Disclaimer: I do not own Soul Eater
Chapter Nineteen
-Dark-blue Eyes-
Concerned whispers echoed through out the crowded room as a court of Reapers all stood at opposite walls facing each other. Some in attendance were recognized by their attire as soldiers, while others bore the pompous air of nobody aristocrats. Others still stood farther away from the others, and their ghoulish visages and haunting sharp teeth denoted them as what little remained of the once menacing group of soul eaters. Their conversations were all hushed and excited, and all had to do with the lone woman who knelt in the middle of the room in front of them.
They gave her a wide berth. No one wanted to be anywhere near her, lest they too fall under the wrathful eyes of Lord Grim as he sat in his chair at the head of the repurposed ballroom. Ever silent and stoic, the father of Reapers needed no words to convey just how furious he was at that very moment. Golden target eyes zeroed in on his once trusted confidant and burned through her very soul. She, likewise, stared back up at him. Forlorn hung heavy in her gaze and she tried her best not to show it, with pitiful results. It was the last thing she ever wanted to see. She'd rather have gone her whole immortal life without ever being on the receiving end of such caustic distaste, least of all from the very man she had devoted everything to. Risked everything for, and succeeded in doing so. He was alive now because of her. And yet...
"Liz," Kidd's cold voice cut through the quiet cacophony in the background. All Reapers in attendance immediately silenced. "Why?"
Liz swallowed the growing lump in her throat. She wasn't scared of Lord Grim, even though everyone else was. If anything, it was the hurt in his tone that really got to her; no one could pick up on it besides her, either because they were too busy groveling or she had just spent way too much time in his presence. Kidd was angry. Confused. Betrayed. But, most of all, alive. Liz kept repeating that to herself in her head over and over again. It was all worth it. He looked better now. He wasn't this half-dead specter that roamed the halls of Gallows Manor on his last legs of life.
He looked like the old Kidd again. Strong. Confident. The change hadn't been immediate. It took the better half of two weeks for him to recover, and another two weeks for him to figure out what had happened. Who had let Maka escape? Was it an inside job? He had put Free in charge of figuring it out initially. Of course, nothing was found out, that is until Kidd became healthy and did all the investigating himself. Lips were much looser when Lord Grim was the one asking the questions. Reapers weren't loyal, and it didn't take long for the finger to be pointed at those responsible.
Of course, no one would accuse Free of anything. Whether that was because they genuinely didn't know he had orchestrated the whole thing, or they simply didn't want their throats torn out as retribution, Liz couldn't say. All she did know was that as soon as word got back to Kidd, things were swiftly sent into motion. She was summoned, as was everyone else in the manor. There was no indication at first that this whole mess is what awaited her, but Liz had a feeling deep down that it would be. Maybe that was why she wasn't scared right now. She already had made peace with it.
"...I did it for you."
Liz stared straight into the leering eyes of an angry god and smiled solemnly. The gesture took both Kidd and the rest of those assembled by surprise, as did her willing confession. Lord Grim swallowed his tongue for a moment as Liz continued to smile at him. He suddenly had no words even though a flood of them had been mounting just seconds before, ready and waiting for Elizabeth to speak so as to drown her in a toxic sea. Resentment suddenly seemed to dry up, and in its place was left only bitter sadness. Kidd's face reflected this; his deathly glare morphed into something else.
A frown. Not like the annoyed kind that he sometimes gave Liz and Patty when one of them got on his nerves, or when they put him in his place without fear of retribution. This one was different. His eyes suddenly seemed much softer. In his furrowed brows, there hung a heavy tug of devastation. It was the look a normal human might have; the same one a father might have at the sudden loss of his child, or a lover whose heart is wrenched away when their partner leaves them forever. Liz knew this, and her own expression came to mirror his. They stared at each other for a moment in silence.
Lord Grim took a shuddered breath and quietly rose to his feet. Not breaking eye contact, the ballroom suddenly erupted with the thunder crack sound of a Reaper's weapon being summoned. Black shadow formed into a pitch dark scythe in Kidd's right hand, and he loomed over Liz as she continued to kneel. The woman sucked in air at the sight of him, and the instant she realized what was going on tears started to well in her eyes. For the first time, she let her stare waver to the floor. A million thoughts ran through her head, all of them involving her, Kidd, and Patty.
She had no way of seeing Kidd do the same. He bowed his own head and hid his face from everyone else in the room. Like Liz, a torrent of emotions swept through him all at once. Even as he made his way slowly over to her and readied his scythe, he had no way of knowing how to deal with all of them. Up until recently, he hadn't experienced them like this. Now, with Liz, Maka, the baby, Evans, and everything else, he couldn't stop it all. He wanted to desperately. Even now, it hurt to raise his scythe. It hurt to look down at her as she averted her gaze. It hurt to know that he had to punish her as Lord Grim, just like he would with any other Reaper, even though every fiber of his being demanded that he not. He hurt. She hurt. He clutched his scythe tighter. He clenched his teeth and damned himself-
"-Hold on there, Kiddo!" a powerful voice boomed through out the ballroom. "Let's not do anything too hasty here! Especially when you're blaming the wrong person!"
Lord Grim froze. His head turned to the doors at the far side of the room. There, standing in the fully opened archway, stood Free. Kidd's heart, which a second ago had stopped the moment he committed to bringing down the scythe, suddenly started to beat intensely. He gasped as his lungs filled with air once more and his hold on the scythe became shaky. His thoughts immediately shifted back to Liz, and the two looked to one another at the exact same time. The instant they did, emotion overcame them both; Liz broke into tears and Lord Grim spat at himself with disdain. His arms fell to he wayside, along with his scythe, and he pensively stared at the floor to the sound of Liz's sobbing. He had no words for her. All he could do was stand there pitifully and share in her pain.
The Reaper assembly didn't know whether to stare at the two of them, or Free as he shuffled into the room at a leisurely pace. His nonchalantness was typical, though hardly appropriate given the circumstances. Even as Kidd focused on Liz, the laid back air of his godfather was infuriating. As Free approached closer and closer, it gnawed at an already exposed Lord Grim. His fingers twitched around his scythe and, the moment Free got close enough, he raised his weapon as warning to stay away from him and Liz. His scythe served as a measuring stick; any closer, and there would be consequences.
"What do you know, Free?" Kidd demanded, still very much angry though unsure of where to focus it all.
"Hm?" Free responded casually, adding to Kidd's fury, "Everything, of course. I'm the one who told Liz to do it."
If there was any way for the room to get even quieter, it happened at that very moment. The soldiers, aristocrats, servants, and soul eaters all collectively held their breath as Lord Grim instantaneously hit what seemed like the limit of his wrath. The look on his face was absolutely terrifying; no emotion. Not a single hint of anything vaguely human remained in his expression. Instead, the only thing that showed through were his eyes. They focused on Free suddenly, and gazed upon him as though he were but an ant in his presence. A small, insignificant insect.
Two things happened, faster than anyone could perceive.
The first was that Kidd struck at Free; at the same time it took everyone to blink, Kidd brought his scythe to the side and took a giant swing at his subordinate. Secondly, Free stopped the attack in an instant. As if anticipating the blow, or perhaps just quicker than Lord Grim, a large hand came up to his side and clutched the sharp blade firmly. Blood splattered against his check and clothes from the sheer force of the strike, though it didn't seem to phase Free in the slightest. However, his ever present grin seemed much more muted now. For the first time in a long time, he seemed serious.
"You let me blame Liz, and it was you this whole time!?" Kidd roared. "I'll kill you! I'll scatter your pieces across the desert!"
Still holding his own against Lord Grim's scythe, Free leaned in and brought his face close to Kidd's. "Then show me what you've got, Kiddo."
Another roar. Kidd retracted his scythe for another blow, but Free would have none of it. Before the second strike could come, the Reaper hopped back swiftly and let steel cut through empty air. The force of the attack alone was enough to whip a wind around the room, and onlookers braced themselves against it. At the center of it all remained Liz, who only just now had been given enough time to process what was going on. By the time she had her senses about her, Kidd and Free were deadlocked in opposite sides of the room. Kidd remained nearby, while Free stayed towards the doors.
"Leave!" Kidd commanded. It was a blanket statement, though his eyes fell on Liz when he shouted it.
The other Reapers obeyed. There was a clamor for the door and an intentional effort to stay a safe distance from Free, though he didn't seem to notice or care about their presence. A swarm filed out behind him as he continued to stare down his godson and the one disobedient Reaper who remained. Liz rose to her feet, but didn't make a dash for safety like the rest of the court. She continued looking to Kidd even as she side-stepped to the edge of the room. He didn't repeat himself, and simply followed her with his eyes until she made it safely to the wall.
The moment he was satisfied with her distance, Kidd stalled no longer. Without warning, he pushed off from the floor and exploded towards Free like a canon blast. Scythe trailing behind him, he swung with everything he had. Free waited for him, but this time didn't attempt to catch the weapon as he did before. He knew this blow wasn't one he could simply shrug off, and instead he elected to match Kidd's power with his own.
As Kidd's scythe went for blood, a sudden chill held the entire room hostage. The temperature dropped, from warm to downright arctic in a millisecond. Kidd anticipated this, but had no way to react to it; even being The Grim, he was too slow to get around a giant pillar of ice that erupted from the ground in front of him. Appearing directly between him and Free, Kidd could only focus his attack on the ice wall in front of him. The sound of slicing metal pierced through the ballroom, and the top part of the pillar fell to the wayside like a felled tree. Easily dispatched, but it served its purpose.
"You never could catch me, Kidd," a voice taunted him from behind.
Lord Grim turned around. He knew what awaited him. He knew from the very beginning that this fight would not be an easy one, though the thought couldn't quell the absolute rage he felt at that moment. Still, the face that stared back at him was a sobering reminder of why Shinigami had entrusted him to Free's care. Why, despite being a god, he ultimately fell under the tutelage of a mere Reaper. He was different now. Transformed. Instead of his normal face there was an elongated snout; for teeth, incisors that looked nothing like a soul eater's, but instead a rabid animal's. Fur, thick and course, insulated him from the freezing cold of his own foul magic. He looked nothing like a human now. He finally looked appropriately like the title given to him by Kidd's father.
Free, the Ice Wolf. The first Reaper made by Shinigami, born from the soul of a faithful dire wolf.
Kidd tried to retaliate, but he wasn't quick enough. Before he knew it, a clawed fist hammered itself into his stomach and sent him careening into the half-standing pillar behind him. His head smacked against the ice and it sent a shock wave through his body, disorienting him. This gave Free the opportunity to swoop in and bring another fist into the exact same spot as before. Kidd sputtered and his eye boggled. He was open to a third and final strike, and that was enough to leave Lord Grim placated for the moment. From the sidelines, Liz called out to him in worry.
Free grabbed Kidd by the hair and lifted his head up before sticking his fully canine face into his once more. "Do you honestly think I did this to hurt you?"
"...I don't care why you did it!" Kidd groaned angrily. He tried not to let his pain seep into his words and give Free the satisfaction. "Liz! You involved her-!"
"-She was concerned!" Free growled bestially. "You didn't listen to my advice, and you suffered for it! You're as headstrong as your father was! It's infuriating!"
Free took Lord Grim by the head and tossed him into a nearby pillar. Marble cracked as Kidd collided into it, again causing him to sputter as he slid down to the floor. Free waited patiently for his godson to get back up on his feet, which he eventually did after another moment to catch his breath. Liz, still watching, fought back the urge to make her way towards him. Her feet wanted to move, but she knew very well that she really shouldn't have been there. This was different from Kidd's fight with Eater. For the first time, she honestly couldn't tell who was stronger; Kidd or Free.
From the way Lord Grim wiped the blood and spit from his mouth as he recovered, she shuddered to think it was the latter. "Maka was our only hope! Without her, the Reapers die out!"
"So?" Free responded without missing a beat. Kidd's eyes widened in disbelief. "So what if they do? Would you really resort to kidnapping to stop that? Rape? Genocide?"
"I would never-!" Kidd started to shout back. He stopped when he caught sight of Free's eyes piercing into him and noticed his left one was now fully unbound.
The witch's eye. The one he had taken from their matriarch over a hundred years ago, the final spoil of a war that Kidd himself had orchestrated. It stared through his very soul and judged him for all the things he was responsible for; for a moment, all could think about were the all the things he'd done over the years. He knew that was Free's intention. He wanted him to come to some sort of epiphany about everything, but there were no other conclusions he could come to other than the one's he'd already arrived at. Free knew damn well what the title of Grim meant. It wasn't supposed to be a pleasant one. If anything, this little display of his only reaffirmed that much to Kidd. If there was any other route that could have been taken he would have done so already, but there simply wasn't.
"...I would commit any atrocity..." Kidd muttered as he stood taller to challenge Free, "...So long as it meant protecting the people that I hold dear!"
Free narrowed his eyes at The Grim. A look of disappointment and distaste spread across his maw. "Even after all these years, you still sound like a child."
"And you still sound like an arrogant old fool!" Lord Grim shot back. He held his hand out, and his scythe came to him without prompting. "You forget your place beneath me!"
Free looked on, uninterested, as Kidd readied his scythe behind him once more. He expected his godson to simply charge at him again and was ready to end things right then and there. But instead of simply barreling towards him like last time, Free raised a brow as he watched the air around Kidd start to shimmer. Shadows, from all parts of the ballroom, started making their way towards him. He was summoning the darkness, something that all Reapers could do, but Grims like Kidd and Soul were particularly more adept at. Theirs were more potent; he needed to be wary.
Liz looked down and watched her own shadow separate from her. She watched his disappear into the growing mass underneath Kidd, and she shuddered to think what she was becoming an accessory to. The mass started to rise and write from the floor, before traveling to the tip of Kidd's scythe and melding into its already void-like steel. The weapon quickly took on the appearance of the night sky; bespeckled with dots of shining light, the entire scythe's formed quickly started to morph into a more crescent shape. It's blade elongated and bent, Free and Liz watched in amazement as Lord Grim wielded what looked like a giant crescent moon in his hands. The entire weapon glowed like a beacon in pitch darkness, even as more shadows continued to swarm all around Kidd.
"Ah, shit," Free chuckled slightly, scratching the back of his head. "You're really trying to kill me, aren't you? I'm actually a little hurt."
"Slay the undying!" Lord Grim's voice boomed. The entire room shook with his words, and Liz looked on in awe. "Witch-Hunter!"
There was no waiting this time. Free immediately raised his hand and summoned a swarm of icy spikes from the floor around him. They encircled him and created a labyrinth that would block out any attack, though they would prove paper-thin fodder. Kidd's speed was on another level; this time, it was Free who ended up being surprised. A fortress of ice was no match for the ferocity that Kidd struck at him with, least of all one that he ended up avoiding altogether. Instead of charging at him, Kidd simply...appeared in front of him. Out of thin air or, more than likely, from the shadows on the floor.
Like a ghost, Kidd came for Free's very soul. From underneath, the glowing scythe was thrust into its mark. Free took the whole brunt of it; an explosion rocked both him and Kidd as ice and debris was thrown outwards. Glass-like shards gouged out huge holes in the ballroom. Liz shouted and ducked for cover. Mere inches from each other's face, neither Kidd nor Free let up, even as the latter stood with a giant scythe sticking out of his backside. Kidd didn't let a single muscle waver as he continued to try and drive the scythe deeper into his godfather's torso. Free did the same, flexing everything he had in effort to stop him.
"Y...y-know..." Free grinned, body shaking, "...I love you like a son, Kidd..."
Kidd mirrored his shudder. His fingers started to turn white as he desperately held onto his scythe.
"...But ever since you took Eruka from me..." A rumble started in the back of Free's throat. "...I just flat out don't like you...!"
Free opened his wolven mouth and roared into Kidd's face. Far removed from his gentlemanly demeanor, Kidd roared back in defiance. Both men screamed at each other as they fought for one final push. Lord Grim tried with everything he had to completely slice through Free. It was the only way to kill him; nothing short of a complete vivisection could kill the strongest of Reapers. He had to do it, it was the only way. He kept trying. Kept pushing. Again he roared, and again Free roared back. Both men were at their wits end. Something had to give. There was nothing else Kidd could do except-
-Not breathe.
Suddenly there was pain. A scream, from somewhere in the room, made him realize things had gone horribly wrong. It was Liz's scream. She was still watching them. Watching him...lose? But how? Kidd's senses had become numb. He was so into the struggle, so focused on this primal desire to see Free off, that he didn't notice until it was too late. He failed to see Free's head swoop in underneath him. He couldn't feel the jaws that suddenly clamped around his throat and bit down like a steel trap. Even as a god. Even as the most powerful creature on the planet, Kidd didn't see it coming.
There was a rip. A sunder. Blood, thick and viscous, drenched Free has he pulled away. It splattered him. The floor. Everywhere.
More screaming, but Kidd could no longer hear it. He fell backwards. With his last remaining vision, Kidd looked on as Free hovered over him; a solid chunk of what was once a piece of Kidd's throat clutched firmly in the Ice Wolf's jaws, he finally realized what had happened. It was the last thing he could process before he hit the floor, dead. Kidd's body landed in a cold thud, and, once he was sure there would be no more movement from him, Free spit out the bloody piece unceremoniously from his mouth. The flesh barely missed Liz as she skidded to Kidd's side in a pool of blood.
"Kidd!" Liz cried out as she reached out for him. She had no idea what to do. Was he-?
"-Give him a few hours," Free growled before Liz could say or do anything else. "He'll regenerate. Just like he always does."
Liz looked up at the monstrous Reaper. She watched as he grabbed hold of the scythe that still impaled him and, in one jerk, pull the thing out from his torso. The whimpered cry of an injured wolf rang out in the room, followed by the ping of metal as the scythe was tossed aside. More blood spilled, and this time it was Free who fell backwards. Liz gaped as Free crashed into the floor. The floor beneath them shook from the impact, and she immediately started crawling over towards him. The sound of his voice, however, instructed her not to.
"I'm fine. I'm not dying," Free revealed. His voice was less animal-like now. He sounded like his usual self. "I'm just...gonna need to rest for a while."
Liz remained where she was. Halfway between Kidd and Free, she didn't know who to attend to first. Overwhelmed and at a loss for what to do, she just sat there. A sea of blood all around her, Liz felt equally useless and defeated. To her left, a man that had just tried to kill her. To her right, a man who had almost let it all happen. She knew what was required of her, what was expected of her. Free needed to be tended to. Kidd needed to be brought to the Death Room. The blood needed cleaning up. The room needed fixing. She needed to be the one to get it all going.
And yet none of that really mattered at the moment.
All she wanted to do was sit there. And wait.
There used to be a dream he had. A long, long time ago.
How strange it was for a god to dream. One would assume they were things for humans to believe in and aspire towards achieving. Their purpose was to make someone better than they already were, as a goal to measure ones growth against. Why then would a god, who, objectively speaking, is above growth, need to dream? Kidd never found a satisfactory answer to that self-imposed question. All he did know was that, yes, there was something he wanted. Something that, maybe a long, long time ago, he believed in.
The details of it, though, were fuzzy. He remembered it came to him one day after creating a particular Reaper, though the knowledge of who specifically still managed to escape him. In fact, the very nature of his dream was still somewhat of a mystery to him. He'd managed to forget what the dream was, who inspired it, and why it even seemed to important in the first place. All essential things when talking about one's own dream, although there was one thing he still very much remembered.
A feeling. Deep in his heart. He still carried it with him, even to this day. Maybe it was because feelings were something he tried constantly to suppress, and yet this particular one just wouldn't be silenced? How fitting then was it that, after all of this business with Maka and the baby, his long dormant emotions were slowly starting to trickle back out after all these years. The business with Free. His anger. Sorrow. Guilt. All the things that he tried to distance himself away from, now controlled every aspect of his life. Is this...what humans were like? All the time? It was exhausting.
That dream, though. In bleak darkness, that is to say, his everyday existence, it served as a tiny reminder of something...better. Again, he didn't remember what it was, but he certainly remembered the feeling it gave him. The absolute content he had when looking back on it. Because that's what the feeling was; content. Whatever inspired it, whatever conclusion he had come to when he had made that particular Reaper so, so long ago, Kidd was okay with it. More than okay, in fact. Nothing else could have pleased him more. He was...content. He was...happy.
"...Kidd?"
A voice, and a familiar one at that. The sound of it suddenly halted Kidd's contemplation. His mind waited patiently as the rest of him slowly caught up. Eyes, heavy and lidded, slowly creaked open again. Blurry light swirled above as his senses struggled to return to him. The first thing that hit him was pain. An ugly throbbing in his neck made Kidd wince the moment he realized it was there, and he simply lay there on his back as he became adjusted to its presence. A cold floor stuck to his backside. Where had his shirt gone?
A soft, white sheet enveloped him and brushed against bare skin. The clean smell they gave off filled his nostrils and accompanied a relieved sigh off to his left. Kidd let his head fall to the side, and there next to him sat Liz. Her legs were pulled up in front of her, and she looked as though she had been waiting in that same spot for a while. Kidd blinked, then scanned the area around them. They were in the Death Room; painted clouds and an endless looking sky filled the background for what looked like miles. He hadn't been here before. Liz must have brought him.
"...w...wh..." Kidd opened his mouth to speak, but found words were difficult to form. His throat was on fire.
Then he remembered. Free. The fight. He hadn't necessarily forgotten, though the injury he sustained must have been much worse than he first realized. It should have been obvious though, since it was enough to "kill" him outright. Though, there was no way Free could actually kill him. Not a god of death, and least not the person he swore to his father to protect.
"I wouldn't try speaking if I were you," Liz cautioned. She put a hand on his chest as if to keep him from attempting to get up, "You haven't fully healed yet."
Kidd nodded. He obeyed and brought his attention above him once more. Sky blue filled his vision and a lonely cloud hung above him. His eyes narrowed at it, as suddenly everything that had transpired seemed to play out like a horrible movie against the fluffy white screen. It all played out in reverse; Free looming over him with his throat in his jaws, followed by them fighting, then shouting, and then...Liz. When Kidd arrived to that part he froze again, wide eyed, and stared at the now-blank nothingness in the cloud. The image was no longer plastered against a white backdrop, but rather etched into every crevice of his brain. The image of her on the floor. The sound of her sobbing. The hurt in her eyes. What had he done?
"...L-liz..." Kidd managed to ground out. His head rolled towards her once more, this time weighed heavy with a frown.
"What did I just say?" Liz chided, poking him in the chest, "I already know what you're going to say, so don't even bother. Just rest."
"...I-I'm...s-s..." Kidd strained to say the rest of it. He tried to continue in defiance of Liz, but ultimately couldn't. All he could do was lay there.
He closed his eyes. He didn't want to turn away from her, but at the same time didn't want to see whatever anger or hatred she had directed towards him. It was all deserved, of course. Nobody would blame her, least of all Kidd himself; he had come seconds away from murdering her in cold blood. Gone. Dead, just like that. It was nothing for him. She was nothing...but that couldn't have been farther from the truth. She, along with Patty, were important to him. And yet here they were in the Death Room, all because he was an idiot.
"...Okay, so I'm just going to say this, and then afterwards you're going to lay there and rest quietly. Got it?"
Kidd stirred from his wallowing. He looked up to find Liz a little bit closer than before. Close enough that he could glimpse her from a different angle. He could see the seat of her pants were stained in blood, along with other parts of her clothes and shoes. Whether it belonged to him or Free was irrelevant; all he could think about was the form of her crawling through blood just to make sure he was alright, and it made Kidd feel lower than the floor. So much that, despite him wanting to be defiant and talk with her more, Kidd nodded at Liz's command. She had earned his compliance a thousand times over.
"Good," she sighed. Liz shifted from sitting on her backside to her knees, and she hovered her face just above his. Long, blonde hair trickled over him.
"I don't hate you, I don't blame you, and I don't hold anything against you," Liz started. Her voice was firm, and she commanded all his attention.
"I know what Maka meant to you, to all the Reapers, and I knew how angry you would be when you found out what me and Free had done."
Liz looked away, "But you were sick. I was afraid if I didn't do something, you wouldn't be able to save the Reapers like you wanted to."
"And just, for the record," she added, "We're already dead, me and Patty. So long as we're together if and when the end comes..."
"...Then it'll be alright. Nothing lasts forever," Liz smiled sadly. "I just don't want you to feel like a failure if it ever happens."
Kidd stared up at Liz quietly the entire time. The longer her explanation continued, the wider his eyes got. Between her words and her ever-increasing proximity to him, Liz captured every ounce of his attention and thought. She was always good at putting him in his place. Even now, he had simultaneously forgotten about the events that had just taken place and his own gripping guilt. All he could focus on were her dark blue eyes that somehow shone through the veiled shade of her hair. That, and that solemn smile of hers.
"You're not a failure," she reaffirmed to both him and herself, "You've done things. Good and bad. Things other people aren't willing to do in order to protect us..."
"...I don't necessarily like it," Liz admitted. Kidd's eyes widened even more. "Actually I hate it, but I understand why you have to do it. I just wish that..."
Liz took a deep breath and looked down at the man below her, "I wish you'd let up a little. Be The Grim a little less, and be Kidd a lot more."
Kidd swallowed a growing lump in his throat. His mind was blank, but a familiar feeling was starting to mount in the very bottom of his chest. At first he thought it was a gut feeling, but he quickly realized it was that dream of his from before. That content he felt at one point in his life that he had forgotten about so easily. It was back again, back at the sound of Liz's voice. Its significance was lost to him, however; he didn't have any time to consider it, not when everything else fell to the wayside. Another feeling. A sudden shift. Breath, hot and fleeting. The brush of it against Kidd's lips sent the man's head reeling, and before he realized it Liz was in his personal space. She hovered in place for a brief second as if to contemplate what she was about to do.
Then, she went in for a kiss.
Kidd froze. His heart stopped.
Warmth. Content. Again, that feeling throbbed through him as their lips met. For a second his eyes couldn't get any wider at the form of Liz above him, but they eventually shuttered as Kidd focused everything he had on her. A heavy arm rose to grasp the back of her head, and what originally felt like a fleeting kiss turned into a drawn out embrace. The Grim didn't exist at that moment. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the only two people in the room were Kidd and Liz. They melted into one another.
Kidd lost himself in Liz's scent. Liz focused on his taste, which was new and at the same time strangely familiar. A ceased heart roared to life again with each passing second, and the blood in Kidd's veins flowed faster and faster. His cold cheeks flushed, and the heat coming off them made Liz smile against his lips. The gesture only made him heat up even more, and it only led to further amusement from Liz. She pulled away and started to laugh, which only grew when she saw him still making a kissing face. Kidd quickly stopped, his face scarlet from embarrassment as he suddenly found Liz laughing completely at his expense.
"...W-h...wha...t?" He strained out. The effort stung his throat, and he winced.
"Nothing!" Liz responded with stifled laughter. She forgot he was still injured. She didn't want him talking. "I've just never seen you like this!"
Liz tried her best to stop. She did for the most part, but still found herself giggling at the image of Kidd looking like a school child at his first kiss. The red in his face was still very much present, but his usual calm expression returned quickly. It disappointed Liz; she liked seeing that softer side of him. Baby steps, though. She smiled again and scooted herself so that both their bodies were facing the same direction. She leaned back and laid down next to him, taking Kidd off guard. Her head rolled to the side and his did the same, and they gazed at one another.
"Get your rest, okay?" Liz instructed. Kidd nodded obediently and she smirked. "I'll go find you a clean shirt."
"...N-not...yet..." Kidd replied, drawing ire from Liz. He just agreed to rest and was already doing the opposite. "...Stay..."
Liz raised a brow. She scanned Kidd's face and found him looking...needy. The Grim, needy. Immediately a giant grin ripped across Liz's face, one born from equal parts amusement and pride that she had made a god all but putty in her hand. Of course, she didn't say that part out loud, not that she cared about Kidd's reaction. All she really cared about was complying with his request, because deep down she didn't want to leave, anyway. Instead of getting up, Liz scooted closer to the white sheets that wrapped around Kidd and let the side of her head bump against his.
Kidd, unsure of what to do next, hesitated. He had Liz next to him, but hadn't gotten much further than that in his head. All he could do besides nothing was to take the sheet around him and toss it over her as well. That seemed to work, though; she scoffed in amusement at the gesture, and Kidd quickly found an arm snaking across his chest. She positioned herself against him as if going to sleep. The heat in Kidd's cheeks returned with a vengeance, only this time he felt it coming and turned his face away from Liz to avoid any further teasing. She probably could still tell, but said nothing.
Even if she did, he probably didn't hear it. Kidd quickly lost himself in his own thoughts. He was back to thinking about that dream from before. The content he felt, that he continued to feel at that very moment, made him remember a little bit more. He still didn't know what the dream was; the fact gnawed at him, but a lone consolation made it bearable. A door opened to a time long ago, and he peeked through it to remember that important day. Back to when he made that Reaper, back to when that dream, whatever it was, gave him this same feeling. He remembered who it was.
It was Liz.
