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Misa had always been easy to love. There was something in her rose window eyes that held your attention, something in the flush of her skin that suggested you’d never really understand what it meant to be her. Yes, she was beautiful, but it was more than that: she was armed with a sacred purpose, with a devotion that colored her every movement.
“I would die for you,” she whispered once, during one of the brief moments that Light wasn’t typing or flipping through print-outs. Ryuzaki was sitting beside him, he was always beside him now, but Misa pretended he wasn’t there. If she kept her eyes on Light, which she usually did, it really wasn’t so hard to imagine he was just an especially annoying potted plant.
Light froze. “What? Misa, we barely know each other.”
“But I really would!” She took his hand and he pulled it away gently, like he didn’t know what he was doing. “Can you understand that?”
“No," he said. "I can’t."
“That’s alright, I’d do it anyway.”
Light's expression fell somewhere between pity and alarm. Misa smiled and wondered if he’d let her hold his hand now, but then Ryuzaki spoke and the moment was ruined. The words didn’t matter, their effect was always the same. Light’s eyes sparked with something beautiful and attentive, and their trio was reduced to a pair as soon as he opened his mouth to reply. The attention would have taken Misa's breath away if it was meant for her.
They were arguing about something Misa wasn’t a part of and she was there but she wasn't. She stared at her shoes while Ryuzaki bit into a cookie. Light muttered something about an oral fixation and she tried not to think about how pathetic it was, being the third wheel on her own date. It made her wish that she was chained to them, too, that she could make them listen.
She didn’t try to cut into their conversation the way she would have weeks ago. She knew it wouldn’t really matter. Instead she closed her eyes and focused on the sounds of their voices until their words melted away and lost all meaning. She imagined sound waves flooding the room, each rarefaction crossing her vision in a graceful arc. She liked the idea of seeing the invisible, of grasping something they couldn’t reach.
Her hands fell into her lap, and against the lace of her skirt, they looked like a child’s.
“Misa?” Light said, and the trance was broken. Her eyelids fluttered open.
“Yes?”
He glanced at Ryuzaki before looking back at her again. “This has been a really fun date, but we have to get back to work now.”
“Oh, okay.”
He hugged her, the chain rattling where it crossed over the coffee table, and it was so tender, so polite.
“I’ll see you soon, right?”
“Right,” she said. “I’ll be counting down the seconds!”
He smiled, and it was moments like these that made it hard to believe that he was real, that he was flesh and blood like her.
In a way, he was nicer when he remembered.
He was Kira, no, they were Kira, and Misa mattered again. He was artful, always careful to punctuate his disinterest with just enough affection to keep her in line. She should have seen through it, really, she should have, but she wanted to believe it so badly that sometimes she couldn’t help herself. Of course they’d be together in any universe. Of course he’d still keep her around if she didn’t have the knife in her hand, if they weren’t chained together by what they had done.
He came home late and whispered the sweetest, cruelest things to her. She was just so special, god, he loved her so much, he loved her eyes, and they were building a new world together, wasn’t that so special, so nice? She was perfect, so much prettier than that Takada slut, he loved her so much it made him sick. Did he mention her eyes? She drank it all in, savoring each word, and the shinigami cackled in the background, lurking like a shadow in the corner of their bedroom. It was another hotel suite, frilly and expensive, and they slept in two twin beds pushed together, like co-stars in a fifties sitcom. The thought made her laugh. They made a perfect sitcom couple, clean sheets and bloody hands.
She thought it would be different when L was gone, but he never really left, did he? L followed them from hotel to hotel like a dog. He sat perched in the corner while the lovebird clattered in its cage, while Misa practiced her lines and cooked meals that nobody ate. She was never alone and it made her feel crazy sometimes. Ink-dark eyes watched her write down name after name, and when her hand cramped she wondered if it was his fault. L was such a sore loser.
“Do you ever miss him?” Misa asked. It was late and the glow of his laptop was keeping her up again. She felt like she hadn't slept in months.
“Hm?” Light didn't look up from his spreadsheet. “Who?”
“Ryuzaki.”
“You mean L. Ryuzaki doesn't exist. And he wanted to kill us, Misa.”
"I didn't ask if you regret it, I asked if you miss him."
"That's a ridiculous question."
She went quiet. The lovebird jumped in its cage and a metallic clang echoed in the darkness. Misa forgot to feed it sometimes. She smoothed the covers over her chest and exhaled. “It feels like he’s still here sometimes, though, doesn’t it?”
“You’re imagining things,” he said, and the sound of keystrokes stopped.
“But you really don’t miss him?”
"No.” The keystrokes resumed. “Do you?”
Sometimes he glanced to the side like he expected someone else to be there. Sometimes he lied to her and thought she was too stupid to notice.
“Not really,” she said, and they didn’t speak about it again.
They rarely spoke at all, lately. He was always away, doing things he assured her she wouldn’t understand, and she kept busy in his absence. It wasn’t hard. She had auditions to prepare for, singles to record (which she actually sang on, despite what that magazine put out about hiring a ghost singer for her last album), and really, she was having the time of her life. She even had a fan club now. They put her photos in their lockers, each picture carefully cut from a magazine and adorned with stickers. Their love was unconditional, and they wrote her letters like they knew her.
These things used to seem really important to Misa.
When Light was home, she watched him carefully, as if he might flicker and disappear the moment she looked away. She stared at his neck, at the way it moved when he spoke, and thought of marble, granite. Something unchangeable. Once he had let her kiss him there, and some animal instinct had told her to bite down, to make him hers forever. He pushed her away the moment her touch lingered too long, and she felt grateful because she didn't know how else to feel. Without him she'd have nothing. He smelled like a stranger and she forgave him. He raised his voice but it was alright, she shouldn't have annoyed him in the first place.
Something was gaining on them, getting closer by the second, but as long as they were together it would all be fine. Misa remembered those months when nothing made sense, back when she had forgotten herself. Cameras had blinked at her from every angle then, and maybe they were still there, maybe someone was still watching. She walked by mirrors quickly, afraid of finding another face in the glass, and the shinigami laughed and laughed. Maybe Light was right, maybe she was losing it.
Once, on a still night when she was sure dark eyes were watching her, the pen hovered over the page and she wondered. Maybe she could save them both. She turned to Light and he was fast asleep, looking peaceful and unlike himself. His chest rose and fell and she remembered what she was capable of. All she needed was a face, after all, and she knew his better than she knew her own.
She could catch him in the middle of a dream and kiss him goodnight. His heart would stop and he could stay like this forever. Nobody would ever know.
She thought of what would follow. A funeral, of course, with coworkers and relatives and childhood friends she didn’t know, because really, she didn’t know anything about his life before they met. Then work. More movies and commercials and singles and meet-and-greets, probably, after the appropriate mourning period had passed. They would write articles about how sad she was and publish photos of her, sorrow-stricken and testing the limits of her setting spray. The years would stretch on and she would be aimless and ordinary, just like everyone else.
Maybe she wouldn't think about him at all.
She put the pen down, her hands shaking, and tried to fall asleep.
Something was on its way and Misa felt it as though it were her own pulse. A new world was on the horizon, but in the meantime, she and Light were happy together. He came home and told her she was being ridiculous when she insisted that someone else was in the room. She needed to grow up, that was all, she needed to stop playing around. It was the middle of the night and there was something sickly sweet on his breath that Misa remembered but couldn't name. He got undressed and Misa stared at her hands against the bedspread, hazy in the half-darkness. They looked different somehow, like they belonged to someone else.
Light sat on the edge of the bed and a shadow shifted in the corner of the room. Misa thought of paper and ink, of the pen on the bedside table.
Misa was so happy. When you love someone that much, everything is happiness.