Twelve is my favourite number.
0o0o0o
The god had been sleeping. Drugged, more like, by his own hands. It had to be, so the plan could carry out, his body going through the preassigned motions.
It should have gone perfectly, and ended with a heart stiller and quieter than it wanted.
It would have gone perfectly, if Light hadn't come back.
It would have ended with a god standing on the ashes of his dead rival, if Light hadn't fallen in love with his detective.
The god expected to wake up with his plan moving along it's smoothly oiled gears. Instead, he woke up to a twisted relationship, all blurry boundaries and thorns and broken glass, dancing on razors and stolen nights.
He woke up to a Light who traced fingers along faded blue-ink words in palms and tapped out patterns, tap scratch tap tap.
He woke up to a Light who'd forgotten too much; a Light who thought about L like he was an angel.
The god woke up to a Light who was broken and useless to the cause, all ashes consumed too many times by fire.
The god woke up and decided to kill Light.
0o0o0o
If you had asked, L would have denied it. He would have said he never saw the moment when the war started and his Light's eyes went tortured and dark. He would have said that Light's flashes of a different personality, one who carried himself like he owned the ground beneath his feet, was simply a product of stress, or anger, or anything other than the confirmation that Light Yagami was Kira. He would have taken the blame on himself and become convinced he'd pushed Light too far, just like A, just like Beyond.
If you'd dragged it out of him, the detective would have pretended he told you everything; that he'd seen what happened, but thought Light could win and take back his mind.
If he'd allowed himself to tell the truth, he would have said that he saw Light's death, saw Kira wake up and kill his angel, and thought of the blue ink they hadn't erased and wondered if Kira would wash it away.
But he didn't. L didn't admit that he saw Light slip away, because if he did, there was no reason to keep going or try to bring Light back.
0o0o0o
The memories lasted less than a fraction of a second. The memories lasted a million years. The memories lasted seven minutes.
It's said that at the moment of death, the brain rewinds the extent of it's memories in a process that appears to take about seven minutes. Some people whisper that at the end, when the memories have backed up to the point of death, the reel loops back on itself and goes through a memory of memories, then over and over again, warping time until a second is stretched forever.
It took seven minutes to rewind light-years of conflicted thought and emotion, of college tests, some unorthodox, of writing names, of a mocking, disembodied voice. Of fake names. It took seven minutes for Light to remember who he was when he died, and it was a cruel sort of irony that the time when all the scattered pieces of his head reassembled was the time when Light Yagami split irrevocably in two.
Kira rose out of the twisted depths of Light's mind like a parasite bent on destroying it's host-no, not destroying. Taking over, reducing it's carrier to little more than flesh to conduct thoughts and carry them out.
Light died the moment Kira returned, but it would take seven rewound minutes until all traces of him were truly gone, and that's what hurt L the most. It would have been better if Light had just been erased like he'd never existed. You can't miss and long for and cry for and taunt a thousand ways something you've never had.
If Light had disappeared from all but L's memory, he could have pretended it was all a dream. Or maybe a nightmare. After years and years of denial, maybe he could have looked in the mirror and wouldn't have seen sometimes-red-sometimes-brown eyes staring back from just behind and above his shoulder.
Light came back in flashes and bits and erratic shards, all tortured and broken and sad, and he was never going to be fixed. Hadn't L once wished to find all of Light's broken pieces and gild the edges, to let the scars fade?
L had wanted nothing more than to heal Light from the Kira Case. It would be a long process, and L might have to cauterize the wounds shut again, but he was willing to wait. Or, at least, that's what he told himself while he'd tested the boundaries too soon and too often to see if he could break them. He could, he did.
What a cruel teacher irony was.
0o0o0o
They used to wake up to hair being brushed out of eyes and soft things like laughter and kisses. They used to whisper at night until it wasn't and the sun glowed through the window. They used to repeat things that, through some quirk of the universe, never wore down. The edges stayed sharp, but they were past cutting each other where it was especially ragged.
L had woken up with Light in his arms once, and it had felt right. Everything was perfect in that moment. Everything was normal, and it ached in his chest like poison. Some of the pain must have come from the fact that it was once, just once. The other nights, Light may as well have been six feet under.
L had thought that normalcy was baffling. What did you do? Everything was a repeated routine.
But if his ritual was waking up to his Light's lips on his and breathing matched with his, then he could understand. He could live an entire life in the seconds when they weren't awake or asleep, and some memory the Kira Case demanded to be forgotten swam back up and let them play a different game. He could learn more about the ticking, volatile bombs that lay buried inside all human's hearts in a minute with his head on Light's chest than he had in years as L the detective.
So what if this, whatever it was, was nothing more than them turning a blind eye to the chaos outside their illusion utopia, holding back the tides for a perfect snapshot before releasing the sea and drowning in the lashback?
L knew when he would die. He knew Light would kill him. So he could have a few moments and make his death all the worse, couldn't he?
It had been one night of pure connection. Light had ripped old scars open and remade him, frozen water and red-hot flames in tests that threatened to shatter him. He would have let Light break him, let him push his head under the water and laugh as his flame guttered out.
Light had sent him through hell and raised him back to heaven. His angel had left brands all over his hands and soul, and L would wear the marks like they were jewelry.
Just one night; of the words 'I love you'.
Just one night; because Kira had burned Light to ashes and presented the charred remains to L all tied up in a bow.
Mockery, that's what it was. Kira was an imitation of Light like Beyond had pretended he was L. Two sides of the same coin who could only imagine what it was like on their twin's face.
It hurt to see Kira's smile and hear him whisper in L's ear before they fell asleep. It was wrong to see the flat glare of red, red, red eyes. Light was supposed to be there, but he was dead in seven warped minutes.
They could pretend that Light wasn't dead for everybody else, but alone, Kira dropped his puppet of Light's body and came back, his laugh the soundtrack to L pulling the blankets around himself and crying instead of screaming.
The tic-tac-toe games had started again, while the tap scratch tap tap L had grown to love was gone.
The ink was nearly faded on L's palm, barely the memory of things that question and matter and escape.
He didn't ask Kira if the note he'd written for Light was still there.
0o0o0o
The phone had barely completed one ring before Watari picked up. If L was calling on this line, it was urgent.
'Watari, I am going to die.'
Normally, those words would have terrorized the older detective. But now?
'How long did it take for you to accept that fact, Ryuzaki?' Watari asked gently. L laughed.
'Too long. I blame Light,' he said, remembering to keep his voice down and not alert Kira.
'Not to be insensitive, but should I set the final preparations in order?' The older man opened his computer and started clicking, already prepared for L's answer.
'I wouldn't want anything less. Oh, and Watari?'
'Yes?'
'Thank you.'
0o0o0o
They were always running off. There was something about being in a hallway that had a 0.5% chance of pedestrian traffic than one that had a 1% chance. No matter what, they'd inflate that tiny percent and forget about the grand scale.
Kira had traced a finger along his neck and whispered, 'Tell me about the one before me.'
Light wouldn't have done that. Light had given him rules and chains to forget Beyond, if only in an offering of skin and heat. It was enough.
'You wanted to know about the other one? The only other person I've ever cared about, the one who I let die because I was too stubborn to play his little game?'
Kira stared back, and L tried so hard to convince himself that it was Light's predatory gleam in those red eyes.
'His name was Beyond Birthday.'
Kira makes no sign of recognition at the name, and L berates himself for expecting one.
'He told me once that he saw numbers above everyone's heads. Said it came from the fact that his eyes were different. Shinigami eyes, he called them.'
'What did the numbers mean?' Kira asked, mouth quirking upwards.
'They showed when the person would die. And before you ask-I don't know mine. I told him never to tell me.'
That was a lie. L had asked once, and Beyond had all too readily supplied the information with a chuckle and calculatedly careless touch. A sultry whisper in his ear, like the date of his death was intimate, on par with 'I love you.'
'Five-one-one-six-one-one-two-one.'
The numbers were running down. He had hours instead of days instead of years.
He'd expected to die suddenly, maybe sitting at his computer, halfway through a sentence. Maybe Kira would control his last actions; write a message of the god's victory on the floor in his own blood?
No, Kira didn't rejoice in his victories. He reveled in his enemy's defeats. It'd be a scrawled note of L's failure to catch the killer and solve the case.
The perfect ending for the perfect rival.
Light's casual touch brought him back. L stared at those slightly tanned fingers resting on his arm and felt sick. Light wouldn't have done that. Light treated every moment of contact like it was precious and touched him like he was going to break, or he was some volatile creature who burned and scalded and would rather be lit aflame than be touched by human hands.
'I'm not volatile. I won't break,' L muttered.
'Sorry?'
'Thinking out loud,' L said.
Kira stared and the hint of a smile emerged. 'Thinking about how you aren't a volatile, breakable human creature?' That hand on his arm was holding him tight enough to bruise-when had that happened?-and his eyes were pure red, pure Kira. 'When we both know you are?'
L had played this game before, but not with Light. Light loved the dominance-submission L could give, but it was only a show. They never would have hurt each other. Nothing they couldn't heal.
(Beyond would stab you and twist the knife. Kira would stab you and pretend to cry when the paramedics pronounced you dead. Light would stab you and blame someone else for the wound that was never deep enough to kill.)
Kira was different. Beyond had been different. They hurt not out of pleasure, but to create it for themselves. Always at other people's expenses.
When Kira laughed, the noise was the opposite of white noise.
Loving Beyond Birthday was like kissing the blade of a poison-soaked knife, or dancing with a handshake murderer.
That was why he could be in a relationship with Light. After waking up too many times to a cold bed and a numbly twisted heart, to keep running back to someone who used him and called him 'my favourite toy', to think about Beyond for days on end when the latter would barely give him a thought, to give Beyond everything he was and only get hurt for it, Light was a relief.
Light was firewood and the arrogance and childhood that kept him burning and everything fast and sharp and hot. Light was going to kill him. Light was nothing and everything compared to Beyond Birthday.
0o0o0o
If Light was a wildfire, all beautiful death but only if you stood too close, Beyond was an earthquake, one that came out of nowhere and destroyed without mercy or inhibition or true aim and held the threat of another until you ran away.
If we're all natural disasters, L thought, then what am I?
A hurricane, maybe, with his destructive tendencies that were never really directed. Or a fire devil; yes, the irony there would be delicious.
Maybe L was a drought, and killed not with what was there but with what should have been but wasn't.
0o0o0o
Natural disasters, or accidental beauty?
:: That song that you can't forget, ever, and sometimes it's too short and sometimes too long
-LyingMonsters, the one who forgets things and can't force themselves to care
