savetheearth | {004} Log: White Day [CLOSED]

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{004} Log: White Day [CLOSED]

Who: Misa Amane + Lazarus, Cesar, Emilia, and Stefan.
What: It's reverse-White Day! A chance to thank those who have helped her out so far.
Where: Various houses in Locke City and Las Vegas
When: March 14
Warnings: None expected

It was a little unorthodox to be giving chocolate instead of receiving it on White Day, but since no one else here seemed to have even heard of the holiday before, Misa figured that she could take some liberties. She really did feel bad for not using Valentine's Day as an opportunity to thank those who had taken her in and helped her out in this strange new city, even though she'd had a pretty decent excuse for laying low during that time. There was a lot that she owed the people here, and if nothing else White Day could function as a delayed Numbered appreciation day this year.

A small package of handmade chocolates in hand, Misa visited the homes of those she felt most indebted to one by one. She had prepared a little box for each of them; nothing fancy, just chocolate fudge squares dusted with cocoa. Maybe store bought would have sufficed, but Misa thought they all deserved a personal touch.

Some addresses were harder to come by than others, but one way or another Misa approached each door with a firm knock, and waited.

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Misa ignores the doppel's comment completely, grabbing a lock of her hair to stare at it in bewilderment.

"I'm..."

She doesn't finish the thought, eyes landing on the staircase. As good a place to sit as any. Letting her hair slide from her fingers, she grabs Lazarus by the hand and drags him over with her before plopping down on the stairs. The scene in her head, the hair, the two L's— it's a sensory overload. Misa feels like she is going mad.

"I need a mirror," she mumbles, still holding Lazarus's hand in a vice-like grip. It's something concrete to focus on.

Edited 2015-03-25 05:23 (UTC)

"Blonde," the doppelganger offers, as she leaves the thought hanging. Lazarus responds to his hand being grabbed with a stifled cry; though his wrists have been fixed on the inside, the tendons and nerves still aren't what they were, and it's painful for them to be tightly or roughly handled.

"I have an iPhone," he offers, voice strained as he takes a seat beside her while his doppel trails listlessly behind them and stays standing. "You're hurting me though..."

Misa glances at their hands, then up to Lazarus, and abruptly releases her hold.

"Sorry— I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking," she says, raising her hands to cover her eyes again and completing the motion this time. Stupid, stupid. She hadn't thought about those scars as anything more than a reminder of a dark time, she shouldn't have just grabbed him like that. "Sorry."

She takes a few deep breaths, trying to calm herself. A phone camera will do, but even though she asked she feels afraid to look. It's silly to make such a big deal, if her hair is all that changed, but, well— it is sudden and alarming.

He tries not to make a bigger deal of it than it has to be, discreetly rolling his wrist after she hastily releases it. "Don't worry, it's fine. You were startled, and it's not your fault," he's quick to assure her, while the doppelganger watches impassively.

He reaches into his pocket, fishing for his cell phone, handing it silently over to Misa. "It doesn't look bad," he offers. "I know that probably sounds kind of awful after he said it in so many words, but... it's good on you."

The comment makes Misa smile, and after a few seconds she lowers her hands, accepting the phone.

"I'm being silly," she says quietly, swiping her fingers across the screen to pull up the camera and sucking in a quick breath when she sees herself reflected. After staring for a moment, she moves the phone around to see from different angles, taking note of the pigtails. It's... strangely childish, or at least strangely J-Pop. The blonde hair certainly doesn't look bad, but it is a big change, and will anyone take her seriously looking like this?

"I saw you... your Other, and Light— the man from my kiss. His name is... Light." Saying it out loud brings a smile back to her face. This is good. It's scary, and the memory is weird and she wants an explanation, but this is all good. She's finding out more and more.

"No, you're not being silly. These are sudden changes and they catch everyone off guard," he assures her. "You're even taking it better than a lot of people, all things considered." He watches with no small measure of concern as she surveys her new appearance, glancing toward her eyes when she describes what else she saw.

The pit drops out of his stomach as he's filled briefly with a sense of hollow dizziness, and there's a sharp intake of breath fro his doppel, as well. While Lazarus' eyes are wide and uncertain, the double seems immensely amused by what he's learned.

"Light, one Light Yagami," he reports, "Also known as L's prime suspect in the Kira investigation. How interesting."

His reassurance is much appreciated, and when Lazarus freezes Misa glances at him sharply. Him too? She gently places her hand on his knee, wanting to return the favor. But what he says has her more confused than ever.

"Wait, what? Kira?" she asks, obviously lost. 'Suspect' can't mean anything good, but what is Kira? "He was my— her boyfriend, or something like that. Light and L were handcuffed together with these..."

Misa reaches out with her free hand to touch the chain dangling from Lazarus's wrist, brow knit as she tries to puzzle it all out. The handcuffs make more sense knowing the context of Light being a suspect for something, at least. From the memory alone she would have thought that L did it just to perv on the two of them.

"I wasn't happy about it."

Edited 2015-03-26 01:25 (UTC)

Him, too. He scarcely notices her hand on his bony knee, thinking about the connection he's just made. The man he'd taken for a possible lover in another echo, the mass murderer, Misa's boyfriend... they're all the same person, or at least his Other thought so.

He jumps slightly when the chain gets rattled. Those had been an echo too, hadn't they? He feels a creeping sense of dread already, but he tries to shake it, tell himself that they'll get to the bottom of this.

"No, I... can't imagine you were happy about it," he murmurs, voice slightly hoarse. "L was a detective, and 'Kira' was the name of a mass-murderer he was trying to hunt down. If what I'm inferring from my last echo just now is correct... that man, your boyfriend, Light Yagami, was the person my Other was accusing of those crimes."

Misa is quiet. Slowly, she moves her hand off of his knee, folding both in her lap. She stares ahead, mind racing to put together an explanation for this that isn't terrible.

"He's wrong," she says at length, confident but without any evidence to prove it. "I would never fall in love with a mass-murderer. I had an echo before... my Other's parents were killed too, except she was there to see it. She watched. I saw it." Misa blinks back tears as the gory images spring to mind unbidden, and looks up at Lazarus desperately. "So there's no way she would ever love a killer."

"I believe you," he's quick to tell her, hoping that she doesn't cry. He's terrible at dealing with crying people, please don't do that to him...

"These are always confusing, even when the full picture comes together. There must have been more to it than that, and I'm sure it makes sense."

His doppelganger snorts. "I'm not," he contradicts. "Sometimes people are just nuts. You know that better than anyone, right?"

"I swear, I'm going to choke you to death with this chain..."

Misa's eyes harden at the comment. She sniffs, wiping at her eyes, and scowls resolutely.

"It's not like that. You didn't hear... the way we were talking to each other, it wasn't like a detective to a suspect at all. I was upset about you chaining yourself to Light, I said that he was mine and basically called you a pervert, and you just said that you weren't doing this because you want to. And then..."

She trails off, making a face half between a grimace and bewilderment. "You said we were all going to go on dates together, and... you were going to watch us kiss. It really didn't seem like official detective work!!"

The doppelganger seems supremely unconcerned with the threat, leaning against the banister as Lazarus leans on his knees and rests his forehead wearily in the palm of his hand.

"You're right, I didn't hear," he says softly, careful not to argue what seems like a very emotionally charged scene from her perspective. "And it doesn't sound like official detective work, but from what I've gotten back, nothing about the case was exactly conventional. I can only hope and believe that whatever my detective was doing, he had his reasons for it, even if it seemed strange or drastic or even... perverted."

His cheeks are a rather pink color, and he seems to be regarding the handcuffs with new, slightly sickened eyes.

Misa notices the flush on his cheeks, but it isn't enough to make her relent, even if what happened isn't really his fault.

"Your Other seems like he has a weird obsession with the two of us— my Other, and Light. Light Yagami..." She rolls the name around on her tongue, testing it out. Her boyfriend in another life. A mass murderer? No way, it doesn't make any sense. She would never fall for someone like that.

Misa grips the chain in her fist, looking at it with distaste. "Maybe he only accused Light so he would have an excuse to barge in on our relationship."

Please, relent. Please leave him to puzzle this out, please talk about chocolates again. Anything to spare him from the uncomfortable possibility that his other was, just maybe, not a very good person.

"I don't know about that," he says quietly. "It was a case. My other was a detective... he saved children, he was a good man. He believed in justice, so I don't... I really don't see how he could have such an irrelevant obsession, or use suspicion as an excuse for that kind of thing just for his own gratification. I can't see it any more than you can see yourself falling for a mass murderer."

L's doppel gives her a little wave as she grips the chain. "Do you want to see all the ways I could use this?" he drawls suggestively.

"Just because he believes in justice doesn't mean he isn't a pervert," Misa says crossly, flicking the chain at the doppel in irritation. His commentary is not doing Lazarus any favors. Letting the chain drop, her eyes go to Lazarus's hand again. While she's not particularly happy with him for defending his Other, she still feels bad for being rough with him.

"How's your hand?" she asks, prodding it gently with two fingers.

L's answer is silence. She's right, of course; he already believes that there was a chance his Other was attracted to his handsome young suspect, despite his gender, likely criminal status, and supposed girlfriend. What if there were other, worse things? What if years investigating the ugliness of human crime had warped him to the point where normal human sexuality was dull and meaningless, was that even possible?

"My hand's fine," he murmurs as she nudges it. It still aches dully, but nothing more than the faint ache that's ever-present. "It's nowhere near the mess it was, so it's actually great, relatively speaking."

Misa sighs, leaning back on the stairs. What a mess all of this is.

"I never asked... how long ago was this?" she says slowly, fingers still ghosting across his hand. She is aware that this is probably crossing a line, and Lazarus would have every right not to answer. But at this point why not throw everything on the table and apologize later?

He's surprised that she's asking, but he's not as sensitive about the subject as many assume him to be. It's certainly not pleasant, but it's a fact of his life, and the scars get older every day. He glances aside, hoping that his doppel doesn't make this harder than it absolutely has to be.

"Five... almost six, years? This May," he says softly. "So, a long time. My tendons and nerves were damaged very badly and for awhile I could only move my thumb and one finger on each hand. It was very impractical. It made finding work extremely difficult."

Misa glances over at him, surprised that he's sharing so much. With his reaction to her grabbing him, she would have thought it was more recent.

"That must have been hard," she says, taking her hand back. "I didn't realize it was like that."

After a pause, she adds, "I thought about killing myself a lot, after my parents were killed and it looked like the murderer was going to walk away. I don't know what I would have done if things hadn't turned around."

There's sudden, ringing laughter, and Lazarus starts to glare at his bewildered doppelganger before he realizes that the broken sound came from him.

It's a relief to talk about it like it's real, not some phantom that everyone sees but ignores to be polite, and it's just a touch overwhelming. The color in his cheeks deepens, and he thinks about apologizing, but his posture and expression communicate pretty clearly that his inappropriate reaction wasn't voluntary or one intended to ridicule.

He swallows the tight dryness in his throat.

"It can happen to anyone, you know. Every single person alive can reach that point if they go past a certain threshold or experience enough loss. We're OK though. We're OK."

Misa startles, sitting up abruptly at the laugh. She stares at Lazarus in confusion, readying to defend herself if he's daring to make fun of her for sharing something so personal— but it doesn't seem like that. He looks just as surprised by the sound as she was, and the deepening blush on his face makes it clear that he isn't proud of the outburst. Slowly, Misa relaxes her raised hackles and moves past preparing for a fight.

"Mhm... we're okay."

He looks so pathetic like this, crouched over and flushed. There's pity in seeing him this way, but there's also a recognition that they share more things in common than could ever be expected. More than even they know, if these echoes are anything to go on.

They're both messed up. Lazarus just wears it on his sleeve, while Misa has learned to bury it. On an impulse to cheer him up, Misa leans over and pecks him on the cheek.

"You're right. We're just fine."

He would never make fun, he's just... not always the best at expressing emotion or reacting correctly. He's intensely glad that Misa seems to be able to pick up on that, and her kindness and understanding are yet another relief, even if he does end up looking rather pitiful.

The kiss comes out of nowhere, and he stiffens, hugging his knees tightly to his chest. The simple, harmless gesture isn't the sole reason, though; it's the fact that it was a veritable floodgate to possibly the largest single chunk of information he's gotten about his past life. Voices, hints, insight... and most of it is fairly chilling. His hand flies to his cheek, but his face is frozen, confused and horrified.

His doppelganger is similarly stricken, more by the volume of information than by the content of the memory.

This time the strange sense of déjà vu and displacement in the pit of her stomach doesn't throw Misa for a loop the way it did before; the feeling is there and then gone in an instant, and something lands on the stair beside her. Misa glances down to see the glossy cover of Eighteen Magazine, a pop starlet she doesn't recognize staring up at her with a bubbly smile.

"Did you feel—" Misa begins to ask, before seeing the expression on Lazarus's face. So he echoed something too, and not something physical. Why kissing him on the cheek caused dual echoes is something Misa has no small degree of curiosity about, but figuring that and the magazine out can wait.

"Lazarus, hey— it's okay," she reassures him, setting her hand on his knee. She doesn't miss the fact that his doppel seems to be affected too, which opens all sorts of other new questions, but he isn't her main concern. "We're still right here."

He continues to blink and stare straight ahead for a few seconds, processing the voices and the faces they belong to just as much as he's processing what was said in a different life. It sheds some light, at least, on what their dynamic was, but what's a delicate way to share it with the person who's efficiently unlocking parts of him he's not had access to until now?

Her reassurance gets him to turn his face slowly toward her. Is it OK? He can't be sure.

"A memory," he says blankly, as the hollowness of echoing slips away and he starts to feel solid and present again. "You were there, so was he, and... there's a lot to it."

His eyes pass to the magazine in Misa's hands. "What is that?"

Misa watches Lazarus process the echo with worry and curiosity vying for dominance. Whatever it is has obviously affected him profoundly, and she wants to be delicate with him but she also wants to know. She gives his knee a comforting squeeze when he turns to look at her.

"So all of us were there... This? Oh, it's just a magazine," Misa says, holding it up for him to see. The text is in Japanese and she assumes he won't be able to read it. "I don't think there's anything special abou—"

She cuts off abruptly as he eyes land on one of the smaller features toward the bottom left corner of the magazine. 'Exclusive Look At Model Misa-Misa's Film Debut!!! Page 41' That... that couldn't be related to her, could it? Mystified, Misa moves her hand off of Lazarus's knee to flip through the magazine to the appropriate page. A picture of her, complete with newly blonde hair, smiles back. She is wearing some sort of flower crown and fairy-like gown with costume wings situated on her back, grinning and flashing a peace sign at the camera.

Misa stares down at the picture for several long seconds, transfixed, Lazarus's echo forgotten for the moment. Seeing her twin is... eerie, to say the least. This is the woman she's turning into? A model turned movie star? Her Other might as well have been a princess.

Edited 2015-03-28 00:09 (UTC)

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