Disclaimer: I do NOT own Death Note the series!

I couldn't pull myself to move out of bed, even after the noon bell rang. Gathering the sheets about my form, I buried my head beneath the snow white cotton. It was too light to suffocate myself and even if I did, what would that solve?

My breath came shallow and slow, almost as if it hurt to take each breath. Silence set into a sphere around me. Every sound seemed to be smothered as if underwater. When there wasn't silence, Kamen's excessive chuckling invaded my mind in a low drone. The silence was worse. Hallucinations could easily manifest in my head with the silence. I became crazier every passing tick of the clock; imagining Hatori's giggling down the hall, Uwada's soft humming, or my father's hoarse breathing through the walls of the room.

I wrapped the sheets tighter about my form, concealing the stains upon my skin, covering the sins that scared my soul with stained hands. I felt as if the blood would never wash off of my hands. For hours, I could stand at the sink and scrub with all my might, but blood would still remain. Light has told me, many times, that nothing was there; but I still scrubbed, attempting in vain to wash my hands of the matter but to no avail...

Every night Light would lye next to me; it was the only time I was calm and safe from the cruel world. Some nights, his hand would trail along my back, between my shoulder blades and down my spine until resting on my lower back: on the scar. It marred my flesh and burned every other hour. The scar ridiculed me and tormented me to no end. Foolish I was to think that I could ease pain and make the past disintegrate. Foolish I was to think that I could erase the scar.

Tighter, I clutched my head through my hair. The voices! Sometimes they were shouting, laughing. What was there to laugh about! I squeezed my eyes shut upon the light before retreating into the shadows and sheets.

When my heart wasn't slow, almost as if it was only for its own sake that it kept beating, it was erotic and fighting against my rib cage for freedom. Freedom from what?

Now I clutched my chest. Everything hurt! More tears just kept coming. Where were they from?

I know the way Light looked upon me. His eyes would glance over me before turning away and attempting to gather what remained of me in his warm arms. I couldn't stand it. What had I become? Whatever it was, I cried to myself, I could not return back.

"Kino?"

I kept my grip around him. If I released him, the reality that I was alone would only sink in deeper. His hand rested itself on my head, which lay atop his torso. He understood, always had. I felt his hand comb through my dark hair, as if trying to sooth my numb headache.

"Kino?" He called again. This time shifting to see my tear sunk eyes. His picked me up, so I now faced him upright with my tired face between his soothing palms. His brown eyes pierced through mine. He hoped it would reach far enough, but did he know I was too deep to be contacted?

Over the week I had gotten a good deal paler, sickening pale. Worry was clearly seen in his gaze; but I could not register it in my aching head. My mind could barely wrap around the fact that he was kissing me. Sure, my body responded, but I knew my mind was far away.

"Kino," I heard his cracked voice against my forehead. Slowly, my eyes raised to his and my hands cuffed his wrists. "You're not alone..." he whispered to me. "You are not alone," he repeated softly, trying to get through, "I'm here." My grip on his wrists tightened. "I'm here."

Again, tears sinned my eyes and I pressed my head against Light's collar bone. "Then stay," I managed to get out. "Then stay here..."

We kept a grip on one another. I feared that if I let go, he would be gone too; leaving me to pick up my shattered pieces.

Light's arms wrapped around me. If, even for a second, he released his hold, I would vanish into nothing. But he couldn't stay with me forever...

"Nothing lasts forever..."

I felt the toll of the bell vibrate through my very soul. Toll for the soul, for the heart, and for the death.

My breathing slowed and I felt as if Light's heartbeat was becoming farther away. I held onto him; but nothing was in sync anymore, our hearts nor our breathing. Things were moving slower, the rise and fall of his chest, the sound of him calling me. Was he slower or was I?

A shudder escaped my lips as I felt the chill of death approach. He seemed to take his time in penetrating my soul and then delayed himself to allow my heart to fully stop. My grip on Light slackened and I saw his brown eyes in panic and anguish; despite this, I felt calm. I knew this time would have to come someday, but for it to come before so many plans... I did not put up a fight nor did I attempt to regain the fading strength.

"Kino..."

Light's gaze imprinted itself in my last memory. I really wish they would have looked like they had before, instead of being threatened by tears. Tears? Faintly, I felt a drop trickle onto my temple, one of the last feelings I had. He was crying for me...

"Kino..."

I felt my eyes close, allowing the darkness to enter my mind and my soul to be sucked down into the abyss.

"Kino..."

"Hitomori, Kagura (Mihari, Kino)
November 12th, 2008
12:05
Broken heart"

The note had been written a week before hand. Of course a shinigami did not feel one once of remorse from his actions, but disappointment hindered his rotten soul. He had expectations, high expectations. I had fulfilled them, but instead of creating new ones, I had taken a different path; one that he did not expect. I fell in the Hell known as Love.

That is what really led Kamen to his decision. Disappointment and fear... Treason never lacks reason.

He was disappointed that I had not continued my actions. He was set in his disillusionment that I would then pursue a greater path of death: to maybe take out the entire yakuza system, slaughtering them all for their very existence. But no... Instead I had found someone who understood and turned me away from the death paved path onto a heavenly lightened one. No longer, did I have the drive to kill for, solely, my own selfish reasons but for another.

Kamen began to see something in me. Every time he looked upon me, he saw the essence of a creature he once knew. A creature that had died sometime ago. A monster that his once-human heart beat for: Enko. This, alone, he feared; as gods of death cannot fear for much. They may fear for others, but very rarely themselves.

Enko was a fallen angel, once human as well. Her soul had been tainted by a human devil, so she was condemned to continue her time in the world of a lower status: The shinigami realm. Impossible as it seems, Kamen actually found his heart in her, the traitorous beast; but would not dare fallow through with his disgustingly human emotions. Hadn't they disintegrated eons ago?

She killed herself, giving her time to a prodigy that would lose everything in a fire, in no way her fault. Funny, how she thought it would be amusing to corrupt the mind of a single innocent girl to change the world. But fate had other plans, as the girl had proved nothing. Everything she had done was amusing to the immortals, but it always seemed to slip out of the mind a second later, going unnoticed...

Fate had a funny hand in its idea of fun. No one expected it and when things finally start to settle, it flips the lights off and changes the game. Fate made things just pointless...

I found myself in a dark hallway, walking away from the light and into the darkness. People were calling out my name, my family? But my feet kept on their intended path, the path I had paved long ago when I first wrote a name in the Death Note. I was on my way to neither Heaven nor Hell.

My name vibrated off the corridors, this time a different voice, a pained one that was still locked in the world of the living. I would be waiting for him... Tears would have been shed if I had anymore left, but there were none and I kept walking on to forever remain unnoticed...

Thank you for reading! I finally got this posted up!

I am proud for finishing something, but I will not comment on the end. I know it is not 'happy' but would you really expect happy to be a theme of the series? It has been a great run, and I am sorry that this is over. No special thank you's, because I really thank all of you, with my whole heart, for reading.

Please tell me what you think of the ending, I would appreciate it! Even if it is criticism, I would like to hear it.

-Sin

P.S. Did I not mention that there is an Epilogue?