There's a Method to This Madness

Ten short stories about friends and family, written for 42_souls.

Part 08: Dare Disturb the Universe

Prompt: Life ((troika+Death))

It had all started out so innocuously.

A quick trip to the Death Room, like they did at the end of every mission, to give a report. And also, in this particularly depressing instance, to deliver a handful of innocent souls – collateral damage, courtesy of the bastards whose souls Liz had relished devouring in the end – to Lord Death. And at the end, when all the official business had been said and done, Death had held out his enormous hands toward his son, ever the insufferable dork, and had said, "Now give your old man a biiiiiiiig hug!"

"Uh." Kid had stepped away from him, clearly not in the hugging mood.

Fortunately, Patti had stepped up to bat. "Patti gives hugs!" she had exclaimed, wrapping her arms around the old death god.

"Thank you, Patti. You're so cute. Waaaaaaaay cuter than my son, who is still very, very cute."

Kid had rolled his eyes and ignored the bait. Liz, however, had been unable to stop staring at the way that the bottom of whatever passed for Death's body had kept swirling around her sister's feet, and how his strange, shadowy arms had flowed around and through Patti's shoulders as he had returned the hug.

Then they had gone home.

After three days away, the mail had piled up. Kid went straight to work sorting through it. "Bill," he said, contemptuously, tossing one envelope aside. "Bill, bill, bill, court summons, bill, IRS audit – what, again? – bill, bill, Cosmo for you," he said, tossing the magazine toward Liz, "and NRA newsletter for me."

He then retreated back into the house, newsletter in hand. Liz followed them deep into the east wing of the house, and into the library. (God, but she still loved the fact that she lived in a house with a library. Not that she read much, but didn't that just sound unbelievably classy? And a library with a fireplace, too! Just like in a movie!) Liz watched Kid curl up on a chair and open his magazine, while Patti hummed to herself and started a fire in the fireplace.

Liz hesitated for a moment, unsure of whether she wanted to spoil the peaceful scene. But then she realized that she simply had to. There was a powerful, important question that had been looping around endlessly in her brain ever since she had seen her sister hugging Lord Death, and now she knew that she wouldn't be able to relax until she had found the answers that she needed.

Obsessive thoughts, Liz thought wryly, sitting down in another chair across from Kid. Puzzles that won't leave your brain alone until you can figure them all out. God, this sucks. Is it always like this for him?

"We have to talk," Liz said. She addressed Kid directly, but meant her words for Patti as well. Patti, for her part, sat down on the floor in front of the fireplace, poked the start of her fire rhythmically with the fireplace poker, and watched them both with wide-eyed interest.

Kid looked up at her and closed his magazine. "Yes?"

"Your dad…"

"Has no respect for personal boundaries, yes, I know," Kid said.

"No, I mean… Um. His feet." Liz took a deep breath. "He doesn't have any feet, does he."

Kid stared at her. Then he said, "Define 'feet'."

"Things that you could give a pedicure to."

"Oh. In that case, well, no." He tapped his fingers against the arm of his chair. "I'd say what he has going on down there is more like… Hmm…."

"A stem," Patti said. "He's like a biiiiiiiiiiiig flower," she said, holding out her arms, "with a stem."

Kid snapped his fingers. "Yes. That's it exactly! Patti, you're a genius."

Patti laughed, and let go of the fireplace poker long enough to clap her hands. "Gen-i-us, gen-i-us!" she sang. Then she laughed again.

But Liz didn't think that any of that was very funny. "So what about you?" she asked him.

"Excuse me?"

"Are yougoing to end up like that? With a, a stem instead of, you know, feet?"

Patti abruptly stopped laughing.

Liz stared Kid down, waiting for his reaction. For as long as she'd known him, he'd always been a more wholly human creature than not. Over the years, he'd even grown and aged at a normal human rate. He felt pain like humans did, despite his ability to heal. When he bled, his blood was as red as hers. According to every doctor they'd ever consulted, even his brain was a most unfortunately human brain, and in his case that truly was unfortunate, at least in terms of being able to develop very, very human disorders was concerned. Biologically, he was human through and through. He still had ten fingers and ten toes, two hands and two feet, hair and skin and even lines across the palms of his hands. Liz was intimately familiar with every detail of his anatomy, and she knew exactly how deeply human he truly was. Not just in terms of his body, but in terms of his heart and soul as well. Especially when they were intimate together, when he shared with her a side of himself that was more human than he ever allowed anybody else to see, not even their closest friends and teammates at Shibusen.

And Liz needed to know how long that was going to last.

Because he was, after all, a god. He would casually mention this fact quite frequently, in fact. Even if he didn't yet quite live up to the title. Yet.

And now that Liz had thrown her question out into the air, there was no taking it back. She could see in Kid's eyes that she had momentarily thrown him mentally off balance. But then he composed himself again, and answered quietly, "I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

"I mean, I… I don't know." He met her gave evenly. "Do you not want me to end up like that?"

Liz bit her lip. She looked to Patti, who merely stared at her with one of the very, very few truly unreadable expressions that Liz had ever seen on her sister's face. Then Liz looked back at Kid and said, "No. I don't."

The weight of those words felt enormous as they fell from her lips. For a moment Liz felt her heart pounding in her chest, and she was suddenly struck with the absurd mental image that there was some great, unseen, omnipotent force staring down at her, and she was staring back up at it with her middle finger raised. And the who the hell did she think she was, daring to make such a selfish demand from the universe?

Liz felt afraid.

But Kid merely nodded calmly, acting for all the world as if she had just requested something utterly mundane, something no grander than I don't want you to cut the crust off my toast or I don't want you to borrow my nail files anymore. "All right then," he said. "I won't."

He made it all sound so easy.

Liz swallowed, still unable to shake the feeling that the eyes of God were watching her with great interest. "J-Just like that? It's that simple?"

"I don't know if it's going to be simple," Kid said. "But as long as you and Patti want to stay with me, then I'll stay with you. I swear that I won't leave you. In any way. And if that means keeping my feet, then that means keeping my feet. I won't let myself lose my feet."

"Or Beelzebub!" Patti suddenly interjected.

"Beg pardon?" Kid blinked at her.

"If you didn't have feet then maybe Beelzebub would leave us," Patti said. "But Patti likes Beelzebub. And Patti likes Kid's feet, too."

"Thank you, Patti."

Patti had long ago abandoned the fireplace poker. Now she sat on the floor in front of the fire, her legs curled up to her chest, rocking back and forth slightly, humming to herself. She looked like she was tuning out already, having finished her contribution to the conversation, preparing to retreat back into her own little world. Liz could sense, however, that her sister was still intensely paying attention to the conversation between her and Kid. It was something in the way that Patti's eyes were staying clear and focused, even though she was busily staring at her own knees.

"And your face," Liz added, quickly, turning her attention back to Kid. "I just… Oh God, Kid, I used to have nightmares about-"

"All right. All right. I can keep my face, too."

"But is your face ever going to wrinkle?" Liz suddenly asked.

"What?" Kid blinked at her.

"I mean…" Liz got out of her chair, stood in front of him, reached out, and grasped his hands in hers. "What's going to happen when Patti and I get old and wrinkled? Are you going to grow old with us? Or are you going to stay young and beautiful like this forever?"

Kid stared up at her. "I doubt that this is a matter that you need to be concerned about, Liz," he said. "Statistically, the odds of a Death Scythe surviving past the age of thirty are-"

Liz squeezed at Kid's hands painfully. "Yes or no?" she growled. "I need you to answer me, Kid. Are you going to grow old with me or not?"

Kid looked up at her, staring straight into her eyes. "What do you want me to do?" he asked.

Liz took a deep breath. "I want my man to grow old with me," she said.

He nodded. "Then I will," he said. "I promise."

Liz let go of his hands. "Can you do that?" she asked. "Seriously?"

"I'm fairly certain that I can make my body do whatever I want it to do," Kid said. "I am a god, after all. Father is the same way. I suspect that he could have feet and a face if he wanted to. He chooses to stay in his current form as a matter of personal preference." Kid smiled up at her. "I would be happy to grow old for you if you want me to. I can become young again after you are gone, anyway."

Liz sighed with relief. "Thank you, Kid," she said. "Thank you for keeping your feet and for making yourself grow old with me."

"Thank you," Patti echoed, looking up from her knees. "Patti doesn't want Kid to have a stem instead of feet, either."

Kid shrugged and turned his attention back to his reading. "Please don't act as if I'm making such a big sacrifice, especially about the age thing," he said. "As I said, the odds of either of you surviving past the age of thirty are-"

Liz reached out, grabbed the magazine right out of Kid's hands, rolled it up, and promptly bashed him over the head with it.

"Liz, what was that for?" Kid asked, more indignant than hurt.

"For being an insensitive immortal jerk," Liz huffed. She stormed out of the library, listening to Patti's laughter echo behind her.

The final two chapters in this set will be uploaded next week. Thank you for all of the feedback and review so far!