Chapter Text
It is not that Misa falls in love with him.
Not that. Never that.
After all, she had not met him. She did not need to. What matters is what he did, not who he is. What he did: bring her peace and sweet relief after years of her parents' killer walking free. Who he is: irrelevant. Disregard it.
Having dead parents fucks you up, sure. So does watching their killer go free. So does being a model, an idol, a celebrity. So does having a stalker. So does watching said stalker die in front of you.
So does acquiring a god of death over your shoulder.
Suffice to say, well before Kira existed, Misa was sufficiently fucked-up. It really should not have come as a surprise, not to anyone, not to Rem, and least of all to herself, when Misa starts killing.
Misa is a worse person than Kira. Smarter, too, but we’ll get to that.
Kira kills for a purpose. Kills the evil, the wicked, the deserving (the broken, the beaten, the damned). Kira, benevolent god that he is, does not kill those who commit murder out of self-defense. He doesn’t kill those in rehab. He doesn't kill those who have expressed remorse, regret, reform for their crimes. He doesn’t kill the battered woman who killed her abusive husband, doesn’t kill the petty shoplifter, doesn’t kill the 9-year-old girl who stabbed her pedophilic stepdad to death.
(And if he has no way of truly knowing if they feel remorse, if he gets to a point where criminals are dropping like flies and he no longer bothers to check their motive and sweeps them all in the same omnipotent brushstroke, well. We’ll get to that later, too.)
Kira only kills those who the world is, truly, better off without.
Misa, however, has no such qualms.
She kills to be happy. Because she is in love with Kira, and wants to be with Kira, and killing people will get his attention. That’s it. That’s all.
Misa has considered that perhaps Kira is a woman. Perhaps Kira is an old man. Perhaps Kira is ugly, is married, is is is. No matter. She is in love with Kira, whoever they are, whatever they are.
And she will be with Kira. Because Kira helped her when no one else did, took revenge for her when no one else cared, saved her when no one else looked twice.
(Rem doesn't count. Rem is… different.)
(Rem doesn't have a choice. She's her shinigami now. There aren't exactly any other mortals she could love, not when she only spends her time with Misa. Misa wins by default.)
She is using the Death Note for herself. She is doing what she wants. Not some grand moral goal, not some meaningful purpose: she wants to talk to him. Find out what kind of person he is. That’s all. Is that too much to ask?
Misa is lucky. Misa has always been lucky. She is lucky now: Kira is a handsome young man, charming, stunning, and attractive to boot. Single, too, unless he’s with that scrawny emo-looking quasimodo.
Perfect.
She has no use in life, so he can use her. She has no purpose, so he can be her reason for living, for killing, for being. No religion, no god, so she will worship him.
She has so much devotion in her, all bottled up and ready to be poured, and she'll take the nearest wine glass, even if it’s poison-rimmed.
She just wishes he’d drink her.
She is not, contrary to popular belief, stupid. She knows he tolerates her at best, and hates her most of the time. She feels the way he stiffens when she clings to him, like she’s some venomous vermin that’ll go away if he only stays still for long enough. Sees the way his lips tug down in distaste when she walks in a room, like she’s made his day just a little more annoying just by being in it. Hears the barely-restrained frustration, anger, as he dumbs himself down for her. He may be charismatic and good-natured and pure-hearted to all the world, but she knows— can see it in his eyes, clear as day, as easily as she can see others’ lifespans and true names— that, most of the time, he only keeps her alive because Rem would kill him if he tried anything.
And that’s it, isn’t it? He’s not with her because she’s useful. He’s stuck with her, and thus, logically, he has found a way to make her useful. Or, she had found a way to make herself useful. Either way—
“Thank you.”
“Hm?”
“The only reason Light is willing to date me… kiss me… touch me… is because of you. He only lets me breathe the same air as him because he’s scared you’ll kill him if he hurts me. So, thank you.”
Rem swallows thickly. Something strange, but not entirely foreign, flashes in her bulbous eyes. “I… I would do… I am willing to do as much for you as you are for Light.” She manages, and the words are coarse and heavy on her tongue, as if they physically pained her to get out.
“Anything, then.”
Rem shifts like her bones are too heavy for her to carry. “Anything.”
Misa sighs. Flips a page in a glossy magazine. Eyes skimming over an article by Jude Ellison S. Doyle.
“It's not that teen girls would love Nine Inch Nails songs with different lyrics. Teen girls loved Nine Inch Nails songs with those lyrics—all that jocky, cocky, screaming rage, all that raw male power that was supposed to scare or exclude us, was relatable. Teenage girls get rage; they get self-hatred. Teenage girls know what it's like to want to cuss and scream and fuck and thrash around incoherently because you don't have the agency to do any of those things. Don't open your eyes, take it from me, I have found you can find happiness in slavery: What is that but the feminine condition, sung REALLY REALLY LOUD?
Teenage girls understood Trent Reznor. They wanted to be Trent Reznor. Teenage girls also wanted to fuck Trent Reznor, not just because he was fuckable—he was; to this day, looking at a photograph of Trent Reznor in the early '90s feels like looking into the sun—but because it was the quickest shortcut to becoming him." [1]
Is that it, then? Does she love Kira because it's the closest way to being Kira? But, no, that's not it. Not at all. She already is the second Kira. She has nothing to prove. She has nothing to gain. She has nothing to…
She has nothing.
Most nights, she does not even have the luxury of sleep, despite the arguably luxurious room and board the taskforce is providing her. She tosses and turns and wishes Light was in this bed with her, but he insists that she would distract him, or that she’d be a hindrance to the case, or that he’s staying up working and he’d hate to keep her up too, or or or.
Fine, she gets it. He’d rather tear off his skin bit by bit with a rusty nail clipper than be alone in a room with her. But she can’t go a minute without thinking of how nice it would be to be held and safe and warm, to be cradled in his arms and to melt into his embrace, to bury her face in his shoulder and drown in the scent and of him and to tuck all of her into all of him until she falls asleep beside him,so she doesn’t sleep at all.
On those restless nights where she clutches her pillow and pretends it’s a person, she has to leave her bed just to stay sane.
“L,” she begins one empty night, because he is the only one who is still awake when she goes downstairs, “you’re a pretty terrible person, you know that?”
“Sure.” He says flatly, eyes firmly glued to his computer, “but at least I use it to do objectively good things.”
“So does Kira.”
“Kira thinks he is; I actually am.” L states petulantly, thumbing at his lip. It’s dry, chapped, and peeling, his body not nearly as well-maintained as Light’s. He’s almost disgusting to look at. “There's a difference. I understand that sounds ridiculously biased—”
Misa rolls her eyes. “No. It just sounds dumb.”
His sallow, gaunt skin is awash blue light from his too-many monitors, the harsh bright glare nearly sears his retinas off (how is it physically possible that he doesn’t need glasses?), his spine folded in such a way that would make any physical therapist flinch. He mutters idly, “Being called dumb by Misa is a new low.”
“I know you don't mean that.”
“No,” he admits, and finally tears his frog-like, bug-like eyes off the screen to regard her askance. "I don't. But Light does. I don't know how you can bear it.”
“Being with someone who hates me?”
“Yes.” He drawls, timber quiet and cold as ever, “I could never bear that. I can call myself a sore loser, or childish, or obsessive. I don’t mind if others disparage me with any insult— usually valid criticism— any epithet at all, except stupid. The things people do for love… I won't pretend to understand. But I could never suffer someone who underestimates my intelligence. Perhaps that is why I am fond of Light: he does think himself smarter than me, but only by an iota, by an atom. He recognizes my competence, sees me as his rival, as a worthy opponent. A challenge.”
Misa nearly shakes in indignation. “You’re saying he thinks I'm easy?”
“Well, aren't you?”
“Excuse me?” She shrieks.
“You choose to be.” L says simply, placidly. Another infuriating thing about him: he can say the worst things with the plainest face. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re smarter than he is.”
She understands it for the condescending joke it must be— though he doesn’t say it like one, what else could he mean? An indignant defense of Light being better than anyone nearly slips off her tongue, as natural as breathing, but curiosity wins out, if only by a fraction. “Why is that?”
“Because you’re the second Kira.” His tone brooks no room for argument. “And the second Kira, quite frankly, can do something the first Kira can’t.”
He can’t possibly know that Misa can learn a name just by seeing the face. He can’t possibly know about the deal, about how she found Light, about— “And what’s that?”
“If I knew, the investigation wouldn’t still be open, would it?” He sighs, and there is so much frustration, so much melancholy in that sigh that she realizes— admittedly, she knew this already— that she will kill him. She’s always known she’d outlive him, but that didn't mean very much, as having Gelus’s life span added to hers, even when halved after the Shinigami Eye, meant she’d likely outlive everyone anyway.
And she realizes, more strangely, that she isn’t completely enthusiastic about the prospects of his death. L does keep her company when Light won’t, after all. She’ll be awfully lonely without him to distract her. “I’m sorry.”
L’s lips quirk, almost amused, almost a smile. “Should I take that as a confession?”
Threat, warning, promise. These are usually the three options. She creates another. “A compliment.”
“A compliment from Misa is a new high.”
She’s able to sleep, that night.
She dreams of her parents. They are warm and good and soft. She has not felt any of these things since their deaths.
Oh, yes, Light makes her feel plenty hot and fiery and sets her aflame. But he does not make her feel warm.
And she does not know what it is to be good, anymore.
As for soft? Well:
“Coffee?”
“It’s 3 A.M.”
“I am aware of the time, as it is displayed on my computer. Coffee?”
“No, that’s not— it’s— I didn’t mean—”
“I don’t understand.” L says, so innocently, so genuine in believing that coffee is a drink to be had at any and all hours, so baffled at her statement, that Misa snorts.
“Well, sure. If you’re offering.”
So she goes back again, and again and again and again, every night that Light spurns her. Which is, you know. Every night ever.
L pours her a piping hot cup of tea, the steam curling up in lazy loops and ribboning pirouettes, the teaspoon clicking against the delicate ceramic cup with every stir.
“I find it strange,” L begins, and she cuts him off.
“Me too.” Misa clicks her tongue. “You’re using so much sugar that it ruins the actual flavor. Cut it out.”
L blinks, pauses, mind stuttering and recalibrating, before sighing in resignation and pouring a new cup. He picks up a sugar cube.
“No.”
“Not even—”
“Not even one.”
“What I meant is,” L begins again, irritation creeping into his voice like frost at being interrupt before he could even posit his thesis. “I find it strange that the other day, you stated you are aware Light hates you. You know? And don't mind?”
Misa shrugs. She’d accepted it a long time ago. If this is the closest anyone ever’s gotten to Light loving them, she’ll take it. “I’m sure he’ll fall in love with me for real one day.”
“And if he doesn’t.”
“I want Light to be happy.” Misa says firmly. She can never tell if L is intentionally trying to get a rise out of her, or if he just has to sate that ravenous curiosity of his, other people’s feelings be damned. Probably both. “Being with him makes me happy, though it doesn't make him happy. But… I'm sure. I'm sure he will come to love me.” She nods to herself as if to reaffirm it, and sips harshly at the genmaicha tea. She cradles the porcelain cup a little tighter, letting its warmth seep in as the closest thing she has to holding hands with someone.
“The illusory truth effect,” L lectures, in the voice he always uses with Light when he's about to be especially annoying, “is the tendency to believe false information to be correct after repeated exposure. This phenomenon was first identified in a 1977 study at Villanova University and Temple University. When truth is assessed, people rely on whether the information is in line with their understanding or if it feels familiar. The first condition is logical, as people compare new information with what they already know to be true. Repetition makes statements easier to process relative to new, unrepeated statements, leading people to believe that the repeated conclusion is more truthful. The illusory truth effect plays a significant role in fields such as advertising, news media, political propaganda, and religious indoctrination.” [2]
“For now, I'm satisfied just being…” used by “...with him.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I am.”
“All right.”
“What are you trying to say?” Misa snaps, “I know what you’re doing! You want to make me doubt my love for Light, so you can catch Kira— this is all a game to you, and you don’t care who gets hurt as long as you win. If you think you can just use me—” only Light can do that. Only Light gets to utilize her like she’s a tool and not a person. It’s only okay when he does it. And it is okay that he does it.
Isn’t it?
Unruffled as ever, L drones on, “I only meant that you wouldn’t have to keep telling yourself Light would come to love you eventually, if you really believed it; the more you repeat it, the more you start to think it’s true; but you know, deep down, it isn’t.”
“I don’t care. If Light’s happy, I’m happy. Whether he loves me or not, cares about me or not, tolerates me or not—” her voice catches, hitches, fractures till it breaks. “It isn't important! No matter what he does or how he feels about me, I’ll only love him more.”
“I tolerate you.” L says it simply, as if it had cost him nothing at all to say it (though Light always acts as existing in her general vicinity more excruciating than having his teeth pulled). He adds, just easily, as if it means nothing but good manners, “Good night, Misa.”
She can hardly bring herself to move, but when she does, it is with an absent epiphany that Light has never once told her even such a basic nicety.
It’s humiliating, that’s what it is. The lengths she goes for him, the things she does for him. Just humiliating.
But she can’t see herself existing without him.
She’s had crushes, before. On a classmate, a manager, a childhood friend. Scared one off by using the word love too soon, scared the other off by asking for a committed relationship, and plain frightened the other by talking dreamily of Mary Shelley keeping her beloved’s calcified heart after his death.
Okay, so she’s annoying. But she’s pretty and smart and doesn’t that count for something? God forbid a girl craves the excrescences of romance.
So Light… might not love her, but he kisses her, and, well. That's basically the same thing. He might not care about her, but he lets her call him her boyfriend, and throw herself all over him, and come over to this house, and she can’t be greedy. Can't ask for more. Will sleep at the foot of his bed as a mutt so long as she gets to sleep in his bed at all.
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“Misa? If you ever want to turn Light in for being Kira, I can grant you immunity. Trade information for your freedom. Otherwise, if you're arrested, you'd be going the same way as him— death penalty. I will personally see to it that Kira can never again—”
“But L,” she says innocently, smiling wide, “since when do you want to catch Kira?”
He blinks.
She smiles wider. “You don't want to catch Kira any more than Kira wants to kill you: sure, that’s your goal, but what will you have to keep you going after you win? The most exciting, most interesting person in your life will be gone, and then where would you be? I'd say you need Kira just as I need Light.”
L blanches. “I don't need—!”
“Neither do I. But, God, life would be so much more boring without him, wouldn't it? Can you at least concede that?”
“Yes,” L admits, “but— just— think about my offer. You'll both be caught eventually— think about which side of the prison bars you’d like to be on when that happens.”
Misa folds her arms, tight and firm over her chest. “I don't believe you.”
“Beg pardon?”
“You lie a lot. So, I don't believe you.” Misa stands up. “Good night, L. Sleep well. I know I will.”
She doesn’t, actually. She never does, anymore.
Instead, she scours internet forums, makes a little game of finding the personal information of any Kira haters, and murdering them.
Now, Light didn't tell her to do this. He doesn't even know about it. In fact, he has staunchly stated, both as public-facing Kira and as Light Yagami, that those who disagree with, hate, or even outright criticize Kira would be spared, so long as they do not actively attempt to hinder him. That everyone is free to dislike or oppose him as they please, for he is a merciful god, bestowing clemency even upon the nonbelievers, the naysayers, the hypocrites.
So, she kills them. After all, often the priest, the nun, the devotee is more violent and more fanatical than the god they worship.
She kills who he asks her to, and who he doesn't ask her to, and feels nothing. No guilt, no remorse, no shame. No hesitation. Not even fear at being caught like he does, not even the anxiety that seems to boil in his frantic attempts to stay one step ahead.
Misa is… calm, in the face of his fear. She knows her place, she knows her purpose, knows exactly why she’s alive.
She understands precisely what the task force, what Light, what the world, means to her, and she is perfectly content with it.
Everyone, except L.
“Cake? It’s lowfat.”
“What, you got it just for me?” Did he seriously remember that last time he’d offered, she’d said she didn’t want it because it was too many calories?
“No,” L states bluntly, “they ran out of the whole milk.”
“Hmph.”
“Last chance for cake.” He offers up the strawberry shortcake, light and pink and piped with pearly frosting, on a round little platter.
“Why do you keep doing that?”
“What?”
“Offering me your food.” She accepts the fork anyway, for the white flag it is.
“Well, I don't do that just for you. I'm sure you've noticed I do it to everyone, Light included.”
“Yes.” Misa says slowly. “You treat me like everyone else.”
“Is that a problem?”
“No,” she admits, and finds she means it.
The next time they share cake, it’s her who picks it up from the bakery, telling him she actually hates strawberry shortcake, that she can’t stand the tastelessness of frosting.
Their little soirees and seances get a little more comfortable, a little cozier, every time. She doesn’t quite grasp why she does it or what it’ll lead to, but it’s nice, for once, not to know what someone is expecting out of her, what someone is trying to get out of her.
Light only speaks to her when he has something to gain. L… just speaks to her when she’s there.
“Ms. Amane. What would you say Kira's morality is?”
“Huh? I dunno.” Misa shrugs, sipping at Tieguanyin tea (named after the Buddhist deity, the Iron Goddess of Mercy.) “Wouldn't you normally ask Light that kind of question?”
“Yes, but seeing as Light has already answered my question, I am now posing it to you.”
“Huh? If this is some kind of trap to see if my answer contradicts his, you can forget it! My love and loyalty—”
“Are you familiar,” L begins patiently, and Misa’s eyes nearly roll all the way to the back of her head, “with moral particularism, consequentialism, and—”
“Their names explain what they are.” Misa deadpans, and dips a slice of lavender shortbread into her teacup, “even someone who's never touched those musty old philosophy books could tell you that.”
“Enlighten me.”
“Why should I?”
L shrugs. “You don't have to. By all means, you can go back to bed. No one’s forcing our nightly rendezvous on you.”
For a long time, they are quiet. Silent blankets them, warm and patient. Waiting. L’s fingers click-clack on his sleek black keyboard, pixels and data lines running along the screen, illuminating the bags under his eyes with an almost eerie glow, highlighting the purple veins under his skin, the burst blood vessel in his capillaries, the peeling of his pale lips.
He plops down about a dozen sugar cubes in his cup of sweet hibiscus tea, and drizzles honey into Misa’s mug.
Because, yes, apparently Misa has a designated mug now. Whatever. It doesn’t mean anything.
She clears her throat and plays his game, because he just keeps sitting there, unexpectant, leaving himself open, but not insisting. Never demanding a thing of her, only asking. “Consequentialism, as the name makes clear, is the belief that actions are determined by their consequences, not their intentions. Many religions would disagree with this. There’s a story— I don't know if it was Jewish or Buddhist or whatever— about a man who wants to get his name on a big ol’ fancy plaque at the hospital, so he makes up his mind to donate a whole bunch to it, but then he goes to the monk and says that he’d decided not to, as he would only be giving charity for attention, not out of the goodness of his heart. The old man tells him, "the kids at the hospital don’t care why they're getting medication, as long as they are getting it, what does it matter what the motive of the generous donor is? They don’t give one whit about how pure your intentions are.” I know I’ve certainly never cared about the motives of all the sympathy gifts and money and fan letters after my parents’ deaths, I was just happy I didn’t have to worry about working on top of grieving.”
“It sounds like you agree with consequentialism."
Misa pauses. “I believe in anything Light believes in.”
“I'm not asking about Light. Careful, now,” there’s some cruel entertainment tainting his voice, drops of black ink threading through pure water, “you almost voiced an opinion that didn’t revolve around him.”
She glares, fierce and firm. “If you’re just going to mock me—”
“I asked you what you think Kira’s moral—”
“Particularism,” Misa snaps, “the idea that you can't just have a hard and fast rule for everything, like, lying is always wrong, killing is always wrong, stealing is always wrong. It always— ha— depends. You can't just apply a blanket law to everything, because every situation is different."
“That, I would say, seems to be Kira's mentality, no? Killing isn't wrong when he does it, because he’s doing it for a good reason, or so he believes.” L hums, “are you familiar with deontological ethics?”
Misa opens her mouth, ready to talk as she always does— either roll her eyes, or huff, or scoff on about how it’s dumb and useless and she’s not some boring old nerd and that she doesn't give a crap about boring old nonsense.
But he’s not talking down to her. Not dumbing it down for her. Not speaking the way the rest of the task force— Light included, Light especially— does to her, like they’re PhD professors come to lecture an especially dim four-year-old..
He just… talks to her. Plain, boring. Deadpan, monotone, apathetic. Just like he does everyone.
So she sighs, and admits, “no. I don't know.”
“Care to guess?”
“Not really. Are you trying to help me fall asleep? If so, you’re doing an excellent job.”
“Fair enough.” And maybe there is something amused in his voice, but not mocking, “if you’ve heard, a good deed is its own reward, or virtue for virtue's sake, that's what it is.”
“The direct opposite of consequentialism, then.”
“Precisley.” L grins, and it’s not a bad look on him at all. “Good job. Clever, even.”
Misa sighs. “Let me guess— the likelihood of my being Kira has increased by 5%?”
“No.” L deadpans, and then, “five point eight.”
She blinks. He blinks back. And then, inexplicably, they burst out laughing.
She sleeps well, that night.
(It is the first night she does not ask Light if she can sleep with him).