Where Dreams Come To Dance
[To put meaning in one's life may end in madness, but life without meaning is the torture of restlessness and vague desire—it is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.]~ George Gray
Light's world is a monochrome template, his life passing by the same way the hands of a clock go tick, tick, tick—systematic and monotonous, forever doomed to drone the same notes over and over, like a bird that can't sing. Time is on Light's side, though he can't do anything with it, and he wonders that, if time is on his side, what must be on the other side.
Light has been his entire life a prodigy, never once thought of anything less than brilliant, but he is, like any good toy of humanity, just a performer, an actor who has forgotten the difference between the part he plays and who he actually is.
(It will be tragic, it will, as soon as Light decides that he cares about it at all.)
The truth is, Light doesn't care about much of anything.
[Boredom, the fruit of glum indifference, gains the dimension of eternity.] ~ Spleen
Everything is simply boring, mundane. Light watches as everyone around him floats through life, testing out living at different angles. Some take an optimistic approach, while others live for the sole purpose of dying, eventually, and there are some determined to go along as individualists. Light Yagami has seen so many varieties that he doesn't even bother looking anymore, because there are only so many ways to live differently, and he is so, so bored of all of them.
His genius: both his defining characteristic and his single downfall.
[I contemplate between dreams the scene I've stolen
like the one who took fire,
like the one who opened the devil box
out of curiosity.] ~Fons
The death note comes to him in the form of both a godsend and wicked misfortune—maybe even a deus ex machina—causing his fears and dreams to collide in a jumbled mess of tangled morals and other-worldly power. The idea of being the god of something perfect tempts him like a sweet poison, slowly eating away at his brain.
Go on, write, write. You can't deny yourself what you want so desperately, it whispers, its words haunting him and occupying his thoughts like a fog that won't go away, immune to sunlight and proper mental resistance.
And so Light kills, kills the bad people, and for the first time in his life he just feels right.
[We know
it's a crazy, morbid, ranting play, a stew
full of murder, love, but with a noble feel.] ~ One Of The Monkeys
Light isn't entirely sure what to think of Ryuk—at least not at first. The Shinigami sees how many names Light has already written (and there are so many, so many), and tells Light that he might just be more of a Shinigami than the actual thing. Tells him that Shinigami do nothing but laze about in the Shinigami realm doing nothing, sometimes spending all of their time just sitting in one place for centuries.
[Maybe I should stay in bed
all day long and read a book
or listen to the news on the radio
but truthfully, I am not meant for that.] ~ National Laureate
Light doesn't understand it—maybe doesn't want to understand it. He can't seem to figure out why beings who have such an incredible power at their disposal simply waste all of eternity doing nothing with it. He doesn't understand how come they don't feel this thrill, this unbelievable sense of empowerment, that he gets from killing.
(Light knows his cause is noble.)
He also knows that murder is wrong. He knows it, knows it, and yet—surely, in order to save thousands of lives, hundreds must die, right? It is a kind of worldly balance, a belief that he has invested himself in.
[These characters at the bottom, so generous
and pathetic. Those abstract things at the top,
so mean, precise and arresting.] ~ This City
L crashes into his life like a freight train, in the form of a television newscast. L is a form of evil—anything standing in Light's way is immediately classified as such—but Light would like to believe that maybe L is on the beautiful side of evil.
L is everything Light never even knew he wanted. He is creative and imposing and above all brilliant—maybe even as brilliant as Light, and just that thought makes Light's breath go faster and makes his skin tingle with excitement, because he has never before met someone like him, and this game with L might actually be a challenge, might actually be fun.
[You most exist when you're driven away, or on—by forms and forces greater than you are.] ~ The Ghazal of What Hurt
L makes the first move by introducing himself at Light's college orientation, and Light knows that L is a bastard and he hates him so much that it borders the lines of obsession, and Light can't help but think he wants to rip out L's throat and pull out his hair and stop his bloody, beating heart in a single pen stroke but oh, this game is just so interesting,and L should never be allowed to die, never never never, because Light doesn't ever want this to end.
They are children of war, both of them, caught up in a battle of wits that no one else even has the capacity to understand. Isolated, they match each other at a level neither of them have ever before experienced, and they both lie and lie and lie but they may as well be telling the truth because the truth is so simply, so obviously, clear.
(That's right, L—I'm Kira. I'd love to see you try to prove it.)
[If that someone who's me yet not me yet who judges me is always with me, as he is, shouldn't he have been there when I said so long ago that thing I said?] ~ The Gaffe
Light supposes that Misa has the potential to be useful to him were she not such a liability. She is a new chess piece, a new player to the board, but Light can't yet figure out what type of piece she actually is, just as he cannot figure out if she is worth keeping alive or not.
But Rem, Rem is another problem in itself. She herself is in a dance with death; falling in love with a human is sure to end her. She threatens Light's life, never mind that it dooms her own, and sits in wait as she watches for Light's reaction.
Light feels almost as though Rem is daring him to just go ahead and try to act against Misa, because maybe that's just how much Rem wants him to die, and Light can see very well that Rem will not hesitate for a second to take his life if she thinks it will benefit Misa.
[She was prepared to be a murderer, to be the worst kind of woman if that's what it took.] ~ Passage
Light is springing forward and falling back, because Misa has been arrested and everything is turning into a big fucking mess. Rem's threats still linger heavy over his head—no harm must come to Misa, because if anything happens to her it will be the end of him.
And if he dies, there will be no one to save this stinking, rotting world from itself.
L is his perfect enemy, always seeming to be one step ahead. Light had been seen with Misa just minutes before her arrest—what now? L's suspicions (he's not just suspicious he knows) rest like a weight on his shoulders, unable to be shaken off or pried loose.
Light needs to take action, he knows, and he has a plan. And it will almost certainly work, too. He knows that L will see through it but there will still be no solid proof, will never be any solid proof, so Light puts a scrap of the death note in the compartment on his watch and commands a god of death to write lies.
[Turning the tables isn't fair unless they keep turning.] ~ Lessons From A Mirror
Upon his request (his stupid, stupid request, whydidIevendothatWHY), Light is put in solitary confinement, after saying that he thinks he might be Kira.
Light is beyond confused; why would he have ever done such a thing? For the first time, he honestly doesn't understand his own reasoning. He isn't Kira—he must have been out of his mind to even consider it a possibility.
Solitary confinement is even more mind-numbingly boring than Light's regular life, which Light feels shouldn't even be possible. He thinks L is wasting his own time looking at him as a suspect, when the real Kira is still at large.
Though, unfortunately, there have been no deaths since he has been locked in here, and that is just all wrong all wrong all wrong because he wouldn't, couldn't be Kira, and someone must be framing him because this simply has to be some mistake. Surely L was smart enough not to come to such a wrong conclusion?
[I witness what is made for someone else, its motion calling me to wait for the regions of love where we come back, able to dismiss the picture of ourselves where we can't smile because no one is able to capture time that has not happened and never will.] ~ Beginning With Two Lines From Rexroth
L releases Light after shoving at him a means to face his own mortality, in the form of his father and a gun loaded with blanks in the back of a car, and even though Light knows that it is necessary for his release there is a small, foreign part of him that whispers, monster.
Light very quickly discovers that freedom is still very much out of his reach. What Light is given is only a semblance of freedom, a lie; a pair of handcuffs bind him to that detective for what seems like will be the rest of forever, and it is all wrong wrong wrong because he is not Kira and how can L not seethat?
Though, sometimes, Light really does wonder about that small part of him that thinks it would be beautiful if he were to hold L and watch him die in his arms.
[I want you with me, and yet you are the end
of my privacy. Do you see how these rooms
have become public? How we glance to see if-
who? Who did you imagine?
Surely we're not here alone, you and I.] ~ To The Reader: If You Asked Me
The more time Light spends around L, the more fascinated with the man he becomes. Everything about him—the way he moves, the way he pronounces his words when he speaks, the way he understands everything Light says without even needing an explanation—it all gives Light the impression that there is something other-worldly about L.
Light watches L, watches him all the time, because he is just that damn interesting and Light wonders if maybe he's becoming a little bit obsessed with him. But then, he's always been obsessed, and he knows he has, from the very moment he met him, and maybe he used to be more obsessed than he is even now but he can't seem to remember why.
A dwelling darkness always seems to accompany his thoughts of the detective, and sometimes at night he dreams of breaking L's bones and laughing while he bleeds. He remembers thinking that L's blood is so pretty.
And when he wakes up, L is always looking at him as if he knows, as if he can see into his mind, which just might honestly be close to the truth because even though Light is an incredible actor, L never ever ever falls for it because nothing Light ever does or thinks or says anymore is private when L is around, and L is always around.
Light thinks that maybe he never wants to let L go.
[I still have nightmares of those departed souls
I see them soaked with blood
I write each stroke, each line
as an outpouring of the tomb.] ~ Fifteen Years Of Darkness
Late at night, when he is exhausted and his loose, wandering thoughts all but seep into his bones, Light thinks Kira's thoughts and dreams Kira's dreams. His mind whispers tales of breaths that turn to bone that turn to dust that become death.
Crowds of faces, all corpses, all dying, all murdered. They stare at him with such accusing eyes that Light figures L must be right, he must be Kira, because deep down Light apparently seems to think he is and besides, L has never been wrong before.
[I wondered
Why we were together—is friendship imaginary?
And does imagination obscure or reveal its subject?] ~ The Bridge, Palm Sunday, 1973
Sometimes, in the wee hours of morning, Light pleads L with his eyes, begging him for a kiss, or maybe so much more, and sometimes L obliges, because this truly is a marvelous game being played between them, and L enjoys it just as much as Light does and every kiss feels like dying feels like winning. So when Light is frightened that he might be someone he despises, or even more terrified that he isn't, L will give in to his pleas for affection, and the whole time L will dream of killing Light with his bare hands just as he is sure Light is doing the same thing.
[I fall asleep trying to give the man a name.] ~ The Fifth Dream: Bullets And Deserts And Borders
Occasionally, Light finds himself making inquiries as to L's true name. He does it for no real reason other than to satiate boredom, really. It isn't as though he wants the name because he is Kira, because he's not.
(Ryuzaki.)
Surely, the detective's current alias probably has nothing at all to do with his actual name, so starting there, Light thinks, is rather pointless.
He tries to come up with some name, any name, that seems to fit the man, but he always comes up with nothing.
Probably, just L suits him best.
[It won't stay with you, but you'll
remember that it felt like nothing else you've felt
or something you've felt that also didn't last.] ~ Leaves
They hone in on Higuchi as Kira both much too soon and not soon enough, because as much as Light wants to prove his innocence, he has come to rely on L's constant company the same way he has come to rely on air.
He knows it is childish, but childish has never mattered to him, and he doesn't want to let L go. L is his best-friend-most-hated-enemy-sort-of-lover-total-equal-the-one-I-am-one-day-going-to-kill and he doesn't even know why.
[All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
luckier.] ~ A child said, What is the grass?
It is thanks to Misa that they have proof that Higuchi is Kira, but, with the desperation of a small child wanting a new toy, they need to find out how Kira kills, because Light knows that the morbid curiosity is absolutely killing L, and even him, too.
And L said he might be Kira. Light wants to know.
[Living one: you move among many dancers and don't know which you are the shadow of; you want to kiss your own face in the mirror but do not approach, knowing you must not touch one like that.] ~ The White Fires Of Venus
L employs criminals to help with their investigation, and everything about that goes against everything Light believes in, but he keeps quiet because he wants to solve the Kira case just as much as anyone else, maybe even more. The desperation of needing to clear his name keeps him quiet as he watches Aiber and Wedy with a pleasant mask in place, hiding his disgust and discrimination.
L smirks when he sees him, because of course he knows when Light is acting, and L silently muses at the thought that maybe Kira's morals could be just a bit higher than his own.
[Madness, with his lewd grin, always waits outside the window, always wanting to come in. I've gone out before, both to slit his throat and to kiss his hand.]~ Poem At Thirty
When Light touches Higuchi's death note (his death note, his), it feels as though he has had the most wonderful punch to the face he has ever had. It is exhilarating, and overwhelming, and painful, and incredible, and I'm Kira I'm Kira I'm Kira I'm Kira I'M KIRA and he can't help but scream.
L has been right all along, but it doesn't matter anymore, because there is a plan in place to kill him and L's death will be beautiful, an artistic masterpiece.
Whatever it is that they have or once had between them was never meant to last in the real world, and they both know it—have known it—and Light is all-too aware that as soon as he has a chance to manipulate Misa, it will be like having set a time bomb, and then it will be all over for his detective.
(Yes yes yes, his detective his detective—)
Rem will do anything to protect the blonde model, even if it means killing herself, and she would. She would, and then Light will be free to use Misa however he pleases, without any lingering threats against his life.
Rem will kill L.
How very easy for him. One could almost consider it a bit lazy.
The thought makes Light's heart jump, in an unexplainable mixture of anticipation and hesitance.
(What? No. Why hesitance? You need L to die; this entire plan is perfect and you should not be having a single second thought about it. L's death equals perfection.)
[(life is grotesque when we catch
it in quick perceptions—
at full vent—history
shaping itself)] ~ Notes On A Visit To Le Tuc D'Audoubert
L is sitting right next to him, and Light's plan is not fully in place just yet. He still needs to kill Higuchi to regain ownership of the death note, and he cannot be caught doing it.
So Light is sure to be very sneaky when he commits his murder, and the fact that he is able to do it while sitting right next to L makes him want to laugh and laugh and laugh, but of course he doesn't, but L can hear his insane laughter anyway. L knows that Light knows who he is, who he has always been.
(L has been waiting a long time for Light to remember...)
So Higuchi dies because Light has positioned his dominoes to fall with the perfection that he's known for, and L will not be able to do anything to stop it from happening.
His death.
(Just as planned.)
[The vulgar and the refined—what you call sin, and what you call
goodness—to think how wide a difference!
To think the difference will still continue to others, yet we lie beyond
the difference.] ~ To Think Of Time
Light knows that he has done unforgivable things, but he also knows that L has perfected a certain cruelty, so he isn't alone. No, he and L are so similar.
(Light knows that both of them are rotten inside so rotten rotten rotten and he loves it.)
L knows that Light knows that L knows what everybody else doesn't know, what everybody else is too blind to see, and so they communicate in the language that only they are able to understand—the one without words or lies or performances or pretending or falsehoods.
(A language that is only capable of speaking the truth, a language on levels far too advanced for the rest of the world to even comprehend.)
L knows he is going to die, he knows that Light is going to kill him, and when they're both alone he lets Light kiss him hard despite it, because even while kissing they are still playing each other, always playing each other, never not fighting to gain the upper hand.
At night Light dreams that he is kissing L's rotting corpse, and when he wakes up he finds that he isn't as disturbed by that as he probably should be.
["Alas, we do evil most cheerfully When we do it for religion."] ~ Arts & Sciences
Misa is an obedient pawn, and, like a good girl, she obeys Light without question when he tells her to start killing again, completely unaware of that by doing so, she is dooming her Shinigami to her death. Light doesn't need to tell her, because she doesn't need to know. She just has to do what she's told.
(She loves so much when she is able to be useful to him.)
Her being arrested under suspicions of being the second Kira has actually turned everything in Light's favour, and he is quite pleased with himself, with his brilliant scheme.
[Melt yourself to make yourself more clear for the next observer. I could barely see you anyway.] ~ Why Is The Colour Of Snow?
L spends his time questioning Rem although he has learned that doing so will likely get him nowhere. She tells him that she knows nothing, but although he suspects she's lying, who is he to call a god of death a liar? He knows nothing of their kind, except for the one ridiculous detail that they maybe like apples.
Rem fills L with a sense of absolute, child-like intrigue, the way she is able to phase through material objects and fly.
(As though he dreams of doing such a thing himself.)
Such a being defies all of his known sciences and physics, and he can't help but want to put together the puzzle as to how this Shinigami works.
L knows that Rem is probably protecting someone, but he thinks it is too soon to know for sure who, but he has a feeling that there won't be enough time to figure it out.
[This day, then, ends in rain, but almost everyone will live through it.] ~ Poem At Thirty
L stands in the pounding, dismal rain and thinks he hears bells in the distance, and although he knows that they are only in his head he likes to imagine that they aren't, so he tells Light to listen for them but of course Light says that he hears nothing. And in the privacy of his mind, L pretends that the only reason Light doesn't hear them is because he isn't the one who is going to die today.
(No, today, Light will kill him. He sees the way Light has been waiting around for it, expecting it very soon to happen. It is inevitable, part of some plan created long ago.)
This is the beginning of the end—this is where the clock hands stop ticking—and both L and Light know it. Like everything else between them, that fact displays itself in perfect clarity. It is right out in the open for all to see, but to it, everyone else, it seems, are deaf and blind.
Whatever they might have once had between them—if it ever even was anything—it is entirely gone now; any and all pretense has taken a back seat to the now-showing, raw hatred and obsession and madness and cold brilliance.
L asks Light an unimportant question, and he can tell that Light isn't paying much attention because L can see glimpses of Light's dreams dancing in his eyes, anxious, hungry, but it doesn't honestly matter because Light gives him some predictable answer that L isn't really paying much attention to, either.
[it's incoherent it's undetermined his sickness has no purpose
now that we are in the text the fixtures appear to subside
a noun is an excess of coughing the beginning of hysteria] ~ The Composition Of The Text
L is dying.
L is dying.
Light's thoughts are in a mess so incoherent nothing makes sense jumbled jumbled where's Rem blackout there's a blackout this is it this is it but oh, when L falls from his chair, Light still manages to dive in time to catch him before he hits the ground.
Light holds him in his arms and gives L all the proof he could ever ask for in one triumphant, terrifying smirk, and Light is right, he is so right, because L is more beautiful dying than he has ever been in life, ever will be in life, because his time has come to an end and he is dying.
Light wonders if it would be okay to steal from him just one last kiss, just one—but no, he has to keep up the performance, after all. If he kisses L, the task force will see, and that cannot happen, because no one must know of their precious secret.
(And that is one secret Light understands they will both take to their grave.)
Rem is dead, now. Ryuk was wrong, about what he had said before. Light is not a Shinigami—he has surpassed that. He is now a God-killer, and there is no one left in his way who can stop him.
[The lives of my friends spend all of their time dying and coming back and dying and coming back.] ~ From The Lives Of My Friends
Light had forgotten how unbelievably boring things are without L around. Secretly, he misses the thrill of the hunt, the challenge, the everything. Ryuk says as much, but Light refuses to be seen with even the slightest bit of regret, so he lies and tells his Shinigami about a perfect world—a world that now belongs entirely to him.
He has Misa to share it with.
[I don't want them to tell me again how the corpse keeps all its blood, how the decaying mouth goes on begging for water.] ~ Gacela Of The Dark Death
L's rotting, decaying corpse (rotten and smelly, just like the man, Light tells himself) sometimes haunts Light in his dreams, and he only sometimes thinks that perhaps L's corpse isn't as beautiful as he once believed it to be.
Still darkly alluring, of course. L will always be darkly alluring, even once he has decayed down to nothing but bones, or even the dust of bones.
Because anyway, he's still dead, and that suits him better than living ever did.
[Nothing ever actually happened—a fictitious man whose life was over from the start, like a diary or a daybook whose poems and stories told the same story over and over again, or no story.] ~ Fear Of The Future
I read a lot of poems (like, a lot of poems), and have almost 2,000 of them saved in one gigantic word document on my computer. So, I decided that I should put some of them to use and write a story that has a whole lot of poem fragments in it. I hope it worked out alright...
Anyway, wow! I wrote all of this all in one go, and I think I like how it turned out. I find that I always tend to write some of my better works when I stay up all night to write them. I know there wasn't a whole lot of LxLight in this, but I'm not very good at writing that pairing in any sort of romantic way because I view their relationship as such a twisted, screwed-up, and complicated one.
I know that some parts of this are a little vague, and it was intended to be as such, but if anyone finds themselves confused about anything, feel free to ask me and I'll try to clear it up for you.
Well, anyway, you have no idea how much I'd love to know what you all think of this. Please review?
Thank you very much for reading!
~Ratt Kazamata, 7/17/2012