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Light was in so much pain.
The bullet wounds burned. Metal dug into his back. But he couldn’t find it in himself to move any further.
He was dying. Light, a god, dying .
Everything he had done, everyone he had sacrificed – for nothing.
L, dead…for nothing.
A sob escaped him. Squeezing his eyes shut, his fingers and hands twitched uselessly as he tried to get up. To run . Things couldn’t end like this, this wasn’t supposed to happen, he wasn’t supposed to lose too –
Ba-bump.
His heart was beginning to fail.
He was running out of time. He had to do something, quick, quick –
“Light-kun.”
He choked on his already shaky breath.
Ba-bump.
His eyes snapped open, ready to prove him wrong, but searching for him all the same. Hoping he’d be there, while wishing he wouldn’t…
L.
“Looks like you’ll be joining me soon,” The ghost murmured with a soft smile.
“Fuck off,” Light wheezed in response.
Ba-bump.
L only smiled further. It was a sad smile, Light noticed. For a moment that smile was all he could focus on, until he realized L had moved to right next to him on the stairs.
“Hurts, doesn’t it? Dying,” L tucked a strand of blood-stained hair behind Light’s ear. His fingers were cold. A scar encircled his wrist, a remnant of the shackles that had bound them together all those years ago. Light knew he bore a matching mark himself.
“I think a part of me…thought I’d never do it,” Light forced out, through a cough. A bit of blood spattered out from his mouth. He hoped none of it got on L’s shirt.
L’s hand trailed from Light’s ear to his shoulder, then wrapped around him, tugging him close. Light’s body was suddenly enveloped in cold , which was unpleasant. But it overrode the pain from his wounds, so he supposed that was somewhat nice.
“You always had a bit too much hubris for your own good, you know that?” L’s mouth was right next to Light’s ear. The sound of his voice was comforting. Light’s eyes closed of their own accord.
“So did you.”
Ba-bump .
Oh, right. He was still dying.
A great fear suddenly struck Light as the full truth of what was happening washed over him – he was going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it. Gripping onto L’s shirt, the sensation like dunking his fingers in ice water, he wept.
“I don’t want to die,” He cried.
“It will be over soon,” L lamented. “I would know.”
Ba-bump . And with his heartbeat, this time, came a memory – L, limp and lifeless in Light’s arms. All of his warmth - gone.
Dead.
“I’m sorry,” Light whimpered.
“I know,” L soothed.
“I miss you.”
“I’m here.”
Ba-bump. More memories. Those two words, being whispered to him in the night after jolting awake from a nightmare, coming from another body not quite touching him but just close enough to give off comforting heat. Being kissed into his neck after they fucked, as L was sliding up behind Light and tucking him close to his chest.
Spoken from the hallway outside Light’s bedroom the night before he died, said through a locked door as Light sobbed on the other side with the burden of knowing what was to come.
“L,” he gasped. Fuck. This was going to be his last chance to tell him. If he couldn’t have the world, then maybe he could at least have L. He had to tell him. “L…I…”
Ba-bump .
The ice water warmed, a river of peace washing over him.
“I love you.”
…And there was no response.
When Light’s eyes cracked open, L was gone.
He let out a weak chuckle. What a fitting ending for him, the dying god of a world that won’t last. Of course, of course he wouldn’t even be able to tell the one person that mattered to him more than his new world just how much Light loved him.
He existed only to eliminate. Such a powerful force of evil could not coexist with something as good as love .
That’s why it killed him.
Ba-bump.
“He went down here, didn’t he? Fuck, where is he?”
Light barely registered the voice of an officer approaching. He couldn’t tell who it was. He couldn’t understand much anymore. Couldn’t feel much. All he could decipher was the beating of his heart as it slowed, slowed, slowed…
Ba-bump.
Light let his eyes slip shut one last time.
Another heartbeat never came.