A new shinigami is void. Two things exist in their mind: themselves – nameless, directionless, without shape or form – and the Death Note, the understanding of what it is and why to use it the only piece of knowledge that exists.
He is void, and thinks of naming himself as such. But no, something in him whispers, he is the opposite of void. He could never be satisfied with anything less than all and his name needs to show that.
––
He learns several things in short order:
He finds Japanese names the easiest to write.
He is bad at Cyrillic. Thirty-four humans die in varied and increasingly exasperated ways to change this.
While he enjoys discovering just how outlandishly it's possible to kill a human (his favourite so far is the one with the pineapple) when he forgets he simply uses heart attacks. He wonders if it is symptomatic of the laziness that affects the other shinigami.
Peer pressure is not something unique to the human world.
Neither is the ability to ignore it.
––
He likes the heaviness of Midora's body, its solidity. Midora will stand firm for what she cares for, will not be swayed easily or without effort, and he likes that. He likes a challenge, and the realisation that he likes anything is good, comforting.
"What is my name?" he asks Midora, who shrugs and pats him carefully on the shoulder, as if his body will cut her.
"Don't worry," she says, and he likes her voice too, sweet and even, inconsistent with her size and shape. "Everybody starts out like you. You'll find your name eventually, everybody does."
This isn't helpful in the slightest and he wants to scowl at her but his face, as ever, remains smirking. She chuckles.
"It's not so hard," she confides. "I took my name from a human woman who killed her children to hurt her husband – and got away with it, too. It didn't quite fit me until I changed it at little, though, it was bit too slim and sharp – it sounded like the name for a pampered cat."
He thinks he might know the name she's talking about but its cracked and uncertain, knowledge from another place.
"There's a shinigami I know who's named for the sound of his laughter," Midora tells him, bringing his attention back from the void that he is. "And I've heard of some human food that made me think of Zellogi – you see? It's not hard."
"I see," he tells her, and then he gets up and walks away, seeking his name, his character, himself.
––
The human realm is full of light. It takes him a while to get used to it, how bright everything is. Light light light, even at night. Only when the moon is gone does it even begin to reach the gloom of the shinigami realm.
Humans used to think the sun and moon were gods, they used to worship what brought them light. He thinks about it for a moment, tries it, then shakes his head. Light doesn't belong in the shinigami realm; it's too pure, too unnecessary, too human. It's not his name, and who cares for the worship of humans anyway?
––
By concentrating carefully on himself, not allowing any other thought in, he can see himself in the pool used to look down on the human world.
Who are you, he asks his reflection – is it his reflection? It doesn't look, it doesn't feel like him, surely he should be able to recognise himself. The stranger in the water gives him nothing.
He fits together like a memory of something brilliant – broken, inexpertly repaired and made hideous. He looks like a classical statue, a hollow approximation of beauty, unreceptive, unapproachable. His face could be a blank stone mask save for the frozen quirk at the corner of his mouth, the only indication of a personality. He is cold where he should be warm, made of sharp angles and hard edges where there should be none. There is nothing in him that invites; he is designed to make people stop, to make them stare, to make them recoil at the mismatched beauty and monstrosity of his distorted body, unable to reconcile it in their minds, unable to cope with the idea of him.
He blinks. The stranger blinks too, a soft klk like a camera shutting, like pebbles clicking against each other.
He leans closer and dispassionately examines the hole in his chest. He wonders if the inside of his body is the same unyielding material as his surface. Carefully, curiously, he digs his fine claw-tipped fingers through his own flesh, seeking the black shape he can see in the water. Something in him expects something organic, expects it to feel like muscle or flesh, although there is nothing soft in his appearance – even his eyes have the hard glitter of rubies to them.
kik-klink.
It's not his name but he knows that when he finds it his real name will have something of that sound in it, the sound a nail makes, tapping against the smooth impenetrable surface of his heart.
––
Zellogi said, "Have you heard the story of Ryuk's human?"
Midora said, "Hush, Zellogi, don't you know that's not a story for new shinigami?"
––
He prods and pulls carefully at the ragged edges of the hole in his chest, trying to worry it into something a little neater or trying to conceal the existence of a heart at all, either might be true. When he looks up again, he can no longer see himself.
He tilts his head to one side as if to see better, although like every shinigami his eyes are perfect. Ghost, he thinks, looking at the human in the viewing pool. It is pale and white, not formed properly; it looks blurred, like a memory of someone seen only once and from a distance. Ghost, he repeats to himself, pleased because the idea of 'ghost' is something alien to the shinigami realm, means it is something from before or something he has learned since.
Nate River doesn't have much life to give so he writes the name of the black-haired human standing near them. He writes Stephen Loud carefully, with reverence, filled with something indefinable as he scribes the name that will extend his life. This is the only thing he's found since he began that feels right and he counts the forty seconds in a human tongue without realising it – san-ju-nana san-ju-hachi san-ju-kyu…
"Kira?!" screams one of the humans and he jerks back with shock, with a feeling like something has slipped into place, as much a part of him as the notebook tied to his side and the ability to see a name above a human's head.
"Kira," he murmurs, tasting it. Yes, perfect, perfect, this is him, these two syllables like a pair of arrows thudding home. "My name is Kira," he says, and it rolls off his tongue so easily he can't quite believe he's never said it before. "I am Kira."
He flies, seeking someone to share this wonder with.
––
Gukku said, "He got tired of the bones, so he found something else. Always was a weird one, bit too interested in work, if you ask me."
––
He is easily bored and when he tires of the pointless gambling, the sideways glances, the gossip that falls ominously silent when he is near, he decides to seek out the laughing shinigami.
Ryuk is something of a legend, though the shinigami remember that he managed to trick another notebook from the shinigami king more than what he did with it. They say it made a huge mess of the human realm for a while so Kira imagines that for someone of his temperament it was far more interesting than the ignorance of the average shinigami indicates.
Gukku says that Ryuk has a penchant for playing games with unsuspecting humans, so Kira wanders from viewing pool to viewing pool. During a game Zellogi tells them offhandedly that Ryuk's favourite human is recently dead (what that means to a shinigami depends upon how old they are) so Kira confines his searches to be within sight of the entrance to the human world.
Ryuk sounds like someone who knows how to keep himself entertained and Kira wants to know how. New as he is he still knows without a doubt what the greatest threat to his existence is. Boredom must truly be the worst way to die.
––
Justin said, "Yagami Light." He said it like it was a blessing, a curse, the secret name of god, the lowest creature in any realm.
––
The laughing shinigami is one of the oddest of their kind he's ever seen. He's not sure what it is, if it's the accumulated debris of human lives adorning him or the way he looks at him like he's found the human's holy grail or the way his permanent smile, unlike Midora's, is genuinely entertained.
"You see that group in the corner of the bar?" Ryuk says, pointing at a small group drinking diligently and arguing over somebody named N or L or Light, they can't seem to decide.
"Cops," Kira says, though he can't say why, what gave them away, why it matters that he knows.
"Yup," Ryuk says, unsurprised, and smiles like someone with something exciting in mind. "How many names have you written?"
Kira smiles, unfastens his notebook and takes out a pen to the sound of Ryuk's amused laughter. Aizawa Shuichi… Ide Hideki… Mogi Kanzo…
"Heart attacks," Ryuk orders when he moves to put a cause of death and forty seconds has already passed before he realises he's missed one. Matsuda Touta screams in a way that makes Kira think of the bullets in Ryuk's hair, but it's soon lost when the whole bar realises what's happened and fills with yelling.
Kira laughs as he returns his notebook and pen to their proper places. "He'll spread the story," he says in answer to Ryuk's inquisitive look.
"Why would you want him to spread the story?" Ryuk asks, but dutifully, as if he already knows the answer. Kira is glad one of them does because he has no idea.
––
Ryuk says, "Let me tell you about a human I knew."
Kira waits impassively.
Ryuk says, "Don't look like that. You have a lot in common." Then he laughs and laughs and laughs.
––
The humans mill around Nate River, looking frightened and infuriated, making ridiculous conclusions and discarding them just as easily, lashing out at each other in their confusion and panic, driving their self-contained circle apart.
"Look at them," Kira says. There's a note of smug amusement in his voice that makes Ryuk stare at him, smile twisted slightly with something a little too intimate, as if Kira is both living up to his expectations and surpassing them at the same moment.
"Which one next then?" Ryuk murmurs in his ear, his voice rich with amusement.
Kira wants to ask if it really matters, because he suspects it does, to Ryuk if to no one else, yet he finds himself saying: "The white one last."
He does not say: I want him to be separated from his allies and know it, I want to see what happens when there is nothing to do but wait for a death that could come at any moment, I want to see what shape is hiding beneath the blankness, I want to see him break the way other humans have. He thinks Ryuk understands these desires better than he does.
Ryuk laughs again, honestly delighted, and Kira knows he's picked right. He doesn't know why he wants to please Ryuk but when he does he always feels like the ground is a little more solid beneath his feet. It's not as if they're a threat to each other; he knows writing another shinigami's name doesn't work and he wouldn't be surprised to find Ryuk knows that too. Ryuk's knowledge of the rules approaches Justin's these days, or so Kira hears.
"This game could last a while," Kira says.
"Exactly," Ryuk says, and the lower half of Kira's marble face splits, a jagged grin forming across it.