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asslover4 · 2 days ago

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lawlight week iii: final goodbye

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category: M/M

Fandom: Death Note (Anime & Manga)

Relationship: L/Yagami Light

Characters: L (Death Note), Yagami Light, Shuichi Aizawa

Additional Tags: Canonical Character Death, Ghosts, Afterlife, POV L (Death Note), Sad Ending, Canon Compliant

Word Count: 1,822

Series: Part 3 of Lawlight Week 2025 | @lawlightweek2025

Summary: Grateful that Light remained by his side as he died, L returns the favour from beyond the grave, in anticipation for a reunion between the two.

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There came a time, shortly after my own death if I remember correctly, that I began to develop sentimental tendencies. Given the profession I was in, I had been occupied with people in relation to statistics and pseudonyms, entirely disconnected from the lives they had led until their profiles landed on my desk. John and Jane Does in manilla envelopes, another assignment to be completed. When I began my work, I would diligently read each headline celebrating a criminal put behind bars through my efforts, but by the thirteenth case, I didn't even so much as extend an acknowledgment to these conclusive reports. After all, the next case would already be underway.

I never saw the significance in names. Mine had been seized before I had a chance to commit it to self identification. Lawliet was a family name that held no significance to me beyond mere practicality.

I was L, and L isn't a name.

Upon becoming aware of you, I became painfully attentive of the importance of a name. Not simply as a means of recognition, but how it could be wielded as a weapon against an individual.

As careful as I had been – as Watari had been – to keep you from discovering the name I was bound by, it had been a lovesick Death God that did your bidding. She followed us into the afterlife uttering a desperate prayer that the woman she loved (certainly more than you ever did) would find the rest of her days to be full of a happiness that she could not provide for her.

I had considered haunting you, but perhaps the reason I never did was because I understood that my presence already resided within you, regardless of whether my spectral hands gently took hold of your shoulders from behind, my lips brushing against the back of your neck. How would you be able to remain composed in response to such a sensation? Would you brush off my cold touch as nothing more than exhaustion? Or would you turn around with the expectation that I would be standing there as if I were still alive?

I heard your thoughts sometimes when I focused hard enough. The denigration of my successors, young boys who you are quick to berate in comparison to me. I am proud of them. A certain ache arose in my chest when two spirits entered the realms of the dead under my name. With death has come an emotional weight to life I had never experienced. My involvement with the children raised to replace me had always been limited, and I have no doubt that those who died will not seek to find me in this afterlife. I do not know what I would do if I were to see them again. There is not much to be done to atone for the mistakes made when we were alive.

As such, I remained focused on you in spite of your increasing paranoia, the irrational decisions made in haste to avoid the growing suspicion of others that I never managed to incite. You spent your nights wide awake, fingers digging into the thin flesh at your chest as if experiencing the very heart attacks you inflict upon others. Could you have ever empathised with the suffering you bestowed? In hindsight, I think you knew your days were numbered, even if you were too afraid to admit it to yourself.

It is when you are dying that I decide that I will visit you. Maybe it is cruel of me to have waited until now, but to some extent I owe you the favour. It was, after all, your arms I died in, and although I felt no comfort in that exaggerated grin of victory that slid across your face as I took my last breath, my final moments saturated with failure, I can still appreciate that there was a part of you that remained tender enough to ensure I wasn’t alone.

I am glad you were the one to kill me. Any other death would have been so inconsequential in comparison. I had confronted imminent fatality many times while alive, fresh wills written before each new case, routine conversations about the state of my affairs becoming increasingly dull. It is only after condemning me to watch the world from beyond the grave that it became of particular interest to me to see exactly which decisions I made had – or indeed had not – been honoured.

There were two ways in which you could have died, neither of which would have been honourable but would at least have determined how the others would talk about you, in those years to come when Kira was nothing more than an ugly moment in humanity's collective history. You had the choice to lose your life in that warehouse in which Near, my sole successor, announced you to be Kira. You would have died disgraced amongst those who had defended you, and those who had always been suspicious and yes, it would have been humiliating. You would have spent those last few seconds alive damning the world around you, but you would have faced death as I did, with others by your side.

Instead, you fight against the current of reason, pulling the door to the warehouse open with a resolution to escape your fate. You think that by running from the humans who sought your demise as God, you can have a chance at living longer, living forever. Killing more and more people, exerting your reign of terror beyond the red numbers that determine today as the day you die. I should not have expected your pride to subside to the grace of dying as a man ought to. Such concepts of mortality are far beneath you.

I am watching you die halfway up a staircase. You are not quite dead yet, but you shall be momentarily, not that you are willing to come to terms with this even now. Your chest tries to draw in breaths that are no longer viable. It is remarkable how such vital organs will fail so easily. How swiftly one is consumed by an agony that you cannot be comprehended before the loss of consciousness.

I do not know if you can see me here, standing before you. Your gaze is heavy and unfocused, your lips parted slightly as if ready to accept mine. I never considered death to be seductive, but the expression which paints your face reminds me of those late nights we spent together, alight in the shadows as we engaged in little intimacies.

For all I expected to feel relieved – even victorious – by your demise, those older memories shared between us resurface to my attention, a flurry of feelings that we both readily admitted we had never experienced with anyone else trapped in my throat.

Reaching out to you, my hand brushes against your chest as you take one final gasp, weak and saturated with a kind of longing, a desire to keep living for a moment longer. You die.

I expect to witness your soul pull away from your mortal vessel, your ghost to look towards me and to smile. I anticipate a kind of relief when you see me again.

Oh it's you. How much I've missed you.

I sit by your body for what feels like hours but must realistically only be a few minutes. I balance myself on the step below your feet, tucking my own beneath my body, and wait patiently for something to occur. Why aren't you moving? You were never overly animated, that much is true, but every movement you made was delicate and precise, as though you had spent your life rehearsing for the small things. I anticipate you sitting up and picking the lint off your blazer, tutting at the bloodstains across your white shirt.

Why have you not arrived on the other side yet?

Attempting to dispel my unease, I direct my focus down towards your sharp leather Oxford shoes, so polished that if I did exist, I expect that I would see my face distorted in their reflection. Both sets of laces are tied. I think about your mother, who I never met, tying your laces for you as a child, teaching you each step patiently, unaware that her little boy did not require such explanations. Even if she was privy to your genius, it was the right thing to do, to send you out into the world with your shoes tied properly. Did you think of her hands as you looped the laces this morning, threading them into a tight and secure bow? Did you believe in her protection from what was to come?

The door behind us creaks open; I whip my head around at the sound. Aizawa stands in the entrance, catching his breath as he surveys the scene before him. He yells to someone outside, presumably to tell them that he has found you, and I desperately realise that you must lie here, where you died, for just a little longer. You must not be taken before you have been delivered to me.

Wake up. I do my best to gently shake your shoulders. You do not move. I have been dead long enough to know no amount of force I apply has any impact on the world of the living. Your body is still too fresh to be considered as property of the afterlife.

Aizawa approaches, placing his hands beneath your arms before pulling you away from the staircase. His face shrinks under the effort of hoisting a corpse in such a manner.

"No." I find myself saying, almost foreign in the sense that I have not heard myself speak in many, many years now. Your arm falls, and I grab your sleeve, but it does not so much slip away from my grip as it simply does not respond to my touch at all. Aizawa is already walking away, facing towards a world outside in which Kira no longer threatens others. A world in which Light Yagami will never have a chance at redemption.

"Please, bring him back here!" I shout, my throat coarse as I start crawling towards the exit. I may not exist within this world anymore, but the world still punishes me as if I do. The palms of my hands hurt as I scrape them against the concrete floor, my legs burning under the weight of a body I no longer possess.

You just need more time. I will not be able to find you once they take you away, and I do not want you to wake up alone as I did. I do not want you to be frightened by the emptiness of death as I had been.

I want to be here for you when you wake up.

Aizawa walks into the night, leaving me to my own thoughts once again.

#lawlightweek2025 #reading list

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asslover4 · 2 days ago

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First Friend

@lawlightweek2025

Day 3: First Meeting/Final Goodbye

Rating: G

Tags: homelessness. L and Light are around the same age.

L’s mother was dead. Even at the age of 6, walking into her room and seeing her stare up at the ceiling, L knew she wasn’t coming back. He’d been so young though… so scared. He ran from the house and got lost.

That’s how he ended up like this… a year into living on the streets of Tokyo, hiding in abandoned buildings and dumpsters. Most people ignored him, which was fine for him. Usually, the people who didn’t were dangerous, anyway.

He sat against a wall, his breathing slow and his stomach aching from hunger. L was scrawny. His black hair was greasy and his cheeks sunken in. The dumpster diving wasn’t going well.

A boy stopped in front of him. L blearily blinked and craned his neck up. The kid seemed clean and proper, with a straight jacket and a pristine backpack. He looked to be around L’s age, maybe a year younger. The boy stared down at L and grinned.

“My dad says to always help!”

He pulled out a container of strawberries from his bag. L’s eyes widened a fraction, his stomach rumbling loudly. The kid barely had enough time to hold out the container before L was snatching it, tossing strawberries into his mouth. They were so sweet… so fresh… The boy watched in awe and scooted forward.

“Do you like them?”

All L could do was grunt as he continued tossing the strawberries into his mouth, looking more like a feral kitten than an actual kid. The boy straightened.

“What’s your name?”

L stared at him blankly for a second, strawberry juice dribbling off his chin. The kid wanted to know his name? Living on the streets had taught him not to give it out so freely. That people couldn’t be trusted with a name… After a few seconds of awkwardly staring, the boy gave a smile.

“It’s okay! My dad says not to judge people, even if they’re weird. What about nicknames? You can call me Moon!”

Something warmed in L’s chest. For the first time in over a year, his lips tugged up into a little smile.

“You can call me… Strawberry?”

The boy snorted softly at that and bobbed his head.

“Okay! I just got out of school. Wanna play?”

L tilted his head a bit.

“You… want to play with me?”

Moon nodded rapidly.

“You look fun!”

“Um… okay…”

“Yay! Hmm… wanna play cops and robbers? Ooh, ooh! I can be the cop!”

L slowly blinked. He played with some of his hair before lightly nodding. He’d never played with anyone his age before… He was still a bit weak from malnutrition, definitely not as fast as the other boy. But it… it was really fun.

Probably the first time he’d ever had fun in his life.

Over the next week, Moon would visit every so often. Not every day, but enough that L almost got used to his presence. And then Watari found L. There was something about the older man that L trusted. Besides, it… wasn’t like he had anywhere else to go. He would’ve said bye to his… friend? Did Moon count as his friend? The first friend he’d ever had? But… he didn’t know where the boy lived. And Watari kept talking about some far away place called England.

L sighed to himself, just accepting the fact that… his first friend was just a ship that would drift past him in life.

***

Light grunted softly as L passed the towel over his feet. He stared down at the detective. Something about seeing L’s hair slicked down from the rain… that distant look in his eyes.

It clicked. Oh… wow… it clicked. Light sucked in a sharp breath, something in his chest stirring as the memory popped in. Should he… say something? What could he possibly say? So much had happened between them. He exhaled slowly and instead of dredging up the past, he took a towel and gently passed it around L’s face. Light wanted the detective dry. Warm. Sa- no, not safe. Not safe.

L craned his neck up, large charcoal eyes meeting Light’s. Light’s breath caught, feeling trapped in the man’s gaze. L’s eyes flickered in consideration. The man stood and leaned forward, gently brushing his lips against Light’s. The sensation shot little shocks through his system, making his brain spin. L’s throat bobbed as he murmured.

“… It’ll be lonely, won’t it?… Thank you for being my first friend.”

Light blinked. Was he talking about when they were kids or now during the Kira investigation? It was always impossible to know with L. So he managed the best indifferent shrug he could manage, his lips still buzzing from the kiss.

“Well, apparently you don’t think of me as your friend, do you?“ he smirked, motioning to his lips.

L’s brow quirked in amusement. His lips curved ever so slightly, making his entire face handsome.

“Mm. Friendship is relative. You didn’t seem to hate it.”

Light stared at him for a moment and snorted softly.

“Hm. I wouldn’t mind doing it more… I guess.”

The thought was nice, but they both knew there wouldn’t be any more. This was their final goodbye.

“I’m glad. I’d like to do that.”

L stood, water still dripping from him.

“Let’s go rejoin the task force.”

#lawlightweek2025 #reading list

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