A/N: Written for the 100 Prompts, up to 100 MCs challenge - #95 – miniscule, and for the Diversity Writing Challenge, m17 – alternate ending.

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Final Chance
Chapter 1 – Final Moments

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He was trapped.

A fine state for the god of the new world to end up with, but as he half ran, half crawled from his defeat, he realised he'd never been a god in the first place, and he'd known that.

A god wouldn't have stuck so close after the world was his.

A god would have hidden in essential non-existence. A god wouldn't have minded if the world could prove who he was, what he was – because a god was absolute.

And a god wasn't afraid of going to jail because there was no jail to hold a god.

And, in any case, how could a god be wrong? And he'd obviously gone wrong.

He'd still wondered, sometimes, about those first two men he'd killed. When he'd dipped his feet into blood and wondered if he'd gone too far or if the decision to keep going after that had tipped him over the edge. Less over the years, but the thought was there, and more prominent in the final moments where everything just fell apart.

It was like a cup that shattered in front of him and he saw each and every piece: how it was, how it should have been.

And when he fell, gasping for air and staring at the sky with steps digging into his spine, he was still seeing those things. The Death Note. Ryuk. Misa. Higuchi. Takada. Mikami. Near.

…and L.

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Light Yagami was halfway up the stairs to nowhere and unconscious, but still days away from death…except for the Death Note Ryuk had opened to a fresh page. But he hadn't taken out his pen. He hadn't written the name.

The thing about rules was that they had loopholes. And he could skip through two of those holes at once if he wanted to.

He was fairly sure he could, anyhow. And if he lost that little bet, all it would cost him was all the apples in the world –

Actually, that wasn't a great trade-off, now that he thought about it. Maybe he'd been hanging around Light too long. Always did things the logical way, planning each step meticulously until it all fell apart. But Light was interesting. The most interesting human he'd ever watched and he wasn't quite ready to give him up.

And what would he gain from writing his name, except the end of the agreement he'd formed and a few days to add to his boring tale? He wouldn't need apples once he was dust – if not writing a name counted as an act of love and who knew? Such circumstances barely arose. Then again, a human hadn't ever hold onto a Death Note for five, or used it on such a grand scale. And awareness of the Death Notes hadn't spread so far before.

That fact made it even less likely another Kira would easily dig their grappling hooks into the world.

So…why not? He was looking at an eternity of boredom once Light was gone, so why not prolong it?

He tucked both the book and pen away.

He'll see what Light Yagami made of his final moments.

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2.

His God had gone. Fled the scene like a martyr or a failed, bleeding man.

For some reason, it hadn't quite clicked that he'd failed. God simply couldn't fail. God was perfect. God was supposed to be perfect.

The fallacy was, of course, that Light Yagami was no God. And, deep down, Mikami understood that. Understood when his help was required because what sort of God required help in the first place? But Gods required servitude, did they not? The evidence was there in almost all religions that had sprung up from the earth from olden times. Gods required servitude – or longed for it, as the embellishment of their pride.

If Light Yagami could turn his back and run, then he had lost his pride.

He wondered if it was his own pride that kept him rooted to the spot. Or a deep-seeded despair that crushed his soul in its grip – because despite knowing, deep down, that a human could never be a God, he'd longed for it. He'd seen a miracle no-one else could create…

And he'd also seen it crumble to little drops of blood leading a trail to a dying man who wasn't God.

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3.

It startled them, a little, in the end. Even if all the facts had been thrown at them again and again. But did that make them fools? They didn't think so. It made them the sort of men who were more prey to their emotions than the hard cold facts of the world.

And that was fine, because L had been like that too, Light had been like that too, Soichiro had been like that too – and they respected Soichiro the most of the three of them. A man who was willing to slash his own lifespan in half to save his daughter. A man who was willing to shoot his son to prove an innocence he soundly believed in – had believed in until the moment he died.

And was it sympathy or part of the plan to prove an innocence that didn't exist? They pleaded sympathy, still. Despite what they witnessed. They were too close to think so callously and, in a way, they didn't wish to either. It was too simple, to say people were good or bad, evil or not, criminals or not. That sort of thinking had brought about Kira while the law had leniencies embedded in it.

But Kira was not the law. L was not the law. Near was not the law.

And as they found Light Yagami lying on the steps, they wondered what was going to happen now: in the endgame of two forces above and beyond the law they'd dedicated their lives to upholding and protecting.

Because the endgame had not ended – or it had gone into overtime. Either way, Light Yagami was still alive and, in that aspect at least, Near was wrong.

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4.

Matsuda didn't go with the rest of his team. If indeed it would be his team for much longer. He'd broken one of their moral rules, after all. Shooting an unarmed man due to anger and anger alone – and he regretted it now, not just because of how he'd lost control but because of who it was. Not that they were going to throw him out because of that. He'd messed up before. They'd all messed up before. Ide had walked away entirely…and they were all that was left of the original team.

But, he thought as he looked at the trail of blood and the hysterical Mikami, something had broken somewhere. The fact that, after all that, Light had turned out to be Kira… had broken something. He didn't want to do this anymore. Spend years chasing something that had turned out to be so close. Too close. Spend years chasing someone who should have been as close as a brother to him…

He didn't want to do that anymore.

But that was what they expected. Chase the bad guys: the criminals. Never mind their own fallacies that had led to their creation, or the immoral things they did in the process. It was the fact that he wouldn't get punished for shooting like he did that struck him more than the slight possibility that he would. Near didn't seem concerned at all. Seemed relieved, almost. Thinking Light would be dead before Aizawa and the others caught up to him. And he might be. If not by those gunshot wounds, then by Ryuk and the Death Note he carried.

But… somewhere inside, Matsuda hoped that wouldn't be the case. And it wasn't just that the Yagami family would be devastated if he did. And it didn't matter that Light Yagami was a dead man anyway. He still didn't want him to die – or be the one who killed him. Despite all those shots.

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5.

All they felt was relief. They'd taken a big gamble and it had paid off.

Or…maybe the gamble wasn't so big. They had Near on their side after all. That lessened the risk, because Near was one of the greatest minds in the world. Like L.

But it had been the second L, Kira, who'd been their opponent. And that had raised the risk all over again.

But that didn't matter now. They'd won. And it wasn't their arch nemesis that they should feel exuberant about that victory. Yes, Kira was a threat that was now neutralised…or would be, as soon as Light Yagami's dead body was dragged back. But they weren't the heroes who'd be heralded for accomplishing that, or the ones who'd truly won. That was Near: the gamemaster, the white king. And the rest of them were pawns. Cleverly placed pawns, and pawns that survived the game, but pawns nonetheless.

Even Kira had pawns that had still survived the game. The third Kira, distraught. The second Kira, still free but Near believed she was no threat anymore and they believed him, because that was the risk they had taken. The only risk they had taken: to throw their lot with Near and his attempt to defeat Kira. And Near had pulled that victory off.

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6.

Kira had fled in disgrace. The game was over. L had lost. Kira had lost. Mello had become the sacrificial queen to give him the final, necessary piece. And Near had won.

He was about ninety percent sure Light Yagami would be dead before long. Not from those gunshot wounds – and he would have admired Touta Matsuda's restraint if it wasn't so foolish in his field – but from Ryuk and the Death Note he still held. Because they'd come to understand each of the Shinigami that had brought a Death Note to their world. And they knew Ryuk had no loyalty to anyone or anything except apples. And they knew Ryuk would sacrifice nothing for Light Yagami.

And the game was over. There was no merit in overtime when nothing could be accomplished from it. Surely, Ryuk would write his human's name in the Death Note and that would be the end of this wretched tale.

And the end of another competition as well. A competition between three boys at Wammy's House – and only one of them still lived. The third L.

'Near!'

He looked up. Why call him now? The story was over, and he deserved a glass of milk and a rubix cube before a new one.

Then he blinked. Aizawa was hailing him. And Ide and Mogi were carrying a pale Light Yagami between them.

Mikami stared at them, then dropped his head and mumbled unintelligibly.

Drops of blood were still falling from the bullet wounds. The chest was still rising and falling.

Light Yagami was still alive.

He'd been wrong.