#it's interesting bc without the DN and with this world change a lot of yagami stays the same but also changes since his motivations like

[grievedifferent]

kny!yagami and sabito are not exactly not friendly to each other, but they aren’t “close”

[monofanii]

→ commissioned from artist. | HIGH QUALITY BC TUMBLR SUCKS.

If you remove this caption or artist credit, I’ll haunt you.

if i disappear / ¿ǝɯ ɹoɟ ʞool noʎ llᴉʍ       — together, or not at all.

Yagami Light & Makise Kurisu, Death Note & Steins;Gate.

My friend and I have crafted a crossover AU that we write together, thus how this commission was born. In which Kurisu and Light form an unexpected friendship and, in a plot that mashes together events of Steins;Gate & Death Note, jump from world line to world line to reach Stein’s Gate and find a reality where not only is the world saved from the destruction of the time machine race, but also where the two of them can survive together.

Tbh, my favorite AU / Crossover I’ve ever had the pleasure of writing with a friend and absolutely my favorite commission I’ve ever gotten, because the artist did SUCH an amazing job and I couldn’t have been happier. ♥ I got it a while back, but never posted it, so here it is now.

I’ll put a bit of (wordy) plot context under the cut because I think it’s a lot of fun and gives the commission more #insight, if anyone is interested, but I could talk about this AU we’ve written all day, so I’ll just leave it at an (as quick as possible) rundown of events in our story setup lmao.

THIS PLOT SUMMARY, THOUGH AN AU CROSSOVER, WILL SPOIL SOME CANON EVENTS FOR STEINS;GATE, STEINS;GATE 0 AND DEATH NOTE.

Light attends the Nakabachi conference Kurisu ends up running out of curiosity and is, at one point, overheard by Okabe Rintaro when he thinks he’s alone with Ryuk discussing his plans as Kira.

Light & Kurisu meet at this conference after her argument with Okabe. The two of them end up making a positive first impression on one-another due to their intellect and personalities & exchange contact information / begin talking.

Kurisu doesn’t die initially: she presents her research to her father, but Nakabachi is angry when she doesn’t hand it over solely to him and storms off without inciting violence.

The world line changes because of an unknown d-mail sent by Rintaro elsewhere, which contains information sensitive to leaking Kira’s identity, rearranging Light’s fate and alerting SERN.

Both Kurisu & Light realize something is wrong, but eventually shrug it off.

Kurisu still pursues Okabe and joins his lab due to his peculiar persona. Everything proceeds as per canon, with all the usual s;g lab members and their d-mail shenanigans, but Kurisu tells Light about the PhoneWave early on and he, too, becomes a lab mem alongside her, wondering if this supposed “time machine” can be used in the event he needs to dodge suspicion from the investigation team searching for Kira.

Through all those nifty plot setup chapters s;g has, Light and Kurisu begin to form an unexpectedly strong and very close friendship and end up spending the majority of their time together, both inside and outside of the lab.

She discovers Light’s identity as Kira after incidentally ending up in possession of his Death Note and its contents. This is on the night that Shit Gets Real(tm).

SERN invades the lab as per canon, but Light is the one who is shot and killed as opposed to Mayuri. Thus, Kurisu time leaps to the past using the PhoneWave.

Both Light and Kurisu retain their memories and are the only ones among the lab mems who have such a strong Reading Steiner, taking Okabe’s place, though Rintaro is still a prominent figure that Kurisu ends up confiding in.

In almost every attempt Kurisu makes to save Light’s life from SERN, the investigation team formerly led by L (already deceased), which has been given the information Rintaro leaked in his d-mail by SERN, is most often the cause of his death instead.

This is the ALPHA world line, where Kurisu survives the present, but Light is murdered by SERN and/or killed by the investigation team / Ryuk (as per DN canon) a few days after the PhoneWave is completed. Eventually, the world is trapped and cut off by SERN when Kurisu is taken hostage by them and forced to complete their time machine research (and later killed, framed as the “mother of the time machine” against her will.) In this world line, Kurisu has to time leap continuously in hopes of saving Light’s life and avoiding SERN / the IT.

During this time as they grow closer, Kurisu comes to terms with Light being Kira and promises to keep his secret even though she doesn’t agree with Kira’s ideals and doesn’t approve of his actions. In the ALPHA world line, their friendship steadily grows stronger until Light as a person becomes more important to her than the fact he’s Kira and because the friendship is mutual, he believes in her and trusts her with his secrets. Kurisu makes him promise he won’t lie to her anymore and when he says he won’t, she believes in him, too.

Kurisu ultimately does not waiver or give up because she refuses to leave a friend who has become so important to her to die. Like Rintaro with Mayuri, she cares less about the state of the future and more about saving a friend she’s come to love.

After much trial and error, by undoing all d-mails as per s;g canon, Kurisu eventually completely reverses the timeline by discovering and undoing the d-mail Rintaro sent regarding Kira, protecting Light’s identity from the IT moving back into the previous world line and preventing SERN from detecting the presence of a time machine.

Light gifts her an Upa phone charm he wins from an arcade machine after she demands he win her one to celebrate escaping the ALPHA world line. It’s a rare metal Upa, that later becomes relevant in Nakabachi’s role.

They reconnect with the lab members in this timeline.

All seems well for a few days, until Suzuha suddenly appears once more to warn them of an oncoming war and, almost two weeks later, after the PhoneWave has been recreated for the sole purpose of time leaping (no d-mail) as everyone figures out what to do, Kurisu is murdered by her father in her hotel room, who steals her research to frame as his own and flees the country.

This is the BETA world line, in which Light survives the present, but Kurisu is murdered by Nakabachi. The world erupts into World War III as countries war over Kurisu’s laptop and research to build the first time machine and, in the future, Light is eventually discovered to be Kira, captured, and executed. In this world line, Light is the one who must continuously time leap to save Kurisu’s life and stop WW3 from happening.

Kurisu gives Light permission to abandon her or do whatever he needs to in order to reach the utopia he dreams of creating with Kira if that’s what makes him happy. Light, however, refuses to leave her behind and presses forward not only for the sake of saving the world from its war-torn future so that he as Kira may thrive, but because Kira’s utopia no longer exists unless Kurisu is alive & part of it alongside him.

Stein’s Gate in this timeline constitutes a world line in which : the time machine is never built, detected or perfected, thus the race and war are completely prevented from happening and the world is in no greater danger in the future, Kurisu survives and is not killed by her father or external factors, Light survives and is not killed by SERN or external factors, and Light’s identity as Kira is ultimately protected by Kurisu, allowing him to evade discovery by the IT and escape execution by Ryuk.

Since both Light and Kurisu have worked together this entire time, retaining their memories with every time leap, and thus keeping all memories intact through the entire plot, their reunion upon reaching Stein’s Gate together is a heartfelt and familiar one, because they both remember everything / each other.

Upon reaching Stein’s Gate, Kurisu gifts Light a fairy Upa charm for his phone and tells him he’s only allowed to remove it if he finds another metal Upa, in which case he can have the metal one and she’ll take the fairy instead, so they can “match.”

That quick plot timeline is the gist of it, this is a massive AU with a lot of small details I just can’t fit here, but I’m so glad to get to write it with someone. Props to Biancnya, my lovely furry spouse, because without her, writing all the convoluted plot that comes along with this premise wouldn’t be nearly as enjoyable. ♥ Light and Kurisu’s friendship has been so much fun to explore and if you read my tldr summary, I hope you at least find it interesting, too!

Or at the very least enjoy this beautiful work of art.