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When Light arrives in the afterlife, L is waiting for him. He is slouched in his familiar, infuriating way, chewing on the end of his finger. Behind him stretches an endless expanse of white; empty, silent. There is nothing else.
“It seems,” L says, “That I won in the end.”
“I still killed you,” Light returns defiantly.
“Yes,” L fixes him with a long, unblinking stare. “I suppose you did.”
- X -
L’s hair is still brittle and his hands are still cold. He no longer eats or sleeps, but neither does Light. He is sometimes indifferent and insouciant, and sometimes fond. Light grows used to his sudden changes of mood the way he had grown used to the handcuffs over a lifetime ago.
L tells him that he cannot hear bells anymore, or even remember what bells sounded like. At the time, he is leaning over Light, his head haloed by the ever-present whiteness of their surroundings. When he sits back, the glare blazes down uninterrupted. Light winces. His shadow had been cool.
- X -
“I missed you,” Light admits, after a while.
“I waited five years in this place for you,” L says. “I missed you, too.”
- X -
Light’s head is throbbing dully; everything is too bright. He is holding L in his arms and this, too, is familiar.
“Did it hurt?” he asks.
“What, when I fell from Heaven?”
“No,” says Light flatly, and closes his eyes against the harsh brilliance. “When I killed you.”
“Of course it hurt,” says L. “Heart attacks generally do.” He adds with surprising gentleness, “But you knew that already.” It takes Light a moment to work out what he means, but then he remembers the warehouse by Tokyo Bay. The sun had shone on the water and the sky had been streaked with colour, and there had been something resembling tenderness in L’s expression as he watched Light die.
- X -
The world, Light realises, will move on. The crime rate will rise again. People in the streets will wonder why Kira has gone silent. Some will rail against him, and some will hope vainly for his return. A distant sort of despair fills him, and this is why he kisses L.
L kisses him back. His hair, so very dark, falls across Light’s face. For a moment, Light forgets that anything else exists.
They are dead and this is eternity. There are no more colours, cities, rooftops or pouring rain. They will never go home again. But L cups Light’s jaw with a strange kind of gentleness, and when Light pulls him close, L clings to him so hard that it hurts.