Ah, chapter two! Hope you all enjoy!


Light was at a loss.

Honestly and truly, at a loss.

There he was, on his hands and knees. He stared hard at the floor, tried to make some sort of confounded hole appear. He tried imagining a hole that lead straight through to the other side, one that lead somewhere else, even one of those plain black holes you would see being thrown around in old cartoons. Still, all of this was to no avail.

And Light was still alone.

With no sense of time, and with nothing to tell it to him, he was hopelessly lost in his own mind and in whatever place he had wound up in. This was apparently Mu. There was a reason why it was considered to be nothingness.

It was boring as hell.

And it was driving him insane.

However, if this was Mu, then why was L here? Did everyone go to Mu, or had L used the Death Note somehow?

He would love to ask him in person, but he couldn't make the damn holes work! He was seriously about ready to start yelling open sesame at the floor. However, just as he opened his mouth, he took a good look at the floor. In the bright reflection, he saw a dark spot.

He looked up.

And god damn him, but there was a hole.

He been making them on the ceiling.

The worst part was that he hadn't even noticed.

So much wasted time.

Regardless of his frustration with himself, he triumphantly stood, ready to finally get out of this hellish place, only to find that since it was on the ceiling, well, he was about three feet too short to actually climb into the hole.

Perfect.

So, he had essentially, gotten no where, in god knows how long. He tried concentrating on a spot above him now instead, to see if the reverse would work and one would appear in the floor, but of course that didn't work either.

"What the FUCK L?!" His scream didn't even echo back. It had nothing to bounce off of. "Why did you just leave me here?! I KNOW you wanted me to follow you, so why didn't you give me any POINTERS or anything on how to actually TRAVEL?!" At this point, he didn't even care that he looked like a three year old having a tantrum. He just really, REALLY needed to get out of this place. Where was some one who knew what they were doing when you needed them?

Light paused for a moment at that.

He needed someone?

He, Kira, needed help from someone?

No. Oh no. He didn't need any sort of help from anyone. He needed a tool. Someone he could manipulate into getting him out of here. Someone to trick, to get a hold over.

He was fooling himself.

Manipulation was just another way of getting help.

Light looked down to his bent knees. Kira had never really done anything monumental on his own. He always had… assistance from someone else.

Fuck, he didn't even kill L.

He looked back at the ground again, mood now on a much lower key. Being "liberated" from the Death Note made him think differently. Being dead made him look back on his actions. It gave him hindsight.

He didn't like it.

"Just… fucking open up to L already." He leaned back, frustrated and exhausted from his fight with the nonsensical laws of physics here.

And wouldn't you know it, but he fell through a goddamn hole.

It was strange. He felt himself falling down, through the darkness, but only for a second, before he had the sensation of rising again. He opened his eyes to see a blue sky above him, and he felt grass tickling his neck. Well, at least he wasn't stuck falling back and forth between two portals.

"I see you finally made it." His head flew over to the right to see L standing nearby again, hair blowing wildly in the fresh wind.

"Nice of you to show me how."

"Oh please Raito-kun. Everyone has to figure it out on their own." Light got up, brushing stray blades of green off of his bloodied dress pants. Oh, right. Bloodied.

He had forgotten for a while, actually.

"Why exactly is that?" He didn't mean to be that snippy, really, he didn't. It's just well, after having a pointless fight with a floor for what seemed like an eternity, Light wasn't exactly overflowing with patience.

"It is simply how things work here. Everyone fends for themselves. I already helped you by showing you what you did not know you were capable of." He decided not to answer that because really, that was one vague form of help.

He surveyed the landscape, and it was a wonderful change from the office building from hell he was just in. Hills with grass and wheat rolled on for forever in one direction, a forest with one humongous tree in it's heart stood in another, and in the final third of this world was one beautiful, sparkling ocean. The seaside changed from jagged cliffs, which they were currently on, to soft white beaches. In the distance, almost touching the horizon, he spied a black volcanic beach.

"So how did you find this place?"

"I made it." Curiosity sprung up like a rainforest mushroom in Light's head. He made this? "Usually when you exit from the place you just were, you end up in either your, or one of your loved one's places of peace. It is not necessarily heaven or paradise, but it is still a place of rest."

"So… Why am I here?" A strange sort of smile climbed onto a shadowed face of porcelain. The sun was setting behind him. Still, that smile looked a little bit victorious.

"You are here because you wanted to be here most." Light felt his eyes narrow at this. Indeed, L was the only person on his mind at the time, but really, he would much rather be with… He would rather see… Mikami? NO. Takada? Not her either. His family? Oh right, they were mostly still alive, and he didn't think it'd be right to face his father just yet. Misa? Well, even if she's dead already, the answer is no.

So, L was right.

Just like how he always was.

He wasn't going to let him know that.

Not really anyway.

"Well, you're right L. I wanted to be here to see you be a broken man." He turned to face L, a wide, expectant smile on his face. He might as well come right out and say what he wanted, after all he had thought it earlier. In death there was no need for pretenses. "I want to see how if feels to have lost to Kira. Go ahead, share with me your thoughts about how I killed you."

His attempt at being superior was ruined by L's incredulous stare.

"You really think you won." He shook his head in the most infuriatingly condescending manner. "How childish."

And Light's small amount of patience snapped.

And with that snap, a punch was thrown, and dodged.

And a kick was planted square in his belly, effectively ending the battle before it really began as he was sent tumbling to the ground with all air absent from his lungs. He still had fight in him, but now he was pinned. He looked up into the eyes of his opponent.

And any inclination he had of continuing to the fight ended with L's expression.

He was on top of him, hands pressing hard into Light's tan wrists, but apparently his captor wouldn't lower himself to the level of straddling his prey, he used a kneecap-to-hip technique instead. A very painful technique at that.

But still, that wasn't what stopped him. As aforementioned, it was the expression that was drawn across that face like a three year-old's nightmare. His eyes were wide, boring into Light's own, and his smile was drawn tight, exposing a few teeth like a threat. Those eyes though, they looked like they belonged to someone else. They were cruel, but still distant, and full of some strange form of laugher.

He brought that face close.

"Raito-kun does not realize that I let him win." This somehow managed to knock more wind out of Light's struggling lungs. His greatest victory, his best accomplishment, had been fake? "Oh yes Raito-kun. You see, it was L's duty to kill you. He had to hunt you down, and he had to see you set on the electric chair like any other criminal." His body lowered more, but still, but no contact was made. L was like a spider, biding it's time to devour it's victim.

"He made sure to send information to Whammy's, he made sure that you would indeed be caught and killed and put on that little chair where so many villains you were too late to kill yourself sat before you. Oh yes, L wanted you dead so badly." And just as he came so close, too close, close enough for Light to only be able to see those dark pools of madness, just as that smile reached it's widest, something changed.

Those eyes looked down, that smile faded, the weight on his hips and wrists lessened.

L simply stared into the red stained fabric of Light's shirt.

Stared right at his heart.

"But I tried my best to fail, Raito-kun." Light, being as scared and intimidated as he was, was once again curious as to what was happening. L was being so sudden about everything, running in circles and leaving no explanation behind.

"I purposely laid out my plans to test the Death Note in front of the shinigami. I knew she had a connection with Misa, and that she would kill me for incriminating her again. I purposefully made the data on you and the case extremely hard to find and follow so that you had more time. I wanted you would have had a better chance of living to see the rest of your days." Jeans brushed against the smooth fabric of dress pants as L sat back onto Light's kneecaps. Light had no desire to interrupt at this point, too enthralled with what exactly was being unveiled to him.

"There was a reason it took Near five years to find you. But the thing is Raito, is that L honestly did want you dead, and I wanted Kira dead, but I was not willing to kill Light Yagami to do it." Their eyes met, one confused, the other mournful. It was strange to hear his name said with the English pronunciation.

"I wanted you to kill me, Raito." Light couldn't absorb any more of this. He couldn't take this. He quickly slithered out from under L, and he let him go. There was no trace of hostility left in him.

"What… What are you saying?" He grabbed a pair of small, bony shoulders, and he knew it hurt. He wanted it to. "What the FUCK are you saying?! That everything I worked for, everything I thought for FIVE YEARS was all a lie set up by you?!"

"I am saying that I did not want to kill my only friend. L was lying to you when he said you were his first friend because he was not allowed to make friends. I however, was telling the truth." At this point, L took away the now lax hands, using all of his fingers to do so. He gingerly put Light's back over on his own body, tan fingers resting against tan pants.

"Raito-kun, I did not believe that what Kira was doing was right at all, but when you were not Kira, when you were just Light, I realized that I really would never be able to kill you. I would never be able to even hurt you. Having you kill me was the only way for me to not truly lose."

"But... Near killed me. He was just like you, a back up, an extension. You still won the actual game." The bitterness in his voice was so solid, so venomous that any sensible living thing would fear for their safety. L never was sensible.

"No. We both lost." And he gave him that same smile.

That smile he gave Light on that last day.

During that foot massage on the stairs.

That sad, knowing smile.

"You lost because you died, and I lost because you died." For the first time, L really looked away. Off, into the sea. Somewhere sad and filled with regrets. "I bet everything on you being able to escape the legacy of L. I gave up my life with the hope that you would keep yours. However, it seems that our fates were both sealed into place the moment L confronted Kira."

"Why… Do you speak of L like he's such a different person than yourself? Isn't he the closest thing to your true personality?" At this point, L stood up to walk over to the cliffside. No birds called to him as he stood, gazing out into the setting sun.

"L was only the part of me I let anyone but Watari see. Everything L said or thought, I really did see and think. It is just that, anything that was too personal, or too irrelevant or kind for L to say, was not said." He turned back again to look at Light from the corner of his eye as the younger boy rose to stand next to him.

"You got to see me a few times though, Raito-kun. For instance, when I said I was your friend, when I told Aizawa that I liked people like him, when the shinigami eyes comment from the second Kira startled me. All of those moments were opportunities for you to find me out." L's eyes were no longer warm as the sun finally dipped below the sea, but they did not regain that devilish look from before.

"I am disappointed and saddened by the fact that you did not see through L to me using those moments. I'm also disappointed that you have died already." They were facing each other again, and Light could feel an energy radiating from L like he had never felt before.

It was anger, and it was frightening.

L was finally showing emotion, but Light wasn't quite sure if he wanted it now.

"To add on to my list of grievances, you killed Watari, someone I had hoped you would at least be decent enough to spare, Wedy, Aiber, Mello, and Matt. Yet despite all of this, despite you killing all of these people who were important to me and critical to the investigation against you, you still allowed yourself to be caught and killed." Light backed away. That was the second point in time where he found himself being afraid of L, and there wasn't even any real reason for it. He backed up, and L came forward, chasing him just like he always had.

"You knew Near was not as good as I was, and you knew he was no real match for you." L wasn't on top of Light, but still, that glint in his eye, the way they grew too wide, it was still disturbing, and still scary. The way his lips began to twitch up in that smile again. It was pushing Light farther and farther away from him. From whatever malevolent force that had possessed the other man.

"You knew you were sloppy after my death, and I must say that it is very disappointing to me that you let that happen. I was disgusted by your failure." Once again, just as he was reaching the point of rage, of insanity, that soft, half lidded gaze returned.

Just who… was this person?

"I was there when you died Light. I saw it. I saw Ryuk writing your name down, and I saw how messy his handwriting was. I watched as your heart stopped. I was indeed disappointed that you died, but more over…" He brought his eyes up again, looking right into Light with that damn smile again. It was just, simply, too tragic to look at. Light couldn't stand it.

"I was incredibly sad that you had, indeed, died. I really did want you to live on." He shook his head once more. He kept doing that, as if he was having trouble with something.

"I am sorry if I have scared you Raito-kun. Regardless of my best efforts, being here has made me… strange in some ways. I think it would be best if you left for now so I can collect myself a bit." As Light started to wonder how exactly he would be able to leave, L stepped closer once more.

There wasn't enough time to react.

Light was promptly pushed off of the cliff, speeding towards the water below.

Just before he blacked out, he saw that face again.

He saw that flash of teeth.


So, a bit strange, especially for me, since this was almost all dialogue! Again, I'm not really sure where this is going right now, but it will definitely be somewhere awesome. By the way, for some reason, when L was being all crazy, I was writing him like he was the Joker from the Dark Knight! I did that to B in chapter 13 of Always too…. It's weird, but hopefully not too weird. I really wanted to say "Why so serious?" somewhere in the chapter, but I think that'd just make L SERIOUSLY be the Joker. Anyone else love that movie, by the way? Fabulous, no?

Hee, especially when L said "being here has made me… strange in some ways" all I thought of was "Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stranger" from the first scene.

Hee, why so serious everyone?!

…..

Anyway! Please drop me a review to let me know what you thought of this. I personally, have mixed feelings….