A/N: I'll probably do a lot of time skips later on in this story, but the first three chapters, at least, will be continuous, or at least pretty close to Liz and Patty's introduction to life at the Gallows.
Thank you to everyone who read chapter one and is coming back for more. You are adored and appreciated! As always, if you have an idea or find an error, please let me know. I keep looking things up in the manga and on Nenena's excellent (and hilarious) live-blogging-while-translating archive when writing, but I'm not sure my timelines, facts and references are always correct.
I imagine Lord Death as the kind of guy who likes being be a dad and loves his son, but is constantly working,distracted and has no clue how to deal with certain things. Also, he's a flaky goofball sometimes. Hope this comes across and that he doesn't seem like an uncaring bastard who hates dealing with his son. However, I can say from personal experience that sometimes you seriously don't want to deal with kids' weird crap. Especially of the "Why the hell did you do that?" variety!
Lord Death really couldn't afford to spend more of his day on domestic affairs, but he absolutely had to have to talk with his son, and with Sid Barrett. Talking to Sid was going to be much more enjoyable, so he went ahead and did that first. He was on his way up to Kid, he rationalized, so he wasn't avoiding the unpleasant task before him; he was just being efficient by talking to Sid on the way. Efficient, that was it.
"Listen," he said when his intelligence officer answered, "Can you send a couple of guards over here? Probably need three shifts. Kids brought two girls home and-"
Sid's laughter interrupted him.
"Isn't he a little young for that? He might need protection, but not the armed kind!"
"Can it, Sid. I've got a serious issue over here!" Lord kept his voice mild, but he really kind of wanted to throw his cell phone down the stairs.
"Sorry, can't help joking when you make it so easy. That's just the kind of guy I am."
Death stopped on the top step, "The guy you are is the kind who's going to set up a guard rotation for the west hallway on the second floor to keep a drug-addled street urchin and her mentally unstable sister from destroying the house or robbing it blind."
"I'm not even gonna ask."
"Good, You don't want to know." Lord Death paused for a moment before flopping into one of the spindly-legged sofas in the upstairs hall, "How do you reign Black Star in when he gets out of hand, Sid?"
"We don't. Matter of fact, Nygus just called me and told me to get my ass home because the kid is literally climbing the walls. Running him around the block a couple of dozen times usually helps."
"I thought school would calm him down a little."
"Yeah, we did too, but all it's doing is making him obsessed with beating the crap out of all the other kids to prove he's really somebody."
"At least he's not obsessed with matching. Kid is getting out of control," sighed the man who controlled life and death all over the world, "I had to have all the paintings put in the attic because they threw the symmetry of the house off. And don't even me started on the cleaning thing."
He'd just had to hire another maid to keep up with Kid's growing need for order and cleanliness. His latest freak was demanding dual paper holders in all the bathrooms so 'the toilets wouldn't be off balance'. The housekeeper, who adored the boy, was worried sick because it was taking Kid two hours to eat his dinner symmetrically and he'd go into a fit of unstoppable hysterics when he couldn't manage it.
"He's getting worse, huh?" Sid was all sympathy. Black Star didn't remember losing his family but he still rebelled against the knowledge of what they'd been and done. What he'd do if he not only remembered losing his mother, but had adored her...well, Sid didn't even want to think about that. And then there was the way Sophie's illness had finally played out. No wonder Kid was a mess.
"Yeah. Things are really going to hell since I sent Marie out to Oceania. She was able to help him stay on track, but I didn't have a choice, Sid. You know there just wasn't anybody else. I didn't have a fucking choice." Death dropped his head forward and pinched the bridge of his nose, "She suggested I put Kid into counseling, but he's going to be the next Lord. I can't have it confirmed that he's not right in the head. The rumors are bad enough. It makes me sick to say it, but he's just going to have to get through this."
"i hear you, man, I hear you. Nothing harder than not being able to help your own boy. Speaking of which, I need to go handle mine or Nygus is going to slit both our throats. Clay and Akane are on their way to the office; I'll pull them off duty and send them over to handle the first shift."
Lord Death sat up abruptly, "No, that's not necessary. Just send over a couple of enlisted men. Big ones. The scarier the better. I just need someone to make sure those girls stay in their rooms. Keep Clay and Akane on task. If there's a witch running around town I want the filthy bitch caught now!"
"You got it." Sid assured his boss hastily, "We'll find out what's going on. Don't worry." Nobody liked witches, but Lord Death was off the charts in the hatred department. Understandably, of course, after what the witches had done to his family. If anybody ever took Nygus away and screwed Black Star up they'd earn Sid's eternal hatred, too.
"Sorry. Forgive me," Lord Death said, his voice sounding exhausted over the line, "It's been a long day. Thanks for everything."
"Never a problem."
"Give Nygus my best."
"Will do."
Lord Death ended the call and slumped back into his seat. The phone dropped into his lap and he looked idly around the room. He finally registered the fact that all the furniture had been rearranged into mirror images along each wall and that, for some reason known only to Kid, a bijouterie table full of his mother's cameos was perched on the window seat. Lord Death was sure it had something to do with making the room even, or maybe Kid just didn't want to look at the cameos. Who knew. Sophie could have figured it all out in an instant, but she was gone and he had tables up in the air and delinquents in the house because of it. Should he put the table back down on the floor, or maybe just hide it away somewhere? It wasn't like the room would look empty without it, even if it was a huge space. Come to think of it, why on earth was this glorified landing the size of a small barn? Maybe he should empty it and turn it into a media room to amuse those two girls or something...
Realizing that he really was stalling, putting off speaking with his own son, Lord Death rose tiredly to his feet. For the twentieth time that day, he wished his wife could come back and help him deal with things like she used to. For the millionth time over the last two years he realized how much he'd relied on her for the parenting stuff. And for the very first time, he realized that he had every intention of keeping the two degenerate little gun-girls if it made his son happy.
A/N: As Nenena pointed out in one of her excellent commentaries, a timeline flaw in Soul Eater indicates that Sid was only about 12 when he rescued and adopted Black Star. I'm just gonna go ahead and ignore that one and assume Sid was a little older when he died than he said he was. If you haven't read Soul Eater Not!, Clay and Akane are members of Sid's intelligence team and when they're not moonlighting as NOT students, they're helping him track down a witch in Death City.
Replies!
Stropanthus: I'm so glad you saw the funny side of it - I didn't want it to be depressingly serious. Some of these will be one-shot vignettes, but they'll all be headed toward a point in the future after the end of the manga.
HiCrazyCow: Thank you so much! I really try to leave reviews for anything I read; it means so, so much when people leave comments for me. I'm thrilled that I'm getting the characters across in the way I imagine them. Getting words to reflect the things in my head while leaving room for people to get into the story with their own imaginations is tough for me. I'll be looking for more of your work, too!
REDEADED: Get 'em while they're cheap, buddy! Con ought to be a wild ride this year, and the price starts going up steadily from now on!
Make you a deal: I write your personal confrontation and you write my tension and physical/fight scenes! We should totally collaborate on some kind of crack-head story.