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lighwt · 4 months

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never-ending up and down

It's the eve of the meeting at Yellow Box Warehouse, and Misa is getting bored. (mostly one-sided mogimane. 2.9k words, no major content warnings. crossposted on ao3.)

“Mocchi, I’m bored.”

It isn’t enough for Misa to announce that with her words alone. No, Amane Misa jumps to her feet and tosses her hand of cards into the air, then buries her dainty little fingers in the stack on the table and shoves them cascading onto the floor. Her former hand falls around her like snow as she turns back to Mogi and points a well-manicured nail at him.

“I don’t wanna play Go Fish anymore.”

Mogi blinks at the mess of cards, thinking back to last hour’s tossed chessboard. Misa had been losing then, too.

Then again, Go Fish is boring.

“We can stop,” Mogi offers, setting his own hand down on the table in a neat pile and beginning to pick up Misa’s mess. “What would you rather do?”

Misa sighs, loud and vocalized. She crosses her arms and walks away from the couch to the wooden dresser, then around the perimeter of the nicely-decorated hotel room with soldier-like steps until she reaches the window. In a single, sweeping movement, she pulls the pink velvet curtains open and presses her pale face against the glass.

“I want to leave,” she whines again. “Maybe if I yell loud enough, someone will come and break us out of here…”

Mogi’s blood runs cold. He stands up, blurting, “Hey, you don’t need to—”

“I’m not actually gonna do that,” Misa scoffs, pulling back from the window some. Her reflection rolls its eyes at him. “Duh, Light told us to stay here. I’m a good girl, Mocchi.”

Mogi relaxes. Eloquently, he replies, “Oh. Right.”

For a moment, they watch each other, and Misa’s expression is blank and unamused. Suddenly, she blinks and turns to face him, grinning.

“I’ve got it! Let’s just pretend this is a sleepover,” she exclaims, clapping her hands together. “Did you ever do sleepovers when you were in school, Mocchi?”

He has to think about that one. “Yes.”

“What did boys do at sleepovers?”

“I don’t know. Watch movies.” He frowns. “My friend swallowed a hundred yen coin on a dare once and had to go to the hospital.”

Misa grimaces. “Yeah, let’s not do that. I guess it would be hard to pretend this was a sleepover, anyway, since you’re a guy.”

Mogi isn’t sure how to respond to that, so he just says, “You could pretend I was a girl.”

Misa stares at him with her big brown eyes, then breaks out into giggles. “A girl? Come on, Mocchi! I’m not a method actor, you know.”

He has no idea what those things have to do with each other, but it had been a stupid response anyways, and he realizes that now that she’s laughing at him. Color rushes to his cheeks.

“Don’t be like that,” Misa teases. Her giggles die away, but the smile remains as she walks back to the couch, folding her arms over its stiff back and leaning to look at Mogi. “We might not be able to pretend this is a sleepover, but I have an idea.”

“What?” Mogi asks, thinking apprehensively back to every other idea Misa has had in the past four-odd years.

Flashing a peace sign, Misa exclaims, “Let’s play two truths and a lie!”

“Oh.” Mogi blinks. “Sure.”

“Yay!” Misa pumps her fist and walks back around the couch to reclaim her seat. “You know how to play, right?”

He finishes collecting the cards and sets them down in a stack on the table, then sits back down. “I do. Who’s starting?”

Misa taps a finger against her chin. “I’ll go! Let’s see… Here: my natural hair color is black—not dark brown, really black—and… my first manager was arrested for drug possession, and I haven’t eaten broccoli since I was five years old.”

When Mogi first met Misa, he had been arresting her.

The problem hadn’t started yet.

He had never been the type to keep up with idols or models or any of that, so he had never even heard of Misa-Misa before L identified her as a Kira suspect, back when he barely even knew Yagami Light. He had seen her around, and sure, he thought she was cute, but it was an objective assessment more than anything. Amane Misa was a model, after all. The possibility that she was a serial killer had been of considerably more interest. She hadn’t put up a fight, and that had been that.

“The last one is the lie,” he decides. “You’ve eaten broccoli more recently than that, right?”

“Wrong!” Misa crows, pumping her fist. “I tricked you! My first manager wasn’t arrested for drug possession—that was my second manager. My first manager died in a car crash.”

Mogi stares at her, dismayed.

She waves her hand dismissively. “It’s fine, it’s fine! He was a creep anyways. It’s your turn now.”

He shakes his head. “Um, okay. Uh… My family is Buddhist, I was in my high school’s Art Club, and I dated Matsuda’s sister for a year back when I first joined the NPA.”

Mogi never actually saw Misa’s confinement. After her arrest, L had him running errands and crunching numbers and overseeing the old office, so he never even set foot in whatever facility L was using. It wasn’t until after the higher-ups cut off their funding during the Yotsuba case that Matsuda told him about it—bound, blindfolded, unmoving, alone, nearly starving. Pigtails left in until her hair began to fall out. Horrific. The idea that he had contributed to that disturbed him, whether she was guilty or not, but it was too late by then, and Misa seemed so bubbly that he could almost forget about it entirely.

The problem hadn’t started then, either. He had focused on his work.

Misa gasps. “Matsu’s sister?! No way that’s true… Oh, but I want it to be! Aw… I’ll say the Art Club one is the lie. You’re a chef, not an artist! Please tell me you dated Matsu’s sister.”

“No, I was in the Art Club. I don’t think Matsuda has a sister.”

“Dang!” Misa huffs, crossing her arms. “I knew it was too good to be true.”

Mogi just shrugs. Apparently, that answer doesn’t satisfy Misa, who leans forward with a smug little smile on her face. “When was the last time you dated someone, anyway?”

“Not for a few years,” he says after a pause. “Because of the investigation.”

“That’s a bad excuse! Light has had plenty of time for me, you know,” she points out, shoving an accusing finger in Mogi’s direction. She seems to think it over for a moment, then taps her chin dejectedly. “Well, not so much recently, but that’s not his fault. We’re going to get married when this is over, you know. You could be getting married, too, if you’d started dating someone when Light and I did!”

“It’s your turn,” Mogi replies uncomfortably.

Misa sticks her tongue out at him. “Fine. I punched Matsu once, I have an Armorer Works M712 modelgun, and I won a surfing competition when I was 15.”

Mogi had never really spoken to Misa until he was assigned to act as her manager. He hated every moment of it; filling overenthusiastic Matsuda’s shoes isn’t exactly easy when you’re used to doing research and heavy lifting. The one decent part, at least, was that Misa was nice. She told him he was doing a good job, which was more than L did. L had just handed him the role and sent him on his way.

But the problem hadn’t started yet.

Huh. “You… you didn’t punch Matsuda. He would’ve told us.”

“Nope! I punched him during a movie shoot a few years ago because he tried to convince me to film a love scene,” she crows. “I made him swear not to tell anyone. It was easy, though—I think he was embarrassed to get punched by a girl. The real lie is the surfing competition one.”

“Why do you have a modelgun…?”

“One of the Yotsuba guys sent it to me after I interviewed with them,” Misa answers, wrinkling her nose. “I dunno why. It was really expensive, so maybe he was trying to show off. I don’t even remember his name now… I mean, he’s dead anyway. I think it was the bald one.”

Mogi can’t remember the bald one’s name, either, just Higuchi’s and Namikawa’s. For some reason, the thought of Misa receiving an expensive modelgun in the mail from a horny businessman is making him upset, so he decides to move on.

“I can sew, I can juggle, and I can pop my thumb out of place on command.”

After L died, the Task Force moved their headquarters into Light and Misa’s apartment. It had seemed a bit intrusive, but Mogi would’ve let them use his house if they had asked him to, so he couldn’t blame Light for offering. It had worked out well—except that Misa insisted on showing up in lingerie on odd nights, summoning a preoccupied Light to bed with her. At least, Light always seemed preoccupied. Mogi wonders now if he was really just disinterested.

Of course Misa was attractive. Of course Mogi blushed when she walked into the room. But, then, so did everyone except the Yagamis.

Still, the problem hadn’t started yet.

Misa frowns. “Okay, I need to get serious. Hm… The last one is a lie. I bet you can sew and juggle.”

“You’re right.”

“Yes!” She pumps her fist (again) in celebration. “My turn. I’d never been in a long-term relationship before Light, I dated a girl once, and I lost my virginity in high school.”

He had been fine with going back to headquarters and keeping an eye on Light in Aizawa’s place. He really had been. Misa had asked for him instead, though, ostensibly because of Aizawa’s haircut, and so he stayed, for days and days that turned into weeks and weeks, even as they returned to Japan.

She didn’t do anything suspicious for even a second. Instead, Mogi was swept away in a constant barrage of shopping and cooking and listening to Misa complain about Light’s old ex-girlfriends who she’d never met, and it almost felt like he had been turned from an investigator to a babysitter. Or a bodyguard. Sometimes he almost liked it, when he wasn’t busy worrying about the Kira situation. It was easy to like it, with Misa around.

Then one night, Misa had said something like, “Even though Light loves me and trusts me, he may think I’m having an affair because I’ve been with you for five whole days under the same roof,” and Mogi had just said yes, but he hadn’t really thought about it until he was on his own. Then he thought about it.

Oh no, he thought.

That’s when the problem started.

The fact that she’s engaged is bad; the fact that her fiancé is probably Kira is worse; the fact that she is/was also probably Kira is worse still. It never would’ve worked out.

Mogi feels like he’s been shot. He blinks hard for several seconds, hands stuck blandly on his lap. “You—isn’t that kind of… personal?”

Misa immediately breaks out into a fit of laughter, covering her mouth with one hand and pointing at Mogi with the other one. “Come on, Mocchi! How much time have we spent together lately? None of that stuff has mattered for a long time, anyway.”

“I don’t think I should say,” he begs. “Your sex life is none of my business…”

“Are you embarrassed?” Misa asks, laughing. “Well, you have to guess anyway, otherwise I win.”

“You can win.”

She pouts. “Come on, Mocchi! Aren’t you having fun? I am.”

Mogi sighs, and he suddenly realizes that he’s been hunching his shoulders to get closer to her height. He doesn’t move.

“The… the last one was the lie,” he finally says, defeated. He doesn’t really want to imagine that, which is mostly why he chooses it.

Misa immediately laughs, covering her mouth with one hand and pointing at Mogi with the other. “Wrong! You must think Misa is really pure. Well, things happen. Just don’t tell Light or he’ll get jealous. Not that it matters to me anymore—none of the boys I dated in high school hold a candle to my Light.”

Mogi wishes he was at home right now.

“Anyway, the one about dating a girl was a lie,” she continues. “I’m not a lesbian. Ew.”

Mogi doesn’t feel quite right about that but decides not to comment on it. Misa doesn’t need to know about his experience with the Tokyo gay scene. No one from his professional life does, for that matter.

“Do you want me to go again?” he asks instead.

Misa sighs. “You could at least pretend you’re enjoying this, Mocchi. Smile a little bit!”

Mogi lifts the edges of his mouth up into an empty smile, and Misa shakes her head, amused.

“I know you can do better than that,” she says. “Let’s do one more round! It’s not like you’re going to beat me, anyway.”

Mogi stares off into the dark world outside their hotel window, grasping at the little memories and skills that thread together in the fabric of his mind. Despite it all, he just isn’t very interesting. You’d think he’d have more stories to tell after this many years working on the Kira case and even more working with the NPA, but what does he do outside work? He exercises, he cooks, he sleeps. Sometimes it feels like there’s barely time for that anymore.

After racking his brain for as long as he can without eliciting prodding from Misa, Mogi finally says, “I wanted to work in television when I was a kid, last time I dated a woman I found out she was already married, and my first job was as a busboy.”

Ever since Takada entered the picture, Misa has been different. Spiteful, bitter, cruel. How much she really knows about Takada’s relationship with Light, Mogi can’t tell, but he can tell that she drinks and mocks and curses and raises her voice more often than she used to. And then she went out for dinner with Takada one night and left the building wasted and indecipherable, and Mogi let her lean her skinny little body against his as he led her to the car.

The Misa of a few months ago would never have told Mogi to take guesses about her sex life; that topic was surely off topic, aside from the odd insinuation about her and Light. Ever since that night, though, Misa has told Mogi a lot of things that he never would’ve thought to ask—not sexual stuff, really, just odd personal details and petty grievances with her peers and obscure details about random things. He wonders if she ever feels lonely.

He can’t help but pity Misa—thin, pale Misa with her fine hair, somehow undestroyed from years of bleaching, and her dainty fingers, unbruised despite all the death and tragedy they’ve caused. If Light is really Kira—and Mogi is almost certain by now that he is—then there’s no way he really loves her. As long as Mogi has known Misa, Light has been the sun around which she revolves, but what good does the sun have for the Earth? If he wins—and Mogi tries not to think about that, but if he wins —he’ll surely throw her away in the end. If he loses, he’ll be gone. What will she do without him, after having already lost so much? Mogi can’t bring himself to answer that.

But as much as he pities Misa, Mogi also can’t forget the thousands of people who have died because of her and her fiance. Ukita Hirokazu, Yagami Soichiro.

He can imagine her doing it. That’s the thing: He can’t even tell himself that poor, beautiful Misa would never hurt another person. There’s not a doubt in his mind that she would; there’s not a doubt in his mind that she has. He can’t imagine she feels bad for it, either, or ever has. She would probably kill him, too, if it came down to it.

Is it wrong to forgive an unrepentant murderer just because of her smile, her voice, her eyes, her hair, her hands, her complete isolation from everything left for her in the tragedy she’s made? It is. He knows it is.

Amane gasps. “Okay, I know the one about television is a lie. No way!”

Mogi, dazed, barely has time to confirm her guess before she exclaims, “Really?! You dated a married woman. You?!”

“Not for long,” Mogi insists, embarrassed. “Just for a few days. I broke up with her once I found out.”

“Oh, Mocchi, that’s so scandalous,” Amane laughs. “But it’s kind of romantic, isn’t it? She must’ve really liked you.”

He stares. “Romantic? You mean—cheating?”

“Well, I would never cheat,” she scoffs. After that, though, she smiles, leaning back and resting her cheek in her hand. “She must’ve been a lesser woman, though, and I can see why she’d choose you. You might’ve been my type, if I wasn’t so in love with Light. You’re a really sweet guy, you’re a great cook, and you’ve got a nice body. I’m sure you’ll find someone after the Kira investigation ends!”

“You think so?” Mogi asks, mostly to himself.

“Sure I do,” Amane says, and maybe he’s imagining the sadness in her voice.

“Near,” Commander Rester says, “I don’t think we’re going to learn anything useful from this.”

Near tosses a dart into his circle of Lego figures, sending the Misa toppling to the floor.

“No,” he sighs, “of course we’re not.”

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