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“Everyone, the shinigami-”
And then, L felt his heart stop.
There was a crushing pain in his chest that wasn’t there before, as if his crucial organ had tied itself into knots. Unsteady now on his chair given his already precarious balance, L toppled over to the side, not worried at all about the pain of hitting the ground when the rest of his body was already filled with crushing agony. Squeezing his hands into fists, L tried to push the anxiety from his mind. He would not die in a panic, like Kira wanted him to. His last moments would be clear.
Kira… L suddenly realized that he’d landed in someone’s soft grip instead of on the harsh floor. He felt Light Yagami’s fingers greedily searching out his pulse, tightening on his wrists to the point of discomfort. L tried to take in a calming breath, but it only made his heart twist again.
Light… he didn’t want to believe it. Still didn’t want it to be true. Because for a while, he’d really felt like he and Light had been close. It had seemed like Light had genuinely wanted to understand him in a way that no one else ever had. Unsteadily, L gazed up into those warm brown eyes, still trying, and failing, to understand Light Yagami.
L sucked in another pointless breath as Light buried his head in his hair. He was so dizzy, and it was hard to see. But he clung to the feeling of Light so close to him. Pointlessly, the thoughts raced through L’s mind: maybe he does care about me, maybe he isn’t Kira . He could still be innocent. L wanted him to be innocent.
It was almost impossible to hear anything except for his own rasping breaths, but L’s senses had always been finely turned. He could feel Light’s soft breathing against his ear, and then a faint whisper that he had to strain his fading attention to understand.
“L,” Light’s voice paused for a moment as L’s focus stretched even thinner, “I am Kira.”
It was as if his heart had stopped again. L’s body tensed up as Light pulled away, staring into those eyes that weren’t warm after all, but as cold as ice. Light’s lips were curled slightly in a sneer.
And then, as the full realization hit L, he furtively found himself wishing that he would die faster.
He knew Light could read the truth in his eyes, because he was already tugging back L’s sleeve, exposing his deepest kept secret other than his name: his soulmate quote. I am Kira . He’d almost forgotten it, but how could he? His body twitched anxiously in Light’s grasp, in the arms of his soulmate, his murderer. And the grin on Light’s face was almost enough to kill him right there.
Light had always been obvious in flashing his blank wrists. This was probably the ultimate victory for him. Having L laid completely bare before him. Knowing that he was made to love Light. That he had , in his own way, loved him. But Kira’s heart was made of ice where L’s was made of glass. And in the end, he’d been destroyed by his own hope that maybe, Light cared for him too.
The bells. They were ringing louder now, and L felt his eyes sliding shut beyond his control. But maybe it wasn’t too late. He could say something to out Light to the others in the taskforce, to try and save them from him. But no words came out, and L realized that he no longer had the air to breathe. In just one minute his world had come crashing down around him, and his voice had been crushed just like his heart.
L heard a bell sounding particularly loudly inside his head as his eyes slipped closed for the last time, and he tried to hold onto that. It was a pure sound, soothing where everything else was not. Maybe he could carry it with him, wherever he was headed.
L felt his body still, and though the room was silent, his last thoughts rang with splendor.