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 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)

To say that he's affected, even profoundly, is something of an understatement. The young man, and even his doppelganger, both seem fairly stricken and more than a little bit rattled, but both are attempting to recover as quickly as possible, even as L sorts through all the implications of what he's echoed back.

It helps to divert his attention for a moment, and he does so, staring at the issue, eyes flicking over the characters with definite comprehension. Not only does Lazarus speak perfect Japanese, but he reads it fluently, as well. "Film debut?" he asks, canting his head sideways. "She was a movie star?"

In addition to... what? The 'Second Kira?'

"It looks like it... it says she was a model first, she won some sort of popularity poll in this magazine. Then she moved on to star in a romantic drama."

Misa is halfway through skimming the article before she looks up at Lazarus, confusion settling over her features. "Wait, you can read this?"

He nods briskly, leaning closer as he continues to read and corroborate what she's saying about the story. "Yes, I can. I echoed back the Japanese language a long time ago, as you may have guessed... among others."

It's the least improbable or surprising thing about this to him, and he continues reading voraciously, wondering if another echo is going to be set off by this.

"I definitely prefer the blonde hair," L's doppelganger says, bored now that he's been completely excluded from the activity they're mutually engaged in.

"I guess that makes sense... we were talking in Japanese in my last echo," Misa murmurs, continuing to skim the article. She hadn't really thought about it; Japanese was the default in her mind, it only made sense for memories to be in her native language.

The doppelganger is thoroughly ignored as Misa continues reading about her alter-ego's one-in-a-million life.

It's been a rough year between her manager's arrest for drug possession and Misa-Misa's subsequent mysterious two-month disappearance, but sources have denied her involvement and insisted she simply needed a break from the entertainment world. Some are even saying it was all a publicity stunt! Whatever the reason,

Misa's eyes go unfocused, words blurring together and room falling away. Everything is dark, everything is silent. Her eyes are covered, and her entire body aches like she's been standing in place for hours. Her back is pressed against something hard and flat, her bare feet forced apart by shackles on her ankles. Her arms are folded against her stomach by what feels like a straight jacket, and she can feel additional restraints at her crotch, her breasts, her hips, her neck. Her legs are completely bare up to mid-thigh, she is cold and stiff and hungry and parched and she can't see anything but blackness. She is going to die like this.

Misa screams, heart racing as she comes back to the stairwell crying, magazine on the ground. She instinctively curls inward on herself, hugging her legs with her head against her knees. What was that? She tries to breathe but can't, shaking and gasping with the ghost feeling of a strap against her neck.

"I'm very comfortable with it..." he says, and it occurs to him that maybe he should offer to switch over for her, if that would make things ultimately easier. Though he is bad at handling distress in all but his closest of friends (with whom he has a nearly preternaturally adept touch), he is grasping for ways to make this situation somehow better and less stressful for the girl.

I can attest to that...

What had he meant?

His eyes scan over the words; though he's a speed-reader, Japanese is not his native language and it takes a fraction of a second longer for the characters to fall into meaningful order in his thoughts. Once they have, though, the pit is dropping out of his stomach again, and he's in the dark, settled on a couch and staring impassively at a blonde girl, trussed and restrained. He sees everything. He watches her suffer and sips his coffee. He munches sugar cubes while she sobs. She won't die here, but she will wish for it, and he feels nothing as she begs, her terror glancing off his black-ice eyes like twin indifferent mirrors.

This echo is different. It leaves him freezing, trembling with the cold as if he's been pulled out of a frozen lake. His doppelganger is lauging, the girl at his side screams, and that empty feeling remains, filling slowly with the empathy that Lazarus feels where his preinacarnate perhaps couldn't. As his doppelganger glances Misa over with new knowledge of what she looks like in intimate and compromised positions, he looks away. What can he say? What would it mean, what does she know about his role in her torture?

"I'm so sorry," he says, horror and chill flash-freezing his tone. "I am so sorry..."

Edited 2015-03-30 13:55 (UTC)

Misa doesn't respond immediately, shaking her head back and forth as if denying the out of body experience entirely. She can't stop crying, and doesn't try to, focusing instead on breathing in and out and squeezing herself to keep from falling apart.

The doppelganger is laughing. At her, no doubt. The sound fills Misa with anger and embarrassment at being seen like this, but she can't find it within herself to pull herself together or tell him off. Not yet. Not with that terrible black void in the forefront of her mind, cold and miserable and hurting in so many ways. It had felt like something out of a horror movie, and Misa can't decide if not knowing what she looked like is for the better or if it makes everything that much worse.

Eventually she manages to tilt her head to the side, looking up at Lazarus with red-rimmed eyes. She tries to say something but stops short when her voice comes out alien, a strangled croak that is a far cry from words. Misa clears her throat, looking down again and letting go of her legs to wipe at her eyes. How shameful, letting them see her like this, maybe even letting them see her like that.

"You saw?"

She isn't quite ready to think through the implications of that. Maybe Lazarus is just reacting to her outburst and doesn't know the context, but something about the horror in his voice suggests otherwise.

There is no language like Japanese for apologies; they are a veritable art form, Lazarus understands, a different one for every occasion at every level of formality. The one he needs is one that expresses both his remorse and his helplessness.

Moshi wake arimasen.

I have no excuse for myself.

He has the words, but not the voice. It sticks in his throat in a heavy lump, and he swallows it, imagining it wet and leaden and slimy in his stomach as a young woman sobs beside him.

L's doppelganger chuckles darkly. "'Saw?' Certainly one way to put it. I'm into it, by the way... All those straps, the blindfold, definitely watching y--"

He's interrupted mid-sentence by Lazarus staggering to his feet, striding forward and twining the chain around his forearm to shorten it. Before he can protest, the doppelganger is getting kicked in the face so hard that his head almost spins 180 degrees on his scrawny neck, and he's knocked to the tile floor where he stares dazedly and then scrambles uncoordinatedly backwards.

Misa cringes at the doppelganger's commentary. For everything she just felt to be sexualized, is he even human? But then, as much as she doesn't want to think about it, part of her has to wonder if it wasn't planned that way. The placement of the straps, the fact that she was practically naked from the waist down with her feet held apart. She shivers, hugging her arms and feeling terribly exposed all over again.

Obviously she was kidnapped by some psychopath. A deluded fan, probably, since the past-her seems to have been famous. But why did Lazarus echo the scene back too? His other had been a detective, maybe he rescued her. Except the way the doppelganger said it, 'Saw? Certainly one way to put it.' But how can she trust anything he says anyway?

It's simultaneously jarring and a relief when Lazarus strides forward and kicks his double into silence, though for a moment Misa fears that he really has broken the idiots neck. Maybe she doesn't mind so much now, but the consequences could be...

Any relief is short lived. Her stomach drops and her mind is filled with a new scene, a large bright room with the trio from before, not again. Her vantage point is that of someone hiding behind a couch as L and Light square off against each other, wearing those damn handcuffs again. "I have just realized something..." L says, "I wanted you to be Kira." Light punches him in the face, and L retaliates by kicking him in the jaw.

"No more," Misa mumbles, pressing her palms against her eyes until she sees spots. If another echo happens she is either going to puke or have her head explode, possibly both at once.

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