Truth and Justice
folder
Death Note › Yaoi-Male/Male › L/Light
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
20
Views:
4,370
Reviews:
13
Recommended:
1
Currently Reading:
0
Category:
Death Note › Yaoi-Male/Male › L/Light
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
20
Views:
4,370
Reviews:
13
Recommended:
1
Currently Reading:
0
Disclaimer:
I do not own Death Note, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.
Nothingness
Warnings for this chapter: Abuse, Angst, Bond, Death, Humil, Language, Torture, reference to N/C, Violence, WIP.
SPOILERS: All manga, all anime, L's true name, Another Note, Law and Right.
~!~!~!~!~!~
Truth and Justice
Chapter 12: Nothingness
~!~!~!~!~!~
Time didn't exist for Light, not when the cuts weren't given, when there were no windows. Nothing but the cold, glaring camera to keep him company.
And the knife, rusted with his own blood. His gaze slid to it then, his breath caught in his throat. Could B really be so stupid after all? He tugged on the restraints, got a good look at them. Adrenalin flooded his system when the idea sparked off in his brain.
He laughed softly, the kind of laugh that would consume him if he let it. He swallowed down the laughter, pushed it down. It wouldn't do to ruin his chance at escape, at survival, by waking up his captor.
He shifted on the futon, reached out with his mouth and closed his teeth over the blade. He yanked upwards, hissing in pain as the corners of his mouth were sliced open.
A small price to pay for freedom. The knife was free and he jerked his body to the side, tossing the knife closer to his hand. He didn't know how long it took for him to push the knife into reach, to close his hand around the handle.
When he did, he had to swallow down the psychotic laughter again, angle his arm and begin sawing at the leather that bound him.
Just a few blocks away at the headquarters, L watched the leather slowly shredding, watched Light struggle against the laughter, the imprisonment. It was going to take a long time for him to recover from it, if the plan worked. If the Death Note was truly as vulnerable as Mikami had made it seem.
L was not a spiritual man, but he found himself praying for his husband's life, his safety, and wished there was another way. But there hadn't been, there had never been, in all that time, a single connection to lead them to B's doorstep.
This was the only way.
And it was working. Thirty minutes after getting his hand around the knife, that hand was free, and he was frantically working on the other one. It took him two hours to free himself, pull the saline hookup off his IV and another hour to discover that he was still helplessly trapped within the room.
He still had three hours, fifteen minutes to live. L swallowed the fear rising in his throat when he turned his gaze back to the screen and saw that an update had been posted to the web site. What he saw made his blood run cold.
Indisputable proof that B had raped Light. He'd probably used a simple PHP script to only begin showing the content after a specific time. L gnawed on his thumb again, cursing inwardly. He could taste blood but he ignored it. Ignored the wounds he'd chewed into his own thumb out of worry. It was nothing, he knew, compared to what Light was enduring.
His gaze returned to his husband, watched as Light laid out his plan. He tucked the knife under the futon, lay down again as if he were still bound, covering the cut leather with the blankets.
Light waited. He couldn't open the door from inside, but he knew B would be back and he would be ready.
His heart was thundering when he thought of what he was about to do, how he was about to escape. He waited quietly, carefully regulating his breathing, trying to remain somewhat calm.
Two hours, fifty minutes after he lay down, there was a sound at the door. His heart was thundering again, whether he liked it or not. He shifted slightly, and when the door opened, he was ready. He'd never put the saline back on the IV, and when the door slid open, Light made his move.
He grabbed the knife and got to his feet, moving as fast as his battered body would allow. The surprise he heard beneath the mask B wore was worth it, as he jerked forward and plunged the knife into his leg, tore through the hamstring.
B crumpled to the floor, howling in pain, and Light shoved his way through the door, dropping the knife on the other side, running full tilt.
He didn't know where he was, where he was going, he simply ran where instinct directed him and by sheer luck found a door. He tumbled through and nearly toppled over the railing. It was an apartment, third floor of a complex. It looked... remarkably like company housing. He ran to the stairs, nearly tripping with every step as he escaped, gasping for breath and looking around for something, anything, anyone that could help him.
There were people nearby, he could hear them, hear the gasps and screams as he made his way to the ground. Barefoot, covered in cuts, bruises, leather restraints on wrists and ankles, and a fucking diaper. He was a sight, but he couldn't even think of it just then. There was a phone! A pay phone, but you didn't have to pay to reach the police.
He threw himself on the phone, grabbed the receiver, hit the emergency button.
"Light. Yagami Light. I don't know... where. Help. I got away, he's on the third floor. They'll know it... they'll know it when they see it," but the adrenalin had run out and he couldn't keep his feet beneath him. He lowered to his knees. "Ambulance. Two. I cut him," he leaned against the pole as his knees failed him, too.
He couldn't hear the reply, couldn't really understand much of it. "This... is being recorded. Release it. Release it to the media. Tell L I love him," and the tears were coming now, his arms, his legs were growing cold as tears tracked down his face.
"Yagami Light. Kira. I was Kira. I was wrong. I was Kira, but I was never justice," and he only had a few minutes left to live.
There was a policeman there, he could feel the hands on him, and felt as if he were seeing from a place far away, far removed from the situation. He couldn't feel anything, it was so numb. "So numb."
He smiled when the policeman told him help was on the way, to hold on. The next thing Light knew, L was there, holding him, he was looking up into those eyes that had seen the best and the worst of him. His vision went cloudy with tears, but he knew he was smiling. "Love you," it was all he could manage.
He could see L's tears, was vaguely aware of a pair of gurneys, of someone else being led away in handcuffs. That last part confused the hell out of him, because they were surely mistaken, to be arresting him. And why was Mikami hovering nearby? Wasn't his information supposed to be a secret? He was so confused, so weak, that he gave up on understanding anything at all for a while.
Then there was the sensation of being lifted, but it never ended. He was on a gurney, and he was heading for an ambulance, but the gurney just never stopped rising.
He closed his eyes, let himself rest for just a little while. He was entitled to rest, wasn't he?
"Of course you are," the reply was a soft but rough, masculine but not unkind.
He was wrapped in warmth, like a womb, he thought. Everything was warm, there was no pain, only comfort, sweet and gentle. Even the voice that spoke to him made him think of his father, so nurturing and kind, even with his rough exterior.
Light opened his eyes slowly, let his gaze wander. There was... nothing. No ground, no sky, no one near him. Just him, with light surrounding him, allowing him to tell the difference between himself and... whatever the place was that he was in.
"Mu," the voice replied. "You have died, Yagami Light."
The news didn't surprise Light as much as he thought it ought to.
"Look at yourself, Yagami Light. Tell me what you see," the voice ordered.
Slowly, Light turned his gaze down, looking at himself. He lifted an arm, looked closer. "Kanji," he muttered. "Black Kanji, names... names I wrote. Names of the people I killed," he realized when he saw Naomi Misora's name flutter across his skin.
"There is more," the voice replied and then there were mirrors everywhere. He gazed into them and caught sight of his back.
"L?" Light reached back, touched himself where the marking lay. A gothic L, just like the one that identified his husband, made of white was on his back. When he drew his hand away again, it had a bit of the white on it, and he looked closely. "Kanji. Names, again?"
"Of the lives you helped save," the voice confirmed. "There is one more, in the palm of your left hand."
Light looked, swallowed heavily. "Beyond Birthday."
"A life, taken, and justifiably so." Light got the sense that whoever was speaking to him was smiling, nodding.
"I killed him?" Light looked up as the mirrors shattered, disappeared.
"You did, and yet, you did not mean to," the voice confirmed.
"Who are you?"
"I am the King of this realm," it replied.
"The Shinigami King," Light closed his eyes slowly. "How am I to pay for my sin?"
"Let us see just how much sin there is within you," the voice replied, and a pair of hands appeared from the dark, on those long, gangly arms that the shinigami all seemed to have.
Light gasped as one of those hands slammed into his chest, nearly in the center, and tore his heart from his body. He expected to see something a bit more grotesque when he looked down, but it was simply a round, black hole in his chest. He looked up again, watched with morbid fascination as his heart was pulled, stretched until it formed a single string, just under a yard in length.
"Every inch is a year," the voice replied. "Look at your life, Yagami Light."
He looked. The string was a pure, beautiful white for nearly eighteen inches. Then it turned a black so deep that he couldn't tell the difference between string and surroundings. It faded, just an inch later to a deep gray. The inches stretched out, the gray fading with every inch until he came to the end of the string. The hand moved and a magnifying glass appeared over the very tip of the string. There was a tiny fleck of red and after it, a tiny fleck of the purest white, just like at the beginning.
"What does it mean?"
"It means that you have managed to redeem yourself, Yagami Light," and the voice was warmer then, kinder.
"Despite all the names I've written?" Light shook his head a little, not quite able to grasp that.
Ba-dump.
The sound reverberated through Light's body. The string snapped free of the hands that held it, returning to the shape of a heart.
Ba-dump.
The heart beat once, and slammed back into Light's chest with so much force that he felt as if he'd been slammed to the ground. His chest arched upwards as the pain rattled through him.
He was on his back and quite suddenly, everything around him was exploding with noise.
"What the fuck?"
~!~!~!~!~!~
A/N: Fwahahaha!
TenshiHaku: Thank you! I hope you sleep, too. XD Especially since my internet died out right before I finished writing this chapter! Which means it wasn't uploaded until internet returned and we all know how long that can take, sometimes... Anyway, I posed the question simply because I was a bit worried that doing another recovery would be somehow redundant.
dragon04: Haha, okay! I will make sure to update again soon! (Assuming that I don't finish this whole thing before the internet returns.)
Selim: Romeo and Juliet? I always hated that play... probably because people always liked to nickname me Juliet. But no, we're not doing the whole lover one fakes death, lover two dies, lover one wakes up and kills self after discovering lover two is dead. Nnnno. Nu-uh. I'm a firm believer that Shakespearian... ideas should remain with Shakespeare. Preferably in his grave. XD; But I'm highly biased.
And no, this is not the last chapter at all. =3 And it is actually going to be breaking a couple of rules and taking some liberties with the pilot chapter that lets me work around it. XD But you'll get a bit more of an explanation next chapter, no worries!
Adele: Well, I only started writing Law and Right about two weeks ago, so you're still pretty quick! I really appreciate the feedback, and because so many people are voting for the recovery chapters, I'll be sure to put that in. I'm glad that I'm able to pull them off. It's the one thing that keeps trying to nag at me over it all.
SPOILERS: All manga, all anime, L's true name, Another Note, Law and Right.
~!~!~!~!~!~
Truth and Justice
Chapter 12: Nothingness
~!~!~!~!~!~
Time didn't exist for Light, not when the cuts weren't given, when there were no windows. Nothing but the cold, glaring camera to keep him company.
And the knife, rusted with his own blood. His gaze slid to it then, his breath caught in his throat. Could B really be so stupid after all? He tugged on the restraints, got a good look at them. Adrenalin flooded his system when the idea sparked off in his brain.
He laughed softly, the kind of laugh that would consume him if he let it. He swallowed down the laughter, pushed it down. It wouldn't do to ruin his chance at escape, at survival, by waking up his captor.
He shifted on the futon, reached out with his mouth and closed his teeth over the blade. He yanked upwards, hissing in pain as the corners of his mouth were sliced open.
A small price to pay for freedom. The knife was free and he jerked his body to the side, tossing the knife closer to his hand. He didn't know how long it took for him to push the knife into reach, to close his hand around the handle.
When he did, he had to swallow down the psychotic laughter again, angle his arm and begin sawing at the leather that bound him.
Just a few blocks away at the headquarters, L watched the leather slowly shredding, watched Light struggle against the laughter, the imprisonment. It was going to take a long time for him to recover from it, if the plan worked. If the Death Note was truly as vulnerable as Mikami had made it seem.
L was not a spiritual man, but he found himself praying for his husband's life, his safety, and wished there was another way. But there hadn't been, there had never been, in all that time, a single connection to lead them to B's doorstep.
This was the only way.
And it was working. Thirty minutes after getting his hand around the knife, that hand was free, and he was frantically working on the other one. It took him two hours to free himself, pull the saline hookup off his IV and another hour to discover that he was still helplessly trapped within the room.
He still had three hours, fifteen minutes to live. L swallowed the fear rising in his throat when he turned his gaze back to the screen and saw that an update had been posted to the web site. What he saw made his blood run cold.
Indisputable proof that B had raped Light. He'd probably used a simple PHP script to only begin showing the content after a specific time. L gnawed on his thumb again, cursing inwardly. He could taste blood but he ignored it. Ignored the wounds he'd chewed into his own thumb out of worry. It was nothing, he knew, compared to what Light was enduring.
His gaze returned to his husband, watched as Light laid out his plan. He tucked the knife under the futon, lay down again as if he were still bound, covering the cut leather with the blankets.
Light waited. He couldn't open the door from inside, but he knew B would be back and he would be ready.
His heart was thundering when he thought of what he was about to do, how he was about to escape. He waited quietly, carefully regulating his breathing, trying to remain somewhat calm.
Two hours, fifty minutes after he lay down, there was a sound at the door. His heart was thundering again, whether he liked it or not. He shifted slightly, and when the door opened, he was ready. He'd never put the saline back on the IV, and when the door slid open, Light made his move.
He grabbed the knife and got to his feet, moving as fast as his battered body would allow. The surprise he heard beneath the mask B wore was worth it, as he jerked forward and plunged the knife into his leg, tore through the hamstring.
B crumpled to the floor, howling in pain, and Light shoved his way through the door, dropping the knife on the other side, running full tilt.
He didn't know where he was, where he was going, he simply ran where instinct directed him and by sheer luck found a door. He tumbled through and nearly toppled over the railing. It was an apartment, third floor of a complex. It looked... remarkably like company housing. He ran to the stairs, nearly tripping with every step as he escaped, gasping for breath and looking around for something, anything, anyone that could help him.
There were people nearby, he could hear them, hear the gasps and screams as he made his way to the ground. Barefoot, covered in cuts, bruises, leather restraints on wrists and ankles, and a fucking diaper. He was a sight, but he couldn't even think of it just then. There was a phone! A pay phone, but you didn't have to pay to reach the police.
He threw himself on the phone, grabbed the receiver, hit the emergency button.
"Light. Yagami Light. I don't know... where. Help. I got away, he's on the third floor. They'll know it... they'll know it when they see it," but the adrenalin had run out and he couldn't keep his feet beneath him. He lowered to his knees. "Ambulance. Two. I cut him," he leaned against the pole as his knees failed him, too.
He couldn't hear the reply, couldn't really understand much of it. "This... is being recorded. Release it. Release it to the media. Tell L I love him," and the tears were coming now, his arms, his legs were growing cold as tears tracked down his face.
"Yagami Light. Kira. I was Kira. I was wrong. I was Kira, but I was never justice," and he only had a few minutes left to live.
There was a policeman there, he could feel the hands on him, and felt as if he were seeing from a place far away, far removed from the situation. He couldn't feel anything, it was so numb. "So numb."
He smiled when the policeman told him help was on the way, to hold on. The next thing Light knew, L was there, holding him, he was looking up into those eyes that had seen the best and the worst of him. His vision went cloudy with tears, but he knew he was smiling. "Love you," it was all he could manage.
He could see L's tears, was vaguely aware of a pair of gurneys, of someone else being led away in handcuffs. That last part confused the hell out of him, because they were surely mistaken, to be arresting him. And why was Mikami hovering nearby? Wasn't his information supposed to be a secret? He was so confused, so weak, that he gave up on understanding anything at all for a while.
Then there was the sensation of being lifted, but it never ended. He was on a gurney, and he was heading for an ambulance, but the gurney just never stopped rising.
He closed his eyes, let himself rest for just a little while. He was entitled to rest, wasn't he?
"Of course you are," the reply was a soft but rough, masculine but not unkind.
He was wrapped in warmth, like a womb, he thought. Everything was warm, there was no pain, only comfort, sweet and gentle. Even the voice that spoke to him made him think of his father, so nurturing and kind, even with his rough exterior.
Light opened his eyes slowly, let his gaze wander. There was... nothing. No ground, no sky, no one near him. Just him, with light surrounding him, allowing him to tell the difference between himself and... whatever the place was that he was in.
"Mu," the voice replied. "You have died, Yagami Light."
The news didn't surprise Light as much as he thought it ought to.
"Look at yourself, Yagami Light. Tell me what you see," the voice ordered.
Slowly, Light turned his gaze down, looking at himself. He lifted an arm, looked closer. "Kanji," he muttered. "Black Kanji, names... names I wrote. Names of the people I killed," he realized when he saw Naomi Misora's name flutter across his skin.
"There is more," the voice replied and then there were mirrors everywhere. He gazed into them and caught sight of his back.
"L?" Light reached back, touched himself where the marking lay. A gothic L, just like the one that identified his husband, made of white was on his back. When he drew his hand away again, it had a bit of the white on it, and he looked closely. "Kanji. Names, again?"
"Of the lives you helped save," the voice confirmed. "There is one more, in the palm of your left hand."
Light looked, swallowed heavily. "Beyond Birthday."
"A life, taken, and justifiably so." Light got the sense that whoever was speaking to him was smiling, nodding.
"I killed him?" Light looked up as the mirrors shattered, disappeared.
"You did, and yet, you did not mean to," the voice confirmed.
"Who are you?"
"I am the King of this realm," it replied.
"The Shinigami King," Light closed his eyes slowly. "How am I to pay for my sin?"
"Let us see just how much sin there is within you," the voice replied, and a pair of hands appeared from the dark, on those long, gangly arms that the shinigami all seemed to have.
Light gasped as one of those hands slammed into his chest, nearly in the center, and tore his heart from his body. He expected to see something a bit more grotesque when he looked down, but it was simply a round, black hole in his chest. He looked up again, watched with morbid fascination as his heart was pulled, stretched until it formed a single string, just under a yard in length.
"Every inch is a year," the voice replied. "Look at your life, Yagami Light."
He looked. The string was a pure, beautiful white for nearly eighteen inches. Then it turned a black so deep that he couldn't tell the difference between string and surroundings. It faded, just an inch later to a deep gray. The inches stretched out, the gray fading with every inch until he came to the end of the string. The hand moved and a magnifying glass appeared over the very tip of the string. There was a tiny fleck of red and after it, a tiny fleck of the purest white, just like at the beginning.
"What does it mean?"
"It means that you have managed to redeem yourself, Yagami Light," and the voice was warmer then, kinder.
"Despite all the names I've written?" Light shook his head a little, not quite able to grasp that.
Ba-dump.
The sound reverberated through Light's body. The string snapped free of the hands that held it, returning to the shape of a heart.
Ba-dump.
The heart beat once, and slammed back into Light's chest with so much force that he felt as if he'd been slammed to the ground. His chest arched upwards as the pain rattled through him.
He was on his back and quite suddenly, everything around him was exploding with noise.
"What the fuck?"
~!~!~!~!~!~
A/N: Fwahahaha!
TenshiHaku: Thank you! I hope you sleep, too. XD Especially since my internet died out right before I finished writing this chapter! Which means it wasn't uploaded until internet returned and we all know how long that can take, sometimes... Anyway, I posed the question simply because I was a bit worried that doing another recovery would be somehow redundant.
dragon04: Haha, okay! I will make sure to update again soon! (Assuming that I don't finish this whole thing before the internet returns.)
Selim: Romeo and Juliet? I always hated that play... probably because people always liked to nickname me Juliet. But no, we're not doing the whole lover one fakes death, lover two dies, lover one wakes up and kills self after discovering lover two is dead. Nnnno. Nu-uh. I'm a firm believer that Shakespearian... ideas should remain with Shakespeare. Preferably in his grave. XD; But I'm highly biased.
And no, this is not the last chapter at all. =3 And it is actually going to be breaking a couple of rules and taking some liberties with the pilot chapter that lets me work around it. XD But you'll get a bit more of an explanation next chapter, no worries!
Adele: Well, I only started writing Law and Right about two weeks ago, so you're still pretty quick! I really appreciate the feedback, and because so many people are voting for the recovery chapters, I'll be sure to put that in. I'm glad that I'm able to pull them off. It's the one thing that keeps trying to nag at me over it all.