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Tweak says, "Mmmm apple pie"

Laura Moon (spitandviolets) wrote in vas_captio_rpg,
@ 2009-06-11 20:29:00

Entry tags:

!dropped, day 10, l lawliet, laura moon, location: gym

Who: Laura Moon and L Lawliet
What: Finding something very important that she allowed to get lost.
Where: The Gym / Makeshift Rundown Hospital
When: Around 10:00pm
Rating: TBD
Status: Active

Laura had been searching for L ever since she had made it out of the scraps of wood and concrete and metal that had once been the liquor store. It had been a very, very bad day. It hadn't started terribly, but it had sharply taken a turn for the worst. The worst part of it was that, once again, she was not by L's side in the face of danger. She'd failed, yet again.

With the ability to identify human beings by the light of their souls, it was not difficult to find him. There had been a few moments, though, while she was looking for him, burning like a torch in the darkness, when she was very worried that his light would be nowhere to be found. She should have gone with him, should have talked to him more about Light. After all, a dead woman was not enough to keep an intelligent, moody, fragile man in the world. Surely he had gone to off himself, she realized in hindsight; if he hadn't, he probably wasn't avoiding his death. Still, she had found him, theoretically. He was getting to be like Shadow. Someone could have thrown Laura into the ocean, weighed her down so she sank to the bottom, and blindfolded her, and she still would have made her way to him. So a little thing like an earthquake was definitely not enough to keep her away.

It was sometime in the early afternoon when she'd found him, but he was surrounded by people. Part of her was glad for that. She'd always said that he needed to get out more, that he needed to be with living people. The pit of her stomach, though, felt icy, like the emptiness was spreading, when she saw Merope with him. He'd reacted more kindly to her than to Laura herself when they'd found Light. Who was she to him? Laura found her startlingly creepy for a human being. Not wanting to reunite with him in front of a large crowd, she had stuck to the shadows, watching. He was amazing to watch, like her own personal ant farm. From where she was, she could only tell that he was hurt, not well. The details were lost in the distance. She had to get to him, but she had the patience to wait.

Once pitch black had set in and most people had allowed themselves to rest, Laura had slipped soundlessly into the gym. She had gone wholly unnoticed, and she'd slipped silently onto a seat beside the bed in which her detective was sleeping. Looking down at him, only a silhouette in the night, she couldn't help but give a sad, hopeful smile. He was alive. Barely, but alive.

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spitandviolets
2009-06-11 08:52 pm UTC (link)

When L kissed her, the universe seemed to freeze. Everything spun, like she was in the Matrix or something, and she just sat there, taking the kiss. She was, in truth, a little bit disgusted. After all, she knew that she was brutally damaged. Having your boyfriend pick a piece of glass was a bit revolting, even for someone who was dead, and it was definitely a mood killer. Still, she couldn't resist kissing him back. The way he kissed was forceful, all consuming. She leaned into him a little, her hand resting atop his, balancing her as she leaned forward.

All good things had to end, though, and he'd said a lot in a very short span of time. Pulling away, she shook her head gravely. "No, L, I'm not going to be okay." She glanced up at him, keeping the damaged eye closed out of courtesy. He didn't need to add eye goo to the list of things that were disgusting about her. "I...I lost the bottle of Norn water that I had. I lost my arm. I lost all of the pieces of me that fell off or were ripped out today except the ones that are still hanging. I have no way to repair myself. Ever." She looked down at the floor, not sure how to put this. "I...should probably say goodbye to my social life, limited as it was. You can expect me by night. No human being should have to look on..." Her voice trailed off for a moment. What word was appropriate? "This," she said flatly, motioning to her body. "Not even you."

"Open wounds make decay accelerate, and there is really nowhere for me to find somewhere cool now, nowhere for me to preserve myself. I can't pass as human anymore, not that I was ever really fooling anybody. But I wanted to. It's only a matter of time before..."

Her voice trailed off. Before what? What was the right word? She'd continue to go south, to decay, to waste away. Her flesh would drop away from her bones, eventually leaving her a skeleton. One day she wouldn't even have that much. What then? She would go on existing as long as the coin continued to be her own. Was it worth it?

"It's the kind of gift you'd give to the King of America," she echoed, looking past L, her lips pursing. Could she really go on? Could she watch herself become nothing and still exist beyond that? The grip on his hand tightened a little.

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inmyownworld
2009-06-12 12:21 pm UTC (link)

L's mental strength was better than most, but he didn't say things relating to emotion unless he meant them with all his heart and soul. So, loving Laura was a commitment, and kissing her regardless of her appearance was something that commitment entailed. And getting the glass out of his girlfriend's eye was the least he could do, at the moment, for both their protection.

However, his ecstatic mood faded when Laura said that, no, she wouldn't be OK. L drew back slowly, blinking, watching her for any sort of sign that she wasn't speaking the truth. There was none. Her eye was closed, in the most solemn wink L had ever seen. "'Lost' just means we haven't found them yet," he insisted. "We'll find your arm, and someone can do a better job, and if that special water survived, we'll find that, too." he attempted to leap spryly out of bed, but a sudden, overwhelming pain in his side caused him to sink back on his cot. With Laura there, looking the way she did, it was too easy for L to forget that he was hurt, too.

He listened numbly and helplessly as Laura dutifully explained what the damage to her body meant. She wouldn't be beautiful forever, no matter how much L willed her to be. She would eventually be a skeleton, and bones, and then.... sentient dust? L gripped her hand in a way that would have been painful to her if she had still been alive.

"America has no king. America will not have a king as long as it's free... and the only way you can keep me from looking at you is if you gouge out my eyes. So don't even think of giving up your coin, because we both need you to keep it."

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spitandviolets
2009-06-14 07:43 pm UTC (link)

Leaning forward, a hand gently resting on his chest, Laura pushed him lightly into bed a bit more. She had suspected, since he was in this makeshift hospital, that he was wounded, but she did not know how injured he was. Despite how sorry she was feeling for herself, she offered him one of her lopsided, hopeful smiles.

"And then what, Rabbit? What if we find them? Someone can stitch me back together all they want, but the damage has been done. I'm rotting, L." That one was almost hard for her to swallow. She owed him the truth, though, and she wasn't sure that she could sugar coat things for him. "I will always be rotting. The pharmacy...was badly damaged, and there are no shelters left that I know of with any sort of refrigeration. I've got nowhere to hide unless we find somewhere, dig a deep hole, and bury me in the ground. That has its own problems, though, and I can already feel the echoes of a wriggling in my lungs." Shaking her head, the pale woman squeezed his hand tenderly. "We can make me look a little bit better, and maybe we can keep me in one piece for longer, but our time is running out."

She paused, falling silent for a few moments. Our time. It belonged to them. Yet it was borrowed and stolen time, and it was ticking down around them. They were trapped in the bottom of an hourglass, and the sand was falling down around them. Getting up from her chair, Laura sat on the side of his bed. When she turned, he could see into the large portion of her side that was missing. The soft, supple curves of her waist were brutally interrupted. She inched back, her skin brushing his, and she laid down on the thin strip of bed that he wasn't on, her body curling into his. She reached back, taking his arm, wrapping it around her, tucking his hand beneath the opposite side of her body. She seemed small in his arms for once.

"I'm cold, Rabbit," she murmured, her voice faint and ghostlike. "And I know you can't do anything about it, but I don't want to be dead anymore. I can't even pass as a human being anymore. There's nowhere that I can be, especially not around people. I would rather be alive and have every bone in my body broken right now, be pouring blood from every hole, than be what I am." She curled into herself more. Something inside of her chest felt heavy, but she realized it was the metal shelf support sticking out of her sternum.

"I am not going to leave you. I am never going to leave you. I am going to stay with you until there is nothing left of me. But you need people, and they shouldn't avoid you because of me. I should keep to the shadows. I should follow you like your own personal ghost. Then, I will never fail you again. I'll keep my coin, because I wouldn't give this up for the world...but I would give it up for you." She pressed her face, mauled as it was, against his arm. "Your light was flickering. I was so scared. Sarah was right; I am in love with you, and I could find you no matter what, even if I were tossed into a volcano or buried to the neck in a desert. I don't want you to leave me. I don't want you to find me disgusting. I want you to be happy."

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inmyownworld
2009-06-15 03:55 pm UTC (link)

L returned the smile as well as he could. He was currently in a good place, anesthetic-wise, lucid and aware but not in terrible pain. However, the morphine was beginning to wear off, and the wound's nagging pain was returning with a vengeance.

"If... if we find the water you say can... fix things... then it is not a terrible problem. It is possible... it might have survived. Please don't give up all hope. I'll help you look... I promise..." he took a deep, difficult breath, feeling the stitches along his abdomen stretching with his skin. "If you have to go underground... you know that I'll go with you. I'm not afraid." In hindsight, that might have been a lie. Though L loved Laura and was sure that he would follow her anywhere, he had been six feet underground today, and almost stayed there. Laura felt fragile, as she lay in his arms, and tentative, and extremely cold. Just as she said. He reached toward her chest, his fingers falling on the shelf support and curling around it loosely. He wanted to take that out, and quickly... seeing things sticking out of the people he loved played havoc with his peace of mind.

But, lying there, with Laura, L was happy. He needed her. She was giving him all he had any right to ask of a person, living or dead. Her assurance that she would not leave. Her loyalty, her love... these were things that no one had ever given him before. "Don't worry about those things, Laura... I cannot find someone I love disgusting no matter what happens. It hasn't happened before, but I know that we'll find a way. We have to."

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spitandviolets
2009-06-15 08:26 pm UTC (link)

"You can't come with me where I'd be going, Rabbit. There wouldn't...be any oxygen down there. There wouldn't be any way for you to breathe, Love." She sighed, wishing she had her right arm so that she could reach around and touch his cheek. Instead, she settled on stroking his hand. "I'd be burying myself, because it's cooler underground. You couldn't be buried with me." It was good that it was a lie. There was no way that she would let him follow her into the darkness.

Her eye, the good one, followed his hand to the spot that it rested, and her mind instantly jumped to several days ago and the tender way that he'd touched her chest. His hand had rested in much the same spot, though it was far less purposeful. It was a memory that came to her clearly, and that was refreshing. "We'll do it together," she said softly. Her hand slid to his. "It might be messy, but...I can't really face you or hug you with metal sticking out of my chest." She grabbed the spike firmly and tugged at it as hard as she could. Something inside of her chest made a cracking sound. This shelf support was coming out the opposite of the way that it went in; there was, surely, another big chunk of flesh that was going to be coming out. Not wanting to enlarge the hole, Laura refrained from twisting as she pulled. Green fluid leaked from her back as the base of the support disappeared into her torso. From L's vantage point behind her, he could easily see a hole that was about five inches around right in the core of her. Her spine was showing, as was the back of her lungs. And there, slightly to the left, was her heart.

"This is too disgusting," she said, realizing how she must have looked to him. "You say that you can't find me so, but this is going to be nasty. I thought the hole in my side was bad, but there isn't going to be a whole lot of me left to keep the inside of me...in. L, I should go."

If she could have been crying, it is very probable that Laura would have been. Her love was crushing her. The spike in her chest was strangely appropriate for how she was feeling. Turning around to face him after prying his fingers from the spike, she looked into his eyes with the one she had left. "You're too good for me," she said, and a smile touched her lips. "I don't deserve you." Her heart felt sick. After the flirting she'd been doing with Gambit, she really didn't deserve him. She was still her old self in that solitary way, and it killed her.

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inmyownworld
2009-06-16 09:01 am UTC (link)

Well, no oxygen meant one thing... but L thought that he would rather die with Laura than live without her. It took a lot to attract a sexually naive man to a rotting corpse, and the fact that Laura had caught his attention in the first place meant that, as long as there was a way for L to follow her, he would. Even into dark places, and especially when there was nowhere else to go. "Technically, I could be buried with you. You know it."

The operation did, indeed, promise to be very messy. L paled as Laura gripped the spike through her sternum, actually trying to remove it by herself and by force. L knew enough about human anatomy, and especially entropic human anatomy by now, to know that this couldn't be a very good thing. His vision spotted and blurred as she turned from him, revealing her naked spine, to attempt the heavy-handed, blind surgical maneuver, and he found his grip on the support slackening as his mind slipped into darkness for a few uneasy moments. He hoped that Laura wouldn't notice that he'd fainted.

Fighting off a wave of nausea as he pulled himself up again, trying to pretend that there was nothing disturbing about what Laura was trying to do, wanting to speak and lie and say that it wasn't disgusting. But he was afraid to open his mouth, feeling slightly sick. His problem-solving mindset thought of constructing a more durable body for Laura, using metal to reinforce her bones and rubber latex to reinforce her skin, holding her together with love in the form of skill. L was smart enough to find a way to do that, and to distract himself from the horrific sight of his lover in danger of falling apart, he focused his thoughts on how he could manage it.

"Don't go. I'm trying to come up with a solution for this... and don't say that. You've never.... you've never done any wrong by me, Laura."

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spitandviolets
2009-06-16 11:49 pm UTC (link)

She didn't want to think about him dead. That was the last thing that she wanted to ever cross her mind. He was L, her Rabbit, and he was immortal and timeless and beautiful in her mind. She knew he was dying. She was always conscious of the fact that he was dying. That didn't mean that she really wanted to think about it. There was not a chance in Hell that she'd let him bury himself with her. The world needed him. "Technically, you could be," she replied, "but you'd either be dead or you'd be choosing to be buried alive, neither of which is something that I would allow you to do. Put such thoughts out of your mind."

Fearless in the face of the metal spike protruding from her chest, Laura clenched her teeth and continued pulling. It was like ripping off a bandaid, and she kept assuring herself that the faster she went the better off she would be. She tried to hide the fact that she was pulling metal out of her body from L, but when she looked over at him she noticed how ill he looked. Immediately sensing a dimming of his light, Laura stopped pulling. The spike was about half way through her body, and it protruded in the front, bits of flesh and insides and green formaldehyde sticking to it.

"I'm sorry. I didn't think before acting. I forgot that you're already sick, so you're not your typical perky self." She reached out, feeling his forehead, stroking his hair back affectionately. If she'd known about his plan to make a Terminator out of her deceased corpse, she probably would have been very supportive of the idea. If she thought that it would work, really work, she would have been thrilled, and she'd be in pre-op already.

When he said she'd never done any wrong by him, her heart sank. Shaking her head, she looked away from him. "But I have," she said, "and so I don't deserve such kind thoughtfulness from you. I am what I've always been, the thing about me that you refuse to see. You know how I died. You know how I was in high school. I know I told you about my wild life. So...I think you should know that, while I was looking for you, I was unable to resist flirting with another man." She sighed, feeling sick. Should she mention her flirting with Jay before they'd even met? Yes, it was better to get it all out. "I love you, and I always want to be with you, but it seems that lust is my sin of choice. I don't want them...I just like the witty banter, the dare, the danger in flirting. Before meeting you, I flirted with Jay. And while I was searching for you, I ran into a man named Gambit." Laura curled into herself, driving the spike back in a little when she hugged her knees. "I don't deserve you. I was a horrible person, and I can't seem to get past my fatal flaw. I'm ashamed of myself, actually. That's a strong emotion, strong enough for me to feel."

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