an:
This is my first attempt at a multi-chaptered fan fiction, so I hope that it is written and paced alright and any constructive feedback is appreciated.
The first chapter is like a prologue, following directly after Light's death in the warehouse. Also, other canon characters probably will be included later on, however there will not be any original characters. This story will focus mainly on L and Light.
Many thanks for reading :)
MysticLock
Chapter One
Drop
Just before Light took his final breath, he saw him.
His pale skin, his dark hair, his white shirt and blue jeans.
The man that he had lost to. The man who had finally brought Kira, through his successors, to Justice.
Light tried to smile. Tried to move, but his body was frozen; his heart was stopping and his eyes closing as he tried to look at L and the light that was cascading from above down onto him and the rays of orange sunlight in the background from the sunset.
It took several minutes more for his brain to stop working. For his mind to completely shut down and during this time he relived moments before the Death Note and Kira, these recollections mixed with the times that he had lost his memories and temporarily been innocent. Then, it all started to fade away, everything slipping as he was pulled into Death's embrace and Kira and Light were no more.
Near had beat him. Matsuda had shot him. Ryuuk had killed him.
And L was waiting.
The bright whiteness wasn't what Light had been expecting. He hadn't been expecting anything except nothing and Mu which was where he thought that he was supposed to go, or to become, or both once he died.
"No heaven or hell," Ryuuk had told him, "For anyone who uses the Death Note."
Combined with the rule that everyone was equal in death, Light assumed that no one went to Heaven or Hell, regardless of whether they used one or not, and therefore either probably didn't exist.
He thought that he had nothing to fear after death, there was no judgement but also nothing to look forward to. What he did with his life, and his soul didn't matter.
There were no cherubs or choirs of angels, singing. No fire and brimstone that would be waiting for him, either. Just nothing... life was pointless. He could do whatever he wanted. He could sin trying to fix the world, or he could sit by and remain sinless, watching it rot.
Given the choice, what was he supposed to have done?
"Yagami-kun,"
That voice. Light knew it. Of course Light knew it. He hadn't heard it in four years, yet the monotonous drawl that belonged to L could never go mistaken. If Light had a body, or a voice, he would have done his best to turn away or scream at him, but he had neither, or at least, it felt like he had neither. Although, maybe he did have a body of some sort, because, after all, he could see.
His pale skin, his dark hair, his white shirt and blue jeans.
What are you doing here?! Light screeched in his head, Why the hell are you here?!
A smile graced those pale lips, as if he could hear the words that Light was thinking as clear as day.
"An eye for an eye," was all that L said, and slowly Light was beginning to become aware that he could feel his legs, and his feet, and he was standing on something, and he tried to move.
"Where are we?" the words formed and left his mouth this time, and Light was startled as his ears heard them. He could see, walk, and talk, now he was able to gain some control over things.
"I would guess that we're in an afterlife of some sort. I've been here for quite a while."
Light wanted to tell L that he could have left anytime he wanted, that he didn't have to wait for him, but he bit back the words and swallowed them. Maybe there was no where else to go.
"You lost to Near," L said then, and a daggered gaze considered him sharply.
"How did you know?"
"I could see."
"How?"
"Through here,"
L looked down and Light couldn't see anything. He moved closer to the dead detective and as the distance closed, he could begin to make out a hole in the whiteness like it had been somehow torn open and there was an abyss and the world below.
"It looks different now, though," L stated, crouching down and resting his chin on his knees.
"Before I could only see you, and the task force. Occasionally, one of my successors. But now everything is far away, like I'm observing the world a few miles from the ground."
Moments passed, and Light felt like he was expected to say that he was sorry. But he didn't. And he wasn't. He looked at L, like he wasn't even there; able to feel his stare, and he didn't care. This man had been pathetic. This man had been the one to destroy everything that he had fought blood and sweat and tears and soul for.
A peaceful world was all that he had wanted, and the pursuit of this ideal had been ruined, all because of L.
Near had defeated him. Matsuda had shot him. And Ryuuk had written Light's name in the Death Note in the end... all because of L.
Light's hands were around L's thin throat before he was aware of it, and L didn't fight back. There was pain, somehow, and water trickling from his eyes, but he didn't so much as lift a finger to resist. His chest rose and fell, then, it only fell and didn't continue to rise.
But when Light let go, L's eyes opened and there was a sadness and dullness about him. Lifeless, truly, he had already died, and so had Light. They were both dead, and neither could die again.
"You bastard! This is all your fault!" Light screeched, "I could have been god of the new world, I could have stopped it from rotting and decaying and you just had to get in my way to serve your own warped sense of justice-?!"
Light couldn't help it. His body was trembling, he was holding L by the scruff of his neck, fighting back with every fiber of his being not to punch him, kick him and beat him into a second death.
"For what?! For what L? Just so that you could win and defeat me?! I could have gotten rid of all the pain and suffering... I was so close,"
"Yes, you were."
"I hate you," Light stated, voice wavering softly. "I hate you all. You were all too stupid and got in Kira's way. I could have won... I could have won..."
Light stayed like this for a while on top of L and eventually, the dead detective pushed him off, not aggressively, but firmly, and Light was left to sit there on his own, still shaking, still caught in the denial of death, still caught on his loss... of everything.
L started to move away from the spot where the beautiful, tragic, twenty-four year old was, and shuffled towards another space in the brightness where he thought that he could see a bench, and sat on it, with the feeling of waiting at a train station. And he had waited at one before, he remembered, when he was a child, after he had first heard about his parents death. After he had been taken in by Watari and they had traveled to the airport where they caught a plane to London, and then, by limousine, to Wammy's Orphanage.
There had been an announcement just before his train had arrived.
He remembered, that it had said his train was departing from platform two.
Watari had worn a stiff, black suit. L had worn mittens and a coat.
The snowflakes had been biting at his cheeks.
Light slid beside him, hesitant, yet fearless, as was Kira's way, and L glanced up, looking at him properly now and noticing that his lips were chapped and eyes were red and he did not look like how L had ever seen him before.
And for this reason, despite everything that had transpired between them and the world, or perhaps because of it, L felt something pull at his heart.
He wanted to reach out and touch Light, embrace and kiss him, but he also wanted to plunge a knife right into his perfect chest and show him how it felt to be deceived and hurt and in pain.
He'd always let Kira off too easily.
"Where are we?" Light licked his lips, giving them back a bit more moisture and L shrugged, deciding to cut off his straying thoughts and turned, to where he felt like he should be expecting something.
"An afterlife, of some sort, it seems." He said, feeling the hair on the back of his neck prick as Light's hand moved close to his and he moved it away, hugging his arms around his legs tightly.
"I feel like I don't have to wait here anymore."
"What do you mean?"
"Now that you're here. I felt like I had to wait for you to die, and now that you have... that we should be leaving soon."
"We're not dead," Light stated, coldly. "If we were, this wouldn't be here. All that waits is Mu."
"Then how is this happening then?"
"The brain... it takes a while to shut down. I just realized, you're not really here. Nothing is. Soon, everything will be gone. The chemicals will stop working, then there'll be nothing."
L snorted.
"I know that it's true," Light continued, "You couldn't be here. I can't be here. None of this is - "
"I loved you, Light."
Light stopped.
"If this was just your brain, making things up in it's final moments, would I have admitted to something as unbelievable as that?"
It was silent. Flat, charcoal grey eyes stared accusingly into deep, coffee colored ones. Then there was a noise - like a coin that had fallen from a great height - landing on the ground and ringing out.
It was followed by another sound.
A chugging that started to get progressively louder.
"I think that it's here."
Light didn't have to ask what it was, because he saw it, before the question had even properly formed.
A grey wisp of a train, traveling towards them at a phenomenal speed from a place in the distance that seemed both far away and close.
Light expected it to stop, soon. But it didn't. And he thought that it was going to go straight past them.
But it didn't.
It hit them, and Light felt a pain unlike any that he had experienced before, even in his death.
