Seal: BWS

"S-Shinigami-san." L said quietly, staring up at Rem. "To what do we owe this visit?"

"I have come to take what is due to me." Rem replied, smiling faintly. "Yagami Light, I am here to do what you wished." It was a knowing smile, and there were wicked promises in it. Light didn't pay that any mind, as he was suddenly preoccupied.

L had stiffened in his arms, freezing absolutely motionless as he took in exactly what Rem had said. "What you wished, Light-kun…? You…"

Light smirked, leaning down to whisper in L's ear, "Well, Ryuuzaki, didn't you just get through asking if I was Kira? Here is your answer."

Rem calmly opened her notebook and pulled out a pen, beginning to write. L started to struggle, and though Light wasn't sure if he was going for the notebook, or a phone, or anything else, he held tightly to the raven-haired detective, not letting him go. The detective thrashed, trying anything to fight Light's grip, but eventually fell still.

"You are… crueler than I had imagined, Light-kun." he murmured. "After telling me that you would never manipulate someone with their emotions…" His dark hair fell over his eyes, hiding what he was thinking from Light's gaze. Rem had finished writing, but had pulled out some sort of stamp and stamped the page. Light watched for a moment, mildly interested, then turned his attention to the clock. Rem would set it to happen right away, whatever it was.

Forty seconds ticked by, and L said quietly, his voice barely audible, "Not a heart attack, then." It may have been spoken quietly, but Light could feel how tense he was.

"No." Rem said. "I am required to wait a full minute for the seal to take effect."

"Seal?" Light asked, frowning. He shifted slightly, beginning to feel uneasy. What had Rem done?

"Yes. A seal to take his soul, not just kill him." Rem said. "The end result is the same. He is gone from your way."

L had actually trembled slightly at this, but Light glanced back at the clock. The remaining twenty seconds had passed, and he said, a bit harshly, "Well, do what you must, then." He had set the cameras earlier, before they watched the movie, to loop last night's footage of them getting ready for bed and going to sleep. Watari would see none of this, but Light didn't want to take any chances. He still needed time to come up with a story as to why L was dead in the morning.

Rem nodded, drifting closer, reaching out to L and still smiling eerily. L began to fight Light's hold again, but it was less calculated. Normally the raven-haired boy could break Light's grip on him, but that was when he was considering where the boy was weakest, and how to exploit it. Now, he was simply fighting because he was afraid. Light, holding on for dear life to keep him in place, took a second to appreciate the fact that L was indeed human enough to feel emotions like fear. He had steeled himself for death, for the agony of a heart attack, if necessary. He hadn't been prepared for the idea of a Shinigami coming for his soul, and he was afraid. Rem's bony white fingers touched the center of his chest, and he froze, staring at the Shinigami. Rem's hand became intangible, going through him, and L screamed.

He was obviously in pain; whatever Rem was doing to him hurt like nothing else on earth ever could. Light knew that the building was not soundproofed, and if L kept screaming like that Watari would come. He did the only thing he could think of in that moment and turned L's head, kissing him to muffle the sound. L cried out and tried to bite him, but missed entirely. Light kept his cries of pain quiet, running one hand through L's hair.

Rem pulled her hand back, curled around something insubstantial and silvery that trailed between her fingers. At that moment, L went limp, his head falling against Light's collarbone, as if he'd gone to sleep. Light stopped moving for a split second, allowing the thought to run unhindered across his mind.

It was over. He had won.

The thought didn't make him as happy as he had thought it would. Where was his joy for the removal of the greatest obstacle to his utopia? He shifted uneasily again, and that was when he realized that he could feel L's breath, soft and even against his chest. He reached forward, lifting the slender wrist and feeling for a pulse.

There was a heartbeat. L was still alive.

The self-proclaimed god glared up at Rem, relief and anger warring. Anger won out, and he growled, "You lied to me. He's not dead."

The Shinigami smirked at him. "I did not say that he would die. I said that he would be gone from your way. The body can live without the soul, but as you can imagine, it is essentially hollow. You could wake him if you tried, but I don't recommend it." There was a triumphant quality in her voice as she added, "And I have avenged Misa."

"What?" Light felt a brief flare of panic. "What do you mean?!"

"I finally saw what Misa saw that night. Truth, not the lies that she was accustomed to." Rem said. She showed Light the notebook, where in smooth handwriting, the name 'L Lawliet' was written, next to a small stamp of an 'X', one side white and one side black. "Kill him if you choose. I no longer care. Farewell, Yagami Light." The white Shinigami drifted back through the ceiling and was gone.

"Lawliet…" Light whispered. L didn't move, and Light carefully tucked him into bed. This… would be easy to explain. L wouldn't wake up. And if the task force or Watari tried to awaken him, they could deal with a soulless L, not him.

He curled up on his side of the bed, ignoring the unconscious detective on the other side. 'Unconscious' had never been a more perfect word, as, if Rem was right, L didn't have a consciousness anymore.

xXx

When he woke up, nothing had changed. Normally, if L was still sleeping when Light awoke, the auburn-haired boy's movement woke him. He never slept deeply. But today, L remained asleep, and Light was completely unnerved. What was he going to do?

Lie. Of course. But what would they believe? He showered and changed like every other morning, considering the possibilities. He could tell them that L wasn't feeling well, and that he had agreed to stay in bed to get better. That would work, and in the meantime… he could figure out what to do.

The task force believed him, and even when Watari went to check on him, he believed the detective to be asleep. He didn't try to wake him up, knowing that L didn't sleep enough in the first place. This left Light to direct the other task force members, and spend a lot of time thinking.

There was still a piece of the Death Note in his watch. Rem had given him L's name. It would be simple to end this; he could write 'dies in his sleep'. No one could pin that on him. But for some reason, every time he reached for the tiny pin in his watch, he felt sick to his stomach. Maybe it was because L wasn't supposed to go down like this, helplessly unconscious. He was supposed to go out fighting, like he had been last night.

"Light-kun, you seem very on-edge today." Matsuda said worriedly, bringing over a stack of papers. "Is everything okay?"

"Just worried about Ryuuzaki." Light said. It was the truth, after all. "He's never gotten sick before. Not that I've seen."

"Watari-san says that he's sleeping, so he'll be better in no time. I'm sure!" Light wanted to smack Matsuda for being so inappropriately cheerful, but he couldn't blame the detective for not knowing what made him so uneasy. L wasn't going to get better, and he was dreading the moment that the task force figured it out.

He slipped away at lunch to 'check on L'. He went back to their room, sitting down on the bed and feeling L's forehead. He was still warm, proof that he truly wasn't dead. Light sighed, realizing that the thing that had been missing all morning, so obviously, was L's presence. Light had thought that this would be the greatest moment of his time as Kira. His enemy laid low before him. Light could do whatever he wanted to L right now, and the detective would never know. But something stopped him.

He went back to work more unnerved than before. What was wrong with him? This was what he'd wanted! He'd given Rem permission to do this, for the sake of his new world. So why did he feel… guilty?

xXx

By the time the task force had gone home, Light was ready to tear his hair out in frustration. What had Rem meant when she said she knew how to hurt him? What did it mean, what Misa had seen? Truth, not lies? He stormed back up to their room, and stopped in the doorway to stare at L.

The silly thought crossed his mind that perhaps a kiss would awaken him, like Sleeping Beauty. He walked over and looked down at the peaceful-looking detective for a moment, before leaning down and pressing a soft kiss to his lips. L didn't move, and Light felt something that he hadn't in a long time. Disappointment. Real, honest disappointment. He had wanted that kiss to awaken L, despite what it would mean.

He sat down on his own side of the bed, feeling like screaming. Everything was starting to make sense now, everything that had happened. It was all finally beginning to add up.

Somewhere along the way, it had stopped being pretend. Somewhere in the two weeks that he had 'faked' his relationship with L, pretend affection and false caring had become genuine concern for the skinny insomniac. Misa had seen it, the night she walked in on them kissing in the investigation room. He had been looking at Ryuuzaki like she had always wished he would look at her, and it had destroyed her.

And Rem had figured it out. Rem had figured it out, knowing that Light hadn't realized, and offered to take L, knowing that Light would jump at the chance. Knowing that it would hurt him so much more after he realized.

"Fuck you, Rem!" he raged at the expressionless ceiling. There was no answer, but Light could imagine Rem laughing somewhere from the Shinigami Realm. But shouting at the absent Shinigami was not going to change the fact that something had happened that he had never counted on.

He had fallen in love with L.

But what could he do now? He could wake L up, but who knew what a person without a soul was like? He didn't want to have to face that.

I've… done something horribly stupid.

If he was God, then why… why didn't he have the ability to bring L back? In that moment, he had the answer, the one that L had probably been trying to convince him of all along. Kira could not be a god, because gods had the power to create, as well as destroy. Kira could only destroy.

Light reached out, sinking his hand into L's thick hair and just sitting there thinking for a long moment. That was how Ryuk found him ten minutes later, apple in hand, grinning.

"Rem said something like this would happen." he chuckled. "I didn't believe her!" He took a huge chomp out of his apple, as Light turned to stare at him questioningly. He laughed. "Oh, yeah, Rem told me her whole plan. She knew you'd fallen for that wacky detective. The King wanted a new soul for the Labyrinth, so she decided to take L's, and leave you to deal with the consequences."

"Labyrinth?" Light asked.

"Yeah. One of the alternate planes. There's Heaven, Hell, Mu, the Shinigami Realm, and the Labyrinth of Souls, which decides where you go when you die." Ryuk explained, being unnaturally helpful for once. Probably because he was enjoying Light's utter helplessness in this situation. "Occasionally, we have to give a soul to the Labyrinth to make sure it keeps working right. We've been neglecting it."

"Would it be possible to get into the Labyrinth to get L's soul back?" Light asked quietly.

Ryuk stared at him for a second, then began to laugh hysterically. "A living person in the Labyrinth? I don't think that's ever been done! That would be so much fun! You'd have to explain where you'd gone to the task force, though. And what about L? He'll still be sleeping like a baby."

"I…" Light didn't really want to think of telling his father or the other detectives. There was really only one person he could tell the truth. The one person who cared about L's well-being just as much as Light. He only hoped that Watari didn't have him locked up, himself.

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Light-o, Watari's going to HATE you! XD

It's the first chapter posted from the BRAND-NEW COMPUTER that now resides in the upstairs hallway of my house! (throws virtual ticker-tape parade) YAY! Can't stay on too long, though. Mom will be back soon. (shifty eyes) Enjoy!

Hugs!
Li