Author's Note: I found my account sorely lacking in Mikami fics, and he is pretty cool, even if I don't write him often. Also a somewhat spin off to "Shadow of the Valley" on my co-written account, somewhat as in it doesn't have to be read in order to understand this.

Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note.

"Deep in human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic"

Dune, Frank Herbert

Mikami met God in a yellow warehouse filled with corpses. He remembered the day well because although he had explicit instructions from God as well as the more vague orders and duties that come to the prophet he had never seen God's face before that moment.

And, later he reflected, it was the only time he'd ever truly seen God's face. God had a face like humans, a face that appeared human, but that face wasn't a face at all. It was a mask, one that could change with such subtle precision that only a God was capable of. There were times when God appeared little older than a child, a grinning beaming innocent child with delight trapped in his eyes, at other times He appeared a dying inhuman creature that had been trapped in crippling mortal flesh.

God's eyes danced like flames, and only once, only once had he ever seen their true steady glow.

It was hard to remember that moment, he often wondered how Moses had felt when confronted with the burning bush. Had he woken up blinking his eyes unfocused and the world dim trying desperately to remember the face in the flames?

He remembered the sight of the young man with auburn hair and golden eyes as he looked over the child with his watch counting down, and the world tumbling down around him. But this was not the true face, not God's true face at all, only a mask that wore a wolfish grin.

They were shaking, cowering before him, even in their false confidence they sensed that this was truly the end and that God had come for them as He promised he would.

"One."

The word echoed against the rusted steel of the fans and the flecked yellow paint on the walls. The bodies began to fall.

The grin faded and He only stared, His face expressionless and His eyes empty and distant. He didn't look as Mikami clambered through the door into the yellow rusting warehouse, He simply stood his arms at His sides, in the silence, in the dark.

Mikami often described God as having no expression in that moment, but he also reflected and thought that this was perhaps a subtle lie. The truth was that he could not name the expression on God's face because it wasn't a human expression.

(He once asked the Shinigami Ryuk if he could name the expression and the thing had looked down upon him with that same grin that God himself had been wearing in that yellow box.

He laughed a grating wretched rusted sound and said, "It's Mu."

And that was all.)

Mikami thought of himself as a prophet, after all he had killed in the name of God, he had destroyed and deleted for God, he had wiped the wretched from the Earth for God but there were times when he wondered if he spoke for God.

There were times God simply looked at him with those golden eyes as if he were incapable of understanding anything as if he were merely a child's plaything to be used and abused until it lay broken and wasted amid the pile of other broken toys. It was at those times that Mikami began to know fear of what God might due to him when his limbs no longer moved the way they used to and another shiny toy made its way to the pile.

No, that wasn't right, the description lacked, always the description lacked. Mikami knew that because he was the prophet and he knew God as no other did. Even that whore Misa Amane, that whore that shared God's bed, she was no prophet. She stood there in lingerie looking at him with something akin to disgust her brown eyes narrowed and her blonde hair falling down her shoulders, she stood there waiting for God to return to her, to return to her bed as if he had any true reason to be there. She dismissed him, she dismissed Mikami with a glance, with a single look of contempt as if he were nothing more than a mite of dust resting on her fingertip. Something to be tolerated only briefly and then thrown away.

She knew nothing though, God said she was necessary, although he would not explain why. God had been standing alone with Mikami his arms crossed and he listened and said that it was a problem he was taking care of. God had a plan, and Mikami must remember that. Mikami was the prophet, he had the notebook once although God had taken it back from him, and he had spoken for God and swept through like a plague and cast the wretched out from the Earth.

No she would be eliminated, he was certain.

God had told him so, with those dancing flaming eyes God had told him that she would die, that she would be eliminated like the wretched thing that she was. It was written.

This made him smile, he now understood that statement, he hadn't before but now he understood and no one else did except for him and God.

God once stared out a window and looked down upon His Kingdom and He had frowned that emptiness lingering in his eyes and he said, "Why does it mean nothing?" And Mikami had understood that, or at least he thought that he did.

God was tired of their wretchedness, tired of those heretics, tired of the filth of the earth. He looked down upon them and saw them, crawling beneath Him, and then His face would contort and He'd laugh at them, laugh at the blind and the wretched who polluted His Kingdom.

Of course that was it, after all Mikami was the prophet, he spoke the words of God. He understood.

Yes, Mikami understood the words of God.

God had a family, a little sister even, he talked about her sometimes and when he did his candle eyes would flicker as if a wind had trickled through them. She was quiet now, the world had been cruel to her, she didn't like to talk much anymore but she would get better because the world was getting better. He'd never met God's human sister, and when he mentioned it God only looked at him, his eyes like Misa's staring out at him from the doorway. Just another useless tool.

Takada was a tool of God, not a prophet but a tool, he used her like a mouthpiece but she didn't work right. She thought she wasn't a tool, she thought she wasn't an angel, merely a messenger before God, she thought she was a Goddess. She was flawed, broken, defective, not effective, and she had to be eliminated. Yes, he understood then and he understands now, elimination it was necessary, she deserved to be burned alive because she did not know what she was.

And God stood in a yellow warehouse and the bodies fell in the silence after his words.

And Takada burned, she burned alive, and she enjoyed it because she was the one who started it after all. It was written.

Mikami was the only one left, no that wasn't the right term, that made it sound as if he had survived rather than been rewarded. He was the most righteous, the rest were unworthy. He wasn't the only one left; he was the only one who deserved it. Yes. That was it.

(He could hardly write the names his hands were shaking so badly…)

"I am baffled by the blank page." God had said once. He had been seated before Mikami in his apartment glancing over at Mikami with those sharp ineffable eyes. His pale hands rested on the sides of the chair, His legs crossed and He simply looked as if that was all that was left to Him.

He had waited for Mikami to respond but Mikami wasn't sure what He meant.

"Did you know that the Notebook creates more pages so that you nor I nor anyone else will ever run out of pages. It's the never-ending story, Mikami. It repeats itself, it loops, it defies time and physics…" He looked away then, away from Matsuda and away from the world and said nothing. When He looked back something in His eyes had died.

"Mikami, you may in fact be my finest creation." He smiled gently, "But you really don't understand a word I'm saying."

That's when it started when the doubts started and Mikami began to watch over his shoulder because God's eyes were everywhere because His power was all-consuming. That's when his words began to shake and twitch beneath his fingers.

But that wasn't true, because Kira-sama was God and He had chosen Mikami to carry out His word and His law. Mikami was the prophet and the angel, it had been written and so it had been and so it would be.

He had to stop thinking about it, if he didn't think about it then he wouldn't remember how Misa had looked at him that last time, almost pitying. Contempt that was almost pity, but not quite, because even she could not bring herself to pity his fate. But she would die too, he knew it, because she was nothing compared to the prophet, she was only the whore.

Takada burned alive and Mikami had smiled because God's will had been done.

There was a daughter now, Mikami had seen her once, and she had yellow eyes just like God. She had God's eyes and when she looked at him all Mikami could see was his own wavering reflection. She wore God's infant face, that true face he had seen only once, and when she looked at him he felt something must collapse. Something must give.

He was the prophet, he was the voice, he was the messenger, and he was the hand. God had written it himself, had delivered it to Mikami's door.

God watched Mikami now and the daughter clung to Him. His eyes had narrowed and He looked at Mikami as if his time were coming. The words were running out.

(He still wrote in spite of this because if he stopped he would see the little girl, he would see her gold eyes, and if he saw her eyes again something must die.)

He walked as he wrote, he looked at the clock, and he knew that it was almost time. He could not see his own reflection, his own numbers, but he knew because he could feel the eyes of God. God was growing impatient again, and there was the little girl, the little girl with the yellow eyes.

His finest creation, he was God's finest creation, he was the words upon the page. He wasn't just the messenger he was the message, he was the prophet and he was needed, he wasn't to be abandoned yet. He still had a purpose, the words were still written.

The wretched were everywhere, there was work to be done, and yet God had looked at him and His eyes had said nothing. His eyes said Mu. His eyes said…

No, he would not be discarded, that was not the truth. He would not fall among the graves of the wretched. It was written.

The notebook stuck to his hands, the pages folding past, a never ending parade of white pages. He tried to count them once but they just kept flipping through and he lost the words he had already written.

The Shinigami laughed at him when it saw Mikami glance his way, and those yellow marble eyes would roll in his head and he would only laugh harder. One of God's lesser tools, lesser beings, that stood behind God as if he were a shadow, God's Angel of Death. It only occurred to Mikami later that the Angel of Death could see the numbers and the name, only when he was flipping through those desolate pages did he realize what it meant.

There were numbers like a brand dangling above his head, and they were spinning, twirling out of control and he couldn't see a single one. He could not see himself, only his reflection, and yet others saw him perfectly and in their eyes he saw all that he was and all that he would ever be. And the numbers were Spinning, sliding, dangling out of control.

Not yet though, God had need of him yet, he was certain.

God crucified the unjust and He smiled down upon their suffering, because it was written by his own hand. His will had been done, and His will would be done, and so it would be.

God had smiled down upon him, His eyes caught fire in the twilight glow and all around Him the room had been painted in gold, if only for a moment. God had held out His hand to his prophet and His expression turned tender. Behind Him the Shinigami danced and cackled but it was only a shadow, nothing more.

Mikami took the hand and God said, "You do realize, Mikami, that I'm going to kill you."

God's eyes blazed and His smile grew. The world stopped spinning and for a moment Mikami could see those numbers floating above his head, could see them spinning faster and faster.

There was only the slow pounding of his heart, like a tremor through the earth, and God's serene smile looking down upon him.

"Of course I'm only telling you this because you knew it already," God continued, His hand still gripping Mikami's, "You've known for a long time, haven't you Mikami?"

Mikami had said nothing, had only held God's hand and thought of the girl, the little girl with those yellow eyes. God's little daughter who saw Mikami merely as nothingness, as something already dead.

"I've been watching you; did you think I wouldn't notice?" He laughed, God tilted back His head and laughed, "Gods notice these things Mikami, you weren't going to get away with it. You know it's time to go."

Mikami wanted to say something, anything, prove his worth. He was the prophet, he wrote the names, he wore the blood, he eliminated and deleted the wretched from the earth. He was…

"You think that I need you, and I find that rather amusing. In the end, I don't need anyone. I didn't need L, I certainly don't need you."

(He looked out the window and saw the stars, he wiped the tears from his eyes because he needed to write, he needed to write, he had to write or…)

"You are nothing to me and I don't think I'll miss you at all."

God released his hand and turned to walk out of the room, out of Mikami's apartment and back into the world and the shadows. Mikami was reaching out for Him, to call Him back, but God didn't turn, because to Him, it was already written.

So now Mikami waits, alone in the dark, with his electric lights and his ball point pens. He writes and he writes and he writes but God has not returned and He will never return. Mikami knows this, but he doesn't, because he is the prophet and Yagami Light is God.

There is ink smudged on his hands and smudges on his glasses but he suspects it no longer matters because all he can see is the little girl's eyes, those little girl's eyes staring back at him with that yellow blankness.

He sees her before him. A slight pale form holding a bear in her left hand, she wears a white night gown and from behind her dark hair those yellow eyes burn.

She holds out her hand, she doesn't smile, she only looks and holds out the hand as if she is waiting for something.

Mikami drops the notebook, he clutches at the pen and he shakes his head frantically, "No, not yet, not yet, it's not time yet."

The little girl does not move, she only stares and it strikes him that this is not the little girl he knows but something else, something older because the girl he knows is an infant. It is her though, he knows those eyes, they have been imprinted on his heart and his mind. In that moment she smiles and takes a step closer.

"You're done here, I think." She sounds just like her father, just like God in the yellow warehouse when He said there was nothing left. Nothing left, no time left, no numbers left, no name, only the wretchedness.

"No, not yet, I…I… I'm not done yet!" He screams and backs away from her into his desk reaching for something to ward off the demon, to ward off the little Goddess and her yellow eyes. She is not his God and she will not take him.

She does smile then, "Silly Mikami, don't you know who I am?"

"No."

"I'm God."

Author's Note: Reviews would be nice...