InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "he don't want your sympathy"

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.

(Read comments) - (Post a new comment)

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."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

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."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

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.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

(Read comments) -