Where Are They Now? (5 Year Edition)

[dead_black_eyes]

This meme was done before in this game, right here, and that is where I am stealing it from. But instead of giving characters the option to return home in this hypothetical scenario, the war is still going on five years from the current date in-game, and BREW still needs everyone.

The question is, what has happened in those five years? The children have become adults, the adults are just a little older without being old, and goodness knows a lot can change in that amount of time. Maybe you're thriving, in your business or your partnership. Maybe not. Either way, with no end in sight, life goes on in the city named after Death.


INSTRUCTIONS

-Post with your characters(s)
-Write a short blurb about what has happened in five years. Love, heartbreak, sickness, wealth, what was in the cards for your Weapon or Meister, and what has it shaped them into? Set a scene for the present.
-Tag others in the scene they kindly set.
-Profit$$$$$$$$

Comments

Re: L Lawliet

[takeapotatochip]

Light made his way down a seemingly-endless hallway lined with countless doors, flanked by both a nurse and a security guard. It was a place he had assured himself he had no business in, and no desire to visit over the last span of months.

Unlike L, he was not the sort who felt the need to poke the hornet's nest after he had succeeded in knocking it from its branch. It had taken a great effort on his part to convince the right sort of people that, for his own safety, L needed to be taken into the custody of an assisted living facility, and once it had been finalized and the last paperwork had been signed, he had been eager to close the book on it and move on.

Though, it hadn't allowed itself to remain closed. Even in his isolation, the rumor mill had been able to reach him, and it whispered implications of L's decline being much more drastic and quicker than expected...a point that the nurse was currently explaining to him as they walked.

"We see a great number of cases come through here and, sometimes, it's just hard to tell. We can't expect everyone to operate at their full capacity every day, or we'd have a much clearer picture."

"Yeah, I can see that." Light muttered, readjusting his hold on the flat white box he carried and giving a wide berth to a patient standing near the wall, seeming fascinated with the paint job.

"All I can tell you is not to hold it against him if he doesn't speak to you....and also not to hold it against him if he does."

The three of them came to a stop in front of one door in particular as the guard fumbled his keys off of his belt to unlock it as the nurse rapped sharply.

"Ryuzaki...? You have a visitor today." she said gently, cracking the door open and motioning Light inside.

He shouldn't have cared...in many ways, he didn't care. But he had convinced himself that after all they had been through, L at least deserved a proper send-off.

[dead_black_eyes]

It was practically a grim guarantee that L's feelings were very different from Light's, on any matter or dilemma that presented itself. Being committed had started out that way; Light had been largely responsible for what appeared to be the correct decision, the compassionate and safe choice given the circumstances. It didn't matter that others had protected and helped him for as long as they could, and would have continued to even as it became more frustrating and difficult to deal with someone who was detaching rapidly from what everyone else called reality. It had been a beautifully subtle manipulation on Light's part; by that point, L largely considered Light an extension of himself. Part of it was the fact that their resonance was lethally good, sharp and brilliant and so complete that it took away a part of the Weapon every time they resonated. And time had ground on; L had long ago forgotten how to even turn into his Weapon form, sometimes forgetting that he was a Weapon entirely and being confused when he couldn't wield others. It had led to some close shaves on missions, but breaks from missions hadn't helped, because then broken mathematics presented as solutions had jeopardized vital matters on the home front. L had subsequently resigned from his job at the Watch, and from there, without purpose or focus, it was nothing but a discouraging downward slide. The detective who never forgot a face was suddenly forgetting many, slipping into dissociative fugues and responding fearfully or violently towards people who had his very best interests at heart.

Light had confirmed the believers' assertion that L was insane, he had swayed the soft-hearted doubters, and he had even convinced L himself to sign many of the required papers. It was no easy task, but even at the end of his life outside of the infuriatingly-named Sunny Graves, L had reluctantly agreed that, based on the evidence, it was the only logical course of action.

It had been easier to think that, then. Now, after six months in the center, L knew that the food was terrible and rarely ate it. He knew that things never changed in his wing, because those patients were fragile and couldn't cope with it. He knew that stability largely meant boredom, and that even when he got visitors, he couldn't help but be disappointed when they entered and were not Light.

Not that he had any real reason to expect Light. In over six months, he hadn't been to visit L once. Maybe he had never existed, L thought bitterly. Maybe that was the real reason he was here, because he kept talking about someone who wasn't real, and endangering himself based on his fictional account.

So, when the door opened, L did what he always did when people came to see him in one of his darker moods. He fixed his gaze straight ahead, unblinking and empty. The staff were used to it and had learned to consider it normal... maybe his "visitor" would learn quickly enough to intuit the most time-efficient method. The sooner he gave up, the sooner he would leave.

[takeapotatochip]

Light lingered near the door, even as it shut quietly behind him, studying L for a long moment from across the room. It was hard to say that the detective looked worse for wear as...well....he'd always been worse for wear. It was more accurate to say that something was missing. That sharp, merciless edge of cleverness that had haunted his awkward features and made him dangerous was gone now, dulled into apathy.

It was hard to look at him. And tempting to simply reach for the door handle and show himself out.

Instead, he made himself cross the room, stopping what he deemed a polite (safe) distance from the window.

"Ryuzaki." he said, waiting to see what sort of reaction he'd receive, if any, before deciding what his next move would be.

[dead_black_eyes]

L's visitor didn't immediately approach him or announce himself, which was, in itself, a warning sign. The doctors and nurses, knowing his edgy temperament, always said who they were when they came in, and so did the visitors he typically had. They did in different ways, of course... and L had a better memory for voices than faces, these days, so it didn't particularly matter...

But no one was silent for so long. Silence was uncomfortable for most people, and there was an innate desire to fill it. And L, especially, was so unnerving to endure a silence with, and only one person seemed to believe that he was the exception and act accordingly.

They had been chained together for months, they could practically take the thoughts out of each other's heads. When they'd resonated, it was like they were one person, and when they'd shared a bed, the sex had been incredible, even if it had left both of them battered and scarred and their acquaintances furious and baffled.

It just wasn't what suspects and detectives did, and it definitely wasn't what they continued to do after both of them were 100% certain of Kira's identity.

So when Light addressed him by his fake name, the empty, common little moniker that he'd continued to use in Death City partly because he missed hearing Light say it so much, he blinked, suddenly aware, turning his gaze slowly toward the door.

He wasn't a zombie, anymore. Under the ice was a swift river and a vicious current. It stood to reason that the obsession that had put L in this hospital in the first place hadn't improved much since he'd been left alone with it, and when the subject of that obsession actually appeared, for the first time in six months...

The surge of emotion that accompanied the realization that Light was actually here was too much for L to handle in his state. Maybe it was more than he'd have been able to handle in any state, but the result was what amounted to a quick and abrupt shut-down.

Just like that, his fledgling good day became the very worst kind of bad day. Because it didn't manifest in obvious peril, flinging the flimsy plastic lawn furniture he'd been downgraded to after plywood had proven too dangerous or even attacking Light with his hands. He'd done both to previous visitors, but this bad day was a quieter one, with a subtler edge that contradicted Light's erroneous dismissal of L's remaining ability to be clever and dangerous.

He was medicated heavily, but using the same techniques he used to hide his eating habits from the staff, he didn't always swallow his drugs, and he didn't always throw them away after his spectators were satisfied.

"Good of you to show up," he said, tone glazed with black ice. "I wondered when you would. I've been getting progressively worse, after all, and I didn't think I'd be able to sustain the appearance of a drastic decline without being moved to a different ward."

A different ward invariably meant a worse one, with higher security and fewer privileges. And the few privileges L had, visitors being the most notable one, were constantly threatened by his violent fugues and fits, so he was walking a thin line by trying to manipulate Light into visiting him from afar.

Getting worse was hard when one was already in pretty rough shape.