raisetheearth | It's not stalking when he's a ghost

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It's not stalking when he's a ghost

Who: Misa Amane and YOU (and a ghost)
Where: Shepherd's Haven
When: August 10th, 2016 (night)
What: Misa has spotted a certain ghost, with a face that has been burned into her mind ever since her first echo. Light Yagami. Well, it's not like she's not going to follow him.
Status: Open
Warnings: Some PG-13 sex suggestions in the thread with Lazarus.

The first time she saw him, saw that familiar face that somehow still belonged to a stranger, Misa had stopped dead in her tracks and lost him. By the time her heart had stopped hammering in her chest and she decided that yes, she should look for him, there was no harm in looking, he had disappeared. The disappointment was acute, but even with that one glimpse the figment had haunted her thoughts for the remainder of the night.

Light Yagami.

There was so little she knew of him, and what she did know often conflicted, missing pieces making the puzzle all the more confusing. Her Other had loved him enough to do anything for him. Misa had amassed enough echoes to find that thought terrifying rather than simply romantic, but even so she still desired to know more.

Who was Light Yagami?

A ghost could not tell her that. Not this one, anyway. The phantom glided silently through the streets, never speaking, a bored look on his eerily beautiful face. Misa walked along beside him, staring. At first she had been more discrete, but after twenty minutes of trailing behind him it became clear that this ghost didn't care about her presence in the least. He didn't so much as look at her.

Misa more than made up for that with how hungrily she looked at him. Time passed by them both, and soon she had lost track of the hour, wandering obliviously through the darkened streets.

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Lazarus knows full well where Misa is supposed to be tonight, and that's part of what sends him out looking for when she fails to turn up at the specified time. With strange goings-on lately even in the remote Shepherd's Haven, he's not so sure that it is safe, which has him going out on a regular basis to ensure that things are in order, even if they are odd.

He walks toward the line of trees and spots Misa standing transfixed by a particular specter. He's already aware of the phenomenon, having stood with Nathan and seen Mello and the ensuing post three days prior, but the way Misa stares at the man like a piece of meat is not lost on Lazarus.

To his secret shame, he feels it, too.

"You stood me up," he accuses casually, also not taking his eyes off Light's disinterested form.

Misa jolts as if awoken from a trance at the sound of his voice, spinning around to face him.

"Lazarus..."

Her eyes go to the apparition, then to their surroundings, as if she is just now realizing where she is and what time it is. How long has she been following a ghost?

"I... I'm sorry, I don't know what I..."

Misa can't manage to string a coherent sentence together, and obviously finds that vexing. It's him. It's something about this ghost. When she looks at him it feels like everything else disappears, like he is the only thing on earth that matters and the only person that she could possibly want.

He isn't even real.

"I'm so sorry, where are...?" she starts, shakily stepping toward Lazarus and away from the apparition. It stays in place, looking at neither of them. Misa takes hold of Lazarus's hand, trying to anchor herself. "I wouldn't ever do that on purpose, there was... something happened."

Not too long, but it's certainly been a little while. He lets her stammer, continuing to stare at Light. He really is uncommonly good-looking; he could be Lazarus' polar opposite, clean-cut and polished and well-groomed. He would look better at the side of someone like Misa, on paper and all things considered.

He was also the person that L's unscrupulous but admittedly brilliant Other suspected of being a mass-murderer, if one who was equal in intellect to him.

He glances down, startled, when Misa takes his hand.

"I can tell as much," he says, not questioning her claim. It's clear that something did happen, after all, even if it's foreboding as hell and not something he really wants to see for what it could very well be.

"I suppose I should stop asking this, but... did you get anything back from them?" he asks, sighing shallowly.

"N... I don't know," she says quietly. She wants to turn back and look at Light. She wants to look at him and nothing else very, very badly. The urge goes beyond unnerving, now that she has consciously noticed it.

Misa wraps her arms around Lazarus's torso, to spite those feelings and to make it so she can't easily turn back around.

"Sorry, I promise to make it up to you. I saw him and... there's this feeling inside me. It doesn't make any sense, I don't even know him, it can't be mine. It's making me act crazy."

She feels crazy. She feels like if the apparition of Light Yagami turned to her right now and told her to cut off her finger for him, she would want to do it. It's terrifying.

"I want to be with you," Misa states firmly, as much for her own benefit as his.

The answer doesn't even begin to satisfy Lazarus. He has to wonder if she does know, given her dubious track record of concealing and denying her echoes up to this point. He has to accept that he has no way of telling, and that sits heavy and uneasy in his stomach, even after she embraces him as a quick, desperate-seeming reassurance.

The fact that she apologizes also makes him uneasy; it indicates that she thinks she's done something wrong, more grievous than simply getting distracted by a fragment of the past and going after it. He shakes his head distractedly, that queasy feeling turning into a stone in his gut as he thinks of a possibility he'd mentioned and entertained in the past.

If we can get back emotions and memories from our Others, why can't our personalities change?

"I... know you want to," he says stiltedly, finding it difficult to return the embrace but managing to put an arm around her.

I know you want to want it.

Misa doesn't miss that Lazarus doesn't really hug her back, but it only makes her squeeze him all the tighter. This is bad. He isn't angry or lashing out at her, but she isn't sure that Lazarus does those things anyway. He is being distant, and that's bad enough.

"I must have echoed it back," she says quietly. "Her... feelings. The way she felt about him. They aren't mine, and- it isn't healthy."

She struggles to put words to it, to the depths of emotion her Other must have felt when she looked at Light. Misa has been in love. It may not feel the same every time, but she knows what being in love feels like. This... it's love, certainly, but it's also obsession and longing and desperation all rolled into one.

It's too much. It's far too much to feel when she looks at a man who doesn't even exist, and it isn't hers to feel.

"I want to go home. With you- I want us to go home, okay?" She presses her lips to his shoulder insistently before continuing. "I'm so sorry for standing you up, I really will make it up to you."

Lazarus really doesn't get angry or lash out; it isn't that he doesn't feel emotions, just that they run deeper and he's more reserved about showing them. But this is different; it's like they echo in a hollow place in his chest when Misa admits that she's echoed back a feeling that goes beyond sheer emotion, it's unhealthy. It's obsession.

The kind of person who would literally kill and die for another.

Even if she's struggling not to look at the specter, Lazarus is staring straight at him, wondering about the kind of person who can make someone feel those things.

She's trying. He can set aside what he feels about it for now, or at least attempt to. "OK," he says simply, nodding briskly and pulling her along toward his cabin, stepping at a quicker clip than his normal gait.

Misa hurries to keep up, not wanting to let go of him or give herself a moment to let temptation win and look back. She doesn't want to leave— no, she does. A remnant of her Other may not want to leave the ghostly apparition behind, but that is exactly what Misa wants. She concentrates on wanting it all the harder.

"I echoed it back," she says breathlessly, heart beating fast in her ears from nerves and trying to stay alongside Lazarus's much longer steps. She doesn't want to think about all the lies that are about to come crumbling down or about the Pandora's box that she is opening by telling him this, she just wants to prove her loyalty to him. "A black notebook with thousands of names in it. That's what I echoed back that day."

They stride along in the darkness, lit only by the lanterns outside the buildings and the pearly glow given off by the ghosts as they wander and float. They're simultaneously harmless and immensely disruptive, and Lazarus finds himself struggling to reconcile the two. He hates this, despises the clenched feeling in his gut and the way Misa seems to want to look back again more than anything in the world. Even as he knows it's not her fault, his frustration needs an outlet, and finds it in the tight way he grasps her hand and the way his steps fall more heavily than they normally do.

Then she speaks, and his steps slow and stop.

"You... what?"

Well, that's a lot to take in.

"You echoed back the notebook? Is that what you're saying?" he asks, voice hoarse, thinking about his own echoes on the subject.

"...I believe you. What else do you know about it?" Maybe her honesty will hold out.

Misa is silent for a moment as they come to a stop, tensed for whatever Lazarus's reaction will be. Immediately she starts sifting through what there is to tell, what she should give away— no. She smashes the train of thought down. She owes Lazarus honesty, and what could she reveal that is worse than having the notebook anyway?

She needs help. Maybe he can help her.

"I know it's called a Death Note. I know that... there's more than one. When I touched the slime it turned into a black notebook, but it looked different than the other one and had different names inside. It had rules written inside, for how to use it."

Lazarus isn't actually sure whether he expects Misa to give him honesty or lies, especially under this current state of stress... but despite his doubt, the chances for honesty feel higher at present. His intuition is telling him that she feels terrible and that if she was going to lie, she'd be trying to make herself look better right about now than she's managing.

If she needs help, Lazarus helps people. It's an identity he's coveted since he first started to echo back things that could make others' lives more convenient or safe. It fulfills him and chases away those dark places in his heart. He can commit to this.

"You have two of them, then?" he asks, disquieted and trying to conceal the extent of it. "Where are they now?"

"No, just one," she answers, eyes on the ground. "The other one turned back into slime. The one I have is in Tokyo."

It hadn't seemed worth the risk to bring it here; not with Lazarus and Nathan already suspicious. It's not as if she has any use for it, anyway. Misa hasn't been able to bring herself to destroy it, but there's no need to have it by her side at all times.

It was more convenient to leave it in a safe place and go back to pretending it didn't exist.

"There's something else. When I was looking at the slime-notebook, I got back a page from a diary. That's here."

He watches her for a long stretch of several seconds, but ultimately, he believes her. If she was trying to hide it, it's true that she probably wouldn't bring it here where they tend not to lock their doors and people come and go freely from their friends' and lovers' houses.

"Then it goes without saying that I think I have to see that diary page," he murmurs. "Please show it to me."

Misa nods, leading him toward her cabin with a simple, "This way."

The page is not well hidden; she doesn't understand its significance well enough for that. Aside from the mention of shinigami, it could be a normal diary entry from any teenage girl. Misa has read over it countless times in the few days since it appeared, trying to figure out how it fits into the puzzle, but she hasn't a clue so far.

When they arrive, she walks in without a word and fetches the page from the drawer on her nightstand. Just as wordlessly, she holds it out for Lazarus to inspect.

This isn't what she wants to be doing right now. She wants to be putting Light out of her mind and assuring Lazarus that she is his in other ways. But the way he keeps saying that he believes her only emphasizes that he is carefully considering whether or not he should believe her. So she'll just have to keep spilling all her secrets raw until it is no longer a question.

His shoulders stiffen, first as they walk and then again as she shows him the page. He doesn't share what he got back, concerned that it will mean giving Misa more revelations and feelings that... wouldn't be conducive to the dynamic they're trying to reestablish.

He massages his aching temple, sighing as more and more comes to light.

"I'm not angry," he says after a moment. "So please don't think that. On an intellectual level, I know that it's not your fault. But I wish you'd shared these things sooner... I feel like if you really trusted me, like you said you did that night we agreed to date, you would have."

"I'm sorry."

Misa sits down and seems to sag against the mattress, shoulders hunched. This might have been easier to weather if Lazarus would get angry.

"I do trust you. I don't trust me— my other. I didn't want anyone to think less of me, or... think I was like that. Now I'm just afraid of becoming her."

It's actually a pretty effective measure to use when talking to someone whose other is a proven torturer and possible sadistic pervert. Lazarus nods slowly, digesting what she's said, understanding like he imagines no one else really can, given their common origin and what they know about each other.

"I know," he says softly. "I'm afraid too. I used to want to know everything about our Others but... lately I wonder if we'd be better off leaving some of them alone. Maybe... for instance, it could be better for us."

Misa meets his eyes and nods desperately. She feels even worse for hiding it from him now; of course Lazarus would understand, more than anyone.

"I don't want to know anymore. Not if it means— feelings that aren't mine. I don't want them."

She reaches for his hands, expression earnest. That handsome ghost's face, the things it made her feel— they aren't hers. They are nothing more than someone else's emotions invading her mind, and Misa refuses to let them replace what is hers.

"I don't want any of it. I want you."

He lets her take his hands, squeezing hers as reassuringly as he possibly can in this very confusing moment. She seems impossibly sincere. He wants what she's saying to be true, even as he wants what he suspects about all of their others to be false.

Feelings are more complicated than logic, and they're possibly the only thing that's absolutely impervious to rational argument. It feels like some deep, hidden cancer that he can't reach to shrink. Just because she doesn't want them doesn't mean she isn't still feeling them, that they aren't every bit as present as her blonde hair.

"What can I do?" he asks after a moment. "I know enough about echoes to know that this probably isn't something we can fix, but we can probably soothe it. Tell me what you need from me."

Misa seems taken aback by the question. "It's not about... you don't need to..." She struggles for the words to say that Lazarus doesn't need to do anything; she stood him up following a ghost and lied to him for months, she is the one that needs to do something to fix it.

"I want you to trust me," she says slowly, standing up from the bed and sinking to her knees in front of him. "I want you to forgive me, and I want you to know that I'm yours." She tilts her head back to look up at him, hands still holding his. "I'll earn those things."

It's a strange, and actually very awkward role reversal. Lazarus is used to being the one doing the apologizing and working to figure out a way to fix things and make them better, and his eyes widen in surprise and confusion when Misa gets down on her knees in front of him.

It's odd and uncomfortable. He's said that he's sorry so many times in his life that he actually has no idea to react when someone is repenting this way before him.

"I forgive you," he says quickly, even though he hasn't realistically had the time to think it over. "I understand why you did what you did, you... really don't have to sit that way, like you're..."

Begging, or praying, or waiting for an execution.

An echo thrums through her and Misa sets her jaw; she has been like this before, kneeling in front of a different man. The memory is as comforting as could be expected. She tries to put the words from her mind, tries to focus on the floor she is sitting on instead of the one her Other did. It only cements her desire to make this different, to prove that she is different.

"I want to," Misa insists, letting go of Lazarus's hands to rest her palms against his thighs. "I want to show you, I'm yours and no one else's."

He stiffens as she does, guessing that even though they're not talking about it, this is giving her a few glancing echoes just as it's doing for him. He stares down at the top of her blonde head as her soft hands rest against the black denim sheathing his thin legs.

"Misa..."

Yours, and no one else's.

He doesn't know if this is the time for what she seems to be implying. He's still having quite a lot of difficulty just sifting through this quagmire.

"I am," she reiterates. He seems uncertain, and she doesn't know what that uncertainty is about but if there is one thing she has to convince him of, it's this. "Only yours."

Misa runs her fingers down his leg, then brushes the hem of his shirt aside to fiddle with the button on his jeans. She'll show him. She'll make him believe it.

There's still something distinctly off about this, and Lazarus can't articulate what it is even though he feels it squirming in the pit of his stomach like a sick, wasting parasite. From the outside, this looks like two people who agreed to be together doing things that dating couples do with each other, but it feels like there's weight attached to this, a shift in the power balance.

Even stranger, it almost seems like Misa finds something about atoning natural, going hand in hand with seduction. Is this new, along with her deep attraction to Light Yagami?

The wind shudders in his chest as he exhales. He's already responding to her fingers at the button on his jeans, and it makes him wonder if he's also fucked up for seeing this as something that can conceivably happen following the unsettling revelations of the evening.

"Do you believe me?" she asks quietly, unzipping his jeans. There is no way her intentions are anything but abundantly clear now; she can't tell what Lazarus is thinking, but he seems open to letting her do this.

[[This thread will be continued here, with warnings for being more explicit.]]

Edited 2015-08-24 23:57 (UTC)

It isn't that Nathan is any more comfortable with the idea of their little community being haunted. This very much still bothers him, but the fact remains that there are things that need to be done and the ghosts have yet to be hostile. So he tries to shove down his instinctive fear as much as possible.

He is not ignoring the ghosts as he walks; that would be foolish, in his estimation. Just as foolish as . . . following them would be. Which is exactly what he sees Misa doing. He debates speaking up; she's probably fine, but he is still very wary of what's happening in the village right now.

Quietly, as he always speaks: "... Misa?"

Misa jolts at the sound of her name, spinning around to face Nathan with wide eyes. She hadn't noticed him approach; for a split second she is convinced one of the ghosts has spoken to her. But no, just another one of the living.

"Nathan... hi," she responds slowly, glancing back at Light's apparition. She doesn't mean to be dismissive of Nathan, but it is hard to look away. "I was just on my way home."

In Misa's defense, Nathan looks ghostly himself even on a good day, with his white hair and natural pallor.

"I realize they've yet to be hostile, but I am not sure following any of them is a good idea." But Nathan does have a tendency to take caution to extremes that other people would not.

He is not offended when Misa's eyes stray back to the apparition. His own follow, mostly out of a desire to keep watch on everything that is happening . . . Hm.

"Ah. I suppose that is him?"

The apparition fits her description well enough, and even upon sight his previous opinion has not exactly changed. He can certainly see why she'd find him good-looking, but he still doesn't register as distinctive in Nathan's mind.

Misa nods, eyes still on Light.

"I wasn't following him," she protests weakly. "We were just... going in the same direction. But he hasn't noticed me at all, I think it's fine."

She finds herself wishing she was alone with the apparition again, for reasons she can't justify. It's not as if the ghost paid any attention to her before Nathan arrived either.

He doesn't begrudge her still watching the apparition. He'd kept his eyes on Mello's for quite some time when he'd seen it, albeit for different reasons.

Nathan can miss a lot in conversations, often falling flat in reading common social cues or why they crop up. But here, the protest is noticeably weak and the hesitance obvious. She is lying, and not doing a very good job. Like she is trying to convince herself of her own words as much as she is trying to convince him.

"Your house isn't in that direction . . ."

"Hm...? Oh, I guess not. I must have... gotten turned around..."

She tears her eyes away from Light to look at Nathan; it's too difficult to concentrate otherwise. When she watches Light it feels impossible to focus on anything else.

"Sorry, I'm kind of distracted, with all the ghosts," she admits, trying to play it off as a more general phenomena than it is. "It's weird, isn't it?"

Turned around because she feels compelled to follow the ghost. But sometimes even Nathan manages tact and thus he doesn't mention it. She isn't distracted by all of the ghosts. Just that ghost. She'd gotten angry with him on this topic earlier, though, and he'd rather not get yelled at in person.

"It is very strange, yes."

His gaze perks up a little as another passes by -- elderly, clean-shaven, small spectacles perched on his nose. Nathan knows few faces from his old life, but that is one of them. He lets it pass without comment, however.

Misa turns to follow his gaze, but nothing catches her interest. There is no echo or flicker of recognition as she takes in the elderly ghost walking past. Probably for the best; there's no telling what she might get back, and Nathan always makes her feel wary with those dark, searching eyes when it comes to keeping secrets.

"Hopefully they won't stay long, right? The slime disappeared, so they should too."

She tries to sound chipper when she says it, but the idea of the ghosts disappearing suddenly fills her with dread. She chances a quick glance back to make sure Light's ghost is where she left him. The relief from seeing that he is still there is dizzying.

He does not remember getting the Echo that allows him to recognize the old ghost; that one had occurred during those lost days before he had contacted the network for the first time. But that ghost is Watari, the one who had looked after Near.

"Possibly. But the slime is the more anomalous of things that have appeared; most have stayed unless they'd been actively removed."

That doesn't make things any more or less worrisome, does it? The ghosts might remain until some way is found to get rid of them. Or they might vanish in a few days' time. Either one seems equally possible to Nathan at the moment.

"Yeah... you're right," Misa agrees, and try as she might she can't keep the relief out of her voice. "I guess we'll just have to get used to them."

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It's not stalking when he's a ghost

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