Death Note Fan Fiction ❯ Going to Marrakesh ❯ Liars ( Chapter 9 )

Disclaimer: Not mine.

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Liars
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They go out on the roof once, one night when the moon is full and brimming, and the breeze is cold and vicious, whipping around concrete and steel, and they climb to the highest part of the tower and breathe in the bite of the evening chill. Light shivers despite the thickness of his sweater and watches L perch himself on a low wall and curl up the way he always does, and realizes that in the moonlight he looks like death or a dream or a nightmare, and has to rush forward and throw his arms around his neck and bury his face in his hair just to make sure he's real.

Don't go don't go don't go don't go without me - So irrational. So pathetic. And yet... Would you could you tell me were you alone like me?

Cool fingers slide up over his neck, clamp down just hard enough to make him tremble, but L exerts just enough pressure to hold him in place, not quite enough to strangle him.

"You did this," he whispers, "For that...?" The world below them is spread out and neon-bright and beautiful, but miles and miles and miles away, full of people who aren't anything like them. Sheep, the wind whispers, and he hides a shiver behind a smile he doesn't feel, and quietly hates the curiosity that tastes sour on his tongue.

"I did this," comes the soft, clear murmur, "for me."

It makes him hang on tighter, because it's not a lie and they don't matter because this is -

"You think I did that too?" his words are half muffled against the back of L's neck, not quite a kiss, not quite otherwise.

"...saving the world is an exercise in futility," L says softly, consideringly, "you're too young to understand that yet."

"...I'm not," he says, but he can't help the wince as he thinks of what L can do, has done, just to support his own cause, because really, is it selfishness if he calls it justice instead? Lovely Misa, bound and blinded, and the bite of steel at his wrists and the pounding of blood in his head, and if he closes his eyes for too long, he's back there, bored out of his skull and slowly rotting, trapped screams scraping his throat raw. Was it the torture that tore his memory to shreds, or was it his own complicity...?

Lind L. Taylor is dead and gone, he thinks, and wonders at his own calmness.

"You don't want to be," L tells him, "but you are. Kira is the same - the real Kira, not the one we're chasing now."

"...'real' Kira, huh," he murmurs, and wiggles around to sit next to him, curls an arm around his waist for warmth and to have something to hold onto, and maybe he would feel safer if only they weren't who they were. "Me?"

"Of course," comes the reply, and he closes his eyes and leans into him, breathing in day-old soap and the remnants of a cherry pie.

"I understand," he says softly, and even he can't tell if it's the truth or just something he's convinced himself into believing. "But I think we can be better."

"People are sheep," L says softly, but when it's him, it doesn't make him tremble, because a theory shared is a theory proven in all the ways that matter. "Foolish and easily mislead, but they won't be bullied for long."

"...it seems to be working, though," Light says quietly, not opening his eyes, because even though the spread of the city lights is lovely in the dark, its not what he wants to see, imperfect and fragile and traitorous. Blind among the blind, and veiled Justice breathes in his arms. There is no utopia here, but he thinks there could be, if only he'd listen and understand. "Crime rates have dropped internationally, people are feeling safer..."

"A tyrant is a tyrant," his voice is velvet-lined razors, "and you know how well history has dealt with tyrants."

It's quiet for a long moment, and Light feels very small, suddenly, just a boy trapped in the dark with a madman. "You're going to kill the king," he says, dizzy with possibility and the ghost-weight of a stolen crown sliding down to circle his neck. You're going to kill me, aren't you?

"I'm going to kill a demon," L says simply, "a foolish creature too simple for its own power."

"Anarchist," he murmurs, but it's lost in the wind and the sound of his own heart beating.

"You can't force people to change," L tells him, "because then they grow to hate you."

The hypocrisy makes him smile. "Aizawa."

"I have no use for someone who won't do as I say," L drawls, but he knows if he opens his eyes, he will be smirking.

"Tyrant," he says, but he knows that given the chance, he'd be the same - maybe even better at it, because he knows how to bend and bow and play and woo, and L won't waste his time on the ones who don't matter.

"My kingdom is one building tall," L murmurs agreeably, and he tilts his head down to kiss his lying mouth, soft and cool in the briskness of the breeze.

Hypocrite of all hypocrites, how are you still alive?

Light hides a smile against his lips and dreams of knocking the king from his throne. It's an awfully long way to fall, and if he's dragged down with him, so much the better.

They're too good for this world anyway.

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