Death the Kid had never seen his father cry.
He didn't think anyone had. The Grim Reaper, weep? It was a laughable thought. He was a God, he was Shinigami, Death, Other, that grand model of perfection that the younger strived to match. Death did not cry. Death did not whine. Death took everything- pain, suffering, hardship, sorrow and anger- with constant good nature and cheer. He did not doubt. He did not hesitate.
He did not mourn.
Asura's soul had been a bit of an afterthought, really, considering the shape everyone had been in after the battle. In between fretting over Maka's broken ribs and Black*Star's concussion and his own negligible injuries (really, they had come out of it better than the adults, than Spirit with his own shattered ribs and Death himself- Kid didn't like to think of how badly his father had been injured), no one had even asked about the kishin soul. There was so much damage and so much hurt; the people had to recollect themselves. The hurts had to be managed.
But a week after the battle, a still-healing Death had summoned his son to the barely-repaired Death Room, and Kid knew why. He didn't even have to ask – so as soon as he entered to see the god (so frail-looking, thinner, more like a shadow than ever), he pulled the suspect object from his coat jacket.
Asura's soul rested in his pale hands, a bloody crimson morass of fear and fury and misery, not at rest even in death.
Kid expected a kind word, perhaps, or even a snap of bitterness – Death had so bitterly seemed to hate the kishin, after all – but instead trembling hands came up and took the burning soul from him. "... I wasn't strong enough after all," Death whispered, and his son's head jerked up in shock at the misery in his voice.
"Father...?"
But Death was not listening; his hands – human hands, a human body, the mask tipping back and the cloak falling away – brought the soul up for haggard copper eyes to examine. Aged by experience and misery, perhaps, the Lines of Sanzu thinned in his tousled hair and his cheeks hollow, the elder shinigami looked as though he'd aged twenty years in just a week. And it hurt to see him like this, so frail and hurt – it scared Kid, because now his father looked human. "Father, it's over." Kid put a hand on his arm, trying to reassure him. "You can dispose of him now."
A bitter laugh escaped the Reaper. He pressed a gentle, hesitant kiss to the crown of the kishin soul, the same way he used to kiss the top of Kid's head when he was little. "No. He'll rest here, with the others..." His gaze swept over the rows upon rows of crosses, the graves of those fleeting lives that had touched that giant soul. Those copper eyes faded to light gold, red-rimmed and glistening with... no. It wasn't possible. "I knew I would lose him, eventually. I knew this was going to happen," he choked out. "I just didn't think..."
Something shimmering slid down that pallid cheek as his voice cracked. "I didn't think it would hurt so much."
And as Kid watched in horror, Death cradled the embers of Asura's soul to his chest and quietly, bitterly, began to weep.