Yet more ficlets!
After helping my brother dig out his car (we got a crapload of snow), I randomly had an idea for a ficlet. This one is in L's POV...which means it may be completely out-of-character, because seriously. How the hell do you even DO L's POV? *headdesk* But it popped into my head, so...here it is.
Still Waters
(L doesn't want to know what lies beneath the surface of Liert's mind.)
L had been expecting Light's double to the more dangerous one; she still possessed Kira's abilities, after all, and therefore was possibly a similar personality. He hadn't been expecting to fear his own double. Who would be afraid of himself?
But Lady Ray was calm and collected cautious, and the death power was eating away at her body, not her mind. Everything about her spoke of honesty, so when she said they would be safe with her group, L believed her. But his double...
It was strange that Ray was more like Light than L's double was like him; Light's double was a woman, for God's sake. But they were alike. They could have been twins. His double, though...
The moment Liert had woken up and looked at them for the first time, L had decided that he would be careful around this man. He and Light tried to avoid being left alone with Liert, because they didn't know what he might do to them. Liert had openly said that he saw both of them as tools to be used however their captors wished, and had even said that he would have killed L on sight if Lady Ray had ordered him not to.
It wasn't the open death threats that made Liert frightening, though. His similar looks only made the differences stand out even more. Liert was malicious, manipulative, pointlessly cruel. He had no interest in justice, or anything besides keeping himself entertained. Human lives held absolutely no meaning to him, and he didn't care who knew it.
And his eyes. Those strange eyes with a silver stripe around the iris, which was apparently a mark of some sort of...magic. L was still coming to terms with the fact that 'it's magic' had become a reasonable explanation. Magic was something he didn't understand, and the more he saw of it, the more he suspected that only people with magic had any chance of understanding it. Liert certainly wasn't helping, with his disturbing abilities to...read minds? Was that what he was doing? No one had yet been able to clearly explain what exactly a 'Diviner', as they called Liert, did. But he knew things that he should not have been able to know. Half the time he seemed to know what everyone around him was thinking.
L had a tendency to give off that appearance, too, but this was different. L saw through people by noticing details and having the intelligence to understand what they meant. Liert just...knew things. Knew them through some seemingly supernatural means that could not be defended against. And the man had apparently never heard of the right to privacy.
But L almost preferred to see Liert as a cynical sadist who was entertained by war, because that was better than the alternative. Because there were times--times that only someone as observant as L would notice--when Liert changed so abruptly that he almost seemed to be a different person. One moment Liert was perfectly normal (for him), the next he was visious, verbally and psychologically attacking anyone who got too close. Or he might suddenly lapse into a deep, exhausted melancholy, refusing to speak to any of them. He was a loose cannon. He was...unstable. Possibly insane.
Normally might have found all this fascinating, but there was something about knowing that this person was him, or that he was this person, or whatever being 'doubles' really meant, that made it too disturbing to look at closely.
[the end]
The title is from that saying, 'still waters run deep'...because Liert's mind looks pretty calm on the surface, but a closer look reveals some serious disturbances. And L would probably notice those, because a) he's kind of insanely observant, and b) he's basically seeing himself--so he would be familiar with his own mannerisms. Well...Liert doesn't visibly behave much like L, but it's got to be easier to read the emotions of someone who's so much like you than some random person.
And of course, L doesn't really like understanding Liert, because it's like seeing an insane, violent version of yourself...and knowing that in some way, somehow, you are that person, and they are you. Kind of. It'd be pretty creepy, I think.
Liert does have serious mood swings. They actually make sense, or at least, they aren't random, but you'd only be able to tell if you knew him very well, and basically nobody does. Sir Wakar probably understands it, and Ray...at least can deal with it. ^_^;;;
Really, now that I think about it, the alterna-verse would probably be most disturbing for L and Watari, not for Light. Because Light meets a version of himself who's this very capable, honorable, awesome leader, but L and Watari get to watch L's double try to kill Near's double. They also get to see Mello and Matt's doubles after Near's double has tortured Mello's double to the point of a serious mental breakdown. So...yeah, creepy. REALLY creepy. And Light is pretty much oblivious to what this means, because he has no idea who any of those people are. Not that it isn't creepy to watch someone who looks almost just like L die right in front of him (well, not die, but very close), and of course stalk him, threaten him with death, and flirt with Light's double. And make weird jokes about girl-on-girl porn. *laughs* Yeah, Liert is kind of...odd. But he's fun to write.
So yeah, just more random writing. Also, I'm trying to teach myself Python. I understand the basics of it (it's an object-oriented language like Java, so the basic concepts are similar), but I'm still getting used to the syntax and the command words...and I miss the brackets...T_T
Also: I bred a winter egg, w00t! Here it is:
Still Waters
(L doesn't want to know what lies beneath the surface of Liert's mind.)
L had been expecting Light's double to the more dangerous one; she still possessed Kira's abilities, after all, and therefore was possibly a similar personality. He hadn't been expecting to fear his own double. Who would be afraid of himself?
But Lady Ray was calm and collected cautious, and the death power was eating away at her body, not her mind. Everything about her spoke of honesty, so when she said they would be safe with her group, L believed her. But his double...
It was strange that Ray was more like Light than L's double was like him; Light's double was a woman, for God's sake. But they were alike. They could have been twins. His double, though...
The moment Liert had woken up and looked at them for the first time, L had decided that he would be careful around this man. He and Light tried to avoid being left alone with Liert, because they didn't know what he might do to them. Liert had openly said that he saw both of them as tools to be used however their captors wished, and had even said that he would have killed L on sight if Lady Ray had ordered him not to.
It wasn't the open death threats that made Liert frightening, though. His similar looks only made the differences stand out even more. Liert was malicious, manipulative, pointlessly cruel. He had no interest in justice, or anything besides keeping himself entertained. Human lives held absolutely no meaning to him, and he didn't care who knew it.
And his eyes. Those strange eyes with a silver stripe around the iris, which was apparently a mark of some sort of...magic. L was still coming to terms with the fact that 'it's magic' had become a reasonable explanation. Magic was something he didn't understand, and the more he saw of it, the more he suspected that only people with magic had any chance of understanding it. Liert certainly wasn't helping, with his disturbing abilities to...read minds? Was that what he was doing? No one had yet been able to clearly explain what exactly a 'Diviner', as they called Liert, did. But he knew things that he should not have been able to know. Half the time he seemed to know what everyone around him was thinking.
L had a tendency to give off that appearance, too, but this was different. L saw through people by noticing details and having the intelligence to understand what they meant. Liert just...knew things. Knew them through some seemingly supernatural means that could not be defended against. And the man had apparently never heard of the right to privacy.
But L almost preferred to see Liert as a cynical sadist who was entertained by war, because that was better than the alternative. Because there were times--times that only someone as observant as L would notice--when Liert changed so abruptly that he almost seemed to be a different person. One moment Liert was perfectly normal (for him), the next he was visious, verbally and psychologically attacking anyone who got too close. Or he might suddenly lapse into a deep, exhausted melancholy, refusing to speak to any of them. He was a loose cannon. He was...unstable. Possibly insane.
Normally might have found all this fascinating, but there was something about knowing that this person was him, or that he was this person, or whatever being 'doubles' really meant, that made it too disturbing to look at closely.
[the end]
The title is from that saying, 'still waters run deep'...because Liert's mind looks pretty calm on the surface, but a closer look reveals some serious disturbances. And L would probably notice those, because a) he's kind of insanely observant, and b) he's basically seeing himself--so he would be familiar with his own mannerisms. Well...Liert doesn't visibly behave much like L, but it's got to be easier to read the emotions of someone who's so much like you than some random person.
And of course, L doesn't really like understanding Liert, because it's like seeing an insane, violent version of yourself...and knowing that in some way, somehow, you are that person, and they are you. Kind of. It'd be pretty creepy, I think.
Liert does have serious mood swings. They actually make sense, or at least, they aren't random, but you'd only be able to tell if you knew him very well, and basically nobody does. Sir Wakar probably understands it, and Ray...at least can deal with it. ^_^;;;
Really, now that I think about it, the alterna-verse would probably be most disturbing for L and Watari, not for Light. Because Light meets a version of himself who's this very capable, honorable, awesome leader, but L and Watari get to watch L's double try to kill Near's double. They also get to see Mello and Matt's doubles after Near's double has tortured Mello's double to the point of a serious mental breakdown. So...yeah, creepy. REALLY creepy. And Light is pretty much oblivious to what this means, because he has no idea who any of those people are. Not that it isn't creepy to watch someone who looks almost just like L die right in front of him (well, not die, but very close), and of course stalk him, threaten him with death, and flirt with Light's double. And make weird jokes about girl-on-girl porn. *laughs* Yeah, Liert is kind of...odd. But he's fun to write.
So yeah, just more random writing. Also, I'm trying to teach myself Python. I understand the basics of it (it's an object-oriented language like Java, so the basic concepts are similar), but I'm still getting used to the syntax and the command words...and I miss the brackets...T_T
Also: I bred a winter egg, w00t! Here it is: