God in the Shadows

This was it. Finally. Everything she’d always wanted, she would have it in only a few moments’ time.

She watched quietly from a few feet away. The once yellow grains had turned red from the blood, and the woman screamed in agony as she writhed in it. If another human were to see this, they would surely panic because something was obviously going wrong.

But this was all according to plan. She’d written that the woman should come here, far from the village where no one would find her, have her child here, and then die from the blood loss. There was no way to stop it now.

Finally a baby’s cry filled the air and she felt something leap inside her, like something had sprung to life in her hollow chest. She smiled as she mused over the thought that it had been her heart; she would have liked to have had one.

The woman had begun to cry, looking down at the baby between her legs. With a few frantic sobs she tried to reach the child, but the pain took over and she started to scream again. Within minutes, she was dead.

The shinigami stood over the corpse, observing the strange blank look in the woman’s eyes. There really wasn’t anything left in them when they died, was there? The poor things didn’t live very long.

But that was going to change now! She looked down at the crying baby and pulled a black notebook from beneath her wings, dropping it to the ground. In a moment, the baby’s flailing arms touched it and the deed was done.

She bent down and lifted the child in her arms—wriggling and screaming with fear of this new and foreign world. A quick glance proved the child to be a boy and she smiled widely.

“My son,” she whispered half to herself as she stroked the baby’s face. “By human standards, you have a long life ahead of you, but I will make sure that you live forever.”

Earlier that day, she had wandered into a human house and found a calendar. She wanted to remember the year so that her human son would know how long he had been alive, and how long he had survived his human weaknesses. The year was 1326, and on that day, the shinigami named Aionc had adopted a human baby as her own.

After seeing a human woman smiling in pure bliss at her children, Aionc had wanted nothing more than to be a mother for centuries, but shinigami did not have children. A year ago, the loneliness became too much and she created this plan. She found a pregnant human and watched over her, helping her along in any way that she possibly could to ensure the child’s safety, and then killed her shortly after giving birth. The humans who eventually found her would realize what had happened and assume that the baby had been carried off by an animal.

But there was one problem. Aionc couldn’t bear the thought of her son dying after only a few decades like all other humans, so she had thought of a plan for that too.

Only a few years later, the Black Plague made its first appearance in China.

XxXxXxXxX

When the lightning struck, all the lights went out. Nobody saw Rem as she moved across the room and passed through a wall. Moments later, Watari collapsed on the screen before them, and a minute or two after that, the great detective L had fallen from his chair.

Light Yagami, the master behind this plan had held the detective until those dark eyes finally closed. He had done everything perfectly, and as he tucked Rem’s notebook underneath his shirt, he summoned false sorrow to his face.

Soon he was named the new L, and the world was his. Everything that L thought he could hide from him would be discovered if he wanted to. The investigation team said that they couldn’t find L’s real identity even after his death, but all Light had to do was look in the Death Note. One glance and the whole story could be revealed.

But for some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to open the pages.

Yet, even now, at the time of his own death, Light couldn’t help but wonder what it might have said. His mind raced over all the possibilities, but couldn’t find one that suited the strange man. After all, what kind of word could possibly describe him?

As he laid there on the stairs he barely noticed the blood flowing out of him. He was seemingly unaware of the solid bullets that had nested inside his body, feeding off of him. Here he thought he could be alone but he still wasn’t sure why exactly he’d come to this place. He could have gone anywhere, and it had taken so much to break through the door and climb these stairs. He couldn’t even remember why he had done it.

“You’re a fool, Light,” A voice echoed somewhere in the empty space. “A silly little boy who thought he could play God.”

He heard a soft clatter and his eyes turned down to find a Death Note had been thrown on the floor before him. The lettering on it looked different from his own or Misa’s; in fact, it was a Death Note he’d never seen before.

“It takes more than a weapon to be a god,” the voice continued slowly, calmly. “There lies your downfall.”

A shuffle of feet, and Light raised his eyes to see a silhouette in the shadows. A shape that seemed so familiar he didn’t think he would ever forget it, yet he was still trying to place the identity of it. He didn’t need to puzzle over it for long as the figure stepped into a beam of sunlight pouring in from a window.

He must have been imagining things.

L’s dark eyes glowered down at him. “Would you like to know your first mistake?”

Light stammered, his tongue refusing to work properly. He managed to get a few nonsense syllables with some effort, but he didn’t know what he was trying to say anyway.

“You rely far too much on your own assumptions,” L started again, lifting a reprimanding finger. “You always said that I was too paranoid, but now I am alive and you’re dying. Instead of finding proof of safety, you assumed safety. You assumed that I didn’t know anything about the Death Note. You assumed that the shinigami were your allies. You assumed that I was dead, despite that you only saw my body for all of three seconds and never checked my pulse. You let your confidence get in the way, Light.”

Here there was a pause, and Light tried to imagine how this could be possible. L smiled at him, that odd curve to his mouth that proved he was pleased with himself, and sat down on the stairs.

“Funny little building, isn’t it? I asked Ryuk that when he wrote your name down, he would have you come here. It’s one of my favourite places. Do you know what it was before?” he didn’t wait to listen for an answer; he knew that by now Light’s body would be beginning to shut down, leaving him with less than ten minutes to live. “It was first a very small hut where a fisherman lived, back when Tokyo was just a little village named Edo. I didn’t have a home then, and his daughter, Kaho, had taken a liking to me. So she talked her father into taking me on as his apprentice. Me, a fisherman! Can you believe it?

“I lived there a long time, and enjoyed it greatly. Kaho and I became very close, and there came a point in time when she told me that she was carrying my child. Her parents were outraged because we weren’t married, and when she had a miscarriage they finally realized that in the ten years I’d been there I hadn’t aged a day; they decided that I was a demon who had cursed the house. I left and returned a week later to apologize, but the house had been burnt to the ground and Kaho was long gone. You’d think I hated to be reminded of it, but I still find this place surprisingly soothing.”

“Th-tha—” Light tried to speak again, but he tasted the blood in his mouth, blocking the words. Still, L seemed to understand.

“Yes, that was a few centuries ago. After Edo Castle was built in 1457 the village grew more and more, becoming less of a fisherman’s village and more of a military town. Does that sound strange to you?” L smiled a little more and reached out, touching his fingertips to a small pool of blood that had gathering around Light’s elbow. “Of course it does. You’ve only lived for a little over two decades so you can’t possibly understand what I’m saying, but I have been here for centuries—in fact, I’m only a few years short of seven. You thought you were the first of your kind, a human with a Death Note that could rule the world behind the name of Kira, but I’ll tell you now the truth behind your childish game.

“My mother was a shinigami, Light. She was one of the ancients; she invented all the laws of their world and understood them perfectly. From the time she picked me up as a baby she knew exactly how she would ensure that I lived. Do you recall the Black Plague? She created it, killing off millions to raise her own lifespan so that when the time came she could sacrifice herself and give it all to me. Even if each one of those people had just one year left of life, I still have millennia before me.

“And what am I to do with all my time? I quickly realized that I could never have a family, as my children would quickly grow old while I remained the same—I suppose my body plans to stay behind with me as time moves forward. I couldn’t live in the world that you know because I’m no longer a part of it, but I can still rule it.

“Any person’s death that altered the course of the world was caused by my hands. Hitler, Rasputin, Henry VIII—I killed them all. With many deaths, spread out and seemingly natural, I ruled the world in shadow without anyone knowing of my existence. I knew that if I killed too many at once, people would know that it was not coincidence, but the world had become such a violent place.”

He smiled and his dark eyes shifted to the dying teenager beside him. “That’s where you came in.

“With the experience of centuries of life, I’ve come to know the human mind very well. Becoming a legendary detective, gaining power over law enforcement all over the world, and remaining completely anonymous was far easier for me than you can imagine. I searched the records of schools to find a genius, and I found many, but I was looking for someone like you. You aspired for justice but were cold and distant from your peers; I dug a little deeper to discover that you had a connection with the police and I knew you would be the one.

“I had Ryuk—an old friend of my mother’s and my guardian for years—deliver a Death Note to you, concealing it from the eyes of all others. He reported to me regularly and I was delighted by your early enthusiasm. You took out all the pests in my garden for me, broadcasting yourself at the same time. The world had someone to point the finger at so all I needed to do was let you do my work and then wipe you out. I’m the hero again.”

There, L reached up to brush the hair from Raito’s eyes, smearing the blood on his fingertips to his forehead. “Do you realize your greatest mistake yet?” He checked the watch on Raito’s wrist; he still had four minutes.

“I suppose I’ll just have to tell you,” he sighed after hearing a wheezing breath escape Raito’s mouth. “You had to be a star. You couldn’t be content with just ruling the world; you had to put yourself on a pedestal for it to bow to. But a man standing on a pedestal is easy to shoot down.

“Death is a dark art to work with—surely even you realize that—and dark arts have no place in a spotlight. Even behind the name of Kira, you aren’t beyond anyone’s grasp if you flaunt that name in public and announce that you’re controlling everything. People don’t like to be controlled, Light.”

He glanced at the watch again. “I suppose we’re almost out of time. I should let you know how you failed so tremendously before you die.

“Though Rem was not entirely in my control, she was still willing to help me. Her feelings for Misa were genuine, so she obeyed me only as long as Misa was not in danger. Regrettably, it was Watari’s death that killed Rem. He was a clever man and he was beginning to notice things that could have destroyed us. She acted on her own behalf, and had I known, I might have stopped her. But we all knew what you were planning and I realized that I was supposed to die at that moment too, so I acted.

“You had yourself hell-bent trying to uncover my name and kill me. And there lies the greatest part of your first mistake—your assumptions. You see, you only assumed that I had a name.

“My mother was a shinigami. They simply come into existence rather than being born, and they name themselves. She waited for me to find my own name, but that had to wait until I could speak of course. According to Mother, the first sound I made was that of an L, so that was what she called me until I had given myself a name. But you see, I’m so picky about that sort of thing, that I’m yet to choose one.

“This,” he bent down and lifted the notebook, tapping Light’s forehead with it. “Can never kill me.”

L glanced at the watch once more and realized that his time for chit-chat was ending. He stood and stepped off the stairs, turning to look into Light’s eyes as he spoke.

“This whole time you’ve been convinced you were a god, but the truth is that I am the god of this world, and you’ve merely been a pawn in my hand. Think of intuition, déjà vu, instinct, and emotion—forces that you can’t see, like a feeling in the back of your mind. You can’t grasp them physically, most you can’t even explain, but they drive you forward. Why? Because it’s me.

“I’m the voice that whispers in your ear when you sleep, and you obey me blindly and without even knowing that you’re following orders. The media, the laws, even the advancing technology of the world all goes through me first and I can plant any messages that I like. You might not believe me, but that’s only because you don’t believe something you’ve never imagined.”

Light felt the last of his life draining out of him, his dying mind barely able to register the information. Could he really believe that he’d been played as a fool all along?

“You should have stepped back into the shadows,” L whispered to him as the darkness engulfed him. “A real God of Death can never exist in light.”

And then all went black.

XxXxXxXxX

I watched the entire anime series and I was thinking back to it all. Light never sees L’s body except for at his death and afterwards “hallucinates” and sees him in the headquarters, then again at the end while he’s dying on the stairs he sees L standing in the shadows. An idea came to mind: “What if he’s not imagining it?” I had a lot of fun coming up with the answer and I liked thinking that L was a dark genius all along :D So I pumped this out and I’m rather pleased with it.

In case you’re wondering, I got the name Aionc from ancient Greek. According to Greek mythology, the original being was Chaos and if you look at how it’s spelt with Greek letters it looks like it says “Aionc”. I like the name because the word chaos in itself suits a shinigami, but also because she was supposed to be one of the very first shinigami. Little fun-fact :D

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