Would you trade your soul for anything? Or nothing?
What if you could know the repercussions?
What if you sold your soul in exchange for the ability to see what would happen because of that decision?
It's a paradox.
0o0o0o
The chain was a promise. Not an alliance. More a truce on one side not to claw out the parasite in their brain and an agreement on the other not to corrupt any thoughts too thoroughly. But if either side steps over the line, then the claws sink in and the memories warp and fade. The animal collapses to the ground and the parasite heaves it's final breath.
Then the night, the night when they both broke, rules and morals and made too many deals to remember, except for the one. That it was one time. That night was the moment of softness, of weakness, and the parasite started to dig and burrow it's own passages where there was none and collapse familiar, torch-lit tunnels through the darkness.
L had asked for his mind back, the one that wasn't haunted by his Kira suspect. The parasite had laughed.
You thought this was your castle? Didn't anybody tell you that only humans stay their own slaves forever?
L's mind was his sanctuary. It was a place to escape and convince himself that the monster was still in it's cage when he could feel it breathing down his neck. A place to say things he couldn't. Somewhere alone and silent and separated, even from his breathing and heartbeat and all the other noises that told the universe he was alive.
It was no longer his fortress, but his jail. And not only did he not possess the keys, there was none. There wasn't a magical escape route that would return everything to how it once was. L had to exterminate the plague and then rebuild.
But would he, the detective wondered, would he be able to return to how the passages were, when he'd become so obsessed with stalking the new ones, searching for the source of the sickness? Did he even remember how it felt to walk in places he considered his and his alone?
Did he even want to go back to the halls being so silent, he considered his heartbeat a disturbance?
0o0o0o
Light stirred and coughed in his sleep, and L loosened his grip around the young man's neck in surprise.
'Sorry, Light-kun. I didn't mean to try to kill you.' L paused, rewound the words in his mind, and laughed. 'I didn't mean to start the Kira Case, either. I didn't mean to end up like this with you.' The laugh ended up bitter and burnt out and broken. 'I didn't mean any of this. We are all accidents, and you were the best and worst mistake I ever made.'
His fingers dropped back to Light's neck, hovering in a familiar position, matching each finger to the bare impressions.
0o0o0o
Light kept his eyes closed and held his breath as L's cool fingers pressed gently back into their former positions. For a second, he thought L was actually going to try to strangle him, for real, not the accidental tightening of his fingers that had happened earlier.
There was a difference.
'Wake up and tell me that this was all part of your plan-or that you were playing with me, or anything. Tell me you don't lo-don't care about me.' A heavy breath. 'So I can stop wondering. Please.'
It would be easy to open his eyes, sit up, and do exactly that. So easy, Light found himself doing exactly that until the words stuck in his throat and L was staring at him with eyes as blank as river stones.
'Do you?' L asked.
'I…' Those dulled eyes, the awful grinding pain of knowing that this particular type of game was always going to be their aftermath, a mess only they could clean up. And they never would.
'I don't know.'
L scoffed, hands twitching.
'You do. You know perfectly well what you feel. You're just lying because you want this game to keep going.' Silence. 'Am I right?' L demanded.
'Do you know, either?' Light challenged, shaking. L went quiet. Light thought he was going to say something like 'This is why I suspect you as Kira, the way you answer questions with more inquiries', but the detective didn't.
'No.'
They stared at each other across the space of less than the air it took to breathe.
'Can we pretend we're normal?' Light asked. 'Just for…'
'Tonight?' L tried out a sardonic smile, but it turned out a bit more honest and sad then he was comfortable with. 'Yes. Yes, I'd like that. It's not like pretending to be asleep is going to fix any...less problems.'
Light buried his face in his detective's dark hair and closed his eyes. L's fingers drew concentric circles on his shoulder blades. The repetition was soothing.
'I wish I could stop this,' L said softly, speaking more to himself than Light. 'The Kira Case. I hate seeing you like this. I want you to just be...Light.'
I wish things too, L. I wish you could sleep well and not wake up screaming moments after you're finally able to nod off. I wish you didn't have habits that destroy you; I know you hate them, I can see the look on your face when you look at your ragged nails or the fingernail-scratched tic-tac-toe games that always end in ties on your forearms. I wish you weren't so sad and broken inside-I wish I could fix you.
'I wish I could be fixed, too,' L said. Light started.
'Was I thinking aloud?'
'Yes.' A soft chuckle. 'You noticed all of those things?'
'Yes. They're hard not to.'
'You'd be surprised how many people are shocked when I tell them I bite my nails or always want something in my hands. We notice the tiny, romanticized things, don't we? If shredded cuticles and reddened chicken scratches can be called romance.'
'It's as good as we're going to get,' Light joked bitterly.
L leaned forward and gave Light a soft kiss.
'No sarcastic humor right now. No dark jokes with hidden undertones. No deep talks about endings. We're trying to be normal, remember? And normal people don't do that.'
Light smiled. 'What, we have rules now? And how would you know? Unless you've been with someone before me.' It was meant to be a playful jab, but L's eyes went blank for a second before returning to the present time. Light felt the jolt in his stomach that came from looking at old pictures of people you told yourself to forget. Old pictures, from the time when they looked at you like you were their sun and moon and stars.
'Was there another person?' No answer, blank eyes again. 'Was there?' Light hissed, challenging, angry and confused at himself for being so.
'One.' L's voice was flat and eerily calm. His eyes still looked far away, removed, like he had to escape somewhere else while delivering the words. 'A long time ago. They're dead now.'
0o0o0o
'They' went by the alias B, or R, or Rue Ryuzaki, or Beyond, or anything but Beyond Birthday. 'They' were dead from a heart attack January 21, 2004. 'They' had been someone determined to make L blame himself for every breath he took after he heard the news. Not on purpose, of course. Just by making L love them and then ripping it all away. Making him feel guilty that he couldn't save his supposed protege and let him watch the sunset one last time.
0o0o0o
'No deep talks about endings,' Light whispered, a line of chain he could grab to haul himself out of the depths. He'd have to climb under his own power, with the cold, rusted metal biting into his palms, and the above world might have been sometimes too sharp and present, but anything was better than sinking ever deeper into his numb memories.
'That was your rule, wasn't it?' L was still clawing off the old shroud of cobwebs-so easy to don, so hard to remove. Must be all the trapping threads, he mused-and forgot to answer. Light brought him back with a gentle touch.
'Yes…?'
'So no talking about them. I'm going to add a rule for that. No talking about the past. No talking about anything except for us,' he added.
'No being suspect and detective,' L offered.
'No Kira Case?' Light asked. L stopped, then nodded vehemently, almost frantically.
'No Kira Case. No mentioning it. No thinking of it. We're somewhere else, another universe where the Kira Case doesn't and never will exist. Somewhere where we're just normal people, and talking normally is something we're capable of doing.'
'I like this universe,' Light said.
Someone found a pen, and the rules were written on skin. L's messy scrawls full of curls and fingerprint smudges, Light's fast and slanting cursive underscored by horizontal scribbles, like a childish drawing of a tornado. They wrote out the guidelines to their own kind of normality and sealed the contracts with soft kisses and laughter.
'Light, that tickles!'
'It's your turn to write next.'
'You do realize that everyone will see the words?'
'Let them see. And we'll stop as soon as we can't come up with any new ones.'
They would always come up with more rules, more holding threads in the formerly tenuous web to keep themselves alive and above the rotting mess of the world.
So many standards in the universe they had all to themselves to keep the illusion operating smoothly. All illusions need rules and ordinances and laws, or else it collapses and buries itself under the dust. The smoke cloud covers up the feeding of the next empire.
But the difference between a society's illusion and this private world's illusion was that in one, the inhabitants were fully aware of their restricting rules to the point where they could mock them.
Shackles in blue ink and words, written where flesh formed pleasing angles or around fingernail scratches or anywhere their chain touched, which was everywhere. Irons that freed instead of trapped. Or maybe it was the comfortable knowledge of being locked inside a prison of their own making.
Our pasts don't exist and don't matter. Full of desperate loops and whorls, scribbled across Light's back and crossing his shoulder blades.
We didn't end up together because of the Kira Case. L's forearm and fingers, Light being careful to avoid the scratches.
We can talk normally. L finished the 'y' on Light's collarbones with a slash.
No more games. Angry, dragging, deep-set lines pressed like brands into the pale skin covering L's ribcage.
No Kira Case. Everywhere. Anywhere there was space, the words were twisted to fit.
Underlined and bolded and traced over again and again until the blue ink started bleeding out in tiny lines and formed a web. L pressed his hand to Light's chest and imagined that the lines that ran off his fingertips could connect him to his suspect, his lover, his Light.
Angels, wings halfway between stripped and restored, covered in inky chains to keep themselves together.
The pen was running out of ink. The last note was written on their hands, and apart, it looked unfinished.
A prison as large as the world.
Does it matter if you can't escape?
'Goodnight,' Light said. L curled into his arms, his twenty-so years disappearing and turning him back into a child. A child with eyes clear and wide and most importantly, here, instead of trapped inside his head, dragging himself up a chain to climb out of old thoughts.
Goodnight, go to sleep, and I'll wait until you wake up. Not necessarily the morning of the next day. Rest as long as you like; I'll sit here by the side of your bed and chase away the monsters.
Please, do the same for me?
0o0o0o
Are paradoxes possible, or are our actions already woven into the timeline?
:: The shiver that goes up your spine and tying it to certain actions; expecting the chill and feeling empty when it doesn't appear
-LyingMonsters, the one who wonders if humans or free will are paradoxes