Disclaimer: I do not own the real Death Note. If I do, I wouldn't need to buy one from the bookstore.
Synopsis: In the end, the biggest winner in the game was Ryuuku.
Final Destination
The human who uses a death note can neither go to heaven or hell.
Ryuuku took a large bite from a big, red apple and let the juice spray out from the corner of his mouth shamelessly. He savored its taste as its sweet juice mingled with the saliva in his mouth before he gulped it down. Aah… what a bliss. And he was enjoying every minute of it. This was his favourite past time. This and watching Raito. Ryuuku dropped the apple's core to the ground and let out a "blub". Then he returned to the realm of dead once more.
Kukuukuuu... an amused laugh escaped Ryuuku's dry, black lips as his eyes spied a certain human boy through the window of his portal. Perhaps Raito was no longer a boy; he had grown into a handsome young man over the years. But in the eyes of the shinigami, he was still so very young and talented too. He could have ruled the human world and become their New God. He could have had anything his heart desired if he had tried hard enough. Could have… if he wasn't dead. What a pity. What a waste. As what one would have said: not a shinigami.
No, Ryuuku felt no pity for anyone or anything and it wasn't a waste as far as he concerned. Raito still managed to surprise him and entertain him endlessly for free. That was what Ryuuku liked best about it – it was absolutely free entertainment. He didn't even need to drop his little black notebook accidentally and receive a lecture from the Shinigami King as a price this time. He just needed to sit back and enjoy the show.
This time, his peers stopped taunting him and started joining him instead for the show. Not that Ryuuku minded it that much – as long as they didn't interrupt him while he tried to enjoy himself. Things were different now. Ryuuku the outcast shinigami had become his peers' idol, and many tried to mimic his revolutionary move. The statistic of missing death notes had skyrocketed over the pass few months.
Ryuuku merely chuckled when he heard the news. He didn't need to do that anymore since he already had Raito. He never revealed the fate of the death of a human who uses death note to Raito. He only told Raito that he could neither go to heaven nor hell. He wasn't lying, of course – he was just not telling the whole truth, that was all.
And the truth is…a human who uses the death note will be "quarantined" in a special dimension for the period of the total accumulated years that were cut off from his victims' life span. In simpler words, if someone was going to live to be seventy, and the death note's user killed him when he was thirty, then the death note's user would have to serve forty years in the abyss. Until then, the death note's user can do nothing inside the dimension except wait for his time to be up.
The dimension itself was neither heaven nor hell but infinite emptiness. Time and space had no meaning in it. And there was no escape from it. Raito had filled up a death note with names which means… you do the math.
It had barely reached a year since Raito was first sent here, but Ryuuku had been shown so much more than a year worth's of entertainment. It was like watching a pinned bug struggling under the lens of a giant microscope. Raito had been calm at first, appraising the alien surrounding and familiarizing himself to it. When he finally realized there was no escape, he began to panic. That was when things got interesting.
Raito had tried every idea his genius brain could think up. He cursed, he yelled, he ran, he hurt himself, he attempted suicide (but failed), he got down to his knees and begged for forgiveness… By the second year, Raito had quieted, merely mumbling some intangible words to himself occasionally. Sometimes he would suddenly laugh or cry. It seemed that the genius' mind was finally broken and lost.
After a while, the other shinigami began to lose interest and resumed their gambling once more. But Ryuuku remained. His curiosity never waned. Besides, he always remembered how good an actor Raito used to be. That boy used to smile when he was plotting to kill, used to cry when he had succeeded. Maybe, just maybe, this was an act too, to gain sympathy or whatever advantage he could exploit.
Ryuuku had yet to find it out but he had no worries. He had plenty of time to do that and he had patience to match it. Yes, this was just the beginning, still a long, long way to go. He turned off his "television" and decided to go for a break.
Life was good. And Ryuuku was still barring his yellowish teeth, as if grinning all the while.
A/N: My first DN fanfic. I got tired of Raito always winning. So I wrote this as a consolation to myself that he will pay his price for everything he did one day, one fine day.