Nothing in this World is Strange.
(Soul Eater.)
Author note: I do not own.
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They are quietly walking down the hall. It is nearly three in the morning and the eldest pistol knows they should be asleep, resting up for classes the next day. She simply cannot bring herself to care.
Kidd is still in his suit jacket and dress pants, somehow silently leading the way to Patty's room in perfectly shined Italian black leather shoes. Liz had, after eyeing her Technician's wrinkle free attire, decided to put on a pair of jeans and tug on some sneakers.
They do not bother to knock on Patty's door, Liz simply walks a few steps inside the darkened room and waits patiently as Kidd puts a hand on each of her younger sister's shoulders. The young reaper is gentle as he shakes Patty into wakefulness, murmuring that everything is alright. Liz catches the way their technician also slides a few whispered good mornings into his words to Patty.
The moment Patty demonstrates alertness Kidd steps back from the bed and shoots Liz a look that is part nod and part question. Rarely do they wake up in the middle of the night for non-emergencies. The protocol on this situation is a vast grey area. Liz clears her throat and walks to the closet, pulling out a pair of pants that match the ones she is currently wearing and throwing them onto the bed for Patty.
She pauses for a moment before picking out matching sneakers and catches Kidd smirking back a laugh at her sluggishness. He is pressing socks into Patty's hands seconds after she finishes buttoning her jeans.
Once they are headed downstairs, it occurs to the eldest pistol that Kidd has not yet explained this early-morning-late-night venture. Patty apparently feels the same way, because the shorter blonde turns mid-step to face Kidd and Liz, her nose wrinkling curiously. It is the precursor to a question. Patty's mouth opens a fraction before she eyes Kidd over once and presses her lips together mutely.
They pause, identical blonde haired and blue eyed, motionless at the entry way to Gallows mansion. The reaper brushes by them, a pallid palm reaching for the door handle. There is the faint sound of mechanisms clattering and sliding into place. Liz recognizes this as the door unlocking and stares vacantly at her technician before remembering that Kidd has never carried a house key. He is pulling the tall, thin door open quietly and ushering them trough with a blank look.
Outside the walls of Gallows mansion the city looks angular and shadowy in the poor light. It is dark, and while the young reaper is having no trouble navigating the eight very slight steps that stretch from the front door to well down the front walk… the two siblings are half blind.
Kidd doesn't even make it to the end of the walk before he stops and holds a palm out at shoulder height.
Abruptly Liz understands the way he looks over his shoulder at the two of them. His face is cleanly blank, eyes hollowed out and shadowed in a way that is made worse by the lights from inside Gallows mansion. This is not her calm technician, this version was uneasy, anxious even.
The light that manifests from his palm doesn't hurt the eldest gun's eyes. She is squinting in sudden awareness at the way Kidd's features look like they are translucent skin over whiter bone. Patty is awake and alert all at once, standing next to Liz as Kidd summons his skateboard.
The young reaper is on the board in a graceful movement, tilting a hip downward slightly and bending his knees just a fraction as he turns the board an easy half-circle. The board has risen slightly higher from the ground, now hovering a good two feet in the air. Kidd is blinking owlishly at his weapons, waiting for them with his palms open and empty.
Liz steps forward and murmurs for soul resonance. She is about to slide into gun form, a bright aura of light flickering from her skin when she hears the nearly silent voice of her technician wind across their link.
No, he says. Even though it is hardly a whisper above the steady multi-level harmonic hum of his soul she freezes like he has ordered her to shoot him. There is a blush of confusion in her soul that serves as an orange tinted reply. She does not understand.
Patty gets it. The shorter blonde flashing a smile at Kidd before jaunting forward and taking his hand, jumping onto the board with surprisingly sure footing. Patty is shifting her stance, bending her knees a bit as Kidd grasps her shoulders and moves her a few inches closer to himself. Liz watches this for a moment, wondering how on earth they could balance on the board without falling.
The eldest pistol catches the quick glance that Kidd throws her way. He presses into their resonance link and suddenly she feels the instinct to shift slightly right, then tilt her weight back just a bit.
Like this, her technician's voice is calmly filling her mind, like when we fight in harmony. He is telling her that they have done more difficult things in unison. She nods, because his logic is sound. Patty is a bright yellow hum of calm within both their minds, unobtrusive but present.
Liz is clamoring onto the board and hooking her thumbs under Kidd's belt. There is a shifting both beneath them and somewhere in Liz's stomach. They are higher up, clearing the treetops by a few feet and slowly making their way above intersections and streetlamps.
In the forefront of Patty's mind sits the unpolished wondering of where Kidd intends to steer them. Liz plucks at the question and draws it forward, ignoring the lurching in her intestines as they rise higher into the night sky.
There is the flicker of a few images, a smattering of memories that the young reaper tugs forward and pushes in front of them. He is talking again, within the quiet of their balanced linking. Explaining that they had taken him into the dessert once.
Both siblings remember well enough, but Kidd is still holding the images out in his mind for them to examine. They had taken him into the dessert one day, telling him from within the open confines of their resonance that he should fly until he passed the city limits. He followed their instruction and they finally told him to slow to a stop when there was nothing but tan and peach colored sand from horizon to horizon.
Each sibling carries memories from that first adventure into the dry endless space of Nevada heat. There were a few times they had been into the dessert since then, but none had been for pleasure. Kidd's memories are like detailed photos and snippets of sound and warmth spreading across skin.
He does not show them images from his solitary adventures into the flat sandy landscape. Liz still tunes into the familiarity and attachment that their technician ties to this environment. She can, if she reaches for the strands of soul perception her technician has woven into his being, feel the hum of Lord Death's soul in the distance.
He has accelerated and the board is higher off the ground than either sibling remembers. They are going fast and Patty spreads her arms wide, blonde hair fluttering in chunky strands as the wind pulls it.
Kidd smiles a little, his soul easing back into balance and clicking into proper place against Liz's. The imperfection in their resonance rate wasn't something she caught until he corrected it. He laughs inwardly and the eldest pistol feels as if she has missed something obvious.
She has been missing something rather apparent, Kidd states calmly.
Her soul blurs into orange confusion again before he fills in the silence between them all.
He says it slowly, explaining that he was never out of resonance with them… but he had fallen out of resonance with himself. His soul was unstable. He was looking for a way to fix it, realign it. He pushes forward images of them in battle and them wandering around the city. There are hundreds of moments that stack one on top of another until they scatter and fill the space inside their resonance like photos hanging in a developing room.
Kidd is turning the board in a wide arching circle and taking it higher still into the sky. There is a moment of stunned silence as Liz looks over the hundreds of thousands of photographs, each perfectly rendered with razor clarity.
Her technician's voice is sweeping lightly into the space within their resonance link, fluttering the photos. He is telling them, in a dozen different languages, that he could not fix his soul alone.
…