Disclaimer! All fictional entities featured/ mentioned in this segment belong to Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata; except Erin Blogger, who I made up for the purpose of this fan fiction. Any other unfamiliar names may be either others original characters or allusions to real-life people, as referred to by the trademark abbreviation. The quote preceding this chapter isn't mine, either. It's from Joseph Addison.
You may be right, Rachelle. I'm not a particularly creative person. I'd like to be, but it also needs to make sense. Otherwise, I end up swinging towards the other extreme (when I wrote for the YGO! GX fandom, I had the unofficial title of the Queen of Crack). My puny imagination couldn't come up with anything different that didn't involve blatantly breaking any Death Note rules or relying on corny, illogical Mary Sue powers. I think that's more cliché than a fake notebook. But you've probably read more DN fics than me.
Besides, Erin kinda did offer another way to end it: burn both notebooks and leave it at that. But, as you are about to see, L had other plans…
Hope we aren't total failures (though I'm pretty sure I'll lose readers from this point on). After this, there's one more chapter, plus an epilogue…which counts for two. Thanks all for your input, past, present, and future! This was a very brutal chapter for me, as will be the others. I don't know if I captured half of the emotion and drama I wanted to convey: not only the horror, shock and grief, but the anger, as well.
PS: It could just be me, but I don't think Light gets enough sympathy, despite what he did. I hated him for a while, sure, but after watching all the variations of his death, I lost my animosity towards him. After all, is Light not just as much of a sentient being as everyone else? He was a good kid who lost his way…never to find it again.
26. Justice
…
"When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me…When I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind."
-Joseph Addison, Meditations in Westminster Abbey, 1672-1719
…
Son of a bitch, there he was standing by the door in that unceremonious way of his that only he could pull off, like he'd been standing there watching the whole time. One hand in his pocket, the other behind his back, his expression never unhappier. It was a wonder why he hadn't followed up with a "Boo!"
"I'm so sorry. Perhaps in another life we all could have been…real friends. Unfortunately, evil cannot be overlooked whether I know the people who commit the evil or not."
I couldn't remember ever seeing Light so wigged out before. His whole face seemed to swell like a puffer fish; I thought I could see the tendons in his neck tighten. He stared at L like he was looking at a phantom (in a way, I couldn't blame him. My sentiments, exactly).
"R—Ryuzaki," he whispered. "You're still…but…but how?"
Yeah, L. How the hell did you survive? But at that moment I didn't even bother to ask. Seeing Rem and Watari's dead bodies, on top of Light's and Misa's betrayal—I mean, everything leading up to that point—had worked me into little more than a blathering lump of blubber, like I'd just been tossed into a blender on the puree setting and then poured back out.
Damn it, where were my glasses? I had no way of knowing whether the kid standing in front of me was just a figment, a hallucination. God, please don't let him be just a hallucination!
Although…if he really was only that it was weird beyond weird how all three of us could be hallucinating the same thing at the same time. We'd have just all been that crazy, I guess. L had made us all crazy. The notebooks had made us crazy. Kira made us all crazy. Life made us all crazy.
The tears started to come back, with a vengeance. All the fever dreams in the world didn't hold a candle to how I felt, then. "Oh my God, you're alive! You're alive, Ryuzaki, you're ALIVE! I…I thought…I thought that I—where have you—"
A sob cut me off before I could say anything remotely intelligent. Honestly, I couldn't describe how I felt about seeing L up and about if I tried. I didn't know whether I wanted to tackle-hug him or smack him like I'd smacked Light, never mind whether I could move at all to do either. That bastard, putting me and everyone through all of that…
Who was the bigger bastard, though: him, or Light? I never figured that out. I still haven't.
"I must admit, you surprise me. I always had the inkling that you were childish, but it seems that you're willing to kill even a complete innocent for saying something you didn't like. This is something I'd expect of Misa, but not from you. It contradicts your mission statement considerably, don't you think? I'm disappointed. And after this display you've just put on I'm sure your father is, too."
"No. No, this can't be," sputtered Light. "You died. You died, I watched you die!" he snapped over a sharp clap of thunder. Even with my mind buzzing like hell, I could hear him crystal-clear; he was beyond pissed. It terrified me, to be honest, seeing him start to unravel the way he did. Was this guy really the Light we knew…or thought we knew?
I don't think Misa took this plot twist too well, either, because bit by bit, I could feel her hold on me deteriorate, enough for me to wiggle my toes in an attempt to get the circulation flowing in my legs which had fallen asleep under me a while before.
That's when the rest of them sprung out of the woodwork. By "them" of course, I mean the task force. All of them: Mogi, Aizawa, Matsuda, and Mr. Yagami. In a stampede of shoes beating on linoleum, they circled us with pistols—pistols, for Christ's sake!—thrust out in front of them.
Well, Mogi didn't have a gun out. He stomped up from behind to pry Misa off of me and force her arms behind her back, whereupon I heard the soft, decisive click of cuffs locking around her wrists.
"Light, no!" she cried vainly as Mogi tugged her away from the circle. "Mochi, what are you doing?" Even after everything she'd done to me, it killed me to hear her cry like that. Like she'd failed him somehow, and would never forgive herself for it. Misa, you should've never gotten involved in the first place. None of us should've ever had to go through what we did, in the first place.
You can bet the first thing I did as soon as Misa's weight lifted off of me was scramble the hell out of the way. Wasn't as easy as that might sound; the floor seemed to sway under my feet with every step I took, like walking inside a moon-walk tent. I practically crawled those first few steps, before finding whatever balance I could to stand never mind run.
L in the meantime reached down to pick up my glasses by the temple arm, holding them out to me pinched in his fingers when I managed to reach him. I couldn't even find the words to thank him for the gesture, having been rendered as wordless as he was, though not for the same reasons.
Guess what my crazy ass did instead?
I poked his shoulder. Poked him just to see if he was real, concrete, before anything else. He was. At least, he felt concrete. You should've seen the look L gave me when I did that: he reminded me of a snail when you touch its eyestalk. I almost expected his arm to retract into its socket but it didn't. My glasses remained outstretched for me to take, not a word exchanged between us.
Why wouldn't he speak to me? I couldn't tell by the look on his face—as if I ever could—but was he sore about me getting out of my room? Or…?
Nevertheless, I accepted my glasses with a shaky nod and shakier hands and as soon as I had them back on my face, I instantly started to wish I hadn't put them on.
Everyone's faces were stiff and mask-like, the way detectives were supposed to look as they closed in on the perp, but their eyes conveyed more horror and grief than I could ever hope to put down on paper, even Mogi's. Matsuda, his eyes were all puffy and red, like he'd been crying for quite a while and was far from finished. I could see his gun quivering in his hands with every labored breath he took, like he was fighting not to start going happy with the trigger. I had to wonder what hurt him more: that his chief's son had turned out to be the same killer they'd been hunting down all this time, or that his favorite pop idol was his accomplice. Not to say that he couldn't be hurt by both.
But Mr. Yagami…he looked the worst out of all of them, and rightfully so. He didn't have a gun, either. That would've been too much, especially for him. Under the lighting, his face seemed gaunter than it had even when he was in jail, his brown eyes dulled and narrowed. He had his lips pursed into an even thinner line than Light had his. He looked so…distant. But I knew better. He'd forced himself to keep a straight face.
"Light...you are under arrest for mass homicide," he said from his place across the room quiet and firm, like he was speaking to just another criminal in the corner not his own son. He'd forced himself to do that too. He was a policeman above everything else. Being a father was a second job. Justice had no partiality, not even to family.
Light's gaze was almost as unwavering as his father's, but by the way his Adam's apple bobbed up and down his throat I could tell he was at a true loss for words. He couldn't talk himself out of this one. I wasn't the only one that the world was crashing on top of.
"Dad," I heard him whisper, as though trying to remind Mr. Yagami who he was, in hopes that he'd have a change of heart and come to his defense, like he always had until now. I don't think there are many feelings in the world worse than the feeling of being cornered: stuck in a dead end with nowhere left to turn, when it starts to sink in that maybe you're not as invincible as you thought you were, that everyone you thought was your ally was now staring at you from the opposite side, and whoever was still with you couldn't help you out of this. For a guy like Light, I can only imagine how brutal this must've been.
His eyes widened like a deer's in front of a lethal pair of headlights as they glanced at everyone in the room before coming to rest on L. From there, they narrowed almost as quickly as they widened, like Light wanted to blast L's head off just by looking at him.
Boy, was I shaking like an epileptic bastard. Still caught between whether to hug him or hit him, I breathed, "R-Ryuzaki…what's going on? If…if that notebook is fake, th-then where's the—?"
L took his hand from behind his back to hold something up, pinching it by its spine like it were something dirty, which it was, in a way. What he had dangling in his fingers was another black notebook that looked just like the fake one. The resemblance was uncanny.
He faced Light, the entire time, not once stealing a glance towards me. "Right here," he deadpanned, as though Light had been the one to pop the question. "This is the real notebook, the one Misa dug up."
Just then, he opened it to a certain page, holding the book up by both top corners like a little kid showing off a finger-painting he'd made in his free time. Something in big, lopsided, line-defying chicken-scratch had been scribbled into one of the pages.
L…Law…liet?
Huh? Who the hell was "L Lawliet?" Moreover, how was that even pronounced? I couldn't explain why exactly, but worms of fear crawled around in my stomach, eating it away from the inside-out when I saw that…that name. Was it even a name?
I yanked the damn notebook out of his hands, mildly surprised that he'd let me do that. As I inched in for a closer look, twisted my neck and squinted, I found these words:
L Lawliet.
At 8:35 am on November 5th he experiences arrhythmia that momentarily stops his pulse, but he recovers within minutes and dies peacefully of heart failure 23 days later.
A fat, sticky lump bumped up into my throat upon reading the word "date." No. No, he didn't. He did NOT write that down. Not in a REAL killer notebook.
I almost couldn't find it in me to lift up my head, again, much less look L in the eyes. Suddenly, it felt as though I had an anvil over it or something. "H-hey. Who—who's 'L Law-lee-it?'" I was a moron, I swear to God, I was.
Well, wait, no. Looking back, I don't think my stupidity was genuine. Rather, I had this feeling, this spark of intuition, my journalist senses, that clued me in on who L Lawliet really was—in a screwy way, it was kind of obvious then—as soon as that name burned itself into my retinas. But I didn't want to believe it. I was using ignorance as a last defense against the truth.
Basically, I was in denial. Almost the same kind of denial I'd been in about Misa and Light, about Watari.
But L wouldn't stand for that, no sir. He pricked my bubble almost as soon as I'd blown it, as he calmly took back the notebook from my slackened hands. "'L Low-light,'" he corrected, without batting a lash, still without looking at me. "This…is my real name. The one you've been looking for, all this time, Light."
Christ, the look Light had on as soon as he saw the name, the way his jaw locked and everything, killed me. His eyes smoldered the way they would when the mind behind them realized that they'd just encountered a sick, sick twist of irony. I knew that look all too well.
I in the meantime felt mine reel all the way across the globe, twice, as soon as reality had seeped in.
I and everyone in that room were now probably the only ones in the triple-W who knew the world's greatest detective's real full name. Who would've thought that his alias could turn out to be his real name, too? That was so stupid, it was…it was crazy-clever.
Not that that really mattered, though. The point was, L Lawliet's name had been written in the notebook. By his own hand.
L was L Lawliet. Which meant—
L, if you'd ever in your life reached your all-time low, this was it.
My voice had cracked so much, I could barely carry it above a whisper. "So…you're gonna…" I couldn't say it. My breath hitched just from thinking about it.
The next thing I knew, I had him by the shoulders, forcing him to look at me as the humidity of sweat and tears fogged up the lenses of my glasses, obscuring his face from my view. "You idiot! Why did you do that?" I howled over the echo of the storm, both outside and within. "Wh-when did you write this? Erase it! Erase it right now!" I glanced into each and every pained face in the room as though I could find a solution in any of them. I'd forgotten all about what Misa had said before about names entered in the notebook.
"I wouldn't waste the effort. Erasing this will not change anything."
"What, did you write this in pen, or something? All right, wh-who's got white-out? White-out? Come on! Somebody!"
Not you too! Please, PLEASE don't do this to me!
L's crow-feather bangs shrouded his face, further obscuring it from me. The tighter I squeezed his shoulder, the more he tensed up. He didn't like being handled all roughly and whatnot. Not that that stopped me.
He closed the notebook in one hand, while the other reached over to peel me off of him. "No. You would only be wasting your time. One cannot change what's been written in a Death Note." As he turned back to Light and left me with my arms hanging limp at the sides, he said, cool as hell, "So I wrote in it first to lock in my own death. And now I have twenty-one days left to live…which means I can no longer be killed with the Death Note."
How could he? How could he talk about his own death like he might have talked about the weather? How could he not care?
How was it possible for anyone to be so selfish?
Not saying that Light was a saint here, though. He wasn't. He didn't even comment on L's death like I thought he would, like he should've. Instead he demanded, "When did you switch them?" He must've been asking about the notebooks. His voice became more and more strained with every word he said. He looked ready for a downright meltdown, provided he hadn't already had one or wasn't in the throes of one right as he spoke.
Misa had nothing to say about L's impending death, either. With Mogi holding her back, she lunged forward in defense. "All the criminals that I wrote in there really did die!"
Who were these guys? All of a sudden, it seemed as though we'd never shared any feelings between us even remotely resembling friendship. Like our relationship as a team had been sapped to little more than the Sherlock closing in on the two hardened criminal masterminds—or was it the villainous mastermind moving in on the two vicious anti-heroic vigilantes he finally had in checkmate?—leaving me and the rest of us on the sidelines as helpless spectators to it all. Pawns forced to look at the results of what we'd been used for.
The world became more and more unglued with every word L said, like a crappy old third-grade diorama. I could almost see the walls peeling as L meandered closer to the circle. "Only for the first three days," he said, all lackadaisical and whatnot. "When we finally confirmed that you, Misa, are the Second Kira, and that the Thirteen-Day rule was false, Wedy infiltrated your apartment to collect photos of the notebook's contents.
"It was a risky action on her part, due to the possibility of the shinigami who was attached to the notebook having enough loyalty to Misa to guard the notebook and warn her that she was being caught onto. After all, the shinigami attached to the notebook we took from Higuchi was willing to lie for you both...even going so far as to kill me in order to protect you," he muttered darkly.
"When Wedy touched the notebook, she didn't see the shinigami anywhere in your apartment. Our surveillance later revealed it to follow you wherever she went. That led us to suspect that the shinigami follow the owner of their notebook around, and not so much the notebook itself.
"Which would explain why you would refuse to leave headquarters and insist on continuing work with us, Light. If you indeed had obtained ownership of Higuchi's notebook, it would've meant that the shinigami would be compelled to follow you wherever you went.
"Using the evidence Wedy gathered, Watari then created a counterfeit and had them switched from the fourth day on. We watched you very carefully through the bugs and cameras Wedy placed throughout your apartment, and had the deaths covered on the news channels as if Kira had indeed returned and resumed killing. You have Aiber to thank for that contribution."
(In hindsight, maybe the reason neither of his criminal buddies were here for this showdown was to keep their identities hidden, from Misa's Eyes and all? They were safe, as long as neither she nor Light knew their real names. I don't know. Whatever thing those three had was kept strictly between those three.)
...
What did he just say?
But…but just the night before, I'd asked him about the killings myself, and he'd told me that they were—
…
He lied to me?
Now, all right, maybe it wasn't supposed to be that much of a shocker. L was the king of the liars, with Light as their holy pope. That was like his specialty, besides detecting, of course. I don't think a day had gone by since I'd met him—or long before even that, for that matter—when he didn't lie about something, to someone, in some way, for some screwy reason of his. He'd pulled off an inversion of this stunt on Light, after all.
That didn't make it hurt any less, though. Actually, it made it worse, because I'd believed him. You don't lie to someone about something like that, about anything in general, not when you're hugging them and everything, in bed, of all places. You shouldn't, anyway.
But then, L never seemed to consider anything sacred, like the trust between two friends. What with his lack of friends, though, I don't know whether or not to really hold that against him.
Or was this why he was friendless, in the first place?
Next thing I knew, I'd seized his shoulder again, from behind him, this time. "Th-that's not what you told me. You...you lied?" I asked him, shaky as hell. "Why? I just defended you in front of Light a couple minutes ago, and you come out with this? Y-you lied to me! A—and I believed you." What a stupid thing to say at such a terrible time, but hey, wasn't it true?
Why are you doing this to me, you bastard?
Between the four of us—him, Light, Misa and me—I couldn't tell anymore who was stupider, aside.
From out of the corner of my eye, I thought I could see Light pass me a stiff but almost sympathetic look in my direction, as though mutely telling me, This is exactly what I was talking about.
Kind of ironic, since he'd spent all this time doing the exact same thing, leading us on.
L still wouldn't look at me. He just reached up to peel me off of him, again. "Yes, that was the intention," he answered in a low voice. That was all he had to say to that.
I drifted back into solid numbness as he continued: "The problem was, we still had no evidence proving that you were Kira. Bravo, Light. You never gave us an inch. And that's why I had to give up my own life. In order to carry out my plan, I needed Mr. Yagami's help. At first, he was against it, because he is a just man with a good heart. But then, when I showed him the notebook and how I had written my own name in it, he recognized my determination and decided to go along with my plan."
Really? That was all it took to get Mr. Yagami and the others on board with this? Did he lie to him, too, at any point?
"Or at least, what had been intended as the plan."
Why did I get this vague suspicion that that jab was directed at me?
"But I digress. You know what, Light? Up until the last second, he refused to believe you were Kira, despite all the proof. Instead of going to the heliport to America, your father and the task force actually stayed behind. They were here. And they saw everything."
Wait…so they really weren't going anywhere, after all? No tests on criminals? But he'd told me—
…
There was no way to explain this. There was nothing that could explain the complete mind-fuckery I had just stood through.
By the looks of Light and Misa's faces, I was far from the only one who felt this way.
Why would L lie about what he was up to? Look, it wasn't that I'd wanted that snake to go through with that goddamn test on the notebook. But did he have to lie to me about doing it, about everything? All for what? So he could write down his own name in the goddamn notebook and have things pan out, the way they did?
What was wrong with just burning the notebooks?
The task force maintained their positions around Light and Misa, a brief but lethal calm cast over the whole lobby. I could hardly find enough feeling just to clench my fists. Light and Mr. Yagami stared each other down, while L stared down at his bare feet, like his head had become too heavy to hold up. His question-mark slouch seemed to grow more and more pronounced until he looked ready to snap in two, like a twig. That hollow, distant look I hated so much, the one he'd worn out in the rain, had returned, more intense than ever. Like a part of him had already died before his time.
I had to strain my ears to hear him mutter, as though to himself, "I do regret…Watari. I honestly didn't think that the shinigami would write his name down. The last mistake I'll ever make…"
A damn preventable mistake, if you'd just listened to me, I wanted to scream at him. But I didn't. Words had failed me, again. The tears didn't, though. The tears never failed, even when they no longer had a fixed reason to be there at all. I mean, I didn't even know what I was crying about anymore.
"Light," Mr. Yagami finally said, "you said that all you're trying to do…is create a new world here for us. But I'm sorry. I don't understand; this isn't justice at all!" He floored me, by the way his voice rose so sharply, the way it carried across the lobby. His eyes hardened a little more with every word he said. How much pain did this guy have to go through, only to end up taking down his own little boy…?
Made me think back to when he'd thrown himself in jail. Makes me wonder if he purposefully chose not to have a gun for reasons beyond the fact that civilians in Japan weren't technically supposed to have guns.
Light's, in the meantime, seemed to soften, as though pleading for his dad, and the rest of us, to hear him out. Out spewed that altruistic PS he'd tried to feed me not long ago: "Before I found the notebook…the world was rotten with criminals who laughed at the legal system," he said, his voice starting to crack as his hand reached over to fiddle with his watch.
Huh. Why would he fiddle with his watch while trying to justify what he did? Pretty strange thing to do, especially coming from him. He was losing it, though, I could tell, provided that he hadn't already a long time ago…
Misa gazed into his face with a kind of solemn agreement with his words, while his words pricked my heart like needles. "It was a world of hypocrisy. But I changed that. With Kira around, the crime rate dropped by seventy percent! And it can only get better from there: at this rate, countries won't have to war with each other. Isn't that…the world you wanted, Dad? A world of…peace and harmony?"
BLAOW!
The crack of a pistol firing shattered the atmosphere, followed by the loud clink of the face of a watch against the linoleum in a tiny shower of glass. A gunshot: a noise that I never, ever wanted to hear again. Never mind who had fired it; I could hardly believe it myself, when I realized it.
While my chickenshit self reflexively shielded my face, Light peered up at Matsuda through wide, demanding eyes. I thought I could see his pistol smoking through my fingers, now trembling more violently than ever before as the tears trickled down Matsuda's lock-jawed face without restraint.
Time and space fell away, after that. Hands locked in one another, Light ran for it, something I never would've thought he'd do. Made a frantic beeline for the part of the watch that had landed on the floor some ten or so yards away.
BANG!
Misa's scream beat against my already throbbing head: "Light, NO!"
"MATSUDA!" I shouted, the only coherent thing I could say, for the moment. I was scared shitless; what if Matsuda lost control and fired again? I'd never seen him this way, and it scared me shitless. I couldn't tell you. Everyone, everything was falling apart right before my eyes.
And all I could do was watch it all. Like being inside the worst action flick in history but outside at the same time, like a viewer.
The second shot rang out even louder than the first in my ears as I saw Light collapse to the floor, a too-sizable spurt of blood—oh God, the blood—rushing out of his leg and splashing on the white tiles like punch from the cracked talking Kool-Aid™ pitcher that Light had pretty much become. A horrible way to put it, but that's exactly what it looked like. Nothing at all like how they showed it in the movies, because this. Was real.
From the way Light writhed in agony on the floor, to the way Matsuda's knees almost buckled under him. He had to force himself to keep standing, as a detective. They all did.
"M-Matsuda, you idiot!" Light snarled. "Who the hell do you think you're shooting at? I would've thought that you of all people would've supported Kira's ideals!"
Turn it off turn it off turn this off—
Unflinching, L said, "That's a piece of the Death Note, isn't it? You had it hidden on you. That's how Higuchi was killed. That's it, then. This case is solved."
Translation: "Light Yagami, thy nuts hath been cracked."
I had to glance over to see what the hell L was talking about, and sure enough, I saw it. A tiny piece of notebook paper was strapped on to a part of the broken watch now on the floor, with writing on it. A name in smeared red.
A name written in blood.
Kyosuke Higuchi.
This isn't happening this isn't happening this is NOT happening—
I had never seen Light look more broken than he did on the floor, face down with his hand and leg bleeding and all. He didn't look at all like the almighty god he wanted to paint himself as, and by the way Misa's face crumbled into pieces at her feet, she probably saw this, too.
I didn't see Kira on the floor. Well, I did, but somehow not as much as I saw Light.
It's funny, in a way, but in another it's not funny at all: in spite of everything he'd done—killing Rem and Watari, how he'd tried to kill me, and more—I felt my hand start to reach out to him, without actually moving from my place. No longer could I think, only feel, though I wasn't sure I could do even that. Any of us probably would've moved, if we hadn't been halted by this awful, guttural sound that started chugging out of his throat.
At first it sounded like crying, but the louder and sharper it got, I realized that it wasn't crying at all.
Light was laughing. Like all this was just the greatest zinger he'd ever heard and nothing else. God, did he have a horrible laugh; he sounded even worse than Higuchi. Every hair on every square inch of my skin prickled when I heard it.
With no assistance whatsoever, Light staggered back on his feet like a wounded animal, snickering, almost cackling, the whole way up. He stumbled a few times on his bad leg, dripping blood everywhere he stumbled, but in the end, he managed to take a wobbly battle stance to look L in the eyes, his hand clutching the other the entire time as he swayed back and forth, as if in a trance. His once neat, tidy hair was now in almost as much disarray as L's had always been, and his eyes—oh Jesus, his eyes, they looked so red and puffy, almost as though he'd been shot in the face.
I'll never forget the way he looked at all of us. From underneath his eyebrows, like some kind of ravenous beast, his breath ragged from his laughing fit. "That's right. I really am Kira," he hissed through clenched teeth, his face polished with sweat as his hair pasted to the frame of his head.
No, Light…
I wanted to speak out against it, but all I could do was open my mouth and leave it hanging, like a dumb trout. What could any of us say at that point, having just had our worst nightmare confirmed before our eyes?
Holding out his hands as though they were stained with blood that only he could see, he gasped, "And I am the god of this new world."
"No, you're not," said L, icy as hell. He held out the notebook like it was garbage. "You're just a pathetic murderer who yielded to his urges and confused himself with a god in trying to justify himself. And this notebook here, is the deadliest weapon on the whole planet."
While I listened to the two of them talk, no, more like condemn each other, that one fucking question came back screaming in my head: What's justice? Where's the justice in any of this? Why won't you help him?
Light spat out L's name like it were a poison he was trying to feed back to him: "L…you have no idea; you hardly ever leave your room. Reality is an innocent person dying because some evil bastard is on the loose, while you sit on your hands and look the other way. Rapists, abusers, thieves...worthless scum, who don't deserve the precious gift of life, who couldn't care less about it. That's the kind of reality in which the law is powerless. I understood in the beginning that it was wrong to kill people. But...this world...this world is rotting, L, with too many rotten people like you! This world can't be fixed any other way! Mankind could have been the greatest race to have ever walked the earth, but instead, we're regressing. We've become less than animals! I am the only sliver of hope mankind has for salvation! Can't you see that?"
Was that Light speaking? Or was that Kira? It felt like watching the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde™, duking it out with each other in the same body, at the same time. Every word he said hit me like a fist to the chest.
Is that really what you wanted to do all along, Light? Protect us? Give us hope? If that's true, then could you tell us when protecting the innocent stopped being as important as ruling over as our god? Was that ever really a priority for you to start with?
If I had gotten the chance to ask, would you even know the answer to that?
That's when Mr. Yagami cut in: "You're right. The law is not perfect. And those who make laws aren't perfect either, which just makes it worse. But…it's a never-ending effort, with the purpose of protecting the people, all people, and the intention of serving justice."
His stoic mask from before flashed more cracks. "What you've done is selfish. No matter what, killing is never an answer to anything! Why can't you see that?"
(If that were true, then why would they be willing to subject Kira to the death penalty when they caught him? Or anyone that's ever been on death row, really?)
Light simply twisted his neck, blindly defiant. "This is nothing but a waste of time. Make all the excuses you want, but deep down you know as well as I do that your system is ineffective. What if something happened to Sayu, or Mom, and the one who did it went free? Look me in the eye and tell me that you wouldn't do what Kira has done."
"That's right! Kira is justice!" Misa testified with the fervor of a Bible-thumper. "My parents can rest in peace because of Kira! Why settle for a system you know doesn't work when you can have one that does?"
Misa, I don't think any of us would want anything to happen to our loved ones. But can getting even change anything? Since that burglar died, has it brought your parents back? Did it really give you closure?
Mr. Yagami cringed. Light turned up his nose as though mutely writing him off as a sniveling coward for his lack of an answer. As far as he was concerned, the rest of us were on the same leaky boat.
"In fact, the only reason we're standing here as we are is because of L's selfishness, and yet you have the nerve to accuse me of such. I'm changing the world for us, but this has been little more than a game to him, a contest to see which of us was more superior. You're all honestly more willing to trust him over me? Useless fools..."
And then began the grand finale to the horror show to end all horror shows. Light started twisting around, like he was looking for someone. "Ryuk…Ryuk, where are you?"
From out of the blue, a grotesque figure dropped from the ceiling: another huge, skinny mother like Rem, but strapped totally in dark leather and feathers, its skin tinged with an even pastier white than L's had ever been. It looked a lot more human than Rem had, but certainly not enough to be called human. Every hair on its wild black mane bristled like the hairs of a cat ready to attack.
Ryuk…!
"Right here," Ryuk purred, his stiff mask-like face frozen into a blue-lipped, crocodile-like grin that literally stretched from ear to earring-adorned ear.
I inched backwards, out of pure instinct, the scream I so desperately wanted to let out clogging my throat. It was a miracle that I didn't faint, this time, for Christ's sake! In a way, though, I kind of wish I had fainted. Then maybe I wouldn't have had to see what was about to happen next.
L, in the meantime, pressed a thumb to his lips, like he'd just seen something fascinating. "The second shinigami," he mumbled. "Can everyone who's touched the notebook see him?"
Everyone nodded, their pistols still raised and ready.
I could see him now, clear as spit. Which meant the notebook L had...it had to be the real thing.
Light toddled over to his acquaintance. "Ryuk, I can still keep you entertained," he said with a smile almost as eerie as Ryuk's was.
He glanced around the room through round, wide, devil-may-care eyes. "Oooh?"
What the hell was Light trying to do?
I got my answer almost as quickly as the question had popped in my head.
"But you have to kill them, first. KILL ALL OF THEM RIGHT NOW, RYUK!"
The world stopped turning under our feet. Misa smirked. Mr. Yagami's face completely crumbled, his once steely composure eroded by raw dismay. "Oh, Light!" He couldn't say much more than that. What can you say when your own son goes and says something like that to your face?
Ryuk's not really just gonna do it, is he?
"What's taking you so long?" Light barked, glaring at his father with the most savage face I'd ever seen on him. "Just write a name down in your Death Note!"
"Hm, just write a name down, huh?"
Oh shit, he is!
Ryuk pulled out a notebook from the holster he had strapped to his almost non-existent waist, his bony claws for fingers fishing out what looked like a pen with an intricate skull pattern from the clumps of crow-black feathers on his shoulders.
Something in the air seemed to snap, right then and there, like a bolt of energy had struck all of us into action mode. Reason had no place here, anymore. Only instinct.
"DROP IT!" shouted Aizawa.
"STOP HIM!" I heard Matsuda cry.
Just like that, the whole room began to explode like a minefield with the sound of pistols firing round after round after round of bullets popping useless holes in the walls as Ryuk continued to write, totally undisturbed. Mogi thrust a bewildered Misa to the floor to shield her from the shootout.
What did I do, in the meantime?
Well…
"Miss Crocker!"
It all happened so fast, I can't recall too many details. I don't know why the hell I ran right up to Light and Ryuk as soon as the bullets started whizzing by, without a doubt one of the most dumbass things I have done to date—if not the most—and definitely not something I would recommend trying out to anyone. Maybe I thought I could stop Ryuk from writing, somehow. I didn't know how to stop him, only that someone needed to stop him. Or maybe I just wanted them to stop firing before they killed somebody. I would not have any more friends die on me. I could not let things end like this!
Or it could've been both. Either way, I was kidding myself.
I do remember someone screeching, "STOP!" They sounded like me. And my ears popping like hell until I could hardly hear much of anything, not even the bullets buzzing by.
I guess I shouldn't have expected anything different when I wound up getting clipped. Another thing I would not recommend, ever.
I didn't realize I'd been hit until this tidal wave of sharp, throbbing pain crashed over me, dragging me to the floor before I could taste any more lead. Jesus Christ, I remember the pain all too well; like nothing I had ever experienced before in my life. It felt as though my left arm had split wide open and all the stuffing was tumbling out. Like all of the emotional pain I'd felt up until that point had suddenly become tangible, physical, my whole consciousness.
I remember clutching my arm, like I was trying to keep the limb from falling off, asking myself why the fuck did my arm hurt so much. When my hand started to feel all hot and wet, I pulled it back for long enough to find my palm stained. With blood.
Believe me, I found nothing heroic about getting plugged, never mind the good old days when I'd daydreamed about it. Again, the movies had lied to me. The last time they would ever lie to me.
Bare feet slapped against the linoleum in what sounded like my direction. Someone asked me, "Miss Crocker, are you all right?" They sounded like L. What a thing to ask.
"I just took a bullet through the arm, asshole! I feel fucking fantastic!" I never knew I was capable of reaching an octave that high. I shouldn't have screamed at him like that, though, I really shouldn't have. That bit had been my fault, not his. But it hurt, it hurt so much. It was a wonder how I could say anything at all, it hurt so much. I started bawling again, harder than I could remember ever bawling before, not only because it hurt like holy hell, but I was scared, too. I might've escaped the notebook, but it'd always been my understanding that that was what people usually did when they got shot. They died, really soon, if not immediately.
By the way the air seemed to have left the room, I honestly felt like I was going to die, there.
Until he crouched down beside me, placing the notebook by his foot. At first, he didn't move any further, like he was trying to assess the situation. Maybe he'd never personally faced something like this either, even in his line of work.
Or maybe it was that before Watari had been there to handle the gory stuff?
In the end, he pulled out this handkerchief from his pocket—he always seemed to have a handkerchief with him. Next thing I knew, L had gathered me up wordlessly in his arms, one hand cradling my head against his shoulder, the other pressing the handkerchief over my arm, squeezing it. Was he trying to stop the bleeding?
I couldn't see his face from my spot on the floor, but I thought I could feel him shiver against me...or that could've been just me. Hell, for a while there, I'd almost forgotten how much I hated him for what he'd done. The pain wouldn't allow me a mite's worth of concentration, not even for the mere fact that L was hugging me, again.
That, and how Light had started up cackling again, louder, shriller, more maniacal than I had ever heard him, or would ever hear him. As soon as I'd hit the ground, the bullets had stopped firing, and now all I heard was that gruesome cackle drumming on my temples. Kira's cackle. I really don't want to think that that was Light cackling. Light was the guy who'd tell me to calm down, all the time.
It didn't help at all that Ryuk had started yukking along with him. Their faces twisted with an inhuman sense of glee, I couldn't tell who had the worst laugh. To tell you the truth, as I squinted at the two of them swaying side by side, howling their heads off like this was the funniest and most deranged joke in the history of jokes, I couldn't tell anymore which was which, who was who.
"It's no use," Light heaved. "Ryuk, have you finished?"
"Uh-huh," Ryuk chuckled. This shinigami was nothing at all like Rem. Maybe shinigami were as different from each other as people were from each other?
I thought I could see Misa's smirk broaden.
"Let me see."
Ryuk held out his open notebook to Light. "Sure thing."
Of course, I couldn't see what Ryuk had put down. But whatever he had written, Light's face shattered as soon as he had read it, like he'd just been socked in the jaw. Misa's, too. Mr. Yagami's, especially.
The world remained frozen in mid-rotation, like it'd never rotate again.
"Sorry, kid," Ryuk said, not sounding all that sorry at all. Almost as though he were mocking Light for the soup he was in. "But you might as well be dead, if you're relying on me."
That could only mean one thing.
Ryuk really had written only one name down.
Just like that, Light's godly façade shattered into pieces around his feet, almost like it'd never existed. "No, w-wait a second! I told you, I'm going to keep you entertained!" The god had become a begging mortal, his pleas falling on deaf ears. Out of pure desperation, he lunged at Ryuk, only to pass right through him before toppling to the floor behind him. Like a fallen angel with his wings permanently clipped. No. Like his wings had been ripped completely out of his back.
While Light twisted around to face him, Ryuk turned his head to grin at him. "Nope. Let's face it, Light: you've lost the game. And I don't wanna lie around waiting until you finally die in prison. Thanks, though. It was fun while it lasted. We eased each other's boredom for quite a while."
"Wh-what are you talking about, Ryuk? The fun's just started!"
Suddenly, the pain in my arm couldn't compare to the pain I saw etched into Light's haggard features, like he was just now coming to the realization that he wasn't at all as omnipotent as he thought. In spite of myself, I started to reach out again, like I could still help him. But L sort of wouldn't let me do even that. The guy had become some kind of anchor.
Did he not realize what was happening to Light, right in front of him?
"Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you: humans who use Death Notes…don't make their way to Heaven or to Hell. So what awaits them after death?" Ryuk asked, like he didn't know the answer himself.
With the widest, toothiest grin he could muster, Ryuk hissed, "Nothing."
Then, it happened. One minute, Light was on his feet, staring at Ryuk through bloodshot eyes. The next, he was on the floor on his side, clawing at his chest and gargling as though trying to say something—plead for his life?—but the words wouldn't leave his throat.
As Misa struggled against Mogi, I heard Mr. Yagami cry, "Light!"
"H-how could you…Ryuk? I can't afford to die now!"
Footsteps thundered along the linoleum with the thunder rolling outside as Mr. Yagami rushed to his son's side, drawing him up into his arms so that his back faced the rest of us.
What's happening? Light? Light! Light, please, don't leave us! As if he hadn't done that a long time ago. Goddamn it, when I'd said I wanted no more people to die—
What had Ryuk meant by "nothing?" It sure as hell didn't sound good.
But hang on. Hadn't L written in the notebook, too? And Misa?
Then…wouldn't that mean…?
By that point, I wasn't sure if I could think or feel. All I had left were my basic senses so I could watch Light die, right in front of me, yet miles away.
"L-Light, wait! Don't go, don't go! You can't leave me! Don't leave us here! We need you! I need you!"
Realizing what was happening to him, and how powerless she was to stop it, Misa began to sob, her struggle against Mogi turning all the more violent. The way she cried and writhed against him, it almost seemed as though she were having a heart attack, herself. Like she had invested so much of her psyche into Light in the time she had known him that she was in-sync with him, suffering every ounce of pain that he was.
Like watching her parents all over again...
"How could this happen?" Light groaned in agony. "All I…all I ever wanted was real justice...the kind of justice you taught me about…you can't let me die like some goddamn CRIMINAL!"
I'll never forget how he squealed, the way he rolled out of his dad's arms and convulsed along the ground like a fish out of water to leave smears of blood in his wake, like all the pain and evil in the world had gathered in his body in that one moment to possess him. The louder he howled, the louder Misa wailed, until all I heard was raw, bitter wailing as Mr. Yagami fought to gather him back in his arms, just to keep the bastard from flailing around, oh God make it stop!
I caught one glimpse of Light's swollen, gaping face as he lay fighting for his life, his face shiny with tears and sweat—first and last time I ever saw him cry—and I could never forget that, either. He never looked more desperate, more frail…
…more human.
Seeing his face hurt me more than all of the bullet wounds in the world.
"L," I found myself pleading, like it'd do me any good. "St-stop this. Help him, you gotta help him…he's dying, L, do something!" I tried to get up myself, but the sonofabitch wouldn't budge. His grip on me tightened, the more I squirmed against him. He still didn't say a word.
What was there to say? Light was beyond anyone's help, now. I'd been kidding myself, again. In just a few more seconds, he...
"K-Kira was real justice," Light choked once he'd quit screaming, his voice blunted with a profound regret that I can't wrap my mind around even to this day. "Dad…pl-please understand…"
Those were his last words, broken and faded as the last breath he ever drew. He wasted it defending Kira. Defending his cause. Begging us to open our eyes to what we were losing. What the whole world was losing.
Then, like a candle flame in the wind...he fell still.
He didn't move again.
He didn't even get to finish what he was trying to say.
Just like that, Kira had abandoned the world, taking Light from us like a robber and leaving the metallic stench of blood in his place. Emptiness fell on us like an avalanche, as the storm outside began to fall. Like it'd lost the will to carry on.
There was no headline for this. Silence had become the most deafening noise any of us had ever heard in our lives.
"Light!"
...
"No..."
...
Mr. Yagami heaved Light's name as if it were a cord wrapped around his neck, tightening with every second he gave us no response. A victim, his own kid, dead in his arms, and he could do nothing for him.
"Did I really make you do this...?"
...
"Light...how could you?" he kept asking weakly, never to get an answer as he held his son closer to him. Rattling him by his slackened shoulder, like that could bring him back to us.
"H-how could you...you little bastard?"
Misa, sapped of every ounce of tenacity in her, finally dropped to her knees. Mascara and rouge ran with her tears, creating a sort of melting mask as her face practically touched the floor. Before long, Mogi and Aizawa were bowing their heads with her, keeping their own grief as tightly bottled up as they could, even in the face of despair.
The last thing I heard, all I could hear, was crying. Misa's. Matsuda's. Mr. Yagami's. My own. The damn tears could've drowned all of us.
…
…
…
…
Where was the justice in any of this?