Warning: If you haven't read the manga series, don't read! (But honestly, why would you be reading Death Note fanfictions if you have no clue what's going on? Don't look at me, I have no idea.)

AN: When the manga series ended, I was so sad :-( !!! But honestly, I think I was a bit disappointed when L died. He remained my favorite character (Mello was a close second, though, since he actually bothered to show some emotions… jeez after being around a bunch of unemotional geniuses for such a long time, anybody could go crazy) throughout the series, so surprise surprise he's going to play a significant role in my fanfic. However, I decided not to tell this from his viewpoint. A) Because I couldn't write like him even if I tried and B) With this plot, it'd be much more amusing to tell the story from Light's POV. Sooo, without any further ado…

……………………………………

Chapter 1: Lockdown

First, there was the end. What was to come, I had no idea. Ryuuk had said that I would go to the same place everybody else does when they die, but I didn't believe him. Or, more accurately, I didn't want to believe him.

I mean let's face it: the cards were not in my favor. At this point, I didn't have any cards, I had no chance whatsoever of making a comeback. I was dying, my fate set in stone using pen and paper. The taste of my own medicine shattered my pride and dignity.

The last 40 seconds of my life flew by, and my hands struggled to grasp them, but they were more elusive and swifter than smoke. Then the opposite: Ryuuk's laughing face blurred, and then slowed down. My anger, my fear, the gripping terror mingling with the blood staining the ground, it all disappeared.

3… 2… 1…

The End.

Some believe that you are reborn as the very thing you hated most when you die. Others don't believe anything (or, more accurately, don't want to believe anything). And I can't blame them, because for my whole life, death was something that happened to other people, not to me. In fact, I brought people's deaths upon themselves. I didn't care about my own death, because I never truly thought it was going to happen. I immersed myself so much in my work bringing justice to the world that I couldn't even see my own end sneak up behind my back.

But the most popular belief among us humans is that the bad people will get their just desserts in hell, while those that led lives of virtue will float up to heaven, where they finally get to indulge themselves free of guilt. These are the people I pitied most. They were going to get a nice surprise in the afterlife.

Once my eyes closed for the last time, my soul was delivered into Nothingness. There, it was locked up in a Manifest and then set free to wander.

But how is it possible to wander through Nothingness? At first I didn't understand, because nobody is able to understand at first.

Images flashed...

A miniature version of me pranced across the kitchen to my mother, who was awaiting my return from school with a glass of milk and some cookies. How naïve. For the first time, I could feel my acceleration through this Nothingness. I could see my Manifest moving in respect to this memory.

Or was the memory moving in relation to me?

I really didn't exist anymore, but in order for my mind to comprehend this new world, I still referred to myself as "me" and kept some of those other silly Life behaviors.

Whether which whatever was moving to whichever didn't matter. A second memory flashed upon the Nothingness: Me as a high school student sat in a boring, stuffy classroom. Various doodles and diagrams decorated the pages of the notebook open in front of me, and every so often I was jerked out of my daydreams by the stupid teacher in the front of the classroom. A few pairs of jealous eyes bored into the back of my head, but my teenage form was able to give an air of indifference.

My mind gave a slight jolt as I realized what day it was projected into Nothingness.

A black notebook tumbled out from the clouds above.

I was immersed in the memory, waiting to see if it would play out just as it was destined to. But it slipped away, behind me, or above me, or just away from me. Or maybe I slipped away from it.

It was if my life were flashing before my eyes, to borrow the Life cliché. Yet it wasn't. No more of my memories were revealed.

The next image (It wasn't exactly an image, seeing as I wasn't able to see anymore. The memory was being placed inside my mind, or brought up from it, or… it is extremely difficult to explain. I'm afraid you'd have to be dead to understand) was not from my life.

It was from someone else's, and as soon as it flickered up, I knew exactly whose it was.

A little child clung onto the arm of an older man whose back was slightly hunched. Snow dotted his midnight hair and the ground below him.

A church bell tolled.

L

If a feeling of surprise or shock were possible in the Nothingness, I felt it then. Of course, my eyes didn't widen, and I didn't instinctively finger a watch strapped onto a wrist.

All I did was float by, or remain still.

And then the fluctuations.

Fragments of the minds of thousands of souls flashed in rapid succession, yet I had the time to decipher each one.

A Christmas gathering, a marriage, a birth, a death, a hope, a disappointment, a failure, the rare success, a downfall, a redemption, a homemade cake, a hardware store, a robotics laboratory, a dark alleyway, an opium den, a silver knife, a broken beer bottle, the shattered glass falling through infinite time and space…

My soul writhed.

For the first time, I was equal with everybody else. Our memories were the same. Everything was the same in Nothingness.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Well, that was my first attempt at a DeathNote fic. I hoped you liked it (and if you did, I hope you'll review it) (and if you didn't, I still hope you'll review it)!! And even though summer's coming to an end, I'd much rather write more chapters than do the rest of my summer hw!

Thanks for reading (and reviewing hint hint)

Ryuuzaki21