Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note.
Casualties
They called him a genius. A prodigy.
He had always been Number One.
In order to achieve his success, however, he built walls around himself miles high.
Outside the walls, people saw him as a cold marble statue, icy as winter, emotionless as the toy robots he played with. A spirit, a specter, someone or something that brought to mind cemeteries and forgotten graves blanketed with silent snow.
It's lonely at the top. And there is such a long way to fall.
He balanced precariously on a hair-thin string, fighting not to sway towards emotion or anything else that might distract him from his goal, from the final result that he and everyone else prized so highly. That string was the only thing that separated him from the losers, the ones who let feelings-anything other than cool, hard logic-get in the way.
The ends justify the means. And by eradicating emotion, he could use any means he pleased. It was a well thought-out, brutally logical system.
But no human can completely destroy their feelings. And those which he could not get rid of, he hid. Withheld, like water behind a dam.
And every dam breaks down eventually.
The one who considered himself the rival of 'Number One', the 'Sheep', the 'bigheaded twit' or any number of nicknames, died before he could see the final result of the battle he had worked so hard to win.
Aforementioned 'sheep' had sat in his room and stared at the wall for the remainder of the night after hearing the news, gray eyes dull and blank. He had forgotten how to cry, and for some reason that made him feel he had failed something important.
The battle ended; as with all wars, not without its casualties. Logic told him that many more lives could have been lost; that the amount they did lose was not so high a price to pay.
Although the irritating thing called 'feeling' kept nagging at him, because even one life lost was too many when that person was someone close to you.
Other survivors had quietly and solemnly congratulated him on his tenacity and his victory. They said (aloud or otherwise) that he was lucky and fortunate to be alive.
Often afterwards, he would reflect on just what about surviving was so lucky.
Death was, after all, an escape from the agonies and struggles of being human. A swift end to the challenges we all face. Like being fired from a hated job.
Those who continued living, continued paying the price of doing so. They kept suffering, they kept moving forward, they kept fighting and struggling.
More time to live was only more time to mourn and cry for those who could no longer fight.
As Nate looked at it, anybody touched by war-whether they lived or died-was a casualty.
There was nothing remotely 'lucky' about living after everyone you cared for had gone.
Fin
A/N: Another relatively pointless drabble from me. –shrug- I guess it could be interpreted as NearxMello if you tilt your head and squint, although that was in no way my intention. Hope you liked it. –SS