Author's note: Random one-shot pieces based on symbolism in Death Note. Thanks to Scourge for the beta; I owe her one for sending her all the crazy one-shots.

Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note.

The Apple

The End of Creation

He was born of dust from God's own hand. His golden eyes locked upon the tree and the crimson fruit that hung from its branches. Eve was not there to take the first bite; the serpent was not there to tempt. Light Yagami hadn't needed a reason to taste the difference between good and evil. Boredom was motivation in itself.

He couldn't exactly say what it tasted like—death, he would say later, the blood pouring from his body as he crawled toward the Shinigami, his golden eyes flickering closed, losing sight of the great tree, of the flaming sword.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Avarice

It fell into his hands, handed to him by the god who tried so very hard to keep himself neutral, tossing it to the nearest victim. A golden star in his hands, reflecting the smile on his lips—the dark, treacherous smile.

They clamored towards him, the immortal goddesses, hanging on his every word. Who is the most lovely, who is the most divine? The decision of a mere mortal recreated the world of the gods. The world bent to his will. To be fair, it destroyed them—the world was his.

Chaos gave him the world, for the apple of discord had fallen from the heavens into his mortal hands.

Bones of the Truth

It seemed that L couldn't help but go through Light's trash. Light attempted to block out the thought of L's spider hands fingering through the garbage can. He showed the pile of cores to Light, with the gnarled, twisted stems reaching out like skeletal fingers.

The questions were bright in his raven's eyes, waiting for an answer. Light's golden eyes contained nothing but shadows of doubt; he remembered nothing of those crimson apples. He remembered nothing of what they had been in life, sitting on the grocery shelf, hanging from the tree.

All that was left was their dark bones.

Power

Light never understood addiction—even when he watched the demon writhe in the absence of the crimson fruit, begging for just one taste, just one bite, with his body contorting into jagged angles that would break any human's bones. He found it amusing, to watch the demon tortured under his own need; something in him found it humorous to watch.

To think that one fruit could cause so much pain—the sadist in Light couldn't help but smile.

Color

Against his hand it was red as blood, the blood he had never spilt, the blood that had never covered his hands, the blood that had not stained his fingers red. He hid the blood of his victims in the fruit's glowing skin—the sign of his guilt was in the flesh of the apple. Gods of Death did not have red hands; their hands were as white as snow.

It was the crimson skin that showed his guilt.

True Love

L, did you know Gods of Death love apples?

It was a lie, and he knew it. Love—what did the shinigami know of love? Obsession, desire, gluttony consumed the creature, manipulated so easily by a single fruit—but then, that was love, wasn't it? The puppet strings that bound one so easily to another, without the pretense of an apple between them?

Light knew that they wouldn't understand, but in the end, Ryuk's love was the only one that was pure and true.

Midnight Visions

The detective ate an apple once, and Light couldn't help but break into mad laughter. For in that moment, his eyes turned yellow and wings sprouted from his back; a Death Note was at his side, a jagged grin spread across his marble face. A blink and the vision was gone—the midnight eyes were blank as always.

Later, he judged it to be sleep deprivation, but he never was able to look at the detective the same way again.

Justice's Retribution

His glass coffin buried beneath the earth, his bone-white flesh hidden beneath the soil…. Light stood above the grave, an apple in hand, a single bite taken from its surface. The poison dripped out like blood from a wound.

To the fairest.

Threat

The bow was tight in his hands, the arrow stretched behind his ear; his eye locked on the crimson fruit balancing on the child's head. The crowd roared, the fame grew… the child with raven's eyes, the child with the snow white hair. So young, so inexperienced—completely unaware of the apple balanced so delicately upon his head.

The black eyes reflected a single arrow, knocked to the bow of the masked archer.

Cannibalism

Gift of the immortals, fruit of passion and youth. He felt it slipping away with each bite they took, his youth, his strength, his will lost upon the world as the apple was eroded by time and the hunger of men. He was being eaten away by the very people he set out to save.

All the while, the shinigami was laughing, watching as they tore the flesh from his skeletal fingers.

Rights of the Divine

It was what the dead consume. Starved, their transparent fingers reach for the scarlet fruit—so close within their reach. The taste of sin on their lips, they cried out for another taste, a taste for the life denied them. Light held the apple aloft as a beacon above their grasping hands, meant only for the gods to reach.

With his marble pedestal high above the masses, it was only the winged shinigami that dared to take a bite.

Failure by Misinterpretation

The eleventh hour, the eleventh trial, the apples hanging so innocently from the tree—his fingers twitched, his eyes narrowed. Nothing was without a price; no trial without adversary. He knew that much. And yet, the fruit was light in his hand, red as the blood in his human veins, as the setting sun in the west.

It wouldn't be until later, after the apple had been eaten by the grinning shinigami, that he would realize he was meant to be his own destruction. Light Yagami failed his eleventh task.

Kingdom of Death

Death came for him in a yellow warehouse, his face concealed by immortality, watching as the blood poured out of Light's wounds. In his hand rested a scarlet apple, half-eaten, accompanied by a death god's toothy grin.

"Damnit."