Chapter Text
The first time was in a cold stairwell in late January.
He had been Kira for just over five years. He was successful, he'd out lived L, his father had died believing his innocence. He might not have been very close to his mother and sister, he might have hated his fiance, had no close friends other than a Shinigami and spent most of his time trying to out smart a literal child. But he had made something of himself and of the world! Kira had been something. Kira had meant something to so many people. They thought about their actions, they tried to be better. Because of him.
And He had been on track to do more. Go further. He had been so close to ending all opposition once and for all!
Dying in a stairwell from multiple gunshot wounds as Ryuk wrote his name in a Death Note was not, in fact, what he had planned for himself. But...there he was.
No heaven or hell, Ryuk had said. He had a moment to wonder than what other option there might be. But only a cold, aching moment.
With his last breath, Light Yagami looked up, and for just moment, L was looking back at him, a golden light shrouding his hunched shoulders.
Too weak to even properly feel angered, Light closed his eyes to numbing darkness.
~
"Yagami san."
Light opened his eyes to the brightly lit interior of his high school literature class. Familiar faces staring back at him. Mr. Sato in anticipation, the students around him in varying states of amusement, boredom, and envy.
He had been here before. He felt...
This was...
Almost on autopilot, Light stood opened his book to the right page and read. Just as he had before, only now he felt nothing but confusion instead of the hollow nothingness that had been his life before.
Before.
Before...
...Before...
He turned his attention back to the window once he was seated again and the class resumed. It wasn't long before he saw. The Death Note. Falling from a clear sky. No window above them, no tree nearby. As though it had fallen from the heavens themself.
The bell rang, and, in a daze, Light followed the same path as before. Outside, to the small garden, among the bushes and well hidden from the casual passersby. The Death Note looked and felt exactly as it had before. Smooth, cool, full of potential.
This...this was happening. This was really happening! He could do it again!
No.
Light grinned down at the innocuous black notebook, knuckles white and heart pounding. No, not again.
He could do it better!
And he had.
Light made it fifteen years that time. He had kept L alive for longer. He had planned how to actually handle L's little trio of noisome children. He knew the moves to make to, the steps to take, do it right. The things he should have said or done the first time around.
Such as, not killing Raye or the FBI agents. Not killing Naomi Misora. Not acting so suspicious when L had their home wired. He went about as he had before he found the book. He had managed to handle Misa better too. She couldn't prove he was Kira if she never saw him. He managed to stay off her radar and to help point L in the right direction.
She had been tried and executed well before she had even tried to find Light. Leaving him without the blame and even Rem did suspect he'd had a hand in it.
Of course the killings didn't stop when Misa died. She quickly became a martyr.
And when the time came he kept his distance from Takada and Mikami. All he had to do was not reveal himself as Kira to Takada, though Mikami was harder to shake. But Light couldn't take the risk fo letting even his most loyal follower in. He had died because of Mikami and his incompetence. It would not happen again!
Ryuk wasn't any help. He claimed to have no memory of before. When Light had informed him of his past Ryuk had simply shrugged and said, "Yeah, it happens like that sometimes." Most annoyingly it seemed that no matter how many times he brought this up to Ryuk, the Shinigami was incapable or remembering they had already had that conversation.
Irksome. But not the end of the world. It meant he also knew how to handle Ryuk from the get go. No needing to rely on him for answers.
Fifteen years, and then a fanatic Kira supporter got him while he was walking to his car alone one evening.
Light didn't blame him, really. The public knew that the task force was still active. That they were and always would, still be looking for Kira.
In his last moment's Light confessed to his attacker, forgave him. The world faded, cold and numb once more, though this time he was held close like something precious.
For the second time Light closed his eyes into death.
~
"Yagami san."
Light opened his eyes to Mr. Sato. To the fall light streaming in through tall windows and a classroom full of students waiting to see if he would, for once, screw up and not be able to answer a teacher's question.
He didn't even need his book when he rose to recite the passage.
Another book. Another Light. Another life.
Another Ryuk who didn't know, and couldn't retain, any information of Light's pasts lives.
Another L and another game of cat and mouse.
Light laughed to himself as he worked out how to be a better Kira. He now had two lifetimes to pull from. He knew the mistakes of fifteen years. And there were some things he wanted to change to.
Ryuk said that no Shinigami could accurately tell if one human died from having their name written in a Death Note, unless it was their own. So Light set Misa up again, only this time he had her make a huge spectacle of it from the start, controlled her actions for weeks until she killed herself in a public display.
Kira all but disappeared. Light worked from the shadows in secret. He was more circumspect. Hitting larger figures all over the world.
L still thought something was up. But no one else seemed to care enough to pursue another Kira case after the pattern ended with Misa's death.
Light lived until the age of eighty seven in that lifetime. He never married. He had no children. He worked at the NPA and played chess with L online most nights.
One night he laid down, thinking of his next moves in his and L's latest game. A smile on his face.
~
"Yagami san."
Light opened his eyes and stood up in a new world, ready and eager to keep playing.
~
"Yagami san."
It was nice to be seventeen again. And again. And again. And again. Especially after lifetimes where he lived to be old. To have vigor. Vitality. To know he was getting to do it all over again. Better than before.
He wanted that.
He did.
It was...a blessing wasn't the right way to put it. But who hadn't thought of what they might do, might accomplish, if they'd only been able to go back in time and do it all over again.
And Light had that!
He was ready to get at it again. Try knew things. Be a whole new version of himself.
Though...
Maybe he didn't want to be Kira...not just yet. He still got the notebook. Ryuk showed up and Light explained that he wanted to wait until he knew exactly what he wanted from such a lofty totem.
Light graduated high school, then To-Oh. For grad school he transferred to an American school, just to shake things up. Only then did he open the book and get to work.
Grad school gave him a freer schedule. He was more connected to what was going on in the world other than the measly happenings of the Kanto Region of Japan. It meant that when L got involved he had a much harder time pinning anything to one single country, let alone a single small region of a tiny country.
Through his connections at the NPA and his own recruitment offers from several American law enforcement agencies, it was easy for Light to work his way into L's good graces. He was perhaps the least suspicious in this lifetime than any before it.
It was perfect.
For years Light traveled between America, Japan, and Europe working on the Kira case with L. He got to see parts of the world he had never experienced in all his other lifetimes.
what number was he one?
five?
No...nine.
...eleven, maybe?
It didn't matter.
He was happy. L and he had a great relationship this time around. Friends from the start. There was no tedious game. No secrets. Other than that big one!
L even introduced him to a colleague of his, Miranda Night. A detective who worked smaller jobs in London. She wouldn't get involved with the Kira case no matter L's urging. She worked on missing child reports, said they were stressful enough.
She liked the planetarium and walking in the rain.
She had long ash brown hair and striking green eyes, and she made a joke about Light's and her names within the first minute of meeting him.
Eleven lifetimes and Light had never actually married.
Eleven lifetimes with only a single human friend and strained relationships with his family.
Yet when he and Miranda kissed it felt right. It felt right to walk with her as she scoured the London area for odd knickknacks to fill her flat. It felt right to follow along beside her as she explored all that downtown Tokyo had to offer.
And if felt right to stand beside her one spring afternoon, surrounded by cherry blossoms as they recited vows to each other.
Miranda Night had been right. And after the wedding Light dug a hole in the foundation of their home in London, placed the Death Note inside, and encased it in cement.
It was a good life. Perhaps the best so far. They never had children. Light still wasn't sure it was something he wanted, and luckily Miranda was of the same mind. She loved his family and even spoke with Sayu several times a week.
Kira had stopped killing, in truth the killings had stopped well before the wedding. It had slowed when Light and Miranda met and then...just tapered off. Otherwise L might have gotten suspicious of the timing. As it was they celebrated a year without any killings just four months before Light and Miranda's first wedding anniversary.
"I suspect that guilt is what did it," L had said, stirring far too much sugar into his coffee. They were at Light and Miranda's house in London, not too far from L's own. L had his shoes off, knees pressed to his chest in the comfortable velvet chair Light had insisted they keep in the kitchen for him, even though it didn't match the rest of the dinette set. The dining chairs weren't as comfortable for how L liked to sit.
Light smiled, "I suspect you're correct. I imagine Kira committed suicide."
L nodded, "they deserved justice. But I suppose we can't be too picky. The killings stopped. That's what matters."
"Indeed." Light lifted his own cup and together they drank to peace.
When Miranda became ill they moved to Japan. She had no living relatives in London, or elsewhere. Sayu demanded that they buy a house near her own. His mother made them dinner nearly every night. Sayu went with them to the doctor appointments. His father sat with him when Light was too out of sorts with worry to function.
L spent more and more time in Japan to visit.
It didn't matter in the end.
The funereal was lovely. And Light was hollow.
Standing there, surrounded by the scent of dying flowers and sobbing, Light felt all of the lives that came before.
Heavy.
Suffocating.
Miranda was gone and she wouldn't get a second life.
Light would.
When he died this was all going to start again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
He couldn't.
He didn't want it...
Ryuk showing up as L helped Light into the car to drive him back home was....fitting.
He returned home, followed Sayu, his mother, his father. Followed closely by L. They did small homey things.
There was food to eat.
Light didn't eat.
There were gifts to go through.
Light left them on the table, claiming it was too soon to read condolences. He would get to it later.
He never planned to.
Instead he excused himself early, went up to his room, sat at Miranda's vanity and wrote a letter. To his family.
But mostly to L.
He had been Kira all along. He told them about the Death Note. Where to find it. He apologized for all the chaos he caused. For lying.
He apologized for leaving them like this.
He didn't want to face tomorrow.
But tomorrow was always going to come.
Maybe it would feel a little better without the shadow of his wife over his shoulder...
It only took a little convincing to have Ryuk write Light's name in his Death Note.
Just before he closed his eyes the door opened.
L's figure filled the doorway.
Light closed his eyes and tried to feel at peace.
~
"Yagami san."
Light opened his eyes....and nothing was the same.
It wasn't better.
It was intolerable.
He didn't want to do this again.
He didn't want to be Kira.
He didn't want to be Light.
On a cold fall morning Light stood up from his desk and, leaving his things in his literature class, simply walked out of the school.
It was the shortest life he had ever lived.
~
Another life.
And another.
And another.
And there were motions that he went through.
And there were choices he could make.
There was always, always, always, a Death Note.
Even if he didn't touch it.
There was always a Kira.
Even when it wasn't him.
life.
Death.
Repeat
Repeat.
Repeat...
....repeat...
~
His lives didn't stack on top of one another. They all started in the same place, there were only minor things that changed between one life and the next. Like, Light's room being painted a sunny yellow in one life, or a dull beige in another. Or Sayu being a year older than she was initially. Nothing big.
It was always the same private school he woke up in. the same house he went back to. The same room. The same everything. The memories of one life flowed and merged together. Overtime they started to feel distant. His first life left so far away. Even the last one started to fuzzy over the longer he enmeshed himself in a new reality.
Light had never actually lived as a teen. Did the things one does at whatever age he was. He had mimed it all before. A play for L. His best audience.
But doing it all for real? No way! He was better than that.
Above it.
He tried it out for real now.
Getting good grades was easy. He had taken all the tests so many times before. He didn't even need to think about it. So long as he had good grades his parent's didn't give two damns what he was actually up to.
Light took the Death Note and burned it in his backyard.
When someone started killing Japanese citizens willy nilly he simply...ignored it.
Light watched the news broadcast of Misa Amane being arrested for being Kira through the window of an electronics's store. He had friends now, a group of stoner kids he would have seen as wastes of space before. They were eating chips and sharing a soft drink between them, bundled in scarves and mittens to keep off the cold. Light felt...well, light. He giggled, and then the others laughed too.
"A pop idol was Kira all along?" one of them said. Meg, or Hana.
Light shrugged. "What sort of world are we living in?" It was rhetorical. They knew it.
They moved on down the sidewalk and never spoke of it again.
Light went to work as a software developer. He made a hell of a lot more money doing that than he ever had as a cop or detective. He had a decent relationship with Sayu, he saw his parents once a month for dinner.
If he wasn't happy, he at least wasn't spiraling into depression.
It was his first lifetime without L...
At the age of 44, when a car swerved over the median and hit him head on, he didn't even have time to feel regrets or worry about the next life that was sure to come.
It was the closest thing to peace he'd ever felt.
And when his name was called once more,
Light Yagami opened his eyes.