"When you learn that a truth is a lie, anger follows"

~ Grace Slick

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Sophie had always referred to the morning room as her boudoir; her hideaway when she needed time away from her bustling official headquarters. Her husband jokingly referred to it with its' literal translation, the Sulking Room. It cracked him up because Sophie never sulked. Half brought the house down when she lost her temper, yes, but never sulked.

And of all the places, his father had chosen to put his mother here when he carried her unconscious body home from Stein's lab. Kid hated the boudoir, uncomfortably reminded of all the good times he'd spent in it as a child and how, at the age of ten, he'd nearly died in it. The bed Sophie now lay on had been installed in the corner after Kid outgrew his bassinet. He'd napped there in the afternoons as a toddler, lulled into sleep by the rustle of his mother's papers, and the click of her keyboard. The soft murmur of her voice solving household and international tangles had been his favorite lullaby. After her son was born, everyone with news of failure or woe to impart quickly learned to call it in during naptimes, when Lady Death refused to raise her voice.

At the end, after a finely and malevolently crafted bit of magic had was driven into her soul; when she was losing her firm and loving grip on the world, Sophie had spent most of her time in the boudoir. She'd kept Kid with her as much as possible, struggling against her madness and barely able to let him out of her sight. Their final, blood-spattered moments had been spent here.

Marie stood at the foot of Sophie's bed, looking tenderly at her friend.

"She looks exactly the same," she brushed the slight bulge of her stomach, freshly reminded of the ten pounds of post-baby weight that stubbornly refused to go away. Kid didn't respond, but he looked at her, which was some progress. He'd been hovering awkwardly near the desk since they'd brought Sophie back to The Gallows, staring silently at the rug in the seating area and looking tragic. Marie continued, encouraged by the tiny response.

"She always seemed young, no matter what decade she was living in. I think that was the secret to her happiness; she always lived in the moment. Never got stuck in one particular time. Kami, Nygus and I used to have the best times with her when we were younger. We were in our late teens and early twenties, just starting out, but she seemed like one of us."

Kid digested her words for a moment before saying, "She doesn't seem like anybody now."

Marie came over and hugged him tightly, reminding him of the way she'd comforted him after his mother had...well after he'd thought she'd died.

"Try to remember how much she loved you, okay? She would never have hurt you if she'd been in her right mind. Blame the spell that witch put on her, but don't blame her. Even when things went so wrong in the end, she was trying to protect you."

"I know."

Kid's sight was inexorably drawn back to the white carpet in the seating area. The elegant tiptoes of Beaux Arts sofas and Louis XVI chairs had once rested on a blue and gold Aubusson; a priceless rug that was destroyed when his mother had tried to kill him on it. A psychotic break had convinced her that she could keep her son's soul safe by tearing it out of his body and hiding it in a little blue enameled box she'd had made especially for the purpose. Kid never understood why his father had replaced the rug at all. It wasn't like the room was in use; it had been locked up for seven years, and only the two Reapers knew where the key was. Some sentimental whim, maybe. Or perhaps it was there to hide the floor beneath it. Kid had always been afraid to look in case he saw his own blood filling the cracks in the parquet. It would have been impossible to get the sticky red out, no matter how hard the wood was scrubbed. By now it would have turned black…..

Suddenly all the air disappeared, and Kid struggled to breathe. The walls were caving in on him; spinning at the same time. He had to get out; get away from the spot where he'd almost lost his life and from the woman who'd tried to take it. The woman he'd adored and been betrayed by.

"I...I need….to...pardon me, Miss Marie, please excuse me!" he croaked, barely able to remember his manners before fleeing into the safety of the hall. There didn't seem to be much more air in it, but perhaps that was a good thing. Because the more he could breathe the angrier he was getting. Which made sense; oxygen fed fire, and Kid was burning up. Terror had turned, as it easily does, to pure fury. It was strong enough to propel Kid halfway into his Reaper aspect, and smoky, half-formed robes trailed behind him as he marched down the hall and through the foyer toward his father's study. The housekeeper, who had known him since birth, was shocked by the malevolent-looking specter who appeared as she was opening the front door to admit Sid Barrett. Sid took one look and reached past her, firmly closing them both behind the etched glass doors that separated the entry vestibule from the foyer. He wasn't going to let the distraught Mrs. Hurst get in the path of a Reaper on the warpath, and he didn't plan to mess with one, either. He had never been that kind of guy.

Lord Death was on the phone when his office doors exploded inward. They bounced off the paneling and the crack of walnut against walnut shook the vast space all the way up to the balcony, where Death's personal library resided. Several volumes tumbled down, cracking their spines or expelling the dust of centuries when they landed on the floor two stories below.

"I'll call you back," he said, hastily ending his phone call.

"That was Mireille," he said conversationally as if nothing unusual had happened. As if his son weren't standing before him bursting with vicious energy, "She was left behind in Paris, and I didn't want her to worry."

"Yes, we wouldn't want Maman's maid to fret," The words dripped with acid. Now Kid had another name to add to the list of people who'd known the secret of his mother's disappearance and had willingly deceived him.

"Kid…" Death's tone was stern, but there was a trace of fear in his voice. Not fear for his son, but fear of him. The cloud of deadly Reaper magic he'd been practicing at compiling was growing dense around him, and it prompted Lord Death to wonder if he was still capable of besting the boy in a contest of sheer power. He was so very unsure that for the first time he pressed a certain button hidden under his top desk drawer. It's signal alerted Spirit to evacuate and seal the Academy administrative center, archives and command posts. Sid's team went on active standby. Mrs. Hurst was notified to get the staff to the safe rooms, and Liz received a message to get Patty and follow them. The mirrors along the wall near his desk turned black as their master sealed off his various other dimensions, including the Death Room.

"You're afraid of me?" Kid's laugh was fierce and humorless, "And you have a protocol for it?"

"Of course I'm afraid," his father replied evenly, "Have you seen yourself?"

Faint black lines were starting to crawl over Kid's lower lip, and his eyes were glowing like skull-shaped coals. He'd encased himself in enough energy to take down Lord Death's most private, protected space, and half the house along with it.

"There's no telling what you might do if you lose control. We can't risk the safety of the people here and the information we're privy to falling into the hands of a madman."

"Scared that I might go mad?" his son snapped, "You mean like I've been trying to avoid doing for the past since I was ten? And mostly alone, while you watched from the sidelines? I'm just a necessary evil to you, aren't I? You need an heir, but you were never too worried about actually raising one!"

Death opened his mouth to explain his motivations, but Kid cut him off.

"Don't say anything. You've gotten good at not telling me anything, so why start now? Anyway, you can't honestly think I'll believe anything you say, do you? I am sick of you lying to me and hiding things from me. All I know is that most of my life has been a lie. A lie that you made so many people a part of. One that made Maka lose her mother so I could lose mine."

Death finally stood. He braced his hands on his desk and leaned over it toward his dangerously hurt and furious child.

"Kid, I tried to contain your mother with doctors and nursemaids for a year. Nothing worked. She's not a strong Reaper, but she's a hell of a lot stronger than most human beings. I couldn't risk letting her near you again, but I was not….am not, will never be, capable of destroying my wife."

"But you let me assume you were." Kid retorted, grabbing onto the back of a Chinese Chippendale chair to steady himself, "Let me grow up wondering if you might kill me if I got too crazy. You told me you killed her."

"I did not," Lord Death shook his head vehemently, "I never said that to you once."

"You said she was gone, or that she'd left us. Fuck that. You know as well as I do that you meant them to sound like euphemisms for death."

The chair splintered in Kid's grip and Death winced as the wreckage was hurled into a corner and shattered the glass in a nearby étagère. A moment later its mate sailed across the vast room, taking out everything in its path before landing precariously close to the fireplace. Death hurried to explain, trying to calm the storm before it broke completely and destroyed them both.

"I needed you to think it could never happen again. Needed you to feel like you were safe. If you knew your mother was alive, you wouldn't have had that security, and we both know what too much fear can do to a person." Death pointed upward, indicating the dark moon where his oldest son was imprisoned; a threat to the entire world in his fear-fueled madness.

"I had to get her out of Death City, and Mrs. Albarn wanted to go. She was strong enough to contain your mother, and they were friends. We told her she'd killed you. It was the only way we could keep her away, and it worked….until Maman found out you were still alive."

The fight drained out of Kid as suddenly as it had ignited.

"I wish she had died." he said bitterly, "She ruined my life. And you finished it off. As far as I'm concerned both of you can go to hell."

He turned his back on his father and fled, hurling one of the broken doors out of his way to facilitate his escape. More glass shattered as frames and knickknacks broke its fall. Death fell back into his chair and dropped his head onto the desk, protectively encircling it with his arms. Time seemed to stop, and it didn't start again until Liz appeared.

"I got the evacuation message, but then I saw Kid storm out of here like a maniac and….whoa."

She surveyed the devastated office with wide eyes.

"I take it he's not handling the news well," she said finally. When she didn't get a response, she strode over to the desk and smacked the wood near Death's head,

"Okay, talk to me! What the hell happened?"

Death had to expend some effort to raise his head, and when he did, Liz saw the telltale mark of tears staining the leather blotter.

"I've already been screamed at today by Spirit, Kid, and my wife, who I haven't laid eyes on for seven years. If you're going to yell at me too, can you please take a number? And maybe put it off until tomorrow?"

"I'm not gonna yell at you," she said, "I won't even say 'I told you so.'"

"You just did."

"Hm. Guess I did, didn't I? Come on over here and sit down." Liz brushed the shards of wood and glass off of a sofa and directed him onto it before picking her way over to the liquor cabinet. She poured a couple of stiff drinks into heavy bottomed crystal tumblers. The same brand of Scotch she'd drunk unbidden on her first visit to this office as a scared, angry, fifteen-year-old street urchin. The same glasses that he'd shocked her by using to serve her purloined liquor while he laid down the laws of her new existence as his son's personal weapon. One of them had been no drinking, but this was a rules-were-meant-to-be-broken kind of day.

"Here," she said, handing him one of the drinks, "You need this. And I'm having one too, whether you like it or not."

"It's the least of my worries tonight," he replied. In spite of his dead eyes, he didn't forgo the customary clink of his glass against hers.

"Besides," he said after taking a sip, "Unless I'm wrong this isn't your first one of the evening."

Liz grinned at him ruefully, "No matter how fucked up you get, you're never too fucked up to bust me."

He smiled wanly at her, "And I never will be. Remember that."

It was his way of assuring her that she and Patty would always have a place in his home and his life, which frightened Liz because it meant that Kid might not. Just the thought of having to choose between them made her lungs constrict.

"So, what now,?" she asked, staring into her glass while running her finger around the edge.

"I don't know," Death sounded lost, "I need to talk to Kami and find out what set Sophie off. I mean...obviously she found out Kid is alive, but I don't know how. I have to figure out what to do with her. And with Kid. I'm afraid I've lost him, Liz."

His voice broke, and he took momentary refuge in his drink. The liquor briefly warmed his throat and stomach but didn't make a dent in the ice around his heart.

"You need to wait until he calms down before you talk to him again," Liz said, "He took off, I'm assuming to see Maka, because that's all fucked up, too. Don't worry; he didn't drive. As soon as I got the red alert message, I got Patty out of the house and grabbed all the car keys on my way."

Lord Death patted her hand and thanked her gratefully. She'd thought even further ahead than he had, one more proof that she'd acted more as a parent to his son than he often had. Liz scooted over and leaned her head on his shoulder.

"He might half-kill himself on that skateboard, but at least he won't run anybody over. When he comes back, I'll talk to him too." she propped her feet up on the coffee table and had another long pull of Scotch, "But, dude, you gotta stop trying to protect him. You need to be honest with him from now on, and you really have to make sure that he's prepared to be the next LD. I don't think you understand how freaked out he is by the thought that he might have to figure all this," she gestured at the trashed office, "out on his own someday."

A phone rang, and they both instinctively grabbed their pockets. It was Death's, and Spirit was on the other side. Death nodded, and the mirrors flickered back on. His secretary was in one of them, informing them that a pre-Kishin was running amok in Iowa and that the US Department of Defense was holding on line one regarding the explosion out in the desert earlier in the evening. She also needed to reschedule the teleconference he was supposed to have had at 8 pm on the "North Korea issue."

In another mirror, Stein appeared, asking to see him as soon as possible, and Sid rang in to make sure it was okay to stand down and get things running again. Liz listened in, sad that her adoptive father had to continue dealing with the weight of the world's problems when his personal ones were already crushing him.

"What you're going through is awful," she said when they were alone again. She knew she needed to leave, that he had to go back to his work, but she couldn't go without doing something encouraging.

"But you'll be able to fix things. Kid does love you, you know. All your kids do." she leaned over and kissed his cheek.

He hugged her, sounding pitifully grateful when telling her that he didn't know what he would have done without her for the last five years. That she was a godsend.

"Nah," Liz forced a smile as she drained her glass and set it on the coffee table, "I'm one of the Brooklyn Devils, remember? I'm pretty sure the other guy sent me."