AN: Rewrote the ending after the utterly lovely review SolitaireAikanaro left me (thank you:D), and it ended up taking a completely different turn. Please enjoy, and as always, concrit is much appreciated.
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She'd spent the Sunday afternoon walking through town aimlessly, marveling at shiny things in shop windows but resisting the urge to buy anything that caught her eye. A couple of times she'd been stopped on the street to sign some autographs, and she'd done so, with a smile on her face and a heart at the end of each signature. Days off are wonderful, she'd thought, taking a window seat at some random café that hadn't looked half-bad and ordering a cherry icee to battle the blazing heat of summer.
She pulled her head from the allure of the window and its glimpse into the regular, normal lives of strangers to settle her gaze on the empty seat in front of her.
She sighed. Amazingly, she hadn't thought of him all day.
What are you doing now, Light?
She answered her own question. Working on the case, of course. What else would he ever be doing?
She sighed again, sipping her drink in an annoyed manner. Her relaxed expression and contented smile were gone, replaced by a bothered furrow of her brow and a gloom in her eyes.
Light.
She said his name again and again in her head.
Why do you never have time for your Misa?
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She'd gone up to him this morning as he was getting ready for a long day of false leads and endless mounds of paper.
"Light!" she'd exclaimed, glomping him affectionately and kissing his cheek, ridiculously happy, "Misa's manager says Misa gets a day off today, the first time in an entire month! Do you think maybe Light and Misa could spend the day together? Just this once? Misa promises never to bother Light about it again!"
He'd inclined his head toward her, taking in her bubbly countenance and gothic lolita style with his usual expressionless night sky eyes.
"Misa, you know the case is important…"
Yes, she knew.
"… and we might just pick up a real lead today…"
Yes, she knew that, too.
"… because you never know when these things can strike…"
No, you never do.
"… so do you mind if we could go some other day?"
She had felt her smile falter. She'd known it was coming, but all the same, there was always that hope… that fleeting, brilliant hope…
"No," she had said softly, still smiling, "Misa doesn't mind."
She must have made him feel some sort of guilt because he'd bent down to kiss her lightly while fixing his tie.
"Another day, I promise."
And she'd nodded, wished him a good day at work, and watched the door close behind him.
---
She felt something odd on her cheeks.
Oh dear…
Seizing a napkin, she dabbled at her tears carefully and quickly, both not to ruin her makeup and not to let other people see. It would be terribly unbecoming of a model to cry in public.
She paid for her icee and left a ludicrously large tip, hurrying out of the café's double doors with her head down. One step outside and she was bombarded with the sights and sounds of her world – people laughing and carrying conversations between them, pop songs blasting from shop entrances, buildings illuminated by blinding lights and flashing advertisements. Her own face was smiling coquettishly from a billboard, tempting the populace with a pomegranate smile and Photoshopped eyes, but Misa didn't recognize the girl. She stared at her shadow, her constant company since the day she was born, making her way down the darkening streets. Sometimes, she wondered if her shadow led a better life than she did, wondered where it went when it disappeared and she couldn't find it, but often she didn't have time to entertain her thoughts with such pointless speculation.
After all, she was an important pawn in powerful peoples' businesses – those of marketing campaigns and flamboyant entertainment and bringing justice to those the concept hadn't yet touched. Without her, that perfume wouldn't have sold so fabulously, and that movie wouldn't have been such a huge hit, and justice wouldn't have been delivered so perfectly. She was the catalyst, the means – integral to the operation. A necessity. Her manager knew it, the director knew it, and Light…
She sighed and stopped walking, staring at her polished shoes in the center of the street. Sometimes, she didn't want to live in a world where the streetlamps always turned on at night, or face the glares of the spotlight, or see some touched-up, radiant imitation of herself hanging from the roof of a lit-up skyscraper.
Sometimes, she just wanted to live in the shadows.
Against the backdrop of the buildings, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a tiny speck of silver glisten. A star, she thought, and she wished what she had always wished for.
I wish Light would love me.
After all, there was nothing she wanted more than that.
Except…
But she shook her head, turned on her heel, and left the unfinished thought on the pavement, head held high and back to her shadow as she made her way back home.
She didn't have time to waste on impossible wishes.