Scheherezade

Scheherezade

Here’s a short piece about Ryuk and Light and what it means to be a Greek chorus of one watching a tragedy in the making.

In truth, Ryuk isn’t sure if he could kill to save Light anymore, not without dying.

Ryuk loves him, in his own way — not as romance, and not as a parent loves a child, but as a precious thing to be witnessed and treasured. His moonlit pet, brilliant and hollow. He speaks with his eyes shut, thinking of distant things, and sleeps with his whole body beneath the blankets. When he pulls out his pen to kill, he twirls it twice, then falls silent as he scrolls through pages and pages of information, making his judgements.

He is seventeen years old. He is proud that he does his own laundry. Last week he spent thirty-seven minutes deciding whether or not to spare a triple-murderer for the sake of her pupal daughter, index finger pressed along the length of his lip, then wrote the name in a series of quick, deliberate strikes and turned the page with nothing more than a beat for the ink to dry.

Humans are filthy and depraved things, that’s what Ryuk has learned since he came down to their world, and Light is such a wonderful specimen of the species. He grows like a flower through shit.

Shinigami are not in the business of chronicling the lives of human beings, but Ryuk keeps a record of Light anyway. He stores it within the tunnels of his own mind. Perhaps one day he will repeat it to someone else and Light’s story will live on, but probably he’ll keep it just for himself.

Light doesn’t belong to the world. He’s made this very clear. He stands separate from it, declaring himself above and apart. He belongs, instead, to Ryuk. He doesn’t have friends anymore; he has only their talks at night, and the long walks to and from the school where Light learns about mathematics and emperors and kings.

Someday Ryuk will kill him. He’ll scrawl down his name and his heart will stop. He wasn’t there for the start, but he’ll be there to witness the end. This is how it should be. It is a promise and a mercy which Ryuk has designed: Light Yagami will not die alone.

just thinking about like. how incredibly fucked up it would be if light actually weren’t kira and L was basically torturing this random kid he’s decided to fixate on? i think there are actually a wide range of reasons someone might think they were unknowingly killing people based on the conditions L has set up, and this never really crosses anyone’s mind. he’s created a literal nightmare scenario and it’s real lucky for everyone involved that he was right.

To everyone who writes Ryuk as not giving a damn about nobody nowhere… I see Ryuk as a very sentimental character in canon but only about one (1) person. Ryuk enjoyed talking with Light so very much that to go without their conversation was grounds to bitch at length.  He regularly followed his commands when he didn’t have to do so, bent the rules as much as he seemingly could for Light, moving the notes around at the man’s wish, responding to unconventional wording for contracts and undoing contracts as if its good enough to give up on the Death Note, never reveals the man to anyone else even when it would be interesting to do so, is respectful towards his father, and in the scene he has to talk to Mikami he can’t WAIT to get back to Light, he looks like he’s going to bust a gut with joy whenever Light addresses him positively, I don’t know what else to say guys… because Ryuk cares about three things in canon 1) this rare enjoyment of his dreary eternity 2) because of *written in flashing neon lights* Light Yagami 3) coming at him with those fukkin apples

that’s my Ryght absolutely has subtext in canon (at the very mildest some one-sided pining) ted talk thanks for coming

head canon (?) that light has been so uptight his whole life and doesn’t really let himself smile or joke a lot bc he has these like weird image he has of himself but he meets L who shows him to find the humor in life (this is so messy but i just had a vision of this) sdjdjfksnfj

YES, I understand what you mean!!! This also reminds me of a post by @gh0stbeeee where Lawlight are the only ones that can make the other ugly laugh!

I think it would start with L muttering responses to stuff the task force says under his breath and because Light is sitting so close he hears and he desperately has to hold himself back from laughing. Eventually it gets to the point where Light is turning red from trying to stop himself from laughing so hard. Eventually L would realize this and amp it up some, make more comments and just do more trying to get Light to fully laugh, cackle, something more than turning red and looking odd.

I think to tie in with this one, the head canon that Light’s crazy evil laugh is just his normal laugh. So when L finally manages to get Light to actually laugh as much as he’d like to say he though it was immediately cute, he actually was quite alarmed. He obviously found it adorable later on, also fun fact! Light also snorts when he laughs!

Eventually L can get Light in moods where he finds anything that L does as absolutely hilarious and is just curled up clutching his stomach from how hard he is laughing. L knocks something off the table slowly and Light is crying from laughing so hard.

In the beginning he still would hide it around his family but once him and L are like together he’s not afraid to be more open like that around others. His family is quite shocked to hear Light truly laugh for the first time. Overall this is a super cute head canon thanks for sending it in!!

light yagami as a sometimes sorta cute slightly fucked up little dork who is detached from other people but wants to (and thinks he can) fix the world anyway AND is also cold and manipulative as an extension of these traits is a more interesting interpretation of his character than seeing him as an edgy sigma male who does not care about anything archetype

honestly i think the idea that light’s classmates liked him because he was cool is basically untrue. there is no possible universe where light yagami is cool. he is a weird dorky kid who studies english too much to play tennis and kind of wants a magic notebook to be real. i think they liked him because he was nice, and a little odd, and because he’d help you with your homework even if you didn’t know him all that well. pre-death note light isn’t enigmatic and aloof, he’s the kid you go to when literally no one else understood the class well enough to take notes and who’ll get genuinely excited for you when you suddenly understand a concept. he wants to go to spaceland and have someone tell him how cool it is that he mends his own clothes. he’s a sweet kid and that’s why it’s so heartbreaking when he lets that seed of coldness in him become his core and then his whole being.