From the Same Star

"Leaves turned to soil beneath my feet. Thus it is, trees eat themselves." - David Mitchell

Ryuk the Shinigami does not have a heart.

No, that isn't quite accurate - technically, Shinigami do have hearts, but to call the shriveled meat behind the claws of his ribs such would be the truest form of bastardization. They aren't comparable to human hearts, in the same way Shinigami apples are not really anything that apples should be.

But even as far as the Shinigami go, he is not the romantic sort. Or else, he may have been at one time, in the beginning, but years of war and terror and death and boredomhave wrung it out of him.

The first time he drops the Death Note, it is an accident that it lands in the hands of someone as perfect for it as Light Yagami is.

That time, two souls collide like asteroids, each steadfast in their path and bent on destruction. They burst into a flurry of brilliant matter, crashing to the world around them and burning everyone close enough to watch. It's a battle, a meeting of minds the likes of which Ryuk has never seen.

Shinigami slide between worlds easily, and the alternate time lines are plentiful, and Ryuk has time to explore. He tries to drop it again, to let a random person within the same universe find it, but it's not nearly as entertaining.

And so, the next time, he finds Light again within the confines of another similar realm, and chooses him; he drops the note practically at his feet.

But this Light Yagami is different. Softer, weaker. He knows loss, compassion, responsibility, and work ethic. He resents his father and is almost aggressively average. Ryuk has to talk him off a ledge after the first two kills, and then he watches with glee, wondering what impact these changes will have.

...Not much, as it turns out.

Not much at all. Events spiral faster, more harshly, but they are familiar. L dies and Light holds him, but this time there are terrible screams as his spirit splinters. Even for Ryuk, it is almost painful to watch, because -

In this universe, the souls of L Lawliet and Light Yagami get to fall a little more in love with one another, before the world erupts around them.

So Ryuk flies onto the next world, one where Light wins but - of course - doesn't reallywin. He reigns over a new world and finds out that Gods taste only ashes, of the loved ones they've sacrificed and the cities they've burned.

The next is one in which Light gives up, where he loses and is forced to confess to the first L, the real L, the only one that matters to Light Yagami. In most, L dies first, but there are many in which Light is the first to pass. Once, they die in tandem, hearts giving out within seconds of one another. In another life, they escape their immediate demise entirely.

Yet, no matter the order, in every life, they die together.

Except for the one in which Ryuk just watches; he never drops any Note and just looks on as Light grows up, grows older, then stops growing at all. He commits suicide before the age of forty, and L lives on, until he doesn't.

They both die alone in that life, which is worse than the most gruesome end they meet in any other.

Ryuk the Shinigami does not have a heart, and he's glad for it, because if he did - watching those two creatures crash and love and burn and die again and again would be unbearable.

Ah, well. Onto the next. He's got an eternity, after all, and there's so much fun to be had.

A/N: Just a quick thing I was thinking of. Basically, I believe that the Dramaverse is just set in a slightly alternate universe and that most of the changes to Light and L's characters are justified. So, that inspired...this. Explaining why in the Drama, Ryuk clearly chose Light.

I was inspired by 25 Lives, by tongari.

-Nilah