Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"I can't – I can't – I can't do this any more!" Pens and papers crash to the floor, the man is gasping, choking, weeping. "I – I thought I could do it," he says desperately.

"And you could," the shinigami points out indifferently, looking at his haggard face.

"I'm a murderer," he says, like that should mean something to a creature that lives on death. "I can't do this any more," he whispers, and writes a name – his own – on the open notebook on the desk.

The shinigami picks up the notebook with a sigh and attaches it to his belt before flying away, leaving a corpse behind him.

Ryuk is so bored.

Ryuk has 'lost' his notebook in the human world six times. He can't remember how long he's been doing it but the first time – and it really was an accident that first time – writing was the province of poets, priests and scribes.

He has without fail retrieved his notebook within three months at most.

The first one was interesting – he couldn't read, for a start, and Ryuk had been very amused as he watched him copy the meaningless hieroglyphics over people's heads without understanding how they spelt a name – but the rest…

It is always interesting to see how a human will use a Death Note, but they are, Ryuk has discovered, too fragile. Frail and ultimately unimaginative, and they think far too much of killing. Eventually, no matter what they tell themselves when they pick the Note up, they crush themselves under the weight of their guilt.

Ryuk is very, very bored.

Ryuk spots him, the human that is going to relieve him of the terrible burden of his boredom, walking down a busy street in Edo – no, they call it Tokyo now, don't they? Ryuk is wondering vaguely what will happen if he writes down a Japanese name using the Roman alphabet, or if he uses the correct kanji but puts the first name before the family, and that is when he sees him.

Ryuk has grown adept – just a little, not enough for scorn – at reading human expressions. He has ample experience in being able to judge when a human is finally going to break and write their own name down. But anybody with the tiniest bit of knowledge would know what Yagami Light is thinking. It's written all over his face – I am so bored.

Yagami smiles though, and the boredom seems to be gone even though it lingers in his eyes, and everybody, everybody around him is fooled, even his family, and Ryuk knows that family is something important to humans, supposed to be something important.

The minute he is alone the human shuts his eyes and goes very still, like a shinigami will after a few centuries when names are no longer enough, nor gambling or gossip.

Ryuk is entranced.

This one is a keeper, Ryuk decides, watching the human Yagami Light sleepwalk through his life. Ryuk thinks this one... this one might just get it.

But. But, you can never know for sure, not until they have the notebook, just what a human is made of. He's not risking his own this time, just in case.

Ryuk drops Sidoh's notebook outside Yagami Light's school, during a class Ryuk knows nobody pays attention to, a class that teaches the language Ryuk has written his rules in. The other humans will talk to each other, about each other. They'll doze or look at magazines with naked humans in them. Yagami Light will do none of those things and look out the window.

And outside the notebook falls and Yagami Light straightens ever so slightly, eyes narrowing on the book, and he has something – something in his expression, and Ryuk knows he's caught him.

This human, yes, this human might be interesting.

This human, it turns out, is made of silk and steel.

He screams when Ryuk first talks to him – a lot of humans have – and then he laughs – none of the humans Ryuk met before did that. Already he is something different.

Then he turns the Death Note around and Ryuk realises just how different this one is.

Delighted, he floats closer. This one talks of justice, of godhood and criminals. Ryuk doesn't care. Gods are boring and justice is something that only humans could think actually mattered. The names are spread before Ryuk in neat rows, hundreds in five days, and this is better than Ryuk ever dared to hope.

"I was… bored too," Yagami says, and Ryuk knows then the truth of Yagami Light. He will tell himself he does it for justice and other such ridiculous human concepts but really he did it to escape his boredom. Ryuk can understand that.

"The Death Note is the bond between the human Yagami Light and the shinigami Ryuk," he says and Yagami murmurs, 'the bond', and Ryuk actually has to remind himself not to care.

Yagami becomes Light the first time he buys him an apple and the flesh crunches beneath his teeth and floods his mouth with juice in the most perfect way since Ryuk first started being bored. Light smiles at him, and Ryuk, who is devoting himself to learning Light's face, the better to read his complex, twisted thoughts, sees amusement and disdain and perhaps something another human once told him was called understanding.

This human – this human – who will laugh at a shinigami, who will sneer at a shinigami, this human, Ryuk bets he tastes like apples, he's that perfect.

"Did you know," Light murmurs, and tells him just about every myth humans have ever told about apples. Ryuk nods along, tells him when time and memory has altered the fruit in question and watches Light smile, avid for knowledge, for things that have stuck in Ryuk's mind that are of no worth to any shinigami, things he has remembered in spite of their uselessness. The expression on Alexander's face when he realised that for him there was no more world to conquer. The patterns Caesar's blood made against the forum floor, the sound the first firework made as it killed its maker.

He picks the apple seeds out, crushes them in his hands and laps the residue up. It tastes very faintly of something bitter and Light tells him it's a poison called cyanide, one that has no antidote. Ryuk laughs, realising that with those words he'll never think of apples without thinking of Light.

"Ryuk," Light says one day as they walk home, where Light will kill time and people until nine o'clock and then do his homework, "how do shinigami–" he pauses, tries to approach the topic delicately, like Ryuk cares. "How are shinigami born?"

There's no rule against talking about the shinigami realm or its inhabitants; it's merely assumed that no human would ever ask. "They're not born," Ryuk says, chuckling. "They're killed."

Light raises an eyebrow, asking him to elaborate.

"They have to be killed by another god of death."

"There must be a lot of them, then," Light murmurs, very rare puzzlement crossing his features.

"Nah," Ryuk says, smiling. He wonders if other humans would call the look sinister, because Light only smiles wryly back. "There are other conditions. Maybe you'll figure them out."

Humans move all the time in this new era, running everywhere, making machines that can move even faster, hurrying to their deaths. Sometimes Ryuk wishes they'd stop. After awhile the constant buzz of activity becomes a drone, everything washes out and becomes dull and grey again.

They aren't satisfied with moving faster either, they have to change themselves all the time – clothes and styles and hair and makeup, this way, that way, as if eventually they'll find something that will make everything okay. It's all a bit overwhelming.

Shinigami bodies are tough, desiccated – Midora perhaps the exception, heavy and fleshy, or Nu, a constant shiver of blinking eyes – and like the realm they inhabit they rarely change. A new shinigami will, seeking something they can't grasp any more, dressing themselves in skulls and bones and chains, feathers and torn cloth – memories of action with the motive excised. Once they've settled their look, though, they don't change again.

Ryuk's newest accessory is his earring, forty years old, designed and made by a puzzled and unhappy woman named Mei Ling, who couldn't understand the language that named her. She wrote three names in Ryuk's notebook: her father, her boss, and her unfaithful lover. The other earring was in her hand when she walked out into New York's busy traffic.

The second newest of his human adornments is one of his rings, heavy and ornate, a century and a half old by at least one human calendar. He'd quickly grown bored of the English lord it originally belonged to and had gotten ten times the entertainment out of his death than anything he'd done in his life. Humans make such a fuss about sex; Ryuk just can't understand it (although he suspects half the outrage was about the piece of furniture that was being used at the time, it apparently being a terrible breach of manners to misuse a billiards table in such a way).

By shinigami standards Ryuk is positively vain.

Light is an island of still amidst the constant change of the human realm, calm and serene and moving at his own pace, at a shinigami's pace. Ryuk thinks he might be different from the other humans this way because his mind moves so fast even the human world slows to a crawl beside it. When he thinks about it, it makes him dizzy, like a human trying to stare into the sun. Or like he thinks looking at the sun makes humans dizzy. Ryuk can look all he wants and never be blinded.

Light is very beautiful.

Humans think this and Ryuk agrees. The humans are talking about the shape of Light's face, the distance between his eyes, the balance between nose and lips and chin, the way Light moves, and the way he will smile and joke, and convince them that he cares about nothing more than their happiness.

Shinigami have different standards.

Ryuk is talking about the way Light will write names, the curve of his arm, the minimalist movements of his fingers, the steady, unrelenting perfection of his letters and characters developing across the page.

He might also be talking about the way Light knows other humans and crawls into their heads and knows exactly how to make them do things for him (tell him their dreams, their jobs, their habits, their names – goodbye, Raye Penber, farewell Misora Naomi).

He might also be talking about the way Light smiles as he leans back from the Death Note and turns out the light to go to bed, where he'll sleep and Ryuk will watch him, making sure his entertainment doesn't stop breathing in the night. Humans are very fragile – even this one, who burns bright and hot in Ryuk's vision like the very first fire humans ever made. He's just making sure he lasts; Ryuk can't go back to being bored.

Ryuk has never had to tell himself not to care about a human. He no longer has to tell himself not to care about Light either, but that's different, just like everything else about Yagami Light is different to every other human Ryuk has ever met and killed.

Ryuk doesn't have to tell himself not to care about Light because he knows him. Caring for Light would be three steps from loving him and loving him would be like a human loving a cobra, holding it close and expecting it not to bite them. It would be like throwing every emotion that ever existed into a black hole and then expecting it to give something back. Ryuk is a shinigami and he doesn't need Rem's little story about Gelus to know that caring about Light would be the stupidest thing he could ever do.

And Rem dares to sneer at him, when she looks at the twittering little blonde thing – Amane Misa, and Ryuk plans on writing her name one day, when Rem is gone, just to prove a point – like she's something.

Light is something. Light isn't like other humans – humans like Misa – rushing all over the place, rushing everywhere, doing nothing. No, Light is deadly-still, but not shinigami-still, not quite. If shinigami had reapers, Light is what they'd be. Everything is weighed and decided only after the scales tip. Light sees through people – and shinigami – in ways Ryuk never could, even with his eyes. Ryuk doesn't care about Light but he's pretty sure that if there were ever a human actually worth some shinigami dying for, it would be him.

What Rem sees in Misa Ryuk will never understand. He says nothing, snickering only a little as he watches Rem threaten, not knowing it's the worst thing she could possibly do. Shinigami don't have death warrants but Rem's managed to sign hers nonetheless. He hopes he's there when it happens, the moment Rem looks at Light and realises he's killed her, and worse, she gave him the means herself.

He chuckles, and Light tilts his head and smiles, and oh, Ryuk knows it's stupid, but he loves him a little then anyway.

L – L – L. It's like magnets, Ryuk decides. The closer he and Light get to each other, the more they repel each other. In some other world, a world where Light never picked up Ryuk's Death Note, a world where Ryuk is not Light's constant companion, they might be the right polarities, they'd snap towards each other, pulled by the force that keeps the world turning, and they'd never be parted without some serious effort.

Ryuk watches Light, watches L, smiles savagely at him over Light's shoulder, watching the numbers fall every time Light takes a step closer.

In this world Light is Ryuk's human and Ryuk knows Light better than L ever will. He's not proud of that fact, he's not pleased that he sees Light better than Light's own equal and anchor – he's delighted, because Yagami Light is a creature that comes along once every thousand years or so and there's no need for two Ls in this time and place.

And then there's no need for even one.

"It's too quiet," Light says, staring at the dark ceiling in his new apartment. Ryuk looks at him, at the way the moon touches his face, at the way Light's eyes are dark and shadowed and no longer flame quite so bright.

The thing Ryuk knows best about humans is the expression they get when they're going to write their own name down.

"It's too quiet," Light repeats, and Ryuk understands that he's talking about how he's never slept in a place where there wasn't someone else sleeping a room away, that he's grown used to L's presence at his back, that he's feeling the absence of L like he's carved something out of himself.

Ryuk settles beside him on the bed, and is unsurprised when Light pushes at him half-heartedly. He chuckles and refuses to move. Light rolls away and presents his back. Ryuk isn't surprised in the slightest that he falls asleep within the hour, next to a shinigami with a Death Note and a pen close to hand.

Light is the poison in the heart of the apple, the steel beneath the silk scabbard – of course he'll fall asleep with a death god in his bed.

The fire in Light's eyes. It's going out. Light isn't like the other humans. He'll never deliberately write his own name, he'll never consciously feel that the weight of his deeds has become too much for him. It's going to take years rather than weeks, but he'll lose himself to Kira and he'll turn a blind eye to things he'd watch if L were around; he's going to fall and Ryuk is going to watch him. He's sure that Light will do the typical breakdown in a way Ryuk's never seen before, just like everything else.

He does. It's huge and horrific and magnificent, and then he turns to Ryuk and he begs, and Ryuk obliges him.

After all, he promised he would one day write Light's name down. Ryuk doesn't normally keep his promises – or at least, not in any manner a human would recognise as 'fair' – but this once he'll do exactly what he said he would.

When Ryuk told Light he would kill him it was his version of a thank you, because the only situation Ryuk would ever do it in would be if Light could not escape. A situation where Light would be captured and all the reasons for watching him would be taken away.

Light had thought Ryuk's wings might be worth half his life and Ryuk thinks they might have been too. If he had wings, he could fly away with Ryuk, and Ryuk would be free of boredom forever. The loss almost isn't worth it. Almost.

He digs his long fingers through the body's wounds, ignoring the yelping from the humans, and removes the bullets. When he gets back to the shinigami realm he'll find something to string them on.

The new shinigami's face is marble – literally – blank as snow, no expression at all save for the small amused quirk at one corner of his mouth that will never go away. Bone folds together across his chest like a suit with a ragged wound over the heart. He looks at Ryuk with brilliant red eyes and asks him about the stained bullets tied at equal distances into his hair like the points of a crown.

Ryuk asks the shinigami his name.

"Kira," says the shinigami, and watches impassively as Ryuk howls with laughter.

Chapter Text

A new shinigami is void. Two things exist in their mind: themselves – nameless, directionless, without shape or form – and the Death Note, the understanding of what it is and why to use it the only piece of knowledge that exists.

He is void, and thinks of naming himself as such. But no, something in him whispers, he is the opposite of void. He could never be satisfied with anything less than all and his name needs to show that.

He learns several things in short order:

He finds Japanese names the easiest to write.

He is bad at Cyrillic. Thirty-four humans die in varied and increasingly exasperated ways to change this.

While he enjoys discovering just how outlandishly it's possible to kill a human (his favourite so far is the one with the pineapple) when he forgets he simply uses heart attacks. He wonders if it is symptomatic of the laziness that affects the other shinigami.

Peer pressure is not something unique to the human world.

Neither is the ability to ignore it.

He likes the heaviness of Midora's body, its solidity. Midora will stand firm for what she cares for, will not be swayed easily or without effort, and he likes that. He likes a challenge, and the realisation that he likes anything is good, comforting.

"What is my name?" he asks Midora, who shrugs and pats him carefully on the shoulder, as if his body will cut her.

"Don't worry," she says, and he likes her voice too, sweet and even, inconsistent with her size and shape. "Everybody starts out like you. You'll find your name eventually, everybody does."

This isn't helpful in the slightest and he wants to scowl at her but his face, as ever, remains smirking. She chuckles.

"It's not so hard," she confides. "I took my name from a human woman who killed her children to hurt her husband – and got away with it, too. It didn't quite fit me until I changed it at little, though, it was bit too slim and sharp – it sounded like the name for a pampered cat."

He thinks he might know the name she's talking about but its cracked and uncertain, knowledge from another place.

"There's a shinigami I know who's named for the sound of his laughter," Midora tells him, bringing his attention back from the void that he is. "And I've heard of some human food that made me think of Zellogi – you see? It's not hard."

"I see," he tells her, and then he gets up and walks away, seeking his name, his character, himself.

The human realm is full of light. It takes him a while to get used to it, how bright everything is. Light light light, even at night. Only when the moon is gone does it even begin to reach the gloom of the shinigami realm.

Humans used to think the sun and moon were gods, they used to worship what brought them light. He thinks about it for a moment, tries it, then shakes his head. Light doesn't belong in the shinigami realm; it's too pure, too unnecessary, too human. It's not his name, and who cares for the worship of humans anyway?

By concentrating carefully on himself, not allowing any other thought in, he can see himself in the pool used to look down on the human world.

Who are you, he asks his reflection – is it his reflection? It doesn't look, it doesn't feel like him, surely he should be able to recognise himself. The stranger in the water gives him nothing.

He fits together like a memory of something brilliant – broken, inexpertly repaired and made hideous. He looks like a classical statue, a hollow approximation of beauty, unreceptive, unapproachable. His face could be a blank stone mask save for the frozen quirk at the corner of his mouth, the only indication of a personality. He is cold where he should be warm, made of sharp angles and hard edges where there should be none. There is nothing in him that invites; he is designed to make people stop, to make them stare, to make them recoil at the mismatched beauty and monstrosity of his distorted body, unable to reconcile it in their minds, unable to cope with the idea of him.

He blinks. The stranger blinks too, a soft klk like a camera shutting, like pebbles clicking against each other.

He leans closer and dispassionately examines the hole in his chest. He wonders if the inside of his body is the same unyielding material as his surface. Carefully, curiously, he digs his fine claw-tipped fingers through his own flesh, seeking the black shape he can see in the water. Something in him expects something organic, expects it to feel like muscle or flesh, although there is nothing soft in his appearance – even his eyes have the hard glitter of rubies to them.

kik-klink.

It's not his name but he knows that when he finds it his real name will have something of that sound in it, the sound a nail makes, tapping against the smooth impenetrable surface of his heart.

Zellogi said, "Have you heard the story of Ryuk's human?"

Midora said, "Hush, Zellogi, don't you know that's not a story for new shinigami?"

He prods and pulls carefully at the ragged edges of the hole in his chest, trying to worry it into something a little neater or trying to conceal the existence of a heart at all, either might be true. When he looks up again, he can no longer see himself.

He tilts his head to one side as if to see better, although like every shinigami his eyes are perfect. Ghost, he thinks, looking at the human in the viewing pool. It is pale and white, not formed properly; it looks blurred, like a memory of someone seen only once and from a distance. Ghost, he repeats to himself, pleased because the idea of 'ghost' is something alien to the shinigami realm, means it is something from before or something he has learned since.

Nate River doesn't have much life to give so he writes the name of the black-haired human standing near them. He writes Stephen Loud carefully, with reverence, filled with something indefinable as he scribes the name that will extend his life. This is the only thing he's found since he began that feels right and he counts the forty seconds in a human tongue without realising it – san-ju-nana san-ju-hachi san-ju-kyu…

"Kira?!" screams one of the humans and he jerks back with shock, with a feeling like something has slipped into place, as much a part of him as the notebook tied to his side and the ability to see a name above a human's head.

"Kira," he murmurs, tasting it. Yes, perfect, perfect, this is him, these two syllables like a pair of arrows thudding home. "My name is Kira," he says, and it rolls off his tongue so easily he can't quite believe he's never said it before. "I am Kira."

He flies, seeking someone to share this wonder with.

Gukku said, "He got tired of the bones, so he found something else. Always was a weird one, bit too interested in work, if you ask me."

He is easily bored and when he tires of the pointless gambling, the sideways glances, the gossip that falls ominously silent when he is near, he decides to seek out the laughing shinigami.

Ryuk is something of a legend, though the shinigami remember that he managed to trick another notebook from the shinigami king more than what he did with it. They say it made a huge mess of the human realm for a while so Kira imagines that for someone of his temperament it was far more interesting than the ignorance of the average shinigami indicates.

Gukku says that Ryuk has a penchant for playing games with unsuspecting humans, so Kira wanders from viewing pool to viewing pool. During a game Zellogi tells them offhandedly that Ryuk's favourite human is recently dead (what that means to a shinigami depends upon how old they are) so Kira confines his searches to be within sight of the entrance to the human world.

Ryuk sounds like someone who knows how to keep himself entertained and Kira wants to know how. New as he is he still knows without a doubt what the greatest threat to his existence is. Boredom must truly be the worst way to die.

Justin said, "Yagami Light." He said it like it was a blessing, a curse, the secret name of god, the lowest creature in any realm.

The laughing shinigami is one of the oddest of their kind he's ever seen. He's not sure what it is, if it's the accumulated debris of human lives adorning him or the way he looks at him like he's found the human's holy grail or the way his permanent smile, unlike Midora's, is genuinely entertained.

"You see that group in the corner of the bar?" Ryuk says, pointing at a small group drinking diligently and arguing over somebody named N or L or Light, they can't seem to decide.

"Cops," Kira says, though he can't say why, what gave them away, why it matters that he knows.

"Yup," Ryuk says, unsurprised, and smiles like someone with something exciting in mind. "How many names have you written?"

Kira smiles, unfastens his notebook and takes out a pen to the sound of Ryuk's amused laughter. Aizawa Shuichi… Ide Hideki… Mogi Kanzo…

"Heart attacks," Ryuk orders when he moves to put a cause of death and forty seconds has already passed before he realises he's missed one. Matsuda Touta screams in a way that makes Kira think of the bullets in Ryuk's hair, but it's soon lost when the whole bar realises what's happened and fills with yelling.

Kira laughs as he returns his notebook and pen to their proper places. "He'll spread the story," he says in answer to Ryuk's inquisitive look.

"Why would you want him to spread the story?" Ryuk asks, but dutifully, as if he already knows the answer. Kira is glad one of them does because he has no idea.

Ryuk says, "Let me tell you about a human I knew."

Kira waits impassively.

Ryuk says, "Don't look like that. You have a lot in common." Then he laughs and laughs and laughs.

The humans mill around Nate River, looking frightened and infuriated, making ridiculous conclusions and discarding them just as easily, lashing out at each other in their confusion and panic, driving their self-contained circle apart.

"Look at them," Kira says. There's a note of smug amusement in his voice that makes Ryuk stare at him, smile twisted slightly with something a little too intimate, as if Kira is both living up to his expectations and surpassing them at the same moment.

"Which one next then?" Ryuk murmurs in his ear, his voice rich with amusement.

Kira wants to ask if it really matters, because he suspects it does, to Ryuk if to no one else, yet he finds himself saying: "The white one last."

He does not say: I want him to be separated from his allies and know it, I want to see what happens when there is nothing to do but wait for a death that could come at any moment, I want to see what shape is hiding beneath the blankness, I want to see him break the way other humans have. He thinks Ryuk understands these desires better than he does.

Ryuk laughs again, honestly delighted, and Kira knows he's picked right. He doesn't know why he wants to please Ryuk but when he does he always feels like the ground is a little more solid beneath his feet. It's not as if they're a threat to each other; he knows writing another shinigami's name doesn't work and he wouldn't be surprised to find Ryuk knows that too. Ryuk's knowledge of the rules approaches Justin's these days, or so Kira hears.

"This game could last a while," Kira says.

"Exactly," Ryuk says, and the lower half of Kira's marble face splits, a jagged grin forming across it.

Chapter Text

Near sits alone, making an elaborate castle of dice. He needs silence, he doesn't want to be distracted, and he thinks vaguely, abstractedly about the deaths of the original Kira task-force as he works.

"Hyuk hyuk hyuk,"

"Shinigami Ryuk," he greets levelly, raising his head to look at him. He wonders what the shinigami wants, why he is here so long after Yagami's death. Perhaps he is responsible for the recent deaths and intends to finish his revenge... perhaps he cared for Light Yagami beyond just making sure he didn't have to live with his humiliation and failure. Perhaps he merely thought it would be amusing. Near doesn't care to know the whims of a shinigami, least of all this one.

"Heya, kiddo," Ryuk says. Near wonders if he ever greeted Yagami with the same mocking affection, with the same careless indulgence. "Came down for a good look at someone I was gonna write down, and then I thought, 'hey, that kid, haven't seen him in a while, I bet he's lonely!'" He chuckles. It makes Near think of his face as he leaned over Yagami's body and peered into its staring eyes. "I thought you might like to meet a friend of mine, a new shinigami."

He drops a piece of paper, a carefully torn strip that appeared in his hand out of nowhere. Near feels his stomach twist like he already knows what he's going to see when he touches that strip of paper and he rocks forward on his heels, stretching one reluctant hand out over his knees to snatch it off the floor.

"Kira," he says, a strangled, disbelieving sound that is unworthy of the world's greatest detective. There is enough left of Light Yagami to recognise something in the way the creature stands, something in the way it tilts its head, something in the way it moves with the palest echo of Yagami's elegance.

"Yes?" it says, faintly curious, faintly bored – without recognition. There is nothing of Light Yagami in the way it studies Near – indifferent, or, if pushed, contemptuous in a broad unreserved way that has nothing to do with Near specifically and more to do with humanity in general. There is nothing of Yagami in its casual disregard for its surroundings. Nothing of Yagami in the way it simply stands in midair as if it can't bear to touch its leather boots (Mello, Near thought when he saw them and hatred filled him for one brief blinding moment) on the human realm.

"Ki- Yagami," he says, testing his theory.

The creature that might have been Light Yagami, that has a little of the man's hollow beauty and all of his heartlessness, blinks once, slowly, like a lizard. "My name is Kira," it says indifferently. It says it as if it means nothing, as if it is simply a name when Kira is anything but. Kira is a methodology, a point of view, a crusade, a thing of worship, a battle side. Kira was never just a name. The greatest man Near ever knew died opposing what Kira stood for, the whole world took sides over it, and this indifference is all wrong, as if Near's success ultimately means nothing.

It doesn't even know what it means to claim the name Kira in the wake of Light Yagami. If this is Yagami, he doesn't know what he fought and killed and died for, and Near wonders if he should laugh that Kira, Kira no longer cares for the things that made his name world-known.

Kira smiles, sharp-toothed and pitiless, like a shark – like Ryuk. It must take considerable effort for Kira to use his face at all, to make any movement visible in the jagged cracks that form a second, more honest grin across his carved smirk, and Near hopes that if this is Yagami he remembers how much he used his looks one day, how much he relied on his ability to paint honest-seeming expressions across his human face.

Kira flexes his mottled wings with a sound like creaking leather and reaches out to touch the walls of Near's painstakingly crafted dice castle. Studying it carefully, he pokes a single die loose and the entire wall crumbles.

Near is the greatest detective in the world. Near is holder of the name 'L', Near has defeated Kira once before – humiliated and crushed Kira. He is not afraid, he is curious. What is the purpose behind this visit, what is the idea Ryuk – because Kira has no memory of him, no concern, no motive – wishes to convey? "What are you doing here? Is it possible for a shinigami to be in the human world without a Note in human possession?"

"You are well-informed," Kira says, exploring Near's kingdom of Lego and cards, matchsticks and plastic toys, finger puppets and puzzle pieces. It is not a compliment. An outstretched claw lingers a long moment over the finger puppet of L, carefully tracing its round face. "But a shinigami may stay in the human realm for several hours so long as it is with the intention of killing a human."

"Speaking of which…" Ryuk says, patting the black notebook tied to his belt.

"My team," Near says, blinded by understanding.

"If you're offering," Ryuk says, grin widening impossibly, his shoulders shaking.

"No," Kira says, picking up the L finger puppet and turning it over and over in his hands. "They are going to go, one by one, but we're not here for them. Ryuk merely wanted to say hello."

Ryuk giggles as he walks through the wall, leaving him alone with the thing that can't remember killing L.

Shinigami don't care who they kill – Ryuk, leaning over Yagami's body, harvesting bullets from the cooling flesh of the boy he followed for over half a decade – and Near doesn't know why he thought it would be different with Kira. No, he knows why he thought that. He is still thinking of Kira as the human Light Yagami, he is still thinking of a self-righteous human fool, not a shinigami.

Foolish and misguided as he was, Yagami had believed he cared about humanity in his own way, had placed limits upon himself, and the creature that he has become has no limit, couldn't care less whether he kills victim or villain, innocent or guilty. This shouldn't strike Near as hard as it does, it shouldn't surprise him because Yagami had long since begun to cross his own lines anyway.

There is nothing Near hates more than inability, than ineffectuality, and if Ryuk intends to rub his face in the fact that he can't do anything to stop Kira just wandering out and killing the first person he sees, then he's succeeding.

"Why did Ryuk want to say hello? Why did you go along with him?"

Kira glances at him, twisting and shaping something sharp and metal between his surprisingly dexterous claws.

"Do you even know who you are?" Near asks quietly after a moment, remembering Light Yagami's star-bright pride, remembering Matsuda saying drunkenly "they were friends, though. Even though- He was different. After. He was different."

Kira ignores Near in favour of the finger puppet and there is somehow no surprise in that. He's managed to attach it to a hook of some kind and Near realises what he's going to do just before he drives the hook through his ear lobe. The flesh yields with a muted crunching noise, like day-old snow underfoot.

Near wonders if the sick feeling in his gut is anger or disgust as he stares at the wide-eyed finger puppet twisting and turning, brushing its open mouthed face against Kira's cold cheek as it swings in tiny circles from his ear.

"Hey," Ryuk says, walking back through the wall, patting his notebook with obnoxious satisfaction. "Nice. I like it." He waves a hand at Kira's ear and Near hunches a little further watching the shinigami tilt his head, meeting the bulging eyes of the little L, of the man whose name he hides behind. This is my fate? He imagines it saying, amused and incredulous and a little irritated, to be the trophy of a creature that can't even remember why I'm worth the mutilation?

"Stop it," Near says.

Kira looks at him. His eyes are empty of everything except calculation and suddenly Near knows that this is what faced L, not the madman he saw in the warehouse. It makes him feel bitter and frustrated and scared all at once. It makes him feel like he's been cheated. It makes him feel like L has taken something from him. It makes him feel defenceless and he shouldn't be forced to feel that way when he finally has everything he's been trained for, everything he's wanted since he was old enough to know he wanted to be L instead of Nate River.

"Funny kid," Ryuk says, a parody of friendly teasing. His smile twists and tilts, becomes crueller than it was five seconds ago, though logically Near knows his expression hasn't changed at all. "Like you can order us to do anything."

Not a human enemy playing a human game. But not a shinigami playing a shinigami game either. This is something that is both and neither; it doesn't fit the paradigm and-

"You're going to kill my team," he says blankly. "Like you killed the Japanese task-force."

"Ding! Give the kid an apple!" Ryuk says. He looks around him. "Or maybe a plastic robot or something…"

"One by one," Kira says. He walks oddly now that he moves on air, careless and bonelessly supple where Yagami had been purposeful and unwavering. His eyes gleam like rubies, like fresh blood, and Near realises suddenly that his name (all his team's names) can be seen with those eyes. "And there is nothing you can do."

Near decides that the worst possible thing about this is being forced to acknowledge that Kira is right about something.

"Kira has an excellent memory for names and faces," Ryuk says, like the punchline to a joke too well known to bother elaborating. "Even if you figured out some way to hide them 24/7, it wouldn't matter. I'm sure he can remember them."

"Why are you telling me this?" he says quietly, staring expressionlessly at Kira's ear and its mocking adornment.

"Why not?" Ryuk says.

Kira leans in; L kisses the side of his face. "And when they are gone," he says, voice indifferent and eyes alight with amusement that is pure Yagami, deep in his madness, "You will have nothing to do but wait and wonder when your name is going to be written down – how are you going to die?"

"How am I going to die?" Near wonders, meeting their eyes without flinching.

Kira smiles Yagami's mad smile. "Why," he says innocently, "you'll just have to wait and see."

"Want to know a secret?" Ryuk says, crouching at the end of the bed, eyes and lips Rorschach marks in his moon-bright face. Near doubts saying 'no' would stop him. "Light despised you. Not because you reduced life and death and godhood to a game. Not because you treated his life's work like nothing more than a puzzle. Not because you didn't care in the slightest about all the people he killed like you should have, like a good human and representative of 'justice' would."

Near waits, staring at him, winding his hair around his fingers like spooling thread.

"Of course," Ryuk adds carelessly, "he did hate you for all those things too."

Near remains silent. Ryuk bares his teeth (he doesn't smile, his face just happens to mimic the human expression of joy) like he's disappointed by the refusal to play.

"He despised you because he didn't think you were worthy of L."

Near smiles. "As if the opinion of a murderer should matter to me," he says, dismissal in his voice, in his face, in every line of his body.

Ryuk chuckles and flaps his wings once, the noise heavy in the still night, like a gunshot, a warning, like a child demanding attention and determined to let no one rest until he got it. "But it does. Because you don't think you are either."

That isn't true at all. Near knows there is no one more worthy of L than he is – after all, isn't he the last one standing, didn't he best Kira when no one else could? He turns his back to Ryuk with all the indifference he can muster but can't ignore the way his body curls in on itself under Ryuk's steady (deadly) gaze. He can't imagine sleeping while being watched by this creature, he can't imagine how Yagami ever managed to look like he'd never missed a night's sleep in his life when he was constantly followed by Ryuk for the last six years of it. (When he murdered by the hundred, by the thousand, when he wrote death in black ink and neat letters in so many different languages.)

Ryuk laughs and Near despises the shudder that runs through him at the sound.

"Oh," Ryuk says, as if he's just remembered something, and Near can't tell if it's real or faked, and is a little glad he can't. He can almost imagine the way he's standing now, wings stretched out, balanced awkwardly between crouching and standing as he prepares to leave Near to the dark and his frantic thoughts – he can almost see it, and that's bad enough. "Kira says the name Roger Ruvie will mean something to you."

"Does he really?" Near says tightly and Ryuk doesn't need to laugh for Near to feel his amusement like a physical thing.

He counts to a hundred and then counts again.

The room is silent aside from his breathing. He doesn't know when Ryuk leaves.

"It's possible to kill a shinigami, you know," Ryuk says idly, rattling the bones cupped in his hands.

"Hm?" Kira says, knowing Ryuk will hear in the casual syllable please tell me. Quite possibly, teacher and elder, please enlighten this unworthy one of the secrets you have gathered.

"Really," Ryuk insists as he throws the bones down.

Kira pushes two apples towards Ryuk without looking at the ground. Ryuk is a cheat and Kira doesn't care for gambling anyway.

"Don't fall in love with a human," Ryuk advises in an apparent non-sequitur.

"I?" Kira says blankly.

Ryuk chuckles. "Oh, that's right. You could never do that, could you?"

"Why do you say it like that?" Kira says, puzzled. "As if there was a time when I could? I've always been this way."

"Yeah," Ryuk says. "You have."

"What was L?" Kira asks, running one finger idly over his new 'earring'. Near stares at him, feeling his lips curl back like a cornered dog. Kira tilts his head and surveys him with unblinking eyes. "Wrong term?" he says lightly, unconcerned. "Should it be who was L?"

"If you don't know, there is no point in me telling you," Near says. Here, at last, something he can keep from Kira.

"It hardly matters," Kira says, almost puzzled by his refusal to speak – that too, is not Yagami, who understood people though he couldn't empathise with them. "He or she or it is dead."

"What makes you say that?" Near says, and wonders what the tone in Kira's voice means.

"I looked for an L," Kira says, as if he sees no reason not to. "There isn't a single human in the world that would need that name to be written down."

Near laughs. It makes Kira snarl – how much does Yagami remember, Near wonders, how far could Near push him by hitting at those human sore spots. Far enough to pick up a pen without thought? "Why do you laugh?" Kira demands, suddenly more shinigami than he has ever been, inhuman in his every aspect.

"You looked," Near says. He wonders if pity would drive this thing mad with rage as it would Yagami.

"Humans," Kira spits with disgust, which only makes Near smile with something like triumph. It's a victory for someone, might as well take it as his own.

"Why is Matsuda still alive?" Anthony says bitterly, time and circumstance wearing on him. They look at Matsuda, huddled in his chair, staring blankly at his empty hands (at the gun they had held, the gun that had reduced Light Yagami to nothing more than meat, Kira to something more than god).

"Yagami did say he was the closest thing to a Kira supporter," Halle says, her voice sharp and brittle and designed to hurt.

Matsuda makes a noise like a kicked puppy and puts his head in his heads. What he is saying is this: why not me? Why everyone else, why not me? – Is there something worse planned? Am I not dead because I need to suffer first?

Near wonders if the same holds true for him or if that is merely what Kira wants him to think, leaving him surprised and unready when he collapses like a crumpled marionette in front of what remains of his task-force.

"Near—" Anthony begins.

"Other than those of us gathered here there is no human alive who knows all our names and our connection to Kira. And none of us, I trust, would be willing to take revenge for him." Near says. He does not look a Matsuda. "Equally, there is no chance this is not deliberate."

"The shinigami, the one with the clown face—"

"Ryuk," Matsuda mutters.

"Do you think a shinigami would bother taking revenge for a human?" Near says, and pretends that his hands are not shaking.

"So if it can't be a shinigami and it isn't someone with a notebook trying to avenge Yagami, who is it?"

This is what is not being said and is louder than the words hanging in the air: Who is next, and when?

("Light-kun? What are you doing out here?"

"Thinking. Go back inside, Matsuda."

"Thinking? About what? About N? Near?"

"Yes."

"You're thinking about L too, right? Right?"

"…"

"I know—"

"No. You don't. Matsuda–-"

"Yes?"

"How dare he? How dare he even think he can…?"

"Light-kun? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Just fine. Go back inside."

"I get it. I miss him too, you know."

"I don't miss him at all.")

Matsuda had to give the news about Light to Sachiko, to Sayu. He had to tell Misa. He'd never had to give that sort of news before, never had to see a family shatter because of something he'd said.

Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night to find himself scrubbing his hands, unable to smell anything other than blood and gunpowder. He'd never fired his gun at a criminal before Light either. No matter how much he scrubs he can't get Light's blood off his hands.

Matsuda is sick. He knows he should be grateful, should be happy, should appreciate that the world is back to normal. He wants to understand, he wants to see things as clearly as everyone else – he honestly wants to prefer the world he now inhabits to the one Light created.

Every time he turns on the news, every time he sees yet another crime, yet another mugshot, his faith crumbles, fills his mouth with dust. He used to work on the Kira case, only the Kira case – there were hardly any other cases around. And now – now –

He shouldn't prefer hunting one criminal to hunting dozens. Isn't that what they're trying to say? So he goes and drinks like he never did when he was on the Kira case, because he just can't – can't understand why no one will agree with him that the world is fucked up and maybe maybe there was something to Kira – to the order he imposed.

Matsuda never had to face a parent and tell them their son was dead when he worked the Kira case. He never shot anyone when he worked with Light. Light took that choice from him by making it himself.

Matsuda drinks too much these days, too much not to know something is wrong. And then Mogi and Ide and Aizawa are drinking and he's trying to find out a way to explain what he feels that won't result in them yelling at him –

And then he's staring at them and their sightless eyes and waiting for his own heart to still because Light was never the sort to forget or forgive, and he screams when he realises it's not going to happen, screams when he realises he's got to wait – and there is a memory of Light smiling, saying, I thought you understood, and maybe he does.

Someone is laughing, and it takes him a minute to recognise his own voice.

Near is looking at him with wide eyes and Matsuda smiles because he's not inscrutable the way L was, he's not unknowable like Light, and his fear is written plain on his face. It's – sweet. The circumstances that have put it there are bitter, but the sight of cold, arrogant little Near afraid is sweet. Because Matsuda misses Light, never wanted to be a killer, secretly blames Near for those facts.

Near looks at him – that smug little child, and I know you drove Mikami mad, I know you killed him, and why didn't anyone believe me? Was it just because it was me that said out loud what they were thinking? – and Matsuda wants to punch him. Because it wasn't enough to know Light was Kira, was it? It wasn't enough, there had to be humiliation, there had to be suffering for having thought himself smarter, faster, quicker to react and move. Light had to be cornered and laid open before he could be mercifully put out of his misery.

Sometimes Matsuda wonders how L would have done it.

Matsuda liked L, even though he was cold, even though he did things that went against Matsuda's training, even though he knew L didn't think much of him or anyone. He liked L because Light liked him and Matsuda refuses to believe even Light could lie that well. The scream he gave in the warehouse echoed one Matsuda had heard four years before.

He liked L because even though he was cold, even though he did things that went against Matsuda's training, even though he didn't think much of anyone, he never acted as though a puzzle was the most important thing in existence. He never acted like Matsuda was a piece to move on a board (wouldn't trust him to stay in his square anyway). If L had caught Light, Matsuda is pretty sure, he'd have done it according to his rules – he wouldn't have used Light's, like Matsuda suspects Near did – and he would have regretted something.

"He's going to kill us all, isn't he?" Matsuda says dreamily.

"Who?" Lidner says sharply, arms folded, glaring.

Suddenly it's Matsuda who can see the shape of the new world, same as the old, Matsuda who understands and everyone else who is stumbling blind. "Light, of course."

"Yagami is dead," she snaps, and she says his name all wrong, and she says dead like that would ever stop Light from doing what he wanted to do.

"He could be a shinigami. Maybe that's what happens when you use a Death Note."

Near is not inscrutable like L, unknowable like Light. His face is wide open because he doesn't know how to read people and thinks that means people don't know how to read him. Where Rester and Lidner are thinking 'I didn't think of that and wish I hadn't been told it', Near is thinking 'how did you know?'.

Matsuda is simple, after all. Maybe that's why joining the dots is so easy for him and apparently so hard for the new L and his team. "I wonder how long you've got?" he asks Near, because Matsuda might have pulled the trigger but Near was the one that arranged the situation necessary for him to do so.

You of all people ought to understand, Light says, and Light was never the type to forget or forgive but he was the type to see advantage in everything, to see use where anyone else would see none, to see a purpose where anyone else would see aimlessness, to see order where there was chaos – and make what he saw become the reality that overrode everyone else's.

Matsuda and Near are going to wait, it seems, and Matsuda is going to make it as uncomfortable as he can because here, now, Near can't get away, can't turn off the computer, can't cut the phone call short. Now Near has to listen. Matsuda wonders if Near can convince him by the time he dies that killing Light was the right thing to do.

"What does L mean?" Kira asks.

"Justice," says Ryuk, sounding like he's quoting, laughing like it's a joke.

"What does Kira mean?" Kira asks.

"Justice," Ryuk repeats, and laughs all the harder.

Halle - Ryuk writes, then stops. "Should it be the female next?"

"Mmm?" Kira murmurs, writing in neat sweeping Arabic. "Kill them both," he says after a moment, indifferent. "Give Nate River enough time to find suitable replacements. Repeat."

"I like the way you think," Ryuk says with honest appreciation.

"So do I," Kira says, and Ryuk finds himself startled by the reminder that Kira is still new enough to be surprised by himself.

"Wanna play?" Ryuk says, already looking to the viewing pool, trying to remember faces from long ago, faces Light would have liked to know the names of.

"Aren't we always playing?" Kira says. Ryuk never saw such a smile on Light's face. It's human-hideous, shinigami-beautiful. There are compensations to losing Light.

"Yeah. Admit it, isn't this fun?"

"Why should I need to admit anything? You know I think it is."

"Kira," Ryuk says with delight.

"Ryuk," Kira responds and laughs because he likes the way it makes his new earring shake. He still doesn't know what L really means, but he has a long time to work it out. He slides his fingers into the hole in his chest and taps his claws gently against his heart, a pseudo-beat.

"Justice," Kira says, in a human tongue because it is a purely human concept and has no equivalent in their language.  He shakes his head and laughs. "Ryuk, where does this game end?"

"Where it always has," Ryuk says. "Wherever you want it to, Kira."