They were arrogant and they were young. L's apprentices were clearly far from the detective's mind when they had been selected. Cassandra remembered their lives with a sneer, and wondered just what had allowed them to join the game with such confidence.
Near and Mello, two shadows of the past trying their best to keep up with a man they never met. A man who had never believed in their potential or their use. A man who had sneered down on them, speaking to them only through a computerized image. She almost pitied them.
They stole his sister, they attacked his pride; they once would have been considered annoyances, flies to be swatted away, flying too close to the sun. But Light was slipping. His emotions were taking hold, and time was just around the other corner, catching up to him slowly but surely. Five years was too long; his skin was stretched across his hands, his eyes were cold and dark. He was aging as a god ages—not through wrinkles but through knowledge. His mind was heavy, and the Shinigami stood too close behind him.
He was going to die, his family was falling apart, his father would be blown to pieces in a warehouse, his sister would lose the ability to speak, his mother would become ever distant, and he would be left alone in his room with no one to talk to. A trickster who doesn't know solitude—slowly and surely, those words were becoming lies, a few more to add to his biography. Only she remained, only she stayed by his side—Cassandra, who watched the world fall down, Cassandra, who wept with the god of death.
Because the puppet strings were falling apart, because the blonde apprentices were coming in fast, because they weren't worth it but they would win anyway. Because life wasn't fair, because they both knew that, and because both had fought against it. Because her world was being taken away, and she didn't know where she would go once he was gone—because without him she had no place else to go.
L was tied to Kira through a silver chain, but she was his shadow. Once the sun disappeared, she would lose the light by which she was seen and she would fade into the background, just another shade of black.
And there was nothing left to say.