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Tweak says, "Beam me up, Scotty."

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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