A/N: O wow, thanks for the reviews guys! they make me feel uber happy.
now for replies:
MattTheGamer: woot woot, permanent readers are always super cool. and that means you are now super cool. :)
Ghostly Hand's Pen: ahahah, that image of light and Ryuk standing there cracked me up! you have funny mental imagines, i enjoy them. and to answer your question the first chapter is sort of just a prologue and only that is set before light gets the death note. The rest is set after, but this chapter is set during.
Princess of Oblivion: interesting starts are always good, and i will be looking forward to you enjoying the next chapter...a.k.a. this one. :)
XxMailxXJeevasxXMihaelxXKee...: well if you want me to continue, of course i will! i am but a humble slave to my readers.
Sephant: clickly, clicky, god i love clicking noises, they amuse me for hours! anywho, very glad it clicked for you! clicking is good.
black.is.the.new.blood: well, i do suppose that now you'll see where i'm going with the story. well not really actually, but this chapter is the start to where i'm going with the story. :)
malice94: squeal yay! I'm original! thank you! if it's not too creepy i love you for loving my writing style! eyebrow waggle ...that was awkward. :)
so just as a warning, this chapter might be a tad confusing and it also has spoilers for L's real name, so if you don't want to know then click back really really fast cuz his real name is like 2 lines down. and more spoilers. :)
Lawliet, his name was Lawliet.
He was dead.
Raito held him as he died, watched as the life fled from his dark eyes, felt his body go limp. Raito had killed the greatest detective in the world--L was dead. Kira won. The teen felt a manic grin plaster itself on his face. He'd won, L was gone. Kira won.
For some reason Raito couldn't comprehend that L was dead. He understood the abstract concept--that Rem had written L's name in her death note and now L was dead. Kira won. But Raito didn't know why L was dead.
Someone was yelling for Ryuzaki to wake up. It took Raito a few moments to realize he was yelling. He was screaming, actually. Screaming and shaking the dead body in his arms.
L was dead.
And his name had been Lawliet.
It took an hour for his father to coax Raito away from L's body.
An hour after L died Raito was wrapped in a blanket, seated on the couch in the room he and L had shared, sipping hot, black coffee. The coffee was very hot, burning as it spilled down his throat. Raito didn't really notice, he was staring blankly at the coffee table.
"Raito come home. We'll work out everything later. You need to rest." His father had said. But there was no way to work anything out. L was dead and everything was wrong. He'd won but it all felt so wrong. Raito needed rest, but not the kind of rest offered to the living.
Somehow Raito had convinced his father to let him stay alone in the apartment he and L had shared. That night Raito was alone in the room he and L had shared...alone save for his death note. He was alone in the bedroom, seated on the bed he and L used to share. The teen's fingers trembled as he grasped a slip of paper. L Lawliet, it said.
He was dead.
And his name had been Lawliet.
Kira had won and L was dead. If he had won why did he feel so sick? Why was his head pounding and why were his eyes burning and why did he want to scream? What had L been to him.
L was a nuisance, a sugar-addicted freak in desperate need of a pedicure, a voyeur, a threat, a challenge, a manipulative bastard who needed a hair brush. Raito remembered the time he'd given L a hair brush as a joke. The teen tried to laugh, it came out as a dry sob. L had been someone...precious to him.
Precious. That word triggered a memory, a memory of a time before the Death Note. That time seemed so far away, that Raito so different. It was like he possessed the memories of a different person.
"You will hurt someone important to you, someone who is...precious to you. And you will face a choice."
That fortuneteller told him that.
The teen sprawled himself across the bed, the same way L had done on the rare occasions he slept. Raito tried to remember what else that strange fortuneteller told him, fingers curled around that slip of paper that read L Lawliet.
He was dead.
And his name had been Lawliet.
The first time he visited that fortune teller, she'd told him to come back the next day. Raito rubbed his forehead. He had come back the day after, but what had she told him that day. Then his eyes widened.
One day after his first visit Raito returned to the fortuneteller's shop. He was not the same boy as the day before. In his bag he carried something heavier, a weight that made his stomach turn and his eyes burn. It was a death note. It was a power beyond anything Raito had ever imagined.
He had killed two people with it that day.
He'd taken two human lives.
Did that make him a murderer? The lives he'd taken were wicked ones, neither of them really deserved to live. But they were still human. Did that make Raito a...criminal? Did that make him evil?
The teen swung open the door to the shop, head reeling and he called, "Hello?"
"Come sit down, Raito Yagami."
He walked to the end of the room where the fortuneteller was again laying out Tarot cards. The teen sat down hard and dropped his bag on the floor. "Am I a murderer?" He blurted.
"Yes."
The teen buried his face in his hands, "But they were criminals! They were bad! I did a good thing. I save people!"
"By taking a life?"
"Yes!" Raito insisted. "Oh god." he moaned again.
"Relish this, Raito Yagami. Soon you won't even regret your crimes. Soon they won't even seem like crimes to you. The Death Note brings nothing but misfortune to the ones who use it."
"Am I going to hell?"
She looked up from the cards and said gently, "I told you, users of the Death Note can't go to heaven or hell."
"Where do we go?"
"Somewhere in between."
"God." Raito moaned. Then he asked gingerly, "I still owe you from yesterday."
"Do you have the pencil you used to write the first name in your Death Note?"
Raito nodded.
She offered him a crooked smile, "That'll do."
The teen procured the pencil from his bag and offered it to her, "How is this payment?"
She chose not to answer. "Our time is coming to an end, Raito Yagami."
"What?!"
"I'm sorry," Her voice was heavy with regret, "but there's isn't much more I'm allowed to tell you. I can only say so much."
"Can I ask a question?"
She nodded.
"...What is love? I mean what does it feel like. I think I love my family, but people talk about how great real love is all the time. You said yesterday that if I didn't make the right choice then I'd never find love. And it seems like the harder choice is always the right one, so tell me, is love worth it?"
She laughed, "God, you're a smart-ass. You're already making a list of pros and cons in your head aren't you? It doesn't work that way kiddo. When the time comes you will face a choice and you will have two options. One will bring you closer to your Death Note and the Raito Yagami who sits before me will die. The other choice will give you the opportunity to love and be loved."
"But if I choose the second option I'll suffer?"
She thought a moment. "Yeah, you will."
"Love doesn't sound like it's worth suffering."
The fortuneteller leaned back in her chair, "You'll suffer more without love then you will with it."
Raito shrugged.
She continued, "It's your choice. But you're right, the hardest choice and the right choice are the same in this case."
The sat in silence.
"I'm scared." Raito finally said.
"When the time comes you'll know. There will be two choices and I pray to god you make the right one."
"...yeah me too."
There was a full moon and it was raining. There was a crack of thunder outside. Raito didn't move from the bed.
L was dead.
And his name had been Lawliet.
L had been precious to Raito and Raito had hurt him. The fortuneteller said he'd have to make a choice. One would bring him closer to the Death Note and the other would lead him to a place between Heaven and Hell. But what were the choices? Raito wanted to sob.
There were no choices. There was nothing but a void inside him and he couldn't help but wonder if Kira was wrong. L wasn't a criminal and yet Kira killed him. Maybe Kira was a murderer.
Raito looked at the slip of paper in his hand, "Lawliet," He murmured.
He had no choice. There were no choices, there was nothing. Outside there was a blood-curling peel of thunder. The rain pounded on the walls of the building. It was L's building. Clouds had covered the full moon, it was dark that night save for the brief flashes of lightening and the lights of the city.
Good. The dark was fitting for Kira.
Raito would continue as Kira. That was the only option. The fortuneteller had lied. There was no other choice. Raito found L's laptop on the bedside table, he flipped it open and checked the FBI's most wanted list. Then the teen opened his Death Note and readied his pencil.
"Jacob McPhearson," Raito whispered the first name aloud as he wrote it in his Death Note.
As he wrote that name his head spun and his breaths came in short, desperate gasps. The same thought replayed itself in his mind, like a DVD caught in an endless loop.
He was dead.
And his name had been Lawliet.
XXX
They said God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. Raito decided that as god of his new world, he would do the same.
For six days after L died Raito wrote names in his Death Note. He hacked into the police computer system, he found the names of inmates in prisons all over the worlds, he killed them. He did not eat, he did not willingly sleep (although he might have passed out two or three times), and he drank...coffee. The only sounds he heard were the scraping of his pencil on the Death Note, his fingers clacking on the keyboard, and coffee being slurped from it's mug.
On the morning of the seventh day Raito reviewed his notebook.
Twenty three lines and two columns of names per page. He flipped through the whole notebook, it was a blur of names. The teen got up from his desk and decided to go to the kitchen. It was a silly idea. He was sleep deprived, he should've gone to sleep and rested. That was the logical thing to do.
But he was craving something sweet.
"Lawliet," Raito murmured, it was the first word he'd said in six days.
It was silly to want something sweet, Raito didn't even like sweets. And they were an illogical food choice as they had almost no nutritional value. He wanted one anyway. The teen checked the fridge. There was a lone strawberry tart there, so sugary and coated in icing that the mere sight of it might send a diabetic into shock. It was perfect.
To go with the slightly stale tart, Raito brewed a fresh pot of coffee. When it was done the teen poured it into a mug and took a sip. He frowned, it was much to hot. The logical thing to do was to wait for it to cool down.
Raito didn't feel logical.
He remembered how L used to put ice in his coffee to cool it down quickly. L hated coffee that was too hot. Raito found himself digging into the freezer and carrying a handful of ice over to the counter were his mug of coffee sat. He dropped a few ice cubes. The logical thing to do was to stop and pick them up. It was easy to slip on ice, especially on the tiled kitchen floor. Raito instead ignored the ice cubes on the floor and dropped a few of the cubes into his coffee and took a sip. The liquid was the perfect temperature. He should've looked down before he took a step--that was the logical thing to do.
Instead he blindly put one foot forward.
He stepped on an ice cub, his foot slid from underneath him. The teen slipped backward, eyes wide. He should've tried to get his hands underneath him so he could fall on them and protect his head. But he was tired, so instead he relaxed into the fall. His body formed a gentle arc as he tumbled backwards. His temple hit the sharply pointed corner of the kitchen table. It only hurt for a moment.
And then, everything Raito saw looked fuzzy.
There was something wet and sticky pooling underneath his head and everything was getting dark
Raito should have tried to retrieve his cell phone from his pocket and dial 9-1-1. Instead he sighed and closed his eyes, and let the darkness overwhelm him.
He had the strangest feeling that someone was watching the entire incident, that someone was very happy. The teen couldn't imagine who'd be happy that he was dying. The last thought that crossed his mind was rather curious though, he wondered, was death a choice?