Abstraction

A Death Note Fan-fiction

Disclaimers: I do not own Death Note, Another Note, or any of the derived characters. As a matter of fact, I don't own anything in this except the storyline, which is mah babeh!

SPOILER WARNING FOR BOTH THE END OF DEATH NOTE AND ANOTHER NOTE!

So, yeah, people are going to get mad at me for this, and I'm going to take an overused DN idea and re-work it in a (hopefully) new way, so… we're going to have fun. Beware the darkness! Rated over 16 for graphic description and such, but I trust you know what you can handle.

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Page One: Awakening

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Five days before he had met Nate River face-to-face.

Five days before Mikami had killed himself.

Five days before he himself had died.

Was that when it had all begun?

He couldn't remember anymore.

All he knew was that it had to have been his conscience haunting him. L was dead, and that was all there was to it. And the fact remained that no one else had seen the hunched figure watching him, with his eyes wide and staring and his thumbnail in his mouth.

L.

Ryuuzaki.

Ryuuga.

No matter what you called him, the fact that he was still dead didn't change. Once, he held the key to death in his hand. But there was no key to life.

Amendment to that statement – there was no key to the recovery of one's own life. Life was like a poker game, he supposed – a game with Death, who had a poker face impossible to read. Every time you encountered a dangerous situation, you had to show your cards. The ante was your life, lying out there in the middle of the table.

Beat Death's hand, and you get to collect your winnings – you may not be unscathed, but at least you live.

Death's hand beats yours, and he sweeps your life off the table. That's the end of it.

However, he supposed that he had been one to beat Death, but not in the 'defeating' sort of way most people viewed it. More like he beat Death in a race – killing people before Death got to them.

Kira.

Kami-sama, he had been called by some, most loudly by Mikami.

Yagami Light, the man… or rather, the boy, who had beaten Death in that race for the lives of the evil. He was dead himself, and he knew that. Ryuk had promised him that, in the end, he would die with his name inscribed in the pages of the Shinigami's Death Note.

No big deal.

Truly, it was no big deal.

But the pain… the pain had been unimaginable those last few moments of his life. Shot, by Matsuda of all people, and forced to escape only to die like a dog.

But now the pain was gone…

…wasn't it?

No.

No, it wasn't.

It was beginning to return again. God, the pain. He felt as though he was having that heart attack again in reverse. And the bullet holes were beginning to burn again. Ryuk had said that he couldn't go to Heaven or Hell, so was this what was waiting for him for the rest of eternity?

The pain began to become so great that his vision went white, painful in and of itself after the black nothingness that was all he had been able to see. Searing pain in his arms, his chest, his legs, his back, and his head. Everywhere he could think of hurt.

And Yagami Light, after three days of being dead, woke up.

--

It was only appropriate.

Near sighed a bit and closed his eyes as the car he was in slowly made its way towards the graveyard. He hadn't had a chance to visit Mello or Matt yet, and hadn't visited L in a very long time. Years, in fact. Now that the Kira case was finally over, what with Light's death, it was only fitting that he at least tell them that it was done.

L needed to know that he had been right. Well, L was always right, but he felt the need to tell him, confirm his 100 percent suspicions, and tell him that it was all over.

Kira was dead.

It was all over.

Near sighed a little and looked down at the three roses he held in his hand – red, yellow, and white. Sometimes, he regretted the fact that he and Mello and, subsequently, Matt had been on such bad terms. After all, as children of Wammy's House, they were almost like a family – albeit the most dysfunctional family he had ever seen in his entire life, what with the bitter rivalries and the pointing guns at each other thing.

Honestly, he had nothing against Matt. Yes, the guy had been Mello's lap dog, and yes, it had been highly pathetic, but it didn't change the fact that Matt mainly followed Mello because he needed someone with Mello's aggressive, over-bearing personality to follow. Matt had never desired to be L, and if Mello was an unorthodox L-prototype, then Matt was an unorthodox Watari-prototype.

The car slowly rolled to a stop outside the graveyard and Near opened the door, making his way up the path to a large stone mausoleum. He walked past the rows of above-ground graves, twisting around a number of corners before reaching a large steel door set into the white marble of the wall.

Reaching into his back pocket, Near produced a keycard and swiped the magnetic strip through the lock. He then entered in his keycode on the keypad beside the door and waited for the hydraulic locks to deactivate. He then waited for the huge, heavy door to slide open before making his way inside, reflecting on the sheer paranoia around L's body.

This room was originally supposed to house L's body, and his alone. There were, however, five graves in the room – four in a four-line star pattern around a large L carved into the stone floor, and one back in the corner, just out of sight but within reasonable distance. When Near had discovered that they were merely going to bury Mello in the main graveyard and dispose of Matt's body completely, he had raised such hell about it they hadn't had much of a choice but to put both of them in the room with L. The room had been renovated for the changes, and Watari had actually been moved from his plot to the crypt, kept in the corner just out of sight but not out of reach, as he had always been in life.

The first grave, just under the 'L', was the body of the man who used that same letter as identification. On the stone slab laid above his tomb was the same 'L' carved sharply into it. To his left was Mello's body, with an 'M' carved into the top slab. Above the 'L' was Matt's body, with a blank slab laid over his corpse. And to the right of L's body was an empty grave with the letter 'N' carved into it.

After all, everyone had to die sometime.

But Near knew that something was wrong the instant he stepped into the room. Something was very, very wrong. And upon reaching the center of the marble room, it wasn't hard to discover what the problem was.

It wasn't just his future grave that was empty, with the slab laying propped up beside it.

The four graves around the 'L' were all empty.

And they were all completely clean.

--

Pain, cold, stiffness, and soreness. Those were the first three things that Light was aware of as he laid in the dark, the bullet holes in his body burning and his heart beating so quickly he felt as though his chest would burst.

Calm down.

What the hell was going on here?

He slowly cracked one eye open, just a little, to gauge the amount of light in the room.

Too much.

He quickly shut his eyes again.

Continuing the mental chant of 'calm down', Light attempted to breathe and try to take in his surroundings without opening his eyes. Either the pain was beginning to slowly subside or he was growing numb to it due to the cold. However, the reason didn't matter – what did matter was he was beginning to be able to think again, and that was the important thing. Now, what could he tell about his surroundings without looking at them?

He had already established that it was cold, so that wasn't something didn't need to be stated again. He was on a bed, and there was a bright light hanging right above his head. And something… something smelled terrible. Rotten. Like… dead flesh that had been left alone for far too long.

Oh, God, was he in the same room as a corpse?

Now he had to fight to keep his gorge from rising in addition to trying to assess his surroundings. While death didn't bother him, the bodies, after too long, did.

Wait…

He was dead, wasn't he?

Was that smell coming from him?

The thought was enough to force Light to open his eyes, an action he immediately regretted. It was bright, too bright. Blindingly so. He turned his head to the side and pain shot from the base of his skull down his spine, spreading out through his limbs.

Look.

Look at your surroundings, dammit.

He managed to adjust his eyes to the light and looked down at himself. He was wearing his best suit, which he could only assume he either had been or was going to be buried in – blood had begun to soak through the material, leaving it glossy under the fluorescent light. As far as he could tell, beyond that his appearance was perfectly normal.

Movement in the corner of the room caught his eye. "You're awake," a quiet voice commented emotionlessly. "I was beginning to fear you'd never stop screaming."

He knew that voice.

Wincing, Light forced his head to slowly turn towards the source of that voice.

Impossible.

It couldn't be.

"Welcome back, Yagami-kun," L said quietly from his place in the corner, his fork poised over the slice of cake in his hand. "How are you feeling?"