Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Although it happens in the middle of the night, Light saw it coming hours prior the moment his stomach, flipped and soaked in acid, turned nauseous and sour. He’s all too familiar with this now: the wet in his eyes and sharp soreness in his throat after last night’s dinner comes right back up and thankfully into the toilet. It’s not like it was any surprise.

During most changes in his life, Light’s anticipation would hit an all time high that made him physically sick at the prospect of a new day on the horizon, bearing events he wasn’t yet ready for: his annual first day of school, violin concerts, final exams, birthday parties, anything that required the conscious effort to leave the house and wear a mask of perfection he’d been long since trained into. The brunt of them took place in adolescence. At first, the anxiety attacks would come with fretful tears and mantras of “I’m not ready”.

Nowadays he tiredly shuffles to the bathroom, empty of useless fretting, just to get it over with. His mother’s scowl used to sear uncomfortable and tense each time he happened to be sent home, or simply couldn’t make it through his morning routine without the cold sweats and a racing heart getting the best of him. “It’s all in your head,” she would say, time and time again, and it eventually worked.

At least, that’s what Light wants to believe. He wants to believe it all meant something in the end because if it truly didn’t then all that suffering would boil down to nothing and that can’t be true. He doesn’t work so goddamn hard through life just for the burden of it to mean nothing; that would take away the strength and productivity it must have offered, where he’d obsessively have to sift for those grand life lessons like gold in thick crumbly mud.

And yet, he was still vomiting with barely an ounce of rest, just in the downstairs bathroom and out of earshot. Back then, he’d wonder why something in his head rendering him to a pathetic state like this made the experience any less real, but he’s stopped clinging to that now, because either way a cycle of pity won’t exactly do much for him.

Blow his nose, wash his face, brush teeth and gargle mouthwash: a secondary routine that has wedged its way into his life since primary school days.

The raw shade of dawn’s faint morning blue filters through the blinds and casts a breath of quiet light across L’s bedroom, not yet enough to overpower the shadows left behind by the night’s embrace. L has since stirred awake, but his rubbed eyes make slow fluttering butterfly blinks through the dark when his arm has registered the empty bedside.

“Light?” His partner’s voice rasps, and it tickles something teenage and giddy in Light’s chest. He’s learned to contain it into something manageable by now.

“I’m fine,” Light says as he climbs back into bed where the wrinkled sheets and cool covers embrace him as readily as a pair of arms. “Just needed to use the bathroom.”

L hums. His eyes have probably slipped shut again by now as the sound is as breathless and sleepy as ever. Except— “You throw up?”

“Mm-mm,” he tries to deny.

“Baby I’m tired, but not an idiot.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

His rumbling chuckle is low and ridiculously handsome as he pulls Light closer. Blunt nails graze along his naked back, rising goosebumps where the blanket doesn’t cover and the AC unit adds a pleasant chill to his skin. “Are you anxious again?”

Light only hums right back, in no mood to admit to his nerve wracking worries flushed down in the connecting bathroom. Fiddling with L’s cotton shirt collar, he lets his eyes glaze over, consciously absent of the muffled thoughts building a chorus beneath a thin blanket of oblivion.

Against the ruffled bangs across his forehead, L presses a comforting kiss. “Should I make you feel good,” —his fingertips dance down Light’s waist, thumbing the dip of his v-line— “And you won’t have to think about anything else for now?”

Blush creeping up his neck, Light swallows. Lucky, his mind leaps to, but no. He’s earned this.

“Yes please.” Coated in polite flattery they both know better than. A snaking possession burrows pleasant in his core, holding tight to a comforting truth.

You’re mine now.

And it just keeps going. Their clothes stripped, hands mapping all across his body with wandering lips leaving their own trail throughout. L’s tongue is hot on his cock but it doesn’t stop there, and the quiet sounds he manages to draw stuttering out of Light sound unreal when it’s this early. It makes his toes curl, and fingers clench on a head of messy black hair. He feels a telltale scruff from the man’s unshaven jaw brush against the tender skin between his legs; it does things to him. Mine mine mine.

It’s not enough. He still wants more and L delivers that much down to where he ends up gripping the bed frame above as he fucks Light into a sweeter oblivion underneath the covers. It builds a cloud of cotton candy between his ears and leaves his brain in the backseat for once.

“Oh my god, o-oh.” Everything is hot, sweaty, and otherwise should be uncomfortable if he wasn’t fucked full of this certain addiction.

“Love hearing you,” L murmurs, and his steady pace only relents when he props up on his arm and grinds impossibly deeper. The angle has Light gasping as pleasure zings down his legs to the point of a nearly blissful numbness.

His own nails rake down his partner’s tense back, digging into undulating muscle to draw pinpricks of pain he knows L wickedly revels in. The sting comes with a breathless chant Light has fallen into, the only feedback loop that matters:

“Elliot… Oh fuck, Elliot, please…”

The man doesn’t respond, not with words, his reaction is infused in the hand fumbling for Light’s to thread through and hold tight, the teeth that sink into the weak juncture above his collarbone, how his cock twitches inside and Light hears himself gasp again at the fast approaching brink they’re reaching.

“Inside me.” Light licks his lips, head thrown back as he pants weakly and gets lost in the view of an empty ceiling. His outlook on a future full of mornings like this burns with desire. They’ll work case by case, they’ll have each other, the Death Note, Val and Nora, an anonymous power overruling the world from the comfort of their own home—

“Cum inside— Fuck, I need you, Elliot.”

Shuddering warmth floods him moments before his own release, and L’s mouth pops off the tender bite of skin, left to air in its own ache. Light clenches around the cock stuffed snug inside him, milking his own untouched orgasm and leaving his partner quivering in between. Their hands stay knit together all throughout.

In the following comfortable silence, Light wants to blurt something. Three words that are long overdue, they crawl up his hoarse throat and make ready to jump, bracing themselves—

“‘That help you, babe?” L mumbles, dazed and spent, against Light’s neck.

The bracing breath deflates out of him and Light swallows. “Yeah.” His mouth twitches, and he combs his fingers through the detective’s tangled hair. “Thank you.”

Time in itself can feel like the worst torture. The torture of waiting.

Last night, after his call with Mikami, all their team members were paged to arrive early this morning to confirm the go ahead on their operation. Most of them usually head back home after reporting to headquarters for their due work and training, especially with families to return to during this holiday season. At most, some have spent a night or two on the guest floors.

The abruptness of it all feels like a sudden interference of their lives. ‘I should’ve tried negotiating a later time, dammit,’ Light still thinks to himself. A constant, aching stress tolls on him throughout it all as he gauges each reaction during the meeting, but everyone seems to handle their pushed forward agenda better than he’d initially expected. He can suppose that after all, they’ve planned this for weeks now. Light even has the other squads’ operations memorized just as thoroughly as his own because every piece matters.

In his place toward the end of the table, near L’s own seat, Light swallows thickly, gripping the edge of his chair. A feeling of utter appreciation swells foreignly in himself at the sight of everyone’s professionalism: most heads are nodding, their tones are leveled…

You’re overthinking again, another signal prods through his analysis of all the body language lumped together in this room. It comes from the hand that rests over his own underneath the table; L acts none the wiser from the waist on up. He gives Light a look, more subtle than dust in the air, all for a fleeting second.

On the projector, each operation is displayed and walked through with overhead diagrams of the building layouts and their team’s formation. Although one thing L can’t stress enough:

“Trust your instincts,” he says. “Our plans are basic references, but those of you who’ve worked in this field for a long time know more than ever they don’t always accommodate for things we may have not seen coming.”

While he and L have their own personal agenda of obtaining the notebooks, it isn’t exactly ideal to let their colleagues drop like flies in the process. Their means of reaching their goal can do without.

Especially Light’s own father, he thinks after feeling a strong pat from the man’s hand against his back once the meeting is over. His dad doesn’t say anything about it, Light knows it’s because he’s worried and simply doesn’t know what else can be said at this point after their many reruns of familial confiding.

“Your sister has been begging me to tell you to answer her phone calls.”

“I guess I can allow at least one.” Light smiles.

His dad ruffles his hair before standing up. “You better.” He nudges Light’s shoulder with that parental look, and Light holds up surrendering hands. Alright, alright. “Your mother wants to know what you want for Christmas dinner for when you come home too.”

“I’ll let her know.”

As soon as his father is out of the conference room and headed to the office floor for more NPA side work, Light takes out his phone, dialing Sayu’s number.

“Your sister?” L asks, head tilted curiously. Light nods while the line rings.

“Light!” Sayu shrieks on the other end. Luckily, this time he took the precaution of lowering his volume.

“Hi.”

“Come back home ASAP. I’m so bored without you here for me to make fun of,” his little sister whines.

Before he moved to To-Oh’s dorms, he and Sayu spent loads more time together. It’s hard to imagine having an empty dynamic with his own sibling that plenty others are used to. When he was bored at home, she was the first he would go to, embarrassing as that is. 

At school, he seemed social on his own terms, but there was no one he truly spent time with off campus besides Elliot, or even knew on a more meaningful level. He remembers the force of their breakup that rendered him almost entirely…

Alone.

It felt pathetic to turn to his sister who was swept up in her own teenage thrill of outrageously big friend groups and activities to go to every weekend or after school hours. Her first year in their high school was his last, and the brunt of that was spent sitting glaringly quiet in the back of classrooms with no geeky troublemaker stuck at his side anymore. Even more than usual, he couldn’t help his negativity, the sarcasm and broodiness, it came a lot more naturally than admitting he missed a certain someone. To Sayu’s friends, he was the Yagami’s eldest and intimidating, top of the class.

To his sister, he was her “moody and emo” older brother, and his preference for solitude never helped to deconstruct that image.

He doesn’t mind it though now, for the most part. When he talks to Sayu over the phone, he knows his sister may chuck those stupid labels at him like he does her, but she knows him better than anyone— Or maybe, her and Elliot have come to a close draw in that kind of competition.

“—and I’ve been meaning to ask, I’m so curious, how old even is L?!”

Light glances at his partner, spinning in circles on his own chair as he listens in on their conversation, at least the loud parts. “Go on, then.”

“Twenty-five,” Light answers plainly. “Mentally though, he’s about seven.”

“He’s close to your age? Is he handsome~…”

Stupidly so, Light thinks exasperatedly as L wobbles dizzyingly, wearing a poorly done smoulder with a hand to his chin. He hasn’t shaved in a few days, those bangs are well within his eyesight enough to be a hazard, on that note a haircut overall is long overdue, Light can’t tell if his t-shirt is even right side out, and those jeans should definitely be in the dirty laundry by now.

That’s him. That’s the one.

“Definitely not,” Light answers.

“He’s lying!” L declares as he scrambles off his chair and into Light’s lap to grab for the phone. “He’s jealous of my good looks!”

“Get—! Don’t break my phone, L!”

In the end, he relents. Although the combination of L and his sister joining powers sounds like a nightmare, one phone call doesn’t hurt. If anything, L has more of a say in what he’d rather disclose about his identity if he’s the one talking in the first place.

“I see you managed to obtain the enthusiasm gene in the family, Sayu,” L says after the girl’s squealed greetings. He settles properly in Light’s lap like an overgrown, obnoxious cat. “It seems to have skipped right over your brother.”

Light huffs. He’s not sure what his sister says to that, but knowing her, she’d wholeheartedly agree.

It’s a strange crossover to listen to the two interact, yet he allows it anyway, and slips back into his own pooling thoughts with Elliot in his arms. His hand meets the faint scruff along the man’s cheek, stroking absentmindedly as though it’s his own skin to touch. After feeling it between his legs this morning, it might just be his new minor obsession…

For the most part, they end up talking about Star Wars, and when Light’s legs have hit intolerable numbness he’s proclaimed the party pooper for taking the phone back to bid his sister goodbye after her last scoop of life gossip to share with him.

“Okay, tell L I like him more than you!”

“I will not. Bye, loser… Love you.”

“Love you too, be safe! Bye-bye Light- kunnn—“

He hangs up.

“So caring and compassionate…” L says, sweetly sarcastic. 

“She knew about you,” Light finds himself blurting out. And at L’s questioning look, he sets his phone down and expands a little more. “Back in high school. After we broke up, I went to her and talked about it.”

Talked about it: the understatement of a lifetime. He still remembers how hard it was to even breathe steadily when his first heartbreak opened the floodgates to feelings he wasn’t even aware of before. Their parents were gone, and the house was so quiet he could hear the winds blowing outside, and his cries pinging static off the walls. The leg of his sister’s sweatpants grew wet with his fallen tears. It was an all time low, one that she shouldn’t have witnessed.

“I thought you never told your family,” L says softly after maneuvering back to his own chair.

“Only her. I guess it doubled as coming out to her too. And she was supportive.” Light crosses his arms. He feels his gaze fall low under a weight of reluctance; this was always a difficult topic to talk about with Elliot, but they aren’t teenagers anymore. “I still don’t know about my parents. I know you think it’s stupid to overthink, or harmless, but they’re strict. I’ve always been on thin ice with my mom for being…” —on the spectrum— “different.. and difficult sometimes. And my dad is nice and caring, yes, but I just don’t know and—“

“I understand,” L says. Shockingly, he mirrors his own look of discomfort at this admittance, knees hugged close to himself and his fingers plucking away at a loose thread in his baggy blue jeans. “I never had strict parents, or one that even cared that much about what I did with myself.” He swallows, those dark grey eyes hover on Light through burdened honesty. “I thought you kept it all a secret because you were embarrassed by me, or ashamed. When it came to you, I cared about that.”

It’s not often enough that L is vulnerable like this. If anything, it's a Herculean task just for either of them to slip something out of their element. Elliot turns every instance into a joke to ease the ache, and Light thinks criticizing every remotely intimate situation will save him from the human feelings that bloom from such. He can imagine they’d look like a couple of morons to the average therapist.

“I didn’t know how my family would react, if anything I was embarrassed by them,” Light says. Every word delivered feels like the weight of muck slabbed on him over these years is finally being sloughed away. “I didn’t want you to deal with any retaliation, or even risk overhearing some of the crap my parents might say. I didn’t think it’d be fair at all. I-I…”

L catches the first tear under his thumb, but there’s several more coming, and he’s soon painted himself as their theme of embarrassment here.

“I wanted you in my life, Elliot.” His lips purse, and he blinks several times to will away the sting in his eyes and nose, but to no avail. He can’t help but keep glancing away as though the right words will be written on the plain tile floor. “I wanted to earn us that a-and right when I thought I finally had a chance, you…” Holding tight to Elliot’s wrist, he takes a long and hiccuped breath. “You left me.”

L might’ve thought he was waiting on empty stubbornness, but from Light’s perspective, that’s far from true. He tried for them, they needed that foundation of a solid reputation if even a stroke of luck was within reach. He challenged the standoffish talk at the dinner table; he rose above his tennis teammates that knew nothing more than abhorrent locker room talk and became team captain; hell, among dozens of other incidents, he went as far to dust itching powder in the makeup of some girls clique that made stuckup remarks about his best friend’s tied back hair and sci-fi pins.

For the sake of revealing the social ladder’s unjust truth and the rightful consequences for it, Light was an invisible force to deal with.

But ultimately, the work of dragging himself and his best friend there had amounted to nothing.

“I know,” Elliot says, hushed. “I’m sorry.”

It’s a monumental step for Light, pulling his partner up off his chair too just for a proper embrace. Elliot hugs him like he means it, at least the firmness in his hold shows that much, and if ever offered, Light may pass up on the world’s softest pillow just have his cheek smooshed comfortingly on this man’s shoulder.

“I am too.” He closes his eyes, inhaling far more steadily than before as they rock contently from side to side. A small, private smile creeps up his cheeks when he feels Elliot’s loose t-shirt tag right under his nape. It is inside-out.

When he opens them again, he catches their humble reflection in the window.

Although, he doesn’t remember that shelf being there. Nor a violet love seat here in the conference room. And his figure looks quite short—

As they turn, he sees it more clearly now.

Nearly synchronized with their movements, the transparent projection of a young woman swaying contently with the other Lawliet twin has made a home in the window panes. Her hair is long and dark, spilling off her shoulders and down a petite frame. Those bangs curtain around a curved and smiling face, eyes closed just like Light’s a moment ago, and her lover’s face is obscured while tucked close in the crook of her neck.

Light doesn’t know where they dance, but it looks like what another person may call home. It catches him off guard for far longer than he’d expect, he nearly forgets the fear that comes from these glimpses until those figures turn and Damien’s head begins to lift off the woman’s shoulder.

Light pulls back.

When his view passes Elliot’s face from one shoulder to the next, the image is gone by the time he looks over the other side, and it’s truly themselves in the reflection.

By the time it’s nearing six o’clock, his heart is racing, head diluted with anxious worry. He can’t stop flicking his wrists, trying to clear his mind, but it feels like his surroundings are caving in, and everything is far too close to keep track of.

“Eow! Meow! Ee—!” Valkyrie cries, needy as ever.

“I hear you, Val, but we aren’t going to be gone for long— Agh! Shit.”

Crazy little cat, she tried clawing up his bare leg, only to leave a rake of stinging failure in its wake. Small scratches on his leg burn a fierce pink, and one sliced deep enough to prickle dots of bleeding red. As though somehow remorseful, Val frantically laps at the small wound with a shallow, scraping tongue.

“Do I hear a cat fight over there?” L calls from the bathroom.

“She’s yelling at me again,” Light says, exasperated. He picks her up and walks over to the bathroom for a wipe and bandage. “Couldn’t have waited for me to put my pants on… Here, stay with Dad,” he mutters to Val, pushing the fluffy heap into the detective’s arms.

“Sounds like one thing we’ve got in common.” Smug.

“Ha-ha.”

After a couple swipes, the site is already clotted and sealed. As he searches for a bandage, his neck twists fast from a double take and leaves him sore at the view before him. L is actually dressed formal, with straight black suit pants and a soft, vanilla button down. Oh, he looks…

“Wow,” Light says, straightening to take in the full attire. “What happened to being allergic to nice clothes?” He quips, taking Valkyrie back into his arms. She purrs almost as loudly as his partner can snore, although this time earplugs thankfully aren’t necessary.

“Change of plans,” L answers simply. He ties his hair back in a half-up style; it suits him as an adult, but Light is more off-put by the freshly wet razor sitting on the counter. No more scruff… Except—

“What do you mean?” Light chuckles, confused. But the man doesn’t smirk with him, he wears no signs that he’s just pulling Light’s leg right now. His stomach drops. Word by word, he asks again. “Elliot, what do you mean…”

“I can’t let you get hurt—“

“No. No, no, no, we planned this—“

The clothes, the change , L wears a bulletproof vest underneath but the rest of his attire is a sophisticated disguise for The Lotus. “Light, I’m asking you now to just trust me—“

“How!” Light snaps. “How am I supposed to when you never even told me to begin with?! Is this what you planned all along?” His voice wavers, brow furrowed so deep it’s giving him a headache, and Val has since been placed back on the floor. “You couldn’t fathom the possibility that I’d stay loyal—“

“I don’t doubt you, Light,” L cuts him off, and steps closer to hold him by the shoulders. “I don’t. But I promised I’d keep you safe from the beginning, and I know my brother’s tricks more than you do.”

Light swallows, fighting everything in himself that urges to shove those hands off of him and storm out. But he’s not a child. He won’t.

“He’s out there. He might be physically confined, but he’s out there,” L says.

“You’re a dick…”

Despite the bite, Light leans in further, until L’s hands move to hold his face with a defeated sigh. He wants to argue, and fight, but one thing rings true and it’s that L has been in this field for longer. An inkling of fear dwindles in his chest though, a knotted pile of yarn, that L is going to take the notebook from Mikami and dash away from everything he and Light have built together. And yet, there’s a lot of nerve in having expected L to trust him this far, with none given in return. He remembers the only promise he ever truly made during this investigation:

‘But if this ends in sick betrayal…’

“We’re swapping places,” L says. “Do you know my position in the library operation?”

Of course he does. If there’s anyone obsessively wary of L’s role in matters, it’s Light. He knows each move with as much familiarity as his own.

“Like the back of my hand.”

It’s not long before he’s dressed too, only just now realizing L was already prepared with his separate gear for the library. The pants are thicker, his shirt underneath his vest is a shade of black like the rest of the articles, and he shucks on the hand-me-down jacket from his father; it’s nearly identical to the rest of the squad’s.

He and L aren’t just swapping places, Light knows what this entails. Their mic and radio system is somehow filtered to still disguise L’s identity, each remark for all members communicating is signed off with an assigned agent letter to indicate instead.

Warily, he glances at the last piece resting on the balcony table: his masked helmet. It’s unlike the cheap, flatter ones used during capture the flag that almost resembled a hockey mask held back by cheap ribbons. This looks more like a motorcycle helmet, with a tinted full face shield.

The rest of the squad won’t know it isn’t L.

He feels a squeeze around his hands where Elliot has scooped them up to hold tight, and all that can vaguely subside his nerves right now is the flooring sight of his dressed up partner with the backdrop of this evening’s last dredges of a dusty burnt orange and red sunset streaked across the sky. If Light thought he still stood a chance here, he’d be eating his words right now. The man is breathtaking.

For a long moment, neither of them say a word. Their foreheads come to rest against each other’s, a firm and steady force he tries to balance his nauseous stomach upon with every conscious inhale and exhale. It’s their shared company here that matters just as much as tonight’s farewell before parting to their respective operations.

It feels like a lifetime ago when his heart first dropped to the floor at Elliot’s resounding return as detective L, and the most betraying smugness about his ex from the look on that man every time they’d lock eyes from then on. He remembers the snarling resentment held deep down, a packed layer of hot soil covering the withered and flakey ashes of a heartbroken depression he never quite gained closure from.

Light may have stopped L’s attempt at an easy kiss only their first night of detainment together, but he was damned to eventually cave. Listing all the reasons in his head not to fall for L only doubled as every reason he still cared.

And so, a certain current streams to the forefront of his mind, parting through the overthinking chaos as a high priority.

“Elliot.” Light swallows. “I just wanna say…” Three words, really it shouldn’t be this damn hard. “I-I just—“

“I know,” Elliot says. Light can hear the smile in his voice even with his eyes shut.

“I still want you to—“

“Come on, Light.” The man leans back, and Light’s eyes open to a sudden flirt. “Give me something to look forward to hearing when this is over.”

Such an idiot, Light thinks with a wet slip of his last tears and hastily wipes them away. By god he’d swear himself out of existence if anyone saw the parts of him he’s allowed Elliot to see. He huffs, a quelled smile resting on his face as he looks at the horizon and all it has to offer for them. A new world…

All the team members have reported to their rightful vehicles, with Elliot’s parked at the back entrance. They give several quick pecks to Nora and Valkyrie at a last stop in the foster kitten room, the latter practically yowling her fur off just to climb up Light’s pant leg one last time. Only those two remain while the rest of the litter has apparently long since been adopted, mostly by their own staff. Val’s attachment gives him a fleeting and childish content he hadn’t got to experience with a pet before, and he makes a pointed mental note that he’ll be back for that ruby-eyed cat.

Light holds Elliot’s hand with all his might on the elevator ride down, helmet clutched in the other. It’s quiet, save for the ding on each passing floor, until he turns to reel his partner in for one last kiss before they go. The pressure of it is fierce: both everything he needs and just not enough, with his lips aching in a matter of only a couple rich seconds as he slides them impossibly closer. A hand presses just as firm at his lower back, and they spend at least three floor levels stupidly tongue-tied. Elliot’s easy passion gives him a powerful thrill to hold onto.

Not to forget the ellipses: One, two, three… 

By ground level, his mask is strapped on and they’ve fixed back to decency, enough for the exchange to remain unsuspected.

Light grabs Elliot by the wrist at the last hallway. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he demands, and even with a mask on, he’s certain the man knows exactly what warning expression he wears.

“I’ll save that for a better time, princess.” Elliot brings up his hand to peck a charming kiss against his knuckles. Those formal clothes are getting to his thick head already, Light rolls his eyes, as invisible as his blush is to the dork.

You tug too many heartstrings, he thinks to himself exasperatedly, and after a reluctant squeeze their hands slip apart to turn their separate ways, missions set at opposite ends.

As Light is chauffeured to the library, one of the few distractions he can afford to entertain and ease his nerves is the organized chaos of wintery decorations outside. It’s a beautiful shock to see as he gazes out the window, where lines of skeletal trees and trimmed bushes are bedazzled by twinkling lights of pale blue and flushed lilac. The city streets come alive under their glow as the sun slides further down the horizon, an ember with only a few heartbeats left before nighttime takes over.

He drinks in their surroundings alone from the backseat as they drag through the thick of holiday season traffic. It makes sense they’d leave fairly early, the Lotus is a half hour in the other direction from headquarters. Mikami is there, or should be soon, and he’s certainly in for a surprise while the rest of them are led to only lollygag across town. Maybe Light could find something useful at the library besides further evidence, perhaps even more information to answer his burning questions on just how things actually work in this branch of the supernatural.

At that thought, he remembers the other reason his heart is caught thick and pulsing in the base of his throat.

The Death Note presses against the sturdy surface of his vest from behind, where it lays upright between the layers of his bomber jacket, sewn shut from the handiwork of corner store dental floss and a cheap pocket knife. Hiding precious things calls for some crafty ideas, from the false bottom of his drawer back home of beloved pictures he’d never quite given up on but needed out of sight, to flash drives of hacked NPA content stuffed inside a cheap plush bear gifted by his sister. As his trust in the world waned from spiraling truths, his instinct to stow away every compromising aspect of life became swelled with validation. The Kira case especially proves so, when even a name holds power over their fate.

Elliot has a fake, he’s well aware of that too. If all it takes is pulling out his own for Mikami to reveal his, on behalf of Light’s “absence” as a feux fellow worshiper, there will be enough time on their hands for Halle and backup officers to intervene and detain the man, or do so if he even tried to make a run for it. Nothing in the book obligates their shinigami to remain within their proximity anyway.

Still, Light feels something curling in his gut at the supposed easiness of it all. Elliot only has that slip of paper.

From behind the tinted partition, he shucks off his jacket. His threaded work with the floss is close enough to its actual seams, but near the bottom is a gap just wide enough for his thumb and forefinger to slip through, tearing off from the same page corner as before.

As slow and steady wins the race, Light doesn’t take risks unless the consistency of his intuition can guarantee their success. And so he’s been thinking about this, deeply, playing out every scenario in the back of his mind until the execution of this has been perfectly planned. Maybe the harbored soft spot for his investigative partner has grown thin and vulnerable, but he won’t allow it to be his downfall. The more precious the valuable, the stronger its exterior must be.

It’s silent back here. White noise from his own focused mind has tuned out all else, and he glances up into the rearview mirror at the chauffeur, those dull blue eyes none the wiser to Light tipping the first domino in an intricate chain that will eventually lead to a more perfect, secure world.

With his jacket back on, he tugs the miniscule protruding gear of his watch, unslotting the part until its needle length and fine tip is revealed. Uncurling his fingers, with the torn bit of paper pressed against an open palm, all it takes is a gentle prick to draw the thickest ink.

Each word is written with hair-thin delicacy. His thoughts are forced into noiseless air, and he carries out the task like folding clothes, or washing his hands.

He trusts it’ll eventually become just as familiar, give time.

When the needle is clicked back into place, Light doesn’t take another second to look at what he’s done. He can’t allow any clawing regret for his means that will justify the ends.

The paper dilutes wet on his tongue, and before he swallows the evidence into a pit of gurgling acid, he closes his eyes and revels in the taste of his own blood.

“H reporting, entering the premises,” Q says through the com. The speakers tickle strangely in Light’s ears. A few minutes later, more noise returns. “1C entrance unlocked, coast is clear, over.”

“Copy, O reporting. We’re going in,” his father announces: the first to push in the levered door.

It’s eerie, here in the library’s darkness past its closing hour. From the center’s glass ceiling panes above, the moonlight filters in enough for their surroundings to rest in an ominous, shadowed peace. The leaves of a haunted courtyard full of gangly plants take the shape of worn book pages here, but that kind of atmosphere still remains, as though built upon their greenhouse cemetery.

They take careful steps, one after the other, along the perimeter inside until Aiber and Raye break away down one of the aisles to eventually secure them from the front. Light knows the back section they’re headed to is all the way across the ground floor, and their ridiculously slow progress to nothing is already doing a number on his patience. He’s only egging on a roundabout dance here, but at least the other team members are aware that their chances of finding the notebook here can be slim. He can’t imagine what the home squad is thinking right now, probably mumbling around a bunch of gym equipment and a half-empty refrigerator.

“H: position secured,” Q reports. Their sniper is at the ready now, somewhere up on the second floor, or even higher near those looming windows, out of sight when huddled farther from the edge. “I see movement from the left wing. Proceed with caution, over.”

Probably just the shadow of a bird or passing car outside… “T re—“

CRRRH CRRRR

Light is ready to report, but a loud scratching sound echoes all throughout the building and has them flinch still, heads slowly craned up to detect the airy commotion. An unmistakably wrong feeling suddenly swings full force in his gut, yet he stays planted there anyway, stuck and scanning the ceiling high above from where the sound seemed to come from. Every grand, bowl shaped light is switched off and sits empty of their typical warmth; the way they each hang suspended by thick black chains reminds Light of the law’s most notorious symbol: the teetering scales of justice. 

That grating cacophony of noise from the library’s overhead speakers continues, a horrendous scraping that prods at an animalistic frustration in him until he realizes…

It’s music.

‘It’s the most wonderful time… of the yearrr!’

“H, reporting. Picking up movement from the right wing now,” Quillsh says. The calmness of his voice makes it apparent this is nothing new to him, even when dealing with the unexpected now. “Agent T, do not move.”

Light clenches his jaw and tries to swallow down the deja vu this is giving him. Their atmosphere here easily changed from a courtyard to an empty retail store with this obnoxious song playing; neither suggest anything good when they’re caught in the dark like this. Every corner he’s hyper aware of, on edge about which aisle their sniper may be looking at right this moment while a supposedly foreign threat creeps closer to him and his father. Whoever it may be, they know the team is here. It’s no coincidence, this song must be a signal somehow.

Don’t move, he hangs onto the urgent mantra, yet his head turns on its own to scan the looming artifacts planted atop especially tall shelves lining the walls behind them.

He feels like he’s dreaming, like the echoing Christmas music is an alarm clock he can’t register in this faraway scene, that any moment he’s supposed to wake up just before danger hits him full force, and the next few breaths are of relief and lucidity.

“He’s out there.” Light is slowly stringing together the same sour feeling from his trips before, where a dancy rhythm had once led him down the oxymoron of a dull empty hallway and a smatter of rotting limbs at its end. He’d wonder if it’s Beyond again, present somehow, but everyone else seems to hear the music too—

Vvvp— something drags, ridged rubber on wood and Light is horrified to find an entire silhouette unfold itself on top of one shelf within arm’s reach like a prowling animal. Their mask is a grotesque cartoon of empty bleeding eyes and swollen rosy cheeks holding up a plastic makeup’d smile. In the daylight, the sight would be all but an absurd musical prop for him to brush away.

Past twilight, with a slinking body attached and dagger readily held in a flesh twitching hand, it’s their predator.

Phhft.

When it happens, it’s quiet. That’s what catches Light off guard: how only a strange mixture of awry vacancy and this brash music could welcome a battle like this. All it takes is the first spit of Q’s sniper; their attacker is struck point blank in the head, blood spattering like a dart to a paint-full balloon at the carnival, and suddenly their swift move to hop off the shelf ends in a clambered fall to the face two meters down.

It’s unreal. Light doesn’t even have it in him to acknowledge it for what it is: death. He swears that could only be a puppet cut from thin strings if this is all it took.

Where’s the screaming in agony? The cries for their cause?

Light watches as blood oozes in a spreading pool across the carpet where the person has landed. It’s a man. Average height, scarred and freckled skin past the threadbare sleeves of musty green jacket, and knotty brown-gray hair tied at the base of a thin neck. He doesn’t know why he feels so unfazed, if anything it’s a puzzling kind of jarring. Did that just—? Is he really—?

This must be shock.

“Agent T and O, right wing exit is blocked. There’s.. There’s more coming, I don’t know what in the hell—“

“Kira worshippers! I-I’ve seen them wear these things on the new— ergh! Agh!”  

Even with the filter, Light can assume the comment comes from Raye, but he’s got less time to keep taking useless guesses when a whole flock is charging straight at their corner. “Detective!” His father grabs his arm, and for the first few steps Light is nearly dragged by his heels alone, barely managing to round the corner before a resounding —BANG! BANG!— leaves his ears ringing.

‘It’s the hap-happiest season of allll…

Ding-dong

Ding-dong’

“H, are all of them armed?” He asks Quillsh.

“From what I can see, it’s all kinds of knives and guns. They’re rebels, it’s practically a wild card we’re up agains— R, on your left!”

“How many?”

BANG! Light scurries behind a table in the open lounge. The polished wood of a chair right beside his face bursts under the pressure of a barreling bullet, flakes flying apart from the impact. A piece flicks against his mask, and the odds of such proximity leave him breathless. That could’ve—

“At least a dozen, six on each side.”

Shit, shit… Light turns to see his father in a similar state from behind another table. It’s adding up right now: if these people are Kira worshippers, and Light has been favorable to Mikami as a supporter of Kira this far, they shouldn’t be attacking, or let alone know about this operation. Then again, he and L switched places last minute. Eliminate the Task Force, but keep Light…

Is there a mole amongst them?

Six… six divided…

Someone on their team must’ve shared intel. He doesn’t know who, or why, can’t even be sure if one of the agents here would do such a thing, or if a different squad…

Was this why L switched with him?

Light takes a shaky, blistering breath. He’s getting too sidetracked, what matters now is that they’re being attacked, and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t put up a fight against whoever may try to stop them.

“H, if you can take down at least two from both wings, each agent will only be left with two rebels to take down instead of three.” He takes out his handgun, already sensing the likely distaste from his father nearby, but he’s L for now. “Let’s start with that. Agents, stay near the perimeter so we’re less likely to be surrounded!”

“Wilco. The south end is my blindspot for both sides, if they stay on the north end of section six at least, I’ll have a clearer shot.”

“Roger that.”

Light keeps one rebel near the shelves, spitting bullets back and forth at one another while he talks into his radio, rather than the helmet button for his com mic. His shots are sloppy and it’s the only cover he’s got besides the table as he calls for backup from other officers in their region still on duty.

It’s a long shot to wait for backup with the evening traffic still thick outside, in the meantime, he and the rest of the team are caught in this death battle.

The glass ceiling panes cave in a great shatter after several bullets pop in a sporadic arch from one high window to roof directly above. Glittering shards soar to the ground, with larger debris crashing into broken bits across an empty checkout desk. Figures, they’re desperate to aim for Q now from his hiding place, Light would’ve known where that is had he not poured all of his attention into the movements of L’s position during their meetings.

To hell with that plan now, though; they were on the lookout for tripwires, bombs, booby traps, a disgruntled accomplice at most. But this…

BANG!

The bullet hits, from what Light can make out several meters away. He sees the rebel keel back, stumbling, as blood soaks through a grimy and wrinkled t-shirt, they knock back against a shelf before sliding defeatedly to the ground. Just then, once their gun clatters uselessly to the ground, Light notices something: a glint of red, glowing red, among the shadows in their mask’s carved eye sockets.

“Agent T!” His father cries, but Light crawls across the floor in their attacker’s direction, hungry for answers. Two down from Q’s snipes: his first hit and a second as Light crosses back over to the enemy, another sitting slack here from his own shot, and one more with only a blade on hand scurrying away.

This one isn’t dead, not yet. They don’t even try to reach for the gun at their feet as Light visibly creeps down the aisle, aiming at them for good measure, but his grip is ridiculously shaky from ruthlessly erratic nerves. Free hand reached out, he grabs the edge of this other unsettling mask stretched wide with a demonic smile and rips it right off.

It’s a middle aged man.

Bronze skin, beady black eyes, and thick splintery hairs in patches of a poorly grown mustache. He clutches his wound, wedding band on his finger tainted by it. There’s no other red for Light to see anymore.

“Who sent you?” he asks, gun kissing the sweat on the rebel’s forehead.

Eyes glazed and head bobbing, the man sucks in a breath and looks up at Light. “God,” he answers, and swallows again. Although Light wears this tinted shield to conceal his face, the gaze locked upon him seems distinct enough, as if Kira’s worshiper can, too, see the man behind the mask. “He said… whoever survives t-til the last sacrifice—” In, out. Light hears his own breathing drown out their surroundings, heartbeat heavy on a scale weighed against a dying man’s. “—will be set free.”

The last sacrifice—?

“GAGH!”

Light jolts back at the strangled shout just one aisle over and nearly trips on his own heels. A body hits the floor with a heavy thud, arm flopped just past the edge and twitching in pain as the high voltage of a taser courses through his limbs. ZzzZzz, he recognizes the telltale static sound of the weapon and is relieved to see his dad trudge around the corner after locking spare cuffs around the fallen rebel’s pulled back wrists.

“I will fulfill my duty as an agent, Detective,” he grunts, “but I do not serve to kill.”

At first, Light is offended, embarrassed, even, at the subtle reprimanding. It’s not like he has much of a choice when they’re being attacked like this. Shoot or be shot.

But as he’s about ready to sputter for an explanation, he catches sight of his current state: gun still in hand over an enemy far past threatening while disarmed and injured now. Point made. He lowers his weapon, sending back a curt nod and presses his helmet. “Agent T reporting: Everyone, aim to disarm and capture to arrest the rebels. Killing is our last resort as self defense—“

Light feels something jab sharp against the back of his knee in the middle of giving orders and staggers to balance himself on the shelf. Books cascade off the edge and thump against one another to a fallen heap on the floor from his fumbling grip. A sudden sting flares in his side shortly after, pain knocking the air out of him with wrecking ball force. Body strained and eyes wide, he sees prickling stars whirling in his peripheral, and for a moment, he forgets how to gasp for air.

His shout in agony belts from the pit of his chest after choking through a great inhale. All around, the gunshots and music become murky background noise, a sound so strong the ground trembles beneath him and deafens his own helmeted ears. Except, it isn’t the sound waves that falter his balance.

Light just got shot in the leg.

He doesn’t entirely know what happens next. At least his vest caught the skim of that following bullet, but the pain is still horrendous and it takes all but a miracle not to look down at his lost case of a functioning knee.

“—downtown a 10-79 in progress… —at’s your 20?”

“Capital library,” Light rasps, then realizes he hadn’t spoken into the radio. With the button pressed again, he repeats. “The capital library.” His leg is partially numb, the rest of the sensation an excruciating mush, and clenching his jaw is all that keeps him from crying out as he limps along the outskirts, away from where his father darts to take down the last shooting rebel on their side. It feels like the joint is being sawed apart at every slight movement. 

He punches the elevator button. A stupid, temporary safe haven just to get him to the second floor and kick ass from above while he can. So far, the barrage of bullets and shouting remains on ground level. All the way across he spots Aiber —much taller and broader in frame than Raye— pinned back against a case full of artifacts by the throat, it takes the agent only seconds to reach aside with twiddling fingers to grasp something undeniably glass. He thrusts it against the rebels head, its shattering impact knocking them out cold before he swiftly moves on to the next one coming.

As the doors sweep open, Light goes to back himself inside when his vision is taken over by a downpour of reflective flecks. He flinches under their pattering light weight, anticipating a bursted window above him by another rebel he failed to catch sight of. But the cascade is drizzling down upon the entirety of the library floors, and as a drop slides down his helmet, it registers: water. Someone set off the sprinklers.

Close, so close. He limps back and jabs the inside button before clinging to the elevator’s railing with a vice-like grip, exposed knuckles running as pale as their indoor rain in fluorescent moonlight while everyone fights among the soak with animalistic aggression. It’s a pathetic parody of holiday cheer, sadistic, all but toy soldiers in a game for this absent god that Kira worshiper spoke of.

The last sacrifice, Light hears whispers of it in his head and tries to piece together its meaning besides the blatant obvious: they’re here to kill.

Parallel to his elevator, the left wing’s slides open as well. In go a tangle of two: Raye, tripping inside on wet shoes, and a man of towering height disguised in a cracked, unsettling nutcracker mask, rearing to corner the agent. He’s the one with the assault rifle, who blindly spit those fireworks of bullets on the off chance of hitting Q.

No…

‘It’s the most wonderful tiiime!’

Raye’s figure cowers. His shaking hands grapple around his hips and legs for a weapon he can’t seem to find, and although that helmet is a blacked out shield over whatever expression may be hiding behind, Light is certain his panic as a mere witness is nothing compared to his teammate’s despair.

Even with his own gun raised, Light hesitates. They’re so close together while struggling at a distance like this, his own grip is barely even steady—

The doors are closing the doors are closing

What are his chances?

‘Oh the most wonderful tiiime…’

Fifty-fifty is better than none. Light pulls the trigger.

Trust your instincts, L had told them. Light doesn’t know what he’s going to see when the doors open again. For a moment, his colleague’s life is a paradox: the one that recalled his fiancé with fondness, even after her passing, the one that awkwardly put effort into understanding L’s team games, who had proper sportsmanship, who laughed with Light like a couple of children on the slippery court floor at headquarters.

There’s still shots spitting out there, but they sound a whole street away from past these walls. Light’s hyperventilating and the clicked reloading of his gun cloud his senses, tunneling his hearing as much as his vision. The rapid communications from his helmet and radio are indecipherable, as if ears can go cross-eyed and delirious too.

“10-80 at…”

“Lost sight of Agent—!”

“—otus, gonna need immediate—“

None of this feels real, not at all. In the back of his mind, he tries to remember when the last time he’d fallen asleep was, if he recalls actually waking up rather than dwelling in a lucid nightmare like this.

The doors slide back open, and with his gun at the ready, he watches the left wing’s open too. In went two…

‘Of the yeeeaaarrr!’ The brass band of that stupid song erupts in a celebratory finale of the capital library’s destruction.

…Out comes one.

The nutcracker trudges in heavy, casual steps, with a backdrop to his exit splattered in dark red whipped diagonally down the elevator’s streaked reflective wall. Raye’s body is slumped crooked in the corner, unmoving.

Dead.

Light’s stomach drops, and so does the rebel’s body, mask eyes aglow before hitting the floor face-first. So his shot somehow did make the target.

But not in time. He limps out of the elevator, toward the center on the building’s south end where an overhanging balcony is. It’s supposed to display a beautiful view of the library’s organized layout and warm ambience. All Light can think about now as he scans it is soggy, peeling book pages, and what equally lifeless bodies are left around them under a swollen bright moon. Gripping the balcony rail, he sees at least a handful of rebels cuffed and piled against the middle desk straight below. His squad has only a couple more of them to play tag with, and backup still has yet to arrive.

Something icy and sharp kisses the column of his wet throat.

“D-Drop your weapon.”

As if tonight couldn’t get any more jarring, the last loose screw that wedges between the whirring clockwork of his mind brings all gears to a screeching stop. He knows that voice, and he has a feeling about where this must be heading.

“I-I said drop it!” Mikami shouts, testing a scratch against the skin right beside Light’s Adam’s apple.

Light raises his hands, wincing as he leans on his good leg. His handgun is placed carefully on the balcony’s wide ledge. He lets out a wavering breath, eyes closed as the ghost of his weapon is replaced with the meager weight of water droplets down his empty palms, and time ticks on.

Mikami swipes the gun away. “Turn around…” he demands, “Detective.”

Oh, the irony.

His old classmate is soaked from head to toe, black hair tangled and stringy over a lopsided mask twisted in an expression of black and white checkered misery. “Shocking, isn’t it?” he growls, and he uses the handgun to point directly back at Light. Tucked under his other arm is the notebook, guarded with a blade in his hand. He may as well need a shopping basket to carry his collection of deadly weapons, and yet it doesn’t make him any more intimidating as he reeks of even more panic. “You and— and your— You and Light thinking we’d be somehow oblivious to your tricks?” We.  

It’s hard to pay attention to one perpetrator when two looming gargoyles unsurprisingly stare at him as well, floating on either side of Mikami only a stone-throw away. Shinigami, he recognizes. One is mostly black, with a paper pale face and bulging yellow eyes, spiked raven hair that makes his skin sting at the thought of grazing its tips. Their skin appears stitched together in some places, like a corpse on its last string of an undead life.

The other is Rem. As far as Light knows, despite the contrast in their colors, neither can be summed up to a devil or angel on either shoulder. They’re props— worse than, pests more like. Of course Rem had a part in this; count on them to betray the expected neutrality of a death god just to save their beloved blonde. 

“You thought you had all the time in the world, huh?” Mikami continues, his shouts sneering and hoarse from the anger scratching its way out of a betrayed throat. “Just to solve another one of your pathetic puzzles while the rest of us suffer! H-How does it feel now… knowing that he’s dead too?!”

Light doesn’t know how to respond, or if he’s even meant to when half the context here is missing. Because there’s no way he’s dead when he’s standing right here.

“Haven’t you heard?” Mikami presses at the lack of a reaction. “Your backup won’t be around anytime soon. Too busy t-trying to piece back your— your boyfriend after he’s been blown to bits.”

Light feels his brows furrow. Blown to…?

“—downtown a 10-79 in progress…” From his radio earlier.

He reels back and re-pieces it all together three times— four, ten times over in a blink, because that’s not right. No. That’s not true. With this kind of conclusion, Light never would’ve missed that detail. He would’ve— He would’ve known— He—

“10-80 at… Yeah, The Lotus, gonna need immediate medical assistance—“ Again, in the elevator.

“No.”

Light’s denial in all things is usually firm, withstanding the harsh winds of emotion and sensitivity, he stands for the truth and having him admit anything remotely otherwise is akin to pulling teeth. But the moment he hears himself, the first whimper of utter weakness in a voice usually authoritative and strong…

His arms waver, lowering into the dragging hold of unimaginable despair. Code 79: Bomb threat. And Code 80:

Explosion.

Even a thousand bricks couldn’t compete with the crushing clench around Light’s heart right now. Tears spill down his sweaty face out of his own unblinking eyes. Undeniable shock swarms around his body and keeps him planted there, frozen still. If he fell back over the railing, would the momentum of his fall be enough to wake up from a reality this far-fetched?

Elliot, he wants to whisper, or dash out of here just to see the supposed— just— His boy is smart. Light refuses such an insane truth, if anything this is one master plan rivaling against another, who’s to say it’s not some elaborate lie just to lower his guard? He walks through hell just to keep his mouth shut.

“It’s not even my fault,” Mikami croaks, shaking his head fervently like a damn child. His broad shoulders shudder as he inhales and rocks anxiously on his feet. As if sensing his own weak demeanor, he waves the gun fiercely at Light again, and the latter thinks twice about attempting to press his com button for help. They’re on the south end in Q’s blind spot, and Aiber has probably caught sight of Raye’s body by now. Come on, Dad…

“IT’S NOT MY FAULT! I-I didn’t know it would even lead to this! My bosses, a-and those people, t-they were terrible but she was on my trail anyway… You don’t understand, I had to get rid of her!”

Get rid of who? Light desperately wants to ask. What other women are even involved aside from Misa, protected under Rem’s unforgiving guard against every potential threat, and their two agents sent off with the other squads.

Tick, tick, tick

Mikami furls a fist through his own sopping hair, blade still gripped tight and dangerously close to the tender skin of his temple. “He’s been in my head ever since. Every moment, every fucking second over a-an accident! I-I-I can’t make it stop,” he cries, a crippling sob racks his body and Light understands now.

‘I feel like I’m losing my mind.’

Glowing red in the eyes of dying men, and the psychological torment from someone out of their control. He knew Beyond had everything to do with this somehow, all in apparent retaliation over the killing of a certain woman.

Naomi Misora. He must’ve written her cause of death as suicide as a measly coverup.

“Twelve thousand… one hundred forty-two. That was her number, just to bring her back,” Mikami says. Bring her back? “He wanted Light dead more than anything, just for you to know the feeling at my expense again. I could’ve done it all this time, but I never… I-I never wanted Light Yagami dead. In fact—”

Thunk, thunk

Relief washes through Light like a damn tsunami when he sees his father approaching from the left wing stairs, his handgun shockingly at the ready as he takes swift steps along the border. But he must’ve been heard too quickly, and after a frantic moment of hesitation, Mikami swivels back to Light, items falling out of his fumbling hold as he charges straight ahead. When he rips away the wailing theatrical face obscuring his own, his sharp cheeks are as flush as his own snotty nose, and wet tears melt down with the mess like a ruined pastel painting. There’s a bewitched glimmer somewhere in his dark eyes.

Tick-tick-tick

BANG!

Light scrambles to turn and grab onto the edge of the balcony as he sloppily braces for an impact intended to shove him right off. Ducking into the cave of his shoulders, time couldn’t ever drag on so painfully slow as Mikami barrels straight into his side. — BANG!— The air in him is crushed under a staggering shove to his ribs and the punch of it leaves his head spinning.

“I wanted you…” he chokes, “dead.”

As if stepping off a whirling carnival ride, Light’s vision flips on its axis. The starry night sky replaces the carpet floor under their feet, and bookshelves spin up and over to replace a broken ceiling with flimsy paper pages. Drowning him in a lost breath, droplets from the sprinklers slide up his visor, and the only thing he latches on to center his balance is a slippery wooden ledge and the image of Mikami’s beaming eyes.

Blaring sirens…

“O reporting. Agent H, we’ve got the last rebel on the south end balcony. Make sure the detainees at the center desk don’t escape. Looks like our backup is nearly here.”

“Wilco.”

“—97 at the capital library. What’s your status?”

Mikami’s mouth falls slack in an open gape. His pale blue button down is soaked against shivering skin, and right at his sternum blooms a hopeless crimson. Eyelids fluttering, more fresh tears fall from his wide eyes before the light in them begins to sputter out.

Even when his father pulls the man away, turning to assess the damage from his shots, Light doesn’t feel the pain ease off himself at all. If anything, it’s even worse when breathing becomes a rigorous chore in itself at this point, and his legs have numbed to what feels like pure static. 

Desperate for the relief of fresh air, Light sluggishly pulls off his helmet and watches it clatter to the ground among all the other cards here laid out on the table. His gun, the other notebook…

Light blinks. He missed one thing.

“…Dad?”

It takes a moment before his father looks over, but when he does—

“Light! Oh no, oh, what happened here?” Their water bottles fell out of his hands as he jogged over to where Light stood at the end of the dock, crying out while the nasty slice in his thumb stung terribly painful.

“Papa!” he shouted, even when his dad had come to kneel down by then and assess the injury. “I-It hurts, it hurts so bad!”

In his rush to plunk the dead fish dangling on his line back into the lake —without being caught— Light’s thumb had stuck and dragged on the fishing hook’s sharp end, leaving him with an unforgivable wound as the animal’s last spiteful wish.

“Alright bud, I hear you. There’s first aid in the car, we’ll get you all fixed up, okay?” He tried to reassure Light, but the wailing continued even after being scooped up in the man’s arms.

In reality, the cut didn’t hurt all that badly. What rendered him so anxious and upset was the simple fact that Light didn’t want to tell Papa that he did something bad. Because what if he’d say Light deserved it? That he doesn’t love him anymore? With his small fists balled up in the fabric of his father’s flannel shirt, his sobbing turned into mild hiccups, gulping down a lake full of guilt with his face hidden in the safety the crook of his father’s neck provided.

It was just a mistake, he wanted to say. But Light didn’t let out a word about it, and he didn’t look back at the lake either. Eyes shut tight, he held tight to his papa, and the innocence that came with being a child.

“—ight? Light, what are you doing here?! What are—“ His father shouts in surprise, but as he eases Mikami to rest against the border, his head stops dead in its up-to-down scan, gaze behind the visor leveled with where Light’s hands shakily lower from his core. “No… No no no no—“

His gun, the notebook, and the blade smeared in blood on the floor between them.

Light sees it all over his open palms. Confused, he feels a cut in the fabric of his shirt, just under his bulletproof vest where more of the wetness sops through. When he looks back up at his dad, he tries deciphering if the man sees it too.

“Somebody help!” His dad shouts as he stumbles back on his feet to reach Light at the balcony’s end. He’s there when Light’s legs give out, and they end up in a fumbling heap on the floor. More shouting, more codes sworn into the radio and the sirens are louder than ever as a hand is pressed firmly into Light’s lower abdomen.

From this angle, he can’t see Mikami at all, but the notebook lays sprawled open within arms reach. A dead man wrote all those names. Light knows that for certain, as the killer, he tasted it on his tongue during the car ride over.

Teru Mikami

Gunshot wound

6:49 PM, 20XX December 17th

His eyes catch a familiar list of all their Task Force officers too, even his dad’s. If there’s one thing he did right though, it was the core of his plan all along: hacking their public records and changing the spelling of every name he could remember involved, as well as legally changing his own and deceiving his old classmate with another type of kira-kira name: 夜神 星.

It was a long shot, but he beat Mikami in their hangman race as the first to write each character correctly.

And yet, there’s one person that fended for themselves this far. Light grabs onto his father’s wrist in sudden panic, he wants to know. “Is i-it true?” he asks tentatively, all his words slurring together as his hair dampens into the same wetness as their clothes, and the Death Note in his jacket stays sandwiched between his back and father’s leg. He can’t complain over discomfort now, it feels like he’s being jabbed with dozens of pointed needles thousands of times in all other parts of his body. If anything, the notebook and light drizzle down his exposed face are next to the comfort that pillows would bring. “L, is h-he…”

“Don’t talk, son…. nna be okay, I-I just need you to…” The man’s voice muffles as though locked behind the nearest door. Somehow, even with the glasses, the grey in his hair, and wrinkles mapped all over his aged face, Light has never seen his father look so young and terrified. The droplets slipping off his chin can’t be from the sprinklers. They’re warm where they land on Light’s skin when his head whips in all directions of the open space around them. “God… God-DAMMIT SOMEBODY! PLEASE!”

His head swings back down, devastation squeezing from his shut eyes and a mouth twisted in dismay only for his son to see. They jostle from the cries that rack his entire body, and with every swallow, Light desperately makes every connection he can that doesn’t lead to his fast approaching fate here. It’s ironic he spent this long strategically scheming around fatal danger from the supernatural, yet this is what has his life slamming on the brakes: sheer spontaneity.

H-He can’t die. Not like this, not this soon. His lips quiver, aching to pout. He never got to say I love you to Elliot, or make the anxious decision to invite the detective to meet the rest of his family; he forgot to tell his mother what he wanted for Christmas dinner; he never got back to his little sister about finally seeing each other again when the case was over. What happened to the life he spent so long fighting to earn a right to? All the milestones he’s got left, a world for him to perfect…

Rem comes over to hover above them, a Death Note slipped into their skeletal hand passed over by the other shinigami.

“Stay with me, son! …here they’re right…!”

Light swallows for the umpteenth time as his heart stutters so weakly, it’s next to impossible to suck in his next breath after wringing out a helpless sob. Have mercy, he thinks, vision tunneling and no light at its end. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. This can’t be happening right now. He was never truly bothered by the prospect of death until it’s become a reality now, and seconds feel like excruciating hours as he watches Rem’s pen hover over the open notebook page, ready to sign him into the permanence of the unknown.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

Light watches Rem lower themself onto the balcony. As they come closer, he sees it over their shoulder: the capital library’s hanging dome lights, teetering scales of justice.

“—is he? Where’s Light?!” A voice calls from somewhere in the shadows that consume his vision.

He’s exhausted. It’s all too much to take in now, and the chances he’s hearing the tempting calls of the afterlife, or panic, selfishly hold more odds than reality working in his favor by some miracle. He didn’t know staying alive felt like holding up the sky’s infinite burdens until he was weakened enough to finally let the weight of death’s inevitability consume him. This is his end. For now, in this world, it is.

But he makes a promise that wherever he may find himself next, he’ll be damned if he doesn’t fight his way back to this life along with his dear partner in crime, lost to the same oblivion. Ambitions strung this far will never be left unfinished.

And with that, Light looks straight at Rem as they lean down over his deathbed, consuming his surroundings until his vision is a blurry murk of human and death god. Their weathered bone fingers reverently come up to brush over his eyes, and Light sighs out his last waning breath: the only risk left for him to take.

I’m ready.

It’s a dingy, soulless corridor. Literally, soulless, if the motionless bodies lining the walls are anything to go by. For some, that’s just a small detail. Honestly they look way more well-rested when they’re dead anyway. No more standing around like boring old statues, puffing cigarettes on their breaks, or wearing bulldog pouts on their ugly faces even when the best jokes are cracked.

Moths flutter under the flickering fluorescent lights, and his skin chaffs raw as he rubs his fingertip down the dry cement wall. “Na na na, mm yeah,” he mumbles along to a song under his breath, and dips down to swipe more fresh ink off cold sweaty skin.

It’s not really perfect, but to him, it looks cute enough. He hopes they like it. After all, he’s been sweating real crazy down here and this mangled greasy hair hasn’t been much help.

Ough, cough

He does a double take at his palette slumped on the ground, catching sight of another set of fingers alive and twitching. Man, they really just can’t hold still, can they? Rolling up his sleeves, he crouches down.

“Curfew’s in five minutes, remember?” he reminds the guy in feigned exasperation. But really, he can’t help his impish smile. Turning tables really is one of his favorite tropes— And what a twist he’s been so damn excited for too! Maybe the quip doesn’t bring a smile to this dude’s face. It’s fine though, won’t matter in some seconds anyway. “How about this,” he proposes, “I take this from you, and on my way out I’ll sing you my favorite lullaby?

…Alright, deal it is.”

He snags a peeking card from the guy’s front pocket and straightens back to his feet. From an artistic standpoint, this really is a beautiful runway to walk down. It brings… passion, character, and fills him with an innate inspiration as he saunters toward the end and sings delight into the atmosphere, leaving behind a last, extra-special message painted on that wall.

“Happy birthday to you…” he begins, lyrics slipping out from the lips of a dimpled smile.

Heading for the door, the card in his hand is a ticket back to paradise, and somewhere on the other side, his lady is surely waiting for him.

I WIN. :)

—B.B.