Chapter Text
The human world faded from Ryuk’s perception with the silent closing of a door. One moment, there was the sterile white of a high-security warehouse, the metallic tang of fear and the sight of a young man dying on a staircase, utterly alone. The next, there was only the vast, hollow expanse of the Shinigami Realm.
Silence.
It was a different silence than he was used to. This one was… absolute. For the first time in decades, there was no clever voice weaving plans beside him, no frantic scribbling of a pen, no dramatic pronouncements or quiet, manipulative questions. There was only the rust-coloured sky, the endless dunes of dust and the quiet, gnawing boredom that had been his existence for millennia.
He flexed his clawed hands, feeling the absence of a weight he’d grown accustomed to.
No Death Note. No contract. No apples.
Especially no apples.
He let out a grating laugh that echoed emptily across the wastes. So, that was it. The greatest entertainment of his eternal life was over. The human, Light Yagami, had been a brilliant, chaotic flame, and Ryuk had warmed his hands by the fire until it consumed itself. It was exactly what he’d wanted.
A spectacle. A story to remember in the long, dull centuries to come.
So why did the memory of those final moments feel like a sinking ship pulling him under?
He replayed them, as a Shinigami might inspect a curious fossil. Light, cornered, stripped of his godhood, bleeding out on the steps with the desperate, pathetic flailing of any other mortal. It was the inevitable end. Ryuk had written it himself, just as the rules dictated. A name for a name. A life for a life. A simple transaction.
But the transaction felt anything, but simple now.
His gaze was drawn to a sudden burst of colour amidst the drab desolation. An unusual sign of hope in the monochrome wasteland. There, nestled between two jagged rocks where only dust should be, was a sapling. It was a sickly thing, thin and pale, but undeniably, impossibly alive. And from its single, slender branch hung one perfectly formed, brilliantly red apple.
Ryuk stared, his yellow eyes unblinking. Trees did not grow in the Shinigami Realm. Life did not create here; it only waited to end. This was a paradox. An impossibility.
He shuffled closer, his large frame casting a long shadow over the fragile plant. He reached out a single, sharp talon and traced the smooth, waxy skin of the apple. The gesture was unnervingly familiar. It was the same way he’d often reached for the fruits offered to him by a human hand—a hand that was now still and cold.
‘Here, Ryuk. An apple for your thoughts.’
The memory surfaced, unbidden. Not of a grand plan or a murder, but a quiet moment. Light, leaning back in his chair after some intricate manoeuvre, a faint, self-satisfied smirk playing on his lips. He’d been wearing that day—a fine, charcoal grey wool that looked inexplicably soft under the harsh desk lamp. The way the crisp white collar of the shirt beneath it peeked out always made Light look a bit too neat, too harmless, like a trick box wrapped in silk, as he tossed a red fruit into the air.
The human never truly gave anything freely; the apples were always a bribe, a payment for silence, a tool to keep his bored God of Death placated, but in those moments, there was a… rhythm to their coexistence. A game within the game.
Ryuk had thought of himself as a spectator, amused and impartial. However, a spectator doesn't feel the absence of the actor so acutely. He wasn't just thankful for the entertainment. He was, with a dawning, unsettling clarity, thankful that it had been that particular human who had picked it up. That specific, brilliant, horrifying boy with eyes full of ambition and a smile that could charm the heavens while plotting to overthrow them. The one who looked at a God of Death not with fear, but with the calculating gaze of a potential business partner.
The young Light, before the weight of the Note had fully twisted him, had been a fascinating creature. Not "sweet"—such a trivial label. Light Yagami was… intriguing. Like a rare gemstone, dazzling, but holding depths you long to explore. His aura shimmered with a rebellious glow, a vivid jolt of life in Ryuk’s world that seemed frozen in time, and Ryuk, who had only ever known the dim twilight, had been mesmerized by the blaze.
The apple on the paradoxical tree seemed to glow under the bleak light. It was a symbol of that connection, of the one thing from the human world that had truly, deeply mattered to him. It was the bridge between his eternal boredom and Light Yagami's fleeting, brilliant storm.
Ryuk closed his bony fingers around the fruit and plucked it. It came away easily, sitting in his palm with a tangible, impossible weight. He brought it to his mouth, his teeth sinking into the crisp flesh with a sound that was obscenely loud in the silence. The flavour burst on his tongue—the same sweet, sharp, perfect taste.
The taste of his greatest entertainment.
The taste of Light.
For a single, suspended moment, it was just him and the memory of that flavour, of that human.
And then the world went black.