The Devil's in the Details

four short stories about one old house, for 42_souls

Part One: Just Checking

(palindromes and butterflies)

Technically, it was still his house, but in name and deed only. Either way, however, the Grim Reaper certainly felt entitled to drop in every now and then, if only just to see how the kids were doing. Even if it wasn't his home anymore, he was still welcome there. (Most of the time.) And of course, because it was his nature to be observant, he couldn't help but notice the many ways that the house itself seemed to change with every visit.

The invasion had started slowly. One time, a lone bottle of bright pink nail polish left sitting near the edge of a sleek black coffee table. A library book – evidence of somebody actually doing homework, for once – left open and resting beside a lamp. Handprints on the banisters, as if people had actually touched them. Pillows on a couch re-arranged, and then mismatched. More and more shoes fighting for space in the cubby near the front entryway, a clutter of high-heeled boots and strappy pumps winning the war against neatly stacked rows of subdued Italian leather. A yellow umbrella printed with cartoon elephants, defiantly sticking out of an umbrella stand that otherwise contained only monochrome black and white ones.

Then the dishes in the kitchen started disappearing.

"What happened to the old teacups?" the Reaper asked, as his son offered him tea in new and unfamiliar dishware.

"Oh. Those." Kid's tone of voice was more dismissive than apologetic. "Mmm. Patti broke one. So then there were only seven left. Seven's a bad number. So we had to get rid of all of the rest of them. They were good for target practice. Did you know that Liz can hit a teacup from over eighty yards away?"

"I thought that you were the one controlling their aim."

"Not always, actually."

"Hmmmm." The Reaper found this very curious. And fascinating. There was still much about his son's chosen partners that he did not understand. There was much about demon-guns period that nobody seemed to really understand, not even Dr. Stein, who had shown up with a scalpel in his hand and a hungry look in his eyes the moment that the rumors about Kid finally choosing his partners had started circulating. The Reaper had sent Stein away with a chop to the head and a stern reprimand. He privately wondered if that would always be enough, though.

The Reaper also wondered how well his son was adjusting to life in the same house with two wild, chaotic young women. He worried, of course. He couldn't help it. He was a father.

And the house kept changing.

Stacks of fashion magazines on the endtables. Black and white candles being replaced by red and pink and green, the type that came with fruity or evergreen scents. Sometimes the furniture in a room wholly re-arranged, or carpet or wallpaper completely replaced. Music that wasn't fifty years old piling up beside the phonogram. Spaces that had been wide, cold, and sterile slowly began to grow cluttered, close, and warm.

Every time the Reaper dropped in for a visit, something else had changed.

"We're remodeling the east wing bathroom again," Kid had said once, "Just because." Letting Patricia rest her head on his shoulder and laugh as she watched the Reaper's enormous hands fumble with a tiny teacup. Or: "I replaced the chandelier in the lower ballroom because it was ugly. I hope you weren't too attached to it." Kid said this as Elizabeth sighed and rolled her eyes, retorting, "You didn't think that it was ugly until two weeks ago."

"Yes. But. That was because I'd never bothered to count all of the crystals before." Kid glared at his father. "Did you know that there was an uneven number on both sides of each rung?"

"Kid, why were you counting the crystals on the chandelier?" The Reaper had asked this, even though he had known that it was a futile question. It was still his duty as a father to ask, after all.

"Because," Kid said, suddenly and quite obviously uncomfortable. "Because I had to. I had to make sure." And he had left it at that.

The more things changed, the Reaper thought, the more they stayed the same.

The kids got older. And then they weren't exactly kids anymore.

"Sorry about the mess," Kid said, pausing to shoot a deadly glare at a small, neat stack of storage boxes that hardly counted as a mess by any standard. "Liz is remodeling one of the guest rooms again. You know. Because she does that."

"Can I see?" the Reaper asked, his curiosity piqued.

"No you cannot see," Liz said, striding into the room impatiently, clutching a book of wallpaper samples to her chest. "It's still a work in progress. Genius which must not be seen or judged until it is complete!"

"Understood." Kid flopped down onto a couch, grinning at her. He was clearly no longer the sole master of this house, and strangely enough to the Reaper's eyes, he actually seemed somewhat more relaxed because of it. Kid then turned to his father and whispered loudly, "This is one of her art things. She just has to get it out of her system."

"Like you when you started re-organizing the kitchen drawers at three in the morning last night?" Liz snapped back at him. "Just getting something out of your system?"

Kid's face darkened. "Liz," he hissed.

"Did you really do that?" the Reaper asked.

"I had to," Kid mumbled, miserably, refusing to meet his father's eyes. "Some of the spoons were misplaced."

The Reaper loomed over his son. "You can leave the spoons. I really don't mind."

"Well, I mind."

"Kid, this is still my house--"

"No, it isn't."

Of course that was the truth. But Kid still managed to point out the truth in the snottiest, most insufferable way possible. It was a trait of Kid's which, fortunately, the Reaper still found utterly adorable.

Eventually, the Reaper started dropping by less and less frequently. For one thing, his son was growing up. For another thing, the Reaper sensed that Kid and the girls had reached the point where they were starting to want actual privacy, especially privacy from nosy parental figures. Or nosy gods. But the biggest reason that the Reaper stopped checking in so often was that he was worrying less.

The more chaotic the house got – the more clutter, the more disorganization, the more signs that it was actually being lived in – the less that the Reaper worried.

The house was a mirror that reflected the hearts of its masters. When Kid had taken charge of it, still young and alone, it hadn't taken long for the house to be transformed into a nearly completely blank slate. All of the Reaper's own quirk and clutter, swiftly cleaned out and eliminated, replaced by regimented organization, minimalist efficiency, and a deeply unsettling monochrome symmetry. A mirror reflecting an empty heart. The boy had had nothing to show for himself, other than the drive to cleanse and compartmentalize. Balance, he had said, repeating the words that his father had taught him, but not understanding any of them. The house is balanced now, he'd said, proudly showing off his even candles, his precisely aligned picture frames, his clean empty spaces to his father.

And the Reaper had worried, because nothing in that house had been balanced at all. Balance meant having both order and chaos. Kid abhorred chaos and disorder, which meant that he didn't truly understand balance. Or at least, he hadn't understood at the time. He'd merely parroted his father's words and had gone about sometimes doing as he was told, sometimes not. Beating himself up over every failure, large or small, real or imagined. Unable to accept even the slightest imperfection, whether in himself, in the house, or in the world around him. Driving himself relentlessly through an utterly unbalanced life.

That was no way to run a life. Certainly no way to run a household. And definitely no way to run a world.

But the girls had changed all of that. Slowly, of course. Kid was nothing if not stubborn, a creature of habit – or rather, a creature of habits so deeply ingrained that they became obsessions. And he fought and fought and fought, a thousand tiny wars over shelf space and furniture arrangement, over kitchen organization or wall decorations, over the shoes in the front hall and the umbrellas and the nail polish bottles and the candles. These battle lines were drawn and decided behind the scenes, of course. Never in front of the Reaper's eyes. But he could always see the results.

The magazines kept piling up on the end tables, eventually joined by children's books of animal pictures, and trashy-looking romance novels with half-naked cowboys on the covers. And then mixed in among these began to appear the well-thumbed and well-loved palindrome collections, and the field guides to wild butterflies. Clutter that most definitely did not belong to the girls. But still clutter.

Not all of the mens' shoes in the shoe cubby were matching shades of black anymore.

More dishes were broken, and then not replaced. Sometimes the sets were just left incomplete. Because seven matching bowls could be enough. Or five cups. Or ten spoons. The rule of eight slowly loosened its previously iron grasp on the kitchen drawers and cupboards.

The Reaper worried less and less. And subsequently visited less and less.

Not that there was no longer any cause to worry, just reason to worry less. But there were still worrisome things. One time Patricia greeted him by touching his arm and saying, "Not today. Today's a bad time."

"Why?"

"Because last night was a bad night." Her round, cheerful face pinched and drawn with a very adult-like weariness. "He was matching. The shoes. Over and over again."

"I don't think he's ever done that before."

"Yeah. It's… a new one."

Sometimes they got new ones. Sometimes the old ones went away without being replaced by new ones, at least not for a while. There were always some times that were better than others. These things tended to go in cycles. One day the Reaper would discover that all of the more colorful, unevenly burned candles in the house had suddenly been replaced with rigidly measured and evenly-shaved sticks of black and white. Then, months later, the insidiously colorful candles would be back, slowly encroaching until they took over. The cacophony of colors and scents would remain untouched until Kid needed to get something out of his system. Again.

But that was all right, because that was balance.

Not like it had been before, when the boy had been alone. Now things were different. Now he had real balance.

"Don't touch that," Kid said, swatting his father's enormous hand away from the newest framed decoration hanging on one of their walls. "I just managed to finally get it level."

This one was a photograph, not a painting. Seven smiling faces, snow, trees, and the gaudiest golden monstrosity that the Reaper had ever seen in the background. "Is that from Kyoto?" he asked.

"Yes. That's the Golden Pavilion."

"You all look like tourists," the Reaper said, amused at the photograph. "Was it really that fun?"

"Absolutely not. One of our worst missions ever, quite frankly. Even worse than that wasp-monster guy in Bogotá."

"This was worse?"

"Tentacles. I hate Japan."

"But you kept this photograph."

"Well, this part was fun. I liked the temple. It was more-or-less symmetrical." Then he was giving the Reaper a careful look. "Have you ever heard of Hayashi Yoken?"

"Nope. Nuh-uh."

"He's the monk who burned down the Golden Pavilion in 1950. Because he loved the building so much, and was so obsessed with its beauty, that… Well, he burned it down. I suppose." He frowned. "Maka read a book about it. She was telling me about it, but… I don't know. I really don't understand the thought process that would lead to something like that. I mean, the obsession part, sure, I understand that," he said, without even a hint of chagrin or embarrassment in his voice. "But why would anybody want to destroy something that they loved?"

"Humans have strange hearts," the Reaper said. He looked down at his son. "Kid. I'm happy to hear you say that you don't understand the thought process behind something like that. You don't have to. It's probably best that you don't."

Kid scratched at his ear. First the right one, then the left one. "I mean, the whole Louvre thing. You know that was an accident, right?" Asking for validation for the umpteenth million time.

"I know. Everybody knows," the Reaper said.

"No. Not everybody 'knows.' I still hear rumors sometimes…" Scratching at his ears and tapping his toes against the ground, now. Tic-ing. "It's not fair. Maka can destroy all of the gates at Fushimi Inari with one badly-timed Demon Hunter, and everybody knows that it's an accident. Black Star can demolish half of Machu Picchu and everybody still says that it's an accident. Then Liz and Patti and I cause one tiny little explosion at the Louvre – and not even near any of the important stuff, mind you, just beneath that hideous glass pyramid thing – and then everybody assumes that I burnt down the museum on purpose. Because of people like Hayashi Yoken. It's like, every time I set something on fire, people think it's because I'm some sort of psychopath!"

The Reaper risked patting his son on the shoulder. "There, there," he said. "You're not a psychopath. You just have lousy aim. Besides," he added cheerfully, "that's why we know so many great lawyers!"

Kid turned and glared at his father.

The Reaper silently decided to wait a good long time before his next attempt to visit his very, very difficult son. Being a father was hard. Being a god was so much easier. A god didn't have to worry about what to say to a son who both resented the whispered rumors that swirled about him and at the same time deeply feared that they may be at least partly true. That was a father's job. But the Reaper had never been much good at being a father. He was good at worrying about his son, but not very good at figuring out what to do about those worries.

Kid had a funny way of making his father always feel unbalanced.

Kid's toes finally stopped their nervous tapping, which meant that his brain had already dropped the subject and moved on. "So, anyway," he said. "Liz and I were talking. We're going to remodel the kitchen."

"Why?"

"Eh. After Japan, I think we both have something that we need to get out of our systems. I'm not going to let her get away with marble countertops, though. That woman is insane."

And so they went, changing and reshaping the house to their whims, often to the tune of a rhyme and reason that the Reaper couldn't possibly fathom. Humans had strange hearts. And so did his son, who was not human. In combination, the three of them somehow managed to become the strangest of all of the many strange things that the Reaper had seen in his long, long life.

But at least they were balanced.

And so he didn't have to worry about them so much, not anymore.