I.
Light had never been able to fully figure out from Ryuk if the nothingness he'd be consigned to after death was something specific to the fact that he'd used the Death Note, or if it was the similar fate of everyone. Was there an afterlife, or a cycle of rebirth that he was being cheated of? Perhaps it didn't really matter. Light had been sure, from the moment he first used the note, that he'd signed away his immortal soul to hell. To be told that, instead, this world would be it for him—was almost a relief. It was certainly invigorating.
He is Kira. He is God. Why not? If power over the fates of humans, and enough reverence, is what makes someone a deity, he has already been deified. On the streets they whisper his name. They fear his swift judgment. They worship him, praise him, seek to appease him. Though publicly he is nothing more than a brilliant prodigy, a detective, the youngest member of the Kira taskforce. Though he is L.
The last time he saw L was three days after L's death, and Light had not slept for three days. He'd been at the keyboard in the previous headquarters, the vast blue rooms glowing with the greenish light of expensive monitors, awash in a sea of wealth and precision. All his, now; but he had to be careful. He had not slept, was still searching fruitlessly for Kira leads, so the others would whisper of his dedication to the cause, to his grief in losing L; so not one remaining doubt would ever flicker through their mind about his true nature. They did not notice now, too lost in their own grief. They would talk of it later. Light did another search, blinked, stifled a yawn—no; he couldn't look uninterested. Reached for a cup of coffee. It had grown cold, sludgy. He put it back down, stared aimlessly at his shaking hands for a minute, and back at the time on the screen to realize it had been five minutes. Blinked. Put his hands to the keyboard, felt the strange pull, a tingling rush of phantom cold, as though plunging himself into L's skin, moving through the spaces where L used to move. He turned his head and saw L watching him from the other seat. His breath stuck in his throat.
He's come back to haunt me, the thought burrowed itself through him, frantically. No. The most plausible explanation was that there was no life after death, not for anyone; the most plausible explanation was that, after three days of no sleep and too much caffeine, he was hallucinating. Nobody else had reacted. Light stared at L and waited for him to speak, but L didn't speak. Just watched him. He looked like he might have any other day, toes curled up under him, back hunched, thumb playing fretfully with his lip—only his eyes were shadowed, lost under the dark fall of his hair, like tunnels, hollow and empty. Light took a breath and resolved to ignore it. Turned back to his keyboard. Still, could not help but sneak a glance back eventually—and the figment was gone. It must have been relief, that almost physical sensation that knocked the breath and concentration from him. If relief had never before screwed the knot tighter in his stomach, he disregarded it.
The last obstacle had been overcome. His reign could truly begin. For the first time, he felt more like Kira than Light. This would not complete until his father's death, with only a few hiccups along the way. But the process was both necessary and inevitable.
The urge to laugh, a sick triumph, had been building in him all throughout L's funeral. He wore the mask of a grieving friend delicately, as though any wrong move would send it tumbling; he resorted, at last, to biting through his own lip, finding comfort in the iron tang of blood. There had been no thoughts then. No grand plans, but only the screw pulling tighter inside his stomach, a winding up beyond the point of reason. When the mourners had left L's gravesite, it erupted. Euphoria. A scream he couldn't call back. I win! His legs had given way, he was kneeling on the freshly-packed earth, distinctly conscious that he was separated from L's decaying body only by six feet. A familiar feeling, like the tug of chains. Moving despite himself, like something made only from flesh, a wild creature. Shaking, or being pulled, or hurtling himself forward, arms trembling, hips pistoning forward in the haze of his orgasmic triumph. He was breathing as though air was in short supply, greedy, he was grinning a rictus as he threw his triumph in L's face. Almost expecting a rebuttal. But the empty air, the lack of answer, was more of a rebuttal than any words. His smile fell.
There was no more game, of course. He'd forgotten. What remained was only the work. What remained was his reward.
II.
Light hadn't liked the flowers, Misa thought, looking at the spilled fall of them at her feet. One was crushed, its delicate stem twisted under Light's boot. He'd shoved her, and the glass vase had gone flying, and there was a trickle of blood across her arm. Stupid man. She would have to explain herself at work again. He wasn't here anymore. Had stormed out of the apartment. That, she regretted. But it was valentines day, and she'd wanted to bring flowers, if only for herself. She knelt down, picked up the pieces and shook her head wryly. There was a way to look at even this. She turned one of the broken shards, peeked through until it made a prism of the small room, a riot of color out of the flowers, like the wild overabundance of a music video. She smiled.
(L would have liked the flowers you brought), the thought sneaked its way into her head like a creeping spider, and sat there. Misa scowled, dropped the glass and watched it shatter even more. She went looking for a broom.
/
She covered the thin scratch with makeup, so nothing disturbed her porcelain illusion. With her brush, she created a goddess from herself, a cute, fun-loving nymph. She sold it every day, and they fawned over her. But the only goddess she was was Kira.
A few tears sneaked into her eyes, and Misa grabbed for a tissue so she wouldn't damage her mascara. It didn't matter if Light was cruel to her, if he pushed and hit her. He was only doing what she'd given him permission for from the very start. Use me, do anything to me. But it meant he wasn't happy. And if he wasn't happy, she wasn't happy. She didn't know what more she could do for him; he already ruled the world.
She wished they could take a vacation. Forget about the Death Notes just for a week or so. Go to Paris. Be the kind of couple people on the street would stare after enviously. She wanted tourist photos on her walls and gaudy trinkets. She wanted to be far enough she wouldn't feel Kira's touch.
But Kira was the blood in her own veins. Kira was the heart that beat in her own chest. When she looked at her soft hands with their nude-painted nails, she looked at the hands of a killer. The killer. Sometimes her godhood was so heavy, it seemed to swallow her whole.
/
(The first time she'd realized how things would be was when they'd all moved out of the previous headquarters, when she and Light had first begun to share an apartment.) She was busy with her work, he with his. But his could last long into the night, and did in those early days. She'd come home from the lights and the glamour to emptiness. Taken off her shoes and was faced with a silent apartment. "Light?" she looked at the coat-rack. Not home yet. She was alone. Entirely alone for the first time since her kidnapping, since L had taken her without a warrant on suspicion of being Kira. The realization slammed into her ribs. The elusive sounds and figures her starved senses had amused themselves with, in the dark silence, had almost reformed from the halls of memory. It was as though she was back there, immobilized, with nothing to do but speak and speak without hearing her own words, just feeling the movement of her mouth and knowing someone was watching, someone must be. She was beautiful, young; she was a girl. Someone was always looking. They had to be, or she was alone. It would explain why she'd been immobilized with straps across her chest, over her breasts; a crazy fan. Someone she could bargain with. She could promise him sweet things, suffering or sex. She wasn't a killer. She wasn't stuck in some government hole for the rest of her life—she wasn't.
It was terror, despair, petrifying. The sharp scent of her own urine had recalled her. She'd wet herself. It had happened often down in that hole. Then efficient hands would take and clean her, touching her minimally with gloves and wipes, saying not a word. She'd forgotten. (Humiliation had always been the prime tool in L's toolbox.) Oh, what did it matter? It was over now. Even if she was still shaking with terror, even if the sound of the shower when she ran into the bathroom and turned it on was the only thing keeping her from screaming. She'd gone to therapy after her parents' death. She was rich, she could afford it. She'd stopped when she'd found it trite and useless. All about moving on, nothing about revenge. Misa wished she could go again, if only to stop the way, when she pulled off her clothes and climbed under the steaming water, she couldn't stop shaking. But it was out of the question. Her secrets were too dangerous; she couldn't even explain why she feared emptiness, and silence, and the lack of people so much her throat seized up.
She hadn't realized.
For so long, she'd always, at least, had Rem.
/
In the evenings Light crawled into bed beside her. This was the agreement that had been negotiated on. He was her boyfriend, he slept beside her. Occasionally he would fuck her, rough and brutal, but mostly he liked to slip into uneasy sleep. Most nights, it was Misa who was overcome with the need for touch. She would kiss him, slow and sweet, while he returned the motions with exquisite skill, passionless. She would give him a handjob or a blowjob (he didn't welcome her touch more than that) or she would ride him, or bring his fingers to her clit so he could get her off. He did it all with mechanical precision, like a perfect anamatron. And his face would stare upward at the blank ceiling, his eyes glassy, and she would look at the name above his head to remind herself she wasn't fucking a corpse.
"Did L get off on this kind of thing?" she said once, nastily. "Placid little pretty-boy dolls?"
His eyes met hers for an instant, coldly, but she gained nothing more than a half-hearted sneer. "You and your perverse mind, Misa. I told you we never had sex."
She really almost believed it. Light had never once shown an interest in another person in that way. But if it had been L forcing himself on him, she knew it would be different. Light would battle back; the old fire would come into his eyes. He would grab onto L if only to bruise him. Pull him close if only to bite. L wouldn't stand for a doll, but he wouldn't get one either. The thought made her nauseous, jealous of a corpse. Her perverse mind.
Afterwards, she would snuggle up against him, and he would hold her, and she would rest her head against his chest, and close her eyes, and listen to the regularity of his heartbeat, and feel the sweat of his skin. They would lie together like a perfect couple, like innocents. One of his arms was curled around her; and she could feel, against her shoulderblade, the knotty rope of scar tissue encircling his wrist. He had smaller scars around his other wrist, and both ankles, from his time in solitary confinement. But the wrist that had been handcuffed to L was a network of mountains and valleys, chains calcified under the skin. He did not let her touch it.
Though she had seen, when he thought he was alone, Light brushing his fingers over it, gently, as though it were a memento.
III.
Light had always been an inhabiter of emptiness. His bedroom had been a quiet refuge; his walks home from high school had been carefully calculated to take place with his friends at least three times a week, and when he walked home alone he'd felt something in him unwind. He did not need, there, to pretend. When he was younger, he wondered if all humans pretended, but learned quite soon that he was in some sense unique. He did not need the social connection, the friendships, others craved. He didn't even understand it. It seemed another set of arbitrary niceties made up so people would get along. That was fine; he liked it when people got along. Orderliness pleased him.
He had never spent so much time fully in another's company till he had been handcuffed to L, and as expected, it drove him frequently to thoughts of murder. But this (he thought at the time) was only natural. An extension of his annoyance; for in fact L was neither orderly nor observant of social nicety. It did not mean (he thought at the time) that he was Kira.
Strangely, even with fantasies at night of smothering L with his own pillow, he found he did not mind L's company as much as he'd feared he would.
/
He'd been placed in solitary confinement, on his own word. But (he'd known at the time) he wasn't Kira. Still, L was loath to let him free. And why shouldn't he be? Bound hand and foot, twisted into a position that made a constant, stabbing pain and ache of his whole body: back, shoulders, neck, knees, he sat facing the single camera which watched him from above. L had power over the entirety of his little, created world. He ruled with perfect inhumanity, like an iron-fisted tyrant, or a god. L with his obsession for catching Kira. The world's greatest detective had spent so much time drawing Light into the chase, Light had sometimes wished (he thought he remembered) to have that attention turned towards him. Kira was powerful, Kira was untouchable, Kira made L's equanimity shatter, a furrow come to his brows. No Kira now. Now, all L thought about was Light.
And so as much as he pleaded for L to come to his senses, Light knew that L would make this last, the way he made his sweets last, licking the sugar from them before biting down. Light existed alone in suffering, and the only voice that could reach him was L's, and Light knew that L knew that Light was aware of how much this assertion of his own power meant to the detective. Because they were quite the same. If Light was in L's place, he too would watch the suffering of his greatest enemy with baited breath. He too would smile.
Light woke, once or more than once, to a dream about this time. The remembered aches pinged through his limbs like serrated fire. His fingers brushed across the scar at his wrist. And he was smiling, still half-within the haze of sleep, still half-within the memory of that exquisite solitude, that pain confined within the boundaries of L's night-dark eyes.
/
But he is L, now. It is only right, and it is only sensible. He has no more higher power to look down upon him in undisguised suspicion. He is Kira, and Kira changes fates with a pen, and weaves webs of power every day. He exists in a world of his own making, an incarnate god.
He pauses in a dark alley, somewhere in the city. The cool night breeze cuts through his dark turtleneck. Stupid woman, he thinks. Misa knew better than to bring him flowers on valentines day, as though they were a real couple. As though she could entice him to her play-pretend with a few carefully-plucked blooms. She would have done better to bring him corpses, arrayed in sunflower-esque spirals, she would have done better to kneel at his feet, as L had done—(he checks himself, and scowls. Puts his hands in his pockets, and stares into the deep electric blue of the light-polluted sky. He hates thinking about L. He hates that L still haunts him.)—He hates that he can still remember the emptiness of those stairwells, going up and going down, and the wet cold rain on their skin, and the definitive way L touched his foot, holding it in his palm—
As if he owned it.
As if he always would.
.
.
.