A Kyrie for the New World
Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note. I make no profit off of this work of fiction. However, I do not give permission for anyone to take this body of work and claim it as their own.
Summary: Movieverse. On the battered spine of an old friend is written a prayer for man. Touch it and sing its hymn, for the Madeleine of memories loosens the tongue with its bitter sapor. A detective game begins anew. T for bad language, some violence.
TW's: This is where the violence comes in so watch out for that. And there's a rude word, too.
CHAPTER NINE
1=1=1=1
DEATH NOTE
HOW TO USE IT
LXXIII
•Residual memories may be transferred to any note at any time. Should the Shinigami take too long to retrieve the memories or if said memories prove to be too traumatic to recover, these memories may degrade or become corrupt.
1=1=1=1
Soichiro is in the middle of an important phone call when Sanami comes rushing in. "It's gone," she states, hair in disarray.
As he turns down NHN news, Soichiro holds up a hand, listening for the line to pick up. Sanami shakes her head. "This is a key piece of evidence, Ch— Deputy Director."
Touta Matsuda sticks his head into the office. "Problem?"
"A key piece of evidence from that burglary case is missing," Sanami moans, dragging her fingers down her face. "I know I locked it up!"
"Hello?" Soichiro gruffs into the handset. "I would like to report a missing child— yes. He's about nine, ten."
"Which burglary case?" Matsuda asks, scrunching up his nose. "Oh! The one with—"
"The heat vision goggles, yes. It wasn't signed out so it had to have been stolen but the surveillance footage from that day is gone too so I can't—"
"He was last seen with a dark-haired man. Foreigner. Five foot ten."
Matsuda's eyes are saucers, now that everything is sinking in. "Oh, wow, Sanami. What are you going to do?"
"Last seen at— yes, I will hold." Soichiro gives Sanami a stern look. She covers her face as Matsuda gives her a consoling pat on the back.
"Don't worry so much," Matsuda is in the middle of saying when the phones begin to ring off the hook. He freezes, eyes even more saucer-like than before.
Soichiro makes a fist around the receiver. The last time the phones rang like that...
Outside the headquarters, a scream rasps the tensing atmosphere. A man races through the street, yelling at the top of his lungs— "He's here! He's here!"
Sanami picks up, desperate for even the tiniest bit of normalcy in an increasingly abnormal situation. "NPA headquarters," she greets just as the "Breaking News!" graphic flashes across the television screen. Matsuda, blinking slowly, reluctantly reaches over and turns up the volume.
"This is NHN's Miho Sato," states the newscaster, "and I'm coming to you live from the First Church of Kira."
The camera pans over the crowds clustered around the church's steps. Many are holding signs. Some are brawling. A good portion of them are screaming at one another. Soichiro has gone numb. He has forgotten about the phone in his hand.
"We're here mere moments after the church's new leader issued a startling proclamation."
At the top of the church is a bell tower. There stands a handsome youth, quiet, small, and all too composed. The camera zooms in.
"That's right," he calls down to his people. "I am Light Yagami. Your beloved god, Kira, has returned."
Soichiro Yagami drops the phone, as much as one can drop something that they are barely holding onto in the first place.
Hikaru speaks at the camera more than he does to it, eyes looking past the camera lens. "If you have any misgivings as to the veracity of my identity, check the status of Reiji Hirose, who only received six months for the murder of an innocent in April of last year. Only three people knew of his name, and now all of you know it.
"Now onto business. The anti-Kira judge Kenichi Mikuriya will die in one hour should the current L refuse to show his face on national TV. And I will know if that person is L."
Despite the screeching pleas for more details, more judgment, some acknowledgment towards his followers from down below, Hikaru falls silent.
Soichiro finds that he has deposited himself into a seat. "Light," he murmurs, holding his head in his hands. Matsuda and Sanami watch for a wordless moment before springing into action, Matsuda putting people on Mikuriya and Sanami rounding up people for crowd control.
Soichiro removes his face from his hands once they leave his office, and completes his phone call. One thing at a time.
1=1=1=1
Near curls and twirls his hair, going over with a fine-toothed comb this afternoon's happenings. A lot has happened.
A lot.
Light Yagami's file had been sparse, the last time Near had a look. Boy has a squeaky-clean record. Boy is bored with world. Boy kills. Boy attempts to kill his father and the task force that set out to bring him to justice. Boy is killed by a God of Death. Case open. Case shut.
Near has a hard time believing this is Light Yagami. He has a hard time thinking, too. The headquarters is empty except for him. Not that he has planned this. If it were up to him, he would have his people here with the First Church crisis going on. However, a tip-off mere hours before the Hikaru Tsukuyomi incident and the church crisis itself has driven most of the SPK out of the building.
And now the internet is not working. Near closes his laptop. He has read all that he has needed to read of the file Roger sent, anyway. The news is so loud, so hectic. It is all pomp, honestly, so Near shuts it off.
This Kira, he likes chaos. And Near does not speak of Hikaru Tsukuyomi. He has seen his grades. It is possible that if he were Light, he would not want to draw attention to himself and so would sabotage his academic pursuits on purpose, but not plausible. Light Yagami is a perfectionist— was a perfectionist.
Near sits, stewing in thoughts and theories, brain marinating in a bath of critical analysis and a drop of fantasy.
No. Dead people stay dead, even in a world where Shinigami and killer notebooks are real.
Near hates to admit it, but he could use another head. Too much of this makes no sense.
Perhaps, he muses, it is supposed to not make any sense. He dispels the notion with a slight shake of his head. He definitely needs another perspective on this. Near shuffles down the hall to the door standing ajar. Gently, he nudges it open.
Rabbit's room is expansive to the point of overkill, but the boy had insisted on these quarters. Its dimensions rival that of a small train station, if that station were covered in long, red curtains and were lined from end to end in playing cards the size of an adult man. Queens, kings, and knaves form many a twisty, snakey corridor. The labyrinth must take up almost the entirety of the room, Near surmises. So this is what he has been doing with his time.
"Rabbit," Near calls. "Rabbit, there has been an incident."
Near waits for a response. Wheeling his head around, he thinks he catches a faint strain of a soft giggle.
"This is not the time for games," Near says. R should know this. Wammy's star student is too much of a child to even be considered in the running for the title of L. He will be sure to confer with Roger once this case is wrapped up.
A soft, whispery voice splits the thick air. "Tick."
Near refuses to sigh. With one finger among his tangles, he presses his right hand to the wall and ventures in.
"Tock."
A creature cloaked in darkness rushes past Near's feet. It twitches its nose at him before loping deeper into the maze.
"Tick."
It is not much of a puzzle. Near reaches the end in less than ten minutes. Disappointment and relief clash. On one hand, he expects more from the boy who has wiped the floor with his genius peers, the very first out of a class of six hundred prodigies. On the other hand, the situation with the First Church demands his attention, and—
So that is where his laptop went.
"Tock."
Just beyond the laptop is another labyrinth. Near is about to pick up his machine and explore when the computer decides to speak with a throat of chrome and a tongue of rust. The clock display on the monitor is minimized. A letter R rendered in Cloister Black font flickers onto the screen. "Hello, Near."
"Rabbit," returns Near without so much of a waver in his voice. He peers through the blue-gray haze, watching the room for any sign of a black fringe or a toy dart gun. Neither things are anywhere in sight.
A hushed laugh bubbles up from the computer speaker. It is and is not R's voice. "You never answered my question. From before."
Near is very aware of his hackles rising.
"'Do you know how it feels to get shot?'"
The whirr of a racecar chimes in behind him. Near turns when he should run. The crack of gunfire resounds. He falls.
A cold, crisp voice crackles from the speakers. "It really hurts."
1=1=1=1
Hikaru Tsukuyomi stands upon the church's bell tower, flanked by his brainless lackeys. All life and vigor has fled his face. His skin does not glow as it does in the photographs procured by a certain conman, the silk quality of his voice is more like polyester.
"I am Light Yagami. Your beloved god, Kira, has returned."
L nibbles his knuckle. Lies, all of them. It is the one thing that this Hikaru has in common with the boy "god" because he is, without a shadow of a doubt, not very smart.
The Light Yagami he knew would not operate out in the open. The Light Yagami he knew would work in the shadows until he absolutely, positively had to come out to play.
The scene is conveyed across the five displays at his desk. Monitor one's visuals center entirely on NHN news' helicopter view of Hikaru. Monitor two is dedicated to NKK's live footage of the Kenichi Mikuriya hostage crisis. Monitor's three, four, and five showcase interviews, frantic conversations occurring across social media, and live feed of the situation directly outside of the church.
"Light Yagami?" wonders one Twitter account. "Junior tennis champion Light Yagami?"
"Didn't he disappear halfway into my first semester at To-Oh?" muses another.
The identity of the original Kira has been, up until now, a well-guarded secret. Hikaru Tsukuyomi cannot be Light Yagami. L knows this is no Light Yagami. And yet, he knows the identity of the original Kira, and spills willingly his name from his lips.
Exhibit A of Hikaru's lack of intelligence?
Or is it a distraction?
L grasps at his wrist. Nothing there. Right. He should put it on. It always used to help him think.
"If you were here we would have wrapped this up by now," L mutters from the side of his mouth. Light does not answer. His vocal chords have long turned to dust, his body rotten and skull empty.
He shifts around in his seat. Something bothersome has been in his back pocket for a while now, but he has been too lost in this case to remember to check it. Now, he slips a hand into the pocket. Probably some hard candy or a lollipop stick, certainly nothing—
A tracker.
L's eye wanders to the far reaches of his vision to the butsudan. His brain chugs, processing. L turns his head, scrutinizing, examining, deducing.
Something here is missing. He turns over every stone in his head. The altar. Something about the altar...
His eyes widen. The watch is gone.
In its place is a shiny red apple.
1=1=1=1
A pair of small hands sets down the remote control. A moment later, a smooth voice wafts in from the shadows of the maze. The childish lilt has been stripped from it.
"The lonely Old Man of the Moon looked down upon the Earth and thought to himself, 'Which of these creatures is the kindest?'"
From a pocket, the hands retrieve a bracelet of silver and cracked glass.
"So he descended to Earth and tested Fox, Monkey, and Rabbit, disguised as a beggar. 'Help me. I am near death. I am starved. Won't you please help feed this withered mouth?'"
Two small black shoes tap on the black-and-white tiles as they move past jokers and aces.
"So. Monkey climbed a tree to gather sweet fruits. Fox snapped up a fish from the river. And Rabbit? Rabbit could find nothing because Rabbit was powerless. Always powerless."
The hands pull on white plastic gloves.
"But Rabbit had an idea. 'Monkey,' he said, 'please fetch some driftwood. Fox, build a fire.' And it was done. Soon after, Rabbit threw his body upon the fire. For what is a little sacrifice for the good of the world?"
The hands unzip a backpack and pull out a portable tool set.
"The Old Man of the Moon retrieved Rabbit from the flames. 'That will not be necessary,' said he. All of the creatures had shown true kindness. But it was Rabbit who had outshined the rest."
A hand encircled with a wristwatch emerges from the darkness of the labyrinth.
"The Old Man of the Moon sang Rabbit's praises and carried him back home with him to live forever in lunar paradise."
Rabbit steps out of the maze entirely. The faint glow from the laptop grants him the barest of outlines against the darkness. His dark bangs are now swept to the side. The puppy fat of his face seems to have been bled out of him. A black notebook is clutched to his chest. A tall dark shadow seems to flicker behind him. When Near blinks, it is gone.
R strides over to him. Near's eyes dart back and forth over his face. Panic edges into his gaze as R settles down on top of N's stomach.
Rabbit's little smile spreads slow like blood and syrup. He sets down the kit on Near's chest and opens it up. Near's eyes narrow until R is not quite sure if the detective has fallen asleep on him. The boy slaps his cheek twice, grinning a childish simper that borders on manic.
Near jerks back. He eyes R with all of the frost of Siberia. He has read over this boy's profile two separate times. Back then, he simply had not recognized that they had been one and the same, or that they could be. But Near sees it in the dead eyes, and the pieces are clicking together and, sure, the proclamation of one Hikaru Tsukuyomi may be an influence in these most trying of moments.
"Light Yagami," he breathes.
"Near," nods the boy before bringing a small mallet down upon his head.
1=1=1=1
It is easy enough to trace not-Near's last message to his base. It is easy to break in with the security disabled. It is easy to follow the screams. It is easy to navigate the maze. Easy, easy, easy.
L will not quite make it so easy for him.
The boy sits on Near's chest, aglow in the gentle light of the computer. His knees hiked up to his chest, his chin in one hand as he fiddles with a reddened wrench, he looks more like a child bored on his front stoop than a long-dead mass-murderer.
Near's leg twitches under him. Jaw set, L steps forward. Rabbit's head lifts.
No, not Rabbit.
"Light," L whispers.
The child's smile is too beatific, too elegant, to be a child's smile. "In the flesh. Well. Not my flesh." He motions to himself. "But, you know."
L takes another step. Light is on his feet, Note gripped in his small hands. "Not another step. I didn't lure you here to get chummy. I want your Note."
L raises his hands. "Let's not be so hasty. Let's catch up. Haven't you missed our stimulating conversation?"
Light rolls his eyes. "Oh yes, I simply loved talking politics with you in between you stuffing your face with cake and accusing me of being Kira."
"Not really an accusation so much as it was a statement of truth," L states, shifting his weight to his right leg.
"L," Light snaps, clicking his pen, "I'm telling you—"
"Relax," L murmurs, scratching at his ankle with his left foot. "Jumpy, aren't you?"
Light flips opens his Note. "Give it to me right now or I swear—"
"Or you'll kill me?" L jeers in monotone. "You couldn't the first time but hey, better luck now that you're inhabiting a body with the brain of a strategist. Question, though. Why didn't you kill me earlier? Surely you got a hold of my name after learning where I lived."
"I had your host's name," Light corrects, spinning his pen over his knuckles. "Now give it to me."
"You had my host's name," L echoes, wracking his brain. He puts his mouth on autopilot as he looks for an opening, his eyes on the pen. "But not my original name?"
The pen wobbles. Got him.
Casually, Light allows the pen to slide back into his grasp. "Who says I don't have your original name?"
"I say, because I am alive and breathing enough to say so in the first place." L takes an experimental step towards him.
Light backs up, almost stumbling over Near's form. "Get back."
"You don't remember, do you?" L advances while Light fumbles around on the floor. "You don't remember my name, the name that ended you."
"You didn't end me!" roars Light as he retrieves the remote control. L turns just in time to see a toy racecar literally gunning for him. He would laugh, if not for the gun strapped to the car's hood. L dives out of the way just as it goes off, covering his head. He only looks up when he hears footsteps pounding away into the second card labyrinth. His eye catches the glint of a miniature hand saw as it disappears along with a miniature hand into the shadows. Exhaling, L disarms the toy and checks Near's pulse. Alive.
The WiFi is out but that does not affect Ryu Ryuugu's phone plan one bit. L contacts Roger anonymously and, trusting the old man to contact Near's task force, follows in hot pursuit of Light.
A whispery voice seems to echo from every corner of the maze as soon as L steps foot into it. "Of course you ruin everything. Always ruining everything for me."
L waves his hands out in front of him. He can barely see an inch before his nose. "I wouldn't have to come spank you if you would behave."
"If I had behaved back then, you would have had nothing."
"Are you suggesting," L snorts, "that you were my greatest case? That you were the epitome of all mysteries? That after tasting you, I would know no peace? Your ego really is something."
"It's the truth," Light says simply. "Gods of Death? Magic killer notebooks? An adversary whose intellect rivals, no, surpasses your own? What other case would satisfy your desire for stimulation?"
L has to stop waving his arms for that. "You describe it like it was some kind of comic book or thriller." L cocks his head. "Is that what you wanted, Light? AP classes weren't engaging enough for you?"
Light says not one word. Not good. L needs to keep him talking.
"How did Hikaru Tsukuyomi factor into this?" he asks. "That's lucky, even for you. The child of a cult leader whose photographs have been wiped from nearly every public record is gifted with a Note?"
"People in high places favor Kira," Light shrugs. "It's not so unthinkable that a high-ranking member of a group dedicated to Kira would be able to erase their Internet footprint effortlessly or be given a Note."
L hears the smile creep over his mouth. "But, yeah. Fortune does seem to favor me, doesn't it? Maybe that should tell you something, hmm? About my divine qualities and all that."
Light's voice drops back down into cold, flat tones. "Ryuk and the other Shinigami, they do their research now. They watch from above, they pick candidates. They want another me."
"But there is no other you," L says softly.
Light sounds as pleased as Punch. "Right," he says. "That's why I'm here. Why you're here."
"So you say. Anyway," L says, trying to sound very much as if this conversation is in danger of making him comatose, "you're wrong. You were not the best I ever had. In fact, just after you died, I solved another case."
He waits, holding his breath. Then he deals the finishing blow.
"It put me to sleep twice. It was still more engaging than you ever were."
There it is—that sharp intake of breath.
"Of course. You accuse me of being uncaring towards people and their lives but to you...to you these are just games. You can sit back with your little cameras and soundproof walls playing mission control. People are dying while you pick and choose who to help based on the level of entertainment they can provide." Light comes up for air before diving back into his own self-righteousness. "So don't you click your tongue at me. Don't you call me a spoiled brat."
"The difference between you and I, Light Yagami," L responds silkily, "is that I know I'm a spoiled brat."
Light rambles on, so wrapped up in himself that he fails to hear L's rejoinder. "You wouldn't know, couldn't know, the pain of dying."
L snorts, hand gliding along the wall. "I died of a heart attack. Same as you."
"No," Light insists. "Not the same. I was shot."
"Oh," L sneers, retort utterly saturated with insincerity. "That changes everything. Poor baby."
"Shot," Light says, more to himself than anyone else. "Over and over and over."
L frowns. "Now you're exaggerating."
"I'm not," snaps Light. "I was there."
"Me, too." L peeks around a corner, waving his hands. His wrists smack into a wall. Dead end. "You were shot twice. Pretty sure you're remembering wrong."
"I'm not," Light dismisses immediately. "Damn Matsuda. Shooting me. And then you all left me for dead."
Leave it to Light to trap someone in a maze all so he can talk them to death. L has a feeling that his code name is not just a reference to an affinity for lagomorphs.
"Left me for dead on those stairs."
Okay, if Light's gab nor gun is not the thing to kill him it certainly will be his tendency for revisionist history.
"What stairs?" L snaps, before jumping and kicking at a corner. His foot brushes past fur. The rabbit leaps away, rocketing out of the maze. "There were no stairs!"
"Don't yell at me!"
Tiny, frantic footsteps precede the pain in L's ankle. He falls. As Light scrambles on top, L struggles, pushing his palms against anything of Light's, hands slipping over a smooth surface as he tries to get a hold of the murderer's shirt. The struggle stops once Light puts (what L guesses is) his miniature handsaw to his throat. Vision barely piercing the umbra, L can just see Light's eyes wild and wide with mania...
Or maybe that is a memory.
"There were stairs," Light spits. "Stairs, and I... "
Creaky, gasping laughter tickles L's ears. It is not Armonia's.
He for a moment does not feel the teeth of the saw on his Adam's apple. Then they are back, teasing tender flesh. "No. It was... Fire? Or was that the sun in my eyes and you were there, I know you were there, you're always there!"
His small hands cover that Adam's apple, squeezing and clenching. "Always there! Ruining everything! Pretending, pretending, lying, acting like you were my friend! But I'm the one who's called a liar." Warm fluid sprinkles L's face, and he does not rule it out that Light is frothing at the mouth at this point. "This is my world! My world!"
A razor edge grazes L's throat. He grunts and jerks back.
"MINE!"
L pulls up his legs and powers his feet straight through Light's gut. The boy, the man, the ghost cries out as he hits a playing card. They both go down.
L uses this moment to take Light by the ankle and, ignoring any nicks and cuts that Light might incur with his little saw, drags him through the labyrinth while pushing over pasteboard royalty, limping as he cuts through a good deck or two before reaching the labyrinth's exit.
Suddenly the room is dyed in hues of blood and Honeycrisps. Sunset bleeds lightly through the red curtains. L, grateful to see, stares dumbly at the ebbing flame behind the pall. Light uses this.
The saw scrapes L's forearm. At his shout, Light scrambles away. He retrieves his Note from under his shirt, opens it and readies his pen. Breathing hard, his bangs in his face, Light lowers pen to paper.
"I may not remember your name," he hisses, nodding in the direction of the injured party just outside of the labyrinth, "but I know his."
They stand, staring and not daring to even move an inch, breathe, or allow their hearts to beat. For one forever minute, the room, the twilit cityscape outside, and the world vanish into a void. It is just them, as it always has been.
In a flutter of darkness and feathers, a creature that is more leather and stitches than being is at Light's side. The Shinigami Ryuk throws back his head and cackles. "God!" he crows. "Is this a touching reunion or what?" Ryuk nods to L. "Why don't we take a break? Have a round of Mario Kart, crack open some cider."
Shaking his head, Ryuk scratches his shriveled nose and grins at L. "Man, I can't believe I let you kill yourself. No, I still can't believe I killed him." He jerks a clawed thumb towards Light. "You guys are a regular comedy duo! The comic and the straight man! The boke and the tsukkomi."
L and Light do not take their eyes off of one another.
"You two," Ryuk snickers, "it's like you were made for each other."
Ignoring the Shinigami, L swallows. "You don't even remember how you died. You can't possibly remember a name you never had access to."
"I'll do it," Light bites out. His hand shakes, knuckles paling as he curls his fingers even tighter around the barrel. "I...can..."
"How did you die again, Light?" L asks softly. "Fire, you said?"
"N—no, I..." The quaking intensifies. "I was...there was a fan..."
L shuffles forward half an inch. "Who killed you?"
Breathing heavily, Light presses his Note to his chest. "Near. It was Near."
"How could Near have killed you if he didn't come to the orphanage until after your death?"
"He..." Light whispers, running the hand still gripping the pen through his hair. His other hand, grip tight on the Note, joins in on the frantic grooming. "He did! He killed...it was him...it was him!"
Light shakes his head violently, as if trying to empty his skull of his fractured thoughts. "No, no, no, no," he whispers, hugging and rocking himself. "No, no, no, nnnnnnn."
He grabs his head, mussing his hair as he clutches and pulls at his fringe. "Stop," he whispers, sounding like the little boy whose face and voice he has stolen.
His features warp and the little boy is gone. "STOP FUCKING WITH ME!" Light screams, attempting to launch himself at L. He trips over himself and is sent stumbling to the floor. Light remains there, face buried in the carpet as he breathes heavily and twitches.
"Something went wrong with you, didn't it?" L murmurs at the form on the floor. "And I'm not just talking about when you were alive."
Armonia speaks up. "Memories are tricky things. Traumatic deaths typically shouldn't be included in memory retrievals."
Ryuk chuckles. "Had to handicap him somehow, though, huh? And even though you picked a child, a traumatized child even, to serve as his meat sack my rook still got to this point." He grins. "I win, Armonia."
"Not quite," grunts the jeweled skeleton. "Gloat when there's a dead body. And that doesn't look like it will be happening anytime soon."
Ryuk pushes Light with his foot. "Come on, buddy. Get up. I don't care about becoming King but I've got all kinds of apples riding on this."
Light says not a word. L crouches down, and lifts up his bangs.
"Face it, Light," he says. "I'll always win. As long as you live in this world, I'm going to be here. I, your foil. You, my shadow. In life and after death." He hooks a finger under his small chin and lifts it from the floor. "Count. On. It."
The irises that meet his are suddenly fearful, watery specks of color. "Where am I?" he whispers. "Where's my mother?" Raizo Beppu's little face contorts. L feels a blockage in his throat.
It is unsettling to be reminded that, when it comes down to it, you are only a memory and that maybe your body is more alive than that memory. Perhaps it may even have memories of its own and feelings that you have never felt.
Then the fear drains from the child's gaze as soon as he presses the Note to his chest.
"Had to train him to do that," Light grumbles, picking himself up off the floor. "Took days. If only I could have taken that idiot kid's comatose body instead." He glares at Ryuk, muttering, "Damn Shinigami" under his breath.
A distant rumbling and trembling rattles the drapery rings. Somewhere at the other end of the room, the SPK break down the door, shouting as they stampede over to Near.
"Anyway," Light says casually, stretching. "Don't think you'll be getting your apples today, Ryuk. Looks like a draw."
L has out a pair of handcuffs in a second. "No. You've definitely lost."
The rumbling draws near, the floor shudders, and L has a feeling he has spoken too soon.
"I'd get down if I were you," Light drawls just before a wrecking ball crashes through the wall. L shoves his body to the ground just as shards of glass pelt the floor. A helicopter hovers to the hole in the wall, blasting with its spinning blades the wreckage all around them and toppling the maze.
"You're late," he shouts to the man who leaps from the chopper. The winds of the aircraft brush aside the length of hair partially covering the Kira supporter's face. He takes off a pair of goggles and bows his head.
"Apologies, Lord Kira," the man says before offering his hand. Light takes it, and throws a gloating look to the prostrated figure behind him.
"You never won," he spits at L as he boards the helicopter. "And I will make sure you never will." He is taken up, up and away into the fire engine-red sky until he is not even a mote.
1=1=1=1
EPILOGUE
At eleven o'clock that night, all of the world gathers at their computers, congregates in their living rooms, stuffs themselves into bars, and refreshes their social media every minute on the minute.
In Japan, Soichiro stares without really seeing anything at the collection of pixels that make up the news anchor's face.
"This is Miho Sato with NHN news. Our top story tonight is the incident at the First Church of Kira. Fifty were injured today in riots taking place at the church. One dead—Hikaru Tsukuyomi, who claimed to be the original Kira, one Light Yagami, before succumbing to a heart attack. We reached out to the NPA, Interpol, anyone who might be able to support such claims. They have declined to comment. Witnesses, however, had this to say—"
Soichiro tunes all of it out. Sachiko stands in the entrance of the living room. She looks like she has aged a lot more than ten years.
"Is there something you want to tell me?"
She waits there for several minutes, turning and softly bidding her husband a "Good night" at a quarter to twelve.
Rubbing his eyes, Soichiro takes it out again, the piece of wrinkled loose leaf found deep in the back of his office desk drawer. Taking a deep breath, he looks at it. Again.
Written in red crayon and the neatest kanji, the message is aligned perfectly in the center of the page.
"I am sorry."
Miho Sato narrates the last of the news. "And finally, Minoru Furusawa was found dead from heart failure in a crane, just after crashing a wrecking ball through a building, previously a toy museum—"
When Soichiro falls asleep mere minutes later, he dreams of a child. He is pure with a sunshine smile, with a round moon face, with eyes like a curious fox, who speaks in nothing but laughter. He beckons to Soichiro, who can do nothing but watch helplessly as the boy sinks and sinks in a puddle of tar while laughing, laughing, laughing his head off.
Come morning, early, early morning, he has a fresh cup of coffee in his hands. He watches the sun come up, painting the lawns and streets in shades of pyrite and he finds that not even the sight of such beauty can spark a song in his heart. Dawns upon this world will be different from now on, he realizes. They will be dimmer—colder.
So he prays.
Author Notes:
I was going to make the epilogue a separate chapter...but it's so short...so what's the use I ask you.
I could have done this like a long-shot...like I originally wanted...oh well...
I got this plot bunny in my head around March of this year and I couldn't let it go especially after reading the synopsis of Light Up the New World which was...something. I thought the DNA stuff didn't make sense so I was like but what if it kind of did and that is why this fic is here. I already have ideas for a sequel so let's hope I don't burn out.
I had in mind the song As Heaven is Wide by Garbage as I was writing this. It might be a strange choice but I think it fits Death Note better than fucking Dani California omg. Read and review, please.
Until next time!
