Summary: When you're Death, you tend to out-live an awful lot of people. Hopefully, at least some of these people will have the foresight to do something while living that will bug the heck out of you from beyond the grave. Kid tries his best to sit around in the graveyard and mourn despite some counter-measures that his weapons put into place. Patty and Liz, they knew/know Kid well. XD
Pairings: None.
Warnings: This is set well after everyone that isn't immortal would have died. So, uh, yeah. Character deaths pre-story.
Author Comments: This was inspired by my need to post something so that I can beta. :D -is dead serious- I love to beta read, and don'tsomuch love to write. XD Anyway, here it is: a little drabble!fic. exploring one of the differences between humans and shinigami: life-span. On that note, this is the first fic that I've uploaded anywhere ever and it scares me to do so...greatly. XD; Enjoy!
Dedication: For Pu. 'Cause she likes Kid and I've been offline/accidentally ignoring her of late. .___.;; Love for Pu!
Random Apology: I hope that the formatting and tense-switches don't make this too difficult to read. X___x;;; It was the only way that I could think of to convey that blurry/sharp, eye-darting, scattered-type of mind-spin. I also can't sort how to indent things... can you even indent things?! __; Guah...
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Asymmetry and Stones
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A young man sat, hands tracing the immaculately inscribed lines on the stone. The cut of each was made at exactly seventy-seven degree angles with an intersecting point one millimetre to the left of where the centre should be. It was asymmetrical and awful and had been done very much on purpose. They had designed it that way. Of course, he hadn't been privy to this fact until the day before the funeral, but it was clear that they'd planned it long in advance. They had also demanded that each marker be made of marble. The veins were prominent, he noted, and not balanced in any way. In fact, the entire area was unbalanced. Asymmetrical. Intolerable.
He leaned helplessly forward making a noise half-way between a laugh and a sigh as he reached the end of the stone's first mark: one stroke down, one to the side. Vertical, horizontal. The lines of the text were patterned, almost: vertical, horizontal, vertical, horizontal--diagonal, horizontal... what was that 'diagonal' doing there anyway?! Couldn't it just give up and become vertical like the rest? Who decided that it would be okay to write 'z's like that? They were--
The wasn't good for him. He knew that. The stones were well designed, at least, and though not quite effective enough to drive him away, they certainly did serve to distract. It was the sort of mischievous display of concern that they had shown while living. Nonetheless, that knowledge alon--
There was absolutely no need to set monuments at that angle an in those positions. They really should align with every other monument in the entire grid-shaped cemetery. It was--
Couldn't the surfaces of the stones at least be levelled off correctly? Why was there a bird perched atop one monument and not the other? Was that really necessary? Mightn't it have been put placed somewhere inbetwee--
The creature took flight, cawing in alarm at the sudden show of attention as skull-infused shadows made chase, snapping skyward in a reflexive attempt to vanquish some expected foe.
But there wasn't one. Just a bird.
The sky was silent save for the last echoes of the crow's retreat.
Flap, flap, flap--
--life would go on, wouldn't it? There wasn't a sign of it in this place, but without life, there could be no Death. And since he was here, then Life must be out there.
He smiled, not really caring and rolled onto his back, exactly half-way between the two stones. He'd measured it enough times to know the place by heart; they would have laughed at that. There'd been a theory that he'd become less obsessive over the years, but really, things hadn't changed. From his new vantage point the young man could see the slightest blush of dawn rising across the horizon. He chuckled, the low rumbling reminding him of the frequent outbursts of one of his friends. She liked to laugh. Her sister preferred to sigh.
"Say, Patty, Liz, what do you think that we should have for breakfast?" Kid closed his eyes and waited, knowing that not even the wind would breathe in reply. The dead didn't talk. Death was silent state. But since he was Death, and dead was a state of Death, didn't that mean that they were sort of with him? Part of what a shinigami encompassed, at the very least? He stood then, breakfast decided as a genuine smile dusted his features for the first time that night:
The dish would be pancakes. Lopsided ones.
Not even Kid knew if he could handle that.
P.s., 'Monuments' are also called 'gravestones.' I just hate the term 'gravestone' as it's kind of... morose? XD; We're remembering someone, not marking something 'grave!' -laughs-
P.p.s. Yes, he's talking to the stones. ^__^;