Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note. Evidence to the fact: Matt, Mello and L are all dead.
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Cold
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One day in January.
Snow is falling soundlessly. The silence is absolute, and the air hangs heavy with suppressed emotion.
There might as well be no human presence whatsoever in the cold cemetery, for all the noise those present make. A group of people stand solemnly before three graves.
The graves are side by side, grim reminders of life stolen.
Markers they are also, the only ways to commemorate the lives of three people that nobody else will remember or care about. (And that is another reason among many to mourn.) Each grave bears a Rest In Peace, and something resembling a name.
There is a cross, simple white marble, pale as the skin of the man for whom it stands. The small platform on which the cross stands is inscribed only with the single letter "L"-the only name the man will ever be remembered by. A man recalled as a detective, an oddity; but never loved and missed as a person with a name.
There is a second cross as well. Nothing ornate; gold and simple. A mirror image of a rosary that a young man wore around his neck. A young man who may or may not have believed in a God that had forsaken him. That man, ice-eyed and determined, lies beneath the golden cross; former liveliness and energy buried under six feet of unforgiving earth. The nickname "Mello" is carved into the gold.
There is a stone, a traditional gravestone, gray and inconspicuous. Always third, always in the background; but the young man buried underneath never really cared about any of that. Beneath a rounded stone and the alias "Matt", a loyal friend and game enthusiast (to put it mildly) rots in the ground.
The black mourning suits of those gathered provide a sharp contrast to the pure, almost mocking whiteness evident everywhere else. The ex-members of the SPK-Halle, Gevanni, Rester-join silently with the ex-members of the NPA's Task Force-Aizawa, Ide, Mogi, Matsuda-to pay their respects to the men without whom victory for true justice would not have been possible.
One more person lingers in the cold, sitting in his odd way before the three graves. His white hair and clothes make him blend in with the snow all around. He stares at the markers with unreadable gray eyes.
Minutes pass. An hour passes. The small crowd slowly disperses, all without saying a single word to their fellow former soldiers.
The white-haired boy stays behind, unmoving in the cold. One of the others finally returns and threatens to hold the boy's robot toys hostage unless he gets into the car.
The boy stands and follows his companion, pausing briefly at each grave and leaving behind an item from a bag he brought.
He leaves a slice of cake with a big, fat strawberry on top at the first grave, a chocolate bar at the second, and a Gameboy at the third.
At all three, he also leaves a short, handwritten note:
We won.
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In a lonely, almost forgotten corner of the same cemetery, a fourth grave freezes in the harsh winter.
A young woman often visits this grave, and she is the only one. She is beautiful, although grief will eventually rob her of her remaining youth and beauty. Once striking blue-green eyes are now wan and sad, though they still sparkle sometimes when she makes her graveyard visit. They occasionally glitter in remembrance of a perfect love lost.
She kneels at the grave every day, keeps it silent company no matter the weather-wind, rain, snow, hail, sleet; the woman is always there.
She will stay at the side of the cross (a poor substitute for her God and love). Every day, almost all day.
Until one icy day in February, when she will be found kneeling in front of the cross, as pale as ice and as cold as the death she welcomed.
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Fin
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