Disclaimer: Pinkfeline does not own Death Note nor any associated characters and events. The content in this story should not be taken as canon.
Dead Man's Lament
He walks, alone in a dirty street. The echo of his passing a haunting beat - hollow and forlorn. He feels he is alone, the absence of life a cold unforgiving wind. He is afraid and he is tired. He knows that it is only a little while longer, a couple more steps until he is there. So he hunches, pushing against the biting wind until the forlorn darkened stone rises before him. He enters and is followed relentlessly by the wind.
He feels cold, his hands fumbling with the keys. Home. He knows that when he enters the room, the room will be a mess. He had cleaned it that morning, as he did everyday for the last two years. And everyday he would return to find his work to be undone. He wonders if L is waiting beyond, or if he has already left. He always wonders.
If L is home, they will fight over the mess - as they have done countless times before. But if the man is absent, Light will clean and fall into bed, dreading the coming of the new day. He might wake then to see L sleeping at his side, and he will leave in the routine of his working day, or he will wake alone.
They used to talk often, Light and L, when they first got together. They would talk of the world outside, of the dreams they had - youthful fantasies. They would hold each other during the night, find comfort in each other's arms. But things changed. They started to fight more often on various things, until they barely spoke for the exhaustion it would bring. They grew silent and apart, their lives slowly losing sync. The nights had grown colder since then, bone chillingly cold.
He could see the fractures, taste the slow decay of what they once had. Light could not let go however, and so they continued on. At times Light would look at L and think that he did not know him. After living with him for two years, Light still knew so precious little of the man he thought he loved. It was like living with a ghost, Light reflected. An impression of a man, but with little in the way of substance. They both kept too many secrets, unwilling to reveal themselves fully to the other.
Why was it? He wondered.
Light could not tell L of what haunted him - of the nightmares that ruled his sleep. He dreamt of death and fear - burning hate. He dreamt too, on some nights, of L in his arms. The rattling gasps for air, the clawing hand and the terrible accusation shining in dark eyes. Those dreams - often too real and painful - dreams that woke with tears drying on his cheeks. He could not tell L, for every time he tried, he saw the accusation in those eyes. The shuttered looks, the secretive glances. He could not reveal to L, the sins of his past.
The lock turned with a dull click. He breathed out carefully, shouldering the door open. He stares at first, body framed in the doorway. The room is clean - just as he had left it that morning when he left L sleeping on the bed. No, the room is not clean - it is empty.
He moves slowly, five strides to the bedroom door. He opens the drawers, glances around the room before going to the kitchen. He brews himself coffee - black, bitter and strong. He takes a seat on the worn dining chair, staring out the dust-covered window to an empty world below. L's stuff is gone - he thinks.
No note. No goodbye.
The room is cold - his hands numb despite the heat of the warm brew. There is a new sense of absence in the air, and he finds his eyes stinging with tears. He stares outward at the world, feeling at a frightening loss. He tried to think beyond the absence, but he cannot. It is a wall too high to scale, and so he buffets himself in vain against its unyielding presence. His mind will not function, the coffee is too hot and scalds his tongue - but he understands nor feels any of it.
He is gone.
L is gone.
He sits through the night, his eyes uncomprehending, his body chilled. He is exhausted in body and mind, drained of energy. The dawn breaks over the land, yet he does not stir. He has to return to work - return to the fruitless and tiresome efforts to keeping society safe. But no one was safe anymore. Crumbling under the weight of greed and corruption, society stood trembling on the last of its legs. He had often mourned the futile efforts of the police, but had worked relentlessly at it.
He felt old and the cold had seeped into his bones until the joints groaned in agony. He was spent, and so he did not rise. He did not look at the old worn watch on his wrist, did not watch the passing time. Only when night set in did he realise that he had been waiting. L hadn't come back yet. He frowned. Surely L should have been back from work by now? True, Light did not know what work L did - one of the secrets he had thought L would eventually share with him in the beginning. But he should have been back by now.
L wasn't coming back. No, all his stuff had disappeared. He wasn't coming back at all.
He must have loved L, he thought. In the beginning he must have. All he felt now was an all-encompassing numbness. Was this the absence of love? If that is so - he had lived without it for much longer than he had realised.
He stood then, the muscles in his back and neck pulling painfully at the sudden movement. He moved slowly, shuffling to a bed that offered no warmth and no comfort.
He waited for a week, seated at the small table, overlooking the outside world. There came no word, no sign of where L had gone nor the reason for his sudden absence.
Light had picked at the wound in his heart - the part of him where L had resided, until it bled profusely and with much pain. His eyes were dry and bloodshot, crusted with the sleeplessness of many nights. He sits in the stained porcelain tub, ice cold water from the showerhead falling to his unprotected back. He stares at his hands, pale and scarred with many wounds and thinks that there is nothing left of life.
He has no family. His work is meaningless and futile. He is exhausted to the core of his soul, and he no longer has L to stabilise him.
His hands curl into loose fists, too weak to do anything more. He sighs, a soft heavy release of air. He cannot go on like this.
---
He remembers when he first met L, a soul very similar to his own. Separated from society by things that could not be put in words, a great big divide that they could not cross. Isolated from others, they had immediately grown close upon their meeting. Similar in mind and thought, but so very different in body - they must have made an odd pair. But they had not cared then - still basking in the light of having found another like themselves.
In a sense they had both been lonely. They saw the world in a different light and carried a heavier burden for it. But the twin burdens were too heavy, so they kept to themselves, growing apart. Perhaps they could have been happy together, had they not been under that burden of knowledge. But they did not find the release they so desperately had craved.
Light misses him - the man that has taken to haunting is dreams. No longer dying in his arms, he now dreams of the finality of death. Standing on the patch of earth, staring at an unmarked grave, full with the knowledge of the one who lay buried there.
He looked down at his hands and found them to be dirty - smeared in grime, sweat and blood. He glanced up at the girl by his side. She stares back at him with empty eyes, her face smeared and as dirty as his hands. When she is with him, he sees in her no love, only a single-minded devotion that he could not understand. And yet he knew that a part of it came from loneliness he also felt. It was the bonds that had drawn them together - a singular anguish that they could not escape.
She smiled at him then, seeing his gaze on her. It was a small smile, and yet it was a hollow gesture - the lines of pain framing her once pretty mouth.
"There is no happiness for us."
Soft and sweet of voice, Misa was a beautiful woman, and again he wondered what had drawn her to him that she followed him so selflessly. Was pain and loneliness really all that kept them together? He does not love her, not like he had loved L. And she does not love him.
He turns to look into the mirror to his side. What he sees is the body of a broken man, haunted and used beyond its capacity. At his side the woman, a faded beauty, aglow in the light of the blazing fire that raged around them. The heat dances around them, stifling and terrible. He can feel his skin blister, but it is only at the cool touch of Misa's hand that he moves.
They move as one through the godforsaken place, not looking back at the inferno raging at their backs. It is not their intention to leave, they have caught a glimpse of heaven and this was but a part of hell. No, they wished now for the bliss of death and the cool nothingness to take them. They settle on his bed, Misa curling within Light's embrace.
He wonders what L would think, were he here to see. He cannot even guess, because he never knew L - only the ghost in the shell.
Perhaps L had known from the beginning that they would never find the happiness they wanted and had only waited for Light to realise the same. Until he could take no more and left Light behind. It was strange how that one event still managed to hurt him so - even after three years.
The blaze had almost reached their door, the light dancing through the cracks. They did not watch it advance, nor did the make a move to stop it. They simply lay entangled on a bed he had once shared with another man, with L. He feels her start to shake against his side, but she does not cry. There is acceptance in her eyes that are reflected in his own. The sound of sirens breaks through the fires roar, but it is too late. They are beyond the reach of safety, beyond help.
Misa was right, they could never be happy in this life. Their burden, their sins were simply too great and so they welcomed death. The touch of moisture surprised him and he glanced down. Tears fell silently from Misa's eyes as her body was wracked with silent heart wrenching sobs. She is afraid of death, but she fears living more. Light does not cry, his tears spent years ago. So he tightens his grip and rests his cheek on top of her head. It is all the comfort he can give.
Thick choking black smoke was quickly filling the room, but still Light lost himself in thought. Did L ever think of him and what could have been? Did the other even ever spare him more than a passing thought? Did he perhaps even miss Light's presence? Was he still alive or had he passed on into death before him?
He coughed violently, water streaming from his eyes. No, not tears. Not anymore.
L had given him up long ago and now it was Light's turn to do the same. The room is too bright and so he closes his eyes against the glare. The fire's roar is deafening, a fearsome hungry creature. Misa is quiet and still in the face of the fires rage - but then she is already gone. She has left him too - but this time he can follow. This time he will not be left alone.
He does not feel the pain as his body is consumed, but darkness takes him at last and with it a silent echoing cry.
…
Goodbye L.
Review!
AN: My apologies if the story was a bit weird. It is kind of a Light and L re-incarnated in the future kind of thing. But with something of the past hanging over their heads - whether they know of it's nature or not - I believe a relationship will be difficult. Besides, relationships that seems so right at the beginning, often fades to nothing. It was more or less an attempt at portraying a mood. Whether I failed or succeeded, well, that remains to be seen.