title: a fire in the distance
word count: ~1500
rating: t
characters: l/light, and the wammy's boys.
summary: in which the world ends again, nate river takes an interest in cartography, miheal keehl rules the wasteland, and light yagami has an existential crisis.
a/n: For my dear KytKlshnikv, who is too cool for school and no longer on Tumblr, but politely requested a post-apocalyptic DN fic in which everyone lives. She did not request I make it a sequel to Postcards from R'yleh, but I did that anyway, because I'm a jerk. Don't you want to read this story now?!
(This will make no sense if you haven't read Postcards from R'yleh, but then again, it probably won't if you have either, so I really don't know how to apologize anymore. Also, I chose to take some liberties with the phrase everyone lives.)
A Fire in the Distance
Light pushes his hand into the small of L's back, as they watch the world end through their bedroom window. They'd opened it earlier, but now the wind smells like singed electronics. Bullfrogs roar in the valley below, while Winchester burns on the horizon.
"I didn't expect it to end like this," L says, leaning into the crocodile-roughness of Light's palm. The lights at Wammy's finally flicker out, and L thinks he hears the crack of Mello's BB gun from somewhere in the field.
"No, that didn't work out, did it?" Light says, but L cannot tell if he sounds embarrassed or amused. He turns to lock his suitcase, swatting Olkoth aside. The creature wakes briefly, plucks a crumb from the corner of his left eye, and moves to reveal an orange stain on the sheets beneath him. "I don't mean to alarm you, but Olkoth seems to be excreting some sort of noxious fluid."
"He's been doing that a lot lately. He's stressed, because of the weather," L says, referring to the quickly approaching inferno and the sky, alarm-red.
Sometimes when looking at Light, L sees a multi-limbed figure with pupils like planets, floating untethered through space. Sometimes, L sees the universe charging forth from a speck in the darkness. Right now, L sees an irritating teenager, given undue authority in an act of desperation.
"We've done the apocalypse drill a million times," Light says, and pulls Mail Jeevas back into the queue. "Let's keep this orderly."
The orphans seem accounted for, aside from the herd of mute, anemic children who'd arrived at Wammy's shortly after Light. They'd taken up residence in the attic, seemingly fond of its steepled darkness and the pools of fungal water. They were genderless and afraid of the falcons nesting in the window box, as if reacting to distant genetic memory. One had stolen a nub of blackboard chalk and marked the attic's floorboards with the cardinal directions. Sometimes, they nodded weakly at Light's lectures on quantum entanglement, but mostly they sat cross-legged at the room's center, squinting west.
They disappear the night Light looks up from an ancient tome in the common room, and announces to those around him that, "We only have four days left to live."
"That's unfortunate. The new Horikawa Sky Robot is supposed to be released in five," Near says, without looking up from the game of gin rummy he is playing with L. They are stomach-down on the floor. L is losing and ignores Light entirely, scratching the rug burn on his elbows.
One of Light's pupils tosses a fishbone into the fireplace, which flares nuclear green. The children eat constantly, everywhere, leaving gleaming scales in the upholstery. Olkoth scampers from the column of smoke, and pushes his forehead into Mello's collarbone. Olkoth has been skittish lately, agitated by the house cats, and sending full-mouthed howls through any open window.
"We should probably go," Light continues, disappointed by his unenthused reception. He presses a hand into the dip beneath his ribcage, where a muscle feels cramped. "Are any of you even listening to me?"
"World is ending. Got it," Mello says, and searches for a napkin to wipe Olkoth's drool from his shirt.
The world ends with a fizzle. They walk and Light leads them.
"There is a safe place," he insists, consulting the compass in his pocket. The needle swings wildly and eventually settles on west, where the sun used to set. They walk, and L watches plants wilting in the acidic atmosphere. Black clouds sink close to the earth.
Mello disappears briefly and returns four days later, scalded from cheekbone to hip, mad in the eye, and carrying the severed head of a night-gaunt. The BB gun is still strapped across his back. Sideways rain has arranged his hair into directional arrows.
"It's bad out there," Mello says, tossing the head at Light's feet. There is a neat black hole in the creature's temple. Behind him, a comet's tail bisects the sky.
"I know," Light says, with uncharacteristic sympathy.
They walk through desserts where rocks erupt from the earth like animals writhing in a sinkhole. They walk through shallow swamplands, where sulfuric lights form shifting constellations in the moss. Light keeps his eyes on the compass, and Mello keeps his eyes on the tree line, and Near takes notes in a battered composition book.
"It's a map," Near admits one evening by their campfire, and tilts the notebook towards L. The pages are intersected by transverse lines, spirals, and shapes that transcend Euclidean geometry. "Of the universe, that is."
"I feel strangely obsolete at the moment," L says, and sips whiskey from a tin cup. Across the flames, Olkoth sits on Mello's lap, eating a palm-full of embryonic birds they'd found in an abandoned nest. Matt watches, frowning.
"That was inevitable," Near says, with no particular pride.
"I know where you're taking us," L says to Light, huddled together in a makeshift tent. Earlier, they'd heard the yelp of prey animals in the meadow, but now it has been still for too long. Even crickets have fallen into a hushed, reverent silence. L watches the colorless reflections on Light's cheekbones and the bridge of his nose. For a moment, L feels violently in love, but then he is just afraid again.
"It's the safest place I could think of."
"I don't understand why you're doing this."
"Then you don't understand me at all. I was always trying to save the world, you know. It just didn't work out so well this time."
"This time?"
"Shut up, L."
The shinigami realm smells like a car crash, or a forest fire, or a hospital ward. The sky is full of – holes, L decides, that open into pulsing light. L wonders if they have come to an intersection, a place where worlds have crashed together and conjoined, victims of cosmic gravity. The children disperse into monolithic ruins, while a death god with the head of a jackal looks on, confused.
"I don't think you're supposed to be here," it says, scratching its temple. Behind it, Mello pitches an acorn-sized pebble at Near's head, and Matt searches for a highpoint among the rocks.
"I made a deal with the King," Light explains, ignoring the shinigami's skeptical gape. "You can ask himself yourself, if you like. Tell him Kira is here."
"You can't be –" the shinigami begins, but then glances at Light's webbed fingers, and retreats into the mist spilling from the gorge behind him. L takes a step after it, half-convinced that the ground is going to splinter beneath his heel. It doesn't. Olkoth eats the head off a black dandelion. The children scream happily, voices rebounding off the rocks.
"You see, L? Everything worked out fine," Light says, with a hand pressed against his eyebrows to block the light. Magenta streaks curve over his collarbones. Sometimes, when L looks at Light, he sees a map of the universe, elegant and terrifying.
"That is a highly subjective statement."
"Give me credit, for once."
"I'd rather not."
"You're welcome."
"Mello, get off that boulder," L shouts.
L finds Near taking notes on the high red cliffs that overlook the scrublands. Near has used every page of the composition books and is now squeezing his pencil into the margins. His handwriting is maddeningly composed for someone who has just survived the apocalypse. Near does not acknowledge L, but pinches the callus on his index finger. In the distance, the other boys carve boot paths into the tall grass. L sees the distant spark of a cigarette lighter.
"It was inevitable," Near finally says. L supposes this is Near's attempt to be comforting, and in some way, it is.
"You say that a lot, lately."
"It's been unusually relevant. "
"What are you going to do with that?" L says, gesturing towards Near's notebook. Near is an adult now and has experienced the weary disappointment of his own future, but L still feels it is his right to know. There is lead embedded beneath the half-moon of Near's fingernails.
"You know what maps are for, L."
They are still orphans, but in a grander sense.
L watches the earth burn through a hole in the shinigami realm, but Light stands with his back turned. The western wind has disturbed a cowlick on his left temple. Light is a god now and will exist until all worlds are sucked back into the void, but L has never seen him look so human.
"It's over now," L says, as the earth gives a tremulous flare and goes dark.
Light says nothing. A buzzard with leather wings lands on a nearby boulder, and gives a flat honk. L pushes his hand into the small of Light's back.
"What do we do now?" L asks, trying to pinpoint that moment Light became the leader of their strange little club. The wind crawling across the shinigami realm sounds like an orchestra warming up. Through the holes above them, L sees the pink light of a thousand worlds blinking in and out of existence.
"Whatever we want," Light says, and L believes him.
Fin.