……………

……………..

Mind Games: Epilogue

The Spoils of War

………………

Grieving for you,

I'm not grieving for you.

Nothing real love can't undo,

And though I may have lost my way,

All paths lead straight to you.

You're not alone,

No matter what they told you, you're not alone

I'll be right beside you forevermore.

I long to be like you,

Lie cold in the ground like you.

There's room inside for two and I'm not grieving for you,

I'm coming for you.

It had all spiralled out of control. Utterly out of his hands. There was nothing more that Raito could do. Kira held the reins, Kira controlled his hand in the game. And Kira viewed Ryuuzaki as merely a piece in the way of his onslaught. A piece that could now be shattered, with the megalomaniac's weapon returned to him and every ounce of his manipulative nature fighting to avoid capture. Raito himself was too numb, too cold to respond. If Ryuuzaki didn't care, then perhaps this was the best path. Raito could continue as he had before, working towards a better world without petty distractions. Kira would rule, and all who opposed him would fall.

And Raito would lose everything that he had ever loved.

Did he really want to lose even more? Bad enough that he had lost Ryuuzaki's affections, but technically, he supposed, you can't lose what you never had.

This was for the best. There was nothing else that he could do. No one stood for long in Kira's path, and no one bested Yagami Raito.

Though Raito wasn't so sure that he wanted vengeance for his rejection. All he really wanted to do was find a dark corner somewhere to curl up and shut out the rest of the world. And his uncertainty was all that Kira needed to deal the final blow, uncontested.

When Ryuuzaki fell from his chair, toppling to earth in a boneless tangle of petrified limbs, it felt as if Raito were the one gripped by the savage contortions of a faltering heart, fallen hard onto the cold tiles of the floor, unable to save himself. He had known it was coming, knew it couldn't be avoided. Still couldn't believe what he was seeing. Why is this happening? Why didn't I prevent it? Did I really want this?

Kira assumed dominance in the youth's mind, moving in swiftly to prevent Raito from completely losing all vestiges of self-control. He took control for enough to grin malevolently down at the prone detective as he rasped his last breath, eyes stark with shock at the pain he felt, and the betrayal of the one who supposedly had loved him. The one he had rejected. Shock and pain were married in one stare, burning into Raito's eyes and scorching what humanity still lurked there. And then those great eyes rolled back into his skull for the last time, eyelids falling closed as heavily as the lid of a tomb. Waves of unadulterated pain washed over Raito, accumulating to a bloody head and released in an unholy shriek, a shriek such as he had not known he could make. And then it was through. Raito died.

He could not watch. Could not take any more. Withdrew into himself utterly, handing control over to Kira. Let Kira make his decisions, set out to make the world a better place through death and fear. Raito just didn't want to involve himself with anything any more. Kira had won the battle, and Raito had lost everything. This was Kira's world now. There was no place for the idealistic youth who had released him.

Even with Ryuuzaki gone, buried anonymously and ignobly, there was still no easy path for Kira to walk. No quick way to victory and dominion of a bright new world. L's successor rose - a child on the other end of the microphone. And for all his grief and silence, Raito still felt something twitch within himself as Near invoked memories that even Kira couldn't ignore. Wrapped in his cocoon of denial, living hollowly through the personality that Kira had come to be, Raito dully thought about this new annoyance for the homicidal genius to handle. Comparisons between the confident child and spidery youth flew all too easily to Raito's benumbed consciousness, even doused and drugged with Kira's lust for power. Ryuuzaki… The child does not compare. Your methods differ too much. The child jumps to conclusions, driving Kira into a corner with every heavy-handed move. It was frustrating, and for more than the reason that it infringed on Kira's hegemony. You were more cautious, careful to accumulate evidence beyond a doubt. You were the superior opponent. This child holds no interest for me. The vague thoughts resounded within Raito, keeping his awareness, even though he had completely absorbed the role of Kira into himself. There were fewer distinctions between the two now. Still enough to make Raito's private hurt just that; private. There was no remorse, no pity in the heart of the mass murderer. Death was too plebeian for Kira now.

All the same, this child seemed to be enough of a match mentally for the arrogant Kira. Months of dancing about one another, exchanging lie for lie, blow for blow, and it had finally come to this. A final confrontation between Kira and L's successor. A hideous parody of Raito's competition with L. The pale little boy even wore a grotesque mask of L's face to hide from the Shinigami's eyes. Stirring behind the murderer's eyes, Raito watched, and remembered, and was repelled.

But it was also startling to see. What precisely had awakened behind the eyes of Kira, when he had strode into the warehouse to see that little figure hunched on the floor, impossibly dark eyes fixed on the ground? For a moment, just one foolish moment, he could have believed that Ryuuzaki was alive. Why did he still experience that throb within his chest? That surge of emotion powerful enough to make his ribs clench tightly and breath hitch? Raito flickered within himself, stirred almost to wakefulness. I am weaker than I have ever been, but I still remember. Still cannot let go.

Raito was distantly aware of his other self fighting furiously, exchanging mental blow after blow, and swapping tactics with ease. But that ease was becoming more strained. Raito could feel Kira's panic, his outrage at this competition. He was shouting, but he only dimly realised that it was his voice being used. How strange. Raito himself was too busy wondering why nothing had changed, even after all those years. I killed Ryuuzaki. Why should I still be thinking those unnatural thoughts? Lost in his own musings, Raito did not hear the gunshot, did not hear Kira's desperate pleas, bloody and twisted at Ryuuk's feet.

And then it all came to naught. Kira's hollow victory was stripped from him, and his life ended in a few simple strokes of the Shinigami's pen.

All was plunged into darkness. Impenetrable, unyielding and inescapable.

All was darkness, but he was not drowning.

Raito blinked in the fog of the unknown, lifeless limbs seemingly weightless.

Is this what death is supposed to feel like?

Somehow, it wasn't going as he had always thought it would. Even before finding the Death Note and beginning Kira's crusade, Raito had mused over death and the afterlife. An early pessimist, he had dismissed any notions of heaven and hell as primitive human superstition and comforting thoughts to make the hardships endured during life somehow bearable. As if, in the end, it was all going to be repaid, honoured or rewarded.

And since when had nature ever done that before?

Raito's resigned belief that the afterlife was a fantasy, and that after death the soul simply did not exist, was appearing to be one of the few cases in which he was, ironically, dead wrong.

Why is it not all dissolving into nothing? I'm not alive… I know that much. There's no way that I can be alive. Kira was panicking…Ryuuk wrote my name into the Death Note, just like he said he would when I first met him. There's nothing more to it. I am dead. Kira is dead. This is death. Thoughts swam in a distorted cacophony about his brain, flickering and difficult to focus on, yet somehow he was not fading. Raito tried to relax, tried to will everything away. I want to let it all go. I made too many mistakes in life to want to dwell on anything. Just let it go to oblivion. I don't want to remember. Images swam in his mind. His parents. His sister. Ryuuzaki. He tried to let them slip past his groping consciousness, tried to force himself to forget. Let it end. I give up.

But the images were becoming clearer, not fading into nothing along with his sense of being. Raito felt a twinge of concern. Ryuuk couldn't have made a mistake, could he? As if. One did not escape death if it was borne on the wings of a Shinigami. This must be the afterlife; this strange, transient consciousness. This floating, weightless sensation, lost in a mishmash of his own unsorted thoughts. Apparently he was wrong. How strange…

But what was happening now? What was he seeing? It was changing even as he began to settle into this new rootless state of being. The lightness seemed to drain from his body, seeping slowly from his form and replaced instead by something akin to lead. He could tentatively feel his body returning to his control, away from tingling numbness that had engulfed him some unknown time before. It felt as if he had never opened his eyes in his life, muscles seizing up and shuddering painfully as he tried to crack the lids apart a little more. I have a physical body even in death? How very bizarre. Fragments of colour assaulted his senses through the scant openings that he managed to wedge between his impossibly heavy eyelids. Greens, blues. Mostly greens. A bright, lively green. The kind that suggested springy turf, trees and other such impracticalities. Raito had grown up well away from those things. Why was he seeing them now? This makes no damn sense! Dull frustration flitted through his brain, or whatever he had now.

He was starting to feel things more accurately again, rather than just a numb awareness that he did in fact possess limbs somewhere. There was a chilly breeze assaulting him from the feet first, causing his toes to curl reflexively. He was lying on something prickly that smelt of crushed foliage, which supported the grass argument at least. Was this truly the afterlife? Ryuuk had said that one who used the Death Note could not go to heaven or hell… Was this some form of purgatory, reduced to nature? Were all humans returned to a pre-industrial earth, abandoned to live as animals? His thoughts swerved to chase this new idea, until something happened to cut them off in pure shock.

"Long time no see, Raito-kun."

Everything froze. Time, if it did indeed have anything to do with matters any more, seemed to slow and Raito's heart, much to his amazement, started to hammer in his chest. How in hell's name is it doing that? The thought rampaged through his head, but was ignored in favour of the other idea that had come bursting onto the scene along with the new voice. How? Why? Why the hell do I give a damn?

Cracked lips parted, new air rasped into and out of his lungs, but no sounds came out. Raito felt his brow furrow slightly with annoyance. Couldn't he speak? Had he forgotten? His body felt odd to him. New. As if it had never been used.

"Your body is restructuring itself according to your soul's memories of it." The bored drawl seemed nearby, but try as he might, Raito could not move his head even a little to try and see the speaker. "It'll take a while before you can actually do anything. I suggest you think hard about what you used to look like, and don't make any alterations that might upset your balance."

What kind of advice was that? Had Raito been able to, he might have rolled his eyes, but as it stood, he wasn't entirely sure where the controls to those were at the moment. Instead he contented himself with lying there (was he lying down? He was almost 90 percent sure that he was) and trying to force his eyes open further. Other than those occasional snide comments by the voice, he couldn't detect any other signs of life. Or something like it. His mouth slackened and tightened, jaw working in small, ginger movements. Questions were burning the lining of his throat, but he was forced to be patient. Forced to wait until small sensations, smaller nerves and tendons, he realised, came creeping back, along with his modicums of physical control. It seemed to take an eternity, and his companion said not a word the entire time. It was achingly lonely, and made even more frustrating by the torrent of questions that Raito's brain was now posting as it roused itself into awareness.

Is this death? Did heaven and hell really exist after all? Why did he have a physical body? Does this mean that the soul really does reside within the body? Raito had never believed in the existence of the soul… he had always thought of death as the ultimate reduction to nothingness, a return to unawareness. How was it that his 'soul' had survived? How was it forming a body? Why didn't he have control over himself?

His tongue was like an old piece of meat lodged between his teeth, but he plied it to speech regardless, mentally wincing at its heavy, crude ability, lacking in delicacy. Old pride dies hard, it would seem. "Where am I?" He slurred the question, feeling no small amount of satisfaction at his success, and an equal amount of embarrassment at his clumsiness.

A pause. He could hear things more clearly now. His companion shifted, making something on the ground rustle. Definitely grass. How very peculiar. I wonder if he knows why we're here. The voice then interrupted his thoughts. "I'm surprised at you, Raito. I'd have thought that you of all people could have figured out where you are."

How intolerably cruel. Surely he knew how hard it was for him to talk, let alone field off rhetorical statements! Raito croaked weakly in protest, and hated himself for it. "D…death. Dead."

"How eloquent of you," chipped the voice dryly. "Congratulations: you are dead. How does it feel? Oh wait, don't tell me, I already know." There was a note of stark bitterness in the voice.

Raito decided not to even try and dignify that with an answer. He focussed instead on the other person's voice. He knew that voice. The rest of his memory was returning to him beyond that of his death and old form; memories of the last few months of his life. He sifted through those images and words dispassionately, as if he were analysing the life of a literary character. Pain, death, isolation. Power. The unquenchable thirst for power. His thoughts began to drift even further back, spiralling tendrils of emotion that twisted around themselves now laid bare to him. It was all so simple. He was no longer clouded by the intense mind battles between Near and Mello, puppeteer of his pawns Misa, Mikami and Takada. This was his mind, his story, his fight.

His mistakes.

Lying there immobile, he could see the beginning of the end: traced the transformation of himself into Kira; saw the contorting of his own values until they were no longer recognisable. He had become the thing he hated the most. The thing he had set out to destroy in the very beginning.

He had killed L.

That realisation came flooding into his skull like an avalanche of ice and rock; cold, cutting and deadening. For a while he lay there, aghast at his own actions. Why had that happened? How could he have destroyed the one thing; the one person that he actually retained feelings for? He followed the trains of thought, mapped out as easily as if he were reading a book. His brain now seemed immune to the wearing of time, and surrendered information readily. So, we never truly forget anything, do we? It is all simply pushed to one side. It was all coming so easily to him. The argument. That cryptic answer that wasn't quite an answer, but was enough to dash Raito's hopes of achieving L's affections to the ground and dance on them for good measure.

L could have caught Kira. L would have destroyed Kira as easily as Raito had destroyed L. When Raito had made that decision, he had been thinking as Kira, not as himself. It had been a reactionary move. Rejection had wounded Raito to the point that he could not make decisions for himself, and so Kira had made it for him.

How very peculiar. He'd lost control of himself to…himself.

So who was he now? Kira or Raito?

His eyes were beginning to ease a little further open, unused to the light despite having been dead for only... how long? Who knew… Dull pain throbbed in his head, probably as a result of his mental reconstruction, but for now, mostly because of his revelation. Kira had killed L because Raito had lost himself. When L died, so did Raito. He had killed the thing he loved the most, and then destroyed himself.

The thing he loved the most. It was all so obvious now. So obvious that Raito felt a smirk twitch at the corners of his mouth, a small chuckle bursting forth, rasping the sides of his raw throat. Why had that been so hard to say? How many months had he nursed that feeling, unwilling to admit it even to himself? He felt the person by his side stiffen, heard their indrawn breath and a moment's hesitation before they spoke.

"Why are you laughing, Raito-kun? I wouldn't have thought that death was so funny."

"No," he mumbled, jaws working furiously in an attempt to spring the muscles into life. "I'm the one who's funny. I've been such a fool for so long."

If his companion had been expecting an answer, then that certainly hadn't been the one on his mind. "What are you saying?" Raito could hear the combination of surprise, confusion and suspicion in the other's voice, playing a discordant melody in his awakening ears. He was becoming himself again.

"I'm saying," he said slowly, savouring the slight release in his tight jaw, "that I've been unaware of myself for a long time. Unaware of myself to the point that I've denied and destroyed everything that I held dear. I was possessed by something that was both me and not me. And I didn't even notice." He barked with laughter, ignoring the other male's silence. How incredible a thing this was! He, Raito, had missed something so obvious and so close to home!

"You can't take back what you do, Raito," came the voice softly. "If you destroy something, it remains destroyed. That is a fact of life."

"But I'm dead now," reminded Raito, delighted by the fact that he could now speak properly, albeit with a slight slur. "Facts of life don't apply any more."

"You sound happy to be dead in that case," responded the voice, cold with dark humour.

"Maybe I am." Raito threw that concept around his brain for a moment. He was…relaxed. More relaxed than he had been in years. No one was chasing him, no one was baying for his blood and trying to pull apart his pseudo-identities. There wasn't even Misa in the background to worry about. He was alone but for this person sitting beside him and making fun of him.

Kira wasn't there any more. Like a disease drawn from the body, the presence was simply gone. Raito was himself.

"I am," he finished with an air of decisiveness. Cold air rushed into his lungs, expelled in a warm burst. He could hear something like birdsong just on the breeze, the rustle of distant trees. It was somehow too realistic to be real… This place, wherever or whatever it was, it just didn't make sense.

"Why?" Now it was the other man's turn to ask the questions. Raito thought that more than slightly amusing, but perhaps that was his brain accidentally releasing endorphins.

"Because I'm not Kira any more. I never was Kira. Kira was always a separate part of me." Raito opened his eyes, forcing them open for the first time, and fixed them on the pallid, panda-eyed youth crouched beside his prone frame. "I've missed you, Ryuuzaki."

His eyes greedily took in the sight that he had been so accustomed to, and then deprived from for so long. The pale, spindly figure that looked so ungainly and fragile, yet held a surprising grace and powerful strike. Haphazard black bangs that had escaped the attention of a comb for years fell into curious eyes, wide with fascination at the world.

He loved those eyes. He loved everything about Ryuuzaki. He knew it now, and was not afraid. Even after inadvertently killing the detective, even after Ryuuzaki spurned him, he still loved him.

Despite Raito's own wonder, there seemed to be no echo of such emotions on the former detective's face. He sat there, hunched and pensive, with no outward sign of any thought other than a kind of bemused distraction. As if Raito were some kind of new dessert made without sugar: confusing, unnatural and yet oddly tempting at the same time. Raito shook his head slightly to remove that image.

"So you do remember." Ryuuzaki stared down thoughtfully at the younger man, technically aged for longer than he himself was allowed to. "I was beginning to wonder if you'd lost that portion of your memory. I haven't had the opportunity to observe anyone's re-composition other than my own, and of course I wouldn't know if I'd forgotten something."

Raito shook his head again, drinking in the sight before his eyes, head spinning. I can't believe it. Is this my second chance? Why am I being given a second chance? I've done nothing to deserve this.He had to ask. Had to see if Ryuuzaki knew the answer to that thought which was niggling at the back of his head. Raito drew a deep breath, "Ryuuzaki, where am I? The user of the Death Note can't go to heaven or hell, so why am I here?"

One of the spindly youth's eyes twitched. "Why are you calling me that?" He didn't answer the question. That surprised Raito somewhat, but not enough to concern him.

"You never told me your name, remember?" Raito stared up at the sky. Little white clouds scudded across the yawning expanse of pale blue. It was too clean, too clear to be anything he had ever seen before. "We had a huge argument about it. You must have forgotten. But never mind that, where am I now?"

He heard the other male swallow, and there was a brief pause before the former detective spoke. "You're in my afterlife."

"Your afterlife?" Raito's attention shot back over to the pallid youth, muscles convulsing as he tried to force himself to sit up, but only succeeded in trembling all over. Did he usually feel this cold? Oh no… don't let him be…

"Yes, my afterlife," continued L in a monotone. His eyes were fixed on Raito's, wide and dark as ever, but with a strange glimmer to them. "I've had a bit of time to think over how 'heaven and hell' actually work, and where the Death Note and Shinigami fall into the equation." He paused, lifting his thumb up to his mouth and chewing absentmindedly on the nail. "It wasn't that hard to think of a way to get you into one or the other. Not for me at least." He flicked a piece of fringe away from his mouth, caught with his thumb.

"You wanted to help me, after all that happened?" Raito stared in amazement at the other youth, now examining his nail with exasperation, as if he had accidentally bitten to the quick. "Why? You didn't trust me enough to tell me your name, but you trust me enough to have me in your afterlife?" This just didn't add up at all. "I killed you!" he exploded at last.

Ryuuzaki glanced down at him and then back at his nail, eyes as unconcerned as ever. "It gave me something to pass the time with, I suppose. I knew that you were going to be subservient to the clause in the Death Note, so I thought I might puzzle it out. And it seems that I was correct in my prediction about how these dimensions work." He then rolled his eyes upwards slightly. "But don't think that I've forgotten what you did to me. I'm not the type to lose a fight easily." There was a savage note to his voice, and Raito saw a hard look pass over the detective's face.

Oh great. And he still couldn't move properly.

Ryuuzaki sighed, directing his attention away from his beloved thumbnail and staring down at Raito again, the look as suddenly gone from his eyes as it had come. The recently deceased young man however, was now lost in his own thoughts. "You brought me to your afterlife to get revenge on me? What was the point in that? A better punishment would have been to let me dissolved, or whatever was supposed to happen. And how on earth, or wherever this is, did you manage it?" He was burning with curiosity rather than fear at Ryuuzaki's potential vengeance.

The detective shook his head, black bangs flying every which way in the process. "There are better ways to extract revenge, Raito-kun. Have you learned nothing?"

"Never mind that," dismissed Raito, heart rising at those words. Maybe there's a chance after all… "How did you get me here?"

"Well, it would appear that I have been sent to 'heaven', as some religions term it," Ryuuzaki began, eyes flickering upwards as he assumed the current position of storyteller, crouched meditatively on the turf. "I experimented a little to see how this 'heaven' operates. After all, what would be heaven for one person could be quite miserable for another. It would appear, therefore, that heaven is altered to fit the identity, habits and pleasures of the individual. As that individual's identity develops, so does 'heaven'. This place can reflect the living realm, or it can imitate the realm of the Shinigami, which I believe is a desolate place. The soul is a medium for life, but it is shackled by death, therefore it has its own realm. Its own area for existence."

Raito blinked. "The user of the Death Note can go to neither heaven nor hell… The soul of the Death Note user loses its ability to control the afterlife?"

"Or so I infer," replied L demurely. "I have no hypothesis as to how the Death Note drains that ability from the user, but that is irrelevant. You have proven my theories." There was a hint of satisfaction in his voice.

Raito stared. "So you just had to think about how you wanted your 'heaven' to be in order to get me here?"

"Precisely." Ryuuzaki stared down at him, eyes penetrating and immobile. Raito now felt positively uncomfortable.

"Does that have anything to do with the fact that I'm now lying here naked and unable to move?"

The look that burned across Ryuuzaki's face was genuinely priceless. It was as if the detective's features didn't quite know where to arrange themselves, and settled for a combination of blushing a deep scarlet, then paling, his eyes widening even further and his mouth flinching with surprise. The detective was at a loss for words, and Raito was trying to remember how to coordinate laughter. "I…It…No… that's what- That's just what happens to everyone after they die!" His response came out in an angry stream, leaving the detective unusually panting for breath and still flaring a bright pink across his cheeks. "Souls do not come fully clothed!"

"It was a joke, Ryuuzaki," chuckled Raito. He could feel some of his strength returning; almost enough for him to sit up. "Thank you." The sincerity in his voice was strident and caught the detective's attention instantly. "Thank you for not leaving me to the darkness, or whatever it was that I was going to."

"You're welcome," replied Ryuuzaki, thankfully returning to his usual stoic self, but his cheeks remained stained with a pink flush. "But yes, I have had to reconstruct my concept of 'heaven' in order to house your spirit here. If that construction wavers, you'll be dispersed and sent back to wherever you were intended to go. The only thing that holds you here is my willpower." He crooked one eyebrow archly, staring pointedly at Raito.

Raito blinked, realisation spreading even as his arms moved slowly to his sides, muscles flexing carefully and pushing upwards to raise him off the ground. "In other words, even though Kira killed you, you still won. I'm completely at your mercy here unless I don't want to drift in eternal nothingness." Oh how bloody cheery.

The look of triumph that flitted into Ryuuzaki's eyes was infuriating. "You won the battle, Raito-kun, but I won the war. You'd better make sure that I don't want to kick you out now, don't you?"

"What's gotten into you?" grumbled Raito, slightly miffed about the fact that somehow he had lost something. Why am I complaining? This has got to be better than an eternity of nothingness. Perhaps I can start again, and make him feel something. Perhaps I can atone for the sins that I committed through Kira. "I think being dead has given you a new personality. A more manipulative one, if possible." He curled his lip with mock disgust, swaying slightly as he fought to sit up straight. Ryuuzaki's arm was suddenly at his shoulders, steadying him. Raito frowned, nodding his thanks and then wishing he hadn't, as his head wobbled and ached, unbalanced.

"No. This is me, without the necessary screens." Ryuuzaki was watching him soberly. "I've now made a realisation. I misjudged you, Raito-kun. Back when you asked me for my name."

Raito's heart leapt, nerves suddenly scorching as if filled with fire. He felt his eyes widen and some pitiful expression approaching hope that he would otherwise have been ashamed of come to his face. "You're reconsidering?"

Ryuuzaki blinked. "Reconsidering? No, not at all. I've just realised that I overestimated you, Raito-kun. You didn't reject me at all. You just didn't understand my answer." The detective rocked back on his knees, sprawling backwards rump-first onto the grass, legs outspread before him and leaving Raito to the mercy of gravity. Thankfully the former homicidal maniac managed to steady himself, rather than forsaking what little dignity was left to him in his current unclothed and unstable state, which admittedly wasn't much.

"Didn't understand your answer? How do you mean?" A horrible feeling was passing into his stomach, leeching through his spine in cold waves. Had he miscalculated? Impossible! Yagami Raito didn't make mistakes like that. His interpretative skills were phenomenally high; higher than those of any other person he had ever encountered. But then again, this was Ryuuzaki that he was talking about. And, come to think of it, he hadn't been thinking very rationally at the time of their little conversation. Could it be possible that he had missed Ryuuzaki's meaning entirely?

"I mean, Raito-kun," said L softly, staring back at the other youth, confused and very much exposed before the detective. "I mean that I told you my name. You just didn't believe me when I stopped playing mental games with you. You asked me to be honest, and I was, but you were so busy looking for double meanings that you missed the first meaning that was staring you in the face." He paused, eyes locked on Raito's face, and writ with an expression that now blossomed into… affection? It was something gentle at least. An expression that Raito had never witnessed on Ryuuzaki's face outside of a plate of cake.

"My name is L, Raito-kun. L Lawliet. I told you my real name during our first meeting, and on our first meeting, I thought that you were the most fascinating being that I had ever encountered." He paused, staring pensively at Raito's face. His mouth worked as if he were rolling the words on the tip of his tongue, testing them out. The he hesitated. "I still do."

Raito didn't trust himself to speak. He was shaking so badly he could hardly stay upright, and this time it had nothing to do with the unfamiliar new body. His eyes were pinned by L's gaze. He couldn't rip them away, nor did he want to. L. L Lawliet. He told me his name, and I was too…stupid to hear it. That realisation ripped into him with all the shredding force of the bullet that he had taken earlier. And even after I killed him, killed him for crying out loud… even now he still… The thought burnt in his brain, scalding him internally and nearly wrenching a shriek of agony from his mouth.

"Ry-L…L…I'm so sorry." Raito felt something break in his voice. A sob of horror? "I..I can't believe that I didn't understand! How could I have missed it? I can't believe that I-" Frustration poured into his brain, and he bathed a tirade of self-loathing. How could I have made such a stupid mistake! He offered me the chance that I wanted, and I killed him for it! It felt as if all of the blood in his body had turned into fire, aching in his veins, strained with utter remorse.

"Everyone makes mistakes, Raito-kun," admonished L softly. "The only difference here is that you made a huge one." There was no note of accusation, no bitterness in his voice, and somehow that made it all the worse.

Raito closed his eyes, refusing to let angry tears fall. "I'm worthless. Completely worthless. I don't know why I prided myself on my intellect when it obviously doesn't exist," he spat bitterly. A sour taste clouded his mouth, filled his head with dull anger at his own failings.

"Don't be stupid," retorted L sharply. "Self-depreciating comments are too indulgent for you, Raito. Get a grip of yourself."

The detective leant forwards and prodded Raito sharply between the eyes, startling the youth into opening them. He was equally startled to see that the detective didn't withdraw after catching his attention. Large black pupils were steady, serious on his own. "This is not how I want you to atone for what you did," L spoke quietly. "I could not bring Kira to justice, but I can still make Yagami Raito see the error of his ways. Do you want to atone for what you were responsible for?"

"In any way possible," asserted Raito, forcing himself to steady enough to look the former detective, now no longer anonymous, head on. "L, I want to gain your trust and respect. I want you to forgive me for everything. Everything that I did. My faith in Kira was… blinded by my own faith in justice. I didn't even notice the twisting of my own beliefs."

L quirked an eye at the younger man. "Are you feeling alright, Raito-kun? I wasn't expecting you to cave so quickly." There was a more kindly note in his voice now, but Raito still wasn't sure that he should benefit from it.

"Never better," returned Raito. "I'm finally being honest with myself. And now, I want to make a start on appeasing you." He glanced to one side, not sure if he could look at L in the eyes. "I want to deserve the fact that you still view me as…fascinating."

He heard the detective inhale sharply. Knew that his eyes would have widened for a moment and then retracted stealthily to hide the flicker of vulnerability. Knew that the rules hadn't changed from their last mental bout. This one might be towards a different goal, but the game was essentially the same. Raito would try to be forgiven, would try to purge the last traces of Kira from his identity. Would try to deserve the detective's faith.

He had to ask. Had to know. "L, why haven't you given up on me? Why don't you hate me?" he asked plaintively, eyes searching the former world-class detective's features.

L blinked at him, lifting one hand to scratch his head, mussing up his tangled black locks even more. He pursed his lips, almost as if he didn't know the answer to that question himself. Then he answered, speaking slowly, as if mulling the words over even as he offered them. "I suppose it's because you are the first person that I've ever taken an interest in. The first person other than Watari to spend so much time at my side. I'm not used to human contact. Not used to anyone offering to feel anything for me beyond that of a comrade, and even then I seldom accepted those offers." He stared at the grass, fingers wrapping themselves around the thin blades. "I finally met an intellectual equal in Raito-kun, and more besides. I knew that…Raito-kun might not have understood what I had said to him. There was a very low percentage of possibility for that, but I realised it when… when I was dying. I saw you… you caught me, and then the other one, the other one inside of you, he grinned at me." He looked back up at Raito. "That was when I realised that part of you was Kira, and part of you was Raito, and that the part of you that was Raito had never abandoned me."

Heart pounding in his head, Raito felt as if every ounce of weight had drained from his body. Mustering up the new reserves of strength slumbering in his limbs, Raito forced himself to his feet, swaying terribly. L blinked up at him, then rose to help his former rival, but was caught instead by the downfall as the younger man slipped, staggering into the detective's arms. Embarrassed and somewhat dazed by the weight of L's words, Raito pushed himself upwards, hands on L's forearms for support. He could feel the detective's skin burning beneath him, could hardly dare to believe that after all this time he was this close. It still surprised him how warm the detective truly was. Hands pawed their way clumsily up to L's unmoving shoulders, resting there for balance. Raito leant the entirety of his weight onto the spidery L, eyes apologetic. "I'm sorr-" He was cut off as L fixed a heavy stare on him, and lifted one finger to the other youth's lips, silencing him.

"Your apologies, Raito-kun, are no longer necessary. Kira won the battle, but I won the war. You'll just have to acknowledge that."

Raito opened his mouth, half of him wanting to chuckle with disbelieving relief, the other half slightly annoyed that L had downplayed his part in the case so much. He was cut off most abruptly however, as L smirked in a most unexpected fashion, and bent down, silencing Raito's lips with his own, hands rising to cradle his face.

This was going to be a most interesting new game.

…………….

Wild-filly: Finally! Good grief, I've loved this fic! I want to thank absolutely EVERYONE who has read this, whether you've just found it or you've been a beloved, wonderful, faithful reviewer all the way through. Mind Games wouldn't have worked without your support and dedication, forcing me to stop wallowing in uselessness and write something. I cannot thank you all enough! My undying love and adoration to you all – if I ever meet any of you in person, I'll buy you an icecream. With sprinkles if you left a review (I jest – you can have sprinkles anyway).

I want to thank Lorekai for forcing me to write this fanfic. Mind Games actually started out as an exercise purely to see if I could make a pairing that, funnily enough, I don't believe could work, and actually do just that. I wanted to follow the manga as closely as possible, complete with its true ending and death scenes, yet still manage to twist a believable back-story into it. The afterlife sequence seemed to me to be the only way that I could achieve just this, and for once, I make no apologies if you didn't like it.

Love to you all.