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I. What a piece of work is a man!
At first he could only think that they had drugged him, he seemed so limp and helpless between the guards. His head hung down, hazel eyes hidden behind auburn hair grown overlong from his time waiting. Christ carrying his cross to Golgotha to be crucified. L narrowed his eyes. Light played the martyr well.
They kept him blindfolded until the doors closed with the hiss of a pressure change, just in case. The bright medical lights turned on and began to hum. Light blinked, eyes scanning the room, searching the corners, the tables. L leaned forward slightly, lowered his voice. "Don't let him speak. We still don't know his full capabilities." A tiny nod from Aizawa acknowledged that he'd heard.
"He's watching, isn't he?" Light's voice transmitted crisply across the line, the voice of a great speaker. "From somewhere. Lurking. Why aren't you here, Ryuga? Or does it content you to be a voyeur to my sacrifice?"
"Don't talk," said the other officer, tightening his grip, but it was Light who led them forward further into the room.
"Justice doesn't hide," Light said. "Justice should not be afraid to show its face."
I am not afraid. L gritted his teeth, and said simply, "Finish this."
Light submitted gracefully, led to the table, which took on the quality of an altar. The straps fastened across his body, hands shackled down. Looking at Light Yagami lying on the steel table, his expression calm, L thought again of Christ, crucified on this modern cross.
He didn't listen to the reading of the charges again. He leaned forward, rubbing his thumb over his teeth. You're just a murderer, Raito-kun. I am Justice. He wondered, though…if he was watching in disbelief, certain that somehow at the last there would be some miracle.
The nurse filled the syringe from a small bottle, the needle gleaming. L looked at the tiny instrument of death. There had been clamors for more brutal methods of execution – the more usual hanging – but Light had asked for this, and L had had it granted. He suspect that Light found a kind of beauty in it.
Light's eyes were closed as the needle approached him, and L frowned. Open your eyes, he willed, and Light's eyes opened.
The change was so sudden, so evident, that L took a sharp breath in. Where before he had been Christ sacrificed for humanity's sake, now he was nothing but a young man, and frightened.
The doctor swore, and L refocused. They seemed to be having trouble finding a usable vein. A dark bruise bloomed visibly in the nest of his elbow. Again, and this time he could see Light's face spasm. He wanted to look away and could not, leaned forward so his nose nearly touched the screen. He had to see, had to prove to himself…
Two more tries, two more dark bruises like black flowers blooming. They switched arms. The fifth time, Light's composure shattered and he screamed, struggled, suddenly young, and L-
Light's eyes rolled up frantically, the white visible all around the remarkably hazel iris. "L!" he cried. "Mercy!"
Your victims never had time to beg for mercy, L thought. But he closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, the doctor was stepping back, drawing the needle out. He looked sick. Light had fallen silent again, skin like ash, shaking minutely.
Forty seconds, L thought and found himself breathing hard. He tried to calm down. Everyone in the room had backed away from Light – Kira – and the table that had become a god's – no, a murderer's – bier. His eyes fell open and L imagined he could hear him breathing.
Twenty.
Escape from this, he thought, and there was almost a desperation in the thought. This is the longest forty seconds of my life.
Fifteen.
Light's eyes never closed. The nurse laid tentative fingers to his neck and declared there was no pulse; his mouth hung slightly open. As they undid the restraining straps holding him down, Light Yagami looked terribly human.
"What were you, in the end, Raito-kun?" L asked quietly. "Was there any of Kira in you?"
Over. It was over.
"Ryuzaki?"
"That's all," he managed to say. "I'll contact you soon." He looked once more at the corpse on the table, so harmless in death, and severed the transmission.
He wanted to sleep forever.
L thought of that last picture of Light's body splayed on the table, Christ fallen. The bruises from the failed injections would be covered by makeup, and his body would be given to what was left of his family, to be buried somewhere discreet, unmarked – in order to spare them the pain of its desecration.
And on the third day, he rose from the tomb.
"You are no Christ, Raito," he said angrily to his walls. "You never were."
II. How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty!
Matsuda found him in the alley nearest the building, barely breathing, in a pool of blood. He had sprinted inside, yelling for someone to come, come quickly, Light was dying.
He was mistaken. Light was already dead by the time the others reached him, sprawled in a boneless heap, coat gone, contents of his pockets spilled on the ground, wrist bare of his accustomed watch. "God," said someone, and Soichiro simply stared, seeming unable to understand what he saw.
L was the last to arrive, and Matsuda looked up to see his face. "…do you think…Kira?"
"No," said L quietly, and he seemed puzzled. "I don't think so. I think…this is just what it looks like." His expression showed nothing, but all the same he cast a vague, rare air of puzzlement. They stared down at him, and L seemed to be looking most at his hands, a few fingers bent and broken where it seemed he had tried to fend off his attackers. His eyes stared blankly upward, all trace of secrecy and brilliant and perhaps murder gone.
Soichiro's voice was flat. "Is he cleared now? Or will you still find some way to suspect him?" He slipped to his knees, touched his son's forehead. "How could this happen? So close to where we were…"
"No," L said slowly. "Or – no, at any rate. It doesn't matter." He looked lost; as though he'd been stranded, or set adrift in a shifting sea he'd never seen before. "I'm sorry," he added after a few moments, and it seemed that he was apologizing more to Light than his father.
Light stayed where he'd fallen, silenced forever, and did not answer.
L knelt next to his body and gently closed his eyes. "You should call the hospital," he said to the watching investigators. "And the police. Chief Yagami and I will bring him out of here."
When they were alone, L looked up. He was silent, for several moments. "Your son was a brilliant man," he said. "I am sorry to lose him."
His only answer was a soft noise that tried hard not to be a sob.
If he was Kira, there is an irony in this, L thought. And a sadness.
It felt wrong for Kira – no, for Light to end like this.
The sirens were approaching. L stood up. "I should go," he said softly. The Chief did not look up from his quietly dead son, and L turned away.
For a few brief weeks, he had had a friend. Maybe. Apparently, friendship never paid.
III. In form and moving how express and admirable!
He had watched closely, carefully, for weeks, examined the newspapers for articles, worked tirelessly at teasing out leads. And if he was right…the gains would be enormous. If he was wrong, the loss was small. It seemed no large sacrifice.
He walked through his day as usual, quivering with excitement. He could not wait, could hardly breathe. Perhaps he would write just one name, for the importance of this one name.
He hurried home, unlocked his suitcase, turned out all the lights but the one at his desk, and laid out the notebook with reverence. He looked down at it, and smiled. "Ryuk," he said quietly. "I want you to witness this."
The shinigami drifted over, seeming disinterested. "Witness what?" It asked, and Mikami sat, opened the notebook, pulled out his pen.
"This," he said, and wrote.
Ryuk began to laugh, suddenly, his dry and awful laugh, and Mikami grinned like a death's head, and finished carefully the last character in the name he had just written.
"My god will be so proud of me," he murmured. "He will reward me beyond my dreams. I sense it."
DETECTIVE'S SON FOUND DEAD. –-Two weeks after Police Chief Yagami's reported death, his son, Light Yagami, first in his class and renowned graduate of To'oh University, was found dead in a hotel room. His presence could not be explained, but the message written on the wall in blood was clear enough: 'Kira judges the unworthy.'
It appeared that Yagami killed himself using the broken glass of a vase. No statement could be made.
IV. In action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!
All the screens went white at once, with one bleak message, letter black and plain. ALL DATA DELETION. Light's breathing quickened as he sensed his victory, only a few breaths left. "What's this," Mogi asked sharply. L seemed frozen, staring at the screens, now blank.
"It was something Watari was to do if anything happened to him."
"Does that mean," Matsuda started to ask, but L cut him off, head snapping up. "The shini-"
L stopped. He seemed to stagger, even sitting down, simply very still, his perch immaculate for one more moment. And then he began to arc sideways, slipping out of his chair, one hand clutching at his chest.
Light held down his smile, and moved, catching the detective before he hit the floor and widening his eyes in the appropriate shock and horror. Well done, Rem…I knew in the end you would do what was best. "Ryuzaki!" He cried aloud, and then
his chest spasmed, seized
What is this? Light thought, in horror. This is not-
heart staggered
Not the Death Note – impossible, there is no other but mine and Misa's, and Misa would never – would never-
heart stopped
Rem.
Rem wrote my name.
How could she, how could she- The rage overwhelmed him, but he couldn't breathe enough to scream, and was collapsing over L's body. Their eyes fell into each other and he could see his own pain reflected there.
"Oh god," he heard someone yelling. "Oh god-!"
Then the noise swallowed everything, and he and L blinked together, and fell together, and it was all over; the game was all over.
V. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
Matsuda fired the first shot to save Near.
The next three were all his own.
But it was only when Light came crashing down in a splash of water, when he began screaming almost hysterical with rage, when his friends – his real friends – pulled him back and the shot that would have blasted his brains out on the concrete floor flew wide, that he realized what he had done.
He'd shot Light. Raito-kun, the Chief's son. The second L. He couldn't look at that face, even twisted with madness, and see Kira – and it was this young man, younger even than he was, that he had just driven four bullets into, perhaps more – he'd lost count.
And no one else seemed to realize. They were all shouting, and all he could do was stare at Light struggling to rise, suit jacket drenched in blood, and his mouth hung open in horror as he screamed to kill them all-
And then Mikami stabbed himself with a pen, and blood sprayed everywhere, and Matsuda looked away – and when he looked back Light was at the doorway, somehow on his feet and hauling it open. Blood dripped from between his fingers, and his shadow was stark against the setting sun.
He couldn't keep from calling out. "Light, wait-" If he left, he'd die.
Light Yagami would die, and somehow that meant everything had failed…
"He won't get far," Near was saying. "He'll stop just the same if we leave him alone."
I shot him, Matsuda thought numbly. I killed my friend. Oh god. Oh god.
He followed Aizawa and Ide, stumbling after them, hearing nothing of their cries and yells as they wheeled and searched, trying to follow the track of blood. It staggered along the wharfs, as Light must have staggered, and as L had died, now Light died, but worse, stumbling along like this, like a wounded animal…
They found him, eventually.
In another warehouse, lying on the stairs, he was stretched out, hands splayed at his side, blood still dripping slowly from his many wounds. His eyes were closed and his mouth was set in the tiniest of frowns, serious, unhappy. Young.
Matsuda broke and turned away, the tears streaming down his cheeks. He did not want this to be true. He wanted it all to be something that he would wake up from tomorrow, lying on the couch with Light tapping away at the computer.
"What do we do," asked Aizawa, and for the first time he sounded lost. "What do we tell…everyone…"
"Nothing," said Ide. "We don't…I can't tell Sachiko this. Not after all she's been through. Light was killed by Kira. That's all anyone needs to know."
Matsuda stared at his face. He looked so peaceful, so sad. The expression reminded Matsuda of one he'd seen once – on a crucifix, Jesus looking down at him, so sad, so solemn. So many were dead, Matsuda thought. So many casualties of this terrible war.
And it all ended like this. Light, broken. L, dead. All of them… I want to go home, he wanted to say. Instead it came out, "Who's going to tell Misa?"
They all looked down at Light, and no one spoke. Ide said it first, and he sounded unutterably sad. "He was a good man," he murmured.
"No," Aizawa said slowly. "He could have been," and Matsuda looked down at Christ-Light's still face and wondered what it all meant, and the only answer he had was nothing.
Man delights not me. –Hamlet, Act II: Scene 2.