At last the warehouse is silent except for Light Yagami's wheezing breaths.
Teru stands. His nice shoes are stained with viscera. He has just killed seven people.
He has never particularly cared about victory.
"Mikami," Light gasps out. "Mikami. You did it."
There is the blood of an eighteen-year-old boy splashed on Teru's dress shoes. He's never fired a gun before. He's handled plenty as a prosecutor, of course, typically while cursing the murderers whose fingerprints littered the handles.
"You're not God," Teru says.
"What areāyou talking about?" Light manages a smile. It twitches oddly on his face, like a dying butterfly. "We won."
Teru just looks at him. Looks and looks and looks.
He used to wonder what God looked like. It was an idle thought, one only entertained in the depths of night when the sleep medication hadn't quite kicked in yet. He told himself it didn't matter; God was an entity that surpassed shallow things like appearance, and Teru's job was to follow him no matter what. Teru was not like the rest of Demegawa's little cult, who followed God only for the sake of personal safety and money. Teru was righteous. But he had wondered, regardless.
He had never settled on an answer. But Light Yagami, bleeding from the shoulder, brown eyes and manic grinā
Pathetic, Teru thinks. You're pathetic.
"Listen, Mikami," and Light tries to sit up, but hisses through his teeth and props himself awkwardly with one elbow instead. "You've done well. I'll reward you. Anything you want."
"Your watch," Teru says.
"Myāwhat?"
"Your watch."
The boy, before he had been gunned down by Teru's own hand, had thrown a match. Teru has never been the type for schemes, but he knows for certain that whether real or fake, all of the notebooks are now ash.
"No," Light says, clamping his free hand around his wrist instantly. "You can'tāit's from my father."
Teru could almost laugh. How nice having a father must have been. How inconsequential.
"I don't care," he says.
It's a fitting choice for a sacred compartment. Something paternal, something time-keeping, something small. It must fit right over Light's pulse point.
"It's not enough," Light tries. "It'sāit's a tiny scrap of paper. It could fit ten names at most."
Teru feels his face fall. He can write very, very small, but the idea of the paper running out is terrifying.
Still. It's better than nothing. Perhaps he'll never even write in it. Perhaps he'll keep it on a necklace or frame it on his desk. Teru can do good work without the Death Note, but he cannot go on without God.
"I don't care," he repeats, and strides towards him.
Light flinches. He tries to get up again; his arm fails him, and he starts dragging himself backwards instead. Like a worm, Teru thinks. That's all he is. A worm and a murderer.
"Don't get closer, Mikami," he says, voice cracking with the beginnings of nervous laughter. "I still haveā"
Teru punches him in the nose.
Light collapses. Teru very easily slips the watch off his wrist.
The shinigami is cackling.
"You don't know how to unlock it!" Light reaches for him. Teru yanks the watch away from his grasp. The idea of being touched right now is more repulsive than the blood. "I never told anyone!"
"I saw you do it," Teru points out. Just before he'd broken out of his restraints he'd seen Light twisting at the crown of the watch to kill Nate River. Four times. A holy number? Or just habit?
"Ryuk!" Light shrieks. "Stop him!"
Oh, there it is. The appeal to a higher power. But Teru's God loves him, and Light Yagami's false idol does not.
It's almost sympathetic. Teru is not a heartless man. He knows how it feels to be screaming for help that never comes.
"I'm not going to kill you," Teru says, folding the watch carefully and slipping it into his breast pocket. Light stares at him, eyes wild. "You're just misguided."
"How dare youā"
If Teru was more inclined to humor, he might have said One day you'll see the light. As it is, he closes his eyes. A sense of beautiful, serene inner peace descends on him. It was foolish of him to put so much faith in a human voice over the phone, to be honest. Teru knows better now.
This time, he'll get it right. This time he will please the real God.
In the meantime, he might as well spread His word.
Teru rolls his sleeve down. He grabs Light's bare wrist through the fabric and, before Light can pull back: kisses his palm.
A day ago, this would have been reverence. Now it reveals itself as pity.
Light sucks in a breath, sharp, pained. Teru lets go.
"Good luck," he says, and means it.
"Mikami! Where are you gāMikami!"
Teru does not look back. The shinigami's cackles fade into the distance.
(Teru Mikami dies of unclear multiple system failure ten days later.)
was talking to a coworker and realised i could not for the life of me remember his name but i was too embarrassed to ask because we've spoken multiple times so mid-conversation i started concocting a plan to nudge the conversation towards the ID photos on our building passes so that i could be like oh my ID photo is awful haha the camera they use to take these has a real talent for making me look as unphotogenic as possible and then he would say oh yes me too haha everyone says that (because they do) and then i would be able to say well let me see yours it can't be as bad as mine! and he would show me his ID because we are coworkers and why wouldn't he and this would allow me to see his building pass which of course would have his name on it and then i would be able to say well yours is perfectly nice it must be me that's the problem! and then we would have a polite chuckle about it and i would have his name without needing to ask for it and he would be none the wiser and all would be well but then before i could execute this fine plan a little voice in my head went "so this is some light yagami bull shit you are about to pull" which was such a violent reality check it shocked me completely out of my embarrassment and i went "hey im so sorry your name has slipped my mind could you remind me" and he did and it was fine.
@rawr-monster and @eyestumblin asked me to elaborate so here goes:
Death Note is a show with a very clear central premise: no one should have the power to kill others without consequence. Not the cops, not corporations, not the Mob, not civilians, no one.
Even outside of the 2000s-era criticisms of the Japanese justice system, even if you're looking at it in a vacuum, Death Note makes it incredibly obvious what it's trying to say. It starts this off by making it very clear, right out of the gate, that the audience identification character really, really should not have this power.
For Death Note's original target audience, Light is everything you're supposed to be. He's smart, diligent, good-looking, athletic, popular but not too popular. He's The Perfect Middle-Class Japanese Teenage Boy. If you're the kind of edgy, smart Japanese teenage boy who would want to watch an anime supernatural crime drama in the mid-00s? Light is built for you to imprint on like a baby duckling.
...And then the show goes out of its way to point out, in the first proper story arc, that Light is the villain of this piece. From the introduction of L to the end of the Raye Penber/Naomi Misora arc, the show makes it very, very clear that Light is a hypocrite with a massive ego. Sure, he says that he's only killing criminals to make a better world. Sure, maybe he panicked and killed fake-L in self-defense. Sure, maybe the life of Reye Penber and any law enforcement chasing Kira were worth the clear drop in the crime rate. Maybe.
But then Light kills one of the very few unambiguously Good members of the Death Note cast, does so in a smug and cruel way, and the entire scene is framed as tragic in a way that none of the criminal deaths really were. The whole world goes quiet. And Naomi Misora stumbles off to commit suicide. By the end of that arc, even if you'd otherwise be sympathetic to Light- even if you're still rooting for him to get away with it- it's a lot harder to justify what he's doing. He's not just breaking a few eggs to make an omelet- at this point, he's actively happy to kill anyone who gets in his way.
So. Okay. The Perfect Japanese Teenage Boy (TM) can't be trusted with the power to kill indiscriminately. Maybe the problem is just that Light, as a person, is an asshole with impure motives, and if you gave the Death Note to someone who's a better person, you'd be better off. Maybe you could find someone who's motivated by love, and they'd do a better job with that power.
Everyone, say hello to Misa Amane, who is utterly driven by love and devotion, and probably one of the crazier/more evil characters on the show! She'd do anything, no matter how terrible, just because Light told her to do it. She is utterly without remorse, utterly without fear, and utterly driven by a darkly Romantic fanaticism.
Light gets to dodge what's coming to him twice because of Misa and love- once because Misa's love for Light lets him start the Yotsuba arc, and once because Rem's love for Misa becomes a diabola ex machina. In the world of Death Note, love is not a pure enough motive to let you kill indiscriminately - in fact, it makes you worse.
Okay, well, (our hypothetical edgy teenage viewer might say), cLEARLY the problem is that everyone here is too emotional, and you need to be able to detach from the situation to use the power of life and death. Of course you'd kill indiscriminately if you've got feeeeelings about it, but someone who is driven by Logic and Reason? Surely they'd never do anything wrong.
...And then L gets his hands on the Death Note, and immediately starts trying to figure out how to use it to prove that some of the rules in the Death Note are fake and Light is guilty. L's plan is to have a criminal on death row write in the Death Note and wait the 13 days to see if he dies. It's simple. Logical. Effective. It's also extremely reminiscent of the stuff Kira's been doing this entire time, and the implication is that, had L lived longer and used the Note more, he might become No Different.
(I think it's significant that in The Movie, L uses the Death Note exactly once, with himself as the victim, and he turns down the Death Note when it's offered to him. TheMovie!L is an unambiguously heroic character, and therefore, he will not kill without consequences.)
The power to kill without any consequence to yourself corrupts you. It makes you want to use it to solve more and more of your problems. It turns you into a fucking monster, one name at a time. And nothing can stop that process except refusing to use that power. Love cannot shield you. Rationality cannot shield you. Justice cannot shield you.
And every other character who gets the Death Note reinforces that theme. The Yotsuba Group? Big corporations should not get to kill without consequences. Mello? Criminals/genius detectives should not get to kill without consequence. Mikami? The Perfect Japanese Adult is outright sadistic about how he uses the Death Note. And on, and on, and on.
Near outright tells Light, in their final confrontation: "You are a murderer, and this notebook is the worst weapon of mass murder in the world." Using the Death Note is not justice; it's not going to bring about a perfect new world. It's murder, full stop. Light has become a mass murderer, a monster, by killing over and over again.
Death Note has a theme: no one should be allowed to kill without consequences, because it makes you a monster. It is not subtle about that theme. It is very, very blatant, and the only way it could be more blatant is if Near stopped to deliver an Atlas-Shrugged-style monologue about it.
and so seeing people reduce that to 'haha ACAB' gets my goat, because no. No, it's not just ACAB. anyone with the power to kill indiscriminately and without consequence- whether it's a cop, a megacorp, an autistic supergenius, a mob boss, or a perfect audience-insert- would become A Bastard.
this is a show that makes it abundantly clear that there is Symbolism and it has a Point, in the way that only stuff aimed at teenagers that's trying to be Deep can do. how you get through the entirety of Death Note and walk away with "there's no point! a cop's son decides to be the worst person ever! Light is Uniquely Terrible and that's all there is to it!" is fucking beyond me.
I was just going to blithely reblog this, and then I thought of something.
There is a category unmentioned here in the 'people who use the death note' and that category is the Shinigami. Yes, Rem's mentioned in the 'things you do for love' situation, tho she's not the only one who uses the Death Note in a selfless way (even under manipulation).
Because Rem and Gelus both use the Death Note to save Misa, and they both DIE for doing so. And that's an important context here, the Shinigami, the people who are MEANT to use the Death Note, are near-immortal immoral monsters. And the one way for them to be killed? Is to use the Death Note to benefit someone else.
Not only is there no 'good' way to use a Death Note, it was never INTENDED to be used for 'good', just as a way to elongate the lifespans of actual literal monster people in another dimension.
Death Note goes out of itās way to have characters just straight-up monologue several times about how itās the power to kill thatās evil and that corrupts anyone who accepts it, that thereās no good way or good person to have power over life and death. They even put the Death Note in the hands of someone who refuses to use it either directly or by proxy (Lightās father) and he gets to die peacefully with the belief that his son was innocent and Ryuk straightup explains this to the audience just to make sure everyone gets it.
(they're talking about light having to give up half a lifespan for the eye deal) oh interesting nuance about the wording here: "this deal has no advantages for the shinigami. i can extend my lifespan using anybody." implies that the half of a lifespan that is given up by the human does get transferred to the shinigami, it's just that ryuk doesn't think this matters very much because he can kill whoever to extend his lifespan without going through with some complicated deal. (this implication is more obvious in the japanese version because ryuk says "this deal basically has no advantages for the shinigami.") anyway really interesting to consider re: misa doing the eye deal twice! bothĀ rem and ryuk have a bit of her lifespan in them now!
Interestingly, of course, Ryuk's technically lying about the deal having no advantages for shinigami, because if you do the math: if the human loses half their remaining life and the shinigami gains the same amount of time, then as long as the shinigami had even, like, five minutes left in hand when the deal was made, the shinigami is now guaranteed to outlive their bonded human.
Which is irrelevant to Ryuk, sure, because he's got his own Death Note still on his belt and can stuff himself with lifespan at will, as he says. But imagine the advantage to a shinigami if a human had gotten their own and only Death Note away from them somehow. Like, eg, Shidoh, who we know was short on life because that's why he noticed his Death Note was missing in the first place, and couldn't feed himself until he got it back. Depending on how close to the wire Shidoh was at that point, making the eye deal with Kal Snydar/Jack Neylon could even have been all that saved his life for long enough to get his Death Note back after the taskforce raid on the mafia hideout.
So yeah, I think Ryuk's telling the truth to Light as regards him personally not gaining anything from the deal - Ryuk's in no danger anyway and since what he wants here is ongoing entertainment, Light not shortening his own life is actively in Ryuk's interests for now! - but I don't know if Light spotted the implications if their circumstances had been different. It definitely isn't true that the eye deal never potentially benefits the shinigami.
Yeah, it's important to remember that Ryuk and Light's bond is NOT how things normally go [and neither is Rem and Misa's, since Rem has her own note to hand too]. If a shinigami drops their note and a human finds it, the shinigami is stuck, noteless, *unable to kill the human to get it back* [without facing the 'don't kill humans any way but with a death note OR ELSE' rule] and facing the very real possibility of death if they run out of life before the human does.
The eye deal is a massive help to a shinigami in that situation.
And since people were pondering it in the comments...
* Misa's life was running down to zero. Gelus killed the stalker, so he collected the stalker's life and then Gelus' life, including the stalker's, went to Misa.
* Misa gave half what she now had to Rem.
* Misa gave half of what remained to Ryuk.
* Rem died to save Misa, *getting Watari and L's lifespans in the process*, and then passing all *that* to Misa.
...unless Rem being bonded to Light meant *he* got what she had when he died, including L and Watari's remaining years?
On that last point, I'm pretty sure that in the "died for a loved mortal" scenario, the shinigami's lifespan goes to the loved one, regardless of any other bond. Gelus wasn't bonded to Misa, but Misa got his lifespan - so since Rem also acted to save Misa, I assume Misa got Rem's lifespan too. There's no reason it would redirect to Light, since that type of life transference seems to relate very specifically to the shinigami's choice to save a favoured human.
Not to mention that if Light had got Rem's lifespan I'm pretty sure Ryuk would've done a noticeable spit-take next time he glanced at the top of Light's head, whether he meant to or not. XD Ryuk can usually lie with the best of Death Note's cast of liars but he can't always hide it when he's genuinely surprised, and I think that specific scenario might have made him double-take enough for Light to ask questions.
Edit: Just realised this also implies Ryuk probably DID choke when he saw Misa's lifespan skyrocket, since he would've been with her when Rem died and seen the lifespan transfer. He must have guessed what happened but been absolutely hopping to know how...
!!!!!! interesting points thank you both of you!!! i was going to check the answer to that last question before i saw this reblog so it's not necessary anymore but i did find this:
so maybe both ryuk and rem think of their state of affairs as the more typical one, at least relative to the times when shinigami were more involved in human affairs, and what happened to sidoh is out of the ordinary? (maybe there used to be more death notes to go around, so shinigami could drop one without losing their own? ryuk does say in c-kira he got the king to give him a bunch more notebooks) (funny because rem literally says like a panel after this that the shinigami king isn't easily tricked enough for her to get a second copy that way. i guess the king is hoarding them.)
anyway yeah, as prev says, the lifespan definitely goes to the person you save -
(thank god lmao misa's shortened her life enough already)
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