Death Note fanfiction
Apr. 24th, 2009 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tallulahgs[Title] A Real Mother
[Rating] PG-13
[Characters] Ms Mikami, Teru Mikami, brief mention of the SPK, Near, and people at Teru's school
[Warnings] Deliberately disjointed; written in second-person; mention of suicide; brief mention of spousal abuse
[Word Count] 2456
[Author's Note] Manga canon. Written for and crossposted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
dn_contest, prompt "Ms Mikami" (for the second time)
You didn't know that being dead was going to mean being unfixed in time. As if dying just gave you another dimension to move through in addition to the regular three. Or instead of them.
(If you had known, it wouldn't have changed anything.)
But you get little choice in your new world. (That's not so different from being alive.) You get little choice in when you move, or where to. (Don't those two things mean the same, when you're talking about time travel?) You just find yourself in one moment, then in another. Watching people you know. Like yourself.
And Teru.
Both of you are in a car. He is sitting in the back, between two other men, his head slumped, his hair (still too long) hanging down to cover his face. (It seems strange to think of your son as a man. You feel like really, he's still the little boy you left behind when you went out to buy a pint of milk. As if this is all a dream.)
It's grey and the car windows are damp. In the front of the vehicle, a blonde woman is driving, and in the passenger seat is curled up an albino child. You aren't sure where you are, or how you're managing to fit into a vehicle already containing five people, but you've long since given up caring about stupid questions like that. It isn't as if you'll be able to figure it out. Besides, your attention wanders when you're not looking at someone you know. You found that out early on.
So, right now, for you, Teru is the only real person in the car. The voices of the others are dull, faded, like listening to speech through water or static. Teru's faint, gulped-back sobs are clear and sharp and he is so sad. This is something else you found out early on, that you feel their feelings. You echo them.
He's sadder than you ever remember yourself feeling before. You don't know what to do. You're his mother. You're supposed to be putting your arms round him and letting him press his face against your ribs and telling him everything will be okay and pretending you haven't noticed how much he's crying. But you can't. You never did like hugs much and you can't touch him anyway.
You don't last long. You go back to college, watching yourself gulp down soup in the dining hall and flirt with the boy on the other side of the table. You don't remember his name. But that's not important. You wrap yourself up in your younger self's amusement and anticipation, and you try and forget your son. It's not as if he even exists right now.
You wonder how far back you could go, if you could watch your own birth instead of Teru's. You wonder if you could watch your mother at school instead of your son. You're dead, so the thought of this only provokes a mild curiosity, but you wonder anyway.
The boy is stroking your foot with his. The soup tastes like hot water. Autumn sunlight breaks through the window and splinters like broken glass across the table.
You want to stay here.
But Teru pulls you back, clutching at your hand. You can't remember when or who or why, and you try and cling on to a good memory, the two of you in the park or something (only he never tried to run ahead and he never begged for an ice cream. He hated food like that - food from vans. What child doesn't like being bought an ice cream?)
He has dropped the ice cream on the ground and he's looking at you out of the corner of his eye, warily. You know he dropped it deliberately because he was afraid, he was afraid he would give in and eat it and it might be dirty - and you're so angry -
- this is better, you could live with anger and dust in your sandals and rivulets of melted strawberry ice cream inches from both your feet but you know it's not going to happen -
- they're leading him out of the car now. It's cold; the air pinches your face and his. Stepping over puddles. The sun's already setting. You realise, as he stumbles, as water spits over his shiny shoes, that he's been handcuffed; you hadn't spotted that until now. It annoys you, you thought you were more observant than that. Still, the shame and humiliation washing over him (and, by extension, over you) makes a little more sense now. He always hated looking like a member of the criminal underclass. You watched him crying because he'd got drunk for the first time and vomited in the street and people had seen.
No - you're watching him do that now, the streetlights reflecting in the rainy tarmac, you're finding out about it for the first time, the smell of damp and sick and petrol - how can the past and the future have any meaning for you when you keep moving between them?
He's crying -
- he's crying, and one of the men, the older one, is impassive, but the other glances warily at your son out of the corner of his eye. And it's not fair, it's not, Teru is meant to be the good one, the controlled one (that's his thoughts) and what the hell has he done that he's been arrested for it? (That's yours. The you who's dead.) He gets angry about people reading magazines without buying them in the newsagent's, for heaven's sake!
You're flicking through the latest Vogue, just for something to do, because the bus won't be here for another half an hour, and he starts yanking on your hand again, fingers sweaty, Mum, Mum, stop it, you haven't paid for it - and you snatch your hand out of his because you're so tired of having him call you on every little stupid thing -
- you wonder what it would be like if you just walked away and left him -
- you're sorry, and you take his hand again, but you can't hold on because they're making him keep walking and his hands are shaking and he can't feel you anyway. You're so stupid. (You're sorry.) You can't walk away. You wonder if, perhaps, he has killed someone because they were hurting someone else. You're thinking of all the fights he got into at school -
(you went back there (you're back there now) a few times and you screamed and screamed)
(and yet some part of you revelled in it because you were feeling something, you could kid yourself that if you were hurting that much then you must be alive)
(what kind of fucked-up mother are you, anyway?)
You wonder if perhaps he found out that a friend, a co-worker, a girlfriend, was being beaten up by her husband or something, and, and took action - that's normal - that's laudable -
(his father only hit you once. But you haven't seen him. Whenever you go back to your life, he's always out of the room.)
They've brought Teru inside now. They've sat him down at the table. The younger of the men talks to him soothingly, gives him some water. He doesn't drink it. You know he won't, that he hasn't been able to verify that the glass is clean. He stares at them through reddened, swollen eyes. You realise he isn't wearing his glasses, and you wonder if he decided to get contact lenses. How could you not know that? Why weren't you there for all the milestones; contact lenses and graduation and hangovers and first apartments and promotions? This man isn't your son. You don't deserve to call yourself his mother. You weren't there. You have no connection to him at all.
Or perhaps you don't really believe that. Perhaps you are just trying to distract yourself from what the older man, sitting across from Teru, is saying.
Your son has killed a lot more than one person.
You break up for a bit then. You go back to college, to school, to your first job, you watch yourself revising and snacking on fruit gums and rocking on your chair and copying someone else's homework and photocopying and making tea. You cling onto the scenes and the scraps of emotion so hard it feels like it'll tear your ghostly fingernails out. You don't want to be a mother. You don't want to be his mother. Or, if you have to be, you want to be so dead you're nothing. While you were there, you did your best. Didn't you? While you were there, you brought him up properly, so why must you be forced to listen to what happened once you were gone?
You keep being pulled back and every time you hear it again until you know everything.
Now. Teru is sitting in a room. A cell. He's sitting on the bed, with his hands on his knees, staring straight ahead. You are very close, and you can see his eyes darting about. He wants to break up, to splinter, as well. You want to wrap your arms round him and take him with you into all the memories. You want to help and you can't -
You are dying. The paramedic pressing the oxygen mask to your face has crooked teeth and messy hair. You already know him, as if you've been to this scene again and again. His face is comforting. There's the screech of brakes and a pound of music as the car swerves towards you. You didn't see the headlights until you'd already been hit.
(You wonder if everything you've seen since your death is just one long extended life flashing before your eyes, and soon it will all go black for real.)
He's kneeling on the floor, whispering names to himself, but they aren't names you know. His face is thinner, hollow; his hair is tangled. You are angry with him, now (or perhaps you're just sensing his anger at himself. You don't know. How can you be expected to know?) He's ruined his life because he was too arrogant to see that other people have rules, too. (Are you just embarrassed that your prestigious prosecutor child has crashed and burned so spectacularly? Are you just scared the other dead mothers will laugh at you?)
You're at his school. His homeroom teacher is telling you that you have to take some responsibility to stop Teru getting into fights all the time. You can feel that the heel on your right shoe is about to crack, and that sweat is building up under your blouse. You want to grab the man by the shirt and tell them you saw cigarette burns on your son's arms yesterday and that he came home with filthy words written all over his uniform. You don't say all that, but you still sound too loud, too angry, and as you leave your voice shakes.
The anger fades.
Teru is still kneeling. The whispering has stopped. But things don't hurt as much now. It's as if both of you have cried and cried until there aren't any tears left and now you are in that state of almost pleasant, slightly headachy calm. You watch him. He cries out, once, as if he's realised how hopeless things are, and then he's silent.
Light becomes dark becomes light. As if you're moving from memory to memory.
The darkness opens inside him and inside you. And you realise what's going to happen and you want to hate and rage - the only advantage of dying when you did is that you wouldn't have to see him go first and it isn't fair that you're denied even that - but you are dead and all you can feel is his relief. He thinks that soon it will all be over. You want to shake him for being so naive.
All you can do is hold onto him and he takes no notice of you as he kneels on the floor and tears a strip off the sheets.
You run away again because you can't bear for the only sound you can hear to be him choking. A real mother would stay to the end.
You have come home from his school and the two of you are sitting in the kitchen and you try and explain to him that his only hope is to stop his crusade, because no one is going to help him and things can't go on like this. You try and explain, but the words don't come out right.
You wished you'd tried harder. You grab your other self by the shoulders, try and shake some sense into her, but she doesn't listen. She talks and then she goes to make some more tea because she is uneasy about the way her son is looking at her. And they've run out of milk. So she leaves to go and buy some.
A screech of brakes.
She leaves Teru alone and she'll find out what harm walking away can cause.
You can't bear this. You go back to his dying.
It goes on for longer than you expected. You wonder if the paramedic who tried to save you was surprised at how long you lasted. If he'll come back and listen to your dying gasps when he ends up like this.
(Perhaps most people don't end up like this. Perhaps it's just you, doomed to wander. Or perhaps it's only mothers. That would fit, all the lack of choice.)
Each time you think this gasp is the last one, it isn't.
You can't bear this either, but you don't leave.
---
Afterwards. Teru raises his head, and, finally, he sees you watching him.
[Rating] PG-13
[Characters] Ms Mikami, Teru Mikami, brief mention of the SPK, Near, and people at Teru's school
[Warnings] Deliberately disjointed; written in second-person; mention of suicide; brief mention of spousal abuse
[Word Count] 2456
[Author's Note] Manga canon. Written for and crossposted to
dn_contest, prompt "Ms Mikami" (for the second time)You didn't know that being dead was going to mean being unfixed in time. As if dying just gave you another dimension to move through in addition to the regular three. Or instead of them.
(If you had known, it wouldn't have changed anything.)
But you get little choice in your new world. (That's not so different from being alive.) You get little choice in when you move, or where to. (Don't those two things mean the same, when you're talking about time travel?) You just find yourself in one moment, then in another. Watching people you know. Like yourself.
And Teru.
Both of you are in a car. He is sitting in the back, between two other men, his head slumped, his hair (still too long) hanging down to cover his face. (It seems strange to think of your son as a man. You feel like really, he's still the little boy you left behind when you went out to buy a pint of milk. As if this is all a dream.)
It's grey and the car windows are damp. In the front of the vehicle, a blonde woman is driving, and in the passenger seat is curled up an albino child. You aren't sure where you are, or how you're managing to fit into a vehicle already containing five people, but you've long since given up caring about stupid questions like that. It isn't as if you'll be able to figure it out. Besides, your attention wanders when you're not looking at someone you know. You found that out early on.
So, right now, for you, Teru is the only real person in the car. The voices of the others are dull, faded, like listening to speech through water or static. Teru's faint, gulped-back sobs are clear and sharp and he is so sad. This is something else you found out early on, that you feel their feelings. You echo them.
He's sadder than you ever remember yourself feeling before. You don't know what to do. You're his mother. You're supposed to be putting your arms round him and letting him press his face against your ribs and telling him everything will be okay and pretending you haven't noticed how much he's crying. But you can't. You never did like hugs much and you can't touch him anyway.
You don't last long. You go back to college, watching yourself gulp down soup in the dining hall and flirt with the boy on the other side of the table. You don't remember his name. But that's not important. You wrap yourself up in your younger self's amusement and anticipation, and you try and forget your son. It's not as if he even exists right now.
You wonder how far back you could go, if you could watch your own birth instead of Teru's. You wonder if you could watch your mother at school instead of your son. You're dead, so the thought of this only provokes a mild curiosity, but you wonder anyway.
The boy is stroking your foot with his. The soup tastes like hot water. Autumn sunlight breaks through the window and splinters like broken glass across the table.
You want to stay here.
But Teru pulls you back, clutching at your hand. You can't remember when or who or why, and you try and cling on to a good memory, the two of you in the park or something (only he never tried to run ahead and he never begged for an ice cream. He hated food like that - food from vans. What child doesn't like being bought an ice cream?)
He has dropped the ice cream on the ground and he's looking at you out of the corner of his eye, warily. You know he dropped it deliberately because he was afraid, he was afraid he would give in and eat it and it might be dirty - and you're so angry -
- this is better, you could live with anger and dust in your sandals and rivulets of melted strawberry ice cream inches from both your feet but you know it's not going to happen -
- they're leading him out of the car now. It's cold; the air pinches your face and his. Stepping over puddles. The sun's already setting. You realise, as he stumbles, as water spits over his shiny shoes, that he's been handcuffed; you hadn't spotted that until now. It annoys you, you thought you were more observant than that. Still, the shame and humiliation washing over him (and, by extension, over you) makes a little more sense now. He always hated looking like a member of the criminal underclass. You watched him crying because he'd got drunk for the first time and vomited in the street and people had seen.
No - you're watching him do that now, the streetlights reflecting in the rainy tarmac, you're finding out about it for the first time, the smell of damp and sick and petrol - how can the past and the future have any meaning for you when you keep moving between them?
He's crying -
- he's crying, and one of the men, the older one, is impassive, but the other glances warily at your son out of the corner of his eye. And it's not fair, it's not, Teru is meant to be the good one, the controlled one (that's his thoughts) and what the hell has he done that he's been arrested for it? (That's yours. The you who's dead.) He gets angry about people reading magazines without buying them in the newsagent's, for heaven's sake!
You're flicking through the latest Vogue, just for something to do, because the bus won't be here for another half an hour, and he starts yanking on your hand again, fingers sweaty, Mum, Mum, stop it, you haven't paid for it - and you snatch your hand out of his because you're so tired of having him call you on every little stupid thing -
- you wonder what it would be like if you just walked away and left him -
- you're sorry, and you take his hand again, but you can't hold on because they're making him keep walking and his hands are shaking and he can't feel you anyway. You're so stupid. (You're sorry.) You can't walk away. You wonder if, perhaps, he has killed someone because they were hurting someone else. You're thinking of all the fights he got into at school -
(you went back there (you're back there now) a few times and you screamed and screamed)
(and yet some part of you revelled in it because you were feeling something, you could kid yourself that if you were hurting that much then you must be alive)
(what kind of fucked-up mother are you, anyway?)
You wonder if perhaps he found out that a friend, a co-worker, a girlfriend, was being beaten up by her husband or something, and, and took action - that's normal - that's laudable -
(his father only hit you once. But you haven't seen him. Whenever you go back to your life, he's always out of the room.)
They've brought Teru inside now. They've sat him down at the table. The younger of the men talks to him soothingly, gives him some water. He doesn't drink it. You know he won't, that he hasn't been able to verify that the glass is clean. He stares at them through reddened, swollen eyes. You realise he isn't wearing his glasses, and you wonder if he decided to get contact lenses. How could you not know that? Why weren't you there for all the milestones; contact lenses and graduation and hangovers and first apartments and promotions? This man isn't your son. You don't deserve to call yourself his mother. You weren't there. You have no connection to him at all.
Or perhaps you don't really believe that. Perhaps you are just trying to distract yourself from what the older man, sitting across from Teru, is saying.
Your son has killed a lot more than one person.
You break up for a bit then. You go back to college, to school, to your first job, you watch yourself revising and snacking on fruit gums and rocking on your chair and copying someone else's homework and photocopying and making tea. You cling onto the scenes and the scraps of emotion so hard it feels like it'll tear your ghostly fingernails out. You don't want to be a mother. You don't want to be his mother. Or, if you have to be, you want to be so dead you're nothing. While you were there, you did your best. Didn't you? While you were there, you brought him up properly, so why must you be forced to listen to what happened once you were gone?
You keep being pulled back and every time you hear it again until you know everything.
Now. Teru is sitting in a room. A cell. He's sitting on the bed, with his hands on his knees, staring straight ahead. You are very close, and you can see his eyes darting about. He wants to break up, to splinter, as well. You want to wrap your arms round him and take him with you into all the memories. You want to help and you can't -
You are dying. The paramedic pressing the oxygen mask to your face has crooked teeth and messy hair. You already know him, as if you've been to this scene again and again. His face is comforting. There's the screech of brakes and a pound of music as the car swerves towards you. You didn't see the headlights until you'd already been hit.
(You wonder if everything you've seen since your death is just one long extended life flashing before your eyes, and soon it will all go black for real.)
He's kneeling on the floor, whispering names to himself, but they aren't names you know. His face is thinner, hollow; his hair is tangled. You are angry with him, now (or perhaps you're just sensing his anger at himself. You don't know. How can you be expected to know?) He's ruined his life because he was too arrogant to see that other people have rules, too. (Are you just embarrassed that your prestigious prosecutor child has crashed and burned so spectacularly? Are you just scared the other dead mothers will laugh at you?)
You're at his school. His homeroom teacher is telling you that you have to take some responsibility to stop Teru getting into fights all the time. You can feel that the heel on your right shoe is about to crack, and that sweat is building up under your blouse. You want to grab the man by the shirt and tell them you saw cigarette burns on your son's arms yesterday and that he came home with filthy words written all over his uniform. You don't say all that, but you still sound too loud, too angry, and as you leave your voice shakes.
The anger fades.
Teru is still kneeling. The whispering has stopped. But things don't hurt as much now. It's as if both of you have cried and cried until there aren't any tears left and now you are in that state of almost pleasant, slightly headachy calm. You watch him. He cries out, once, as if he's realised how hopeless things are, and then he's silent.
Light becomes dark becomes light. As if you're moving from memory to memory.
The darkness opens inside him and inside you. And you realise what's going to happen and you want to hate and rage - the only advantage of dying when you did is that you wouldn't have to see him go first and it isn't fair that you're denied even that - but you are dead and all you can feel is his relief. He thinks that soon it will all be over. You want to shake him for being so naive.
All you can do is hold onto him and he takes no notice of you as he kneels on the floor and tears a strip off the sheets.
You run away again because you can't bear for the only sound you can hear to be him choking. A real mother would stay to the end.
You have come home from his school and the two of you are sitting in the kitchen and you try and explain to him that his only hope is to stop his crusade, because no one is going to help him and things can't go on like this. You try and explain, but the words don't come out right.
You wished you'd tried harder. You grab your other self by the shoulders, try and shake some sense into her, but she doesn't listen. She talks and then she goes to make some more tea because she is uneasy about the way her son is looking at her. And they've run out of milk. So she leaves to go and buy some.
A screech of brakes.
She leaves Teru alone and she'll find out what harm walking away can cause.
You can't bear this. You go back to his dying.
It goes on for longer than you expected. You wonder if the paramedic who tried to save you was surprised at how long you lasted. If he'll come back and listen to your dying gasps when he ends up like this.
(Perhaps most people don't end up like this. Perhaps it's just you, doomed to wander. Or perhaps it's only mothers. That would fit, all the lack of choice.)
Each time you think this gasp is the last one, it isn't.
You can't bear this either, but you don't leave.
---
Afterwards. Teru raises his head, and, finally, he sees you watching him.
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Date: 2009-04-27 11:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-28 05:59 pm (UTC)I really enjoyed writing the story so I'm glad you liked it. Thanks very much for taking the time to comment!