A/N: Thank you very much for the reviews!
Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note characters.
Note: Second person point of view. And this is my slight different version of L and Light after-life (my previous story "Sayonara" also has an insight of their after-life. ^^)
Warning: Sad story
Listening to: Like The Wind (piano, violin, and strings instrumental) – S.E.N.S.
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A Long Gaze
by Yukitarina
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You are not sleeping that night. As usual. Even in the bedroom you still force yourself to sit in front of your laptop. A pattern which makes those bags keeps girdling around your eyes.
It doesn't mean you don't feel any fatigue. You are merely a human, and you have an instinct to take rests just like any other normal beings—even though the word 'normal' has been so strange regarding to your existence. But you have a rest with your own way, a unique way just like all other activities you do.
When your ebony eyes have been too weary of staring at the laptop, you'll automatically incline your head to the bed next to your own. You will gaze at the one laying there. A calm, tranquil gaze. You will watch his peaceful feature. Also his eyelids which look thick when they are closed. And his cinnamon hair which still looks soft and attractive when touching the pillow.
Then, automatically as ever, you will change your crouching position. You will sit—truly sitting it is—on your divan, although your analytical ability will decrease 40% in that normal sitting position. But even you, who gets a nobility as three greatest world's detectives, almost ignore your ratio in this kind of moment. You don't demand full intelligent when seeing him sleeping tight—in fact, you assume the intelligence will reduce the quality of the sincere gaze you give him.
At that moment, only by gazing at his perfect face, the weariness you feel steadily leaves you, drowning into the stillness of the night.
You don't know how exactly your feeling towards him is. Since you deduced he has lost his memory of Kira, and since both your and his hands were handcuffed to each other, you've felt something which isn't easy to explain, moreover when you see him slumbering with that innocent features. For you, this feeling is strange. Original it is, but strange. You almost get tickled to see your own self: a genius who has solved massive cases which can't be deduced even by the most notable investigation bureau, is unable to analyze his own feeling.
Maybe it happens because of the blurriness of his and your relationship. Friends? You may say. Rival? Of course. Brother? No relation, but your manners to each other almost in type with blood-relation siblings, especially those with the same ages as yours: sometimes quarreling, selfish, immature, but complementally helping each other when one needs it.
Is this affection? A contradictive affection, for the specific. Affecting, yet being alert as well. Affecting, at the same time suspecting. This is also an affection which is hurt to feel, because you know you and him won't stay this way forever. Because you know there will be a time when this handcuff is released, and you will lose him eternally.
Whatever it is, you try not to bother about it. You keep gazing at him, letting go your weariness, until the morning comes.
"Ohayo," he greets, always, when the radiance of the sun starts to perforate the curtains and enlightens his adorable visage. His wonderful brown eyes still struggle to keep shutting, but waking up in this hour is a routine he will never put down.
"Ohayo," you reply. The ghost of smile appears on your face.
Then he wakes up, tidying up his bed. And you will return crouching, gaining your 40% intelligence. Your tiredness has gone anyway.
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The following days, you keep doing the same thing. The fatigue in your eyes will fly away only by looking at him. Sometimes you pull a chair and sit next to his divan (releasing your 40% analytical ability). You slightly lean on him and giving your long gaze. Only such, and that's enough.
"Hm…? Ryuuzaki?" he wakes up in one midnight, feeling you sitting close to his bed. His extremely sleepy eyes stare at you in confusion. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong," you answer. Your voice is low and monotonous as ever, but there's warmth inside. Your eyes are soothing as well. "Sleep tight, Light-kun...," you whispered while fixing his blanket.
He continues slumbering.
It keeps going that way, until the agonizing moment comes. The moment when you are no longer able to hush your fatigue away by gazing at him, for the handcuff is finally released. At last.
You don't want to confess that, less or more, your heart is aching. And a wounding heart sometimes heals itself in peculiar ways, not to mention in wild ones. You try covering your wound by working endlessly, even harder than usual. You will never let yourself to fall tired, because tiredness always reminds you to a lost hope. Yes, you have lost him. And as you have forecasted, you lose him eternally.
Time goes by. Your life finally ends, curse his restored evilness. Nevertheless, you keep escorting him when he lets go his last breath, by transparently mirroring him.
Then you and him meet again. At a crossway which will bring human beings to three different dimensions, depends on the records of their life: heaven, hell, or nothingness, which also means the world without hope. Shinigami world? Maybe.
You are willing to temporarily leave the dimension which has been your home only for the sake of seeing him again. Your present home is a cluster of marshmallow-white clouds with a café in the middle, a beautiful café full of various shortcakes and choux which never dwindle away.
You tell him you have proposed various petitions, applications, documents, inquiries, and the like, in order he can stay with you in heaven. But the requests are never accepted, because the people who use Death Note certainly won't proceed to heaven or hell.
"Why did you do that?" he asks, his brown eyes gaze at you in emptiness. "I have killed you, did you forget? Why you bother to propose useless documents only for the sake of a murderer?"
You answer that you don't do it for the sake of that murderer. You do it not for Kira; you do it for Light-kun. Light-kun, whose hands were handcuffed with you for more than two months. Light-kun, who always accompanied you sincerely when solving difficult cases. Light-kun, your first friend… Light-kun, whose face was always gazed by you every night for the sake of hushing away the tiredness and weariness you feel… It is Light-kun whom you struggle a happiness for, but you can't… You won't ever be able to…
You don't realize your voice starts to get broken. Warm tears also trickle down from your eyes, betraying your nature which formerly was in distance with feeling and emotion. Now you are failed to hold them anymore…
"You're…," he says, with the same broken voice. He feels his heart is rent by an incurable wound as he accepts your sincere affection. He is no longer Kira… He is Light, Light whom you give your affection to… But everything's too late… When life has been taken from the earth, goodbye to the chances formerly owned by beings to redeem his sins.
"You're…," he whispered again. His tears finally trickle down his cheeks. "You're really an idiot, Ryuuzaki…"
You don't reply, only hold him so tight. You don't reply his statement because you know completely that you're an idiot… And because your throat is too hurt to talk…
Finally you and him are parting. At last, there is no chance for a pair of antonym to belong together. You are Sherlock and he is Moriarty. And he will fall into Reichenbach falls in eternity…
"I'm sorry…," is his last words given to you.
You can only watch him stepping to another dimension in silent, with tears which never cease falling from behind your fringe.
And you won't ever be able to gaze on him again. Only by gazing on him, and that's enough. Only by gazing at him, and your tiredness disappears. Only by gazing at him…
But now you can't, no matter how hard you try.
What is left only remembrances, which you'll everlastingly treasure and keep in your heart…
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End
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