Scourge's Note: Long time no see again, folks. Thanks to those of you who're still reading after all this time. Reviews, as always, are much appreciated and hopefully responded to (although our email alerts have been funky lately; not sure if it's Yahoo or Fanfiction net). Also, we were almost to an average of two reviews per chapter, 'n we were really happy about that. Alas, we haven't yet reached that number. It'd be cool if we did by the time the story winds down.

Enough of my rambling. March onwards!

WE WEAR THE MASK

More sinned against than sinning, please
You're not above my suspicions
You're lamb and serpent just like me
It's more than just superstition
Then suddenly, I'm finding out that it's me you'll be taking down with you

-A Charming Spell, Splashdown

It was said that Death wore three faces.

Love, which drew eyes to the world below so they might lean in and see all that they could not have. Love that watched and coveted, love that changed what should have been apathetic. Love was cruel, and never betrayed her secrets. They sensed nothing, for they could not see the hands of death; they could not even see the dust of what should have been their reaper.

Boredom, the poison that had sunk into their bones and their hearts until even their hands stopped moving. The rot had infested their world for so long they could hardly feel it—all but the whispers that destroy their minds. Slowly, they crumbled into dust as the names moved past them, beyond them, until they were indistinguishable from the sand of the desert.

But death had a third face, ineffable and unseen, his eyes upon the gods of death just as their eyes watched the humans. They could not see this face; they could not see through his mask, for he came in many forms, always changing, always shifting beneath their gaze, until he had them tangled in his puppet strings. His name was the whisper of the wind, the fire in a dying human's eyes.

He was their god of fate, god of consequences, god of reflected sunlight. His face was no more than a porcelain mask, lost amid a sea of one thousand human faces. His shadow stretched across the face of both worlds, the wingless angel, the blind Shinigami, the reaper of the dammed.

(Even the fledgling Shinigami, arrogant and proud as they were, knew to fear their own gods of death.)

The third face of death was also the god of time. The Shinigami realm on its own was timeless, but Light was time. It was the passing of days and years that aged humanity so terribly. He controlled the numbers above the humans' head, dwindling away into nothingness as humanity reached closer into eternity.

But he had not always been the face of Death; before Death, he had been a watchmaker with a human face of his own.

(Here, Ryuk would pause for effect—or if not for effect, then inspiration—to continue. It was hard coming up with such bold-faced lies, but soon enough, the next sentence or two would come to him and he would continue.)

Humanity abandoned him when he made and lost a bargain with the god of humans. A child at the time, he had looked up from the gears of the watch on his table, his eyes watching god.

(Ryuk never knew what color to call those eyes, for no color ever seemed to stick—it was always evading him.)

Light was in need of glory, God was in need of a reaper—but the human had never imagined glory such as that. He traded his name for the Notebook, his watch for an immortal's scarlet eyes, his life for the dust that would greet his bones at the end of the road. Betrayed by his own desires, by his own expectations, he wandered, the wingless angel, between worlds… always planning, always scheming, for his eyes were always watching god.

Though if asked, they were never quite sure what he had asked for, or what the god had given him. They only knew the emptiness in his eyes, the stillness of his face, the dust trapped between the creases in his gloves, and the cruelty of his smile.

The third face of death had his secrets.

There once was a Shinigami named Lux. One day, he came upon Deth's third face. There was nothing in the desert but the memories left forgotten by gods of death, so naturally, upon the bones of the great beasts should the human face of death be found.

"You must be death," said Lux, for he was very clever. He watched as the human nodded, his hands fiddling with the gears of a watch, a smile upon his porcelain lips. But in a battle of wits, Deth always wins, for he is older than the earth and sky, and he was there before the rot.

"What brings you to the Shinigami Realm? Surely you aren't foolish enough that you take a life, take my life?" Lux laughed, his bones creaking with the effort of the sound, the sand beneath his feet rustling at the noise.

"Then you must be Pride." Deth's third face smiled, moving to face the Shinigami, his fragile human legs swinging beneath the ivory bones of the forgotten beasts. The wind began to whisper and in the distance a faint light could be seen.

"They say no creature can outwit Death." It was a challenge that Lux spoke of, watching the human-garbed death with his own scarlet eyes. "But then, I suppose you have never come across the likes of me before."

"The clever do not try." The silver watch fell from his pockets to the sea of earth below, the corpses of forgotten Shinigami who had seen his eyes once before and never lived to tell the tale. "For a gambler cannot always pay his debts."

"But what could kill me? I have no interest in humanity, I have eluded boredom; death has no power over me." Pride opened his arms to face what storm death might throw at him. Deth cocked his head, analyzing the Shinigami before revealing his demon's smile.

"Then I bring you a gift." Deth motioned to the watch that had fallen from his pocket; the silver glinted in the faint light of what was to come and what had already past.

"I bring you time, for down there." He pointed below him, towards humanity and their toil. "They have far too much; they squander it, but an immortal such as yourself might have some use for it." In the Shinigami's hand, it looked tarnished—an inexpensive gift, surely, little more than human rubbish that could easily have been thrown away.

"It is an expensive gift; do not take it lightly," cautioned Deth with a smile. A carrion crow perched upon the bones of the dead; the dust caught innocently between the folds of his clothes, the ground bones of the dead.

It weighed light as a feather in his hand, and Lux forgot the gift he had won. He had forgotten that Deth could be patient when it suited him. He watched as his fellow gods of death drifted in and out of life, falling to love, falling to gambling, to the ever-present boredom. And somewhere, the forgotten watch began to tick.

He felt the world pressing down against him, heavier with each moment. The silver watch grew more tarnished by the instant; the hands ticked away so slowly. Lux tried to destroy it. He dropped it in the human realm, but it came back to him—for it was his gift, and humans had time enough already.

He felt the ticking like a heartbeat in his skull, always pounding, moving in that eternal dance—a waltz upon the midnight hour, until it stopped completely. Deth's gloved hand awaited him. "I've come for your debts," he said, his white gloves black with the dust of all those who had dared to oppose him.

"But it was a gift, you said it was a gift!" Lux cried, throwing the watch at Deth, watching as it landed in his outstretched hand.

"I never said it came without a price. You made a gamble and you lost; I've come for your debts." Deth wound the watch with precision, blowing the dust out of the gears so that it might come back to life.

"My debts—I owe you nothing!"

"Everyone owes me something. Even you, proud as you are, owe me your world. You thrive on the death of others, and you yourself called me death; you live upon my work. Who are you to deny me my wishes? I made your Notebook, I fashioned your bones, I wrought your still heart. You have not the will to deny me, for even Pride falls to the hand of Light."

It was said that Deth conquered even the proudest of kings, for he could take their world from them, and without time, they were merely dust in the creases of his gloves.

He sat at the end of all roads, and that was where she found him, the human child who attempted to steal his heart. He polished his watch as he waited for her; the incessant heartbeat of the gears fluttered in his gloved hand, not covered in blood but a fine dust unseen by human eyes. For humans could not even see the bones of their reapers, blind as they were.

"I know you from somewhere," she said to him, watching the way he gazed off into the dusk, the red of the bleeding sun trapped within his eyes. For death was perpetually dying—he was constantly filled with the light of the world's end, the reflected light of the sun.

"I was there at your beginning—" he said, turning toward her, the red glow lost in his eyes as he held out his gloved hand towards her, "—and I am here at your end. Are you coming?"

"No, I don't want to go yet, I can't go yet, I have things to do…" She began to trail off, backing away from his eyes and his outstretched hand, backing off into the world of the living, the world of true sunlight.

"It's not fair, is it? But it's your time, and I can't wait for you to make up your mind."

"Please, let me say goodbye—to my family, to my friends."

"Everyone wants to say goodbye. Why should you get the chance?"

"I need to live!"

"What for?"

She paused, thinking, searching, and finally settling upon what human frailty she had always clung to.

"For love. Surely death himself has loved, has longed for love. Surely you can understand the need to hold someone close. You must understand—you are human, after all."

She reached towards death's cold heart and found only the abyss, for his heart had long since fallen to dust. Mortal hearts were a frailty he could not afford.

"What on earth gave you that idea?"

"Dear Jesus, you think he couldn't get any creepier." Matt shivered, searching in his pockets for loose change that might buy him cigarettes. Marcus, who had the unfortunate job of making sure Matt didn't start any brawls, shrugged.

"I mean, damn, he's like the antichrist 'round this place. Look at that whore over there—she's been giving us the evil eye for the past ten minutes. And nobody here knows what a fucking cigarette is, Jesus Christ." Matt waved a gloved hand in the air, signaling towards a vender who was indeed giving them the evil eye, pointing to the cigarette in his mouth and rubbing his fingers together. Marcus felt like drinking, but then Marcus always felt like drinking. Standing next to Matt, he really felt like drinking.

"See what I mean? Can't even get a pack of smokes. It's all his fault, the bastard. He doesn't even come and I still can't get my fucking cigarettes."

The vender continued to ignore Matt with almost as much skill as members of Light's A-team (as much as they hated to admit it, it truly was Light Yagami's A-team). Marcus was impressed. Of course, that still didn't make him any happier that he got stuck babysitting the fourteen year-old. He swore the straws were rigged. He always managed to get stuck with the red-haired punk.

"Maybe it's a sign from God that your breath reeks," mumbled Marcus, watching as Matt flipped off the vender and proceeded to check the next store for cigarettes and/or porn. Oh, the joys of watching a fourteen-year-old drunkard were growing by the minute.

"What'd you say?"

"I said, you're not black."

Matt picked up a magazine, flipped through the pictures. He sighed when he couldn't find anything in the least entertaining. (The porn industry, surprisingly, had been on the rise after the masked apocalypse. For some reason there was a devoted section of the population that enjoyed masked erotica—it fit nicely into the BDSM section).

"Well, you know he's a fucking whack job. Hell, he tried to blow your brains out."

Marcus shrugged, remembering the incident a little differently than Matt described it. Perhaps 'blowing brains out' was a bit too graphic to describe the situation. But yes, he supposed it worked, in a metaphorical sense.

"You're right, Matt, he's nuts." Marcus sounded defeated, remembering the look in those golden eyes. The venders knew, the whole world knew—that's why they were afraid of them, that's why they whispered when the A-team passed through, that's why they stared at them as if they were monsters.

As if they were Light Yagami himself.

"Just get your crap so we can get out of here." Marcus threw his change towards the vendor, dragging Matt and his poorly photographed porn with him. He was tired of the world staring at him, not as if he were a rat—he had always been a rat—but as if he were something worse.

"Hey, man! Don't be an asshole!" Matt struggled back, thinking of the cigarettes he had not managed to replenish and the beer he had forgotten to purchase.

But Marcus wouldn't listen this time. He had seen his own reflection far too many times in strangers' eyes. No, he wouldn't come back again. It wasn't worth the memories.

"Why are you here?" Light Yagami asked his reflection. His golden eyes caught upon the silver of his dog-tag, the name inscribed deep within its flesh. He often found himself staring at those characters, wondering which human they were describing. Were they describing what he had been, the wounded child? Or were they words of something else? Was that the name of his stone-eyed reflection?

"Because I was broke, and the military seemed like a good enough option." The dark-haired woman did not attempt to hide her evasion of the question, but then, the raven wasn't always known for its honesty.

"But where will you go?" He dropped the dog tag from his hands, feeling the chain rub against his neck as it swung back and forth. "When the twilight has ended?" He did not turn to see her, for hers would be a pale resemblance of a face, a mask of plaster.

"Back home, I guess. America, maybe. Japan, maybe. I'll get there when I get there." But the watch was ticking away in his pocket; the silver watch with black arrows was ticking away…

"Do you find it hard to look at me?" This time he did turn to her, away from his memories and thoughts, to see the fear in her eyes. She did fear him, he knew—he could see it—and yet she stayed with him to keep guard from the shadows and demons in his amber eyes.

"No." Brief was best, for it left no room for doubt. No room for her eyes to trace his scars, to see the blood coating the grey of his uniform, to watch his bitter eyes. She saved herself from the torture of having to see.

"The others do, all of them." He paused remembering the last expression he saw in the doctor's eyes, the pen knife tangled in his hand. "They run from me—they run from my scars and my pale skin." Here, his gloved hand reached tentatively up to trace one of the many pale scars that decorated his face.

"And I know why they do: Because mine is the only human face left in the world. I am humanity. I am humanity's torn, worn, deformed face, and they hate me for it."