Fic post: Statistics and Tragedy
Sep. 23rd, 2009 12:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darklunaTitle: Statistics and Tragedy
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Light, with a little Ryuk
Warnings: Umm, it came out really introspective?
Word Count: 864
Notes: Another Light plot bunny, for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
dn_contest's "numbers" prompt. Thanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
vashti for her usual sanity check!
I. Statistics
In the early days, Light read almost all the message boards. People understood, much more quickly than he had expected them to, what his vision was for the new world. "See, Ryuk?" he'd say, as if the shinigami were arguing with him, though he never did. "The world was ready for Kira."
The only time he was ever tempted to post something himself was in reply to someone who didn't understand.
You people are idiots, it said. Idiots and sheep. You think mass murder is just fine because it's people you think should be dead? This is the mindset that made the Holocaust possible. How many dead will it take before you see that? A hundred thousand, a million? They're dying to feed one man's ego. One man's lust for power. You all disgust me.
As Light read, he felt his face starting to freeze in a rictus of rage, as ridiculous as Ryuk's clown's grin, and he clenched his fists and forced himself back into a semblance of calm. It was easier than when the man who'd claimed to be L had smirked and called Light evil. He didn't even look toward the notebook this time.
Ryuk laughed in his stuttering cough, and the small annoyance that prickled through Light made it bearable, somehow, that some nameless, faceless person out there could be so wrong and still live and breathe.
"Of course there are people who can't see it," Light said with an airy acceptance that was, by now, only partly feigned. "That's the only motivation they can understand. Kira is... more than that."
"Is that so," Ryuk said, and laughed again.
Kira is egoless, Light imagined typing. He would have to be, to take the burden of these deaths onto himself. He's doing it for you.
The names, neatly written on pages not from this world, months of them already, and they would grow for years. The foundation of the new world in densely packed characters, like bricks, each name a building block.
The world is rotten, Light would have written. It has to be rebuilt from scratch. Any rebirth is painful.
II. Tragedy
It was the name he didn't write himself that Light regretted the most.
There was triumph, earlier, mixed with a reeling dizziness that skirted the edge of pain, when he held the notebook in his hands again and the memories flooded back in great gouts, filling his mind to bursting, it seemed.
"Are you okay?" L said, and Light was disoriented for a moment by the fact that the dead man sitting next to him was speaking. He could only afford a moment's pang, there and gone too quickly for him to name the emotion that prompted it. There was too much to be done, too much already in motion.
Light mouthed some excuse about how unbelievable it all was, hardly knowing what he was saying. His mind raced, memories slotting back into place, the plan he'd so carefully constructed growing back into being from the ground up.
It took time for the other pieces to move into position. Higuchi toppling, swept off the board; Ryuk and Misa, Rem and L. They all behaved as Light had expected, playing out their roles as if reading from a script he'd written.
And yet, as L fell, clearing the way for Kira—for Light—right before his eyes, even as he flung himself forward to catch him, Light remembered saying, what felt like forever ago, If you'd been smarter, this could've gotten interesting... He didn't think of it again in the whirlwind of activity: the secret burial, the debates about how to proceed, the inevitable conclusion that he should play the role of L.
Weeks later, he stood alone at the window, looking out over the city lights, the faint hum of electronics around him like the engines of a great ship carrying them all forward to a world unlike any that had ever been known or made. It was his world to remake, but for this moment, Light didn't feel eager. He felt... annoyed.
Disposing of L had been vital. He could not possibly argue otherwise, not even to himself. There would never be a threat like him to overcome again; only the shifting of the world toward accepting Kira, and why was it so slow, and damn L for being the most challenge it could offer, and damn him for that pigheaded refusal to see what was best.
It was the ghost of that old restlessness the notebook had mostly dispelled, he decided. He'd cleared every hurdle easily, effortlessly, and stood now on the winning side of the finish line, looking back at everyone else still struggling. L would have been close enough behind him to make the victory mean something.
He laughed, and imagined the bitterness leaving him in that short, sharp breath. Slow as they are, you haven't won them over completely yet. There's no tedium in building brick by brick, name by name, not when you know how high this wall will reach someday, and what the view will be like once you achieve it. Any rebirth is painful.
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Light, with a little Ryuk
Warnings: Umm, it came out really introspective?
Word Count: 864
Notes: Another Light plot bunny, for
dn_contest's "numbers" prompt. Thanks to vashti for her usual sanity check!I. Statistics
In the early days, Light read almost all the message boards. People understood, much more quickly than he had expected them to, what his vision was for the new world. "See, Ryuk?" he'd say, as if the shinigami were arguing with him, though he never did. "The world was ready for Kira."
The only time he was ever tempted to post something himself was in reply to someone who didn't understand.
You people are idiots, it said. Idiots and sheep. You think mass murder is just fine because it's people you think should be dead? This is the mindset that made the Holocaust possible. How many dead will it take before you see that? A hundred thousand, a million? They're dying to feed one man's ego. One man's lust for power. You all disgust me.
As Light read, he felt his face starting to freeze in a rictus of rage, as ridiculous as Ryuk's clown's grin, and he clenched his fists and forced himself back into a semblance of calm. It was easier than when the man who'd claimed to be L had smirked and called Light evil. He didn't even look toward the notebook this time.
Ryuk laughed in his stuttering cough, and the small annoyance that prickled through Light made it bearable, somehow, that some nameless, faceless person out there could be so wrong and still live and breathe.
"Of course there are people who can't see it," Light said with an airy acceptance that was, by now, only partly feigned. "That's the only motivation they can understand. Kira is... more than that."
"Is that so," Ryuk said, and laughed again.
Kira is egoless, Light imagined typing. He would have to be, to take the burden of these deaths onto himself. He's doing it for you.
The names, neatly written on pages not from this world, months of them already, and they would grow for years. The foundation of the new world in densely packed characters, like bricks, each name a building block.
The world is rotten, Light would have written. It has to be rebuilt from scratch. Any rebirth is painful.
II. Tragedy
It was the name he didn't write himself that Light regretted the most.
There was triumph, earlier, mixed with a reeling dizziness that skirted the edge of pain, when he held the notebook in his hands again and the memories flooded back in great gouts, filling his mind to bursting, it seemed.
"Are you okay?" L said, and Light was disoriented for a moment by the fact that the dead man sitting next to him was speaking. He could only afford a moment's pang, there and gone too quickly for him to name the emotion that prompted it. There was too much to be done, too much already in motion.
Light mouthed some excuse about how unbelievable it all was, hardly knowing what he was saying. His mind raced, memories slotting back into place, the plan he'd so carefully constructed growing back into being from the ground up.
It took time for the other pieces to move into position. Higuchi toppling, swept off the board; Ryuk and Misa, Rem and L. They all behaved as Light had expected, playing out their roles as if reading from a script he'd written.
And yet, as L fell, clearing the way for Kira—for Light—right before his eyes, even as he flung himself forward to catch him, Light remembered saying, what felt like forever ago, If you'd been smarter, this could've gotten interesting... He didn't think of it again in the whirlwind of activity: the secret burial, the debates about how to proceed, the inevitable conclusion that he should play the role of L.
Weeks later, he stood alone at the window, looking out over the city lights, the faint hum of electronics around him like the engines of a great ship carrying them all forward to a world unlike any that had ever been known or made. It was his world to remake, but for this moment, Light didn't feel eager. He felt... annoyed.
Disposing of L had been vital. He could not possibly argue otherwise, not even to himself. There would never be a threat like him to overcome again; only the shifting of the world toward accepting Kira, and why was it so slow, and damn L for being the most challenge it could offer, and damn him for that pigheaded refusal to see what was best.
It was the ghost of that old restlessness the notebook had mostly dispelled, he decided. He'd cleared every hurdle easily, effortlessly, and stood now on the winning side of the finish line, looking back at everyone else still struggling. L would have been close enough behind him to make the victory mean something.
He laughed, and imagined the bitterness leaving him in that short, sharp breath. Slow as they are, you haven't won them over completely yet. There's no tedium in building brick by brick, name by name, not when you know how high this wall will reach someday, and what the view will be like once you achieve it. Any rebirth is painful.
