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Tweak says, "Bing bong! Bring it on!"

meticulous_soul (meticulous_soul) wrote in mirage_rpg,
@ 2009-02-08 19:40:00

Current music:	Casey Chambers- "Rattlin' Bones"
Entry tags:	complete, day 31, l lawliet, laura moon

I Left My Home, I Left My Love, I Left My Faith Back There.
[Who]: L and Laura
[When]: Day 31, Afternoon
[What]: L isn't bored, but wants to hang out with Laura anyway. She's that cool~
[Rating]: PG for now, for likely deep thoughts.
[Status]: Technically open, though they'll likely be forced!polite to anyone else who shows up, lol

It puzzled L, that Laura might possibly believe that he wouldn't want to spend time with her unless he had absolutely nothing else to do. She certainly wasn't easy on herself, when it came to the appeal she held for others. He could understand, when he thought about it as others might... but it was a forced way of thinking, for the secretive detective. He was the type of man who named spiders but left others hanging without even an approved fake moniker for himself. Except for Laura, of course. Laura was different. She knew to call him by his professional codename. It was closer than he allowed most people to get. And, yes, he considered Laura a "person."

The commons area was a well-furnishes, quiet room with a fireplace, though with agreeable weather like they had been having, it was not in use. Perching on an armchair, L organized his thoughts (as was his custom before a planned conversation), craning his neck and watching for Laura.

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spitandviolets
2009-02-09 10:01 pm UTC (link)

As she listened to him, Laura became even more acutely aware that L was fragile. He was so delicate, so like a rose, it was almost as if he was made of glass. She knew that human beings were fragile. That was not something that she could deny. L, though, was even more so, and she felt sorry for him. He was in grave danger with her around. She was a monster, and a dangerous one at that. Laura didn't know her own strength at this point. She always touched lighter than she was intending to, and it seemed to be about normal. What if she slipped? What if she messed up? That would be agony. Hurting someone who didn't deserve it, possibly killing him? No, that thought was too frightening. This was a bad choice. He'd said that he hadn't seen her much since they had parted ways, and he had seemed to genuinely desire her presence. That presence, though, was far too dangerous. He was at risk every second that he was with her. He was beautiful, and breakable, and fleeting. Hell, what was she on about?

Pulled from her meditation, she looked over at him, eyes staring at his face. "You need to sleep," she said. She had wanted to use his name, to make the address more personal, but she wasn't sure what ears were around. "It can't be good for you, staying up like this. I know that there's a lot going on around here, but you will crash eventually. If you don't give in, it will be messy, and it will be hazardous." What could she say that would convince him? Ah! That was a possibility. "Would it help if I said I'd watch over you if and when you finally decided to go to sleep? It seems that you had many caretakers at home, so maybe, if one could simulate such an environment, you would not be so vehemently opposed to getting the rest that your body clearly needs."

"Why would someone be mimicking my appearance?" she asked, dumbfounded but unable to effectively communicate her shock and awe. Laura didn't come from a world with disguises and intrigue. She didn't know people who tried to kill other people, not in terms of assassinations, and his words sounded like something out of a movie. "Who and why would they take advantage of such a fact? I mean, who would want to be me? That makes no sense. You really are overtired."

"It was probably fun. It wasn't horrible. I met an older woman who reminded me of my mother, and I met a man about your age who reminded me of my late husband. There was also some shrimpy blond kid there. He just grumbled and complained the whole time."

If he had vocalized that he thought that Laura had pretty anything at this point, she probably would have melted. She thought that she was completely horrible to look at in the light. Laura liked to keep her nails painted to hide the bluish tint to her nail bed. He was so warm, so comforting to her. Reluctantly, she pried herself away. It was fine. She didn't need to be reminded of how cold she was all the time. Touching people, feeling warm, only made going back to being frigid all the more depressing.

"What kinds of things are you good at? I don't mean it as an insult, I'm just curious to know if there's anything you haven't mentioned yet. What kinds of things do you need help with?" As she was asking her second question, he had already given her at least one answer. She was wholly unable to imagine a world in which someone had servants, or caretakers, as he called them. From a very young age, Laura had been forced to do everything for herself. She was fiercely independent. Her eyes studied him. Biting into her lower lip, she shrugged to herself. It couldn't hurt. "Would you like to go get something to eat? Have you eaten since arriving, or are you on strike from that, as well?"

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meticulous_soul
2009-02-10 11:31 am UTC (link)

Glancing at Laura, L wondered what was going through her mind. Being a genius didn't make him a psychic, and he was far from an empathic prodigy. He never would have guessed that he was in danger, of all things, near her... in fact, he would go so far as to say that he actually felt safer near someone with no reason in the world to want to hurt him. It occurred to him that a "friend" was someone who helped and allowed friends to help them, in return. Had he ever had a "friend" like that before?

"Ryuzaki, you fell asleep at work again. You'd better be careful, or something bad could happen." a smirk.

"It won't happen again." Trying to avoid the guilt, and overcoming sense that he was pathetic. That Light thought so. That Light was waiting for just the right moment to kill him.

"Of course it will. You're only human, Ryuzaki. You should get some sleep... in a bed, for a change. Then you can spend the hours we're both awake being more productive." So helpful. So worried, so Machiavellian and apparently caring.

"You're right... I do need to sleep," L conceded, looking a little bit ashamed on top of exhausted. He had a long history of denying his humanity to himself, pushing his body beyond its breaking point just to try to find that point, and overcome it. Once, he had asked Watari if he was an android. Watari was an inventor, after all, and L's memories of childhood were sketchy and fractured, at best... Watari had laughed, invited L to cut himself, and bleed, and heal, as humans did, and then to ask that question again and listen to himself. L had been bitterly disappointed, knowing that he had limitations. Knowing that he was, indeed, fragile. "It... would help, if you could watch me," he decided. She had suggested it, not him, and she sounded like she wouldn't mind. "It would help me, to know that someone is nearby... thank you." If a friend was someone who let a friend help... L could only deduce that he was, indeed, being a friend.

"You never know... people mimic each other all the time," L said, staring straight ahead and biting his fingertip, as he was prone to doing. "For many different reasons... sometimes it's subtle, even unconscious... other times, it's malicious." he shrugged, not elaborating further, letting what wasn't said carry his meaning.

He had to bite his cheek again to keep from breaking into an all-out grin. He'd known a shrimpy blond kid who grumbled and complained, himself. Mello, his maybe-successor. Were they already contacting the orphanage, to get some of those kids on the case he'd been withdrawn from? "It sounds like you met some interesting people. Is it good, or bad, to be reminded of home by people who seem like others you have known?" he asked, tilting his head.

"I'm good at some things, like everyone," L said, rubbing his bare toes against each other. However, when he tried to be modest, it usually backfired on him. "I'm good at learning languages... math... music... I like philosophy, a little, and astronomy, and entomology... I'm very good at puzzles and seeing patterns. I see patterns in everything... and I can't forget things. It is useful, sometimes, but it makes my head hurt, more often than not. It makes me see patterns where there actually aren't any, and... well. That makes me paranoid." he closed his eyes, looking like he just might drop off, but quickly opened them again when Laura mentioned food.

"I... actually am very hungry." he was too embarrassed to admit it, but he was incredibly worried about poison.

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spitandviolets
2009-02-12 01:12 am UTC (link)

When his face got like that, and she wasn't even sure what expression it was exactly, it meant that he was lost someplace. His mind had, seemingly, wandered off and was somewhere that Laura couldn't follow. She was glad, then, and a little relieved, when he returned. It felt like he was in a little less danger when he existed in the present tense. His mind, when it was caught up in itself, was a mysterious and foreign land, a place where she could neither find nor protect him. What use was defending and protecting an empty body, a shell of the person that she saw fit to guard? It left her with an even colder, emptier feeling than usual. A touch of the void, perhaps. The void. That was a scary notion.

"You don't need to thank me," Laura said, watching him. "You know for a fact that I don't sleep, and I get very bored at night. Everyone that I know on this planet needs sleep, and I would never be the one to insist on wakefulness. I remember, faintly, how a good night's sleep felt." She paused. Her mind was fuzzy, like a television channel picking up two broadcasts at once. "I also know what it is like to be afraid of going to sleep. You...never know what could happen to you when your eyes are closed for the night. Also, there's a whole wide and wild world going on out there. The idea of it passing you by is enough to drive a person mad. Add nightmares to the list, and I can fully understand." Her hand raised to her forehead, rubbing slowly. After a few moments the mixup passed. She could never tell who she was when the signals got crossed. Whose memories were those? Someone alive? Someone dead? "You don't have to worry about it while I'm on watch, though. Just let me know when you want to sleep. Or, if you feel that you haven't the strength to tell me, just fall into it. I'm perfectly capable of carrying you, and I am certain that I could find someplace to put you." Maybe her bed would be used for its intended purpose instead of by some crazy dead woman who liked to pretend that she was able to rest.

L liked to ask interesting questions. When she had come back, Laura didn't think that there was a single question that anyone could ask her that she would find difficult. Once you were in the past tense, everything seemed incredibly blasé. Still, he succeeded in making undeath interesting. She liked that about him. The fact that he genuinely seemed to care about her answers also made it a touch more enjoyable. "It's a bad thing," she answered in her dull, flat tone. "It makes me realize that maybe my world, in life, was too small. I thought that the people that I knew were wholly unique and interesting. They were special to me. I wonder, though, if they were special because they were mine, because they were all that I knew. It might be that they're just like everybody everywhere, but I saw so few places and met so few people that I never noticed how ordinary people like Shadow were. I'm not certain. We're usually blind to the ordinary qualities of those that we care about in life. In death, I find that I see people much more clearly. If I had met you while I was alive, I don't think that I would have understood you at all." I never would have realized that you are a lantern light in a world of flickering candles. I never would have known that you shine.

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spitandviolets
2009-02-12 01:12 am UTC (link)

"Languages, huh? The only language I ever knew, and poorly, was French. I always had dreams of going to Paris one day, of seeing the Eiffel Tower. Math, as I've said, was beyond me, though I liked listening to music." Her nose wrinkled slightly. "I despised philosophy and theology. It's caused too many problems to be worth anything. Also, no one knows if they're right. No one can ever know if they're right." One of those crooked, ironic smiles touched her lips, but it never quite reached her eyes. "Except me, though I'm not much of an anybody anymore. I bet I could argue theology with the best of them. First hand knowledge and primary sources always beat hearsay and theory." She shrugged. "I always liked astrology, though that doesn't have anything to do with astronomy."

Laura rose to her feet and smoothed her clothes off. Making her way to his chair, she gently smoothed her hand over his forehead, fingers lightly playing with his hair. "Does it hurt badly?" she asked. That deadpan made things very difficult for her. No matter how genuine she was, nothing ever sounded right. "I don't know how to help paranoia," she said, shaking her head. "Does the knowledge that fate is a random force and really doesn't have a set pattern help at all?" Hopefully, coming from her, such a thing was believable. She did not, in fact, know that for certain, but it was a personal philosophy. Still, it did explain why bad things sometimes happened to good people and sometimes happened to bad people. If it was just a random sampling, because her case, and Shadow's case by the transitive property, was a rarity. The gods very seldom took personal interest in anybody, and fate, being a force that ruled even the gods, probably took less interest. Shoot. There she was, doing philosophy.

Moving in front of the chair, she offered her hand to him. "Let's go find food," she said, as if it were the obvious answer to everything about which they had just spoken. "I'm sure that there's a kitchen around here somewhere. A restaurant would be better, considering you don't know how to cook and I no longer can taste anything, but I could make you something. I managed to keep myself fed when I was alive. It might not have been impressive, but it was edible." The fact was that Laura had been a fairly excellent cook. She probably could have gone to school for it. Her chili was famous. Unfortunately, she had always cooked by taste. "Maybe we'll even find you something sweet."

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meticulous_soul
2009-02-12 03:02 pm UTC (link)

"That expression," as Laura put it to herself, was what L's mother had seen every time she looked into her son's face. A phantom of a child, really, always somewhere else, living in a world with strict and complicated rules and where fear was the heart of being alive at all. His work and purpose had drawn him out, given him an outlet and a way to learn how to understand human beings like himself, but before then, he wasn't sure what he had been. Whatever it was, it had been enough to drive his mother mad.

"That's exactly it," he said, raising his eyebrows at Laura's list of nighttime dangers. "There are a lot of reasons to not want to sleep. Before meeting you, I thought that death must be like being asleep forever, and that's why I did not want to waste life in a state like that." Did those words make sense, especially if not sleeping was essentially self-destructive and ultimately shortened life? Probably not... but truly, L was exhausted. But Laura's offer was something he appreciated... someone to watch him while he slept. Maybe not cameras, or a roomful of armed police detectives who were loyal to his cause... but someone he had found no reason to distrust. That was an accomplishment, in L's book.

L had known many, many people, even if they hadn't known him, and only a few of them had been "unique." Incidentally, Laura was one of them. "If it means anything, I have never met anyone like you," he said, shrugging one shoulder in that controlled, careful way that showed how much attention he paid to even the most natural actions. "Most people don't understand me, and I don't understand most people... you wouldn't have been alone. I am happy that you feel you can understand me now, though," L said, an encouraged uplift at the end of his sentence. His own voice, like Laura's, tended towards an unsoothing monotone, but occasionally, he made more of an effort to sound like he had a feel for natural speech patterns. Usually, it was only because he was mimicking a pattern he had heard someone else use, precise to the point where it clearly wasn't his inflection.

"Français?" L asked interestedly. "My mother spoke French at home... it was the first language I heard. I liked it." He spoke it fluently, of course, but it seemed a little redundant to share information like that. It was like bragging, especially after Laura said that she didn't speak it well. "The Eiffel Tower is overrated," he said helpfully, instead. "Philosophy is something I enjoy but do not take too seriously... I like some of the Russian existentialists, like Dostoevsky... but otherwise, it is merely an idle hobby. Theology... I stay away from, but I am certain that your experiences make you something of an expert on the topic." He tilted his head quizzically when Laura mentioned astrology, since it was something he had little to no experience with. "Astrology? You mean... star signs? The sun traveling around the Ecliptic and passing through the constellations of the zodiac?"

He closed his eyes, able to better tolerate contact without visual sensory input. The soothing feel of Laura's cool hand felt nice against his forehead, and he sighed quietly. "Not badly... it is not a physical ache. I suppose that your confirmation of such a thing is more comforting than knowing that people kill people... and that some people are easier to kill than others, and that killing comes more easily to some." it made L dizzy, to think about such things. The last time he'd felt that sense of vertigo was in early November, on the chilly rooftop of that building, contemplating death and control and how they related to each other. Ironic, that he was here now, closely associating with someone who cared nothing for control (he deduced this from her statements about fate) and was an embodiment herself of death. He took her hand when it was offered, pulling himself to his feet. "I don't mind. Just as long as the food has some sugar in it, and no meat," he said, biting his lip. "I don't like the way meat tastes. Did you cook a lot, back on earth?" it was notable that L did not say something like "when you were alive," choosing instead to relate to a state they shared. They were both passengers of Spaceship Earth, now somewhere else.

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