Author Notes: All the miscellaneous, superfluous symbols in Death Note always amused me while they simultaneously made me shake my head. So I wrote a psuedo-satire about them. With the prompt "Fish". It turned out more serious than I expected.

genre: semi-satire? parody? friendship? crackish?

disclaimer: disclaim'd

characters/pairings: L, Light, Sayu

spoilers: entire manga.

Symbol
by scelerus animus

- o -

When Sayu Yagami turns ten, she gets a pet goldfish for her birthday. It is small and pretty with a long tail that fans out like the flowing skirts in her mother's closet that Sayu wears to play dress-up.

While her mother clears the table of leftovers and her father sits down to read a work report, she tries to carry the fish bowl up to her room by herself. She trips on the third step. Water sloshes onto the carpet and the goldfish zigzags through the water like a ricocheting bullet. As she falls, clutching the slippery bowl in her small arms, the only thought running through her mind is Oh no, I must save Yoshi!.

She doesn't fall. Light catches her—holds her until she regains her balance.

"Sayu," Light chides calmly, "you must be careful. You're lucky I was here. You do not want hurt the fish."

She looks over her shoulder at her brother. She blinks at the light from the hallway framing Light's head in a bright ring. Her brother is fourteen and looks like a hero—tall and handsome and brave—to her. She smiles a wide, gap-toothed grin at him.

"Thank you, nii-san!" she says. "You saved me and Yoshi!"

Light returns her smile, and it's bright and dazzling, just like all the knight-in-shining-armor boys in her shoujo manga.

"Just be more careful next time, Sayu," he says and pats her head, playfully mussing her hair.

* * *

When his mother asks him to get Sayu for dinner, Light knocks a few times and calls her name, but she doesn't answer. After he opens the door and enters, he realizes the fish is the only living thing in the room besides himself.

Figuring she is probably in the yard playing, he moves to leave, but the fish—Yoshi—catches his eye, and he pauses.

The fish's eyes are black and protruding, and stare unblinkingly at him. It's an odd sight. Normally, the fish is swimming rapidly through the bowl in jagged, aimless paths. Not that the fish has a lot of room to move, but Light suspects the fish is rather retarded, nevertheless.

For a moment, the fish's unnatural stillness unnerves Light. Then he shakes his head, mentally scoffing. It's a stupid fish.

He shuts the door and doesn't think about it again until a week later when Sayu runs into his room, crying hysterically, and jumps into his lap. With a soft grunt of surprise, Light drops the pencil he held. It rolls over his desk as he wraps his arms around Sayu. His chair scrapes against the carpet as he pushes away from his desk.

"He's dead!" Sayu cries into his school uniform shirt. He can already feel faint dampness of her tears soaking through his shirt to his skin.

Later, he stares at the fish floating belly-side-up in the fishbowl. Its white belly peaks out of the water and glistens—slick and unnatural—under the fluorescent light. Once again, it is motionless. Its body is turned toward Light; its inverted head pointing at him. The water is faintly misty, and the rest of the dead fish's body is blurry, but its eyes are not. Glassy eyes stare emptily at Light. Black and protruding and dead.

This is not the first dead animal Light has seen. Light has even seen numerous pictures of dead human bodies—he wants to be a detective, after all—and hasn't gotten queasy since seeing the man with his head blown off by a shotgun. Shotgun-man was all gristle and bone and blood, while the fish—the fish is just a dead fish.

But as he looks at the fish, a nauseous, sickly feeling settles in the pit of his stomach—as if something gnaws at his insides.

Light jerks when the door the creaks open behind him and the queasy feeling dissipates. Head bowed, Sayu shuffles inside, still sniffling quietly.

With a gentle "Come on, Sayu," he patiently helps her extract the fish from the bowl, wraps it in a piece of cloth, and flushes it down the toilet.

He shows Sayu, his little sister, how one must take care of the dead as well as the living.

* * *

Four years later, Light glares with frustration at his computer monitor in a hotel room-cum-temporary-headquarters. He has reached a momentary dead-end with his last lead.

Matsuda is sitting next to him, eating chips and not accomplishing any work, either. This doesn't make Light feel any better, because Matsuda usually is quite useless when it comes to research on the computer. Matsuda cheerfully tosses another chip in his mouth, and the crunchcrunchcrunch grates on Light's nerves.

"Matsuda, can you not do that at the work station?" Light grits out. "You may mess up the keyboard with crumbs."

It doesn't matter that L always has various foods with him wherever he is working, including at the computers.

"Hmm, Light-kun?" Matsuda says distractedly, not even looking at Light. In fact, Light notes irritably, Matsuda has been staring at L across the room for the past several minutes.

"He is rather weird, you know…" Matsuda comments, frowning slightly and completely ignoring Light's words. He leans closer to Light, whispering conspiringly. "His eyes sorta creep me out. They're kinda like…" Apparently forgetting about subtlety, Matsuda wildly waves his arms around as he searches for a fitting description.

"Fish," Light says and starts a little. Brow furrowing slightly, he wonders why he picked that analogy.

"What?" Matsuda says, face scrunching briefly. "No."

He gestures again, hands flapping absurdly, and Light leans farther away before he accidentally gets hit.

"Bug-like," Matsuda whispers animatedly, loudly. "And I swear they don't have pupils sometimes. Just, you know—all protruding and black. Creepy."

Light pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs.

* * *

Not far from the University, there is park with a small lake. After their Literature and Symbolism class ends, Light and L—Ryuuzaki—end up taking a walk in the park. He is not sure how that happened, but they silently walk around the lake until they stop on a small bridge and watch the koi fish swim.

The weather is mild, and a slight breeze flutters pleasantly through Light's hair. Sunlight plays off the water, and dozens of colors dance freely across the surface—the white-yellow of the sun, the powder blue of the sky, the vivid oranges and yellows of glinting fish scales. As they flash in and out of sight, Light only catches glimpses of the fish.

He narrows his eyes at their sleek bodies. Something curls in his stomach, settling deep in his belly, heavy like a stone and slimy like a—a—

Light glares down at the water.

"You will not win a staring contest with fish, Yagami-kun," L remarks.

Light's gaze snaps to the detective. His glare remains. Then he sighs and shrugs. Forces his taut muscles and rigid bones to straighten and relax. Light does not know why he is strung up so tightly. Probably from dealing with Ryuuzaki all day at University, Light reasons with a slight mental scowl.

"People find symbols in everything they see," Light says, "and most of them are useless."

"Symbolism is vapid art form in pop culture," L agrees nonchalantly. Light nods absently. Both of them prefer the precise beauty of deduction and logic and fact. Symbolism is not a game—does not need to be solved. Interpreted, maybe, but interpretations usually spiral down into debates on the subjectivity of everything, and nothing concrete is accomplished.

Light thinks about Misa's excessive collection of crosses—bejeweled and glinting and dangling from lazy necklaces and silver earring hooks—and grimaces.

"In Western culture, the fish is a well-known symbol of Christianity—Jesus Christ," L comments nonchalantly, rubbing his bare right foot against his left calf. His shoe remains empty and neglected on the ground. He bends over the bridge rail and peers impassively at the zigzagging fish.

"Koi fish, normally," L says, "represent good luck."

Light raises an eyebrow.

"You do not need luck," Light says dryly. Neither of them do; they are geniuses; Kira will not be caught by luck.

L doesn't say anything for a moment, and Light's eyes shift over to him—his hunched form, hand shoved pockets, eyes black and unblinking.

Then he says, "Yagami-kun is right, of course."

He blinks finally and turns to face Light, smiling faintly.

Five months later, Light catches L as he falls from his chair, a heart-attack ripping through his chest. L dies in Light's arms, and Light smiles triumphantly and screams devastatingly and does not think about Ryuuzaki's eyes—glassy and black and dead.

Sayu returns from Mello's captivity silent and unresponsive. All she does is gaze blankly out the window all day. She is not dead, but she is mute; a sheen of moisture always shines across her eyes from staring so long without blinking.

Light does not know what she sees, and by that time he does not particularly care what she sees.

* * *

Sayu stumbles a lot—getting out of bed when she can be persuaded—walking up and down the stairs. Light is not there to catch her.

Soichirou Yagami's last meal is grilled salmon lightly seasoned and decoratively served by his caring wife.

Light's meal is the same, only lacking his mother's touch.

These meals are not unusual. Fish is a large part of a normal Japanese diet.

Everything dies eventually.

* * *

Sayu outlives everyone she knew during the time of Kira.

She is no longer mute, but her words are soft and few. Her smiles make up for it, however—endless and brilliant.

On her tenth birthday, she gives her granddaughter a goldfish.

- Owari -

End Notes: Comments? Constructive criticism?