If Light had cared, maybe (maybe) this whole situation would have seemed bitter and wrong. It was mid-afternoon and the morning's clouds were burning off to allow glaring rays of sunlight to fall on the space they were so aware of, so carefully concealed and secretive. Illumination. –to not even be able to properly mourn someone. To have to act as if nothing had happened, to have to—unthinkably—take on that person's identity; how perfectly terrible. This brief stop would have seemed the only, painful way he was permitted to acknowledge the death of someone much-missed and truly remarkable. Etc.

It was a very large if.

Soichiro Yagami stood on its other side and at Light's, and sighed a weary sigh.

(Just a father-son outing—inconspicuous; it'll be safe enough.)

He probably felt sentimentally that it should have been raining even if they could not weep, or some nonsense like that. He could be so absurd, sometimes, Light's father.

(Ryuuzaki would have liked this. Didn't any of them know anything at all?

Attention to security, following of procedure, paranoia—that was all worth more than what they'd both considered useless ceremony.)

If Light had cared, he wouldn't have spoken immediately, and so he said nothing. Careful with the expression, though! Not too outright—Light Yagami wasn't like that—no, it had to be a little stoic, a little determined, a touch of strain, there, what's usual for that sort of situation. Not L. Not a triumph. His friend, Ryuuzaki. Summoning the appearance of grief for Ryuuzaki's sake could not be that difficult a task. He just had to find a source. He'd done that with everything else. Acting the part of Light-who-was-not-Kira came naturally as ever. Effortless. Easy.

Except with L, and that hardly mattered anymore.

The path to complete victory (justice) would be so much simpler from here.

(Oddly enough, Ryuk was nowhere in sight.)

Soichiro put a hand on his shoulder.

Light fought the instinct to draw back. Instead he swallowed, met his father's eyes. –ahhh, look at that pity, that sorrow. My poor son, who has lost his greatest friend: how ridiculous. Don't pity me, you fool. Pity Ryuuzaki if you must. He's lost everything—he's lost. I won and I'm alive. What do I need your pity for?

"…I'm sorry, Light."

Sorry.

To the future god of a new world!

They'd all taken his fervent work on the Kira case as not just vengeance for the fallen

(he'd fallen in such a literal sense, hadn't he? Light had caught him and he'd felt so solid and light and human; almost an object but for those strange wide eyes)

but driving himself to distraction; he had felt their looks of sympathy. They looked you were the only one that really knew him, L, Ryuuzaki, I mean, stumble, glance, apologize. And yet they really did act as if they had known something, the way they always did. As if R—as if L would have given a damn for any of it. Sure, Light knew him. He knew L. He could have delivered the only accurate eulogy anyone ever could, if he had cared. Light had at last found a stratagem to defeat L and in doing so had had to encompass L's way of thinking. L had been brilliant. Enough that only Light could see how. Just…not enough.

That bloodshot insomniac crouched on chairs, eerie in the soft glow of a computer screen, scarfing sweets, awkward and lilting and arrogant and ruthless: they would forget that and recall the Great L like some sort of astringent legend after a time. That was certain. And then they would forget that right readily as they entered the world of Kira.

That was because they were stupid.

If Light had really cared, he would have said this.

Instead he said, finally, quietly: "He was the best of us."

Was.

(Somewhere he imagined L with a small and satisfied smile, nodding, saying 'Yes.' )