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Tweak says, "You're my soul train!"

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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inmyownworld
2009-06-18 08:35 pm UTC (link)

L was ready to tune everything out, and cave in to his childhood tendencies. It was the most logical solution, truly... removing himself from a bad situation would save him from being destroyed. What reason did Laura have to be jealous, of L or Merope? Everyone was kind to people who couldn't take care of themselves, everyone spoke and acted softly to them. Merope had responded to his pain, not his desire. There was a very distinct difference between the two, in L's mind, and he couldn't understand why Laura, knowing what she did about lust, couldn't see that. He could feel her hand, soft against his back, stroking down his spine, and then withdrawing.

"I know what you were. I love what you are, and I thought you loved what I am, too," L said, the words simple and precise. They were exactly what he meant, and he liked the way they came out. "I'm far from angry. I'm not sure what I am, but it's not that. I thought that I made you happy, the way you make me happy. Now I don't know what to think, except that I think I'm losing you." The words came straight from L's heart, so raw that it was as if someone had drilled a hole straight into the center of it and was extracting them piece by piece.

"I'm sorry that you weren't here, as well. I wanted you to be. I wanted you to hold me while a shovel was being extracted from my liver."

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spitandviolets
2009-06-18 10:08 pm UTC (link)

"You thought?" she said, almost too hastily. For someone who had no inflection, it was a bit telling. She leaned forward in the chair more, and her eyes studied the floor of the gymnasium. It was so old and run down that she couldn't even tell what the marks on it were supposed to be anymore. She assumed basketball had once been played here, as in every gym in the world, but she didn't know if that was the case with this one. She remembered, briefly, gym class. Special ed gym was definitely something to behold. That was why, most of the time, she spent her time on her back on the catwalk in the auditorium with boys she shouldn't have been seeing or smoking out behind the snack shack near the football field. But such memories didn't have any right to be in this place, in this time.

She fell silent, thinking. So he didn't know what he was, either to her or at her. But he said he wasn't angry. Well, that sounded like angry, just a very veiled version of it. He thought that she loved him. He thought that he made her happy. He didn't know what to, currently, think. As she looked down at him, fragile and hurt, she knew what he meant about losing. Laura, though, knew that she had already lost. It was the same as that first night that she'd come back to shadow. Humans were awful about that, weren't they? Miss one important event in their life, like getting out of prison or having a shovel removed from a liver, and they were all bent out of shape about it at you. They didn't even want to bother with you anymore.

She sat there quietly. She felt poorly that he'd been impaled. It was her fault, too. She shouldn't have been so concerned about preserving her body from the heat. "You made me vain," she said, bluntly. "You left this morning and I didn't go with you because I wanted to prevent my body from decaying more rapidly due to heat and injury. I wanted to stay as beautiful and lifelike for you for as long as I could." Obviously, the same fucked up gods of fate that had been laughing at her where she'd come from were still here, and they must have been having a good cackle over this one. "Look at us now." She was destroyed, expired, on her way out, and she had broken the one promise that she'd made him, that she would always be there. He didn't know how he felt anymore, and that was as good as saying that he didn't love her anymore. They were, after all, the same thing. You didn't half love people. You either loved them or not. It was an on and off thing.

She rose to her feet, and she leaned down slowly. Laura lifted his shirt, and she saw the stitches that ran over his skin. They made her feel guilty. Her fingers reached out, but she stopped herself. They reminded her of the autopsy scar that she...used to have...on her chest. Now, there was a hole. And there were some feeble strings that held the skin over her collar bones together. Leaning down more, she brushed her icy lips over his wound just once in a soft kiss that said "heal." She pulled away and slid his shirt back down once more. Her hair had completely fallen into her face, hiding her from view. She looked rather ghoulish, truth be told, or like some sort of Japanese ghost from a horror movie. Moving slowly and silently, she turned away from him, her back to him. She could not, though, make her feet move more than a few paces.

Go, her mind screamed. There isn't an "us" anymore. You failed, and he doesn't love you. How could he? You're disgusting, even if he says your beautiful. You will never be as ugly on the outside as you've always been within. And the worst part is, after all this, you're still just you. You're still completely boring and unremarkable. You hold no great power. You can't even save the people who are counting on you. You're no superhero.

Unable to move another step, Laura crouched down and curled into herself. Her knees were against the hole in her chest. Her hands lifted, and she covered her face with her palms. Nothing came out, but her body shook and trembled silently as she hovered there, inches from the floor. Laura could only feel strong emotions. This one was sorrow.

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inmyownworld
2009-06-18 11:11 pm UTC (link)

In actuality, L truly wasn't angry. He felt pulverized and embarrassed, and a little bit emasculated, knowing that, like Laura, he couldn't get angry. It was a deep sadness, like his ribs were shielding a black hole that drew him deeper and deeper into himself every day just to escape the agony of not knowing why he couldn't be the only one that caught Laura's eye.

Somewhere in that deep, crushing place, he knew that he wasn't the kind of man she was used to. He knew that he was smaller, frailer, gentler, and sweeter than the forceful male ideal. He cradled his elbows when he walked, treading softly without a swagger, and he rescued spiders with the same hands that trembled when they unhooked Laura's bra, rather than manfully crushing them with his shoe. No... L didn't even wear shoes. Even the feet he planted against the surface of a challenging world were vulnerable.

He allowed himself a moment of self pity, of introspection and thought. He could have died in that perfect grave he had excavated while thinking about another slender young genius. He could have died waiting for a doctor to save him from his anguish. He could still die of blood poisoning, infection, or hemorrhage. His eyes stung, pricking shamefully, as he imagined Laura walking into Gambit's arms the moment he was gone. Maybe she already had, even while he held on. But such thoughts could only haunt him while he was alive, he realized. Unlike Laura, when he died, nothing would remain except his flesh and bones. Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust... feed the worms, as all things must.

There would be no pain. No sorrow. No doubt or feelings of inadequacy, no abandonment, no secret tears. True, there would be no love, but watching Laura turn from him, he thought that maybe that was true already. It would only take a little longer to relieve himself of all emotional responsibility. Glancing at the syringes nearby that contained his personal supply of morphine, he realized how easy it would be. In this miserable place, where everyone needed a doctor and doctor's were scarce, someone self-medicating would scarcely draw attention. He bit the tip off a syringe, filled it completely with the drug, and began looking for a decent vein in his thin arm, wondering which one would be the quickest route to his heart.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Laura shaking, her body racked with violent tremors that resembled sobs. He had never seen her like that before. He glanced down at the needle, and back at Laura, struggling with himself, both feeling and seeing such complete sorrow that it wasn't a terribly difficult thing to slip the needle into his vein. He would take this slowly. Little by little, he'd kill the pain in his side and in his soul.

"Laura." A plume of deep red as he pulled back on the plunger, announcing that he'd found a good one. "I don't want you to be sad. I don't want you to cry." Slow, gentle pressure. Stinging, subsiding to drowsiness. "I want you to know that I love you. I'm glad that I got to say that... I'll love you for the rest of my life." His thumb was steady, his side was painless. His eyelids and limbs were heavy.

His pain regarding Laura did not change. It only got worse as his pulse slowed and his vision darkened.

He dropped the syringe and what remained of his ultimate retreat from what he felt he couldn't face. He couldn't see where it had fallen and shattered, but he hoped that enough had remained inside the syringe to keep him alive. Because, in all honesty, he wanted to live, and he wanted to live with Laura.

"You make me happy when skies are gray, and you'll never know..."

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spitandviolets
2009-06-18 11:48 pm UTC (link)

The moment she heard movement behind her, Laura collected herself. What was he doing? If he was trying to get up, she was going to put him in his place. She stood and turned around, her face completely dry except for the remnants of her right eye. It was a gory sight, and he probably got a full view of it when she rushed to his side. Her body was so mangled, and her mind was so cloudy, that she got there just a moment too late. The glass was already breaking when she was half way on his bed.

"L!" she said, wanting to cry out, wanting to yell, but finding no way to do so. That was one thing that death had taken away, and it blew. She didn't know what to do. Her remaining hand felt idle. Somewhere out there, in the pharmacy, the hand on her other arm strained and fretted, for it was still active via the magic that kept her existing. Her eye was wide, and she gathered him into her arm. Holding him closely to her chest, her gaping chest, she shook him gently. She didn't want to hurt him. "L, you stupid idiot, look at me. Open your eyes and look at me. For somebody so smart, you're pretty stupid."

She set him down like he was made of glass. She was moist, and her formaldehyde was on his clothes. About that, she felt bad. She didn't want him to get dirty. Being sick was enough, but sick and dirty was horrible. Nobody was around, really. That was the point of her visiting at this time of night. She was on her own.

"Rabbit," she murmured. Laying down next to him once more, her head on his chest, she pressed her empty shoulder socket into his uninjured side. Her eye leaked onto his chest. "Rabbit, stop this. Stop it. I'm sad because I'm guilty. Because I am horrible to you. I left you alone when I went out to find you food after we made love. I wasn't there to stop whatever happened to you while I was out. I wasn't there when you were hurt by Bob. I wasn't there when you were stabbed by a shovel. I dragged you away from the body of your dead friend, and I wasn't there to console you because I was locked up inside of a freezer." Her hand gripped at his chest, gently squeezing at his shirt. Sliding into her bra, she pulled out the coin, looking at it. It glittered even in the dim light in the clinic.

"I know how much you love me. And I know that I will love you forever. You've got a piece of me that I can never have back, and I don't want it. I will love you even when there is nothing left to me whatsoever. When I am nothing but a ghost, I will still love you. I just want you to be happy, L. And I've failed at that, too, because I've failed at everything else. I've never done anything but take from you."

She wanted to tell him why she was jealous. But that was one secret that she was convinced she'd die with. It was too painful. But he was ending it all, and he was singing, and he was the one who wanted her to be loved. So he deserved the truth. "I'm jealous of every girl in the whole world. Because if you see them, you'll notice that they're interesting without having to try. I've never been interesting. I like being dead because it gives me something unique." That one was stolen from Gambit, because he saw the truth, and it was messy. "If you see anyone besides me, in any way, you'll eventually realize how unremarkable I am. And then what do I do? Go back to being a phantom. I couldn't stand that. I couldn't go on existing if you didn't see me as special anymore."

"I've failed you over and over," she said, clenching the coin. Her hand rested on his chest once more. "But not this time. I'm here now. And you're going to be fine. Because I love you."

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inmyownworld
2009-06-19 12:29 am UTC (link)

The world looked different without pain. Sounds blended into each other harmlessly, and his skin and spirit started to go numb. He stared straight ahead, desiring nothing, mourning nothing, feeling nothing.

Please don't take my sunshine away.

Laura was there; he could feel her, smell formaldehyde and traces of her perfume, and she was embracing him tightly. Dimly, he wondered if things were better, if he had repaired everything, or if it was just his faulty perception of the world under the influence of a powerful narcotic.

He opened his eyes, struggling somewhat, looking into Laura's face. No wonder other men noticed her... she was more than beautiful. She was the most beautiful. Exotic and fragile and fearsome and ghoulish and gorgeous. He blinked; his heartbeat was slow, and his mind was only partially functioning, and his body felt like it was made of lead, but he was with it enough to understand that Laura was with him. He needed her, not because he had injected a large amount of a dangerous drug into his system, but because, truly, he had been alone for a long time.

He wanted this. He wanted to lie next to Laura and listen to words overwhelmed by clear love. He was not dying now, but he was beloved, and he felt it to the core of his being. He had to make Laura understand both of those things before she panicked and mistook him for the King of America.

"Stop. Don't be... stupid." For once, L's brain moved more slowly than his mouth. "You're here now. You love me. I... am happy." he didn't notice any kind of mess on his clothes, only that Laura was there and that they were touching and that he needed this. "Don't... fail. Not a phantom. Laura Moon. Only sunshine." Was he making any sense? Why were the ballads and flowery prose spinning in his head only make it out sounding like a very sappy Rorschach?

He held her close, her lightweight body feeling fragile even through his dulled senses. The coin rested between them, maybe keeping him afloat even though he was relatively certain he hadn't killed himself with morphine. "Please... don't leave... wait until I am asleep before you go." he looked into her eyes, his own ringed by dark circles in a paler-than-usual face. "I'll be fine, but don't leave. If you leave, I'll go away, too." he stroked the stump of her arm thoughtfully.

"I'll find your arm and your water tomorrow. I'll let a doctor put it back on. Then I'll get metal, and latex, and rubber, and I'll make your body last forever. You're so special..." he sighed softly, nestling his cheek against Laura's shoulder. "I'm happy to be alive in a world that has you. I'm going to wake up tomorrow. I promise."

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