I.
Light traces figures in the sand. He can hear people talking, laughing, living. It all sounds far off. Everything might as well be behind a glass wall. He's too absorbed in his current task to really pay attention. He doesn't need to anyway. Nothing interesting ever happens. He drags the stick along slowly, carefully, he doesn't want to have to start over again. He wants (needs) to get the wings just right.
Ryuk.
He mouths the name to himself. It tastes bitter on his tongue, like a bar of 95 percent dark chocolate, but he never has cared very much for sweet things. He misses the shinigami in a way, if only because he had been able to be himself around Ryuk.
A quick glance upwards shows his parents sitting with another couple, happily chatting away. A few feet away from them is his little sister, Sayu, building sand castles with a boy around his age, maybe a couple years older. Light knows who he is immediately, he looks much the same as he had in the last life. He has lost the exhaustion and stress lines, though it's to be expected considering they are both children in this time. Matsuda.
He's at the beach with his family. His parents had set up a play date with one of the other families from the neighborhood. Light knows that they're worried about him. They're worried that he never speaks, that he doesn't have any friends. He hears them talking at night. They are hoping this outing will help. He knows it won't. The other 'outings' never did, because there is nothing wrong with him.
At least nothing anyone else can help with. Their friends' son is the opposite of him. Everything he knows his parents want him to be. Maybe in a past life (This saying amuses him because there is no maybe about it.) he would be good enough for them.
They want him to be just like Matsuda; outgoing, friendly, cheerful. Matsuda has the disposition of a puppy.
He allows himself a small smile as he looks down at the finished product, satisfied with his depiction of Ryuk. He starts a new sand drawing. Just as he's finishing the tower of apples, a shadow falls across his pictures. He looks up only because he knows it's the polite thing to do. All he feels is annoyance at the interruption.
"Do you want to build sand castles with us?" The boy, Matsuda, sounds happy. Light briefly wonders how that must feel.
Light nods after a few seconds. Matsuda smiles softly back at him, turns to walk away, and for a moment Light is struck with the image of a very different Matsuda, older and more weary, filled with helpless anger.
'You shot me.' The thought rushes through his mind like, well, a gunshot and his shoulder feels as if it's on fire. His hands start to shake.
He feels a laugh bubbling up, hysterical, shrill. He forces it down.
Light stands and starts to follow the other boy, slowly. He makes sure to step in the shallow prints Matsuda leaves in the sand.
Sayu squeals in delight when she looks up and sees Light walking towards her. She waves her tiny chubby fingers at him excitedly. He spares her a tiny smile. It feels mechanical. He sits across from them, occasionally handing Sayu shells for their castle. Light feels tired. Their happiness is exhausting. In this moment, he feels incredibly ancient.
He hands Sayu another shell.
II.
The space next to him feels like a void, stretching empty and cold.
Light dreams of dark, shadowed eyes watching over him, like a guardian devil or more likely a prison guard, and messy black hair (soft, silky between his fingers) and when he startles awake, finds himself reaching for something (someone).
There is never anything there.
He wants, wants, wants.
He circles his fingers around his wrist and momentarily stops feeling empty.
Light wishes he could make it last.
III.
Light was (is) in love with L. He knows that now.
It's funny, he thinks, that he can remember so much about the past, but he doesn't recall how his own voice sounds. At some point he has developed an odd fear that his voice won't be his own. He might open his mouth to discover that he has the raspy, rusty tones of a shinigami. He might tilt his head back to laugh and find that all that comes out is a grating cackle. He'd rather not find out so he says nothing. The memory of his own voice drifts somewhere he can't reach.
He remembers L's voice though. L would probably find it funny that Light can't get him out of his brain. In fact, he would probably say that it increases his chances of being Kira. Light can almost picture him smiling in that infuriating, and oddly charming, Light can admit now that he's removed from it all, way of his. He hears L's voice in his thoughts and in his dreams. He sometimes awakes with percentages at the tip of his tongue as if L had placed them there himself, long, pale fingers stacking the numbers in precarious piles like so many of his favorite treats. Light swallows them down so they won't escape. He wants to keep everything L has ever said to him, real and imagined, in a box, in a vault, for safekeeping.
In his dreams, L's voice says things that he never has and never will say to him. (i love you.) Not in this life and not in the last (the thought of it stings).
(Light wants, wants, wants.)
He wonders if there will be a next life and if he'll remember in that one too. He hopes for his own sanity that he doesn't.
Notes: Ugh, I don't really like this. He ages up in each little segment. He's also mute for some reason. This is my first and probably only venture into writing anything for Death Note. Review, if you want.