The Nothing
No warmth.
No sound.
No feeling.
No light.
No Light.
And no Kira, either.
There is only...nothing.
And me.
I am not really here. In this void, nothing exists. Yet somehow, my thoughts form and reform, endlessly.
Perhaps it's my punishment.
Ryuk told me once...that those who used the Death Note went neither to Heaven nor Hell.
I didn't care then.
The new earth, created by Kira, where I was to reign as God over utopia...that was to be my Heaven. What came after was unimportant and irrelevant.
When I failed...when I died...that was my Hell.
And now that I am here...wherever 'here' is...it's strange...I still can't bring myself to care.
Such feelings do not exist here.
I have only myself...and my thoughts.
I think about my life. The different moments, the highs and the lows.
It's funny, all the things that I can remember. I remember my family, I remember growing up, I remember my days as an ordinary high school student. I remember finding the notebook, and meeting Ryuk. I remember my judgments as Kira.
I remember how it felt to die.
But even though I can remember such things, it is as though I am seeing them through a glass. The actions are there, but somehow they are no longer connected to me.
It's the window to someone else's life, now. Though I can identify the emotions that I felt, I can no longer truly feel them here. Though I can wonder about how things might have been different, I cannot feel regret at the how circumstances occurred.
Questions and memories play over and over...but there no answers. They are as meaningless as I am, now.
I don't even know what I am anymore.
Sometimes, I think about L. He said that I was his only friend.
He was probably lying. L lied a lot, about many things.
But sometimes, I wonder if he was my only friend. He was certainly the only true connection that I made during my time as Kira. I think I hated him for the most part. He was my rival, the only thing between me and my utopia. But somehow, I also enjoyed the challenge of overcoming such a nemesis. His defeat was necessary. It was Justice.
But despite beating him, I still lost in the end.
I wonder what happened to him...after.
Would he have gone to Heaven? Or Hell? Does anyone actually go to either?
Or did he go to a nothingness like this, too? Is he somewhere, thinking of me, of the smirk on my face as he died in my arms? What did he think of, in that last moment? If he could have changed those last few days, what would he have done differently?
Such thoughts are meaningless, of course.
But I have nothing else to do.
We both died the same way.
Maybe that's why I think of him so often here.
Rem killed L...and Ryuk killed me.
It takes an additional 28 seconds for you to fully die after your name has been written in the Death Note, and the heart attack strikes. For nearly all who died this way, those seconds were meaningless. Nothing but pain and agony. Though there were a few, like Raye Penbar and Watari, who managed to make use of them.
For me, those seconds seemed an eternity. I felt as though I retraced every moment in my life that had led to that point.
Perhaps that's why I can remember it all so well now.
Were L's last seconds as interminable as well?
I saw him, just before my eyes closed that last time. It was blurry, but he was unmistakable. He stood right in front of me, hands in his pockets, hunched over as always. Was he celebrating his victory at last? Did he care that he had beaten me at the last? I couldn't see his eyes, I don't know.
No, I'm spouting nonsense.
L was dead.
I am dead.
Neither one us cares anymore.
Once, my name was Yagami Light.
Once, they called me Kira.
But now...there is only nothing.
MU.
AN: So, I just finished watching the Death Note series, and I wanted to write something about Light's final thoughts. I know that the rules talk about MU (the Nothingness) where Death Note users go, but then I suddenly wondered, 'What if it's not completely empty? What if you're stuck with your final thoughts for eternity?' And so, this depressing little ficlet was born.
Also, for those who might be wondering, the 28 seconds before you fully die is something completely of my own invention. Obviously, it does take a bit of time before Light and L fully died, but I picked the number 28 so that the total time from when the name is written to final moment would be 1:08, which is one of those unlucky numbers in Japan, and is also the number of Death Note chapters in the original manga.