For Want of Paradise
Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note. I make no profit off of this work of fiction. However, I do not give permission for anyone to take this body of work and claim it as their own.
Summary: All humans eventually die. The place they go to is Mu. Rated K+ for violence.
1=1=1=1
Hoary drabness paints the Shinigami Realm vividly in a muted rainbow. From cracked and ruined grounds, the wooden splintered claws of trees pregnant with wrinkled, pale fruit scrape the clouds that seem at any moment to rain down upon them blood, sleet, and ash. It seems to settle for something like a gentle snowfall instead, scattering motes of white and gray like wintry cherry blossoms.
But Light is not looking at any of that.
He moves towards him with his hand clasped around his burning wrist, feet barely skimming the ground. Here the concept of gravity seems to have fled. At any other moment, Light would have tried to fulfill the wish of man since antiquity, would have tested the atmosphere and his body for its capacity for flight. Now he only longs to reach the shade of that slaty monstrous arbor erupting from this gouged earth. The moldy scent of apples dusts the end of his nose as he swims through thick, musty air. He chokes on a mouthful when he calls to him, grasping his chest and pushing his palm to his lips. Heaviness and despair and regret and a touch of vinegar fill up his mouth.
It is the taste of death.
Under the apple tree, the shadow that watches him shakes. The strange noise it emits boxes his ears roughly when it eventually reaches him, a church bell clanging in his ear. Light Yagami of Earth would have scowled, grit his teeth, stared down the source of the racket with brimstone smoking in his eyes.
Light scampers now, stumbling over his feet as he attempts to half run on all fours, half stride in an attempt to preserve his pride. The more vigorously he pumps his arms, the harder he stomps his feet, the longer he soars through the air as he leaps across fissures and canyons, the farther the shadow seems to get and the harder it appears to quake.
Bereft of oxygen, Light withers to the ground. Of what use is pride here? In the netherworld, what glory can be had? Trembling, his legs bent beneath him, his head hung low, his palms pressed to an earth of rubble and wreckage, he lowers his face to the ground. He has nothing and nothing to lose.
The shadow wavers. Then, like an autumn-decrepit leaf riding the wind, it drifts over. The bells grow louder and louder until Light's very skull vibrates from the ringing. Nose still pressed to the soil, Light dares not move until he sees a pair of snow-white feet. Laboriously, he lifts his head.
Black is the absence of light and now it gazes at Light, contempt glittering under even blacker lashes blanketed by even jet-blacker, wild tresses. His shirt is as pristine-white as the day he died, his jeans as ripped and frayed around the ankles as ever.
There is a bit of a draft blowing through L's monotone as his foot slams down on Light's neck. Light's face is crushed into a pile of gravel and bones. "Lonely, are we?"
"Ryuzaki," he grinds out, coughing out pebbles. No. "L. Listen to me—"
"I think not," L answers coolly, the heel of his foot pressing down on the knot below Light's chin, "Kira."
"Wait," he gasps, clawing at L's foot. "Wait, come on."
"Did you think I would show you mercy?"
Light's chest heaves as his windpipe closes up. Is it possible to die twice? He has u until recently been under the impression that there would be no afterlife for him but then, here he is.
"Do you think you are deserving of mercy?" L relieves Light's throat of some of his foot's presence, leaving his toes hovering at most half an inch above him. "Answer me."
Tears crystallizing in his eyes, Light hacks until surely he feels his lungs touching his tonsils. "No," he wheezes.
Slowly, deliberately, L kneels with his toes still upon Light's larynx. "I want to hear you say it."
Light's mouth is a mutinous, unmoving length of flesh. L begins to press again.
"I want you to confess."
The flesh wriggles in horror and humiliation. L presses harder, ankle bone scraping the underside of Light's chin. "'I am Kira.' Say it."
Perfect teeth clenched, jaws tight, lips pursed, Light chokes it out. "I. Am. Kira."
L lets his foot sink half an inch into Light's throat before withdrawing it...and then stomping on his stomach. "I don't want to ever see you around this part of the Realm again, Yagami."
Grasping his abused, throbbing abdomen, Light gasps. "Wait, wait," he coughs as the oxygen returns to his brain. "Don't—"
"I'm done with you," L says simply, shuffling away.
On hands and knees, Light crawls after him. He collapses onto his stomach as an agonizing pang shoots through his wrist. "You and I both know," he pleads in a whisper, "that this is hell for us. No one else around, nothing to do."
L stops in his tracks, only moving his head to look down at Light, in the physical sense as much as the figurative.
Light seizes his chance. "This place is only interesting for so long. You probably know every inch of it by now, don't you? Half of these damn Shinigami, they're too dumb to hold any sort of meaningful conversation or they're sleeping or dying. But—But with me, L..."
Just this interaction seems to be providing more entertainment than L has seen in the four years that he has been dead. He cocks his head to the side, like a dog listening out for a curious sound. Light jumps at the chance to feed him more curiosities.
"You know you need me. You and I, we can't stand each other, that much is true. B—But, L—!"
On his belly and using only the heels of his hands, Light creeps forward. Powdery flakes begin to fall thick and fast. One of them lands on Light's knuckle. It is neither wet nor freezing to the touch. He blinks, his eyelashes casting off more flecks of the growing white-out onto the back of his hand. This is not snow, but—
The wind kicks up, bowling over a nearby hill of Shinigami dust, and so more flurries throw in their lot with the storm.
Light chokes through the funerary ash and dust that now coats his throat. "Who else can keep up with you? Who else can alleviate the hell of tedium?"
L's irises move in an arc over the whites of his eyes as he turns around. Panicking, Light scrambles on hands and knees to grab his ankle. "L," he pleads, and for once he thinks he knows what loneliness feels like, "L, we were meant for each other."
Eyes like moonless nights rake over him. Light, still wrapped around L's leg, pushes his hands together and bows his head. Desperate, hoarse, his voice falls out like a rotten tooth. "Please."
L does not move. His gaze, more biting to the touch than any snow, scans Light down to his core. Then, he lifts his foot.
He lets it crash down onto Light's head.
"I want you to know, Yagami, that you are nothing to me."
As Light lies stunned and hopeless on the ground, L pops his thumb into his mouth and looks out over at the endless, bleak horizon and tries imagining continuing to search it without even a little of that level of amusement after sampling just a morsel of it. Company, in particular Light's, is a drop of water on a tongue that has been parched for four years. L's teeth clamp on the bit of flesh on his thumb. Damn it, Yagami, you cannot miss what you have not known and L has been this close to forgetting the appeal of having someone at your side all day, every day.
"Come," L states curtly, giving the man his back. "Get up and keep up. You need to fill me in, and I am not going to slow down for you."
Light gathers up the last of his dignity and stands. Cradling his hand, he limps after L. Together they go into the swirling dust and dimness.
"After killing you, Rem died. That's one of the ways you can kill a Shinigami. If they fall in love..."
On Earth, as the sun stretches fading tendrils to stroke his face, Light Yagami goes into cardiac arrest.
1=1=1=1
Author Notes:
I've had this just...festering and I wanted to finish it. It was always supposed to be a oneshot! I don't know what took me so long. Guess it's because I forgot what the ending was originally going to be.
I've got a better idea of what to do with the second chapter of So the World's Greatest so maybe expect that after I finish up with Kyrie.
P.S. I'm using 1=1=1=1 as a horizontal ruler from now on because the uploader never transfers the rulers correctly and it's such a pain to add it into the editor.