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In truth, Ryuk isn’t sure if he could kill to save Light anymore, not without dying.
Ryuk loves him, in his own way — not as romance, and not as a parent loves a child, but as a precious thing to be witnessed and treasured. His moonlit pet, brilliant and hollow. He speaks with his eyes shut, thinking of distant things, and sleeps with his whole body beneath the blankets. When he pulls out his pen to kill, he twirls it twice, then falls silent as he scrolls through pages and pages of information, making his judgements.
He is seventeen years old. He is proud that he does his own laundry. Last week he spent thirty-seven minutes deciding whether or not to spare a triple-murderer for the sake of her pupal daughter, index finger pressed along the length of his lip, then wrote the name in a series of quick, deliberate strikes and turned the page with nothing more than a beat for the ink to dry.
Humans are filthy and depraved things, that’s what Ryuk has learned since he came down to their world, and Light is such a wonderful specimen of the species. He grows like a flower through shit.
Shinigami are not in the business of chronicling the lives of human beings, but Ryuk keeps a record of Light anyway. He stores it within the tunnels of his own mind. Perhaps one day he will repeat it to someone else and Light’s story will live on, but probably he’ll keep it just for himself.
Light doesn’t belong to the world. He’s made this very clear. He stands separate from it, declaring himself above and apart. He belongs, instead, to Ryuk. He doesn’t have friends anymore; he has only their talks at night, and the long walks to and from the school where Light learns about mathematics and emperors and kings.
Someday Ryuk will kill him. He’ll scrawl down his name and his heart will stop. He wasn’t there for the start, but he’ll be there to witness the end. This is how it should be. It is a promise and a mercy which Ryuk has designed: Light Yagami will not die alone.