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Light’s bullet riddled body sags as if letting out a sigh before he pushes open the door of the warehouse.
Run.
Light stumbles immediately as he begins to move his heavily wounded body away from the warehouse, blood seeping through his pristine clothes. His arm hangs uselessly at his side. He can faintly feel the sensation of the blood trickling down his arm in rivulets, but aside from that, he is totally numb. He can’t feel the two gunshot wounds in his ribs, nor the one in his shoulder. All he feels is the blood, the life, steadily oozing from his wounds.
Run.
Light isn’t quite running, but he manages something resembling a jog, and it’s a miracle he can muster the energy to do that much. His legs are unsteady underneath him, and he feels so tired. If Light were a normal person, he might be wishing someone that loves him would be here to support him. But for Light, who has had every person in his life turn on him, or has turned on everyone himself, he cannot think this way. He doesn’t yearn for the impossible. He just thinks of how nice it would be to sit against the chain link fence he’s running along, to let the diamond-shaped chains dig into his back, and rest.
No, I can’t. I have to run.
He shakes off the desire to rest and keeps moving. He doesn’t now where he’s running, or what he’ll do if he manages to escape. There’s nowhere left for him to go. For the first time since receiving the Death Note, he has no plan. He just moves, breathes, and thinks nothing but the word, run.
The sun is setting. It’s dying Light colors the sky a soft yellow, as the sun glows warm and brilliant, sinking deeper and deeper into the horizon.
The light is going away. The light is going to disappear.
A memory surfaces in Light’s mind, abrupt and unbidden. It is so insignificant of a thing to remember, yet it comes to his mind clearly now. He recalls something L said during the investigation into Yotsuba, when Light had been without his memories of the Death Note. Light and L had been arguing over whether Misa should participate in the investigation, and Misa enthusiastically gave her approval, leaving Light fighting a losing battle.
While Light had been trying to devise another strategy that didn’t require Misa, she had clung to his arm annoyingly. “I would never dream about living in a world without Light,” she had said in the most nauseatingly saccharine voice, her words only feeding into L’s idea that her love for him was worth using for the investigation. Then L, with the same wry and dry humor he was known to use on occasion, indulgently replied with, “Yes, that would be dark.”
Light had thought at the time that it had been a joke, but now he finds himself wondering—what if it wasn’t? What if L had truly meant what he said? That a world without Light Yagami, without him, would be a dark place? Suddenly, Light desperately wishes to know the answer to that question. Were you joking? Did you mean it? Did you care?
L.
Light feels a longing just thinking of that name. He wants to see him again. L is intolerably important to Light, and also incredibly precious. L is his rival, his equal in all things, and the only person to ever understand him. Yet that one tangible, mutual connection was severed by none other than Light himself.
He imagines what it would have been like if he had never regained his memories, or even picked up the Death Note at all. He pictures them both working together as the greatest detectives in the world, capturing criminals no one else could possibly catch. He thinks about how he would drag L out of whatever hotel room they would be working out of for a tennis match, in which he would win, and they would go to a café in which L would get celebratory cake, even if he didn’t win. He imagines hearing one of L’s rare quips and laughing at it with reckless abandon. He dreams of the genuine smile that would bloom on L’s face at his reaction.
Then, as if to prevent him the comfort of his delusions, he envisions his past self in the distance.
He’s wearing his old beige uniform, his red tie loosened just the slightest after a long day at school. His school bag is casually slung over his shoulder, and he’s reading a book. For some reason, he can’t see his eyes. Light’s innocence walks right past him in long, unbroken strides, his eyes still hidden in his book, and it’s as if Light is the one who is nothing but an illusion. They were completely lost to each other. As he hears his former self’s footsteps fading, he knows for certain that they will never meet again.
He can barely support his body now, his movements janky and slow. He sees an abandoned warehouse similar to the one he had just escaped from and decides to rest there. He pulls the door open with shaky fingers, and his breathing comes in soft gasps as he limps to a set of rusty stairs. He slowly sits himself and lies back, his back settling uncomfortably on the middle steps. Light looks up. Among the bursts of light coming through the shattered glass windows of the warehouse, he sees L. The moment their eyes meet, Light’s eyes widen, and his heart stutters in his chest. Light wants to smile and tell L how grateful he is that he’s here, that Light won’t have to die alone in the dark, but the pain in his chest makes him unable to.
Light takes a stuttering, shallow breath.
“I meant it.” he hears L say faintly.
His eyelids lower like a falling curtain over his brilliant amber eyes. Suddenly, his chest doesn’t hurt anymore.
Thank you.