These characters are under copyright by Atsushi Ōkubo, Squar Enix, Yen Press, Shōnen,
Akatsuki Yamatoya. Madman Entertainment, Manga Entertainment, Funimation, and/or others. This is a work of fanfiction, for no monetary gain.
Chapter 20 – Panic Attack: How Can Kid Not Want to be Symmetrical?
Kid awoke abruptly and sat up scowling, immediately realizing he was back in a bed in the Auxiliary Infirmary, memory of overwhelming helplessness and mindless fury making his heart rate spike and his breathing ragged. He instinctively focused on the ward on his cast, the soothing, symmetrical lines of it to calm himself. He didn't know what he'd do once it was gone.
Maybe he could get a tattoo? So that he could always have that same warm feeling when he looked at his left arm. He imagined it clearly, outlined in black, intricate and perfect in his mind's eye and then he froze. Because he hadn't been imagining one on each arm, he'd been imagining one, on his left arm, just like now.
He felt a swell of panic so deep he couldn't breathe. He wasn't symmetrical. For a moment, he hadn't even wanted to be symmetrical!
He began clawing at the cast with his right hand.
"Hey, Kid! Liz wanted me to make sure… what's wrong?" Patty asked in alarm, as she ran up to him.
"I'm hideous! I'm an abomination! Get it off! I can't bear to look at it anymore!" Kid demanded, slamming his arm into the wall, trying to crack the plaster, gasping in pain.
"Kid, stop! Why are you hurting yourself? Come with me! You need to talk to Liz! She'll understand. She's not supposed to get out of bed, but she always knows what to say!" Patty urged.
"No, I need to get it off now! And… you're not symmetrical either! You're supposed to be with Liz!" But Liz was hurt, because he was so incompetent he couldn't even protect his Weapons, she'd almost died, she was hurt so badly, and even though she was still alive, she was going to be scarred, the perfection of her body had been ruined because of him, because he was such a hopeless, worthless, useless piece of asymmetrical garbage!
0 0 0
Death regretted having left Kid's side, to see Stein in his office before he fled for his laboratory, after making his rounds of the now nearly empty Infirmary. Spirit had had the same idea, and Death had mistakenly thought his son would still be unconscious, but Kid had fought his way back to wakefulness while he was gone.
He hadn't seen Kid this bad in years, not since he'd first realized how wrong his world was, and tried to fix it, when he'd had to remake Death Mansion the way his son needed it to be. Kid hadn't calmed down enough to eat or sleep until the first room at least, his bedroom, was perfect, though it had taken nearly a week to get it that way. Kid had passed out from exhaustion and finally slept the moment he was satisfied.
Now Patty had burst into Stein's office yelling for help, and by the time they'd reached Kid, he'd torn out half the nails on his right hand trying to claw off the cast and caved three holes in the wall from slamming his arm into it. For a moment Death actually suspected the little Witch girl Angela of treachery, of some kind of delayed spell, until he realized it had finally sunk into his son's unique brain that he only had the single ward, the single cast, and Kid just couldn't stand it a moment longer.
Kid's mental state was far too fragile for a crisis like this. Death didn't even hesitate, he just wrapped his son in shadow, knocking him unconscious again instantly.
"Why isn't he moving!" Patty shrilled, and Death realized how ominous that must look to the poor girl.
"It's alright, Patty. Kid's going to be fine. I just put him to sleep," Death explained.
He was shocked by the look of wide-eyed terror on her face.
"Get away from him! How could you do that! He's your son! Why would you kill him?" she screamed, turning into her Weapon form and shooting her Soul Wavelength bullets at him.
Stein grabbed her from behind, wrestling with the unfamiliar Weapon, the look on his face as flummoxed as he felt. "I don't understand. She's always been stable. Even without a Meister, she's had her sister, she's part of a pair of Weapons. Part of the blessing of her lower level of intellect has always been that stability."
"Patty, it's alright. Kid's not dead," Spirit reassured her calmly. "Lord Death didn't mean it like that, not like with a dog or a cat. He really just meant he made him go to sleep. Stop shooting. You might hit Kid by mistake."
Patty immediately transformed back. "I'd never hurt Kid," she claimed angrily, and then her eyes flicked uncertainly from Kid to him and then Death and Kid again. "He'd not dead?"
"Of course not. Forgive me, I didn't mean to make it sound like that," Death explained, still not quite sure why she thought he might ever kill his own son. Although she'd seen him attack Asura with that intent, so… The thought of ever having to subdue Kid like that, skin him alive and imprison him, only to eventually have to allow others to kill him anyway, made him feel his full hundreds of years of life for the second time, the first since the battle with Asura.
"Death, he'll be fine. Now tell us what happened here," Stein said calmly, with that clinical detachment he used to mask the strongest of his feelings.
Patty confirmed Death's conjecture about the cast, explaining that Kid was acting strangely when he woke up, that first he looked afraid, but then he started to calm down when he looked at the cast, and then he'd completely freaked out. He started screaming about how worthless he was, and tried to rip the cast off and then started smashing it against the wall.
Death wished Mifune had been there – the samurai was remarkably adept at soothing his son – but he was with Angela on a mini-tour of the DWMA, escorted by Black-Star and Tsubaki. It had been Stein's idea, to take their minds off the rescue mission of Justin that they couldn't participate in.
"We need to get that cast off of him. He honestly likely doesn't need it anymore anyway," Stein said clinically. "I've already taken his bandages off, but bones are harder to heal, even for Reapers – they take longer. His ribs and leg and arm should be completely healed within the next few days, especially with the enhanced healing the ward has been providing all this time, although he might have aggravated the fracture by slamming his arm into the wall that way," Stein said clinically.
"If I'd known you'd be back to your usual self and at work this quickly, I would have gone after Giriko myself," Death accused, regretting it in the next instant, when he saw the pain in Stein's eyes.
"Then you wouldn't have been here when Stein and your son need you most," Spirit reminded Death pointedly, hugging Stein, who thankfully leaned into the hug Spirit offered, after initially shying away from the embrace, the skittishness and hesitation showing that in spite of the typical air of unconcern he'd displayed, Stein was far from normal.
"Forgive me. I didn't mean to say that. I just… I can't stand seeing him like this. He's been getting so strong, he's done so well. To see him backslide this far…" Death shrugged helplessly. And then, thankfully, Stein reached out and pulled him into their embrace.
"It's alright. You don't have to deal with it all on your own. We're here to help you, and Kid. And he's not like he was years ago. He's stronger now. He has friends now, a whole support system he can rely on, when he remembers to use them. You know how unusual it is for him to be alone now, and he used to be nothing but alone, when you weren't with him. Even now, he was with Liz and Patty. They saw something was wrong, so Patty was able to get help before he could do too much damage to himself. He'll recover from this."
Death nodded, needing to believe it. He just wanted this to be over. He wanted the monster who had hurt his son dead, and he wanted Kid to be whole again.
The last thing any of them expected was to hear angry yelling from the hallway leading to Stein's office.
"Calm down Soul! Nygus is going to keep you out of the Infirmary if you keep yelling like that, or worse, Lord Death is going to find out we're back, before we figure out how to tell him why we let Giriko escape with Justin," Maka scolded, as she and Soul and Crona appeared in the doorway. They stopped, cold, as they realized they were being stared at, and who was there, Maka and Crona looking guilty, and Soul looking furious.
"What do you mean you allowed Giriko to escape with Justin? Why isn't Giriko dead and Justin with you?" Death didn't even realize he was yelling, that his shadow had filled the room, how threatening he looked, until Soul transformed and leapt into Maka's hands, Patty transformed and flew into her sister's hand, and both Stein and Spirit stepped protectively in front of the five children.
"Kids, no! Transform back, now! Don't do anything to antagonize him, get out of here with your Weapons while Spirit and I distract him!" Stein ordered, strong and sure, as if he'd never doubted himself for a moment, even as Spirit kowtowed in front of him, completely submissive and vulnerable. The sight and sound of the two men was enough to bring Death back to himself, and the shadows that had blanketed the room receded back into his body.
"It's alright. I'm not going to harm anyone. I'll be in the Mansion. The one room I wouldn't let Kid change," Death proclaimed, and then he darted for Stein's office, to the mirror. He couldn't go directly to the room, because he had smashed the single mirror that had been in that room, though he'd left everything else intact.
Death emerged in the hallway outside the door of the place he always went when the Madness howled the loudest and threatened to overtake him. He formed lungs to take a deep breath, carefully constructing a fully human body, needing it to feel the full measure of pain that would be necessary for this. And then he stepped into a room frozen in time, a silent memorial to the son he had lost, long before he was actually killed. He stepped into Asura's bedroom.
0 0 0
"Damn it, Death, don't!" Spirit yelled ineffectually, as Death disappeared down the hallway, his eyes frantically going to Stein's.
"Go! You know where he's gone, and he shouldn't be there alone, not this time, when he's like this, not now, when Asura's dead," Stein said. "I'll take care of Kid. You take care of Death."
Spirit gave him a look of gratitude and then he ran.
"Everyone's gone completely nuts, and it's all that bastard's fault," Soul claimed angrily, as he changed back from his Weapon form to his human form, but then he spotted Kid, on the ground, where Death's shadow had deposited him. "Kid! What's wrong with him? What happened to his hand?" he demanded, gently putting his hand under the torn and bloody nailbeds of Kid's right hand.
"He'll be fine. I just need to cut his cast off, before he wakes up again. His arm should be mostly healed by now," Stein claimed in that dispassionate voice that was somehow better than anyone else's bedside manner, because you just knew that Dr. Stein would help them.
"While I'm doing that, I want you to explain exactly what you were trying to find a way to tell Lord Death," Stein ordered, reminding Soul there was a reason he was the most powerful Meister in the Academy's history, that he was worthy of wielding Spirit, even though Spirit was officially Lord Death's Scythe now.
0 0 0
Soul explained the insane situation as best as he could, with Maka and Crona constantly cutting him off, especially Crona, which he wouldn't have suspected. He was confused as hell by what Crona told them all, about the separate souls they'd felt, and how Giriko had kept two of them from dying by weakening the others, including his own. Or they all had. He still didn't know what any of that meant.
"You used your Witch powers to heal Giriko?" Stein asked Crona levelly, his voice neither accusing nor surprised nor incredulous, just fact finding.
"Yes sir. I had to. I couldn't let him die. I couldn't hurt Justin like that, not when he'd begged me to save him. The rest of you don't know Justin as well as I do. He's never cared about anyone like that, enough to want to save them. I mean, he's saved people before, lots of times, for Lord Death, but only because it was for Lord Death. I don't think he ever really cared if any of those people lived or died. But he didn't want Giriko to die."
"You know about Stockholm syndrome, Crona, we talked about how that was part of how Medusa controlled you, all those years, because you were reliant on her for your survival, that when you said you loved her because she was your mother, you really meant because she was your captor but had allowed you to live, that she never had maternal feelings for you, and you never had filial feelings for her?" Stein said patiently.
"Yes, I know, and I agree, but that was me. This didn't look like that, it was deeper than that, it was like seeing you and Lord Death and Spirit, the way you'd die for them, or Soul and Kid, or Tsubaki and Black*Star, her, not him, because he's too dense to realize yet, and oh no, I wasn't supposed to ever say anything about that in front of him, I'm sorry Tsubaki, I just don't know how to deal with Dr. Stein thinking I don't know the difference between real love and messed up captivity feelings, because Maka needs to know I do, and Justin needs me to speak for him because he's not here, and I'm not very good at talking, and I won't know how to deal with it if I mess this up."
Black*Star was looking at Tsubaki, really looking, and she was blushing, but she looked him in the eye. "You shouldn't try to keep secrets from Gods. I've known all along how you feel about me," Black*Star claimed with his usual bravado, even as he crossed his arms defensively.
"I didn't want you to feel awkward about not feeling the same way," Tsubaki apologized gently.
Black*Star frowned, uncrossing his arms. "Who told you I don't feel the same way? Tell me who the little liar is so I can punch them for you," he demanded.
Her eyes widened at the implication, the unintentional confession, and astonishingly, Black*Star blushed.
Soul would have kidded him about it, if still wasn't so pissed off at Crona and Maka for letting Giriko escape, and worried about Kid.
Tsubaki kissed Black*Star on the cheek. "You're so sweet, offering to beat them up for me, when you know I can do it myself," she said happily.
Soul went to Kid's side, watching critically as Stein began sawing off the cast, the sound of the blades making him fume. It sounded like Giriko, and if Kid had been awake to hear that, it would have been freaking him out, and he wanted to murder that smug bastard. How could Maka and Crona just let him get away after what he'd done? He'd almost killed Kid.
And why didn't he kill him anyway? To hell with what that fucked in the head Autonomous Weapon thought. Except Maka would have hated him then, and Crona would have tried to stop him, and if he hurt Crona, Maka would have really hated him, and damn it, this was all so messed up! Things like this weren't supposed to happen, now that the war was over, now that Asura was dead.
"It will always be dangerous to be a Weapon or a Meister or even a Reaper," Stein said softly as he cut away the last bit holding the cast together, in that creepy way he had of knowing what everyone was thinking, especially the more fucked up the things they were thinking were.
"That's why Meisters and Weapons and Reapers are so strong, though, so they can protect others from the dangers of the world, the ones not strong enough to protect themselves. Sometimes Meisters die and sometimes Weapons die and very rarely, even Reapers die. But Kid isn't in danger of dying, or even truly going insane, though it might have looked like that to some of you. This is who Kid is. His need for symmetry, for balance, is an innate part of him. If anything, because he's always so carefully controlled, he's a lot less likely to fall to the Madness than someone like Death.
"Also, because he's still human, for now: he still has a body, he still needs to eat and breathe, he can still bleed. The danger will be greatest once those things become optional for him. Gods are at their most dangerous when they forget what it's like to be human, when they can't remember what it is they were trying to protect. Spirit and I are going to see to it that Death isn't able to forget that again. It's up to you, Soul, to make sure Kid never loses sight of that for himself. And Liz and Patty of course, to a lesser extent. But you do realize one day you'll become the Reaper's Death Scythe, that Kid will be the one wielding you instead of Maka? Or at least, along with her," he qualified, looking at the mirror Death had disappeared into.
"Yeah, I get that. Although I always kind of pictured Lord Death being the Reaper to wield me. I mean, in order for Kid to…" He frowned, looking at the mirror.
Stein sighed. "Lord Death will die, eventually, you know. Every being that lives eventually dies. Even Reapers aren't immortal. But hopefully it will be a very, very long time until Kid becomes the new Lord Death."
"Excuse us for interrupting, but Angela wanted to offer her assistance," Mifune said, holding the little Witch girl in his arms.
"Now that I'm feeling better and am stronger again, I'd like to finish healing Kid's arm. Now that he doesn't need the cast anymore – not just the healing, the protection – I can drain my magic from the ward, along with Mifune's and my protection wards, and mix it with the rest of my magic to heal his arm directly. And his ribs and leg."
Stein frowned, but not in an angry way, in a thoughtful way. "Actually, Kid's own Reaper healing ability has rebounded, now that he doesn't have so many severe injuries overtaxing it. What would actually help him more would be if you could heal Liz instead. Because I know it's not just seeing her badly injured and in bed that has him so upset, but the scars she's going to have, and from what Crona was saying, Witches can heal without leaving scars. Seeing her well again, and not scarred, would be the best thing you could do for Kid," Stein said.
"Oh! I can do that!" Angela said brightly.
"No way. I'm fine, I'm tough. You fix Kid," Liz complained.
"Nu-uh. The Doc's right, Sis. You know Kid would feel loads better if you were alright again. He yelled at me for being alone before, because I wasn't being symmetrical with you, and the way he looked, like it hurt to say it, even though it was true, I don't want to see that look anymore. Kid's eyes aren't supposed to look like that. They're supposed to be golden and smiling, like the Sun."
"Patty, Kid's eyes haven't ever smiled like that crazy Sun," Liz scolded.
"Of course they have! They do every time we're in perfect symmetry, or when he sees Maka's ponytails are exactly the same length, or there's just enough ice cream left for two more spoonfuls, or lots of times!" Patty argued.
"She's right, you know. I've seen it. Before he met you girls, he had the saddest eyes I'd ever seen, next to Spirit's. But ever since you've partnered with him, his eyes have been changing. They won't ever be as perfect as Death's, because they're not the color of Spirit's hair, but they're still beautiful when they smile," Stein said unexpectedly.
"Death's eyes are the color of my father's hair? You mean he really does have a face behind the mask?" Maka asked in surprise.
"Sometimes," Stein admitted, mysteriously.
"OK, enough. It's just too weird hearing you people talk about Kid's eyes like that. I mean, they're just eyes, for goodness sakes. He just uses them to see like everybody else," Liz snapped.
"So you'll let me heal you?" Angela asked eagerly.
Liz frowned suspiciously. "This had better not hurt," she grumbled. "Not that I can't take it, but you'll upset Patty," she added, as if her toughness had ever been in question.
"It won't, I promise. It just feels sort of warm and tingly, like being hugged by kittens. At least that's what Mifune told me," Angela said wisely.
"Kittens, huh?" Liz asked, with a smirk.
"When you live with Angela, you learn to describe things in terms of kittens," the gentle Samurai said, obviously not feeling the same need as Liz to appear tough.
"OK, Cat Girl, do your thing," Liz grudgingly agreed.