This is a one-shot based on my story Justice Never Dies, explaining how L won against Kira and managed to survive (thanks to Sabext for the idea!).

For those who have seen the movies and read the manga, it involves a combination of those plots, except L lives. That will be explained, don't worry. It involves a twist from the main plot, in that Ryuk was the Shinigami sent off to Higuchi, and Rem's Death Note was the one buried in the ground. This way, in case you're wondering, Rem lived too, yes.

So, my disclaimer: I do not own rights to the Death Note manga or movies. Or anime, even though that's not involved here. I still haven't seen a single episode / it kindasorta sucks that I haven't got to, ya know?

I decided to go for first person POV.

Deceptive Winning

I had won. It didn't take a genius to see it. Considering Matsuda-san definitely wasn't a genius and he was still pointing a gun at Yagami Light after having already shot him in the wrist and the arm a couple times, I could come to this conclusion. Light was yelling like a homicidal maniac that he was, indeed, Kira, but that Kira was justice, not a homicidal maniac. His yelling wasn't doing much to prove his point. Misa Amane was also there, as she had come here to get my name again since Light's Shinigami obviously couldn't be bothered to write it. If it weren't that Shinigami's fault that this entire mess had started, I might have considered thanking him. However, as he had dropped a Death Note on the pavement next to Light's high school, he deserved no thanks.

Indeed, the investigation team didn't consider it winning. I had tricked them into going along with my plan. It couldn't have been helped, and it was the best course of action I could have taken. It assured that Kira would be arrested and that I myself would survive another investigation. So, there had been more than one fake Death Note. I had switched one with the one in the investigation room, and used the other fake to trick the team, while the real murderer's notebook was hidden away safely. I told them I was so sure that Yagami Light and Amane Misa were Kira and the second Kira, I knew I would be killed. So, I wrote my name in the second fake Death Note that only I knew about with the twenty-three day rule in play, so I would supposedly "die" in twenty-three days.

The plan had been to trick Light, of course, but I had to trick them in the process. The rule stating that "one who uses the Death Note will die after thirteen days if they fail to write a name in that time will die…" that was the rule I used for the trick to trick Yagami Light. Yagami-san agreed, in front of Light, to find two prisoners on death row in another country. He would have one would write the other's name in the Death Note on the day he was due to die, and then they would wait thirteen days. The rule would be a fake if the criminal who wrote the name didn't die. This plan was a decoy, of course. In reality, the investigation team would all leave except for L and Light and go to a nearby hotel room to supervise what happened on cameras and audio equipment. They had taken the fake notebook in the investigation room with them; the one they knew wasn't real. I still had the fake I had used to trick them, as well as the real one.

I knew I wouldn't die. We also retrieved Amane Misa's Death Note while she was out and switched it with a fake. Light also didn't know of this action. Of course, this was when the investigation team agreed that she was the second Kira without a doubt. How they couldn't have figured it out just by the circumstances simply amazed me. She left headquarters, the killings started again. It was fairly reasonable.

I did have to pretend to die for my plan to work, so Yagami Light would take action as Kira with the team monitoring it. With my heartbeat being monitored, I only had to slip the sensor off of my finger and fall out of my chair. In his happiness for the fact that his main adversary was "dead", he didn't bother checking my pulse. I had to lay there for a while, but I heard everything that Amane and Yagami said (I had summoned Amane there to question her on the suspicion of being the second Kira). The investigation team witnessed Yagami Light acting as Kira. He also attempted to kill his father with Misa's fake Death Note. He wrote that Yagami Soichiro would abort his plans and come back to headquarters, hand over the Death Note to an ally, and die of a heart attack. This obviously didn't happen. That was how we trapped Yagami Light and Amane Misa.

At this point, as far as Amane Misa was concerned, I could assume she would give up her Death Note after Light was sentenced to death, turn herself in, or kill herself. I didn't know which it would be, but one of those three things was certain to happen. I was certain she wouldn't continue killing if Light – if Kira – was dead. For now, we could do nothing about her. If it came down to it, I could just have her detained until she gave up her Death Note, of course.

As I had summoned Amane here for "questioning" to capture her as well, she was also here. I did have her Death Note, but under the circumstance that she forfeited it, I couldn't prove she was Kira. I could also see her Shinigami – Rem – now, as could everyone else on the team. Rem, while a bit less threatening than Light's Shinigami, scared me far more than the other in the room did. Rem was on Misa's side, after all. Ryuk had taken a neutral stance from the beginning. If Misa was harmed, Rem would harm those who had harmed her. That was an unsettling thought.

Misa would have to be dealt with after Light, however. I half-listened to Light's incoherent shouting again. He was trying to reason with those pointing guns at him and Amane now. He was spouting at his father about how "Kira is justice" and all that load of nonsense again. The same thing he'd been saying for the past five minutes. He already had his watch shot of his wrist, courtesy of Matsuda-san, who was apparently useless in general thought process, but good with guns. That was lucky enough, or Light would have written as many names as he could have on that tiny square of paper. As it already had Higuchi's name on it, that just proved even more against him.

I was beginning to get bored with his ranting. Repeating the same line over and over was all he was doing.

"No," I interrupted him, "you aren't justice. You're only a murderer."

And more ranting followed this, of course. I wasn't paying much attention to it. I had already said everything I needed to say. I told him how my plan had played out, and I told him his mistakes. All that was left now was for him to surrender peacefully or for the team to forcefully arrest him. That would be his choice. As he was still giving a speech, he wasn't going to be arrested yet. Of course, none of us had expected his next action, as he looked around.

"Where the hell are you?" he said quietly. "Ryuk!" he yelled. "Where the fuck are you?!"

The Shinigami flew down through the ceiling.

"Eh?" he said.

"You're not going to let them kill Kira, are you?" he asked madly. "Wouldn't that end your fun? If you kill them, then you wouldn't have to go back to your world! Go on write a name!"

"A name?" he said. He took a Death Note from his pocket and a pen. He flipped it open. "Sure. I'll write a name."

The room became deathly silent as he wrote. The same though crossed all our minds: who's name was he going to write? The silence was broken by insane laughter. I wanted to throw my empty coffee cup at Light. It might have shut him up.

"There," the Shinigami said, pulling his pen away from the paper. His grin seemed wider than usual as he turned the notebook around for Light to see it. "Look."

The triumphant look on Light's face turned to a look of sheer horror. I almost grinned, but I decided to pretend to remain as dumbfounded as the rest of the team. However, just by that look on Light's face, I knew what Ryuk had done. He had written Yagami Light's name on the Death Note.

"I... I'm going to die?"

"Yep," Ryuk said. "Forty seconds. Heart attack. That's it."

"I-I… I don't want to die! Ryuk, you idiot! What're you doing?? I'm Kira, I can't die!"

"I was looking forward to seeing how you would get out of this," Ryuk said. "But you leaned on me. So you're dead now. I told you when you got the Death Note that I would be the one to write your name in the end. I don't want to have to wait for you to get out of prison to do it, that would just be boring. And also, you already know you won't be going to heaven or hell. I told ya that too. You'll be going to Mu."

"Mu..?"

"Yeah. Nothingness. Forever."

"Can't you stop it!" Light yelled.

"No. You're name's already on the note. There's no stopping it now."

The horrorstruck look on Light's face was soon replaced with one of immense pain. He was dead in seconds. This hadn't been part of my calculations. The Shinigami flew over to my chair now.

"Shinigami," I said, "are the last two rules in the Death Note real?"

"Nope."

"Good. Then all of the Death Notes and copies will be burned later today."

"You mean you're not going to use it?" Ryuk said. "Boooring…"

He flew up through the ceiling. The room would have been silent were it not for Misa's particularly annoying sobs. As far as the investigation team knew, I would be dying in twenty days. As the Death Notes would be burned, they would never know the truth. Kira was dead now. That was the best thing for the world, even if I had to deceive those I had worked with over the past year to make it happen. I couldn't help but vaguely wonder about "Mu," though. If he couldn't go to hell, then I hoped that this fate would be enough to make Kira suffer for the rest of eternity.

Burning the Death Notes would definitely be best. This way, Misa would also no longer have a Death Note. Without the evidence, prosecuting her was impossible, but she wouldn't be able to kill again. Therefore, she also wouldn't be able to kill me. This was a comforting thought, to say the least, as I didn't particularly want to die.

It was twenty days later when Yagami-san returned to headquarters to gain confirmation that all of the Death Notes and copies had been disposed of. He also informed me that he had told the police force of Kira's capture, leaving out the Shinigami and the Death Notes. In this version of the story, Kira had used his powers to kill himself because he would rather take his own life than loose to me. It made him seem even more like a worm than he had made himself seem to be. Besides this, we also had knowledge that Misa no longer remembered she had owned a Death Note, meaning burning hers had caused her to loose her memory of it. There would be no purpose served in arresting her, then.

As I was supposed to be dying on this day, Yagami-san left quickly. I spoke left the couch in the investigation room to move to the computers. I spoke into the microphone.

"Watari, prepare a flight. The Kira case is over. We will leave immediately and in secret."

"Yes sir," it replied.

I was quite glad it was over without me having lost my life. Deception had been greatly involved, but also required. Perhaps the investigation team would find out that I had lied one day, if I ever had to work with them again. For now, though, it didn't matter. I, L Lawliet, had managed to survive the first case I had ever allowed a piece of my identity to slip for. I had considered it a failure at first, but it led to the greatest victory I had ever gained.