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 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)

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It's not stalking when he's a ghost

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