The main part of this story has been bugging me for a while, so I had to write it. But the whole scene with the vacation was randomly inspired by the week I recently spent on my (well, technically my parents') boat out on Higgins Lake, which is without a doubt the most gorgeous lake I've ever been to. I was laying out on the boat eating Subway and for some odd reason I thought of Kid. And by the way, this is not a romance. I see Liz as more of an older sister/mother figure to Kid, and that's how I try to portray her. There are parts that almost start to sound like a romance in here, specifically in the first chapter, but that's not what I'm implying. This story is mostly centered around Liz and Kid, because Liz is the older and more mature one, more prone to this type of thought.
It was a weird feeling, being out on vacation.
It wasn't as though they never took a break or anything, but for all of them to be out here, together… and the setting was just too odd. Soul, Maka, Blair, Black Star, Tsubaki, Kid, Liz, Patty, Stein, Spirit, and Marie were all out on a boat, floating somewhere in the middle of some lake; it had been Spirit's idea to take a vacation out here and the boat was not difficult for Shinigami-sama to procure, though he himself did not join them.
What was really so odd about the informal setting was how well they all fit into it. Everything just seemed normal, lacking the awkwardness that would usually be present when friends and students, parents and teachers all took a vacation together.
Patty had been the first, of course, to leap happily into the beautiful water as soon as they had anchored the boat in the middle of the lake. Black Star soon followed her, dragging Tsubaki along with him. Spirit suggested that he and Maka take a swim together, earning him a slap from his daughter. Looking slightly put out, he was now sipping some sort of champagne and talking with Stein and Marie. Blair was sprawled out on a deck chair, tanning; Maka was doing the same, though with noticeably less skin exposed to the burning sun than the neko. Soul, who claimed not to like the heat, was sitting in the cool shade of the entrance to the boat's cabin, watching the swimmers.
After a few minutes of shrieking from Patty for her sister to join her, Liz came and stood on the swim platform. Kid was standing beside her, keeping watch over the swimmers. He wasn't dressed for the water by any means—though his attire was more casual than his usual meister outfit, he still wore rather nice-looking pants and a dark jacket over a white dress shirt. "Come swim with us, Kid," Liz said as she stepped to the edge, swinging her arms in imitation of a graceful dive that she would never actually attempt—belly flops were more in her line of talent.
"I don't think so," the young reaper said with a skeptical smile. Liz pouted at him for a moment, and then, abandoning all rational thought, she pushed him, hard.
Maka, Soul, and Blair looked up at the sound as Kid splashed into the water backwards. He emerged a second later, treading water as Liz crouched down on the swim platform, and he looked grumpily up at her. "I just got to display all of the grace of a true shinigami right there, as you shoved me into the lake. Thank you for that." He splashed water in her face and she squealed.
Maka's mouth fell open, and even Soul looked taken aback—they were expecting an angry outburst from the reaper, not a short and playful reprimand—and they were expecting Kid to immediately crawl out of the water, stammering about how asymmetrical he was when wet. They certainly were not expecting him to stay in the water as Liz laughed and jumped in, rather more gracefully, beside him.
Kid's head disappeared under the surface for a few moments as his dark shape moved about underwater. When he resurfaced, he reached out and grabbed the edge of the swim platform with one hand, bringing the other up out of the water to place his now waterlogged shoes up on the platform. He disappeared under the water once more, and when he resurfaced this time, he flung his soaking jacket up on top of his shoes. He then pushed off the boat and did a graceful back-flip underwater, coming up to grin in Liz's face.
Patty swam up behind Kid and splashed water at the back of his head. "I thought it was going to take a lot longer to get you in the water!" she exclaimed happily.
Out of the water, Blair had resumed her tanning, but Maka and Soul were watching the young reaper and his weapons swim around each other, laughing and splashing. "Weird, isn't it?" Maka said.
"Hm?" Soul replied casually.
"I mean, you never really see Kid as someone to just… relax like that. He seems to be having so much fun, and he's not even worrying about symmetry or anything. It's kinda weird. Good, though," she added with a smile.
After an hour or so of playing around in the water, Black Star announced that he was the fastest swimmer in the world and dared anyone to challenge him, which was their cue to get back on the boat. Tsubaki had to drag her meister out, but eventually they all settled around the boat, eating the sandwiches that Tsubaki had prepared and talking. In another hour, Soul announced that he was hot and climbed to the very front of the boat, where the bow rose up out of the water about five feet, and leapt off. This prompted Black Star to announce that he could make a bigger splash, and he quickly attempted to climb the side of the cabin, looking for a higher platform to jump from.
Patty, impossible to keep out of the water, got a running head start off the bow and did an enormous cannonball after them. Liz laughed, but had no inclination to join them this time, as she was currently focused on something else.
After climbing out of the water, Kid had also removed his white dress shirt in order to dry faster in the sun. He was now lying on his stomach on the flat cover that housed the engine, immersed in some book that he had brought along. Liz was sitting on the lower seat next to where he lay, staring at his back.
Specifically, she was staring at the numerous long, thin scars that covered his small back, wrapping around to his chest and arms where she couldn't see, though she knew they were there. Absentmindedly, she propped her right elbow next to him and began tracing the various scars with one finger. Lost in his reading, Kid didn't even seem to notice, though admittedly, she had been doing this a lot lately, whenever he was sitting next to her: whether he had a shirt covering them or not, it didn't matter, because she had memorized where every one of his scars were. As she ran her fingers over them, she felt the weight of those strange emotions take her over again.
This wasn't supposed to happen to her. It was just her and Patty, and they could both take care of themselves, so there was no reason to worry. She couldn't deny that she had grown to care for this kid, but he was a shinigami… he was tough, he could take care of himself too. So there was no reason for her to feel like she did, to feel like the world that had previously been all she had was now somehow foreign… she shouldn't feel the need to keep Patty and Kid away from every imaginable danger. And when they were out of eyesight, there was no reason for her to worry that something had happened.
Of course, this odd feeling of guilt and worry could be coming from the fact that the last time she looked away, something did happen, something she would never forget. Though the scars she now traced along Kid's back would eventually fade (and then he would be more symmetrical again…), they would be forever ingrained into her memory, and those scars served to remind her that something more had happened since she met this kid than just what everyone else saw, something that made her sure that she could never go back to her old life.
The next chapter will start in the past, so don't be confused when the scene changes. I could have made it just a flashback, but it would have been extremely long and that's a lot to put in italics.