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He sits on L’s grave a lot. L doesn’t mind. It’s convenient really. When you’re dead going places is a sluggish endeavor and time moves strangely when you’re not anchored by the physical processes of sleeping, eating and shitting. It’s a kind of holiday time but it’s very easy to lose track of things moving around. The living world moves much faster than L and when he tries to pivot his ghost inside it everything blurs.
Light comes to him with the kind of diligence Light should really be showing his girlfriend. Or is Misa his fiancé now? L doesn’t keep track of those details as much as others. Light likes to talk, sprawled back on L’s patch of earth. The grass has come in on the soil now and in the shadow of his cross Light often looks like he might fall asleep. L wonders where Kiyomi and Teru and all those other scoundrels think Light is when he’s here, with him.
It's a shame Near isn’t tenacious enough to set up a wire at the gravesite. He’d hear twenty Kira confessions in a week if he did. Light holds nothing back from L anymore. Which is a shame because L would’ve appreciated that transparency more if he was alive to talk back. Still, he supposes Near doesn’t know about the grave. Another secret Light has hoarded for himself. L’s not even sure half the taskforce know where the grave is. Light carried out the funeral arrangements and Light buried him and it was entirely how L wanted it, mind you, but it did make Light look more like a widow than a murderer.
Its funny, all that. Light is at once his widow and his murderer. He’s very good at both roles, always a talented actor, and L supposes there’s a certain degree of intimacy you can only achieve by killing someone.
L knows Light regrets it. Light never says it out loud but Light is here, with him, so often that it’s apparent he’s lonely. Light doesn’t even let the Shinigami within ear shot when he’s at L’s graveside. He wants to update L on the case, on his mistakes and his triumphs. He talks too much now but L likes it in the same way you think your longstanding girlfriend is insufferable with her workplace gossip. You always listen. Because you love them and the animation of their face when they talk is a kind of magic usually reserved for children’s books.
If L was alive he’d make Light a coffee. He probably wouldn’t contribute more than he does now. And Light would say “are you even listening?” and he would say “of course not,” but that would be a lie and Light would know it and keep talking. But L’s not alive. So he can’t make Light a coffee. He can’t sit in a kitchen which is a warzone of their aesthetic tastes and pretend to be working on his laptop. In some other reality they have a life together. What they have now is a death together. Which is a different kind of reality.
Light talks about his father passing and L worries, for a moment, that Soichiro Yagami will take his place in rambling one-sided conversations but he squashes the thought almost instantly. Light was never honest with his father in life, why would he start in death? Light wants Soichiro to move on, even though Light doesn’t believe in Heaven or Hell, and Light is quietly relieved that, no matter what, his father at least will never carry the tragedy of the truth. He’s been freed of responsibility, of agony, and he died thinking his son was at least half as good as he always hoped. Light wanted that for him. Not the dead part. But the safety from Kira part.
L thinks he could handle the Kira part. Then again, the Kira part is the reason he’s dead. So maybe he’s wrong too. Maybe no one can love Light properly. Maybe no one can hold him in their hands without burning themselves. Light is lovely from afar but the nitty gritty is bloody and impractical and as close as L wants to be the truth is he could never be this close if his heart was beating. Kira is Light but Kira is dangerous.
Ryuk does a little better than L. He’s got the sturdy evolutionary advantages of being someone Light can’t kill which seems to be a necessity for someone who loves Kira. And L thinks Ryuk does love Kira. Maybe not Light but certainly Kira. L suspects when Light dies Ryuk will take him and they’ll both be apart again, perhaps forever. Even now their time is limited.
Light has had an awful day. He tells L all about it and lays back on the gravesite like it’s a picnic spread. As the sun sets Light falls asleep and as it gets cold Light looks younger in his sleeping. His face is softer, less tense. L likes it less than when he’s awake but this is an intimacy L has missed. Sleeping next to each other. Strange to think they speed ran through a whirlwind of marriage and cohabitation, all using their own words of course, handcuffs instead of wedding rings and all that, and now its over. It lasted just a few months, not even a year. L thinks, even if he’d won, and lived, that he would’ve remembered that little year forever. Shaped by a life that existed as a flash in a bottle and then vanished. Another trick of the light.
“Hey!”
Light startles awake.
“You can’t sleep here,” the graveyard security chides, “it’s disrespectful to the dead.”
L doesn’t think this bastard knows anything about the dead and certainly shouldn’t speak on his behalf but Light, softly pink, is mortified and apologizes. He hates being caught unexpectedly.
The security guard leaves, assured Light is heading back to his car and Light sighs bitterly down to the earth where L’s body is rotting, worm infested, and L is not present. L looks at his face, almost nose to nose, and Ryuk crosses the divide to hover close over Light’s shoulder.
“Are we going home then?” Ryuk supposes.
“Yeah, guess so.”
“What did that human say again?”
“That sleeping on the graves is disrespectful.” Light scoffs.
“He doesn’t look like he minds,” Ryuk says, looking right at L.
Light stiffens, looking back at the Shinigami.
L tenses, clenching muscles he doesn’t have to clench. His mouth starts to open—
“What did you say?” Light wheezes.
Ryuk looks at L, seems to consider L and everything L is, and says; “just a joke.”
Light sneers. “Not funny, Ryuk.” And turns to walk away.
“Tell him.” L hisses, appealing to Ryuk with all that he has left.
Ryuk lingers for a moment, head tilted at L like a dog. L knows he understands. L knows he hears.
“Tell him, please.”
“You don’t get to interrupt my time again.” Ryuk says. And Ryuk leaves.
Because that’s true, isn’t it? As temporary as L was to Light. Light’s life is so temporary to Ryuk. Kira is not a Shinigami with eyes or wings and Kira will die. Even if Ryuk desperately doesn’t want him too. Why would he want L in the middle of that?