Graves of the living;
Graves of the dying;
Graves of the sinning;
Graves of the loving;
Grave of despairing;
And oh! graves of the deserted!
She had no name in the Notebook's realm; she had no true place in the world. But she felt in the moment when the detective fell to the floor, his eyes closing and the bells clanging off in the distance, that she had become Cassandra. She had known, she had always known—and yet the prophecy could not be prevented. She ran about the streets of Troy, warning of the end of Priam's prosperity, but they laughed—laughed because she had been cursed so that they would not listen, cursed so that she would speak but they would not hear.
It was Kira's final gift to her, as he held his enemy in his arms, watching as he faded from the world into nothingness—his final gift, the smile on his lips as she truly fell apart. Everything she had believed in, everything her world had taught her, was gone as his eyes closed shut. Kira's utopia was filled with nothing but death and fear, with ravens and church bells. It was not Eden, it was not Arcadia, it was not the paradise he had promised the world. He lived in a world where ravens wore the guise of doves, where his reflection showed a red-eyed demon, where only he could see that the sky was red as death.
He screamed because he saw what she had seen all along—that he was tearing himself apart from humanity, away from his people. He knew what lay beyond death, he knew that there were no Elysian Fields waiting for L; he knew that there was no Heaven and no Hell, nothing to remember him, nothing waiting for him. Mu was a cruel fate, but it was humanity's fate none the less—for in the Notebook's world, God was a watchmaker, distant and apathetic. His people suffered under his reign.
Cassandra was weeping. She was screaming for the women he would call goddess, for the sacrifices he would make. She sobbed for the world's fate under his fingertips—and then for his own death at the hands of a Shinigami, surrounded by the very men who loathed him, nothing but a murderer, a man who tried to change the world. A man who failed.
And what would become of his world, his new world that he so desperately believed in? It would sink back to the state it had once been in. Kira left as nothing but a memory, Guy Fawkes burned on November the Fifth—nothing more than ashes of a failed attempt at anarchy. Not even the fear of him would be remembered. He would be left to rot under the white child's hand, nothing but a puppet to be played with.
A broken toy.
Yes, she supposed even the watchmaker himself had a sense of humor.
The men ran from the room, searching for the Shinigami, leaving her and the corpse alone in the crimson shadows. She scooted closer to the man she had once hated and reached for his pale hand. Tears fell onto his pale, jaded face—her life for his. She could have saved him if she had not feared to die. She could have saved them all with her prophet's gift, if only they could have listened.
"Forgive me, Lawliet." Cassandra loved the corpse more than she could ever love the man. She leaned forward, whispering the words for fear that he might hear them: "I had no choice."
But Lawliet was gone and his masks were nothing more than empty promises.