Quotes are funny and beautiful. I love them.
0o0o0o
A great man once said: 'You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play the game better than anybody else.'
What's the true game? Everyone seems to be playing a thousand different warped ones.
Who can get the highest position in this illusion-upheld society?
Who can get the most invisible approval from 'higher powers'?
Who can hide what they feel and play by the rules?
Who is the coldest, the one who will betray and turn traitor and shoot others in the back, because it doesn't matter how you got the highest position?
Who plays the game, and who plays the judges to claw themselves higher?
Who is the cruelest? Who can break the other more absolutely? Who plays by the rules until nobody is looking, and then slips poison into the drinks?
Who cries fake tears over the murder they committed until the cameras turn off?
We all want to rise out of the darkness and to heaven, but somewhere along the way, the instructions were lost. Now we dig our own graves while staring at the sky,deluding ourselves into believing that we can fly.
Light, if we're playing all those games together, staring across the chessboard at each other, then, my brilliant rival, I think you're winning.
Never more have I wanted to lose; never more have I needed to win.
0o0o0o
Light, losing hold. On the time running out, slipping between his fingers like particles of sand. On his thoughts. On whatever lapse of sanity that forbid him from running back to L. On the promise, that slippery shell of a promise. Barely a few words, far from any sort of official, legalized bargain, but it was desperate and held so much on the frame of not being broken.
He wanted to break the promise, but he needed to keep it intact more. Just one time with L had worked it's way inside his head and driven him to obsess over it.
More would satisfy him until the drunkenness faded and the addiction was revealed to be stronger. And then he'd pretend he didn't need another night more than he wanted to breathe safely until he broke and the cycle started again.
He could pretend he didn't want it, and that had to count for something, right?
Light closed his eyes and pressed his hands over his ears to block out the noise of breathing, leaving him alone with his thoughts. His crazy, disjointed, staggering thoughts that were becoming more and more horrifying at every moment.
He wasn't Kira.
He could be Kira.
But he wasn't.
He was.
He was not.
He was Kira.
Please just take me away from this place, this awful world where I can't even trust. This world where I keep waking up and realizing all the decisions I made are mine. I don't want that responsibility.
I am childish, I am scared, I am not ready to be all by myself in this world full of monsters with nobody to tell me which steps will fall out from under me.
0o0o0o
The sting of knuckles on his skin. The warm flush of blood pooling under the skin. Light raised his fingers to the bruise and prodded the skin detachedly. Even after hours, it hadn't faded.
The fight had been his fault, yes, but he could also securely place blame on a few other factors. L was one. The second was the nightmare he kept waking up into, where, after all his pleading, nobody had come to tell him what were the right decisions.
'Light?'
'Ryuzaki.'
L stared at Light, but with more concern that he naturally showed.
'Light, are you okay?' Light noncommittally jerked his shoulders.
'I'm fine.' The pause stretched. 'Are you?'
'I'll be fine,' L echoed.
What is the difference between 'I'm fine' and 'I'll be fine'? Is it not necessarily the time it takes to put a veneer of perfection over the scars, but the time it takes before people believe you? Or is it that 'I'm fine' is a lie for others while 'I'll be fine' is a lie for yourself?
Which is kinder and to whom?
Light flinched at the sudden cold pressure on his bruise. L withdrew his hand.
'I'm sorry. I…'
Automatic excuses?
'No. I'm sorry.'
0o0o0o
L nodded at the small splits on Light's jaw and knuckles.
'Do you want me to treat those?' he asked. Light frowned, wincing as the small movement stretched one of the cuts.
'Yes, please.' L rose and rummaged in the nearby drawer, withdrawing a bottle and some Band-Aids.
'This is going to sting,' he warned, pulling a pillow off the bed and awkwardly holding it out to Light. 'Just in case,' the detective mumbled, and after a long moment, Light accepted, drawing it close to his chest.
The brunette held his breath as L gently cleaned first his knuckles, then the bruising cut on his face with the rubbing alcohol. It stung more than Light had predicted, and he was thankful for the pillow.
'Light, hold on, I'm almost done.'
The alcohol swab disappeared, replaced by cool fingers and rough fabric.
Light opened his eyes. L watched him expectantly, tensely.
'Are you okay?'
'I...will be fine.'
0o0o0o
'I'm losing it. I'm not Kira. I am Light Yagami, ace student, Kira Case prime suspect…' He looked over at L, for the umpteenth time wondering if the detective was asleep. 'L's lover, oh God…'
Light raked his hands through his hair again and repeated the words that were just now starting to be less than meshed-together sounds and were now taking on ideas, meaning.
'L. Famous, elusive detective. Genius. My prime interrogator, the one who could sentence me to death with a word.'
'He's going to kill me.'
'And I'm his lover.'
Light buried his face in the pillow, forcing the material against his bitten lips. It was a game in itself trying to untangle his biased thoughts from the true-if they were even true-facts about L. And Light knew he was losing.
I'm going insane over every second with him.
L was like one of the sleeping pills people took. 'It's just one, just once.' 'Just a couple.' 'Only a few times.' 'Only occasionally.'
They wouldn't let you sleep without them, so you came back for more. They ended up doing the opposite of what they promised, but you were so caught up in just getting back for 'just one last time' that you never noticed.
He's so dangerous, more than sitting on society's throne after you cheated your way to the top. More than justice. More than any power a god could give me. I've become dependent on him.
Just. Once.
It was never just once, Light thought despairingly. No matter what lies he was telling himself now, no matter how much he desperately wanted to believe them, there would come a moment where all his promises broke under the pressure and he crawled back to L.
Light already hated that moment. But he knew it would satisfy him, so part of him hungered. After the second time would come the third, then the fourth. Each time, he would give in quicker.
How many times did you have to drag yourself back until you were 'addicted'? Or was dependence measured in how long it took before you caved?
He wanted to turn to L and ask again. Say he needed more. It would be so easy. It would be a gateway to asking again and again and again.
Light wrapped his arms around himself, like that would keep the words from spilling out.
0o0o0o
L's default response to things he couldn't handle was to ignore them and pretend like they never existed. It worked almost without exception. Other people, with their presence and their probing eyes and their habits of asking all the wrong questions? He could block them out. Responsibilities, to be more than he ever could? He could pretend they didn't matter. And the world, the world full of human-bred monsters?
He could tell himself they didn't exist.
He tried to ignore Light. He tried to put Light safely into the same box as everyone else when he knew, from the moment they had unofficially met across TV, he was anything but.
He tried to ignore the falling angel until the temptation proved too much and he pounced like it was his first sustenance in years. In a way, it was. Light was the first person he saw as a worthy rival since Beyond Birthday.
L had been forced to open that old box, the one that had previously only held Beyond. It was emptier than the detective would have liked. And the emptiness hurt. There could have been so much more. There could have been more memories and words and everything and anything there, but there wasn't.
If he added Light, there could be, but the box being fuller would do nothing to soothe the pain. Old pain at seeing the emptiness again, new pain at everything about Beyond Birthday.
He wasn't ready to put Light in the same category as the deranged genius yet.
Light was still worth saving, even if doing so would take him away from L. L could do that, right? He could let something go and return to being empty again, until the next rival appeared?
There would be no 'next rival'. Light would be his last. The Kira Case would be his downfall, and it would be a fitting end.
0o0o0o
Thank you.
::The sound of leaves falling