Title: "Why They Write"
Author: Sashocirrione
Spoilers: MAJOR spoilers for the entire anime/manga series.
Warnings: Rated T for violence.
Summary: Why they write in the death note: each chapter concerns a different character.
Pairings: Canon pairings such as LightxMisa and LightxTakada are implied to exist, but there's no smut.
Additional Notes: This is the type of fanfic I rarely do: one that is not a divergent AU, or an AU in any way. It is probably completely compatible with canon, in that the only filled-in events are ones that could have happened with the canon storyline. If it is not compatible, then this is because of mistakes I made instead of my intentions.
Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note and I do not make any money from these writings.
CHAPTER 1: Mikami
Every time he took it out, the instrument of God, he found himself struggling in the same way. It was difficult to keep their faces out of his mind, to keep his hand from writing down their names. It had been years, and yet those faces and names were clearer in his mind than many other things that had happened during the same time periods.
God did not allow it yet, that is why Mikami's hand held back from deleting those bullies. God was in trouble; the police were too near to the truth. Every move must be perfect and approved by God beforehand. Soon, soon, all those investigators would be completely destroyed, and then there would be no need to hold back, but it was difficult to wait. It was a weakness that pulled at Mikami's mind constantly.
When he wrote, every single bully he had ever opposed rose up in Mikami's mind, especially those still surviving. He could almost feel the old injuries again, the split lips, the bruises, the few times that he had broken a finger. The time he'd been rushed to the hospital from being held down and kicked in the stomach repeatedly for nearly half an hour, coughing up blood and feeling as if something in there had been split open.
His hands often trembled slightly as he wrote down neat rows of names, filling exactly a page each day with those who had been judged and deleted. Until the page was full, he felt dirty, soiled. He had to fill it with justice, to prove himself worthwhile.
Every one of those meticulously-researched criminals was a proxy, a stand-in. Mikami could imagine them bullying in exactly the same way when they'd been younger. It was surely part of the path to criminal pursuits. Those who hurt others so casually were blights on society and needed to be removed.
Even the lazy were blights on society. Whoever wasn't helping society was ungrateful, evil, a burden. God had promised that the plan would eventually extend even to them. There were two sides in a constant struggle in the world, and Mikami stood firm on the correct side. He never doubted his position for an instant. The other side would be completely eliminated.
Even his dead mother had been eliminated in that accident, along with a few of the most prominent of the bullies, hadn't she? God had taken her away for the sin of disapproving of the fight for justice. She was so petty as to disapprove because of things that were irrelevant, such as the cost of constantly replacing broken eyeglasses. She had no understanding of true justice, but only hampered it.
Soon, the surviving bullies would join her in death. Until then, Mikami would try to keep the weakness from his mind and be a completely obedient servant of God.
A/N (Author's Note):
This is basically what I imagine Mikami was thinking while writing in the death note. Some of this is explicitly canon, especially in the manga which went into more detail, and I think the rest is implied or easy to extrapolate.
He had very personal reasons for wanting to write in the death note, and I think you have to pity the guy a little, even though he's evil and he's crazy enough to have been glad at his own mother's death while a teenager, long before Light ever got ahold of him.
Canon never addresses whether Mikami got revenge on all those bullies from his past (the ones who weren't killed in that car accident; canon implies that he was on a crusade to fight bullies all throughout his school years, so there must have been more bullies still surviving). I can't help but think that those surviving bullies would have been prominent in Mikami's mind, and that he would have either killed them or only held back because of Light's orders.
We are never shown one way or the other because, in Death Note, characterization almost always takes a back seat to the plot. I can see why some of the canon decisions were made to not flesh out characters more fully, and I appreciate not getting seven billion detailed flashbacks of every single character's backstory, like in some anime/manga, but I think I would have enjoyed the canon a lot more if the characters had been a bit more well-rounded.