renascence

Light was lying on the rock and gazing upwards into the cimmerian mists, one arm dangling limply over the edge. The falling ash was collecting even on the surfaces of his open, unblinking eyes, settling over his unmoving form like funeral flowers covering a coffin.

'What is wrong, Kira-kun?' asked Lawliet finally, standing from the completed cat skeleton—the same as before Light had destroyed it, but with a few extra toes—and shuffling over, hands in his pockets.

Light didn't turn to look at him, continuing to stare upwards with blank, ash-covered eyes. 'I feel like I should be going insane.' His voice was barely a murmur. He lifted a hand upwards, closing fingers around empty air. 'But it's not there. There's just nothing.' The arm lowered back to his side. 'I don't feel insane.' His fingers twitched, as if he were attempting to move his arm again, but then stilled. 'I don't feel anything.'

'Well, you are dead, after all,' pointed out Lawliet.

'I don't need you to tell me that, L,' murmured Light, without bitterness, but without anything else, either.

Lawliet looked down at him, dark shadows beneath darker eyes. 'You did ask me to remind you, if you recall.'

'Can you feel anything, L?' asked Light, distantly. 'Is it death, or is it just me?'

Lawliet glanced upwards, but the ash drifted down and tried to settle over his cornea, so he lowered his gaze back to Light's lifeless form, bangs shielding his dark eyes and casting his face in shadow. 'I can feel some things.'

He bit at his thumb. 'Or they might just be memories of what it felt like to feel those things. It's difficult to tell.'

'I'm bored,' murmured Light, like someone might have murmured that the world was over. 'But I can't hurt myself, and I can't fall apart.'

'You would prefer falling apart?' asked Lawliet, quietly.

'Yes,' said Light. 'In the cell, after the insanity set in, I stopped feeling the boredom so keenly.' He finally blinked away the ash on his eyes, and a trembling hand came up to cover his face. 'I feel like I should be falling apart, but am being forcibly held together.' His voices was slightly muffled by his palm, and his eyes were closed behind his fingers. 'Do you not have that feeling, L?'

Lawliet was silent for a while, watching the ash settle over Light's form as if to bury him, slowly erase him from existence.

'I think I feel something similar,' admitted Lawliet, finally, and looked away, fingers tensing for a moment in the fabric of his pants before relaxing again. 'Like there are things that should be there that are inexplicably absent. Like I'm constantly about to sneeze, but never do, and know I never will.'

'A rather inelegant analogy for it,' murmured Light, hand slipping from his face and eyes opening to gaze once more into the gloom, 'but accurate enough.'

Lawliet glanced at him. 'What does Kira-kun plan to do about it?'

Light shifted his gaze in Lawliet's direction, but seemed to lack the energy to even narrow his eyes. 'What's with the Kira-kun all of a sudden?'

'Do I need a reason?' murmured Lawliet, thumb at his lips. 'You're avoiding the question.'

'So are you,' said Light. He looked away again. 'And I've already told you all my ideas, L. You weren't very enthusiastic about any of them.'

'They weren't very good ideas,' said Lawliet.

'Do you have any better ones?' asked Light, not looking at him.

Lawliet was looking down, biting at his thumb, bare toes curling in the ash. 'We could play a game.'

'And what kind of game would you suggest?' said Light dully.

Lawliet glanced up at him through his bangs, eyes dark and lucid. 'Two Lies and a Truth?'

Light's ribs collapsed in a quasi-sigh. 'What confession are you trying to get out of me, L?'

'Maybe I just want to learn more about Kira-kun,' said Lawliet, lowering his hand, a slight imprint of teeth in his thumb.

'Enough that you're actually willing to part with information about yourself?' asked Light, glancing at him from the corner of a dull, half-lidded eye.

'Well,' said Lawliet, stepping onto the rock beside Light and crouching there, hands resting on his knees, gazing out into the mist-heavy shadows that surrounded him, 'there's no danger in giving you information about me when we're already dead, now is there?'

'No,' agreed Light, finally sitting up, shifting so his legs hung over the edge, head tilted down so his hair obscured his face. 'But you strike me as the kind of person who prefers to remain a mystery. You don't want anybody to know you. That's not going to change just because you're dead.'

Lawliet looked at him sideways. 'Kira-kun isn't just anybody.'

'Heh.' Light's bangs hid his eyes, but not the wry quirk of his lips. 'I'm not actually as sentimental as I acted, you know. And I know that you aren't, either.'

'I know,' said Lawliet. 'But there's nothing else to do here. Would you rather just keep lying there wishing you could go insane?'

Light's fingers curled over the rock's edge, knuckles whitening, shoulders starting to tremble. 'If I could just find a Shinigami…'

'Kira-kun,' said Lawliet.

Light's fingers relaxed, his shoulders stilling. 'L.'

'I really do consider you to be the closest thing I've ever had to a friend,' said Lawliet, quietly. 'I told you that in another life we could have not been enemies.' The halflight filtering through the mists caught on his dark eyes, but could do nothing about the shadows beneath them. 'And, like you pointed out, this could really just be considered another life.'

'I don't know how to not think of you as an enemy, L,' said Light.

Lawliet watched the ash fall, fluttering down around them like achromatic sakura petals, curling and spinning on some breeze that stirred the darkness around them but caused them no sensation.

'Why don't you start by calling me Lawliet, Light-kun.'