Disclaimer: Death Note and it's characters don't belong to me, but this little bit of fantasy does

Spoilers: For the end. But we all know how that went!

Forget the past, lose the mask... then speak friend and enter.

SEPARATED SELF

By Just Akiko

It was as if he were looking through frosted glass, the reflection coming through fuzzy and slightly distorted. It was only when he realised that the temperature was mild (practically undetectable even) that Light realised this was not the case. The dark shadow that was his reflection was becoming bigger, clearer when suddenly the boy-genius was struck with a startling realisation; this was no reflection, this was somebody else.

But who?

This was his death, his own personal demise; there should have been no one there to join him in it. Except perhaps the Shinigami Ryuk; but he had never been the sentimental type and one dead human (Kira or not) was surely only as interesting as the next. This nothingness was supposed to be his and his alone, a silent prison, and his penance for possessing a lethal notebook in the world of the living.

Light blinked once. Twice. But the figure only grew clearer and more foreign the longer he looked. Yet in its alien-ness Light's still-sharp mind quickly recognised the figure's familiarity.

"L."

It had been so long since he'd uttered that name in reference to anyone but himself that it could almost have been that the pale hunchback was indeed his own reflection. However, when ink-black eyes finally swam into focus, immediately drawing Light's own gaze into their infinite depths, he could feel the old differences set firmly between them. Light and dark, good and evil, L and Kira. Perhaps there was a wall of glass there after all?

If so it was sound permeable, because when the dead detective answered his address, Light could hear him perfectly.

"Actually, I prefer Ryuuzaki now, Yagami Light."

His voice was still its usual drone but contained that spark of a smile that once coloured the eccentric's more sociable living days. Light remembered it well from the muttered conversations, oddly mundane and meaningless, that had kept them both awake for hours on end when one or the other struggled to sleep in chains. Funny (he thought suddenly) how he'd forgotten those conversations of late…

"Ryuuzaki? Really?" Light replied, apparently more direct and less polite in death. "I would have though an alias was meaningless in the afterlife." And it was true; he was confused as to why the detective was clinging to a name that had eventually lost him the title of the greatest detective that had ever lived.

L… or Ryuuzaki… simply smiled, his lips curving into an almost dopey grin that Light suddenly recalled associating with strawberry cheesecake (delivered every Thursday, with extra cream and strawberry sauce). Strange.

"Actually I found it a more comfortable label with which to withstand eternity. After all, L lost, and I never did like to be associated with failure."

Light smiled this time. But to his surprise he felt it coloured with amusement, not with the superiority or hard earned pride he'd died with.

"But you are L." He stated. (apparently death giving him a penchant for stating the obvious as well)"You intend to spend the afterlife living another lie?"

Light almost felt the weariness of such an existence, resting upon his own shoulders. It had been a burden he had learned to carry well over the final years of his life, when the world had called on him to play both sides of the fight for Kira's justice. However here in… whatever this nothingness was… it seemed suddenly heavier, less manageable. Whereas Ryuuzaki on the other hand seemed to be standing straighter than ever before, his shoulders only slightly slumped, spine barely curved at all and almost an extra two inches of height gained even though he was still barefoot.

He allowed Light to register all this before replying with an encouraging nod.

"This is no lie Light-kun." He replied. "The 'afterlife' as you call it is best spent without masks, past or present, no matter how closely they once fit to your skin. You'll find only the shadows remaining now. In death it seems we are all equal. Not even the world's greatest liars can hide from themselves here."

If they had ever expressed emotion, Light though L's eyes would have been shining back at him with sympathy, as he finished his little speech. Instead all he noticed were the tiny creases of concern across an otherwise smooth forehead. The action seemed remarkably expressive in itself, on a face that Light was used to seeing set in stone.

"So…Ryuuzaki is your 'real self'?" He asked, trying hard not to sound dubious. To his dismay the smoothness of his silver tongue seemed to be tarnishing in death and his cynicism was obvious even to him. The detective however smiled yet again and lifted a trademark thumb to his lips.

"Apparently so." He replied (in a voice lighter than the Investigation Team had ever heard, and Light only vaguely recalled brief moments in the mornings when, joined at the wrist, they would blithely discuss the weather over a breakfast of tea and cake). "I admit it was a surprise to myself. However, looking back and having had time to consider it seems… fitting."

His ebony eyes seemed to drift out of focus and Light suddenly panicked at the thought of the rest of the dead boy's body following. It had been so lonely before. He'd almost felt as if he were losing himself, parts drifting away into the endless white. But now he was once again conversing with someone, with a familiar face, he could almost feel the press of a metallic cuff hugging his wrist, anchoring him there with its promise of constant surveillance and constant company. A part of Light recognised (and, in honesty, remembered) the comforting feeling this gave him… a small part.

To his unexpected relief, Ryuuzaki's eyes refocused and he remained standing before Light, separated by apparently invisible glass, as he exchanged one thumb for the other. He peered once again into Light's own eyes from beneath his stark black bangs, and suddenly he seemed to be seeing right into Light's very soul. (This feeling too was also familiar, although to Light's great dismay he was forgetting exactly why. Something about suspicion, a suspect, a case…)

"It doesn't always take long to lose those masks Light." Ryuuzaki spoke suddenly, his voice now heavy with truth (and Light saw flashes of computer monitors and equations and a corporate meeting with a killer at its head). "In fact, if the identity we forced upon ourselves was ill-fitting in life, it can disappear quite quickly here."

Apparently Light's face was still struggling with his remembrances (or lack thereof) because suddenly Ryuuzaki's thumb was gone from his mouth and he was waving a hand slowly in front of his face, as if to gain Light's full attention. When the younger boy looked back he continued with a hint of understanding, "And you already seem to be forgetting."

Hearing the words out loud seemed to spark some desperate life into the memories that Light could now feel slipping away from him like sand. They clawed at his mind and as he watched Ryuuzaki's tilt his head in apparent curiosity, he suddenly saw himself standing over the same Ryuuzaki, watching him fall from a chair and hit the ground with a lifeless thump. Light held a black notebook clenched in his hands.

Then out of nowhere, he was gasping for air. His head was hurting and he felt lost again in this sea of endless white. Ryuuzaki, his only point of reference, had not moved. Apparently their imaginary wall was still in place, but he was so focused on Light's quivering form that the younger boy could practically feel his mental reassurances. When he finally spoke, Ryuuzaki's voice was calm almost soothing. (and Light could have heard the clink of metal chain and the slither of bed sheets.)

"You remember Kira?" He asked knowingly. And Light did. He did remember. But even as the guilt threatened to suffocate him, he found a pleasant blankness seeping in from his equally blank surroundings. Kira was becoming an object, a suspect, and Light no longer felt the press of the name against his flesh. Something told him he should have but…

"I-I…" He was fighting with suddenly errant vocal chords. "I think I remember… He was… I was…"

"One and the same." Ryuuzaki interjected and the proclamation hit Light like a physical blow. He felt the air (if there was air in the afterlife) leave him rapidly, to be replaced by this accusation, by Kira once again. He struggled to surface as a tide of anger and guilt tried to submerge him in whiteness. It was Ryuuzaki's voice, a second time (but still as soft as moonlight across a rumpled bed) that dragged him back from the confusion of his former life.

"But only as L and I were once one and the same." He hinted, hoping that Light's intellect would surface long enough to gather his full meaning; one even his genius had trouble explaining. "Kira was a part of you. A mask you wore in a world that is not this one. Here there is only room for one of you. And that choice is no longer yours Light Yagami."

Hearing his name (his real name) seemed to quell the storm of panic and remorse that had swept Light away and when he reopened eyes that had closed without consent, he was relieved to see Ryuuzaki still standing there, almost waiting for him, with a look of mild amusement (that used to be reserved for Matsuda when he said or did something particularly dense during the… some time when they were…working together on the case…)

"Do you understand?" Ryuuzaki asked.

Light shook his head honestly. "No. I don't think I do." He paused. "But you do. Why?"

It had been a long time since Ryuuzaki had arrived here, of that Light was certain, so why did the older man still seem to know more about a life that Light had only recently left but was fast forgetting?

The ex-detective seemed to ponder for a moment, thumb returned to his lips, before replying. "It seems the masks we make for ourselves are harder to shake than those we have pressed upon us. I may never lose L completely. But I do exist without him now, through circumstance alone if nothing else."

He smiled wryly and Light felt himself respond automatically in kind.

"No killers to catch in the afterlife hmm?"

Ryuuzaki smiled, pleased (a small, quiet smile that Light only remembered seeing once before). The hum of computers echoed in his ears as he listened to the older man reply.

"No. Only friends."

"Even those suspected of murder?" He asked, a weary disapproval filling his words as an old-fashioned innocence welled up inside of him.

"We are all equal in the after life Light-kun." Ryuuzaki replied with a patient smile.

"But you still think it was me thought, right?"

"You don't think so?"

Light didn't even pause before responding with an ignorant conviction "I always told you I was innocent and I stand by that. Yagami Light would not kill one, let along thousands of people."

Ryuuzaki nodded, understanding and pleasantly accepting.

"No. Only Kira could do something like that."

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Ja x