Part Two

"You certainly are dramatic, aren't you…Yagami Raito."

Raito spun on his newly boot-clad feet, heavy and uncomfortable in this skin that wasn't his. Everything was clinging to him too tightly, even the claws that had become his hands. It felt like a costume, like it had been stitched onto his body, but he knew it went deeper than that, deeper than skin, straight into the marrow of his bones. The black, the sickness. It was in him.

His eyes scanned the dark room he had been too preoccupied to notice before. It was a cavern, a huge expanse of black rock like the ground he had landed on. To his right he saw the barest hint of light at the top of a long staircase carved into the stone wall. In front of him, lit by its own light—or was it that his eyes were beginning to adjust to their new way of seeing—rested a throne, unevenly carved and decorated with skulls. And there, lounging like a bored king, sat something far more fearsome than his own changed appearance. Raito knew it was a shinigami. He had seen enough of them in his life to recognize how they fell only slightly short of looking human. The creature before him was shaped like a man but made of bone, his head a jeweled skull. He was covered in finery, truly a king, despite the death that clung to him more securely than any gem or strand of gold. King. A king.

The King of the Shinigami.

"We haven't had one like you in centuries," the King said, his bony chin resting on long skeletal fingers. His eyes were diamonds and they stared forward blankly, though Raito knew they were looking right at him. "A shinigami by punishment is a rare thing. But then you've been a shinigami for years, haven't you, and better than the rest of those lazy fools, by far."

Raito stared, feeling the tightness in his cheeks and the sting of his fangs as he gnawed nervously at the skin. He had to stay calm. He turns, facing the mirror again, but the same image stared at him, the image of him mangled and mutated into a thing. He was covered all over in black, his hair longer and darker, his face no longer his with the bat nose and red eyes, and the markings he hadn't at first noticed, streaking red from the corners of his mouth and up towards his cheekbones. Like blood.

Raito backed away from the mirror, and his steps brought him right off the small ledge he has been poised on. He fell hard on his curved and deformed back and scrambled to right himself, knowing he was even closer to the King now. Indeed when he stood and turned back the throne was right behind him.

"I…I'm not a shinigami," he stuttered.

A rattle left the King like a failed attempt at a laugh. He pointed a bony finger at the mirror. "It is your world that tells you a mirror cannot lie. It was brought in especially for you, Yagami Raito."

Against his will Raito felt his gaze drawn back to the mirror, elevated on the ledge he had first found bearings. He could see the top of his head reflected in the base of it, his red eyes staring too wide, and then the mirror cracked and shattered like an eruption, spraying glass towards Raito's face.

Raito screamed again and fell to the floor, protecting his head with his too long arms. But he felt nothing, not a single shard of glass. When he looked back, the mirror had vanished and there were no signs of debris.

"Things from the human world don't last very long here," the King said. And he rattled again, gruff and unfriendly.

Raito had to stay calm. He had to stay…calm. He wasn't a shinigami. He wasn't condemned to this. He was a god. He was Kira. He was creating a world that would have been grander than anything any nation had ever achieved. Death couldn't mean an eternity of this.

"Only as long as an eternity as you wish it, Yagami Raito."

Raito jumped. He had not realized he was speaking aloud, ranting in harsh whispers into his clawed hands. He turned to face the King again. "Punishment. You said…" he shook his head, "What is it? What is my punishment?"

"Just what you see. You are shinigami now. And a shinigami you will be until that life expires."

"Then if I wished, it could end now," Raito said, and because he was speaking, he was beginning to notice that his voice had also changed. It was rougher and grating, like speaking around a throat full of gravel. "There must be a way for a shinigami to die."

Again, the King rattled. "Shinigami die when their lives run out. Your life has just begun, Yagami Raito. You are a young shinigami. Even if you choose to never write in your Death Note," And as he spoke the King produced a Death Note, simple and black without lettering like Ryuuku had added to his, "you will still live one hundred years as a shinigami. Of course, you can always choose to extend this life," the King grinned with his lack of lips and large teeth, "By taking others' lives. You seem to be rather talented at that."

Raito jumped back as the Death Note was thrown at his feet—his black booted feet with long skinny legs that bent unnaturally. He didn't want to look at himself. He was glad the mirror was gone.

The claw that was now Raito's right hand reached for the Death Note. He picked it up as if fascinated, as if he had never seen one. Now that he had touched it, it was his, forever, unless he dropped it for another to claim. He was a shinigami by design not by choice. His body had molded to fit this very ideal and the instrument was in his hands.

No, they weren't hands, and they never would be again. There was something almost like a pencil but not that stuck to the back of the book. Raito knew without touching it that he could use it, that he could write as he could write when he was human. But it would never be the same. Because he wasn't human.

Yagami Raito was a shinigami.

"No…I'm not…a shinigami…" Raito breathed, gripping the Death Note hard in both hands so that his talons made scratches on the cover. He looked up, his new red eyes wider than ever, and stared at the King. "I'm not. I'm not!"

"Yagami Raito," boomed the King, and the strange humor that had filled his words before faded into the sudden seriousness of the echoes filling the cavernous room, "Welcome to the world of Death. The world you chose to belong to the first moment you wrote a name in a Death Note that wasn't your own." He extended the finger he had used to point at the mirror and pointed it at Raito's chest. "You wrapped every binding on your new body with your own hands. Do not forget that."

Raito could only shake his head as his feet backpedaled and he gripped his Death Note harder. "No…I'm not. I'm not a shinigami! I didn't do anything wrong!"

The only response this time was that rattle, full and hollow as it filled the room around him.

Raito couldn't stand it. He had to escape. He had to get away from that sound. Get away from all of it. He turned and saw that small spark of light atop the stares and ran, stumbling over limbs he wasn't used to using until he was all but crawling up the steps. The Death Note was still in his hand, and though the King's laughter followed him up and out of the great room, Raito cared only for freedom

The light of the shinigami world was surprisingly bright when he got to the top and stepped out into what looked like fields of dead earth and bone. There was a sky but it wasn't a sky. Everything was grey and black and skeleton white. There were other shinigami, some small like deformed children, others tall and shaped like dragons, and others still like Ryuuki, like himself now with features that tried to be human but never quite were.

Raito wanted nothing to do with any of it. He just wanted out. There had to be a way out. He turned away from the shinigami, who were staring at him now, some laughing in their own versions of rattles and hisses, and ran as fast and as hard as he could down a path.

He could hear some of the shinigami calling out to him. Some of them even knew his name.

"We've watched you, Yagami Raito!"

"You're one of us now!"

"The best of us, finally come home!" And there was laughter in every word.

No, Raito thought. I'm not home. This isn't home. I want to go home

He ran, he ran so hard his feet left the ground and he realized he had wings. He had joked with Ryuuku once that he would have gladly done the shinigami eye deal if it had been for wings instead. Every human longs to fly. But the wilted black feathers that pushed out of his body to form wings were not welcome. It startled him and sickened him so much he willed them to retract without trying. He had started to soar up off the ground and when the wings left he dropped to the ground on all fours. It didn't hurt but something stung in his chest where his heart had been and he cried.

It seemed such a cruel joke that no tears fell but Raito sobbed into the black ground, shaking and clawing at the earth that wasn't his Earth. He stares at his right hand, the hand still holding his Death Note. He wanted it gone. With a cry that growled in his throat he flung it away from him, not looking to see where it had gone. He tried to calm, he tried to sit up and pull himself together, but he could only cling to his knees and rock, wishing it all away. He just wanted to go home. He didn't want this life. He hadn't meant for it to turn out like this.

The Death Note appeared in front of Raito's face so suddenly, he nearly fell over backwards to keep away. Only then did he realize it was being handed to him by a surprisingly human looking white hand.

He turned away from this figure, whoever it was, and pulled his knees in tighter. "Leave me alone. I don't want that thing," he said.

"Oh?" the shinigami behind him questioned, and the voice was low, very low, like dark silk torn on the rocks, "You might regret dropping it," he said, "Isn't this what the great Kira always wanted."

Raito shuddered. Did all the shinigami know of him? "Leave me alone," he said again, "I don't want that book, I don't want anything in this world, I just want to—"

"Go home."

It sounded so juvenile to hear it aloud. Raito couldn't bring himself to respond. He sensed that the shinigami sat down behind him, felt eyes watching the back of his head, and as much as he wished the shinigami would leave him in peace, he was surprisingly soothed to have the company. This shinigami did not speak his words with scorn.

"This isn't what you wanted then?" the shinigami asked.

Raito kept his eyes closed, his shin resting on his pulled in knees. "Who could want this," he said, "Nothing in this world is alive. I'm not alive anymore. I'm not me at all. It wasn't…it wasn't supposed to end this way."

"Then how should it have ended?"

"I don't know. The dream should have worked. I should have won. Was it wrong for me to want the world to be a better place, to make it better, actively, instead of just watching criminals move in and out of the justice system without ever being served justice?"

"Mmm. An interesting question. But then is it right to think one man could ever know what real justice would be for another?"

Raito didn't response. He was tonguing his fangs, trying to convince himself they weren't real. That none of this was. He wasn't wrong. He hadn't done anything wrong.

"You really think you are innocent, don't you?"

Raito growled and though the sound startled him he did not allow it to make him back down. "Shut up. You don't know. You shinigami sitting here watching like you're better, like it doesn't matter if you kill people but God forbid a human try to do the same. I never killed arbitrarily. Not once."

"Oh? Then all of the people you killed were criminals?"

"Of course."

"All of them?"

"I…well…there were times when I had no choice and—"

"And you killed people who might have wanted the same dream as you, only in different ways. Is that really justice, Raito-kun?"

Raito…kun?

"But then, maybe I didn't understand justice either. After all, I knew the truth for so long, but I didn't want to believe my only friend was also my greatest enemy."

No. It couldn't be. Raito felt his blood run cold like frost in his veins. But he knew that voice, changed as it was. He knew.

"Oh well. I never planned to live forever. But this sure is interesting, don't you think, Raito-kun?"

Raito couldn't do it. He couldn't turn. He couldn't look. But when he felt the figure behind him stand and move, his chin lifted up on his own and from his hunched and huddled position he saw wide black eyes he knew well.

Yagami Raito was a shinigami. And he wasn't alone.

"Ryuuzaki…"

tbc...

A/N: Hehehe. Bet you saw that coming, but I don't care. I hope you'll stick with me because I am not done messing with dear Light quite yet. Oh no. L LIVES!

Crim