Risks and Rewards

Description: Elijah has a new year and a new mission, but this time Light won't be so cooperative. Let the battle of ideology begin.

Disclaimer: Death Note is still not mine. Go figure.

A/N: Merry Christmas to all! I have to say I worked my butt off to get this ready by today. Unfortunately, I am not finished with my judging duties (94 chapters left to read), so updates will be extremely slow until I get them done. But you've all been so patient that I had to at least start the story for you today.

Important! This is the sequel to "Rules". If you have not read that story, I strongly suggest you do so before going any farther. I am not going to recap or explain anything from the previous story. And truly, if you don't like "Rules", then you're not going to like this one either so why bother with it?

Off we go ...

Chapter 1

Ohayou, Raito-kun.

Never before had two words taken such complete control over Light's brain. They circled through it incessantly, forcing out all other thoughts and memories until it seemed that those six syllables comprised his entire existence. They meant so much more than their literal translation. Even with the huge gaps in understanding that Light possessed, he knew enough to know that much. In two words, Elijah had announced to Light that the binding rules of the past year had been lifted. The suffering blond had more than an unexpected third chance; he had a third chance without the burden of fear and lies. He had a chance to be himself.

Ohayou, Raito-kun.

Those words meant one other thing as well: answers to all of Light's questions.

Or they would have if Light could have spent even a minute alone with the older man since his awakening. Unfortunately, Julie and Rich, being the loving parents they were, had made sure that at least one of them was with Elijah at all times while he was in the hospital. The doctors wouldn't leave the poor guy alone either, although Light had to admit he understood why. Never before had they seen an "amnesiac" fall into a "coma" with a flatline EEG for no apparent reason and then snap out of it less than twenty-four hours later. The head doctor in particular looked like he wanted to ship Elijah off to some laboratory to be studied in depth, although once Julie caught on to his looks and started throwing some of her own in his direction, the man had backed off quite a bit.

Of course, Elijah could not spend the rest of his life in the hospital, and they eventually discharged him. However, to Light's increasing frustration, almost a week later he still had been unable to get the other man alone. He visited the McCormicks' house as much as his schedule would allow, but there was always someone else there, whether it was Julie going overboard on the mothering or one of their other friends hanging out to keep the blond company. Ethan was the worst offender, and Light found himself fantasizing about pulling out the Death Note and killing off the kind-hearted junior if only to get him the hell out of the house.

The questions churning in him were slowly driving him mad. What exactly had happened when Elijah had collapsed? How had he convinced the supernatural being that had revived him in the first place to give him more time? How much time did he have? Was he here to stay or did he have a deadline again? Was it true that the rules had been lifted or were there others? Had they been lifted only for Light or could he tell everyone who he had once been? If the latter was the case, would he now turn around and denounce Light as Kira or would he keep their friendship intact? There was so much Light didn't understand, from the past year and from the past week, and he wanted answers. He wanted them right now.

The worst part, however, was that Elijah himself had done nothing to ease Light's distress. More than once, the younger man had waited for the elder to shoo his mother out of the room so that the two friends could talk in private, but Elijah had never done so. And ever since that first afternoon when the blond had smiled at him with such relief and happiness, since then Light had not seen a flicker of emotion in the other's face. It bothered and upset him almost as much as his questions.

"Are you alright, Light?"

The soft voice snapped Light from his thoughts. He lifted his eyes to meet the quietly-blank blue ones that gazed at him from the bed. Elijah sat in a mountain of pillows, all lovingly fluffed by Julie. He had pulled up his knees to mimic his normal position, but the curled effect was looser than usual and his hands rested lightly on his thighs instead of gripping his legs. To an untrained eye, he looked the paragon of casualness.

Light knew better. "Yes, 'Lij, I'm fine," he replied to the other's question.

Elijah tipped his head a little and continued to stare. Light wanted to leap across the room and throttle him. That blank expression, those empty eyes, he hadn't seen them in months. Elijah was being so guarded around him, so damn careful, that Light was almost afraid. What the hell had happened while Elijah was comatose?

The quiet voice spoke again, insisting on making its point. "Because you look a little pale."

Light resisted the urge to scowl fiercely and spin the swivel chair away in disgust. Elijah knew exactly why Light looked unsettled, but he simply had to add insult to injury by making a spectacle of the younger man. Well, Light could play these idiot games as well. After all, he was a master of games.

Well-honed instincts flared and took control of the brunet's body. His posture relaxed, and a bright smile spread across his face, showing an easy friendliness that was pure acting. "You?" he asked lightly. "Calling me pale? I must look like a ghost then."

Elijah smiled lopsidedly at him, a glint in his eyes that had not been there before. It was almost as if he was glad to see that spark of defiance in the other young man. He remarked, "I do hope that worry over me has not caused you to fall ill. If so, I will not be offended if you stop visiting me."

Internally, Light roared in rage. How dare he? His smile, however, only widened, and he waved a hand in lazy dismissal. "Don't be silly. I'm fine. And if I do stop visiting, I'd only worry more."

"So you admit you are worrying about me."

"A bit, sure. You're my friend after all. Unless nearly dying suddenly negates all we've built over the last year."

A gentle smile spread over Elijah's lips. "Of course not," he replied, his words carrying far more weight than his tone.

Sitting on the end of the bed, Ethan chuckled at their exchange, completely missing the hidden meanings in their words. He and the others had been far too relieved that Elijah had not died to notice the tension between the once-close young men. Even Julie, with her uncanny ability to read her son's emotions, had not noticed. Light supposed it must be a testament to how well they had once hidden themselves from each other that no one could see the horrible distance that had grown between them overnight.

After a few minutes of silence where brown eyes glared darkly into impassive blue ones, Ethan rose to his feet and stretched out his back. "Well, 'Lij," he commented, "I'm going to have to go now. I have a class in thirty minutes." Turning to the brunet in the swivel chair, he asked, "You want to come, Light, or do you want to stay here with Elijah?"

The implication of Ethan's words slammed into Light and instantly disintegrated all of his anger and resentment. Ethan was leaving. No one else was there at the moment. Rich was at work, and Julie was busy in her study. He could finally be alone with the owner of the answers to his questions, assuming he could pry those tight lips apart far enough to reach in and pull them out. Excitement gripped him so fiercely that he couldn't get his mouth open fast enough to reply.

Instead, a softer voice answered for him. "If you could stay, Light, I would very much appreciate it."

Elijah was staring at him, his expression still unreadable but his eyes full of a familiar warmth. Finally Light could see a hint of the man he had been so desperate to save. The smile that had fallen off of his face with his shock reinstated itself, but this time it was real.

"Sure, I'll hang out a bit longer. I'm done with classes for today anyway."

"All right then," Ethan replied. "See you guys later." He threw a friendly smile at both of them, turned, and walked to the open door.

As soon as the stairs creaked, signifying that the junior was descending to the first floor, Light leapt from his chair. He ran to the door, shut it, and flicked the lock the second it had closed. Spinning on his heel, he stared at Elijah through a mess of brown bangs that had fallen into his eyes.

"All right, you," he near-panted. "Talk."

The blond blinked at him. "Talk about what?" he asked innocently. Then, one corner of his mouth lifted in a sly smirk and he added, "Raito-kun."

Light positively snarled.

The violent sound of frustration broke through Elijah's fake indifference. He began to laugh quietly, dipping his chin into his drawn-up knees. After a tense moment during which Light debated between laughing with him or attacking him, the blond lifted a hand and beckoned to Light in a silent invitation. As Light moved to comply, Elijah caught his breath and asked, "How do you want to do this?"

"What do you mean?" Light asked back, settling himself comfortably on the end of the bed.

"Do you want to ask questions and have me answer, or do you want me to just start from the beginning and talk until my voice gives out?"

Excitement surged through Light again, but he quelled it in order to consider the question. "The second," he finally replied. "I have so many questions that if I just start asking them, we're both bound to get confused."

Elijah nodded, satisfied with this, and began, "Then I'll start at the beginning. Or rather the end. When I died." He paused, then amended with a smirk, "I mean, when you killed me."

Light shrank back in spite of himself, and the defenses poured forth before he could stop them. "I didn't kill you. Rem did."

"After you backed her into a corner."

"You were my enemy. You stood in my way!"

"We had just caught Kira."

"But you still suspected me, and I knew the 13-day rule wouldn't hold you back for long."

"No, it wouldn't have, and I was right in suspecting you."

"Which is why I had to get rid of you!"

"Do you regret it?"

The question hit Light like a slap across the face. He stared into Elijah's calm eyes, at his expressionless face, at his strange appearance. At everything that had convinced Light from the first moment they saw one another that Elijah was really L. But he had hated L down to the last cell of his body. Elijah he could never hate. Just the opposite. While sitting at the blond's bedside, watching the miracle of his eyes opening once more, Light had realized just how much he loved Elijah. They were more than friends; they were family. Light could easily see himself doing just about anything to help the other man.

That soft voice that he had feared he would never hear again cut into his thoughts. "Don't answer that." Elijah was smiling at him, a hint of sadness in his expression. "The fact that you're bothering to argue with me tells me the answer." He looked away for a moment, allowing Light to banish the awkwardness from his face. When he turned back, Light had recovered his usual composure.

"So, returning to task, I died and woke up in Heaven." A thumb lifted to Elijah's lip and began to poke at it idly. "I woke up on a bed, of all things, in a long hall with soul monitors traveling up and down. As soon as one noticed I was awake, he ushered me off the bed and into an adjoining room. This one was sort of like customs. The female soul who helped me asked for my name and other personal information, and then she found my destination in this large book. I didn't need to do any penance in Purgatory, so she called for yet another soul to escort me to my room."

"Your room?" Light asked. "Souls get individual rooms?"

"Souls get nothing but individual rooms," Elijah replied, flicking his eyes over for a moment before letting them drift away again. "You are allowed to request to visit other souls' rooms, but they are also allowed to deny you access. Imagine what a mess it would be otherwise. Famous people would get no rest whatsoever. They'd be mobbed by adoring fans for all of eternity."

"That makes sense, I suppose."

"Heaven makes a world of sense," the other remarked knowingly. "Everything is fast, efficient, and runs like clockwork. After all, they've had quite a while to perfect their system."

Light smiled at the joke, but it faded when he realized that Elijah was serious. Noticing intense blue eyes on him, he nodded to indicate that the other should continue.

"I quickly learned all there was to know about my room. It's a very nice set-up if you know how to use it properly. With a bit of imagination and a little will, you can turn your room into just about any location you would like. A house, a park, a boat on the ocean, a castle out of a fairy tale. Anything. I wasn't interested in that aspect as much as the fact that all of Heaven's knowledge was available to anyone who wished to learn it. A giant database, if you will, containing the entirety of history as well as everything to do with all branches of science. So I turned my room into something resembling investigation headquarters and dove into the knowledge of the universe via my laptop."

"I'm surprised your brain didn't explode."

Elijah spared Light a half-hearted glare, but a moment later, he turned to the younger man with an expression of pure awe. "Raito-kun," he whispered, "Heaven has cameras everywhere."

Light couldn't help himself. He burst out laughing. He could just picture it: L's newly-arrived soul, staring bug-eyed at all the cameras available to him, practically drooling at the implications of it. It had probably been the closest thing to an orgasm that the skinny ex-detective had ever experienced.

Elijah waited patiently for the brunet's laughter to die down before commenting, "That's how I found out all about you, Light. From the moment you received the Death Note, through all the traps and tricks you played, right up to my death and then beyond."

The laughter died in Light's throat. So, L knew everything. How he had found the Death Note, all his conversations with Ryuk, how he had ensnared Raye Penber, the death of Raye's fiancée Naomi, the trick with the bag of chips, Misa, and the great plan that would clear them both. L knew. No, Elijah knew, and that was what made Light feel suddenly uncomfortable. He had never regretted a single one of his moves, but knowing that Elijah knew made Light feel slightly ashamed. Like being caught doing something inappropriate or vaguely obscene. He didn't like the thought that Elijah would disapprove of him or of the things he had done.

Shaking these thoughts from his head, Light questioned, "So what prompted you to leave this amazing situation?"

Elijah shrugged. "I wasn't happy," he replied evenly.

"Not happy?" Light echoed, incredulous. "With all that information and video footage as well? You weren't happy?"

The blond shrugged again, clearly uninterested in delving too far into his feelings. "I was basically spending my afterlife in the same way that I had spent my life, and I wasn't happy then so why would I be happy now?"

Light opened his mouth to respond and found that he had nothing to say. Stunned, he shut his mouth, swallowed, and waited for the other man to continue.

"All souls have a higher-level soul monitoring them, so when mine asked if I was happy, I told the truth and said I wasn't. That's when he -- or she, it's impossible to tell with the high ones -- offered me the one-year deal. Get sent back to Life for one year in order to search for what it was that you missed the first time around. But I would have to follow very strict rules, which are there basically to ensure that souls don't go flying back down to earth just because they miss someone or because they want to finish something they started. I, of course, would have loved to have finished the Kira case and sent you to prison, but that wasn't the cause of my restlessness. I felt like something else was missing from my heart."

"A family," Light murmured.

Elijah dropped his hand and lifted his head, facing Light full-on for the first time since he had begun speaking. His blue eyes gazed carefully into Light's brown ones, searching. Several silent heartbeats passed before Elijah replied, "I suppose so."

Light blinked. "You suppose?" When Elijah looked away and refused to respond, he decided to just let it go. Drawing in a quick breath, he asked to change the subject, "So these rules of yours that gave me such a headache last year, are you allowed to tell me them now?"

A small smile spread over the other man's face again. "Yes," he replied, "although you essentially guessed them yourself. I was not allowed to tell anyone who I used to be or participate in the Kira case. If I had, I would have forfeited the deal and returned to Heaven immediately. The rules did have that loophole, however, that I could simply refuse to answer your questions which allowed you to draw the correct conclusions. Eventually." The hint of a smirk danced through his eyes, but Light chose to ignore the dig.

"And what about now?" he asked, hiding his eagerness to know the answer. "How did you get another chance and how long is it?"

For a long moment, Elijah did not respond, but then he said in an even tone, "I have another year, and to get it, I made another deal." The thumb was back on his lip, and he began to chew on the nail as he added, "I negotiated this deal a bit more and won the ability to talk to you freely about everything, but only you."

Light allowed himself a brief moment of pride at that revelation, but he quickly pushed past it. Elijah had shut himself away again, hiding his thoughts behind a carefully blank expression. Apprehension began to tingle at the back of Light's neck, and it slowly sank down the length of his spine.

"What was the deal?" he heard himself ask.

Another pause stretched between them before Elijah replied, "It's not exactly a deal. It's a mission. If I accomplish the task given me before the year ends, then I will be allowed to stay here as Elijah McCormick and live out a second life with a natural lifespan. If I don't, I will go back at the end of the year, and this time I will not return."

"What's the mission?" Light asked, feeling his nervousness grow at the unchanging emptiness in the other's face. "If there's any way that I can help you, I will." The words rolled off his tongue without thought. He meant them; he truly did. But he had this terrible feeling that he would regret saying them.

Elijah met Light's eyes and held them with a strong, serious gaze. Light felt his heart sink even before the first words left the other's mouth.

"I am to kill Kira."

Neither spoke for a solid five minutes. They simply sat there, looking at each other. Light's mind was awhirl, but he felt as if he were accessing it through a thick wall of glass. He could see the thoughts tumbling madly over one another, but he could not feel them, could not feel the emotions they kindled. The only real thing in his world at that moment was Elijah. Elijah and his empty eyes, his guarded face, his quiet voice and the words of doom that it had spoken.

Finally, after a seeming eternity, Light's throat remembered how to function. "Kill me?" he whispered.

That same sad smile reappeared. "That's what I thought at first as well," the other said, "and at first I refused. But Heaven's keepers do not desire your death, Light. All they want is the end of Kira. Killing you would accomplish this, but so would something else."

Pieces were falling into place within Light's head. So much of Elijah's recent behavior now made sense. Understanding, however, brought with it pain and darkness. "You want me to give up the Death Note," he stated. Then, as an afterthought, he added, "Don't you?"

"Yes."

The answer -- quiet, but firm -- shocked Light like nothing he had ever experienced. Without realizing his own actions, he stood from the bed and gazed down at his best friend. He could feel his expression turning hard and cold, and he could do nothing to stop it.

"Well," he remarked in a voice that sounded alien to his own ears, "at least you'll have an extra year to cross a few more things off your list."

And he turned on his heel and left the room. Calmly, he walked down the hall, down the stairs, and out the front door. Steadily, he walked down the front path, turned at the sidewalk, and headed towards campus. Carefully, he side-stepped the few people walking along the same road, keeping his eyes on his feet as they made firm, even steps on the concrete.

The nausea hit him two blocks from his dorm. Staggering, he hit a streetlamp and leaned heavily against it, one hand clamped over his mouth as he breathed through his nose. His mind was screaming, pounding against his temples in a monstrous headache, and his hands and knees were shaking. It was taking all of his concentration not to empty his stomach into the street.

How had this happened? When Elijah had "died", he had been so sure that he would give anything to have his best friend back. He had known in his heart that he would gladly give the other man any amount of help he needed to stay. Hadn't he just said to Elijah that he would help? Hadn't he just promised to do anything he could? But this … no, he couldn't do this. He would give Elijah money, time, support, anything up to and including his own arm or leg if it would help. But to give him Light's future, his dreams for a better world ... even Elijah's life wasn't worth that. All of Light's hard work, all of the lives sacrificed to make way for the new tomorrow, he would not throw that away for anything. Not even to give L another chance or to give Light the greatest friendship of his life.

The Death Note was more than just the means to kill without dirtying one's hands. It was the tool to bring about a world without crime. The way to give all innocent people the happy and full lives they deserved. Light was fighting, not for his future, but for the future of all good people everywhere. The hopes of the world rested on his shoulders. If he buckled from mere personal pressures, he would fail all of them. The greater good must be considered before one's personal well-being. He had known that the moment he set out on this journey, and he would not forget. Not now. Not ever.

Slowly, the illness passed from Light's body. Breathing became easier as his resolve hardened. Eventually, his hand fell from his face and he straightened. Hard eyes stared ahead with purpose as feet began to move once more. Light walked away from the streetlamp and continued on his way to his room.

Kira had returned.