Victorious

I have won.
It is not as wondrous as I had expected. I had always thought that my triumph over my nemesis would be somehow more . . . triumphant. Instead, I am just empty. I should be getting work done; there is so much to do. But I have been sitting here, staring at my hands for almost an hour. His blood is not on them. And yet they are stained with it.
I have not slept since I can remember. I suppose it may have something to do with Ryuk s lurking problem, which I have been meaning to address for quite some time now, but I no longer think that that is all. I cannot shake the feeling of the blood my hands never spilled, cannot rinse off the guilt or write away the constant apprehension. I have become akin to Lady Macbeth; wandering in sleep to wash my hands of a murder I could neither prevent nor have afforded to do without. I tell myself that he had to die, and it does not help.
I stare into the darkness and I see him staring back. He knew, in those last moments, I am sure. He could see through me. He could see that he had been beaten, and by whom. I think, perhaps, he always knew. He just did not know why. He never really got the chance to learn. It was in his eyes, as their light faded, as he slipped away, held in my arms. He was just asking me why. And I do not have an answer.
I have not killed anyone in three days. Objectively, that is a strange thing to hear. It has become force of habit, for me. I kill because I must. I kill because they need me to. I kill only because some people need to die.
But did he?
He committed no crime. His only sin was to defy the god of a new world for the sake of the old. His only offense was to stand up for the safety of those who violate the safety of others. His only wrongdoing was to follow the Old Justice, which pitied those who had wronged the undeserving. He did not deserve. Perhaps I should have pitied him.
But I cannot undo this thing. I cannot take back the wrongs I have inflicted for the sake of a new and better world. I cannot un-write the names I have set down for a penalty that was, perhaps, too harsh. I cannot wash the blood from my hands, and I cannot bring him back.
It is a strange thing, but I . . . I miss him. There is no sense of victory. There is only emptiness before me, stretching like a straight road to the horizon without a single obstacle in my path. Now, all is smooth sailing, all is set forth as on paper, and all is within my grasp. Without him, everything will be too easy. But that is not why I miss him.
Ryuk is watching me as I write. I wonder how much he knows. I am aware of his strange fascination with humanity, which echoes my own fascination with his kind. I am not sure if he knows enough about humanity to recognize my condition, nor if he would much care if he did. He might laugh. Or he might just ask for an apple, which he has now done.
It is a quarter past four, a.m. I am exhausted, but cannot sleep. Whenever I close my eyes, I can feel his hair on my bare skin as I held him there, as his heart struggled against the power of the Death Note. It was soft, and smooth; worthy of being stroked. Whenever I close my eyes, I can feel his weight in my arms, far less than I expected, and the bones beneath his skin (I will never know how he managed this; with the amount of sweets he consumed, he ought to have been bedridden with his own weight). Whenever I close my eyes, I can feel his breath on my face, his pulse slowing, his body still warm even when the spark of life had faded from him. Whenever I close my eyes, I see his, staring back, and knowing, and not knowing why.
It is strange, the things I think about him as I lie here, waiting in vain for sleep to come. I remember his oddities, and his strangeness; I remember his penchant for sweets and his awkward, ape-limbed way of moving. I remember our victories, our triumphs, and I look on them with nostalgic pride. I remember his eccentric habits, his obsessive-compulsive attention to detail in complete opposition with his large-scale untidiness; his hair was never combed, and he was nearly never wearing shoes, but he would always place his sugar-cubes into neat, perfect stacks of twelve before stirring them into his tea, eighteen stirs clockwise and nineteen counter-clockwise. I remember his odd habit of standing in the rain, listening, and yet unable to hear when I called to him. I remember the way that any mention of tennis made him perk up like a terrier. I remember the single time I saw him smile.
And he died in my arms three days ago.
There has never a more costly victory been won.