#also kind of ya.gamane but you have to dig for that one so probably not tagging it

[kiyomitakada]

Light likes to think he is an active person. An open-minded risk-taker, if one will. When he encounters a problem, he does not shy from the challenge but faces it square on. This is why he was a pleasure to have in class.

The first time Light is strangled asleep by the ghost of L Lawliet, he decides to put these skills into practice and raid Misa's sleeping pills.

Look, it's not like Misa keeps track of them. Light's usually the one who has to remind her to take her pills in the first place; she doesn't have any sort of refill schedule other than 'when they run out.' Taking just one won't hurt.

Still. He feels oddly guilty, shaking it out of the bottle, which is stupid for aforementioned reasons; the pill, at least, goes down as smoothly as a lie.

"Goodnight, darling," Misa mumbles, when he slides into bed at last, his throat bitter and tight.

"Night, Misa."

Light always sleeps on his back with his arms locked at his sides. He has nightmares, but not usually insomnia; he curbed that after the first week of using the Death Note. He closes his eyes and drowns with ease.

-

"Misa," he says the next morning, while dumping refrigerated salad into a bowl. He drinks coffee on weekdays like these. She drinks zero-sugar orange juice. Ryuk gets an apple.

Misa startles. "Yeah? What is it, Light?"

She's stopped wearing her pigtails recently. It's just too much effort to style her hair now that she's acting in more feature films, she says. These days it falls to her shoulders, straight and blonde. It makes Light a little sick to look at her.

"When you're falling asleep," he says. "Do you ever feel like something is crushing you?"

"Uh… no?" Misa tilts her head at him. "Why would I?"

"Some sleep conditions come with full-body paralysis and the sensation of weight. I was reading about it online yesterday." He wasn't.

"Hmm. Nope! Guess I have something else." Misa shrugs, grinning. "Thanks for looking it up for me."

"Sure," Light says. He wonders, briefly, if she's lying. No. Misa would never lie to him.

-

The pill, if anything, had dragged it out longer: the (lack of) screaming, the (lack of) thrashing, so on and so forth. But it occurs to Light, as he heads into the task force headquarters, that his nightmares are blurrier now. Usually the images last until at least lunch, possibly dinner if he has to use the voice changer for whatever reason; now he finds he can barely recall whether L's eyes crinkled at the edges or not when Light was feeding him cake.

This is, naturally, a relief. Light really hates his nightmares. He doesn't know why his brain insists on inventing a kind Ryuzaki, one who laughs at his jokes and returns his empty smiles and would not have killed him even if he saw Light in his entirety, which he didn't. Whoever that man is, he's an affront to the real L's memory.

Light snickers to himself in the empty elevator. Right, because he's doing such a great job carrying L's memory already.

Maybe the tradeoff is worth it, he thinks. He never wants to see L again, of course, but he'd take the real L over some facsimile in a heartbeat. At least L doesn't talk when he's strangling him.

-

"Where do humans go when they die?"

Ryuk snorts. "Midlife crisis, Light-o?"

"What? No. I'm only twenty." It had not occurred to Light that Ryuk would think he was asking about himself. 'Humans' had seemed like such an objective, distant word.

"Maybe heaven," Ryuk says. "Maybe hell. Maybe nowhere at all."

"With — equal probability?"

"Wouldn't you like to know," Ryuk says. "Gimme another apple."

"No."

There is, obviously, no way that L has made it to heaven. So that rules one out. Actually Light is pretty sure this is a reskin of the Monty Hall game show problem, but he doesn't know what reward he's hoping for.

In any case, he's done his research by now. Sleep paralysis is a common condition that affects 8 to 50% of the population, a horrifically large range that should not still be tolerated by academia. The best treatments are cognitive behavioral therapy (which he doesn't need, since it's apparently centered around getting rid of fear of the paralysis), antidepressants (he's not depressed), and 'reassurance' (he is twenty years old).

In summary, this L is just as fake as Ryuzaki. Which Light knew already. Obviously.

It doesn't matter, though. It's better this way.

-

"—Light?"

Something is encircling his wrist. His left wrist. Light instinctively tries to reach for it, but he can't move, still — black-hole gaze and taxidermied butterflies and he needs to kill him, he needs to run —

"Light!"

And suddenly it all falls away. The person in front of him is blonde and soft and not any version of L at all.

He shoves her hand away. "Misa. What's wrong?"

"You were saying something," Misa says. "Over and over. It woke me up."

What is he supposed to say to that? 'Sorry'? "What was I saying?"

"…I don't know," Misa says. "Just gibberish, I guess."

Misa would never lie to him. He swallows the sudden acrid taste in his throat and his urge to scream at her for chasing L away. L will still be here tomorrow. It's fine. "Go back to sleep then."

"Okay!" Misa chirps, and flops down beside him.

Light checks his watch. It is still only fifteen past midnight. He must not have gotten very far into sleep.

He closes his eyes and tries to summon L again, not Ryuzaki with his oddly soft hair and dark brown eyes. L who is made of cruelty and vindictiveness and tricks. L who was never human in the first place.

He doesn't find him.

[ @deathnotetober day 25: ghost ]

(A/N: halfway through writing this i realized i might be drawing a lot of unconscious inspiration from telltale, which you should read right now because it’s gorgeous and it actually happened in canon i know because i was there. i don't think they are too similar but i just wanted it on the record if you're feeling deja vu that's probably why)