Title: The Second Coming
Author: axilet
Rating: G
Word Count: 1,874
Characters: Light, the NPA, Near (minor)
Genre: Angst, Drama
Warnings: Religious themes.
Summary: "I will return," God promised, and they have been waiting ever since.
Author's Notes: Currently working on resurrecting all the WIPs buried in GDocs. At the time of abandonment, I was convinced they sucked irredeemably bad. With time has come perspective, and as it turns out there's plenty that can be salvaged.
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
-Yeats, "The Second Coming"
There was a boy who picked up a notebook…
And there should have been a star in the sky, fire from the earth, signs and portents—anything, an omen of Biblical proportions warning of death and danger. Instead nobody was watching, nobody cared, as he put the Death Note inside his neat brown book bag and went away with his deadly burden.
Later, out of boredom, he would write a name in it and kill a man, and thus by a stroke of blind, random chance, or the whims of a Death God with too much time on its hands, an empire was born and baptized in blood. After that, the victims kept dying, the faithful kept praying, and together they sowed and watered the seeds of the new age.
("To soar freely through the skies. Now that is godly," Light said to the Death God, and smiled as he imagined himself forever unfettered from the earth, the common masses. "A dream that humans have shared since ancient times…")
At first the whole world held its breath and recoiled at every fresh death. But take a novel thing and make it a daily occurrence and it is human nature to find ways to tackle it and fit it into one's little piece of the world. There were of course those who squabbled to claim the phenomenon for their own gods, flourishing it as proof of His/Her/Its existence; but there were others who gave it a different name, at first insulting, dismissive; then finally an title of respect, fear and devotion—"Kira". A killer's name, for a killer—his followers know. They cannot claim ignorance. Kira's hands were as red with blood as of those he judged.
But it was a world that has already seen more than its fair share of dark deeds; a world where senseless things happened every day, and the innocent the first to suffer the wages of the guilty's sins. When it was now the blood of the deserving which spilled so freely, those who had toiled too long under the yoke of injustice both real and imagined rose and cheered, as bloodthirsty as the crowds before the guillotine in Paris, feasting on the sights of the baskets filled with severed heads. Each death was a straightening of the cosmic scales, a fulfilment of the long promised salvation.
Crime was in freefall, and the people celebrated Kira for what the old justice failed to do.
(The seeds that had been planted grew and stretched their heavily laden branches to the sky, and the corpses of those deemed unworthy were tangled in its roots. And the tree was well fed.)
In retrospect, it was a mistake to think that the end of Kira would mean the end of the people who had gorged themselves on his dream of Utopia. Maybe it only made it worse. L (the original, the first, the only) would have compared Kira's perfect world to some sweet artificial candy—wonderful at first, but ultimately corroding on the teeth and heart. Kira would have brought himself down in the end, and all his kingdom in ruin about him; a perfect Greek play in three acts, just another cautionary tale of hubris to add to the list. The history of the world is littered with the remains of empires mightier than his. But he was gone, and that made him a martyr, that made him as distant and unknowable as any god, his perfection captured and frozen in living memory before it could decay as did all things.
Kira has gone away to test us, the faithful said. He will return any day now, just you wait and see…
(I will return, God promised in the Book of Revelation, and they have been waiting ever since.)
Weeks pass. Months pass. Criminals creep back onto the streets, testing the waters; upon finding it nice and warm and absolutely shark-free, plunge back in, sending the crime rates skyrocketing towards the suddenly indifferent heavens. It's like kids throwing a party once their parents are out of the house, only the consequences are far worse than stained rugs or drunken minors.
Everything has gone back to normal, some say, as though that is a good thing, or a true thing.
Tension simmers in the air. Perhaps they are being tested, perhaps they have been abandoned. But Kira's power had been real, as they had seen with their own eyes and heard with their own ears. This is no small thing in a world where gods are abundant but their miracles scarce, if they exist at all. In time there are those who eventually cease to pass the test of faith. But the children of Kira are many in number, and the most ardent are the ones who had suffered most at the hands of fickle fate. To them, waiting, and suffering a little more, are small pains in comparison.
The photographs sent in to the NPA are dark and blurry, taken as they are by the light of the full moon. But you can see the line of candle flames snaking their way up the mountain, and guess at the shadowed men and women and children behind, pale and ghostly in their white robes. On the other side there is a note warning them to be careful, signed by a single typed letter—'L'.
It is a field strewn with mines, a wilderness with no map or guiding hand. Sooner or later, something is bound to explode.
It starts as many things do; with a rumor. It was begun by the friend of a friend of a friend—perhaps one of the few who knew, or someone who had put enough pieces together, or maybe it is speculation born and spread out of pure malice. Its provenance proves to be less important than its consequences, as it falls like a spark into dry grass, and sets it aflame.
Kira is incapacitated, the story runs. Kira is displeased by the non-believers. The culprits/infidels? Interpol, the United Nations, insert favorite shadowy conspiracy group of choice here—upset at the way Kira had seized control and exposed their incompetency so laughably to the rest of the world and pissing their pants that they would be the next to follow. (A criminal by any other name...) They had pooled the resources, paid up the mysterious detective L to catch Kira. He had obviously succeeded, since he was still around. There were allegations, outright accusations, posts of evidence indicating the formation of a special unit called the SPK by the US government, barely more than outright assassins. The NPA had been working closely with L right up the point Kira had vanished. Suddenly, there is a focus for all the helplessness and anger that has been in the air ever since Kira had vanished.
(Every police department in every country is soon hit by an influx of letters. "Bring Kira back. He did a better job," they all say, variations on the same theme, every message scored in deep, violent lines.)
It continues. Rocks are thrown at police cars, government property defaced. The body of an ex-convict is found in an alleyway, its throat slashed by a deep red smile. It is not the end.
At the end of the week the children of Kira gather first in a noisy demonstration, and follow up by rolling through the streets in a screaming, bloody riot. They had been held in check for months, forced to worship Kira under cover of night, but now everything pours out in a torrent of emotion. The people in white who had been worshipping so quietly now attack as though possessed by a savage mindless fury; faces contorted in grief and rage.
(Matsuda thinks that is how his face must have looked, when he pointed the gun at Kira; Light fallen in an instant, as though God had fallen from the sky, and crashed and burned.)
"This is insane," Aizawa says. Although his gun is drawn, it hangs loosely from his grip. He looks tired, unshaven and bitter; he has not seen his wife and daughter in months for their own safety. "I don't want to hurt civilians. But they'll rip us to pieces if they get their hands on us."
"Light must be laughing in his grave," Ide says. It's the first time any of them has said his name out loud since the incident. They flinch as though invoking his name will invoke the vengeful spirit itself. If so, Matsuda thinks, he will probably be the first to die. He is the traitor, after all, not just Light's comrade but his friend, even if that had also been a lie like everything else. His death will be long-drawn and painful, but at least it will be an end to the wretched guilt.
"He's dead," Aizawa says fiercely. A muscle jumps in his jaw. "He must be."
It doesn't matter. They listen to reports of their colleagues being killed, the ones who had not retreated into the station in time. In a minute they will go out to help reinforce the barricade. Mogi claps each of them on the shoulder as they file out; godslayers, every one of them. Every one is thinking: we are the ones they came here for. Every one is wondering if it would be enough to simply offer themselves to the mob, if their sacrifice would be enough to sate the voracious red pit of its appetites.
The answer is probably: no.
Kira was human, damn you, Aizawa would have told them, torn up their hopes and dreams just like they would have torn him up and fed him to the wolves. I saw him bleed. I saw his heart stop. His mother scattered his ashes on the wind as she cried for someone she never knew. He won't ever be coming back, and you're all sad deluded fools for being played by a murderer long after he's dead. He never gave a damn about you even when he was alive, he'll never give a damn for anything ever again now.
But he knows they will never listen. There is no one as blind and deaf as the one drunk on hope. "Kira," they hear, the shouts coming nearer and nearer, feeding and being fed by the frenzy of the crowd in a feedback loop. "Kira, cover us in your righteousness as we march on your enemies. Kira, restore your favor to this fallen world. Kira..."
And maybe Light is looking, and laughing; maybe by killing him they have made a god out of a mortal man. They watch the distant line surge up the road, and together they wait for the end.
Somewhere else, a black notebook flutters down from the sky.
fin.