Care enough to Hate

Late-add Authors Note - I'm debateing on how much Yaoi content I'm gonna put in this. It's eather gonna be none at all, in which case I will take the plot one direction, or quite a bit, in which case I have any number of options of what to do. I don't have much in the way of grey area. Comments voteing one way or another will be appreachated, and probablly will be a decision-making factor.
Enjoy Chapter 2
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You can only live so long before you stop counting life in days. When the time comes you can’t even count life in years anymore, you know you’ve lived too long. But how can you escape life after death?

You can only play so long against an equal before you loose interest in the game.

Against a better, losses only hone your talents and help you sharpen your skills and strive toward the unachievable goal of victory. Against a lesser, constant victory would grow stale. However, the thrill of crushing your opponent into ever lower levels of hopelessness makes such games worthwhile to any who enjoy the rush of dominance. Against an equal, a victory proves nothing. A subsequent challenge brings only defeat. Eventually wins and losses take on the rhythm of a bouncing rubber ball. Up and down to spring back up until even the highs are low and finally, at long last you roll to a complete halt.

They’d played so much tennis that the sight of a ball made him ill, so much chess that he’d swear they’d invented hundreds of never-before imagined gambits, and so many other games of so many varying natures that he could hardly remember them all, and, tired of all of them, they had at last resorted to snakes and ladders for something vaguely knew. It was at this point that Light tried to escape. They had just, in their boredom at turning a spinner and moving a plastic piece, begun a moral discussion of why stealing cookies led to the biggest fall of the game. It was an enlightening conversation, illumining a fact so unpleasant Light flew into a rage. Yanking at the spinner, he tore the plastic to bits, leaving a sharp edge to one side which he, turning his anger on himself instead of the recoiling Lawliet, attempted to drive through the tender flesh of his throat.

He failed. The plastic edge passed through his throat without cutting. It was only solid to his hands. The realization he should have remembered this from the dozens of times balls from various games had passed right through his abdomen only enraged him farther. He slashed at himself, dragging the plastic through every part of his body, desperately wanting to cut, to break, to just finally STOP!

Lawliet watched without reaction. At first, he was amused. He had wondered how long it would take the other to break under the strain of nothingness. Then, as it progressed, his feeling turned to concern. He didn’t know how long this would last, and he wasn’t sure how long he could stand watching it before a similar madness took him. Just as he felt he was about to begin an equally futile effort, Light fell suddenly. He was still, the only movement in his body caused by sobs that shook his entire frame. Unable to keep silent, Lawliet spoke in a low voice. “Light-kun?”

“How do you stand it?” shrieked Light. “Never tired, never hungry, nothing to do but pummel each other at any game we imagine! I hate it! I hate it and I hate you and right now, I even hate myself!” The proclamation was followed by a short silence, which Lawliet did nothing to break. A moment that could just as easily have been a year in this place passed before Light let out a hoarse laugh, then commented “and Ryuk told me I could never go to hell.”

“Light-kun.” Same low tone, same gentle request to have the others full attention for a moment. No demands. Light was far to fragile right now to have demands made of him.

“What?” Harsh, bitter, ragged. Hardly a trace of the confident, cultured young man he had first waged a lethal war with.

“The game is gone. Maybe, instead of calling a new one to replace it, we should just talk instead.”

“Talk?” Light echoed “after all this time, you want to talk?”

“Compared to how long we’ll be together, Light-kun, ‘all this time’ is…insignificant.”

Breaths. Slow, deep, cleansing. “What would you like to talk about?”

Lawliet shrugged. “Your motives for your recent foolish endeavor, perhaps. We have no bodies here, therefore we cannot destroy them. Even if we could, there is no where else to send what remains.” Silence, then “I share you despair, Light-kun. I too wish for nonexistence.” Light looked at the other in disbelief. Lawliet only nodded. “I’d planned for my life to end well before I was forty, because I couldn’t imagine existing without anything interesting left to experience.”

“Is that why you placed yourself in jeopardy?” Light asked “Why you were always so casual about the subject of your own death?”

Lawliet considered. “Those are both complex questions, Light-kun. You see, as much as my boredom led, and still leads me to crave nonexistence, my pride makes me fear it.”

Light understood. He twisted the concept around in his mind, remembering days he’d felt the same. Days before Kira, days before he had something to do, something to exist for, something…

“That’s it!” he cried, his new realization filling him with hope. “We need something to work for! Something…”

Obsidian eyes showed twin monuments to his error in thinking. Slowly, Lawliet shook his head.

The hope fled Light, and he murmured “…nothing. We have nothing.”

And once more, silence fell.