A/N: Spam!fic for numisma, for her birthday. It was written in a series of comments, hence the formatting, and I've decided to preserve that. Changed a few words here and there, but the story is generally intact. Enjoy!
Word
count: 2, 699
Post
series, speculation about what happens to users of the Death Note.
Spoilers for c58.
---
ReplayHe woke up somewhere dark.
He could move his fingers, but he couldn't feel them.
He could turn his head, but he couldn't see.
For a few moments, he was unsure whether or not his eyes were open or closed; everything looked black, if you could define this lack of sight with a colour. He shifted his eyeballs in his sockets, but whether or not they actually moved, he could not tell.
He couldn't feel anything.
"Am I in Hell?" he asked.
He had not expected an answer, but one came back to him.
"No," a deep voice answered. "You are not."
"Then," he asked, "Am I in Heaven?"
And the voice replied, "No."
He thought about that for several long minutes, wondering what it meant. He wanted to ask what his name was-- and though he couldn't be sure he had a name at all, he wanted to check anyway.
He licked his lips, but they didn't feel wet.
An eternity later (well, it might have just been a few seconds) he tried again.
"Where am--" but he never finished, and his voice got lost and he disappeared, and he didn't know what was going on and where he was going, and if he felt panic, he wasn't sure where it was coming from, because...
---
His name was Alison White, and he was walking along a street in New York, dressed in business attire and half-swinging his expensive, rhinestone studded purse.
Inside the purse, was a knife.
It had been washed clean with the liquid soap from the bathroom, and wrapped in brown paper towels. It smelled faintly of lemons.
He (or was it she?) had just committed a crime.
And no one knew.
She giggled a little, giddy, caught between fear and accomplishment.
It wasn't the first time.
But the first time, the police had to let her go, because they had no proof. Her face was all over the newspapers for a few days, but the world forgot about her soon after that, and she went back to being invisible and innocent, soon enough.
She smiled a little more. A passerby on the street, affected by her good mood, smiled infectiously back.
She wished she could take her knife out and look at it.
She started to unzip her purse.
But all of a sudden... she couldn't breathe.
Something was... it was crushing her heart! She fell to the ground, gasping, pain exploding in her shoulders and jaws. She clutched at her chest.
"Somebody... help..." she croaked, trying to fight the tightness in her jaw.
Her elbow hit the ground first. She vaguely registered people running to her side. Someone shouted, "Ambulance!"
Pain, panic, and asphyxiation; then, everything disapp--
He woke up somewhere dark.
He rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck, but his neck didn't crack, and he didn't feel his shoulders move.
Some time later, he asked (though he couldn't feel his mouth forming the words), "Am I in Heaven?"
"No," another answered.
"Am I in Hell?"
"No."
He couldn't feel himself at all. He curled and uncurled his toes.
He decided to ask another question, some time later.
"What am I?" he asked.
And the voice answered, "A killer."
It took him a moment to register, then, "Why?"
And the voice replied, reverberating all around him, speaking right into his soul, wherever that was, "Because you chose to be."
---
He woke up in a prison.
He felt damp, and filthy.
His clothes were unwashed, and they stuck to him in uncomfortable places, wet and sticky and disgusting.
He wasn't used to such ill hygiene.
The prison walls were clean, but the floor was dusty and crumbly, covered with bits of dirt and insects. The air smelled mouldy and sour, but it wasn't until he dropped himself onto his cot, with arms behind his head, that he realized the awful scent came from himself.
He was here, because he'd done many unforgivable things.
He didn't like to think about them. He hated talking about them more.
Not because he was afraid of what his own hands had done, but because they reminded him of being caught.
Humiliating. Masaaki Shirami, a good, upstanding citizen, was arrested, right in the middle of the street.
In front of everyone.
At that moment, he wanted the world to burn.
He imagined the apartments spewing flames into the sky, with rich shadowy smoke tainting the blue sky.
But... enough. He'd daydreamed this too many times already.
Suddenly, something changed.
He wasn't sure what came over him. It was like a dream... Shirami watched himself from a distance. He bit into his finger.
Bit hard, until the skin broke, and he tasted blood.
An image was fixated in his mind.
A five-pointed star, inscribed in a circle.
His heart jolted in excitement. The same excitement that prompted him to burn those families. He chuckled a little. Good times.
And drew a picture on the prison wall.
His heart battered wildly. He couldn't identify this high-strung emotion: was it fear, or was it joy?
It didn't really matter. He liked it.
It took Shirami several minutes to register the pain.
He'd been captivated by his stained finger.
Something... cutting...
Across his lungs.
He felt sick, and collapsed to the ground. Shirami lay gasping on his back, shuddering.
Watery vomit dripped out the side of his mouth.
His eyes, half-lidded, fluttered.
And the last thing he saw before slipping into a dreamless sleep was the star, inscribed in a circle.
He woke up somewhere dark.
This time, he did not bother trying to move his arms, or his shoulders, or his lips or his ears.
He just thought about which question to ask.
Finally, he said, "Where am I?"
And the voice said in answer, "You are neither in Heaven,"
"Nor in Hell."
Then there was silence. Or rather, a lack of sound.
He was in a void, he realized, but a void cannot be defined, so where was he?
He repeated his question, because he wanted an answer, and he didn't like to be left in the dark.
"Where am I?" he inquired.
He thought his words might have been more forceful this time, but he was unsure, since he couldn't hear them.
He hated not knowing.
But the voice, crackly, low, and cynical, did not answer his question.
"You are being punished," the voice said.
"You are dead."
And then the blackness swallowed him up again.
This must have been the millionth time. Exhausted, he just lay limp and followed the nothing, like the tides, swishing in and out.
---
He was known as L.
In this room, he was called Ryuuzaki.
He had all but forgotten his real name.
It didn't matter anyway.
His thumb was moist against his lips.
There was a crash.
"Watari?" his voice sounded to loud to his own ears, and he listened, desperately, for any sound.
His heightened senses felt those in the room draw near, clamouring around him, trying to figure out what happened.
"Watari!"
The screen, white and stark and painfully bright, blinked at him.
All Data Deletion, it said.
It took him less than a second to figure out what had happened.
The only question was, who...?
"Everyone," L said, "The reaper--"
Bang. Something... a great pressure in his chest. He toppled over, spoon still caught between two fingers, which were quickly growing weak.
He was having a heart attack.
His thoughts continued to race.
He felt, faintly, someone's hands pressing into his body.
They weren't gentle at all, though they should have been, against a body that was dying.
Ryuuzaki gasped.
He knew he was dying.
He looked up, and saw the face of Light Yagami, who was smiling. The lights above seemed to surround him like a dreamy halo.
He might look like God... but he isn't, Ryuuzaki thought.
---
He woke up somewhere dark.
He twitched his finger, and fluttered his eyelids, but he didn't feel them move.
"Was that my punishment?" he asked.
He imagined his own reflection, smiling at him, reveling in his, no, Ryuuzaki's death.
But he had been L, for a moment, there.
He couldn't feel his cheeks.
"How does it feel to die?" the voice replied, sarcastically.
It chuckled.
He said nothing, unwilling to be goaded.
He tried to turn over, but nothing changed.
This place had no up and down.
"Do you remember what I told you, in the beginning?" the voice asked. "When we first met?"
He either shook or nodded his head. Probably both. He wasn't sure.
He sat. It might have been successful, or it might not. This place had no ground.
"What do you want with me?" he asked.
Loud, raucous laughter, from every direction, battered him.
"What do I want?" the voice asked. He chuckled to himself.
"I don't want anything," he said.
It sounded like he was smiling as he said it.
"You did this to yourself," he continued. "I'm just here to watch."
"I'm bored, and there's nothing to do." A pause.
"Don't you agree?"
No, he thought.
"You'll figure it out soon enough. You were quite intelligent in your previous life," the voice murmured.
"Still, you turned out to be a helpless human, in the end."
"Just like all the others."
He shifted a little, eyeballs spinning. Nothing. Nothing!
Why couldn't he see anything? Why couldn't he leave this place?
He didn't want to die again.
"You were very close," the voice mused, oblivious to his blind, blind panic. "But humans were never meant to be gods."
"Stop," he said. "Stop this."
The voice (so cold, so heartless) just laughed at him. Uncaring.
"You can't."
"Why?" he asked, though he seemed to know the answer to this question.
"Because this is what you chose," the voice replied.
"Did I know that things would be like this?" he asked, wishing he could sense his lips moving. That is, if they were moving at all.
"No."
Silence. He did not get an answer.
He repeated himself, three times, four times, five times, adding more intensity, rephrasing himself...
But the voice still did not respond. He had an odd feeling the speaker had lost interest.
He tried to paddle through this murkiness, willed himself to experience his fingertips, and become aware of them, but he got nowhere.
Then he remembered what the voice had said before. In his blunt, emotionless way.
"You're a killer."
He crossed his legs, but they either did not cross, or he simply couldn't feel them touching.
He tried to touch his face.
Of course, no contact registered.
In this space between the realism of a dream and the truth of reality, he realized something.
Suddenly, he heard the dry voice again.
"So you know, do you?"
"What?" he asked.
"Why you are here. Have you figured it out yet?"
He mused a little to himself. He wasn't sure. Suspicion, formless and slippery, slid into his thoughts.
"Did you kill me?" he asked.
The voice cried Ho! in surprise, then answered, "Yes, yes I did."
"Because I was a killer?" he demanded.
"No, because you were a human. A human that pretended he was god."
That answer struck a sore spot with him, for a reason he couldn't identify.
"I don't like dying," he said, instead.
The voice laughed at him.
"No one does."
The one answering him continued. "But you didn't think about that. You forgot you were just one of them, no better, and no worse."
"And that is why you will suffer. Until you have felt the pain of every single person you have killed."
"Who made up that rule?" he asked. "I don't deserve that."
"You are not the one to decide," the voice replied, smoothly, sounding amused.
"Then who decides?" he asked. "You?"
The voice didn't answer.
It just laughed, coldly, and cruelly, and he found it insulting.
He wanted an answer.
And he didn't want to die, again.
He hated being left in the dark. He deserved to know. His mind yearned for something like an answer. And it sought for a way out.
"Who was I?" he asked then, though he knew.
The voice did not humour him. He chose to torture him slowly, and just laughed harder, sounding rather like he was choking on something. Or perhaps he had hiccups.
"You know," the voice said, thoughtfully, "You are not in Heaven, and you are not in Hell."
"There is no point in wondering why things are happening this way.
They just are."
"There's no point in trying to escape, either," he continued. "You cannot. Those are the rules."
The rules. He racked his brain for ideas. There had to be some way around the rules. There had to be some way. Perhaps he could fool this god, this teacher, whomever this person was, that spoke to him and laughed at him and made him feel like an idiot.
"I didn't create those rules," he went on. "They just are."
"And not even you can slip by them."
Who are you?" he asked, squirming. He wished that he could see himself, see the other, that spoke to him. Whose words seemed to enter right into his being, without going through his ears.
"That doesn't matter," the other replied.
"Who I am, does not matter to you. It won't help you."
"Because... I'm simply bored."
"And you're just a dead human who made a mistake."
"What mistake? I don't make mista--" he began to protest, incited to anger, struggling against nothing and himself and whatever was keeping him in this light-less place, when his consciousness spun again, and he felt limbs, but they weren't his, nor were the eyes he could suddenly see out of his own.
---
He was in his house, cooking some ramen for dinner.
His wife. His children. His parents.
All dead.
And somehow, the world, with its sadistic sense of humour, he'd been left with everything but the lives of those he loved. He had millions of dollars. He owned two houses. He had everything.
He even had freedom.
Because the police had suspected him, and he'd nearly been arrested for a crime he didn't commit. But he was furious that he'd nearly been accused; couldn't they feel his pain? He'd shouted and screamed and protested inside, tears burning holes in his stomach. He spoke the truth. His sorrow was real. How could they accuse him? How could they?
But because of insufficient evidence, they could not throw him in prison.
Nor could they find the true killer.
He did not feel lucky for being the only one allowed to live.
He ladled soup into his bowl, fingers smarting from the heat of the liquid. He had little appetite, but he needed to eat.
His sister refused to talk to him. No one in his family trusted him.
His chopsticks clacked.
They all thought he did it. But there had been no evidence. It hurt. Akira slammed his hand on the table, and the noodles clamped in his chopsticks slid out and fell with a plop into his bowl. He didn't do it.
Akira didn't kill his family.
It took a few seconds for him to realize where the pain was coming from.
At first, he just thought it was because the noodles were too hot, and were inciting a strange reaction from his body.
His breastbone suddenly felt like it was on fire. Akira choked. And the noodles burnt his tongue, causing saliva to pool into his mouth.
He was lightheaded, and his skin felt cold and damp and icy. Abruptly, he lost his breath.
And Akira slid onto the table, eyes wide and crazed, terrified. Something awful was going to happen to him.
What had he done wrong? Why was God doing this to him?
He gasped. He didn't kill them! "I didn't," he moaned.
Please, he begged.
His arm knocked into his bowl. It skidded across the table, then finally toppled off and shattered on the ground. Too late, he remembered who was punishing the evildoers. This was...
Kira's... doing...
Kira...
---
He woke up somewhere dark.
This time, he asked no questions.
He waited.