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“...but I don’t mind waiting a little bit longer.”
That horrible voice.
That enraging plan.
That astonishing man.
“You can answer all of my questions when I catch you.”
I will answer your every question, Light thinks immediately, deliriously, infuriated, shocked.
Impressed.
He’s never felt more like a caught deer.
Like a lost hound.
Like a fascinated…
Person.
I will answer your every question right before I kill you.
An involuntary chuckle is torn out of his throat.
Astounding him.
And another one.
Light closes his eyes, confused, thrilled, and smiling.
His cheeks hurt a little
And he closes his eyes, presses a hand to his face and laughs.
Then he opens them.
And cries out in a long, terrified, deafening scream.
As his eyes burn him alive.
He is unfortunately close to throwing up for the next five minutes or so.
On his knees, hugging his chair, through the migraine so strong that he might have as well kept screaming, he heaves, fighting to keep his whole being down, as his brain is rearranging itself.
Everything is dark.
He does not lose sight, but it feels like a distressingly close call. His room, familiar and fine just seconds ago, having drained of light, having fallen into shadows, turned into a picture of deep, moonlight midnight.
It does not go away.
It will not go away.
He keeps a shaking hand pressed to his mouth.
“You good?” Ryuk asks.
Light is shaking, nodding and shaking.
His numb hand finds a remote in the gloom. He switches on the TV again.
The news play with their colours - colours, real colours, - barely any different from the monochrome he had always seen.
“What,” Light rasps.
His voice is ruined.
“What is this?..”
“You’re seeing them?” Ryuk barks out in surprise.
“Yeah,” Light manages, focusing, as much as possible, on the screen, trying to calm his rattled mind, his overworked lungs, his pulsing temples. “But I…”
The screen is barely lighter than anything around him.
In the end, it makes him recognise that all the lights in the room are on.
He is just barely seeing them.
“This…” and he will be mumbling now, won’t he? In a way he hadn’t mumbled even when he’d just killed the first few criminals with the Death Note. “It can’t be.”
Ryuk whistles.
Light cringes and looks with vexation at his black mass of aimless protrusions.
The glowing red of Ryuk’s eyes is lost somewhere there.
“You’re in love!” Ryuk all but sings. “Kira’s in love? With L? That’s insane!”
Light can hear that Ryuk’s also dancing. Shoddy little rock-and-roll moves.
The irritation is prodding, scratching, clawing at Light from the inside…
After a minute more, he snaps.
“It can’t be!” he is staring madly at the news channel.
Whatever contrast there used to be between shades of the monochrome is compromised.
“That’s not how it’s supposed to work!” he flails his hands, uselessly, like it would turn back time and cause some kind of change, any kind of change. “I’m… They are not supposed to be overpowering everything! They are not supposed to be making everything worse, I…”
What?
…He is puffing and panting.
“I’m” what?
Having lost his composure.
I should get myself together.
This is a disgrace.
And the truth is that he can’t be stupid about it, either.
Head spinning, body disobedient, he all but crawls to the bed.
Thankfully, the Shinigami does not comment on that.
Merely keeps asking childishly excited questions.
When the night has come, and Light has switched the lights off, and none of that changed a thing about what he sees, he says his exasperating, unfathomable “what”.
He whispers, “I’m supposed to feel something.”
Ryuk, chewing on the apple, makes the sound of a choking pug.
Light leaves it at that.
Light feels dreadful, maddening anxiety for days after the broadcast.
His world is a blur of darkness. He can see things - he processes this knowledge belatedly, and it helps him breathe; it’s just that they are all drowning in the black well of his vision.
He can see colours.
They are just barely there.
He discovers - he thinks - how shortsighted people feel, trying to discern unhelpful silhouettes in the distance. How people with reading difficulties feel - trying to put the slightly blurry words around them together.
Oh, he hates L.
He. Hates. L.
Will I always be seeing things this way?
It is difficult to see his family’s faces.
He cannot study.
The names he is writing might be all wrong.
He can’t catch a break; since the darkness around him grows and dims. Goes shades warmer; shades colder. Floods his surroundings.
Almost disappears.
Is this how it is going to be?
Light dreads waking up as much as he dreads going to bed.
Light thinks he might be going insane.
It subsides.
Predictably, he scoffs and tells himself.
His chest still feels icy and dead from the terror of the week.
Later, when he is going through the tests on his laptop, he determines what he’s been observing all along.
Blue.
It is all blue.
It was all blue.
Light pointedly does not smash anything into the wall.
So, it was not black that he was seeing.
It was the deepest, darkest blue.
He dreams about the bathyscaphes crashing in the depths of the Mariana Trench.
A week later, the blue subsides.
Light sees the colour wheel in its full glory.
It steals his breath.
Light sees.
He sees the tiniest rainbow sparkles of the fresh snow.
He sees the earthy and the leafy shades of green he’s chosen for his bedroom.
He sees the blood.
It’s red.
Light loves it.
His previously unvaried, wearisome life has shades, emotions and reasons.
Light loves L for this for one humiliating millisecond.
Then, he comes to his senses.
Sensing L’s emotions change is a wonder.
Most of the time, Light’s world is tinted with dense, bright royal blue.
A beautiful colour.
Elevated, sophisticated.
Embodying confidence and determination.
Projecting authority and power.
Light doesn’t… hate L for the blue, at least.
For everything else - Light can hate him.
L’s emotions change quickly.
They get stuck, unrelenting and stable, in different states for long periods of time.
The plants liven up with waves of the emerald tint coming and going when L is interested in something.
Light waters them generously.
The white bed sheets resemble light-coloured bubblegum when L is feeling… cute, Light guesses.
Sometimes, it makes Light scrunch his nose in distaste.
Most often, Light instead huffs a taunt L will never hear.
And changes his bedding to an even whiter one.
The specks of golden yellow get lost in Light’s hair when L is happy.
Light smirks at his radiant face in the mirror.
His life is blue most of the time.
It is decidedly not love.
It is something… platonic.
Thrill, respect. Animosity, anger.
He does not love L.
He doesn’t even know L, for fuck’s sake.
L mesmerises him.
Light meets L in person.
The wet, strange bird-lizard-cat.
With the most intense, big obsidian eyes Light has ever seen.
And the whitest, inhumanly white, almost dead-looking skin.
Light acts all nice at the university.
At home, he screams.
From then on, when they are apart, his world is most often blue, still.
When they are together, it is violet.
Vibrant, dark and passionate.
Full of cruelty, desire and life.
Light… likes the violet.
L smiles cunningly, and the blue overpowers the red.
Light enjoys it.
L sulks, and, curiously, the strength of both the blue and the red subsides.
Light ponders about it.
L says something.
And Light scoffs at it internally, or plays a good friend, or puts the thought away, or memorises the moment in case it becomes important later.
And the fireworks of L’s rushing, endlessly inquisitive, captivating, annoying, beautiful mind light up the deep, dark summer sky of the boring and, thus, nonexistent world around them.
Light tells himself it will not change a thing.
He hates L, in the end.
…But the fireworks can stay for a while.
…After the confinement and until the helicopter, Light does not know they exist.
He does not see them.
He does not think of colours.
He does not see them.
As far as he knows, he has never seen them before.
In the half-darkness, Light does not recognise it.
He is too nervous about the possibility of his plan going wrong.
L is watching him. Light is scrolling through the black-and-white mass data, compiled by them meticulously over the months of hard work now rendered useless. The Death Note is in his hands, it is finally in his hands, again, - his tool, and purpose, and vision. White name in a bony font, on the black leather of the cover; strict divisive lines inside, meant to be filled with the names of human trash.
Meant for the android under the moniker of “L”.
That’s what Light tells himself.
Light’s heart is racing, his hands are getting wet, and if he notices the blood on the pin being bleaker - he dismisses the thought, judging the perplexity to be untimely and irrelevant.
He is powerful, he is driven and unstoppable, again, and he is scared to death of his plan going wrong, and he is drunk on his impending victory, intoxicated at the prospect of killing L.
He is so into this game.
Their game.
And, in comparison to the last months, he is so, so, so into L.
Into angering, upsetting, defeating L.
L deserves to suffer for all Light’s trouble.
If L is weirdly quiet - Light does not think about it much, as there is only so much attention he can dedicate right now to anything that is not about holding on to the meaning of his life, the meaning that might just seep through his fingers if he loses the notebook right now.
He understands it when they get to the headquarters.
Comprehension hits him with the force of a crushing train.
He stops in his tracks.
And he feels….
Confused.
He promptly convinces himself he is, must be angered, at least, irritated.
The lie doesn’t stick, though.
Then, he realises.
Why the hell would he be irritated?
Then, he is.
His world is in monochrome.
Darker, muddier, greyer than it used to be.
Perhaps, it is an illusion of greyness - something psychosomatic, overpowering the clarity of his vision; overriding all reason.
L’s face is not white. It’s ashen. Distastefully close in shade to the lead grey of his eyes, dimming them.
Greyness, and dejection dull Task Force’s already tedious, if alarmed and anxious, faces.
As if the boredom is creeping up on Light, again.
With passion, he hates L’s guts.
Because greyness doesn’t make sense.
Light couldn’t have fallen out of love.
How could he have? He doesn’t feel any different.
He doesn’t feel any different from before he has been confined, so how, why?
He has his memories back, so why is the palette destroyed, why has the life wilted, why have the colours been sucked out?
He hates the dirty, inelegant black-and-white.
He was meant to see the coming of his mesmerising, enchanting, bright New World.
He has one thought, full of messy, disgusted, hurt rage.
L.
What did you do to me?
It must be L’s fault.
L’s… plan.
“What do the rules say?” L asks evenly, absorbed in looking at the floor and holding his cup of tea.
The tea is the same unpleasant grey.
Light is calming down, at least. His inhales and exhales are meticulously controlled.
“Do you want to read again, Ryuzaki?” Matsuda readily picks up the notebook - and L stops him with a barely raised hand.
“I need to think,” he says. He appears to be deep in thought; and only Light can see the tiniest fidgeting of his fingers, and the barely noticeable flickering of his eyes, as he seems to be running through some imagery in his mind. “Aizawa, could you please read them for me?”
Aizawa is unamused with L’s lack of engagement, but still says, “Of course.”
Opens the notebook and reads out loud.
L is tired for days.
Light was expecting him to study the evidence with the hawklike focus, poke and prod at loopholes in Rem’s mediocre tales, question Light’s presence and the reciprocated lack of engagement.
L is either absent or listening to something in the headphones. When he is looking at the screen, the brightness and contrast degrees are now raised so high that the rooms L prefers to keep with overhead lights off are instead awash with the blue light.
L doesn’t talk much.
These days, Light is angry beyond belief.
He barely goes outside - not only because of the caution, so Rem would not have to follow him when Light has to exceed the distance between them. Rem can disappear from sight, yet it is best if she stays by L’s side at all times.
Another reason for Light to stay inside is that he is waiting for L’s demise.
He needs and wants to be there for it.
L is not much fun when he is silent. He is not even focused on the investigation - Light can tell, and it keeps him on edge, but he never succeeds in getting L to disclose what exactly is the subject of L’s unrelenting focus.
Rem is no help at deciphering it either. She tries to show Light with some kind of outdated sign language that L is researching something related to the brain and heart. MRI, hallucinations, history, oxytocin. Light is understandably suspicious of that.
Nonetheless, he finds nothing incriminating about the glimpses of L’s notes that he catches.
Perhaps, L is trying to figure something out before his time is up.
Light’s third reason for staying inside is that he hates seeing his world be this mundane.
This boring.
He tells himself, Whatever. Once L is done for, Light will have colours for the rest of his life.
To watch the crimson blood of his enemies blacken. To watch L’s pale rosy lips go blue.
To watch the full-of-life green of the lush tree crones above L’s grave.
The beauty of existence - without L’s emotions obstructing it.
The world’s current lifelessness might be Light’s main reason for staying inside.
It might not be his last one.
By accident, he touches L’s shoulder.
And L flinches, having been distracted by the voice in his headphones and bleached-out schemes on his screens, and raises his dark, wide-eyed gaze to Light.
L’s pale cheeks are tinted with the bleakest baby blue.
Light stares in shock.
The shade is so faint it looks natural on L.
“Light?” L asks.
It takes a second for Light to respond.
Light doesn’t touch L again.
The blue is a good, really good sign.
Everything is well.
L will be dead soon.
Interestingly, L does not talk to him, either.
It doesn’t bother Light.
Just as greyness doesn’t bother him anymore - not when he’s seen the weak, bleak flickers of blue whenever he would tell L something tedious, as a hidden taunt.
L acts calm.
L is sitting under the pouring rain when Light finds him.
L’s eyes are closed, face lifted for the rain to hit it mercilessly and its streaks cascade down his subtly melancholic face.
He is on his knees.
Light calls out to him.
L doesn’t seem to hear.
Only when Light starts coming closer, he discerns that the corners of L’s lips are downturned.
“What are you doing, sitting here all by yourself?” Light asks, both baffled and unsurprised by L’s antics.
L’s eyes open.
Dart to Light’s shirt.
Then, slowly, back to the sky.
“Nothing in particular,” L says. “It’s just that… I hear the bells.”
There is no sound but the tiredly lamenting storm.
Now would be as good of a time as ever to turn around and go back inside.
Unfortunately, Light has to take L with him. If left alone, L might just stay here for hours, getting soaked while being lost in his thoughts, to then die of some banal cause - like a health condition that Light, sadly, wouldn’t be able to control.
It might even turn painful beyond what Light needs to make his point.
But he’s never seen L so openly upset. It is a rare, curious scene.
“I don’t hear anything,” Light says honestly. If L catches a cold, it will be solely L’s problem.
“...I see,” L replies, raising his head to the wretched clouds.
Light stands there, listening to nothing.
After a few seconds of silence, L starts saying completely nonsensical things
The vagueness gently scratches Light’s nerves.
When L wonders about the funeral…
“What are you getting at, Ryuzaki?” Light immediately snaps.
L looks at him.
Mouth an inch open, big eyes attentive, expression vulnerable. Like he expected Light to… what? Listen? Sympathise with L’s depressed daydreams?
“Come on, cut it out,” Light presses. “Let’s get back inside.”
“...I’m sorry,” L says suddenly, quietly. Head lowering. Shoulders hunching. “Nothing I say makes any sense, anyway.”
He is drenched and defenceless. Not hiding, yet also not parading his vulnerability.
Not asking for compassion or help.
Light feels off.
The wind hits him in the face, and he turns away from it a bit, displeased.
He didn’t realise it’s been getting darker.
And he’s had enough of the darkness and cold.
“Ryuzaki,” he says, voice steely, “Let’s go inside. We’re both drenched.” He won’t ask for the fourth time.
L unsticks his eyelashes slowly.
And only now does Light feel how much L wants to stay here.
Light can’t let it happen.
“Yeah,” L says.
Finally.
“I might need help,” L says.
Light’s eyebrows twitch up.
L extends his hand in Light’s direction.
Light extends his in L’s.
And L does not take it.
For a moment, Light tries not to get annoyed.
L is looking at his chest.
And slowly, slowly, very slowly…
Light realises.
The air gets stuck in his expanded lungs.
“Ryuzaki…” he can’t believe this. How?
“Funny, is it not?” L says, the phrase bordering on a whisper.
He keeps his sadness bleak, and his demeanour - blank otherwise.
Light’s mind is in disarray, the jumbled memories are a mess of clues, and the quietened tempest around them has nothing on the rising hurricane in his mind.
“What do you…” he croaks, stumbling, for a second, at the concern of how to continue.
“It’s black,” L murmurs.
Light would have better luck reading his lips rather than listening to him.
“It’s all black. Everything. I can’t see a thing.”
Nausea slithering in Light’s stomach feels wonderful.
Perfect.
It’s cruel.
But he can’t bring himself to regret a thing.
Amazing.
Yes.
Yes, yes, yes!..
The tension blooming in his chest is marvellous.
“You are in love with Kira…” he whispers, and it is so difficult to make it sound anguished and concerned when he is fighting to keep his giddiness down.
“It appears so,” L mutters.
So fucking pathetic.
L’s eyes don’t focus.
They don’t.
So Light does not have to struggle to keep the gleeful, remorseless smirk off his face.
L is on his knees. Head bowed in defeat. Incapacitated, doomed, destroyed.
Hopelessly blind.
Light’s heart is fluttering in an uncontrollable joy. He has to press the hand he was outstretching to L to his mouth to not laugh like a maniac.
As though L senses it, he lowers his hand as well.
Light can’t speak.
He might just start howling in overjoyed ridicule.
The clouds over them are getting darker.
The evening is young.
But it might be L’s last one.
L seems to sense it, too - because he unexpectedly opens his mouth.
And his always smooth, thrillingly powerful, soothingly confident voice crackles on the edge of hearing, “I don’t want to die like this, Light.”
Light doubles over, having to press both hands to his face with a violent effort.
Don’t.
Don’t.
His body trembles.
“Ryuzaki,” he eventually manages excruciatingly, caringly out of pure habit and power of will, “It… it will be alright…”
He has to take a step closer to L to keep up his facade.
L’s breathing is getting compromised, as his face is parallel to his thighs.
“I don’t want to die, Light,” he whispers, the words more measured somehow.
Light’s every muscle, every ligament throbs in a beautiful fever.
“We’ll figure this out,” Light reassures, soothes, “I promise…”
He takes one more step.
L’s limp hands rest uselessly on his knees.
You wouldn’t be able to survive the years of this, Light thinks condescendingly, mockingly, gently.
He takes the step that brings his knees almost flush to the side of L’s head.
I could keep you, “beloved”, Light thinks tauntingly, hatefully.
Through a strain of overly taut limbs, he gets on his knees as well.
But you would never be fine with being used only for fun.
L whispers painfully, “I was so wrong, Light…”
Light can’t, doesn’t want, would never want to restrain himself from brushing his trembling hand over L’s wet, cold hair.
L seems to start trembling now, too.
Light’s fingers are weak as he slides them under L’s chin and carefully lifts L’s heavy head.
Light could die blissfully while looking into L’s agonised, unseeing, hopeless eyes.
His magnificent, powerless enemy, being swallowed by void, the abyss, the pitch black of impending midnight.
The kindest thing I can do is to kill you, Light thinks lovingly, tenderly, and it’s this abyss that he truly loves.
Light hugs him around his neck.
And inhales with his whole chest the leftover sweet scent of L’s hair.
It won’t hurt too much.
L is gasping softly, time after time.
So often that he does not even have air.
Light squeezes his eyes shut to not cry in joy.
They both shake.
It feels so good. He feels so warm, so safe, so adored, and the fact that it’s L who is dying because he has loved too much makes stars light up behind Light’s closed eyelids.
He opens his eyes then.
And it’s all dark.
There is nothing.
His mouth is agape.
Then, there is horror.
Panic hits him instantly, and he doesn’t even process it before the terrified rage in him rasps out, “You, you want to kill me…”
L’s face is still pressed into his shoulder.
L’s arms are apparently around him.
“What gave it away?” L asks hoarsely.
Light feels the muzzle of a gun at the nape of his neck.
His body, his fucking body doesn’t… move…
L’s voice is croaking and calm. And stupidly honest.
“I did not think you’d just lower your guard. Were you too busy celebrating?”
Is it wet?
Or is Light hearing something that does not exist?
Oh God.
There’s only a starless, all-consuming night.
Light’s chest is cracking from the pounding of his horror-struck, treacherous, terrible heart.
“You know what I’ve seen before this?” L asks, hushed by its beats near his ear. “Red. Crimson, overly saturated, bloody red. With rare exceptions.”
Shut the fuck up, Light wants to shout, scream, cry, I don’t want to die!
He… he has to…
I don’t want to die!
How can he… push L away so that…
I… don’t… I… I…
“And I saw purple,” L whispers, and Light can hear the pure, unbridled heartache, the stupid yearning, the pitifully forlorn feelings that have doomed them both, “When it was just you and me.”
“I saw blue,” Light rushes shakily before he can even think, This is my chance, my…
“Don’t lie,” L interrupts.
In the fake calmness Light despises.
“I’m not lying,” Light desperately grits out, suffocating, choking, choking and suffocating in the cage of his flesh.
“Don’t,” L punctuates, “Lie.”
Oh God.
Light’s chest will burst any second now.
I am the God, I’m supposed to be the God, I will be a god, I must be a god…
His head might burst first, though.
Gods… Gods, they don’t… They never…
“L,” he starts, shaking so hard he doesn’t even hear himself, and it’s good - he can bet he sounds wretched, “L, you wouldn’t do this to me, right?”
L’s shaking is subsiding gradually.
“L…” Light cries.
A second away from wailing.
I did not lie…
L’s next exhale is long and controlled.
Light is petrified out of his mind.
Please! I didn’t lie, I did not lie this time!
The gun feels so cold.
Everything is so dark.
…Is that how you see it, too? he thinks dizzily, deliriously, in the all-encompassing heartbreak.
Is that how you feel it?
When you are with me?
“L…” he tries.
L’s breathing is slowing down.
“Love…” Light tries breathlessly, in one long hushed whine.
The short click sounds.