Nothing In This World Is Strange:
(Soul Eater Fiction)
…
He heals quickly.
…
They all manage to stumble inside Gallows mansion under their own power, which is a miracle considering the current time and the unexpectedly complicated nature of the mission they only just staggered away from. Liz and Patty are stiff and cold and a hundred other things, but there is not a scratch of either of them. (They still feel drained, unpleasantly worn, their bodies have conducted too much of their mister's energy.)
As tired and frayed as every nerve in their bodies seems to be, they are mentally present enough to realize that their mister did sustain a few injuries. But he brushes off their glances of concern with stern silence and the cold set of his jaw. He is walking and glaring at unsymmetrical things and that is enough of an indicator of sanity and general "okay-ness" for the twin weapons.
Liz is in the mindset for some tea, because that is what they do late at night when they cannot sleep. Or early in the morning before the sun rises and they have just come back from a mission. (Because it will be a cold day in reaper-hell when Kid's father assigns them a mission that doesn't mess with their sleep cycles. )
She knows they will all sleep just fine after this particular mission, but somehow the wind-down seemed like a good idea. She figures, due to his suddenly noticed absence, that their mister is elsewhere. Probably showering the many coats of dust and slick grime off of himself.
The eldest weapon glances about, Patty is perched on a stool, waiting for the water to boil in the tea kettle. Out of reflex and little else Liz looks her sister over, checking for signs that Patti was hurt in the battle. There is nothing visible. Though, Liz notes with an internal sigh, they could both use a bath or a hot shower to loosen up before bed.
Provided Kid does not take all of the hot water.
The kettle squeals bloody murder after a few moments of blank white thought, and before Liz can reach it Patty is there -shutting off the stovetop and putting the kettle on a cool burner. They shuffle about in a sort of battered-post-battle-unison, getting cups and honey and the other things for nighttime tea. In a few minutes the three scalding cups are assembled onto a platter with a few muffins and a few scones.
It is wordlessly decided, another moment of post-battle-unison, that they are going to have this tea with Kid. Which requires the locating of Kid and the transport of tea , and themselves, to his location.
So down the hall and up the stairwell and down another hall and past the symmetrical suits of armor and a set of really strange paintings that look like trees (almost) and they knock on their mister's bedroom door.
Liz picks up on the signs a bit too slowly, the closed door and the lack of instant reply to her knocking… but eventually she understands a few things in quick order. Their mister did not want to be disturbed, she was going to ignore that unspoken request (which is well within her right as his weapon, and his housemate) but she would not subject Kid to Patty. (Because that would be unfair and cruel on some level.)
She pulls the tray from Patty and mutters something about it being late and Patty needing sleep. The youngest pistol isn't stupid, but she doesn't ask questions and she doesn't look back as she pulls her cup off of the tray and shuffles back toward her room. Patty is simply glad that somebody is checking up on their mister, she has no preference as to whom is doing the checking.
Liz knocks again and Kid still doesn't answer. So the eldest sibling coaches a blank expression onto her face and jimmies open the door with her elbow before backing inside the room. Experience tells her that the grim reaper and his only son are completely capable of surprising her (a demon pistol from Brooklyn) which places them in the top 0.04 percentile of the worlds population. The sight of Shinigami-sama gliding out of a mirror and into Gallows mansion's living room would always seem odd to her.
She turns. The young reaper isn't in the room, but he was in the bathroom and he had left the door ajar.
"Kid?" She calls out abnormally loud, not wanting to catch him off guard.
"I am currently in the bathroom, what do you need?"
She pauses a beat, tempted to just lay the tray down and leave the room. Instead she mutters something about having brought him tea. Before her traitor mouth could be silenced by her loyal, yet obviously sleep deprived brain… she finds herself walking to the bathroom door and entering the moment Kid's voice grants her permission to do so.
Damn it all.
She has a mug in each hand, because somehow she found time to put the tray down without even knowing she did so. Her eyes are adjusting to the shift in light and the vision obscuring steam that has formed crawling tendrils out the door of the bathroom. (She notes that she isn't going to take a shower tonight, because between Kid and Patti all of the hot water is gone.)
Liz's then spots the deep pink and red gash curving along her mister's forearm as he reaches for his mug of tea. She doesn't hand it over, instead she places both mugs beside the sink. He thinks nothing of the gash, she can tell. (He makes no move to hide it from her and he doesn't rub at it as if it was sore.) She spots it suddenly, he is moving slower and avoiding her eyes. His gestures and presence feel stiff.
His back is to her and he is buttoning up another of the endless supply of white shirts he owns. This one appears to be made of thinner material, it breaths better and Liz can only assume that this high collar loose cotton weave thing is what he will wear to bed. She is about to turn back and get his mug, seeing only the scratch on his forearm and no other cause for worry or higher levels of specific panic…
But she notices him hesitate slightly as he reaches the buttons over his ribs.
Either his arms or his ribs are badly injured because he shudders before she steps forward and lays a hand on each shoulder (lightly, to avoid harming him.) She exhales and he follows suit, telling her that she can leave his tea centered between the two sinks. His tone is polite dismissal and complete avoidance.
She understands that to him this isn't even that bad, or that perhaps it is slightly bad but not uncommon and therefore not significant. Still, she moves quickly, locating two rolls of gauze and some astringent type liquid from underneath the sinks.
He switches over to a numb autopilot. She feels the difference the moment she touches him. It is odd, the amounts of impassive and blank stoicism that coat him as she orders him to undo the buttons of his shirt. It's already got blooming misshapen patches of red on it, and he nods at a black bin as she takes the shirt from his hands.
She patches him up slowly, the deep gash on his forearm has brothers. One that winds from his bicep and carves a shallow curve around the muscle over his shoulder, another on his other arm that rakes the inside of his elbow before lightening up as it reaches the outside of his lower arm. Those are rinsed out twice each before she applies light wrapping to them. He murmurs that they are defensive wounds. She recalls a few blows from a razor sharp tail that should have been deflected by his weapons… but he had shifted and taken the blows on his skin.
The cut gracing his shoulder goes halfway to bone.
There are more, with each new gash or bloodied marring gouge or deep purple black bruise beaten into his body he would whisper an explanation as she did her best to make him new again. She found new old wounds, things she never recalled him getting in their prior fights and he rattles off dates and explanations with a muted sigh.
It doesn't take her long to understand that while his body heals quickly (he murmurs "last week, the twin kishin" as she trails her eyes over a nearly-healed bruise that shadows his shoulder blades and stretches into the middle of his back.)… he carries the memory much longer.
She is tempted to ask why, because she has seen flickers of his skill set and agility. Her mister is not graceless, he is not weak. All of the blows that landed on his alabaster skin could have been avoided. She could have blocked them. (It was her right to shield him from harm.)
He has been watching her eyes the entire time and he has noticed the shift in her emotions, from obligation, to grim curiosity to this fresh lead-coated guilt.
After a few moments he blinks the dryness from his eyes and sees that she is not in front of him anymore, her hands are no longer manipulating his limbs. She isn't patching up his cuts, she is looking at him. Waiting. With a lurching suddenness he feels tired and heavy and out of touch. A drastic shift from the comfortable numb observance he was wrapped in just a few minutes ago.
How long has she been leaning against the sink sipping her tea and looking at him with enough force to make lesser mortals wince in fear? He runs both hands through his hair and she holds out a clean shirt. She watches him take it lightly from her grip and he can feel a muddled brewery of emotion seeping out of her soul. She still has that lead coated guilt, but now its mixed with more complex things, like possessiveness and fear, anger and the faint smattering of shame.
He keeps trying to narrow down the tenor of her soul's emotions as he turns his back to her and buttons the shirt stiffly. He is negotiating the ones by his collar bone when he senses her soul focus on something specific.
Her voice reaches him not a moment later and disrupts his analysis of her wavelength.
"Why?"
His answer is nearly automatic, partially because he can tell precisely how she is asking the question and partially because he has reasonably and logically thought about this subject for a significant amount of time. He knows this, explaining it to her is easy.
"Because you are human."
He knows she catches the emphasis on the words, the way he made 'human' sound like 'irreplaceable' without implying that they are fragile. She nods at him once before reminding him to drink his tea unless he wants it cold. Then she shows herself out of his space, the last of the steam vanishing with her.
They both understand it at different levels. Theirs is a role reversal for the ages. They have become a trinity, a set of redrawn lines and unspoken devotion. They are each other's everything, despite the convoluted nature of it, or perhaps because of it.
He hears her pad down the hall as he takes a sip of drinkable and blessedly warm tea.
…
Author's note:
Before I posted this I had to do a fair bit of editing, as I have found that I get "wordy" with a story the moment I get comfortable with it… but up until then it is this stiff mess of a plot and dialogue. Still, if you spot any glaring spelling errors let me know. As for comma misuse, I claim artistic license.
This will be a multi-chaptered work.
Lastly, I Do Not Own Soul Eater.