Disclaimer: I do not own DN or any of its characters. Any similarity in the story to actual persons, animals, places and events is purely coincidental. Please forgive me if I either deviated too much from the canon, or if there are any inaccuracies in place descriptions, or both.

Summary: AU. Set two years after episode 25, L finally captures Light (yes, folks, L is alive in this fan fiction ) and brings him to justice. Light is tried, found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment for multiple counts of homicide. Things would go awry for the two geniuses, however, when a ghost from L's past resurfaces, out to take what he deemed was rightfully his.

"I'm sorry, Light. I really have to do this."

A brown-haired teenager looked up into the eyes of a weary middle-aged man with streaks of white through the latter's hair. Light could see nothing but bitter disappointment in Soichiro Yagami's eyes.

His father's eyes.

Light could not reply. Light, wearing a simple black long-sleeved shirt with a round collar and black pants, slowly turned his back on the man who had raised him for almost two decades. He did this with difficulty, either because both his hands and feet were bound by chains ending in a heavy metal ball, or because he could not stand what he picked up from his father's voice, or both. He did not mean to look disrespectful in front of his father, and he never really wanted everything to come to this.

"Sir, your time is up," said the young guard to his father, while the former pointed at his watch and showed it to the elder Yagami. Soichiro squinted at the man, who blinked under the former's intense stare.

"Alright, then," said Soichiro, and Light watched his father's shadow on the concrete walls of his cell grow smaller and smaller, as the cruel sound of his father's feet dragging and the iron bars clanking followed. He could not bear it, but Light decided that there was no use simply staring at the shadows the iron bars cast on the walls; he turned around to face the iron bars, again with difficulty, and sat down on the rather hard bed, with only a thin white blanket and a single flat, dirty pillow softening it.

Light then buried his face in his hands. How could he, the most intelligent, promising and gifted student in his school, who only sought to purge this world of crime and corruption, face the irony of ending up in a pathetic prison cell (and a "maximum security" cell at that) alongside the very people whom he persecuted?

Then he suddenly thought of the man responsible for all his sufferings: L. A sudden rush of hatred for the sugar-addicted, insomniac detective filled him.

Light vaguely remembered how the blinding flashes of the journalists' cameras added to his already uncomfortable position, as two strong men held his hands behind his back. He was being brought to the highest court in Japan against his will, accompanied by men led by his father, who was not looking at him, and by a strange young man with untidy black hair whom Light had come to associate with inexplicable rushes of guilt in his chest… No, he should not be feeling guilty, he did not do anything wrong…

All it took was to let himself be tricked by L into revealing the mechanics and whereabouts of the Death Note. Light had deleted the method by which L had betrayed him from his memory, but he did remember with bitterness that the next thing he knew, police cars and his own father were swooping down on him like vultures…

You're under arrest, Light Yagami, his father said in a shaking voice, for the murders of… And Soichiro Yagami reluctantly revealed about 50 pictures of men who died within the last four months of mysterious heart attacks.

Light Yagami, you have been found guilty for the murders of people too numerous to mention here. The blood spilled by these murdered men in their lifetime does not cleanse your hands of the blood shed by these very men… I sentence you to spend the rest of your remaining life behind bars.

At the sound of Judge Shinichi Ishitaka's small hammer, two men grasped Light by the arms, each of them holding one arm. As Light allowed himself to be quietly dragged outside, he looked back at all the faces looking at him: the faceless multitude, whose names he would never know, but he would always remember as shooting him mixed expressions of sadness, anger, hatred and disappointment; his parents' faces, Soichiro's, contorted by disappointment and a resolute attempt to hold back tears, Sachiko's, covered by a white lace handkerchief, softly sobbing at what had become of her son; his sister Sayu, whose eyes were wide with shock, while whispering, "Onii-chan, why?", and, like her father, was stoic; and L's. That face. That expressionless, pale face, which masked a genius even Light did not anticipate. Those deceptively languid black eyes, framed by dark circles, like two bottomless pits to hell, oh, how he would like to tear them out with his bare hands… Light swore to himself that L will pay someday for taking his precious Death Note away…

Out of the corner of his eyes, Light saw a shadow fall to the ground, then another shadow appear. He also heard a low moan, as though someone had been punched in the stomach, followed by a soft thump. Light slowly moved his head up from his hands, only to be faced by a startling sight.

"You!" With unexpected strength abetted by fear, Light jumped up from the bed. Light could not see the man's face, for the moonlight from the barred window two feet above Light's head only illuminated the unconscious body of the young guard who asked his father to step out earlier and the slightly hunched body of a tall man with his hands in his pockets standing outside the prison bars. The man's head was a black silhouette, but something about that silhouette was familiar…

"Relax, Yagami," a cold, deep, voice replied. "You're partly right… I am me, but I am not who you think I am."

Something about that voice made the hairs on Light's neck stand up. Nevertheless, he tried to sound unmoved by saying, "How did you know my name?"

"As of now, that little piece if information is irrelevant," said the voice, as the man stepped into the moonlight.

Light could not help but blink in surprise, and judging by the upward curl of the man's lips, the latter had noticed.

The man bore a striking resemblance to none other than the great L himself. Like L, the man wore a baggy white T-shirt and jeans, and was also barefoot. If you did not look at the eyes and the slight variance in height (Light had enough experience of the sight of L to last him a lifetime, being literally chained to the great detective at one humiliating point), you would wonder why L would visit the criminal who gave him the hardest time in his entire career in the dead of night, knock out the unfortunate guard, and speak to Light in riddles. The man in front of him had piercing gray almond eyes, which narrowed with amusement at the sight of Light's bewildered face (although Light tried in vain to conceal it), and had no trace of dark circles underneath, and he was definitely taller than L by about two inches and probably a bit older as well.

"We don't have much time, Yagami. Stand back," the man said as he pulled out a circular object from his pocket.

"Is that a …?"

The mysterious man only glared at the disheveled Light. And so, unlike his usual self, Light did as he was told due to his inability to recover immediately from his shock and disorientation, and the man threw the circular object against the concrete wall. A loud, piercing sound hit Light's ears, and he crouched down, closed his eyes and covered his ears to minimize the impact of the explosion. To his surprise, the man immediately appeared in front of him, in a similar crouching position.

"Hold out your hands and feet," a voice commanded in Light's ears, and again, he did as he was told. Judging by the speed with which Mr. Gray Eyes unlocked the chains (using the keys he stole from the hapless guard), Light deduced that the man was used to doing things like this. The sound of the explosion in his cell was immediately followed by the cry of the sirens, which made him realize…

"You're free now, kid. Grab my hand, and follow me!"

"My foot is bleeding!" The explosion caused some of the rubble to hit Light's left foot. He also felt a slight stab of annoyance at being called a "kid". He was around twenty years old, for goodness sake. Twenty year olds are not kids.

"We'll deal with that later! They're coming!" said the exasperated man, and he immediately grabbed Light's left hand and pulled him out of the cell, through the large hole the hand grenade had made, with surprising strength (the man had the same deceptively frail figure as L), forcing Light to endure the pain he felt in his foot to follow the man who had just helped him escape.

And to think they called it a "maximum security" cell, Light thought.

Guys, please do recall that I set this fic a couple of years after episode 25 in the anime. So I think Light would be about 20 or 21 at that time (if I did my math correctly).

What do you think so far, guys? Please give it a rating of 0 to 4, 4 being the highest. (Tip: You can also give me a rating like 2.5, for instance :-) ) A rating of 3-4 would mean to me that this fic is very good and that I should keep on writing and improving it. 2-2.5 means that my fic is just average, but can still be improved. Lastly, I would interpret 0 to 1.5 as a sign that the fic is a waste of Internet space. Oh yeah, constructive criticism, whether positive or negative would be most helpful. (Another tip: Please explain why you gave me your rating.)

You're probably wondering, "Who the hell is the gray-eyed guy who looks like L and helped Light escape?" Sorry, I can't reveal that… for now. :-)