"Please, Ryuk! You're all I have left to rely on! Please write the names down!" Light screeched, his mind left shattered by the agonizing shock of defeat. I looked down at his writhing body with a concealed hurt in my eyes. His blood was pooling around him, mocking us and everything we had worked for with its terrifying abundance. He was reaching up to me now, desperately trying to cling to the hope he believed still existed. I swallowed my emotions and ignored him, opting instead to glance at Near, who looked both content and bored by the situation. I had always been on Light's side as far as the Kira case went, but it really hit me as I looked at the expression on Near's face that I had become too attached to the whole thing. I hated Near so much for being impassive right now. Impassive! Of all emotions to feel when someone is dying in front of you, he chose impassive! I scowled, but turned back to Light before I lost control. He was still reaching towards me, trying to wrap his hands around my leg. I took a step back and looked at him. He was hopeless now. His mind had gone, and he was dying. No matter what I did, he had lost. It was over. It was all over. I looked at him, malice for Near still lingering on my face, and made my decision. The best path for Light right now was death. He was practically calling for the grave, though he didn't know it. I could see it in every pained expression that crossed his bloodied face.
"Sure…" I said, managing to uphold an air of disenchantment with the scene before me in my voice. "I'll write it." I opened my Death Note and held my pen to the paper. I heard Light say my name proudly, and I struggled not to look at him as I wrote his name down.
"Stop it!" Someone yelled, and I saw bullets shooting through the air towards me. They flew right through me and embedded themselves in the wall behind me, much to the disappointment of the gunman. Oh, the naivety these people had in thinking that it was their names that I was writing, and that they could kill me.
"Sorry." I said. "I'm a Shinigami, so you can't kill me with those things, and stuff in the human world can't touch my notebook unless I allow it." At this, Light let out a barking laugh that was not at all suited to the boy I had been with for eight years. The sound of it sent a chill running through my body, which I concealed by turning my face back to my Death Note and touching up the calligraphic essences of the letters of Light's name that I had written. I looked up when Light started to yell.
"Sucks to be you, Near! The only choice you had was to kill me right away!" His eyes were wild and his smile was crazed with the power he believed himself to posses. "But now that Ryuk's decided to
write your names down, nobody can stop him! It's too late! You're all going to die!" I sighed at his words.
"No, Light." I said, locking my eyes with his. I pondered briefly over how to tell him that it was his name that was the only one written down, finally deciding to be as blunt as I could be to avoid awkwardness and betrayal of the raging emotions I felt. "The one who's going to die… is you." And then Light looked at me.
His eyes were a mixture of hurt and fury, and his grin was replaced with a disbelieving gape. It hurt me to see him like this, and what hurt the most was knowing that I was the one who brought all this on him. "Ryuk," He pleaded. "You… you…" I continued to write his name, cringing with every letter written. "Stop it!" he cried, lunging from where he lay in a vain attempt to stop me. His form fell through me and he collided with the hard concrete floors, his neck and limbs bent awkwardly. I fumbled with what words to say, because it was so hard to conceal all the pain inside of me.
"No matter how I look at it, you've lost." I said weakly. "I was kind of expecting to get out of this one, but if I'm your last resort…" I paused and inhaled deeply. "You really are done for." I looked at him again. "You've eased my boredom for quite a long time, haven't you?" I disgusted myself with those words. He hadn't eased my boredom; he'd changed my entire life. He'd become my entire life. "It was a lot of fun." I said shortly, wishing I could have said more. Fun didn't do the joy he brought me justice. I looked once more at his name in my Death Note.
"A-Am I going to die?!" He asked me, his former self totally drained. He sounded like a frightened child, and my heart felt like it was bleeding. "I'm going to die!" He cried, looking at me with horror.
"That's right." I said. "In forty seconds… you'll have a heart attack. It's already been decided upon." I held the notebook out to him, shielding my face with it so he couldn't see the sadness in my eyes.
"I-I'm going to die." He said, his voice hollow and quiet. I realized that even though his heart was still beating and he still breathed in the musty air of the warehouse, Light Yagami was dead. At least, the Light Yagami I knew was. "N…N…No… I don't want to die." 'I don't want you to die, either." I thought. 'But it has to be done.' "I don't want to die, damn it!" He howled, dragging himself across the floor towards me. "Stop it! I don't want to die!"
"You sound so undignified." I said, finally letting some emotion slip through my façade of apathy. "It's not like you, Light." It's not like the teenager I met eight years ago in a back alley. It's not like the college student who tried to change the world. It's not like the adult who couldn't escape destiny. It was like a child, crying for its mother. "I told you in the very beginning that I would be the one writing your name in the notebook when you die." I said to him. "That is the rule between the Shinigami who brings the notebook into the human realm and the first human who picks up the notebook." He still looked aghast at my actions. I decided to try for making him realize that this was good for him. "If they put you in prison, who knows when you'll die? I don't want to lie around waiting for you to die." This was the truth. Watching his face lose its shine and the life fading from his eyes would be more than I could take. "So it's all over. You should die right here."
"N…No! I don't want to die! I don't want to go to prison, either!" His breath only came in labored pants now, and his voice cracked on every word. "Do something! I know there's a way out of it, Ryuk!" I forced myself not to reach out and touch him, not to let him know I'd already given him the only way out.
"Once a name is written in the Death Note," I began, trying to sound confident in what I had done. "You can't do anything about it. You, more than anybody else here, should know that." I hated myself for lecturing him as he died. I stole a glance at him, and felt the throbbing of regret pulsing inside me like some horribly grotesque snake, binding me to my choice. "Goodbye, Light Yagami." I said, feeling the hypothetical snake wrap itself tighter around me, strangling my voice. The room was silent around me. All I could hear was the pained breaths Light forced from his lungs. He looked so afraid. So lost. So alone. Turning away was all I could do to keep myself from crying. I don't even know if I'm capable of crying, but I do know that at that moment, I could feel the unfamiliar sting of tears accompanied by a foreign lump forming in the throat. A sob.
"Don't think," I choked out, "That any human who has used the Death Note can go to heaven or hell." I paused and tried to collect myself. "You'll find out more about that after you die." As I looked at him, I remembered how we were. I remembered the sparkle that used to be in his eyes. I remembered the beautiful glow on his pale skin. I remembered the soft texture of his hair. I remembered sitting on his bed, talking to him as he worked. I remembered him tossing me an apple, just because he knew they made me happy. I remembered Light Yagami the way I had fallen in love with him.
"You really are something." I had said to him one day, when he told me he already knew there was no heaven or hell. I had thought all humans seriously believed in life after death, but from the moment I came into being I knew it was a lie. "There is no heaven or hell," I had said. "No matter what you do while you're alive, everybody goes to the same place once they die. Death is equal." Just this once, I wished there was a heaven, so that Light could go there and live out his eternity in peace. I pleaded so desperately with the universe to create an eternity for Light. I pleaded for an eternity free from crime, just as he had wanted it. I wanted a heaven for Light more than I had ever wanted anything else. I was snapped from my nostalgia by Light's bloodcurdling screams.
"I don't want to die!" He screamed, clawing wildly at the air. "I DON'T WANT TO GO!" He looked at me with pleading eyes, his mouth open and his hair matted down with blood. I tried to picture him the way I met him, but I couldn't make the transformation. The man in front of me now was a different person. I looked back at him, and I opened my mouth to tell him I wanted to help him. To tell him I never wanted to leave him. To tell him I would miss him. To tell him I cared about him. To tell him I loved him. I moved towards him to relish in my final confession, but he flew backward and hit the floor with surprising force. His teeth were clenched and the pain he felt was all too obvious on his face. He was having a heart attack. A heart attack that I had given him. "Damn it…" he murmured. "Damn it…" And Light Yagami breathed his last.