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When you feel my heat

Look into my eyes

It's where my demons hide

It's where my demons hide

Don't get too close

It's dark inside

It's where my demons hide

It's where my demons hide

(Demons: Imagine Dragons)

/

Light found the shinigami easily enough. They'd been ordered to remain within one of the rooms off-branching from the meeting room. He also narrowed in on the one who'd been sent to kill his family. Despite the overwhelming urge to eliminate the shinigami, Light thrust the notebooks into the clawed hands of the most responsible looking shinigami, i.e., not Ryuk who he saw floating in the corner of the room wearing a stretched grin.

"Light," A pale clawed hand grabbed his shoulder, the voice cold and threatening, as Rem forcefully spun Light around to face her. "What did you do to Misa? If you don't release her I will end you." Rem's voice dropped a few degrees lower, if Light had still been human he would have been wary of the threat.

Instead he laughed as he brushed her hand aside and addressed the room full of shinigami. "I don't answer to you, moreover, your little threat is nothing to me. You see, I'm already dead." He spat. "Return to the shinigami realm, I've no doubt the king is awaiting your return, and if I ever see any of you down here," He paused and looked Rem in the eye, crimson clashing with yellow. "I'll end you." He promised, this time able to leave the room without hassle. 'But I know L will be mad I gave the Death Notes back.' Not that Light cared much about it, they had to be given back to the shinigami in order for them to return home.

He was just exiting the elevator when the sound of wing beats had him turning. Ryuk drifted down through the ceiling, mouth still searched into an eternal grin despite the curiosity and worry in his red, bulbous eyes. Light didn't even pause, turned back around and just kept walking despite Ryuk following behind him in silence.

"Light-o, we need to talk." The shinigami began, breaking the silence Light knew wouldn't last.

"What about Ryuk?" He said with a sigh, the pair making it into the outside where police lights flashed and onlookers had gathered to take pictures.

"Normally I wouldn't say anything, because it would have lengthened your lifespan and killed me, but you're one of us now and I don't see the harm in telling you," Light cut him off by raising a hand, switching off the audio on the bug he was wearing so that the picture was the only thing transmitting. He waved Ryuk on with a causal gesture of his hand. "Higuchi took pages of the Death Note with him. He's also been killing people off who attended the funerals of your family. He worked out that L must have been one of the guests. I knew you wanted to be the one to kill him, so I thought I'd let you know that someone else was trying to do the same thing." Ryuk took to the night sky with a cackle. "See you around!" And with that, Ryuk melted into the darkness.

'I knew that Higuchi seemed off.' Light glanced around to ensure nobody was watching, when he melted from sight and arched black crimson tinged wings into the sky. He flew as fast as his wings could carry him, not bothering to go around buildings or other them, he flew in a straight path through buildings a various sizes and purposes. 'Hopefully someone remembered to check their clothing and accessories for pages of the Death Notes.' Though something about the way Ryuk stressed the words 'someone else', tugged at his attention.

He made it to the taskforce building and ignored the floor where everyone would be gathered, he didn't even bother to return sound to the video, appearing in front of the cells within seconds. What he found made him regret not checking the killers himself. The entirety of the Elite lay sprawled in varying positions across the floor, bed and chairs, all with their eyes opened and utterly still. 'How has nobody been made aware of this?' His unasked question was answered when he stumbled across Watari's still form and the cut wires of the camera system. 'L I'm so sorry for your loss.' He knew that someone, or everyone, would be heading down to this floor after seeing the video that was still streaming from the bug.

When Light caught sight of what Higuchi held in his hand, his blood ran cold. Rushing to the dead man's side, he pulled the paper from the stiffening body and backed away, looking down at the torn, scrunched up paper Light knew deep down that he didn't want L to see what was written upon it. He turned the camera off and tossed it aside, ghosting through the walls when Aizawa, Mogi and Mello exited the elevator and made for the cells. Alone in an empty hall Light looked down upon the scrap and felt a dull blow to his stomach, written in sticky drying blood was a list of names.

Quillsh Wammy, comes down to the cells and cuts the wires to the camera system, dies once the wires are cut.

Kyosuke Higuchi, dies after writing the names of his accomplices onto scrap of paper he has, makes sure to add the name of the person he discovered onto the paper.

Shingo Mido, Reiji Namikawa, Eiichi Takahashi, Suguru Shimura, Masahiko Kida, Takeshi Ooi, Arayoshi Hatori, Misa Amane and Teru Mikami.

But the one that had Light release a small sob of despair was the last name scribbled in a mess of blood as Higuchi lost his life.

L Lawliet, dies at midnight, deprived of human contact in his last few hours and dies in pain.

Kira's law is just. You're a traitor to us all. May you spend eternity alone as you remember the way your love died?

/:/:/

L couldn't help the flare of irritation that rose within him when Light handed the Death Notes back to the shinigami owners. How was he supposed to study the notebooks now? What was he supposed to use as evidence in the court cases? Not that L believed that the cases would go to court. He watched as Light traded words with the female shinigami who seemed overly invested in Misa's wellbeing, something L would be concerned about had Light not made himself clear as to why he was down on Earth in the first place.

"It's so weird knowing that he's talking to a room full of beings we can't see. I mean, we can't even hear their voices but Light defiantly handed the notebooks to something because they just vanished." Matt said, getting up from his position on the floor and stretching. "Well I'm off to bed. Our rolls as secondary characters has come to an end." With that Matt was off, leaving behind a befuddled group of detectives.

"He has a point, we did next to nothing on this case. We weren't even needed here." Mello stood from his chair, pausing when he reached the doorway. "I can't be the only one who feels as though this entire thing has been manipulated to go this way right? They just handed the Death Notes over. That doesn't seem like something they would normally do, regardless of the original Kira being there or not. And then there's the nuclear weapon that turned out to be a fake..." Mello trailed off, blue eyes fastening upon the screen that showed the visual of the bug Light was wearing.

L flicked his eyes from his successor to the screen, and felt disbelief hit him like a blow. The Elites were all dead in their cells, Mogi and Aizawa had gotten to their feet at that point heading over to Mello when Matsuda and Near made near identical sounds of shock that caught everyone's attention. L swallowed down the sob that rose within him at the sight of his mentor and closest thing to a father he'd ever known, lay cold and lifeless upon the ground. Mogi, Aizawa and Mello had left at that point leaving behind Near, Matsuda and L. The camera feed cut off moments after Light entered the cell that held Higuchi, they couldn't read what had been written upon the scrap of Death Note paper. L wasn't sure he wanted to know.

He ignored his successor and Matsuda as he headed for the elevator. All he knew was that he wanted to leave the building that he couldn't remain in there for much longer. On the trip up to the top floor L thought he could faintly hear bells ringing.

...