Rules

If Yagami Raito were not dead already, he would have died again.

"I always knew you would make a fine shinigami."

No. It couldn't be that simple. Ryuuku told him it was chance. Anyone could have picked up that book.

But then, would anyone have acted as Raito had, with such fierce intelligence and agenda? Of course not. No one else would have been worthy of the book, not as Kira was. Ryuuku had been prepared from the beginning. Much as he seemed surprised and excited about Raito's actions, there were moments when something sinister seemed to lurk within the shinigami that otherwise remained hidden. He was just a big, monstrous-looking puppy, Raito once believed. How foolish must he have been to believe that?

Foolish like so many of the people in Raito's life were foolish for believing in him. To say it that way makes Raito cringe to think how much like a shinigami he really was. Throughout everything he and Ryuuku were incredible actors.

Raito stumbled away from the shinigami before him, bumping into L's body and disrupting both of their human feet. L was barefoot and Raito faintly heard the detective hiss as the soles of his feet scraped the ground.

Laughter responded before Ryuuku spoke again. "What could you be afraid of, Raito?" the shinigami grinned, "You're as powerful as I am now. To think how long it took me to find you too. You've come a long way from the palace. Getting good use out of those wings you wanted so much, eh?"

The breath in Raito's still shinigami lungs rose up and caught in his throat.

"You found L too, hmm?" Ryuuku continued, uncaring to Raito's horrified stance and expression, pressed back against L who awkwardly tried to find a place for his hands but couldn't quite get passed his neurotic ways to hold his friend. "Is it a joint effort now?" Ryuuku said, "You have your Death Note and the best possible companions, eh? Are we starting with criminals right off the bat then or getting rid of others first?"

Slowly, Raito's senses started to come back to him, but he still couldn't understand what Ryuuku was talking about. "Criminals…? You…you think just like those other shinigami. You think I'm still Kira, that I want to continue that work? It ruined my life! And…and it was all…because of you…"

It had only been hours, hours since Raito was first made a shinigami and he was still putting together the shattered pieces of himself. He hadn't been able to think straight once. And the time for that was not yet now.

Raito steadied himself and left the safety of feeling L at his back. Ryuuku was just in front of him, daring to look smug and excited about Kira the Shinigami. But that wasn't Raito anymore. He wouldn't let it be. He had lost too much.

And all of it was Ryuuku's fault.

"You knew…how could you have known?!" Raito cried, human hands clenched tight and shinigami eyes glaring blood red, "It was all for nothing. I lost…everything. I could have been like my father. And instead…he died and I didn't even care, and now I'm…I'm this thing like you. But I never wanted this. I am not Kira! You…you ruined everything!"

Indeed, the time for thinking straight was not yet now.

Raito charged forward, throwing his unbalanced weight into Ryuuku with a great scream of fury. His arms and legs were human but his heart pumped blood like hellfire. It didn't matter if this act added up to nothing. He was too angry to care.

And through it all, Ryuuku was still laughing. "Me? You think you can blame me?" Ryuuku said, bowled over onto the ground but not even bothering to fend Raito's attack off. The meager clawing Raito was attempting was doing little more than leave an occasional scratch on Ryuuku's face that quickly healed. "I just gave you a book, Raito. Everything else was because of you."

"No! No, I couldn't have known what would happen! You…you tricked me!"

"Haha! Tricked you? It was chance you picked up the book, Raito. Sure, I dropped it where you could easily find it, and having watched you I knew you wouldn't leave it alone, but the choice was always yours. I just knew the final outcome. I've been around a long time, Raito. You humans are very predictable."

The feebleness of his actions was beginning to catch up to Raito, and his angry clawing started to cease. Soon, he was simply sitting on Ryuuku's chest, crying once again with dry sobs that told the same story. "It…doesn't matter…does it?" Raito said, "It doesn't matter if you planned it, if you singled me out because you knew I'd become Kira. I chose everything."

"And you were very fun to watch too," Ryuuku grinned.

Raito wished he had an apple if only to have something to throw up. "Why? Why me? Why Kira? Why did you want all of that to happen?"

Ryuuku considered this, his smile slightly less taunting as he did so, and said, "I've told you, Raito. You make a fine shinigami. The ones around here are so lazy, they let themselves waste away. But you, I knew you could change the way things are here. Now that you're one of us, the others will see that they can't sit around the way they do. You said it yourself, Raito, as shinigami we have the power to change the human world. Why not use that power to make the world the way we want it? It was your ideals that made me choose you, Raito. And now that you're here, we can really do it." Raito must have been shaking his head even before Ryuuku finished, because the forever-smile shifted as it spoke those final words.

Raito didn't feel like soothing Ryuuku, because even though he knew he could only blame himself, he would never forgive the shinigami for showing him how much of monster he could be.

Moving slowly off of Ryuuku, Raito stood, hovering over his almost-friend. Ryuuku told Raito from the beginning that he was neither on Raito's side nor L's, and yet Raito always considered Ryuuku his closest companion. It wasn't a knife in the back. It was a knife in the heart, right where Raito should have seen it coming.

"I am not Kira," Raito said, "Kira died just the way he should have. From a shinigami. A heart attack. I am paying for his sins and I want nothing more to do with him." Raito's red eyes narrowed into angry slants. "Or you."

L, who had been keeping out of the exchange as he knew Raito would want, nodded to his friend when Raito at last turned towards him to leave Ryuuku behind. But Raito did not get more than one step before he felt claws grab his wrist and he clenched his teeth from the pain.

Pain. The human parts of him could feel pain, though the shinigami could not. That was not a good sign.

"I was going to compliment you on your new look, Raito," Ryuuku said, and a chill shot down Raito's spine because the tone was the same Ryuuku used when telling Raito whose name he really wrote in his Death Note, "But…I don't think I can do that anymore…can I?"

Ryuuku tightened his grip and Raito gasped. Shinigami can touch each other but they cannot hurt each other. Unfortunately, not all of Raito is shinigami anymore.

Panicked, Raito looked forward at L with wild, pain-filled eyes and silently pleaded for help. He hardly expected L to be his white knight but there had to be something they could do. Raito hadn't thought about the reactions from other shinigami should humans suddenly exist in their realm, and he certainly hadn't counted on Ryuuku.

Could he…die again?

"You needn't be cross for being wrong, Ryuuku-san," L said, taking unhurried strides towards the others on his bare human feet, though because his torso was still shinigami his slouch was as severe as ever, "I have had enough time now to get over my own miscalculations. Well, really I was right all along, of course, but to lose is a difficult thing for the prideful. Are you…too full of pride, Ryuuku-san…to admit defeat?"

Perhaps L would make a fine white knight after all. Raito hardly believed the detective was defending him, despite their recent truce. More than anything Raito wanted escape, escape from all of it, but he couldn't have that even in death. L was his only chance.

"Come now, Ryuuku-san," L continued, staring past Raito confidently, though Raito, frozen by such unexpected pain, could not see Ryuuku's face, "You cannot blame Raito for his reaction. Nor can you force him to be what he is not. You were mistaken. That does not change your desires if you wish to pursue them on your own."

A throaty scoff replied to that. "On my own? Where's the fun in that? Raito had all the entertaining ideas. It would just be boring again without him. Besides," and though Raito still could not see Ryuuku he felt the shinigami approach him more closely because a chilling absence of breath struck the back of his neck and made him shudder, "You've been bending the rules. I can smell it. Feel it too. Shinigami aren't allowed to trade lives for anything but years. You've been shinigami a long time now, L. You should know that."

Raito's eyes widened but L showed no signs of shock. Could it be? The shrouded shinigami had kept this from him on purpose? As if Raito's punishment were not bad enough, L had risked them angering this world without telling him the consequences?

Facing L as he was, Raito felt for a second time the strange sensation of being stabbed in the front.

"If it's entertainment you want, Ryuuku-san, shouldn't this be enough," L said, raising his human hands that were now attached to human arms, "Raito found many ways to bend and toy with the rules on Earth, why not here? It makes for a much more exciting time, don't you think?"

Ryuuku scoffed again, holding onto Raito's stinging wrist tighter. "I counted on this end. You may have made it more entertaining on Earth, Great Detective L, but here you are just in the way."

Part of Raito was angry at L, furious, thinking he had been betrayed again, but the conviction in L, the determination to help Raito never wavered inside of L's wide dark eyes. It was the same constant stare Raito knew well, only not directed at him for a change but beyond him to protect. That was it. Even L's lies—or rather, well-chosen bits of undisclosed information—had reason. Raito would not normally doubt that all of L's decisions had logic to them, but he realized he still wasn't thinking as straight as he could and putting trust in another was never going to come easy again.

The standstill was becoming grating. Raito could barely feel his wrist now since it had become numb from Ryuuku's hold. He didn't dare move, feeling how close the other shinigami was behind him and not knowing whether or not Ryuuku could actually hurt him.

Meanwhile, L, vacant expression by design, stood only a few feet in front of them, stationary as well, as if waiting for something. If it was for Ryuuku to magically decide to back down, Raito highly doubted that would happen.

"Are you really angry, Ryuuku-san, or just disappointed?" L said, "Disappointment can be overcome after a length of time, you know, and if it is anger then what can be done of that? You can hardly hurt either of us, after all."

Now Raito was beginning to panic. Was L goading Ryuuku? Raito knew he could be hurt; he felt it. Maybe L didn't know that information. Maybe L was bluffing. Maybe…

And then Raito knew. Suddenly he just knew as if L had psychically passed the plan to him. It was foolish. Childish even. But at this point, it was still the most logical way to go.

As soon as Ryuuku began to shift, Raito braced himself. "Can't hurt you?" Ryuuku said, still holding Raito's wrist, but more loosely since he was walking around to the side of Raito now to get a fuller look at him, "Wishful thinking for humans in the world of Death." But as much as Ryuuku was grinning and Raito felt fear of him for the first time since the initial sight of him, Ryuuku's eyes had shifted from being pinned on L to forgetting L just long enough for the detective to act.

Raito felt the impact, the sting as his wrist was roughly pulled out of the last of Ryuuku's grip, and then the almost familiar feeling of being weightless as his feet left the ground and he did not immediately slam down into hard rock. He had never seen a shinigami fly as fast as their wings could carry them, but feeling it soon reminded him of the worst of rollercoasters and it was no longer a pleasant sensation.

"You're crazier than you look," Raito said into L's shoulder, not wanting to see if Ryuuku was on their tail or how high up they were flying, "And believe me, that's saying something."

Sideways in L's arms, Raito foolishly thought that the white shroud and bony white wings made L quite the parody of a knight after all.

They flew for some time. L never spoke, but Raito didn't mind. Neither was the type to run from anything but they didn't have much time or much choice. If what they were doing really was against the rules then word would spread quickly now. It had been so easy. The shinigami are spread out in their land, huddled and kept to themselves when not gambling. No one paid them any mind. But now that Ryuuku knew there was no telling how quickly the pair could be found out.

And now Raito also knew something else. They could be hurt. Maybe even killed. What would happen to them then? One of L's many possible outcomes? It could be anything from nothing at all to starting at the beginning, cursed again. It may have been only a few hours since Raito became shinigami, but he was ready to be done with it. Even if that meant playing the coward long enough to get away from Ryuuku.

Raito had to admit though, if it had been him, he wasn't sure if he could have been as reckless as L. Raito had never seen the detective move so fast when not fighting. L wasn't known for dramatic physical acts other than his occasional outburst of kicks that never really got either of them anywhere. Fighting while chained really wasn't the brightest thing they could have thought of.

A chuckle escaped Raito remembering those times. That was when he didn't remember being Kira, when his intentions were genuine, and L really was beginning to become a friend. It was probably the only time either of them acted their age.

"Something humorous, Raito-kun?" L asked, his still gravely voice close beside Raito's ear, "Because I could very well drop you, you know? We're far enough away now that if you wanted to use your own wings I wouldn't grudge you that show of pride."

Raito snorted. Couldn't L just come out and say that he was tired and that Raito should stop being a lazy ass and use his own damn wings? Of course he couldn't. Much as Raito might enjoy hearing something like that, it just wouldn't be L.

Uncurling from L's hold, Raito carefully pushed off and caught his wings on the wind, amazed that they could appear at will as quickly as he thought of them. The pair flew side by side the rest of their trek, Raito always a step behind L, following the detective to a place Raito assumed had been chosen for just this sort of escape. Like himself once upon a time, L always had a plan.

When they touched down the land itself looked no different, but there was not another shinigami in sight. In the distance Raito could see what he only knew how to describe as a change in color. He squinted to see better and asked L what it was.

"That is our destination, Raito-kun. I would have had us come here eventually. It would have been too dangerous to make that journey as complete humans."

L made to sit down but Raito was in no mood to be tactful. He grabbed a handful of L's shroud and tugged the former detective in close. "You liar. You tell me you're being honest, that you've always been honest, and then you keep something like that from me. I thought you wanted to help me."

"I do, Raito. I would be long gone by now if I didn't."

"Then tell me everything. I don't care if your logic says that keeping things from me protects me more. I want to know when something is going on. If you expect me to trust you then that is the least you can give me." Raito understood how hypocritical his words sounded after his time as Kira and how he had lied so expertly to L and many others, but he would not amend his request. They had to trust each other if they were going to accomplish anything.

"I agree with you," L said, unperturbed by the strong grip on the front of his shirt. He looked at Raito, eyes bottomless and large, "I apologize if my logic got in the way of our camaraderie. I am not used to friends. Different rules apply, yes? Logic is not always the best course, even when it seems it is."

The way L needed to analyze everything annoyed Raito somewhat. He often did the same, that was true, but he knew the difference between a situation that required analysis and simple human social skills. "Ryuuzaki, you're applying logic anyway by thinking of it that way. There are no set rules. Every relationship is different. Maybe there will come a time when we need to lie to each to save each others' lives. But I want you to be honest with me anyway, okay?"

L considered Raito's words carefully, released at last from Raito's grip. He shuffled his feet and tried to place his thumb at the crevice of his lips, though it didn't look as it once would have with his mouth stretched so strangely.

When he finally spoke, he tilted his head in question.

"Raito-kun," he said, "Your words are a paradox."

Raito couldn't help but smile. "That's what makes relationships so complicated."

"Ah. I see. Then if I may say so, I am in no hurry to have any more, though I will try my best to adhere to these non-rules in your case, Raito-kun. Complicated as it may be, I enjoy our relationship. If you want honesty, I will tell you everything I know."

'Thanks."

For the first time Raito really felt how alone they were. Not only because there were no other shinigami around but because even if Ryuuku was with them, they would still be alone. L was the only person Raito trusted, and he didn't doubt the same was true in reverse. They were all each other had.

"So, we don't have much time."

"I do not think so. We will have to be swift." L sat down in the dirt and took out his Death Note, and Raito watched as a viewing screen rose up out of the ground for their use. L easily took notice of his companion's amazement. "It is risky but necessary. To summon one as I have may alert others to our presence here. But we will need it in order to find victims. Raito," L stressed the name, and with the honorific left out, Raito knew to listen more carefully, "Are you prepared to continue? There really is no going back."

There was only one answer to that question and Raito didn't feel the need to express it. Instead, he sat down beside L and took his Death Note out as well. "My turn, wasn't it?" he said, and with the briefest of shared smiles they began the process of finishing their work.

tbc...

A/N: I'm trying to take turns posting this and my Saiyuki fic. Hope you liked this part. Things will be wrapping up quickly, but will leave things open for many a one shot. I expect another two chapters. Yes, I know, the sadness! But those one shots will be alot of fun when I have the time. I can tell you, you have no idea what I have planned.

I finally posted a picture of what these two look like as shinigami. Please go to DeviantArt. My name is CrimsonDomingo. You can search for me and my work by typing in the search box by:CrimsonDomingo and it will be the newest pic. Comments are appreciated. Also, my boyfriend drew me a Death Note comic for Valentine's Day that is also up. It is the most recent of my favorites. Thank you!

Crim