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inmyownworld ([info]inmyownworld) wrote in [info]vas_captio_rpg,
@ 2009-04-26 23:39:00

Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Current music:Switchblade Symphony- "Mine Eyes"
Entry tags:!complete, day 05, l lawliet, laura moon, location: pharmacy/liquor store

Day 5- I Only Want to Hear the Angels Laugh, Are They Sleeping On The Edge of the Sky? [Finished]
Who: L Lawliet and Laura Moon
What: Fractious, sleepless detective. Sympathetic, watchful Laura. Aspirin.
When: Day 5 Early Afternoon
Where: The drug store
Rating: PG to start
Status: Complete



It had been a long and somewhat frustrating morning. The odd, precarious and often baffling thing that was L's sleeping patterns were catching up to him, and there couldn't be a worst time for their negative effects to stalk him. He slept for four hours every two days, and now that he was ready to collapse as that time was again approaching, he found, to his horror, that as soon as his eyes closed and he composed himself, a loud siren jolted him back to jittery wakefulness. It was a complete and terrible exhaustion, the kind that no amount of coffee or sugar could remedy. The kind that made nail guns look better than a glass of cool, clear water looks to a man dying of thirst.

Not to mention he had a whanging headache. Without Watari around to provide him with much-needed dietary supplements and a quiet place to fall asleep when determined limbs and stubborn willpower couldn't keep him awake any longer, L tended to start to fade and weaken. It was odd and a little ironic that he and Laura were living together as "partners". The two were looking more alike now that L was getting paler and thinner.

Sighing, L curled up where he was, against a row of shelves in the drug store. And was instantly covering his ears in frustrated madness when the alarm sounded, like clockwork. Composing himself, wanting to scream but not possessing the ability to healthily release pent-up aggression or emotions, L seized a bottle of cough syrup and hurled it at the wall opposite him, where it shattered. He eyed the sticky fragments with contempt, drawing his knees to his chest and hugging them.


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[info]spitandviolets
2009-04-26 11:59 pm UTC (link)
It was cooler today, and, as such, Laura had stayed up and around rather than going into her refrigerated coffin. The front door of the drug store opened, allowing her access, and she quickly shut it behind her. She didn't want to wake L if he was resting. As she began to make her way towards the back, she heard glass shatter. Super speed and instinct kicked in, and she was at the back of the shop before she knew what she was doing. She felt only one presence, and, realizing that the light of it was familiar, she relaxed. It was only Ryuzaki.

"You're still here," she sighed thankfully, making her way to him. She'd never seen him curled up quite so small. Her brows furrowed. This did not look good. "Watch the glass," she said, and instinct took over. She lifted him, effortlessly, into the air and carried him to the back counter. Laura set him down and knelt, trying to get a lock on his eyes. Poor thing did not look well at all.

She reached up and smoothed his hair from his eyes with her icy hand. Her fingers rested against his skin, and she tried her best not to allow his warmth to wash over her. "You've got a headache," she murmured, pulling her journal from her pocket. She tossed it to the side; it wasn't very important at the moment. "I came back to see if you needed anything. I was looking for food for you." She reached into her pocket and pulled out several shelf stable items. It was mostly candy bars and chips; the gas station had been pretty wiped out. She did not, however, want to cook cougar for him.

Turning, Laura looked around the store. "I'm going to try to find some aspirin," she said, keeping her voice low. Her fingers left his forehead as she started to walk away. It hadn't been so much a conversation as a statement of fact, much like many conversations with Laura.

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[info]inmyownworld
2009-04-27 12:50 am UTC (link)
L hadn't even noticed the drug store door opening, so lost in stormy, deluded thought. It wasn't until she spoke, stating her relief that he was here, that he became aware of Laura's presence at all. He was not as sensitive as she was, in those matters. If he'd been more able to control his actions and reactions, he might have thought to warn her of the class, but in just a moment he had been scooped up in Laura's arms. She proceeded to carry him, with embarrassing ease, to the back counter.

L's perception of the event was dim and erratic. He was almost constantly on the brink of psychosis due to lack of sleep anyway, and the fact that he was able to function at all relied heavily on his ability to simply sleep wherever he happened to feel the urgent need to. That had happened this morning, right on schedule... and now he was unable to follow his carefully structured routine. He couldn't sleep when he most needed to.

He registered, with his dull and foggy senses, that Laura was talking to him, and he made an effort to listen and actually absorb what was being said to him. Food... headache... aspirin? Aspirin sounded like a good idea... nodding heavily, L turned on his side and curled again, closing his eyes, thinking for one brief moment that he would actually be able to sleep. Then, the siren blared again, and he was sitting bolt-upright, clutching his head, wanting someone to smash it in for him so the siren couldn't wake him up.

He resolved to ask Laura when she came back. Maybe he could conceal his temporary madness well enough to convince her to hit him hard enough to put him out of his misery.

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[info]spitandviolets
2009-04-27 01:11 am UTC (link)
It took her some doing to search the store. She shuffled here and there, sifted through things, and mumbled to herself when results were not satisfactory. After much doing, though, she came up with a bottle of aspirin. It seemed that it wasn't out of date and that it would be okay for him to take. More searching turned up a bottle of coke. She wasn't exactly sure what was wrong with him, and it looked like it was flat and probably quite old, but it would do. Caffeine usually helped her when she wasn't feeling well.

Returning to his side, the dark haired woman gently lifted his head up to look at her. The alarm sounded. It was mostly annoying to her, but she could see how it would be maddening to someone who actually required sleep. Her hand lightly brushed his. "L?" she said, hoping that he would be able to answer her this time. "L, you need to take this. It should make you feel a little bit better." She held up the bottle and began opening it. The cola she rested beside him. "Take two of these, and drink it down with that." She motioned to the sicky sweet drink. "It says it should start working within about twenty minutes."

She hated seeing him like this. It just wasn't right. He was usually so sharp, so full of life, so... together. This couldn't be. It was uncomfortable. Still, in some part of her mind, she had to admit that it felt very nice to be needed. She was glad that she could be of use to him.

"Glad I proposed the partner system. I know if I were in your place and we weren't partners, it's possible that no one would come for me. If there's anything else you need, let me know. Please."

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[info]inmyownworld
2009-04-28 04:29 pm UTC (link)
L brought his hands to his ears, as if holding either side of his aching head would prevent it from splitting in two, as the siren sounded. Since coming here, he had found that he still hated to be touched, but something about Laura was... exceptional. He felt nothing negative when she touched him, and so he allowed her to lift his head. He heard his true name, blinking and squinting, nodding wearily in response to her gentle coaxing. In many ways, L was like a child. His life was usually regulated, his body cared for and regulated like a machine while his brain carried out higher functions that were beyond most people.

Raising himself, he obeyed without questioning, the familiar feeling of being taken care of overriding any paranoia or doubts about the things he was being offered. Taking the aspirin and downing it with a few swallows of the warm, stale cola, he let it settle in his stomach for a moment before turning blearily back towards Laura.

It was true. Usually, he was sharp, competent, vibrant, and capable, but he lived so close to his breaking point that he had no room to deprive himself of more than he already did.

"Stay with me?" he asked quietly, keeping a hold on her hand. "I don't want to be unreasonably needy, but... this is so maddening..." the caffeine already seemed to be reviving him somewhat, even though his body was appallingly used to the drug. "Talk to me... keep me awake so that siren doesn't go off here again. Tell me about the people you knew..."

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[info]spitandviolets
2009-05-04 01:47 am UTC (link)
In truth, using his real name was awkward and counter-intuitive for her. She'd read it on the journal, and, though he seemed to like being called Ryuzaki, he was so far gone that she had to hope that it would reach him and bring him around. When he was more conscious she would have to ask him what he wanted her to call him. She'd seen so many things flying around in that damn notebook, and everyone seemed to have an opinion about him. There was that guy who called everyone whores...and, next to him, L looked like everybody's least favorite. She couldn't help but want to tell them that they just needed to know him like she did, but that was saying a little too much. People needed to make their own decisions; she knew that more than anyone. While the jury in her mind was still out on the issue of predestination versus free will, she was determined to force the humans around this place to make their own decisions.

It was good, then, that he had not told her about how much he hated being touched just yet. That would have been one choice that Laura would have made for him. After all, she didn't want to make him uncomfortable. He was her partner, and she needed to be close to ensure his protection. If he had rejected her in such a way, she probably would have overcompensated by pushing him away even more. Fortunately, his childlike motions betrayed no dislike of contact. Once he had finished taking his medicine, she smoothed his hair back again. For someone who was never a mother, who claimed to not be very fond of children, she had fairly decent maternal instincts.

Faintly, as if it were an echo from over a thousand years ago, Laura remembered what exhaustion was like. When Shadow had gone away at first, she had stayed up drinking and crying until her body had passed out. Her mind, though, it was forever in agony. All she had wanted was someone to take away the burden of her thoughts. Robbie had been that person.

"Of course I'll stay with you," she murmured. Sitting beside him, her hand grasped in his, she felt a little awkward. It was almost too intimate, too comfortable. She was afraid of it somewhere, but it was too far back to worry about at present. "And don't worry about sounding unreasonably needy. Unreasonably needy is asking someone you just met to staple your arm on for you." A smirk crossed her lips. She was hoping to find some lipstick sometime in the not to distant future, or at least some gloss. Pale was fine, but cracking was not.

"The people that I knew," she began, as if she were a grade schooler beginning an essay. "That's a difficult topic, you know. You had to ask something hard, didn't you? That's fine. I must warn you, though, that it won't sound very much like a story. I've become very factual of late. I will do my best to remember things. I must also warn you that, sometimes, my memories get...mixed up...with other people's memories. It's usually the people that I'm around. If any of my memories come out as yours, let me know and I will do my best to reroute the circuit."

Where did one start telling this kind of story? It wasn't a story, really. Well, she supposed she could start at the beginning. "My family, when I was growing up, consisted of my mother, my father, my older sister, and myself. My mother always liked my older sister better than she liked me. This is a fact, not an impression. I could never do anything right by her. In our family, my mother held more sway than my father. She was the powerful one. My sister was responsible, dependable, and many other words that ended in "ble." I was my father's favorite. He was a good man, a nice man, and he never could do right by anyone, but he kept trying. He always did his best to be a good, kind, hopeful person. That's what I was like when I was alive."

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[info]spitandviolets
2009-05-04 01:47 am UTC (link)
"My father died of a heart attack on the toilet in the bathroom when I was thirteen, and I became somewhat of a problem child after that. I already knew that I could not please my mother, nor could I do anything right by her, so I resolved to be as wrong as I possibly could be while still being a good, respectful daughter to her. My sister grew up, had a sweetheart, got married, had two children. She moved out of Eagle Point, Indiana, and to Texas. I don't know where. She never invited me to visit her, though I used to really like her children. I grew up, slept with boys in the back seats of cars, did some drugs, but nothing hard, got put into special education classes, barely graduated from high school, and became a travel agent."

"Somewhere along the line I met Audrey. She was important in my life. She was my best friend until the day I died, though I do not think that, in the end, she thought of me that way. At my funeral, she gave me violets, my favorite flowers, and then spit on me. I deserved it. I slept with her husband for a long time. Two years, if my memory is correct. Robbie was her husband. He was also important in my life, and he was instrumental in my death. I died after giving him the very last blowjob that I had ever intended to give him in my whole life. I say after because I did not die at the scene of the accident that claimed my life. I made it to the hospital, and they removed his penis from my mouth. It had come off in the crash, you see. Thus, I did not die with his dick in my mouth as Audrey claims. I think she said such things because she was angry. I don't blame her."

"The most important person in my whole live, and in my death until I arrived here, was Shadow Moon, my husband." She paused. "Am I boring you? Any questions?" She told a better story than she thought.

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[info]inmyownworld
2009-05-04 04:32 pm UTC (link)
It was true that L tended to make enemies rather easily. It didn't seem as psychotically deliberate as Rorschach's communications, but like someone who was honest and observed and judged things unapologetically. His social skills were awful, and that was about as true as things could get. When Laura asked him what name he would prefer her to call him, though, "L" would be the definite answer. Ryuzaki was false, a safety alias that meant nothing and was completely detached from L. It was like a spider that the detective found endearing, but released outside to separate himself from it.

Had L been in complete possession of his thoughts and reactions, he might have found holding Laura's hand somewhat awkward, especially with the knowledge that he was beginning to think of her as something other than a mere acquaintance. However, he was, indeed, far gone, and desensitized to the stimuli that overwhelmed him when he was completely alert. "Your arm fell off... that wasn't any trouble, Laura, and you are not needy..." he protested, suppressing a wide yawn. "You give more than you take, and that is... very extraordinary..."

"I don't care if it's not a 'story'..." L said. "Stories are to make children fall asleep... I want to stay awake so those horrible sirens don't go off again. So... I want to learn more about you, because you are interesting and it will not put me to sleep." he listened, his eyes dull and his body wilted, but didn't seem the least bit bored. There were elements in the narrative that he wasn't familiar with, such as the term "blowjob", but he understood enough to derive the basic nature of Laura's acts and their consequences. He felt a slight, metallic twinge of jealousy when Laura mentioned Shadow, though he honestly had no reason to when he examined it objectively. Why should he be jealous of such an unfortunate man?

"Tell me about Shadow? Your husband?" Only curiosity found its way into L's weary voice, no trace of the envy he actually felt.

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[info]spitandviolets
2009-05-05 01:01 am UTC (link)
Where did she begin a story about Shadow? That was a difficult question. She didn't even know where Shadow began; how, then, could her story start? She supposed, though, that L didn't care to hear about Shadow on his own, all of his backstory and all of the odd things about him. He wanted to hear about Shadow in relation to her.

"I met Shadow Moon through Audrey. Audrey, as I said, was my best friend. We had been best friends for a long time, and we were both single and looking. This was a few years ago. Well, more years than it was, but not too terribly long ago. Less than five years, and I was about twenty-one or twenty-two. Maybe twenty-three? No, I had to be younger than that. It was a long chain of unfortunate events that happened. Regardless, Audrey was going on a date with Robbie Burton, some guy that she had met from somewhere. Isn't that always how it happens, though? People never really remember where, exactly, they met for the first time; they only remember the first significant meeting. She was nervous to go alone, so she wanted me to come along. Not wanting me to feel lonely, she had Robbie invite a friend of his along. Shadow was my blind date, and I went in expecting nothing. I think that's why we worked so well. We both went there expecting nothing, and fate had it in for us to fall for each other at that very moment. Funny how it happens that way sometimes."

"Shadow and I started dating, and within a very short time we were married. It just clicked. We didn't have money, we lived in a dump of an apartment, and I worked more frequently than he did. It didn't matter, though, especially at first. There was me, and there was him, and there was the whole wide world and it was ours. We couldn't keep a puppy in our own apartment because of the landlord, but he was my puppy. My big, dopey puppy. We had no control over our immediate situation, yet in our minds we owned everything. I suppose that was the feeling of the Old Millennium and the Old Gods."

"One day I got the bright idea that Shadow and I needed more money. Some people say money is the root of all evil, but I say that girls are the root of all evil. I know that I was the poison in our marriage. I knew some guys from my wild days in high school. They were planning to rob a bank, so I got in contact with them. Shadow was only supposed to drive the getaway car. He was only supposed to be the driver. He was supposed to get one third of the haul. The heist went without any real event. After, though, things got ugly. Somebody disrespected me, and they weren't going to give Shadow his share of the money. Shadow liked to talk with his fists to anyone who wasn't me. He was rough around the edges. For most of his life he'd been alone, and his hands had done more talking than any other part of him. He beat them, almost to death, and he took the money. He gave it to me. We were supposed to be happy. Then the police came for him. The other two had turned on him, and he was supposed to take the fall for the heist and for the assaults. He would not let me testify to help him. Instead, he had me hide the money someplace that no one would ever find it."

Laura paused. "It's a secret I took to the grave." Leaning in, she pressed her lips against his ear, hoping to help keep him alert by sharing something more secret with him. "I buried it beneath my father's headstone in the cemetery where both he and I were buried."

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[info]spitandviolets
2009-05-05 01:02 am UTC (link)
She pulled back, still holding his hand, barely noticing. "Shadow went away for a while, to prison, and it was just far enough away that I couldn't go see him. I didn't have the money. Ironic, isn't it? People never think about the people, the families, that 'criminals' leave behind. We don't matter; only justice does. I drank. I drank a lot. I was sad, and I was sorry. I drank an entire year under the table until Robbie came to stop me. Robbie and Audrey, they were such good people. They really cared about me. They did everything with me. I don't think they went on a single date without me for three years. How did I repay them? I came between them. I started sleeping with Robbie, and I stopped drinking. He became my addiction. I hadn't had sex in about a year, and it was torture. I needed his skin. I needed him to pretend. There were no feelings behind it. I didn't love him. I don't think I even liked him towards the end. But there was lust. We carried on our affair for two whole years."

"Then Shadow was coming home. Three years into a seven year sentence, and my Puppy was coming home. I was so...happy. I was going to call it off with Robbie. We were done. We were planning Shadow's welcome home party together. To celebrate, we went out on one last dinner together. I drank a lot. I drank, and then I got lusty. I had to have him just one more time before I said goodbye and walked away from him forever. While he was driving me home, three days before Shadow was supposed to come home, I leaned over and put my head in his lap. My shoulder hit the drive shaft, and we careened into the other lane. The last thing I remember clearly was 'I'm going to die' and then blackness. I don't remember pain, or sorrow, or remorse. Just...black. Bang. Over. There are flickers from the emergency room, the autopsy, but I was somewhere else at that point."

"They let Shadow out early so he could come to my funeral. My best friend gave me violets and spit on me. My husband gave me a coin and an apology. He apologized, after all that, and he knew everything. He blamed himself." Laura stopped. Her hand gripped his a little tighter, and she actually looked away from him. "I corrupted and destroyed a good, honest, simple man. Shadow would have been happy if he had never met me. Shadow wouldn't have died hanging on a tree for nine days if he had never met me. I did so much evil to him, yet he apologized, and he forgave me. This," she held up the coin on the chain around her neck, "is his apology. I need no other forgiveness."

"He may have doomed me to walk the world until the end of eternity, but he gave me the chance to protect him. Shadow, my Puppy, gave me the opportunity to help him even after dying. I know he didn't know what he'd done, bringing me back; that part was an accident. But sometimes accidents speak loudly. He couldn't look at me. I know my existence made him sick. I wasn't his Laura. He was completely cold and unsympathetic to me. He wouldn't hold me, wouldn't make me warm. The morning I first came to him, after clawing out of my coffin and up through my grave, he didn't even ask me to stay. And he wouldn't work on our marriage. That's why it's always been so hard for me. I serve no purpose. The man who created me doesn't even want me. I'm inconvenient, and I'm an accident."

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[info]spitandviolets
2009-05-05 01:02 am UTC (link)
"I don't want to be dead, you know," she said softly, her voice like an echo. "I say that I'm not really prejudiced about dying and all that, but I don't even know if I really mean it. I know what death is, I know what happens. Would I ever choose it, though, if there were another option? No. I'm afraid, now, of the end of my own existence. There's nowhere for me to go. When it's all over, I'll simply cease to be. There's no comfort, no answers, when you've died, come back to the world of the living, and stopped existing. Those privileges are reserved for the dead, the truly dead. I want to be alive, Ryuzaki. I want so desperately to be alive. I'm always cold. I hate passing for alive; I want to be alive." There was something akin to frustration in her voice, and she fell silent. The sound lingered in the air. Somewhere, possibly, the alarm went off, but that may have been the alarm in Laura's mind.

"Do you know the worst part?" she asked. "The worst part is that I don't think that the real Laura Moon died in that car crash a year ago. I don't think she was scared when the metal hit the glass. The real Laura Moon died when Shadow Moon went to prison. I don't think I've been myself for four and a half years."

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[info]inmyownworld
2009-05-05 09:52 am UTC (link)
L might have argued that he was different, that he always remembered faces and the first place he met someone, if he encountered them more than once. His brain was like an extensive, living filing cabinet, and that sort of retrieval was truly child's play. But he remained silent, listening to Laura talk about Shadow Moon and what he had been to her. He found it interesting the way she described him as a 'big, dopey puppy'... hardly words that implied great respect. Had they been married simply because it had "clicked," because it was convenient?

Money was something L had almost always had a lot of. He was so talented that it had simply fallen into his lap, in many cases. Maybe that was why it had never been a good or a bad thing to him, but simply something that meant he could have comfort and sweet things. Considering it now, though... it was cause for many crimes. It tore people apart and turned them into greedy, empty things. Furthermore, it equaled time, and he had heard that women were a product of money and time, and therefore the square root of women was money, and therefore... he cringed inwardly. Using that reasoning (which he had heard as a joke, not come up with on his own), women truly were the root of all evil.

He probably shouldn't share that with Laura at this time. It could be "inappropriate."

What followed reminded L strongly of another conversation he and Laura had had about the subject of death. He wondered why, every time it came up, her attitude towards life and living seemed to improve. If he didn't know better, he'd say that she was trying to influence him. But L had thought about it lately, and it seemed like, when you died, it became clear based on what sort of life you'd lived what kind of person you were. L had never allowed another person to become intimately familiar with him, and it seemed like dying, having your skin stripped away, your heart weighed and truths and secrets laid bare would do the trick. And all he, L, the great detective, would have to do was lie still.

But Laura wanted to be alive. She had had both life and death and would know, wouldn't she?

"Of course you're yourself..." he said, keeping his eyes open and his mind working, taking another drink of coke. "I've never thought that people can truly become other people entirely, except in cases where mind-altering drugs, illness, or psychoses are involved. Your ordinary, healthy person changes in minute ways every day, and over time the changes seem large, but they are the result of influences and events. Every time something sentient learns something new, they change a little bit... I'm different now than I was ten minutes ago, because I feel like I know more about you."

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[info]spitandviolets
2009-05-05 04:25 pm UTC (link)
"I'm not sure that you could ever really understand it, Ryuzaki," she murmured, shaking her head. "I'm not the same person that I was. I wasn't myself for a very long time. You say that the ordinary, healthy person changes, yet I am neither ordinary, nor healthy, nor have I been for a long time. Drugs, you say, and mind-altering ones. I drank so much for so long that it rotted away any part of my personality that was mine, that was something I recognized. I'm something wicked, something rotten, something twisted. And I am glad that I am not the sort of undead who never ages, never gets worse. I rot. I decay. I decline. My insides seep out, overtaking my physical form, making me as disgusting and as hideous as I deserve to be."

"You should have known me!" she said, a little more forcefully than usual. Laura was shaking faintly. Her fingers were gripping the counter, and the strain was denting the wooden countertop. "I wasn't this." It was as if the echo of emotion was able to sneak through and come out into her pale, faint, sad, monotone voice. "I was brilliant. I was lively. I was vibrant, and I lived. I was alive until I went and removed my own soul by damning his." The emotion, over the course of her words, had faded out completely once more. "I loved strawberry flavored things, especially daiquiris. I made amazing chili. I always thought that I was too fat and had curves in all the wrong places. I wore sexy lingerie simply because I could; I was good at stripping, and I liked to do it because it was fun. I liked to dream about the places that I would go if I ever had the money, like Italy and France and London and Tokyo and Hawaii. I had doubts; I worried about if I was a good enough wife, if I really loved Shadow, if my life had meaning. I wondered what my father would have thought about me if he had lived."

Slowly, the dark haired woman's head bowed. Her hair fell forward, covering her face, and her hands moved to her eyes. She covered them, hard, and pressed in. Her eyes gave a faint squish beneath her palms, but she didn't worry about it very much. She couldn't damage herself that badly. What was she doing? In truth, the answer wasn't in her mind. It was an impulse reaction. And then the memory of something that she'd lost came through. A straining, heavy feeling was in her chest. It was like something was sitting on her sternum, pressing down, trying to squeeze her lungs out.

"I want to cry," she said very quietly. "I want to cry, I don't know why I want to cry, and I know that it is not possible for me to cry. I don't usually feel. I don't understand what's going on anymore. I feel like there's something wrong with me. I feel...empty."

"You really feel like you're different? You really feel like you know more about me?" Her brows furrowed, and she peeked through her fingers at him. She looked helpless somehow, innocent, vulnerable. It was one of those moments when the unbeatable corpse woman was practically made of glass.

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[info]inmyownworld
2009-05-05 06:19 pm UTC (link)
"You are not wicked... you helped me..." L responded resolutely, looking saddened by Laura's visceral description of what would happen to her body. He had wondered, actually, about the extent of Laura's immortality, and knowing such a thing was disquieting. L did not want her insides to seep out... even if, he thought wryly, it happened to result in weight loss.

"Fair enough," he said, after a moment of reflection. "I didn't know you when you were alive, or when you liked strawberry daquiris. But I know you now, and I like you, so what does it matter that I wasn't there when you were different? The way you talk is interesting. The blunt, honest way you see life is interesting. So... even though I would have liked to know you at different parts of your life, I'm not about to mourn that when I'm fortunate enough to know you at all."

He winced when he heard the slight squish sound that Laura's eyes made when she pressed forcefully into them. She looked like she'd cry... at this moment, Laura actually appeared as weak and vulnerable as L often felt in her presence.

His movents timid, stuttering and slow, L carefully sat up and embraced her. "I do. I feel like I know more about you," he said.

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[info]spitandviolets
2009-05-06 03:46 pm UTC (link)
"Perhaps, more accurately, I could say that I was wicked. But, as you say, you did not know me when I was alive. Things are different now. That doesn't change the fact that I have to repent for what I did. I do not think that it would change my moral standing at all, but I believe that it gives me a sense of purpose, trying to pay for what I did. It seems right somehow, doesn't it?"

Laura's whole body went stiff when he wrapped his arms around her. She was more like a corpse than ever. Her body was cold against him, and her eyes were wide; her hands had dropped away from them. Usually she was good with intuition, but she hadn't seen that embrace coming from anywhere. She swallowed hard, more an involuntary reaction than anything useful. What had prompted this? She hadn't been embraced in...months, honestly. Shadow held her when she appeared to him, though reluctantly. That was all she'd really had. Robbie and she had never really hugged. Honestly, she had all but completely forgotten what an earnest embrace felt like.

"You feel like you know more about me," she said, nodding. Her voice was soft. Laura turned, and her icy arms slid around his waist. Her head pressed into his chest / shoulder, and her eyes closed. So warm. His heart was beating, and he had such wonderful heat. A chill ran down her spine. Fingers lightly gripping the back of his shirt, a soft exhale was allowed to pass through her lips.

"Can I know more about you?"

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[info]inmyownworld
2009-05-06 04:15 pm UTC (link)
Honestly, L had as little experience giving embraces as Laura had receiving them in recent months. True, she felt stiff, and her silence was a resounding indication of her apparent shock, but holding her was... nice. Her scent, if he didn't think about it too much, was wholly sweet and pleasant with no undertones of death, tinted with cloves. That last aspect lingered the most in her hair, which he leaned his cheek against as she returned the embrace.

L hoped that it was evident that he certainly did know more about Laura after her story. He sighed softly, leaning closer, odd tingles running up and down his spine. The overall impression he got was of electricity; something was telling him to either draw away or pull Laura closer. L paused to think about what it meant... and then it hit him like a freight train. This was called attraction. It was an interesting revelation, to say the least.

"Yes... I'd say that it's only fair..." he breathed, still overcome by the novelty and strength of the way his entire body seemed to carry its own charge. "I'll tell you about me."

Not immediately, though. L was content, for the moment, to simply continue to hold Laura, revel in her acceptance of him, and wonder if she could feel anything approaching what he did.

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[info]spitandviolets
2009-05-06 08:07 pm UTC (link)
A profound sense of peace flowed over Laura as L held onto her. It was unlike any repose that she had ever repose that she had ever found, even the comforting embrace of death. In his arms she was warm, and she was starting to feel his warmth through their clothing. Part of her, greedily, wondered what his whole body would feel like against her. She was always so icy, yet it wasn't real cold. Real cold was snow and ice and rain. The cold that she felt was a deeply profound emptiness. It was the calling of the void, of nothingness, of that space that was beyond life, death, religion, and the afterlife. It was the blankness of the universe that sometimes welled up inside of her, and she was afraid of it. Fear was a very, very powerful emotion, and though she didn't have much to fear anymore it was emptiness and nothingness that she did fear.

When she felt his cheek against her hair, her head tilted towards him a bit more. She was confused again, a strange sense of confusion. She was dead both inside and outside; what was mixing with the cold? What did she feel when he was holding her? "Mm," she murmured, rubbing her forehead against his chin.

Part of her was angry that he used that word: fair. What was fair? There was no such thing as fair. It was an imaginary concept. Was fair dying in a car crash at twenty-seven?

"So...what about you?"

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[info]inmyownworld
2009-05-06 08:23 pm UTC (link)
L himself felt that something else had to be done, that things weren't meant to end at an embrace, no matter how intense the feelings involved became. However, having never been in a situation quite like this before, he was nervous and unsure of how to proceed. Laura's contentment added to his bafflement. L's was a mind of formulas and equations, and not knowing what it was he was doing to illicit those peaceful, contented murmuring sounds made him uneasy. As if he was doing something he wasn't aware of, or he was about to ruin things terribly.

"Me... I..." Where could he start? Being born, growing up, things he didn't remember, or couldn't understand? "I was a detective... I solved crimes," he said, after a moment. In a nutshell, wasn't that who he was? L, great genius, computer investigator with over a thousand testimonies to his incredible problem-solving abilities? There weren't many other ways he was capable of thinking of himself.

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[info]spitandviolets
2009-05-07 01:08 am UTC (link)
"I know that part," she said. Her head tilted back and she looked up at him. A lopsided smile crossed her face. It was the warmest she had been in a long time, and she didn't want it to stop. Her fingers clutched at his back harder, but she was careful not to squeeze him too hard. The last thing that she wanted was to cause him any pain, especially physically. She supposed that was her greatest fear as far as this particular moment and this particular form of affection went. "But I'm not surprised that you told me that. My request was very vague."

What did she want to know? What sort of thing could she possibly ask him? She didn't want to offend him, and she didn't know that much about him, so it was very difficult to decide just where to begin. Then, logic fell into place. A stupid song ironically echoed in her brain. The beginning was a very good place to start.

"Why don't we trade? Question for question. I'll ask you something, you ask me something. We'll make a game of sorts of it. Then there's not so much pressure for you to just tell me things about your life. How does that sound? If so, why don't you tell me about where you came from? Where were you born? Where did you grow up?"

That couldn't possibly be offensive, could it? And why was she so worried about offending him? That didn't matter. Why did she care about the what and why? She resolved to simply let it be for now. This moment, this time, simply was. L couldn't sleep, so she was trying her best to keep him comfortable.

At least it was an excuse that made sense in her mind.

Part of her mind wanted more, and it was a little more than her mind that wanted more. It was her body, long dormant and cold, that was compelling her to hold onto him like he was the last stable thing on earth. After all, she may have been dead, but she was still a woman. Until he pushed her away she would remain there, holding onto him, feeling warmth because of him. Fortunately, it didn't seem that she was making him too terribly cold.

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[info]inmyownworld
2009-05-07 06:27 pm UTC (link)
Though L wasn't in pain, he felt the security of Laura's grip, her fingertips kneading the knotted, stressed muscles in his chronically hunched back. "Your request was vague... but I should probably have known and honored it, regardless," he said sheepishly. Why was he so afraid to talk about things that had happened so long ago?

"Question for question is good," L decided, though Laura had already told him most of what constituted a history. He furrowed his brow, trying to think of the best way to answer hers. "Well, I... from what I'm told, I was born in Paris, France. My father was, apparently, an American, and my mom was half Japanese and half French. Her name was Sophie, and even though I don't remember her terribly well, she was beautiful. Porcelain skin, dark hair, eyes that kept secrets." he said the words as they came to him, trying to keep the report as factual as possible. "My father, for some reason, found it best to leave us. It was probably because I was diagnosed with autism at an early age, and he didn't want to stick around with that kind of sad responsibility. My mother was very sad, understandably, and after my first day of school went horribly wrong, she tried to kill both of us." he shrugged one shoulder, the affectedly indifferent gesture looking more like a nervous twitch. "She died. I was in a coma for four years, and it's odd, but I think my brain must have taken that time to catch up and reset itself. It was still hard, but I could communicate. I could be intelligent, I could produce... and that's about it," he finished lamely. Something about sharing, being open, was so foreign to him that even when it told the truth it seemed shallow and meaningless. Maybe that was something else he and Laura had in common: their tendencies to see their actions and deeds from the outside and objectively.

"It's my turn to ask a question. What was your favorite book, and why?" While Laura didn't strike L as quite the type of person to read five books a week, he thought that it was a distinct possibility that she had a favorite. "And... what did Shadow think, of your favorite book? Did he agree with you that it was wonderful, or disagree?"

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[info]spitandviolets
2009-05-07 07:44 pm UTC (link)
When he started, she was excited. The idea of someone being born in Paris was incredibly exciting to her. She had seen travel books on France, had read books about Paris. If she had possessed the money, Laura would have gone to Paris, to all of France, and she probably never would have come home. "I would have owned a vineyard, or at least worked on one." Realizing that she had spoken without meaning to, she bowed her head. "Sorry." She fell silent once more.

When L described his mother, she couldn't help but notice that Sophie, the half-Japanese, half-Parisian woman sounded somewhat like herself in appearance. Porcelain skin? Well, maybe not porcelain, but paler. Alabaster, wasn't that a form of porcelain? Dark hair? Yes, she had that. It had been a glossy chestnut color in life, but it had gotten darker more recently, possibly because it wasn't growing, wasn't changing. As for eyes that kept secrets, she wasn't sure what that meant, but her own eyes were dark. Maybe that was what he meant? A pause. Why was she drawing parallels between L's mother and herself? That was insane. She'd never thought like that before. Why start now? Still, when he shared that his father had decided to leave him and Sophie she felt a strange sort of pain inside. Why had he left? It seemed unfair. Unfair? Hadn't she been the one claiming that there was no such thing?

Autism. Laura knew about autism. Because she hadn't worked hard enough in school, because teachers knew that she would never care to apply herself, Laura had been placed in special needs classes. She had been with some of the brightest of the slow, and those were the autistic kids. It started to make sense to her now, that she seemed to not even notice that there was anything amiss with him while the rest of the world seemed to think that he was abrasive or good for exploitation. Her mouth opened, but it shut a moment later. There was nothing that she had to say, nothing that she had to offer.

When he went on, she was glad that she hadn't said anything. Her vineyard comment had seemed utterly inappropriate, as did her parallels, yet she could not deny that she and Sophie were any less similar. Laura had been sad in life, and perhaps she was still sad, even in death; at least now she did not know it now. But for Sophie to have tried to kill her own son? As if on cue, however, Laura's mind began to go fuzzy. Her eyes widened, and her own memories began slipping away. It was funny how the dead sometimes leaked through to each other. Memories, thoughts that were not her own seemed to seep in around the edges. It echoed through time and space. Unable to block it out, Laura listened to it, and she understood. In a moment, she understood why Sophie had tried to kill her son.

"It would have been easier for you."

Her words echoed in the quiet drug store. Eyes wide, she looked up at him. Her form had been shaking a little bit against him. The otherworldly consciousness was there, just beyond reach, and she felt that she could tap it at will. Yet she knew that she could not allow herself to do so. She could not become a vessel for L's long deceased mother. "At least, that must have been her rationale. I cannot believe that she was correct in such a thought, but it seems that she was a very sick woman." Yes, she knew for certain that Sophie was a very sick woman. She could feel it just like she could feel the stagnant chemicals in her own veins. She had nothing else to say, really, for saying anything would be saying too much. "I'm glad that you woke up."

Her favorite book. That was a very easy question, for Laura had not read many books without pictures in her life. "Mother Night," she replied, "by Kurt Vonnegut. Howard Campbell was the first man that I ever loved." She looked up at him. "He hanged himself not for crimes against humanity but for crimes against himself." Shadow. This day was haunted by Shadow. "He...never asked me... Shadow, that is. He never asked me what my favorite book was. And I don't think that he would have cared."

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[info]inmyownworld
2009-05-08 09:38 am UTC (link)
To L, with his nomadic career and constant state of jet-set insomnia, being born in Paris was no different from being born in Moscow, London, Seoul, or Los Angeles. Places started to look the same, after awhile... except Wammy's House. That was the closest thing that L knew to a thing called "home." Even now, a grown man, he thought often of the comfort living in the orphanage had brought him as a child, and the fact that it owed its existence to his accomplishments also helped. Wammy's House wasn't his... it was him. "No, no, it's all right..." he assured her, after she spoke. Interruptions of that nature did not bother L; though he preferred to be allowed to finish when reading case reports aloud, this type of personal monologue was open to contributions. It was, somehow, a comfort to know through such comments that Laura was listening, though L doubtless would have been able to tell anyway, so complete was her interest.

Of course, he was also paying attention to Laura, and noticed right away when she started trembling in his arms. He wondered if it was possible that news of his mother's death affected her so strongly, even through his dispassionate relation of the event... possibly even more strongly than it affected him. It was a ghastly story, by all means, but if details had leaked through to Laura's consciousness, she knew what had happened then and after. That Sophie had driven her car off a bridge in the wintertime and cracked her head open, that the car had filled with icy water L had filled his lungs with, and that he had missed his mother's funeral because his brain, and nothing else, was quietly showing activity on a small monitor next to his metal-railed bed. It was the quietest room he had ever been in, the most complete and healing state of isolation; a step away from death, a long sleep with a possibility of never waking. Sometimes he still thought of it and tried to remember his dreams during that time, the way his mind had managed to make connections even while he was separated from the world. His expression did not change when Laura said, with absolute certainty, that it would have been easier for him had Sophie's plan come to fruition. For a very brief moment, he met her wide, dark eyes with his own before he had to break eye contact. "Yes... my mother was sick," he agreed quietly. "I think she justified things in an incredibly roundabout and unrealistic manner... I cannot respect her memory, though I have grappled with the concept." he smiled palely when Laura told him that she was glad that he had woken up; he was, too. Especially since meeting her.

Even so, he couldn't quite hide his relief when the topic changed to literature. This was something he could converse about, fluently and intelligently. "That's my favorite Vonnegut book, at any rate," he agreed heartily. "The author himself ranked it quite highly among his other works. I find it very interesting that you like that one, too... Leichentraeger zu Wache..." he shuddered, the German words sounding just as misleadingly soothing in his clipped, soft voice as they had meant to in the story. "That was my favorite line. Crimes against self... crimes against humanity, how they come together, how through betraying your own psyche you are opening the door to betraying your race. I like to think that Naziism was an extreme form of that... wronging oneself and humanity as a result. I have always liked Vonnegut's tone, his way of making things so intensely personal while applying them on a broader, occasionally universal scale." He smiled, pleased with his quick, on-the-spot evaluation. He was also pleased that he and Laura seemed to share another thing in common.... and interested that she thought that the man she had loved would not have cared.

"Do you think that Howard Campbell would have cared, or that he is very much like Shadow?" L asked curiously, forgetting that Laura was entitled to a question following the one he had just asked. Even in a completely different world, not surrounded by the support network and resources he usually was, L tended to be far more interested in learning about others than talking about himself.


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[info]spitandviolets
2009-05-12 12:43 am UTC (link)
As the story of how it all happened flooded into her mind, the dark haired woman tried her hardest to push it out. She didn't want those kinds of thoughts, no, those kinds of memories. Her thought process paused for a moment. L had to live with those thoughts, with the experience of it, of having been on the receiving end of that woman's wicked plot. Sophie was sick, and what made it worse was that she firmly believed, at the time, that what she was doing was the right thing to do. L had simply been a child, and he had suffered the same sort of experience, perhaps worse, than what Laura had gone through in her last moments. L, after all, had lived through it. Laura had not, so there were no scarring mental consequences for her. Everything was cold and detached for her. He lived with the repercussions every single day.

Like him, she was glad when the subject changed to literature. That seemed easier, talking about books and such. It wasn't as personal. Still, not having much emotion anymore, it was a bit difficult for her to imagine things about Howard Campbell. Those thoughts felt like they existed over a thousand years ago. "Your favorite Vonnegut book? I, for some reason, did not think that you were a fan of Vonnegut." She did not add that it was, perhaps, because she thought that he was too innocent. "As a detective, I suppose that I imagined that you would not appreciate the oftentimes black humor that Vonnegut uses in his works. He is brilliant, and I am glad to know that he has ranked my favorite book as one of his favorites. I must say that I adore black humor and irony. They're two of the few things that can get through to me still. I have trouble appreciating any other kind of humor as much. Maybe it's just my situation. My death was comical in a black humor sort of way, I suppose. Don't you?"

More in common, hm? It seemed that she and L just kept having things in common. How was it possible that two people from two very different times could like so many of the same things? Then again, it was possible that their worlds were not that entirely different. They were from the same world, but different sides of it, and he was from much later. There were moments that some of her living vitality would creep into her mind, and she would wonder how the world was different where he came from. What had happened after December of 2001 on the other side of the world? He made her realize that things had not stopped with her death.

"I do not think that Howard Campbell would have cared that I loved him or that Mother Night is my favorite novel. He didn't seem to treat women very well. I also don't think he was that much like Shadow; maybe I just see everyone in terms of Shadow now. I don't really know anyone else that I could use as a benchmark. But I suppose that's what I've always done wrong. I always went for the men who didn't care, who were there one moment and gone the next. Objectively, I blame my father. He was the only person to love me for many years, and he was ripped out of my life without warning. I kept reliving the relationship with my father in all of the men that I had relations with. I always picked the men who couldn't care or cared too much."

"Enough about me, though. You asked two in a row. Thus, I get to ask you a few questions. How old are you? What is your world like on a daily basis? What things do you see?" She paused. For some reason curiosity bubbled up inside of her. "Will you tell me about the women that you've loved in the course of your years? Any of them, any of the ones that you've had feelings for. I wish to understand that aspect of you, for it seems very foreign to me."

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[info]inmyownworld
2009-05-12 01:44 pm UTC (link)
How ironic, that a car accident had ended Laura's life and started a new chapter in L's.

"Of course I like Vonnegut," L said briskly. "The deceptively simple writing style, yes, bit most of all, Vonnegut is a responsible writer. He never leaves a theme or motif hanging, like some authors... he brings everything to a conclusion in that regard. For instance... when Campbell was arrested at the end, the old woman... the Auschwitz survivor, the doctor's
mother... she whispered to him. The same soothing, terrible words that she had heard so many times from her captors." he paused, resisting the urge to whisper the German under his breath. "As for black humor and irony... I understand it. It works for my particular mindset."

He shuffled nervously when the conversation returned to him. He thought very carefully about Laura's questions, and decided that they were not unreasonable. "Ah... where I came from, it was early November, so I had just turned 25," he said, wondering if she'd find his age surprising. He looked and acted much younger than he actually was. He realized that he and Laura were therefore fairly close in age. "My... world on a daily basis?" L asked, frowning slightly. He thought of his room, a dark, bleak place lit only by the artificial glow of a computer screen, bleaching his skin and causing his limbs to weaken while his brain labored on. "It was simple," he decided. "There was one room, one computer, one outfit that I had several sets of. There was one man who knew my face, and I depended on him for everything. His name was Watari, and he was an inventor. Sometimes I wondered..." he paused, wondering if it would sound too ridiculous. "Sometimes I wondered if my memories were false, and if I was one of his own creations. The idea of being an android instead of a human being was highly attractive to me. I would not have to worry about things like hunger, fatigue, pain, desire, or death. I would not have to fear anything. Of course, I was not an artificial man, and Watari laughed when I proposed the idea, but... still. It wasn't as if he discouraged me from behaving like a machine, and he saw nothing wrong with helping me through... unorthodox means. If I couldn't stay awake, he would put cocaine in my food. If I showed too much interest in the opposite sex and seemed too curious, there were drugs for that, also. I never had to worry about anything except the task at hand, because... well, because I was..." drugged out of his humanity half the time? He looked troubled for a moment, unable to finish the thought. It was too strange to look at it objectively.

It was also strange to think of the women he may or may not have loved. His natural childlike attitude toward sexuality, coupled with his controlled chemical castration during harder cases, made it difficult for him to recall any true desire he'd felt. "I don't really know," he decided, biting his fingertip. "I've had crushes on girls, but most of them have never even seen my face."


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[info]spitandviolets
2009-05-15 12:34 am UTC (link)
"I always hated when he wrote in German. It was the only time that I ever felt that he was being unfair to me. I did not know what the character was saying, and I never wanted to break myself away from the book long enough to figure it out. Even the parts when he translated, I always got irritated. I didn't want to wait; I wanted to know everything that he had to say." She looked serene for a moment, a Mona Lisa smile on her face. "Then again, I'm not sure if I mean Vonnegut or if I mean Campbell. Or maybe I mean Shadow or somebody else. That's one of those memories, I suppose. I can't quite place it, and I'm not quite sure what I mean." Her voice drifted off.

As he described his world, her smile faded away, and she listened with a certain intensity that no one else could match. One room? One computer? One outfit? How was such a thing possible? It was inhumane. Then again, L was a very special person. If she didn't know better, she might say that he was something more than human. Still, she could not possibly imagine what his world must have been like. Where Laura had been overstimulated, had something packing every moment of every hour, he had lived in somber isolation. The idea baffled her.

When she finally spoke, it was like Laura had heard nothing else. "You never have known love?" she said, her voice soft and dark, like a storm out at sea. "You don't know what it is to love someone romantically? How did you stand for that? How is it that you never found yourself discontented with the idea of knowing that love, and passion, and sexuality, and all of the things that come with love and never experiencing it? You yourself have said that you've got curiosity, and it's a good and healthy curiosity. I don't understand how you would let yourself be subjected to such a thing. How could you let someone use you like that? How could you let someone mistreat you like that? Why didn't you do anything?"

She stopped, looking away from him. Realization was apparent in her face. "Because you saw no reason to. It worked. And you loved what you did." That was why she had never stopped herself from doing oh so many things in her life.

"Some women might find it strange or unsettling, but I find the idea of someone loving you when you've never seen their face to be...romantic in some odd way. Tell me about them? If you remember them at all. They must have been special for someone so detached as you to have had feelings for, or interest in, them."

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[info]inmyownworld
2009-05-15 11:03 am UTC (link)
Love, passion, and sexuality... L knew the words, of course, but had somehow never applied them to himself. "Um... well... I suppose it never came up," he said, biting his lip, looking away as if he had something to be ashamed of. "I mean... all of that is really a process for reproduction. Right? And... that was taken care of, for me. My genetic material was harvested, purchased by women who wanted genius offspring... I probably have children somewhere. Maybe they look like me, but... I've never thought about it much. It's not like I will ever meet them." there wasn't a trace of sadness or regret in the man's voice, since he had long ago distanced himself from this aspect of his life with resounding success.

"You misunderstand..." L said, curling his shoulders forward and allowing his head to sink deeper between them and toward his chest. "I was never mistreated. I was rescued... please don't get the wrong idea. If Watari had never found me... I probably would not have lived a year out of the hospital. The world scared me... touch, loud noises, dogs... the list was endless. Just walking down the street alone was torture, because I never knew what to expect. In the real world, there is no time to stop in the middle of the street because a car horn has startled you. There is no time to crouch and hold your head and try to collect yourself again. In the world that Watari created for me... there was always time. I was always collected. It was what he wanted, yes... but it was what I needed. Without me, his detective syndication was substandard, but I literally could not survive without him. He kept me from going over the deep end and I simply did what I was best at. Work that made me feel competent and special, because it was so easy for me while everyone else couldn't seem to quite figure it all out. But... as I got older, it became... lonely? It was fun to always win games as a child, but adults search for meaning, even adults like me... I wanted there to be other people like me, and there just... there weren't. The days got longer, the shadows seemed darker... I questioned life's purpose. Watari arranged things so that I wouldn't have to. It wasn't that I was manipulated or coerced into that state of acceptance... I just wanted peace so that I could think. That's all. My curiosity remained intact, but was refocused so that it was conducive to productivity. So... yes. You are correct. In the end... there is no purpose, there is no reason... and what I loved... was a pleasant distraction." he bowed his head for a moment, clearly in very deep thought, before returning to the present and to Laura's question about the women in his life who had never seen him.

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[info]inmyownworld
2009-05-15 11:03 am UTC (link)
"The first woman who ever caught my attention that way... her name was Naomi Misora. She was a Japanese woman who went to America and became an FBI agent, getting through the program unusually fast for a woman. No... for anyone. That's one thing I admired about her. She assisted me in several cases... in particular the Los Angeles B.B. Murder Mystery. That was a former possible successor of mine with a grudge... a desire to surpass the world's greatest detective as the world's greatest criminal. It was his intention to create an unsolvable case, but... thanks to Misora's involvement, it was solved. However... even though I always suspected that Naomi might have liked me, if she'd gotten to know me... she was engaged. Not only that, she personally met Beyond Birthday... the murderer in the case... without knowing at the time that he was the culprit. He was masquerading as a private investigator at the time, and he had the interesting habit of altering his appearance to look like me. He did a remarkable job of it, too... but when I asked Misora about her impression of him, her reaction was... harsh. She said, in so many words, that he was creepy, pathetic, and that if the world could be divided into people who deserved to live and people who deserved to die, then he would certainly fall into the latter category. I did meet her, later... but I don't think she really knew it was me. Which, in the end, was for the best. Sometime during my last case, she died. The suspected cause was suicide, following the work-related death of her fiance, but I really don't think that was the case."

He paused. "Um. Let me think... there was a woman I only knew as Wedy. She was an expert of the underworld, a thief who specialized in cracking high-end security systems. I hired her for a variety of cases, including my last one. I did meet her face-to-face, many times... she even rescued me once, during the Detective War, but that's another story. I was young and green then, and she got me out of a bad hostage situation. She was American, very beautiful, from a wealthy family... which made her decision to become a thief all the more interesting, I suppose. The last I heard, she is still alive.

"Also... there is Misa Amane... but things are complicated, there. During my last case, the one that killed Misora, I suspected a young man named Light Yagami of being a murderer called 'Kira', who could kill by seeing a person's name and face. During the case, a young woman made herself known to him about the same time another such murderer appeared who wanted to cooperate with Kira, and forensic evidence pointed towards her. She... did not have the maturity or the intelligence of Wedy or Naomi. But there was something about her that interested me. Most likely, it was just a crush, and I was even able to use it to my advantage, since it allowed me to believably exploit other situations... but in the end, it would never have worked."

He blinked, aware that he had been talking for quite some time. "I apologize... it seems that I have been rambling..."

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[info]spitandviolets
2009-05-15 03:29 pm UTC (link)
"No, not rambling," she answered, almost too quickly. Her eyes had glazed over, and it had seemed for a moment that she was looking through him. Regardless, her attention had always been on him. It was easier to listen without visual stimuli. "I asked you to tell me, and you have."

And had he ever. Every single woman seemed more interesting than the last. L had crushes on the spy, the thief, the murderer. Each one was more fascinating than the last, and each one of them had been incredibly significant to him. They were unique, important, interesting. Naomi had seemed like a bit of a bitch, but she was good at what she did, and she was intelligent; that was something that Laura did not have. Wedy was skilled and sly, as well as beautiful and rich; that was something that Laura did not have. Misa was easily used, but she was devoted to killing and she was a complex mental puzzle, it seemed; that was something that Laura did not have.

What was Laura Moon in the face of women like that? Moreover, why did she care? Her nose wrinkled slightly as she thought. Why did she care how she stacked up against these women? She then decided that she was more worried about what L would say to people in the future about her. Then there was Laura Moon, she thought. She was a woman who had lead a wretched life, had died for her sins, and had been so horrible that the gods saw fit to make her endure existence after she had seen the great and powerful beyond. During a time when I was trapped in a glass box with numerous other people, she saw fit to elect herself my protector. She was good at it, but she was revolting and frightening. In the dark she was beautiful, but that is only because she passed as human because you didn't have to look directly at her. Her affection for me was somewhat and strangely maternal for a woman who claimed apathy and a complete lack of feeling. I do not believe that it would have worked out, primarily for she is deceased and I am alive.

A hand moved to her forehead, and Laura rubbed her temple roughly. There was no pain there, but some human habits died hard. She assumed, had her brain still worked, that this was one of those moments that would have merited a headache. Why was she thinking such things? Why did she care? Her mind was confused.

"Was there anything else that you wanted to ask me? I enjoy answering your questions, and it is your turn. Two times over, I believe, if I am correct. It allows me to look at my life objectively. I feel that I am learning some things that I never knew simply because I cared too much. Holding it at arms' length is an interesting feeling."

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[info]inmyownworld
2009-05-15 08:13 pm UTC (link)
L felt exactly the same way, all things considered. He and Laura were doing something very similar, in that they were talking about themselves as completely objectively as was possible while considering each other entire people. L seldom felt what he'd call compassion, but Laura evoked something like that in him.

"You really enjoy answering my questions? OK... well... I like questions about favorites, so I will ask you three. What is your favorite film, alcoholic drink, and type of weather?"

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[info]spitandviolets
2009-05-15 08:41 pm UTC (link)
"I do. It forces me to think. It's very easy for me to not think, so your line of questioning forces action within my brain. I'd say that's a good thing, wouldn't you?" She nodded, nudging him slightly. He looked better, and markedly so. She was glad that the Tylenol and caffeine seemed to be helping.

"My favorite film...I would have to say is What Dreams May Come. I absolutely loved Robin Williams in serious roles. He was always so good at making me weep. The idea behind the movie is beautiful, too. That two people could find themselves so in love that one would give up Heaven and go searching in Hell to find the other is incredibly powerful. I always loved Dante's Inferno, too. I think, though, that What Dreams is a better modern take. It's beautiful. Have you ever seen it? I wish that we could watch it together. I haven't watched a movie in...well, since I died."

She failed to see the irony of her favorite movie choice. It never occurred to her that she was Chris and that Shadow was Annie. She probably never would unless it was pointed out to her. At this point, it hardly mattered anyway.

"I loved strawberry daiquiris. They were my favorite. And when I was alive, I adored the hottest days imaginable. They didn't happen that often in Eagle Point, so it was always wonderful and rare. Now, for me, the colder the better. It gives me one less thing to worry about. I died in the winter, and I've made it through one summer; the effects were garish. My decay increases exponentially in hot weather."

Getting up, she smoothed her hand over his forehead. "You keep sipping on that pop. I'm going to go out and try to find some supplies; I haven't gone looking in a few days" She turned, starting to head towards the door, listening keenly in case he said anything. Hearing nothing, she exited, planning on returning later and hoping that he didn't fall asleep. That alarm was infernal.

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