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remix_reduxTitle: Shadow Play (The Crazy Bastard Remix)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
elwing_alcyone
Summary: Mikami doesn’t just lose his memories: he watches them fall apart.
Fandom: Death Note
Character: Mikami
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Death Note belongs to Ohba and Obata.
Original story: Out of the Shadows byarislanchan
Notes: Spoilers for Chapter 107.
The car door slammed behind him. Mikami lifted his head at the sound; it reminded him of something, something that might have happened recently, or perhaps when he was a child and impressionable. He tried to grasp at it, but it slipped away like a dream.
The reality was that he was caught, and the battle was utterly lost, and the perfect world he had been trying to build was turning back into the fantasy it had been before Kira had begun to judge. He didn't think Nate River would ever let the story be revealed, not even to the families of the dead. All of it would be concealed in the shadows and forgotten. Whoever created these things had made them so easy to lose.
Leaning back, he thought he felt the palms of his hands pressed against the edge of a desk, and jolted, trying to twist round and see. Gevanni turned round with a warning look, sit still and don't try anything, and when he did he felt only the seat.
*
He had expected the cell, and was not unhappy. Worship of a false god was a crime deserving of punishment. He wanted to be punished. He wanted this isolation and silence.
There was a great wreck inside him where his god had been. His mind had collided with itself so that the truth was crumpled and unrecognisable, the hateful knowledge that he had been so wrong. Was this what his life had been for? He had thought it so ordered, every decision so careful and measured, and it had come to this.
His hand clenched involuntarily. He wished he had been the one to write that name. It should have been his right, to eliminate that child who had been so... perfect. Perfect enough to pretend he was god. Perfect enough to lie to everyone and still be loved.
And what had happened to the real god, the one who had always judged the wicked as long as Mikami had lived? Why had he let the usurper take his place?
Perhaps he had never existed at all.
*
With the darkness came ghosts, half-dream, half-memory, though he kept his eyes open. He could see all his life before him, as if he were dying already: the precise way his mother’s fingers had flexed and interlocked as she rubbed in her hand cream, and how her hands had still been soft in the hospital room two minutes before she had died. He had always contrived, by some coincidence, to be nearby when his enemies were slain, to see all of them prone and broken and lifeless. Just like his former god.
And god had been so human. Human enough to beg. Human enough to crawl on the ground, scream and rave like a madman. Human enough to die.
He saw the warehouse, the blood. He heard the scratching of pen on paper and, almost, the last heartbeat before silence. He remembered the crumpled heap of white fabric –
But that hadn't happened, had it?
This was his memory playing a final trick as it deserted him, as Nate River, efficient and irreverent, destroyed the Death Note. His cell had the warehouse inside it, crammed in like an optical illusion, and he strained his eyes to see through the darkness as the body got up from the floor and stood straight. There was light pouring in through the high, grimy windows, the sunlight of a new world, the sunset ember-glow as it was burned away.
"Mikami," the voice said with a double echo. "Look around. What do you think this means?"
And he knew it wasn't real, that it was only happening in the seconds as the notebook and his memory flaked apart, turning to ash, disintegrating – and he knew this person had been a fake and had betrayed him – but he was still trembling with awe and adoration, still praying with the same fervour as before that he would be worthy. That he would be forgiven.
It was his own weakness that he would still do anything this arrogant boy demanded of him. He bowed his head and did not answer, and god laughed without joy.
God's footsteps echoed in the silence. "What would you do," he said, "if I asked you to write your name in the Death Note?"
The Death Note that was burning hot blue, curling in the flames. The ghosts of those whose names had been written inside were lifting free in the smoke. There was no Death Note to be written in any more, and the question was absurd, but he let himself accept it. God worked in mysterious ways.
"Write it," he said. "My life is yours."
"And if I told you to write my name?"
It was too much to ask for him to push down the blackening memory of that, the shinigami with his shark grin and lunatic, merciless eyes, and the shape of that name written down in the Death Note (which crackled and twisted like a live thing as the fire consumed it). The question had no reasonable answer, even for an unreasonable man.
He looked up at last to see who it was in his cell – the grey shadow wavering like smoke, the brilliance of their perfect world shrinking into a faint blue witchlight. God stood leaning over him with skin and hair black with dirt, eye sockets full of hot cinders, his right hand mangled and bloody. Mikami wanted to hide his face, but god's broken hand was reaching for him and he couldn’t look away.
"Yes, Mikami," god said, in a voice as insubstantial as ash, "with you by my side..."
But his voice fell away into nothingness, and his form was dissolving, even as Mikami scrabbled desperately after his vanishing memories. The warehouse was a ruin, breaking apart; Nate River was a blur of ghostly white; Takada was a trace of perfume and a smile with sharp edges; the notebook and pen were in his hands, crumbling as he tried to write the names of people long since dead, and...
It was gone.
But he could feel a hand still resting on his throat, on the pulse, feeling for something. Waiting. Counting to forty. Perhaps this was what he'd find after death: the nothing-touch of a dead god, a peripheral flicker of blue flame in a darkness outside time.
Author:
elwing_alcyoneSummary: Mikami doesn’t just lose his memories: he watches them fall apart.
Fandom: Death Note
Character: Mikami
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Death Note belongs to Ohba and Obata.
Original story: Out of the Shadows by
arislanchanNotes: Spoilers for Chapter 107.
The car door slammed behind him. Mikami lifted his head at the sound; it reminded him of something, something that might have happened recently, or perhaps when he was a child and impressionable. He tried to grasp at it, but it slipped away like a dream.
The reality was that he was caught, and the battle was utterly lost, and the perfect world he had been trying to build was turning back into the fantasy it had been before Kira had begun to judge. He didn't think Nate River would ever let the story be revealed, not even to the families of the dead. All of it would be concealed in the shadows and forgotten. Whoever created these things had made them so easy to lose.
Leaning back, he thought he felt the palms of his hands pressed against the edge of a desk, and jolted, trying to twist round and see. Gevanni turned round with a warning look, sit still and don't try anything, and when he did he felt only the seat.
*
He had expected the cell, and was not unhappy. Worship of a false god was a crime deserving of punishment. He wanted to be punished. He wanted this isolation and silence.
There was a great wreck inside him where his god had been. His mind had collided with itself so that the truth was crumpled and unrecognisable, the hateful knowledge that he had been so wrong. Was this what his life had been for? He had thought it so ordered, every decision so careful and measured, and it had come to this.
His hand clenched involuntarily. He wished he had been the one to write that name. It should have been his right, to eliminate that child who had been so... perfect. Perfect enough to pretend he was god. Perfect enough to lie to everyone and still be loved.
And what had happened to the real god, the one who had always judged the wicked as long as Mikami had lived? Why had he let the usurper take his place?
Perhaps he had never existed at all.
*
With the darkness came ghosts, half-dream, half-memory, though he kept his eyes open. He could see all his life before him, as if he were dying already: the precise way his mother’s fingers had flexed and interlocked as she rubbed in her hand cream, and how her hands had still been soft in the hospital room two minutes before she had died. He had always contrived, by some coincidence, to be nearby when his enemies were slain, to see all of them prone and broken and lifeless. Just like his former god.
And god had been so human. Human enough to beg. Human enough to crawl on the ground, scream and rave like a madman. Human enough to die.
He saw the warehouse, the blood. He heard the scratching of pen on paper and, almost, the last heartbeat before silence. He remembered the crumpled heap of white fabric –
But that hadn't happened, had it?
This was his memory playing a final trick as it deserted him, as Nate River, efficient and irreverent, destroyed the Death Note. His cell had the warehouse inside it, crammed in like an optical illusion, and he strained his eyes to see through the darkness as the body got up from the floor and stood straight. There was light pouring in through the high, grimy windows, the sunlight of a new world, the sunset ember-glow as it was burned away.
"Mikami," the voice said with a double echo. "Look around. What do you think this means?"
And he knew it wasn't real, that it was only happening in the seconds as the notebook and his memory flaked apart, turning to ash, disintegrating – and he knew this person had been a fake and had betrayed him – but he was still trembling with awe and adoration, still praying with the same fervour as before that he would be worthy. That he would be forgiven.
It was his own weakness that he would still do anything this arrogant boy demanded of him. He bowed his head and did not answer, and god laughed without joy.
God's footsteps echoed in the silence. "What would you do," he said, "if I asked you to write your name in the Death Note?"
The Death Note that was burning hot blue, curling in the flames. The ghosts of those whose names had been written inside were lifting free in the smoke. There was no Death Note to be written in any more, and the question was absurd, but he let himself accept it. God worked in mysterious ways.
"Write it," he said. "My life is yours."
"And if I told you to write my name?"
It was too much to ask for him to push down the blackening memory of that, the shinigami with his shark grin and lunatic, merciless eyes, and the shape of that name written down in the Death Note (which crackled and twisted like a live thing as the fire consumed it). The question had no reasonable answer, even for an unreasonable man.
He looked up at last to see who it was in his cell – the grey shadow wavering like smoke, the brilliance of their perfect world shrinking into a faint blue witchlight. God stood leaning over him with skin and hair black with dirt, eye sockets full of hot cinders, his right hand mangled and bloody. Mikami wanted to hide his face, but god's broken hand was reaching for him and he couldn’t look away.
"Yes, Mikami," god said, in a voice as insubstantial as ash, "with you by my side..."
But his voice fell away into nothingness, and his form was dissolving, even as Mikami scrabbled desperately after his vanishing memories. The warehouse was a ruin, breaking apart; Nate River was a blur of ghostly white; Takada was a trace of perfume and a smile with sharp edges; the notebook and pen were in his hands, crumbling as he tried to write the names of people long since dead, and...
It was gone.
But he could feel a hand still resting on his throat, on the pulse, feeling for something. Waiting. Counting to forty. Perhaps this was what he'd find after death: the nothing-touch of a dead god, a peripheral flicker of blue flame in a darkness outside time.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-22 03:53 pm (UTC)Beautifully written, particularly his thoughts on Light and Near, and... gah. :3
I really love it, thank you so much! ♥
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-28 02:38 am (UTC)