A/N: This story is almost completed in on my computer. It has short chapters but I'll be updating as quickly as I can until it's all uploaded. Ghostie LxLight for teh win!

Funeral

Deep in the earth, through that regular six feet of soil, there is the place composed purely of heavy silence. Where what crawls eats and then with a sigh everything falls back. All the nails, all the sallow skin; no scrabbling at the splintered wood along the narrow crevices, only a thick tangle amongst the thronging harvesters of nature.

In an unmarked grave, in a country far from his birth and all that had ever touched him, known him, nurtured him; a faceless, nameless few. And now he is faceless too, eternally nameless; the corpse of L Lawliet. There is a dark coil somewhere which knows this name, on the lips of the wind which roars around this solitary place.

Only once, one last time, was there a flesh upon this place. The murderer who dug his nails into the soil, screaming without restraint, a mangled, confused cry while his hair tangled in the wind and caught his eyes. His fingers plunged deep into the earth, the dirt catching under his nails. The skin that was scratched from this man's hands is in this earth. It can taste him. It remembers.

Light screamed violently that day. His words sounded distant to himself; they were separated and distorted to his brain. They were wrong, his numb mind conceded, so very wrong. They didn't mean anything. They were the dust in his throat and he let the possession leave him, trembling down through him into the earth bellow. Then he was calm, limp, far receded inside his shell.

He had straightened up and walked away. The young man taking practiced steps through the graveyard. Dressed in his handsome suit.

When he had arrived home he had taken off that flattering, fitted clothing and had scrubbed at his nails; driving a fine brush under to remove all the dirt. It washed down the plug-hole; an angry mouth in the midst of a pure water vortex.

He leant forward to press his head against the glass and ran his fingers through his hair and his breath misted against the clear surface. Then he withdrew and the mark slowly disappeared from the mirror. And slowly the years faded away.