AN: Kind of in the same universe as I'm Not Okay (I Promise), but they're basically unconnected, so you don't have to have read that one to enjoy this one.

This story takes place when Light is 21 and is working as L and Watari but hasn't yet officially joined the police force, and Sayu is 18 and has started college.

This was just a random idea that popped into my head while watching the second opening of the anime, and wondering about the blue roses there.

And I just kinda really enjoy watching Light lie to people, lol.

Blue Roses, White Lies

When the Task Force entered Light's apartment, there was a bouquet of white roses resting in a glass vase on the coffee table, their syrupy sweet scent permeating the room.

Aizawa sighed, closing his eyes and rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Light, if you're going to buy flowers for Misa, please don't keep them on the table where we work."

"I didn't buy them for Misa," Light said, closing the apartment door and following them into the living room. "She'd get mad at me for buying her any color but red, anyways. Apparently red roses signify passionate love, so I'm supposed to buy them for her on romantic holidays."

"Then what are the flowers doing there for?" Aizawa asked, gesturing to them in exasperation.

"I…" Light looked away. His voice was quiet. "I was planning on going to visit Ryuzaki's grave."

"Light," Chief Yagami said gruffly, resting a comforting hand on his son's shoulder.

Matsuda grinned. "I think that's a great idea, Light!"

Aizawa blinked. "I see." He rubbed the back of his neck, sighing. "I'm sorry for snapping at you, Light. I guess I'm just stressed. We aren't exactly getting anywhere, after all."

"I know," Light said. "That's part of why I wanted to visit Ryuzaki's grave. I want to apologize for the lack of progress we've made, and remind myself why the struggle is still worth it." He walked over to the table, carefully picking up the vase of white roses. "You're right, though, Aizawa—they're in the way here. I'll move them."

"Hey, Light," Matsuda said, bending down slightly to look at the glass vase, pointing to it. "Why is the water blue?"

Chief Yagami sighed. "Light…"

Light held up the vase to the light streaming in through the window so Matsuda could see better. "Did you know that if you put white flowers in water with food coloring, the flowers will become that color?"

"Wow, really?" Matsuda said, looking at him with a grin. "That's so cool!" He straightened, turning to look at the rest of the Task Force with bright eyes. "Can we leave the roses on the table while we work? I want to see them turn blue!"

Aizawa's brow was furrowed. "Why are you dying the flowers blue?"

"Look!" Matsuda said, delighted, pointing to one of the white roses. "It's starting to turn blue at the edges of its petals!"

Light looked down at the roses, rearranging one of them to make the bouquet more even, fingers moving carefully to avoid the thorns. "White roses just seem a bit too normal for Ryuzaki, don't you think?"

Matsuda's eyes widened. "You're right, Light!" He smiled. "Blue roses would fit Ryuzaki much better, since they're so unusual!"

"Yeah, I guess," Aizawa agreed. He sighed. "I guess you can keep them on the table, if there's room."

Mogi was setting the documents of information they were going through on the table, rearranging them so there was space in the center. "There's room," he said, gesturing.

"Very well, then," Light said, setting the vase back down in the center of the table. "Just try not to knock into them, Matsuda."

"I won't!" Matsuda promised, sitting down on the couch, rubbing the back of his neck and chuckling awkwardly. "I'm not completely incompetent, you know."

"Well," said Chief Yagami, glancing at the roses for a moment before sitting down and picking up one of the documents. "Let's get to work."

"Huh?" Misa said when she danced into their apartment, stopping to lean down and stare at the vase of roses. "What are these for?"

"For leaving on Ryuzaki's grave," said Light, closing the door behind her, straightening out his shirt that had become slightly wrinkled when she'd hugged him.

"You're leaving flowers on Ryuzaki's grave?" Misa repeated, blinking.

'Huh?' Ryuk said as he slipped through the door, unperturbed by the fact that Light had just closed it in his face. 'Why would you do that?'

"It's all about appearances," Light said. "The Task Force needs to stay convinced that I'm mourning Ryuzaki's death, otherwise they might become suspicious that I'm Kira."

"Oh," Misa said, while Ryuk cackled behind her. "That makes sense." She threw her arms around Light's neck. "You're so clever, Light!"

Letting him go a moment later, Misa skipped back over to the flowers, examining them again. "But why are they blue?"

'I don't think I've seen blue roses before,' Ryuk agreed, gliding over to look at them closer. 'Is that natural here?'

"No," Light said, straightening out his shirt again. "Matsuda found some blue food dye in the cabinet when he was looking for the coffee, and put it in the water when I wasn't looking. Apparently he'd heard somewhere that it would change the color of white flowers, and he wanted to see if it actually worked."

Ryuk cackled. 'Humans sure are interesting!'

"Matsuda's so funny!" Misa agreed. "I miss having him as my manager—my current manager is super boring. Like, I don't they could possibly have found a more boring person in the entire world." She sat down on the couch, reaching out to carefully brush her fingers over one of the dyed blue petals. "The blue is kinda pretty, though."

"I suppose," Light said.

Misa leapt up from the couch and ran over to throw her arms around him again, laughing brightly. "But red is far more beautiful! Isn't that right, Light?"

"Of course," Light said.

"Yay!" Misa cheered, before pulling away, smiling at him coyly. "And I suppose I'm okay with you giving flowers to someone else, since it's Ryuzaki and he's dead and all."

Light straightened out his shirt again.

Sayu was walking home from university when she spotted Light walking along the sidewalk with a bouquet of roses.

"Light! Brother!" she called, grinning as she ran to catch up to him. "What are you doing here? Who are the flowers for?"

He looked over at her, offering her a smile. "I'm headed over to the cemetery, actually."

"The cemetery?" Sayu asked, blinking. "Why?"

"To drop off the flowers, of course," Light said.

"Liiight," Sayu whined, shoving him in the shoulder. "That's not an answer!"

Light laughed gently, teasing. "I answered what you asked."

"But not what I meant!" Sayu said. She looked at the roses again, furrowing her brow. "Do we know anyone who's died? And why are the flowers blue?"

Light didn't say anything for a while, watching the sun lower behind the buildings, casting the busy street in shadow, vehicles and pedestrians moving past them, cars honking and people talking on their cellphones.

"Brother," Sayu said again, tugging at his sleeve.

Light sighed, shrugging slightly. "I don't have a good answer, Sayu. Why don't you come with me and I'll show you?"

"Huh?" Sayu said, blinking. "Okay." She laughed, then. "You're so odd sometimes, Light!"

Light chuckled with her. "I guess so."

The cemetery was a large one, no buildings obscuring the horizon, and the setting sun cast a deep gold glow over the headstones. The sounds of the city became more distant as they walked while the sound of their footsteps grew louder.

"You seem to know where you're going," Sayu observed, as Light's steps never hesitated.

"Walking through the cemetery is a shortcut between my apartment and the grocery store, so I pass through here often," Light said, finally coming to a stop at a headstone topped with a cross.

"Huh?" Sayu said, taking a step closer to look at it. "There's no name."

"Exactly," Light said, crouching down to place the bouquet before the grave. "I encountered this unmarked grave on my walk, and I thought I would pay my respects." He stood back up, hands in his pockets as he looked at the headstone, the blank spot where a name should be. "Don't you think it's sad, Sayu? That whoever is buried here had no family or friends to remember them, nothing to show that they ever actually existed? Nobody to care enough to even inscribe a name and epitaph? No 'A Loving Son' or 'A Loving Sister' or anything else. This person was nobody to anybody."

Sayu stared at him with watery eyes, then back down at the grave, the gray stone bathed in honeyed sunlight. "That's why you bought the roses?"

"Yeah," Light said, still staring at the base of the cross. "I just figured that whoever is buried here, no matter what kind of person they were, deserves to have flowers placed at their grave at least once, right? Even if it's by a complete stranger. Every life is significant, and everyone deserves to be at least respected, even if they're not remembered. We can't disregard the dead simply because they're nameless; we can't afford to let the dead become simply numbers just because there's so many of them."

Sayu nudged him in the arm. "Okay, Mr. Justice and police-officer-to-be. But you still haven't explained why the roses are blue."

Light smiled slightly, turning away from the grave to look at her. "Do you remember how we used to dye white flowers when we were younger, Sayu?"

"Of course!" Sayu said, laughing. "Like that one time we dyed that bouquet that Dad was going to bring to his friend's wedding—he got so mad at us for that!"

"It was in the name of science," Light reminded her.

"Yeah," Sayu laughed. "Even though we'd done it before, we had to make sure it worked with all the different colors, and then we had to try mixing them. And Mom kept trying to hide the food coloring, but you always figured out where it was." She grinned at the memories.

"Yeah," Light agreed, still smiling softly as he looked back at the grave. "So I dyed them, because…" he trailed off, chuckling slightly.

"Because white flowers are so impersonal and boring, right?" Sayu finished for him, grinning. "I'm pretty sure I was the one who convinced you of that."

"Yeah," Light said again. "So the flowers are blue because of you, Sayu. You have nobody to blame but yourself."

Sayu's laughter was cut off when a cold gust of wind, sweet with the scent of roses, made her shiver. "I should head back. Mom might start worrying if I take too long."

"Do you want me to walk you back?" Light asked.

"Ever the gentleman," Sayu teased, nudging him in the arm again. "Don't worry about it, Brother. It's not that far back to the house, and your apartment is in the opposite direction. Besides, however evil Kira is, it can't be denied that it's safer, now, since criminals are scared of being killed."

"Yeah," Light said, and sighed. "My moral compass doesn't know what to make of it. And the police have stopped opposing Kira. Does that mean, when I become a police officer, that I'll be working on the same side as that murderer?"

"Well, then, once you're a police officer you can work on catching him, Light!" Sayu said, patting him on the shoulder. "You're probably smarter than he is, anyhow."

"Thank you, Sayu," Light said. "Stay safe on your walk back. And remember that you can always call me if you need help with anything, okay?"

"Of course!" Sayu said, turning to walk back through the cemetery the way that they had come, waving over her shoulder. "See you later, Brother!"

"It's November 5," Light said to the grave, once Sayu had disappeared beyond the rows of headstones. "Three years since I killed you."

His lips pulled away from his teeth and his eyes glinting. "I'm so close to becoming the God of the New World, L. But I'll take my time; I don't need to force my rule over the world. There's nobody openly opposing me now, and soon enough they will all be begging me to become their God."

He laughed and nudged the bouquet with his foot, causing the ribbon tying them together to loosen, the roses spilling haphazardly over the grave. "Those are for you, L. Make of them what you will; you would know better than to believe any explanation I gave you, anyway."

He turned away from L's grave, then, and started walking back through the cemetery towards his apartment, the evening light around him slowly turning more and more blue.

END.

AN: Why Light actually dyed the roses blue is, of course, open to interpretation. I mean, one of the meanings blue roses are supposed to signify is love, so if you wanted to you could think of that as the reason. That's not why I think he dyed them blue, though, as I don't think Light is the type of person to care a whit what flowers and flower colors are supposed to signify.

His reasons were, in my mind, either sadistic, uncaring, or a little bit of both. Honestly, I think he just found the blue food coloring in his cabinet when he was looking for something, and he'd already bought the white roses because they're a funeral flower, and he was just like "why not" and put the food coloring in because he was so bored, and explaining why he had blue roses is more of a challenge than explaining why he had white roses. And at the end I think he was sadistically pleased by the thought that L would have been confused by the action, and that he found it cruelly ironic that he, L's enemy, was the only person leaving flowers at his grave. So it was kind of a mocking, sadistic act of faux-kindness, and a childish rub-your-failure-and-death-in-your-face kind of sentiment.

Admittedly, I have an interpretation of Light's character that's a bit colder than how most people seem to interpret him.

Still, though, the point of this story wasn't actually him bringing roses to L's grave and why he actually did it - the point of this story was to show his acting and lying skills, and how he kinda adopts a different persona depending on who he's with, and how he never really ever tells the truth. (Not even to the dead.)