"You're cleared," his father said, squeezing his shoulder. "Aren't you happy?"
"Yeah," Light replied, "Yeah…I'm happy."
He wasn't. Light remembered it all, now, week upon week in that tiny room, every wall the same, every day the same until he wanted to scream. And L, never giving up, never showing mercy, even when any sane person would have known his captive's innocence. He had volunteered, of course, but he had made a sore mistake in thinking that L might have an ounce of compassion in his twisted body.
But L wasn't sane. L was mad and cruel and vicious, didn't know when to stop or step back. L was a monster who pretended to work for the law. Light knew him for what he was now. He watched Ryuzaki sideways where they sat side by side on the high-powered computers, crouched like a hideous hobgoblin, revealed to Light's eyes in all his twisted glory.
He stared at L's back as he stacked sugar cubes twelve high and thought of his father's gun's muzzle against his forehead. Thought of waking screaming from dreams of the walls closing in on him. L had used his power to hurt Light, and had barely been forced to stop.
Spinning in his swivel chair and looking up at the ceiling, he thought gleefully of all the things he could do to his archenemy. Pay him back in kind for every moment of humiliation and frustration. And in the end, the coup de grace…
Ryuuga seemed confused, baffled of late. Perhaps he felt the end closing in on him, sensed that his time was short. Light hoped he knew. He wanted L to feel the trap closing and know that its inexorable force could not be stopped.
The first night after the cuffs had been removed, they lay together in bed, shoulders barely touching, and L said after a moment, "You know it's not personal."
"Of course not," said Light, and closed his eyes. "It's never personal, is it?"
Not personal, to pull his life apart piece by piece. Not personal, to drive an innocent (because he had been innocent, then!) man near to madness. Not personal to put a father in the position of pretending to kill his own son. Not personal at all.
Just like it won't be personal when I see to it you die.
The moon spilled on the covers, illuminating Light's long and slender hands. He smiled faintly at the ceiling of the room they shared and imagined how it would be. He would be eating one of those damned sugar confections, and all of a sudden… he shivered in delight. No other thought had ever been so fulfilling.
Revenge. A beautiful, circular thing. He'd never loved anything so much. Light laid his long fingers on L's collarbone where his lover-archenemy lay beside him, imagined sliding them up to wrap around his neck, squeeze the life out of the detective himself.
He pulled his hands away. No. It had to be clean. Clean, brutal, perfection.
Light slipped out of the bed and slid silently across the floor to the window. He shuddered with anticipation. The symphony crescendoed toward its end. He held L in the palm of one hand, and only had to close his fist to crush his sole opponent.
The moon blinked back at him, one great eye in the night, watching everything. "Please, father! I'm innocent. I'm innocent!" Bang.
Light glanced at his arms. The scabbed wounds weren't visible, but then, they would never be. Alone in his wakefulness, Light felt curiously free. He looked back at the sleeping detective, watched his curved spine rise and fall with his breathing. Nothing to keep him from walking out and leaving all of this behind forever. L murmured something in his sleep, and Light didn't care to listen.
He felt curiously ghostlike; unreal.
"Light-kun?"
So he wasn't sleeping, after all. Light's hand tightened on the desk he stood before, staring at the top of L's closed laptop computer. Yes, he thought. Yes, it is like this. "Yes?" He could have strapped L to a table and scourged him until he screamed for mercy. I am not yours to dissect, Ryuzaki.
"You're awake." L rubbed a hand through his hair, voice cool and apathetic as always, hair sticking up like a black crown.
"So I am," Light said, and flashed a smile. "I couldn't sleep. Too restless." Do you know how it is, L, to be questioned so much that you don't know who you are anymore? It hurts, my friend, it hurts. "It seems strange to think that it's over."
"It's not over," L said, and rolled to his back. "Not by far. I have too many unanswered questions." L chewed his thumb, absently. "I still need more…explanations."
L and his god damned explanations. How did you kill them? Why won't you confess? No stopping, never stopping, until he wanted to break under the strain and was even uncertain of if he was who he believed…
And then the car, and his father, and the gun.
If I had the power, Light thought savagely, I would rip you apart, L, as you ripped me apart. Tear you down. Force you to remember that you are only human. Sometimes he wondered if L had forgotten that. If L truly believed it when he had offered something like an apology, it was necessary, Light-kun; you understand?, and Light had ground his teeth and smiled and said only that he understood.
"You look tense, Light-kun. Something on your mind?"
"No, nothing." He smiled, utterly perfect and utterly false. "Just thinking."
"Do you ever do anything else?" L drawled, and Light just smiled, faintly.
He hoped that L would understand when he died, why he had to fall. You ruined me, L. He had been pure and innocent and perfect. L had stolen all that. But it was more than that, too; after all, every god had his trials. L was his. It was what he was, what he stood for. You destroy, I create. There is only enough room for one of us in this world. And it has to be me.
If anyone could understand, it was L. After all.
It was nothing personal.
And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them. –Ezekiel 25:17