#deusvolent

               “You look at her differently than you used to when you first joined us here, Gami.”  She lowers the needle she’s working with as Kurisu and Okarin disappear out the door, regarding him with kind curiosity. Both he and Makise have looked worse for wear this past week ... but Light doesn’t have Rin lovingly doting on him, though she’s sure she’s the only one whose noticed that, anyways.  “...is she your hostage now?”

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↪ @deusvolent. we both know i posted this meme specifically to @ you.

               There’s a part of her that wants to scream at him. To raise hell and demand that he put this idea of reaching Stein’s Gate together behind him: something hypocritical at its core, because she knows that not that long ago, the roles had been reversed and it’d been her saying they could in the first place. But he’d never asked her to leave him behind as she’d done and she can’t say for sure if this change in his demeanor, when he’d seemed hopeless at times before, is because he cares too much for his own life, if the success of escaping the last world line renewed his belief this would could be escaped as well, or if some seed of desperation to keep her alive had bloomed within him the same as it had in her, for him.

               She can’t claim to have infinite insight into his character. She hasn’t known him their entire life, only however many months worth of time they’d been forced to relive over and over and the near month they’d spent together beforehand. And yet, looking at him now, through tired eyes with bated breath, she gets a feeling in the sinking depths of her heart that she may be one of the few people who has ever gotten this close to the person Light truly is. In consideration for how tall the walls around him are and how cruel his family is, maybe she’s the only one. And maybe that gives her the right to believe, ultimately, that although he may be egotistical and see himself as above this world, he doesn’t see himself as above her.

               She’s not sure whether it makes her feel better or worse, believing that the distress behind his statement is genuine. Absently, she wonders if he knows that his lips press together and his brows furrow when he’s showing raw, honest emotion. Even worse, she wonders if anyone else has ever been allowed to make that observation and has to stop herself from picking apart how much loneliness must be locked behind the promise he’s making her. His voice has a subtle tremble to it, sometimes, when he’s speaking openly to her like this. So invisible, she could barely catch it. For all the people in all the worlds he’s managed to fool under the guise of Kira, whom the public perceives as an emotionless right-hand of either God or worse, Light, at his core, has always given her the impression that although he may not experience sentiment and empathy as the rest of the populace does, the emotions he does feel, he feels so deeply that they consume him.

               “So you’ve said... multiple times. Every time I urge you to worry about yourself instead, actually.”  There’s some small amount of humor in her voice, but not much. Those walls he’s built are tall, yes, and so impenetrable, and yet here she sits, on the inside of them, with him. He’s gripping her hand so tightly in his own that her fingers are starting to tingle from lack of circulation and she’s not even sure he realizes it, nor is she sure she minds it, because she has an inkling that neither of them are particularly skilled in navigating what to do when feelings for another person have overwhelmed them. Another thing she’s certain of is that he’s probably never said something like that to someone and so wholeheartedly meant it. She’d seen him lie to her face, had caught how ashamed of it he’d become later, and she’d learned to do what she thinks he must have thought impossible... understand him.

               It’s hard to keep putting up a fight when she’s faced with these realities. As much as she wants him to put himself first and save his own life at all costs, damn the world line and herself in it, she knows she can’t force him. And as much as she hates it, there’s an even more prominent part of her that’s relieved. She doesn’t want to die, no matter how many times she lies and says that it’s fine. She wants to reach Stein’s Gate. She wants both of them to be safe, together, in a world that won’t hurt either of them. She hates herself for it, but she wants it. This is in part why it takes her to long to respond to him. She’s unsure what to say, whether to be honest or lie through gritted teeth and continue to put up that front, even though she knows it’s useless. But he’d stopped lying to her quite a long time ago. At some point, she has to stop lying to them both.

               “I always assumed you didn’t like promises.”  She shifts where she sits on the floor, him directly in front of her, both with their legs crossed. She has one hour left until she dies, in whatever way this world finds to kill her while she’s here in Okabe’s lab. In less than an hour, he will leap back in time before it has a chance to happen. Spare her from suffering, this once.  “It seemed like the ones you made were promises you intended to break. Or made to further your own goals. I figured you must see promises as a pretty soulless concept. I mean, I do. Promises are usually empty, they don’t mean anything.”  She’s not trying to insult him. Her tone of voice is musing, sure, but there’s warmth to it. As if she realizes how that could sound after she says it, she reaches out the hand he doesn’t have in a death grip to touch her fingers to the side of his face. She thinks it’s telling, the way he leans into her palm the same way one would with someone they not only cherish, but most importantly, trust. She wonders if it’s purposeful or instinctual: how connected do two people become when their friendship evolves to the point of literally holding one-another’s lives in their hands? She only keeps it there for a moment before reaching up to brush his bangs from his eyes, however.  “But I believe the promises you make to me. Because here, what you say does mean something. You’d lie to this entire world without much thought, but you would never lie to me. That’s why I know, that if you can’t fulfill that promise... it won’t be your fault. And you need to know that, too.”

               She has to prep the PhoneWave for him, but she isn’t ready, not yet. She likes it there, in their little bubble, when they’re allowed to have moments to themselves without everything around them going wrong. Her hand falls back down to her lap, the feeling starting to return to the one he has in his grasp because his grip has loosened just enough that it isn’t too tight anymore. She hadn’t really thought about it yet, if watching her die perhaps hurt him even a fraction as much as seeing him die had hurt her. Light is better held together than she is, and he doesn’t show it when he’s affected by something as openly, but hints of what she guessed to be pain could shine through in little ways.

               It’s that train of thought, then, that makes her realize something... An angle she hadn’t considered until that moment. Her lips part, as if she has something to say, but instead of speaking her mind right away, she searches his expression for one of those little telltale signs. All this time and she’s never thought to flip the narrative to his perspective. She’s slightly troubled by the idea that every time she’s asked him to leave her behind, if the suggestion from his point of view seemed as if he was the one who would get left behind, moving forward on his own. For all her insight and understanding, it’s easy to forget, at times, the person she’s actually dealing with. Someone who puts up a facade, yes, but not just for the sake of fooling a group of ragtag officers into believing he’s innocent of murder. He fabricates a soulless social circle where there isn’t one, creates the empty illusion of a bond with a family he may as well be invisible to, and crafts unhealthy romantic storylines with people he holds no affinity for : something he’d been doing long before Kira, isn’t it? Contemplating the ghost of his loneliness once more, she has to take a moment to ask herself how important their friendship must be to him if he’d reached the point of shelving it alongside not only his own survival, but the idea of the world he’s dreamed of creating. She swallows, her throat suddenly dry. Oh, she’s an idiot.

               “I’ll stay with you,”  she says at length, after some thought. She holds out her free hand, giving him the option of taking that one, too, if he wants. He does. And his expression doesn’t change, because even though she thinks she has a handle on him, that doesn’t mean everything about him is easy to her. But even though his face remains static, she can still tell from the brief flicker of (admittedly, very rare) surprise in his eyes, that he must pick up on her meaning.  “If that’s really how you feel, then... I’ll meet you in your new world. At Stein’s Gate. I promise.”  She thinks back to when she’d yelled at him, stomping her feet and demanding that he have faith in her when she was determined to save his life. He may not be as animated as her, but he’s every bit as stubborn. And although it may not be true to the people on the outside looking in at the two of them, he’s just as sincere, too.

               “Light...”  He reaches his hand out to tenderly push back the hair in his eyes, gloved palm pressing comfortingly to his forehead. This is not the first time he has been given this task : he thinks, perhaps, it may be the first time he has a chance of succeeding. His thumb strokes his skin  —  simply to let the man know he is there, unsure of how far his consciousness has faded. Not far enough to prevent him from reaching him, true, but he’s ... terribly hurt. Between the gunshots and his name written in that book : he shouldn’t be alive. It is by no force other than divine intervention, in this moment, that he still is.  “Can you hear me? Focus on my voice...”  He needs to speak with him. But he cannot do that with him on his deathbed. The only way around it, then ... is to halt their reality, by Omnibus’ blessing. His hand moves away from his forehead and he holds it out towards his body, in a way that he can see, no matter how gone he is.

               “If you willingly take my hand ... I can save you.”

we ' re    the    only    ones     who    can    understand       𝙤𝙪𝙧    𝙘𝙧𝙤𝙤𝙠𝙚𝙙    𝙜𝙖𝙢𝙚       that      no    one    knows    of      because     we    can ' t    go    back    anymore  .                /    @deusvolent​  .

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