"Elysium" for Death Note

Vegetaworshipper92

Not more than a minute ago, I had been shot. I remembered screaming as loudly as I could, filling the air with my wretched cries, and I could still feel my blood running down my front, staining my shirt and tie. Silly, really, to have been wearing a shirt and tie.

O, how ironic it had been. I was to be the God of reason, a bright, triumphant pinnacle of truth. At least that's how it started. I remembered lying to cover my own sorry hide. I remembered killing the innocent to keep my operation safe. Yes, I killed innocents. Raye Penber, Naomi Misora, Kiyomi Takada, Teru Mikami, Mihael Keehl, Soichiro Yagami, and…yes, L. My dear Ryuzaki had died because of me.

I woke up shivering, drenched in my own sweat, blood, and vomit. I curled up into a ball and tucked my head between my knees, cowering. Although my eyes were open, I was blind. All I saw was black. It was not just the color black, as in the absence of other material, but the essence of black. It was a physical presence that suffocated me. I was drowning in black.

I thought of "Kira". I had loved to answer to the name. It had a certain ring to it that reminded me how important, how divine I had been. I was Kira. I had been Kira. The name didn't fit me anymore. I shed it like a snakeskin. It lay there, crumpled on the ground before me. Why had I ever been proud to be a murderer? How egomaniacal had I been, to think that I alone could take the world into my hands? I had never thought that being God meant taking care of the innocent ones just as much as destroying the sordid ones.

Kira started to take form. It rose up in front of me, a wraith of a creature supported by wind and malice. It was like a ghost on a wire, the way it hung suspended there, staring at me. Its eyes were red. "Light Yagami," it said.

"But how?" I asked. "You don't have the Shinigami's Eyes."

"I know you," it answered. The detective story had ended long ago. I intuitively knew it was right. There was no evidence. Kira knew me. "I know you."

There were corpses. They dragged themselves around me, crawling on their bellies, and put their icy hands on me. I recognized them. There was the first man I killed, the one from the news show. There was Shibuimaru Takuo, still wearing his biker gear. There were countless thugs in prison uniforms, too many to count. Misora and Penber were there. They did not recognize each other, though in life, they had been lovers. I saw Takada. Mikami must not have been dead yet.

The beautiful faces I had known were ruined. Takada drooled and her eyes rolled around randomly in her head. Misora's body started to eat the one in front of her. Penber tripped and was trampled by the others, as he moaned stupidly.

The carcasses lifted themselves onto me and started to bury me, each of them stroking my face or chest. Two females started to fight over which of them would kiss me first. Their hands were cold and slimy, and were not careful like human hands.

I cried and struggled to free myself, but their grips were stronger than rigor mortis, the strains of death. I could not move at all. I wailed the names of anyone I knew, "Misa! Help me! Ryuk! Mikami! Help! Dad! Mom! Sayu -" I was cut off when one of the belligerent females pressed her rotted lips to mine. They were clammy and slimy and repulsive. She put her putrid tongue in my mouth, and it tasted of rotten eggs and dirt and bad breath. She rubbed it along my teeth in what seemed to be a hideous kiss as she slobbered in my mouth and bit me.

Her companion pulled her off of me and they wrestled off in another direction, rolling off the pile of corpses that surrounded me. I was buried to the neck, and festering hands kept coming, running through my hair, brushing my eyes… I screamed desperately into the black. "Please! Anyone! HELP!!" There was one name I had not called, but didn't dare to…

My eyes were forcibly closed. They put their fingers in my ears and nose, and one covered my mouth. "Ryuzaki," I whispered. "Save me!"

I was myself again. There were no carcasses around me, no dead hands molesting me. There was but one pair of warm, live, soft ones. One held me around the shoulders, my head resting upon a body attached to it. I felt warm breath on me.

I hummed gently and shifted around a bit, and I was not dropped. I turned towards the affectionate mass protecting me, burying my face in the gentle heat, and I rubbed against a careworn softness. I inhaled. The smell was comforting, somehow… It was one of those smells that remembers happy things and intimate pleasure. The other hand found me and brushed the hair of my forehead. The someone planted a kiss on my nose. It was a real kiss, too, and I could tell that the someone cared for me deeply for how gently its lips brushed my skin.

"Light, precious," it cooed. "Light, beloved…" I opened my eyes. I was lying against a white torso, with long white arms. I looked up to the neck, hardly any deeper a color, and then to the trembling chin. "Light," he called. "You're awake." The mouth smiled. The cheeks were bright.

"Ryuzaki," I breathed.

"L, Light," he replied. His eyes glittered. Each of his irises was large and dark grey, and his pupils reflected mine own image back at me. "Call me L. My name is L Lawliet."

My heart broke. It was him! He was here! I hadn't simply imagined that there had been a man named L after all! He had lived! We had met, worked together, shared a room, shared everything, and for a while, my world had revolved around him. I stared into his face, framed with wild black hair as always. I listened to him breathe, a comfort to me in the night. I felt his delicate skin, so familiar against my own. I smelled him, more powerful to me than any powder.

"Don't cry," he soothed, still holding me close to him. "Everything's alright. I've got you. You're safe now."

"You did save me," I said, my voice quiet and weak.

"Yes," he replied. "I saved you from the people you killed," his expression turning a bit darker.

"Why?" I asked.

"I didn't want you to suffer," he answered.

"How can it be that simple? I killed you," I confessed. "I wasted a year of your life just so I could play at being God, and then I killed you… I've caused you so much pain."

"That may be so," L said gently. "But love is not jealous or vengeful. I never wished you any harm, Light, no matter what."

"You must have known I was Kira, right there at the end," I said. "When you died and I caught you, I made that face…"

"I'll admit you scared me," L murmured. "Probably the biggest scare of my life. It didn't make that heart attack any less painful, no…"

"I don't know what got in to me," I apologized.

"Well, at least you stopped me from cracking my head on the floor," L commented.

"Ryu- um…L?" I asked him. "Do you remember what you said on the roof about me lying all the time?" He nodded. "I want you to know that I wasn't always a filthy liar. Yes, you were right about me. I lied constantly from the second I picked up the Death Note. Well, except to Ryuk, when I was still busy trying to figure out how it worked. But anyway, I'm starting to realize that something about the Note changed me, if you'll believe it…"

"I know already," L interrupted.

"You do?" I asked, bewildered.

"Ever since your confinement I knew there were two sides to you. There has always been the beautiful, pure child, Light, who was kind to others and enjoyed life to the fullest. Then there was the darker man who secretly knew that he was better than everyone else, and would gladly make it known by almost any means. The latter became Kira. I watched you change in your cell. I witnessed the moment when Kira was banished from your heart and left you pure once more. Damn me; I didn't watch Kira for two months, I watched an innocent boy suffer! How could I have been so heartless?"

"I met Kira back there," I said absentmindedly, "back with the corpses."

"Many times, when a person dies," L started to explain, "his different personalities are separated. This way, he can enjoy the afterlife however he chooses, free of conflict. This is paradise. There is no evil here."

"L," I said, "I gave up control of the Death Note, and -"

"I already know everything," L interrupted yet again. "Rem told me."

"Rem's here?"

"She's off somewhere waiting for Misa."

I gulped. "Misa was just trying to help, L," I started to ramble, "and it was only because Death Notes existed that she fell in love with Kira in the first place -"

"Never mind," L said. "The important thing is that my dearest, irreplaceable Light is here with me," and he pulled me closer to him. "The months without the Death Note were the happiest of my life."

"Same," I said. "I had never been happier than when I was with you. I understood that shortly after your death. I never really mourned you, but I always missed you…"

"None of that matters," L whispered. "I've found you at last." He kissed me gently on the lips. I could have died again in his arms, experiencing that again. I knew he loved me dearly.

"L?" another boy asked. The voice was eerily familiar. "L, you coming?" he pressed.

"In a minute, Mello," L answered. He sat me up and rose to his feet, stooping over in his customary pose. Mello and some other boy beckoned from the distance. They were holding hands.

"Come with us, Light," L coaxed.

"Where are you going?"

"To find your father and Watari."

"You've been here for four years, and you haven't found Watari?" I asked.

"Young people go somewhere different than their elders," L said. "I was younger than older, so I came here. I found Mello and Matt – oh, you haven't met Matt, have you? He's another of my heirs, Mello's closest friend, accomplice, and partner." Matt must have been the one with shocking red hair and the crazy smile.

I thought of my father. I needed to go to him and comfort him, and save him from the thought of Kira. "What about the others?" I asked. "The people whose souls belonged to those bodies…"

"They're alright," L responded. "Those corpses were just part of your own personal hell, that's all." He walked away towards Mello and Matt, and I got up and followed. I noticed that I was more limber than I was used to. I was eighteen again. I was still a teenager.

"Light Yagami," Mello greeted me. "Nice to finally see you in person," he said, with but a note of scathing in his voice.

"Damn," Matt said in a low whistle. "I never thought I'd see you face-to-face."

"Yagami," Mello continued, "I need to know something. No point in lying now that we're all dead, so: Did you kill Matt or not?"

"I didn't even know he existed," I said truthfully. "The first time I heard of him was when he aided you in the Takada abduction. Brutal, what happened. I had nothing to do with that, I swear."

"Except for the fact that they were yelling, 'For Kira!' for about an hour after they proclaimed Matt dead," Mello added.

"Cut it out, Mel," Matt said playfully as he elbowed his companion in the arm. Mello bear-hugged his friend and tickled his ribs, and Matt nearly suffocated with laugher.

"I never thought that you would have a heart, of all people, Mello," I commented. "All that business with the mafia and my sister…"

"Paints a pretty bleak picture, doesn't it?" Mello responded calmly. "But that's okay. It's all in the past." The three Wammy's boys started to walk away again, in search of their beloved mentor.

"Wait, L," I called after him. He stopped for me, and when I caught up to him, I placed my hands on his shoulders. I lifted his chin up, took his hands out of his pockets, and straightened his back. "Walk like that from now on," I said.

"Why do you want that?" he asked.

"You're not a detective anymore," I replied. "You don't need to huddle over in desk-chairs any longer." I slipped my hand in his and we walked side-by-side. "I never want to leave you again," I said.

"You never will," he answered, "not here, in Elysium."

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