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Tweak says, "PLUS ULTRA!!!"

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

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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