himself at once drawn and repulsed by the figure before him, the eyes sucking at his attention even as they silently flayed at him from the inside out. "You mean about killing you," he said hoarsely. What could be the harm, after all, in speaking openly to a ghost?

"You know why I had to so that," he said defensively. "We both knew the rules of the game, what would happen when one of us was finally caught, and you lost. We both knew what would happen; you can't keep torturing me for this!" Light jumped up from his chair suddenly, sending the wheeled thing spinning into the desk behind him with a clatter. The monitor swayed with the jostle, the blue light dancing and casting disturbing shadows around the room, over L.

"It's not fair, L," Light protested, walking up and down the room, a pair of flame red eyes following his every step. "It's not fair to act like you were cheated out of the game. You lost is all, and it wasn't an easy victory, to be sure. You did a good job making it a difficult win for me, I'll give you that, but it was mine. This is childish what you're doing, trying to take all the sweetness out of it." Light was rambling, and he knew it. It was a measure of control lost that he was not at all comfortable with, something that just never happened to him, yet here it was. He was panicking.

"You're dead, L," he said after a breath, though it didn't come out nearly as firmly as he had wanted. "You're dead and out of the game. Leave me alone."

The wraith had followed him with burning eyes as he paced, never straying. Now as Light turned to him they locked on his face, the stare burning though him like an acid. Finally he tilted his head at Light, a familiar gesture that made his gut twist. "L is dead," he said, confirming the words. "But I am not L."

For a moment the words made no sense to Light at all. Then as comprehension came, more confusion replaced it. "Not L?" he said with a kind of relief. "Then who the hell are you?"

"B," the wraith said, and Light marveled at how much like the dead detective he was. "I was one of those meant to take L's place when he died."

Light looked him up and down, new considerations for this person springing up in his mind. "Is that what you're here for, then? To take his place on the investigative team?"

The man – B – stared at him without answering the question. The unblinking stare was unsettling, and filled Light with fresh dread and a cold certainty that whatever this man was here for, it was nothing he was prepared to cope with. "No," he said at last, and stood up from the chair. He was taller than L, Light realized with a start. The added height made looking at him a little disorientating and made his gauntness that much more obvious, more painful to see. "I'm here for revenge," he said, jamming his hands into his pockets, tone completely flat.

"Revenge?" Such words out of someone who looked like this one, late at night, caught alone with no one to help was more unsettling than he cared to admit. "Revenge against the one who killed L, you mean? You must know it was Kira, and that we're looking for him." He was babbling again and he knew it, but couldn't seem to stop his tongue. He was in danger, he could feel it, and there was no way to defend himself, no weapon and no notebook, only his own body and wits against this deformed stranger. But while he could feel his muscles getting ready to either fight or flee, he still wasn't certain whether he was hallucinating everything he saw and heard. Was he mad?

The other man finally blinked. A long, slow, deliberate blink, as though he had to remember how to do it. Then he smiled. Light wished he hadn't. It did strange things to the scars on his face, and the teeth looked altogether too sharp. "You are Kira, Light Yagami. I can see it as plainly as the pulse at your throat. So not think for a moment that you can deceive me."

Light tried to get a grip on himself, to slow the wild beating of his heart. "You predecessor thought that I was Kira as well," he said. "But he could never conclusively prove it. I doubt that you would be any more successful."

The smile didn't budge. It didn't grow and it didn't fade, and Light's uncertainty only grew worse. His gaze never wandering away from Light's face, the man who called himself B took a slow step towards him, then another. "You are used to L's ways, his process. You're accustomed to his methods. You know then that he was somewhat…" he gave another slow blink. "Unorthodox. He was an agent of the law, but used methods that the regulars of the establishment would never consider. Such was L's way, and it worked very well. There are probably hundreds behind bars now that might never have been caught had it not been for L's irregular practices."

The man had continued to approach Light as he spoke, and almost without thinking Light had backed away from him. His face was terrible to look at, and his presence was threatening. Now he was nearly caught in a corner.

"I was meant to be his replacement," he said, still approaching. "I was taught how to work like him, how to behave like him, how to think like him. I was made to be just like him, so if you were familiar with him, you could predict my movements as well." The grin widened, and Light became terribly aware of how close he was, and how very cornered he was. "Except I was a failed experiment. I learned everything they taught me, but I refused to do what it was I was trained for. I was thrown out because I was considered… unstable."

B had him pressed against one wall now, and could stare straight down into his face. "You think I want revenge for L's sake?" he murmured at him. "I hated the bastard. Death was something he richly deserved."

"Then why are you here?" Light got out, his voice shaking. "What do you want from me?"

The other man seemed to consider the question carefully, studying Light's face with the impossibly red eyes. Eyes like blood, or fire. He was aware, with the man standing so near, that despite his gaunt, skeletal appearance, a strength radiated from him. In a contest of muscle, Light would most likely lose. "L was mine," B growled down at him, his half and half face darkening dangerously. "He was mine and no one else's to play with, and you took him and you broke him. You broke my toy." The last four words were ground out roughly, little more than an animalistic growl, his face inches away from Light's. He pulled back again, taking a breath, but Light felt no relief. "L felt that the rules and laws could be bent to serve a higher cause."

B's hands, until now jammed in his jeans pockets, came up, and Light's heart almost stopped. The long bony fingers held, in the same delicate grip as L had once held spoons, a box cutter.

"I feel no similar compunction. And I want you to replace my lost toy."

…

A/N2: After that I'm letting your imaginations fill in with all the interesting play B would do to break in his new toy. ;)

As always, thank you for reading, you lovely people, you!