AN: I felt the need to update before I went on vacation. Real life has decided to suck me into a black abyss as of late, so it might be a little poo. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

When they had first met, all three of them had doubted their ability to adapt to one another. Liz and Patty lie on one side of the spectrum in both class and personality; Kid sat on an island he had made for himself miles and miles away. It was impossible to close up a hole like that.

Instead, they would have to build a bridge.

Initially, Kid had been eerily unfamiliar with the ways of human illness. He'd never been that close to humans before allowing the sibling weapons from Brooklyn into his home, so he'd never bothered to examine the mannerisms and weaknesses of their species, shrugging their susceptibility to disease off as a trait overlooked by the process of their evolution that nothing but time could help. He accepted the fact that they succumbed to the warfare of germs much easier than any Shinigami ever would with ease and kept their fragility in mind, but he had no idea that the affects of a simple influenza bug could very severe, and a string of the rhinovirus can look like Hell on the outside of the human body - it was merely a matter of being ignorant. Being sick, he had always thought, was just as it sounded: If a human felt sick, they could sleep it off and get over it. His father had told him how being sick felt, but no one had ever warned him about how being sick looked.

His fear was therefore understandable when Patty came home from a day of shopping with a weak, limp, and groaning Liz clinging desperately about her waist, her feet dragging like the limbs of something half-dead. Her face was a pallid grey, her normally bright cheeks washed over with a sickly hue that was nearly a freakish green in coloration. None of her muscles seemed to be functioning well enough to keep her own weight up, and he could see even from across the room that she was incapable of supporting herself, instead relying entirely on her sister for transportation. To Kid, she looked about ready to melt into a pasty concoction on the floor and, being entirely unfamiliar with her symptoms, he instantly felt a raw, feral panic that lanced him speedily to his feet.

"Patty!" He cried, scrambling around the table and bee-lining for them. His eyes had gone wide with horror at the sight of his ailing partner as he examined her carefully - was she bleeding? Were her bones broken? He couldn't tell! "What's wrong? What happened to Liz? Did someone hurt her?" He extended his fingers to touch her and search for any obvious injuries, but Patty pulled Liz out of his reach like she was something of great monetary value, grinning deviously.

"No, it's okay!" She announced, punctuating her declaration with a booming laugh. She chose not to elaborate on what had happened and instead continued walking across the floor, ignoring the poor boy blatantly. Frantic and afraid, Kid made glanced down to ensure that blood hadn't pooled underneath their feet and, after confirming that neither of them had any apparent open and leaking wounds, he tried again.

"Why does she look so uncomfortable? Was there an accident? Did she do this to herself?" He demanded, firing questions rapidly as he followed behind them. His fingers (were they shaking?) stretched to touch Liz's back (yes, they were shaking) - and, as if she'd read his mind, Patty did a little hop-skip out of his reach, Liz's pseudo-corpse bumping right along with her.

"Shoo, fly, you're buggin' me," she replied cheerfully, simply. Her unwillingness to comply with his requests was becoming physically painful to him, and for a moment he considered grabbing her by the throat and giving her a good throttle, if only out of sheer annoyance. He wasn't exactly used to the verbal abuse, either, and her cruelty towards him only served to puzzle him even deeper. Liz mumbled something in tone guised by misery, but her vocalizations went unnoticed as the trio began to painstakingly make their way up the steps, each member of the party a bit uneasy and off-balance in their own, special ways. Kid stood behind Liz with his palms out in case Patty dropped her - but Patty didn't drop her, and the feeling of being unneeded was somehow incredibly hurtful to him. He was completely unused to any sort of rejection.

"Will you at least tell me if she's alright?" He asked, forcing his tone to be level lest he give his weapon the angry response she desired so fervently. His patience was slipping irrevocably further away from his grasp with every question Patty dodged, however, and he knew he couldn't keep his guise up for long. "She looks like a wreck," he added in an attempt to communicate his concern to her, hoping that his feelings would sway her unnecessary adamancy.

Patty said nothing. That bout of silence proved to be too much for him, and something within him snapped in an instant, the act he'd worked so hard to build up collapsing under the pressure of the situation. "This isn't funny, Patty! Just tell me!" Kid demanded, fully aware of the lunacy that had edged into his voice. He was new to this whole caring thing, as were they - was she really finding his cluelessness that funny? She probably would have told him by now if it was serious; yet, there was Liz, looking about ready to deposit her stomach contents on the glassy surface of his flooring, and he had no idea why. She could at least tell me that Liz is alright, he fumed mentally as his eyes bored holes into the back of her head, his fists grasping the air by his sides. That's the least she could do. It's all I want to know. That, and he wanted to know whose face he had to break for doing this - if anyone was at fault. Really, he had no idea.

Patty chose that moment to turn around and face him. Her grin was juxtaposed comically against Liz's grimace of despair.

"You're stupid, Kid!" She exclaimed, as if that statement would somehow clarify things for him. When he continued to look impatient and unhappy, she heaved a sigh, adjusting her grip on her sister with a roll of her eyes. (Liz had begun to slip at some point and her knees nearly reached the floor by the time her caretaker had spotted the error, poor thing.) "Liz is sick. That's it. Dummy." She paused to gauge his reaction, then rolled her eyes again. "Flu-bug. Geez."

Kid had to blink back his surprise.

"Flu-bug?" He parroted. The flu, as in influenza, as in the human illness? That was it? Liz looked dead.

"Flu-bug," Patty confirmed, shifting again. Kid the anxiety and rage he'd felt in the moments prior rush out of his body with a deep sigh of relief.

"You could have told me that earlier," he said, folding his arms indignantly. He was a little embarrassed now - he'd certainly thrown quite the fit. "All I wanted to know was if Liz was okay."

"It's fun to see you get all huffy," Patty replied, giggling. "You look like a chicken." She left him gaping at her in disbelief as she pranced into Liz's room, humming a bright and happy tune that echoed through their vacant halls.

Although Patty had told him that she would break four of the fingers on his left hand and only three on the right if he snuck Liz's room while she was sleeping, Kid couldn't help himself. She'd looked so helpless before, when she was being carried across the living room and up the steps... Her state was nothing short of frightening to him. He peeked through the crack in the doorway from the hall and, with the carefulness of a child sneaking into the kitchen for a midnight snack, slipped inside, his breathing stilled. His footsteps sounded unnaturally loud and cut through the silence like many tiny daggers, but he wasn't afraid of waking Liz up, not in the least - she was sleeping like the dead. Knowing that Patty would respond to even the slightest sound of chair legs against the floorboards, he eased a seat from the corner of the room to Liz's bedside without making a sound and sat heavily, folding his arms on his lap.

Flu bug, Patty had told him - and with such confidence! Frankly, he didn't believe her, and nothing would convince him otherwise. He had been sizing them up since the moment he'd seen them and, so long as his research was correct, someone with the strength of these two would never fall so unquestionably to the wrath of a simple virus. But as he gazed down at Liz's face, noting the way she seemed so vulnerable and green with nausea, he couldn't help but question his own theory. This was the woman who he had just recently let into his home, one of two; this was the woman who pulled him from the chasm of hysteria, the woman who still sometimes threatened to leave when she didn't get her way, the woman who begrudgingly accepted his soul's wavelength in a way that was bitter but getting better every day, just like he was. He was one of his two pillars, and without two, one couldn't stand.

Flu bug.

He leaned down and placed his arms over the bed, resting his chin on the tops of his hands. She seemed so ill even in sleep, and he couldn't do anything to help - useless, unneeded. To think the gun that faced his terrifying disorder with a brave face, the gun that he'd pulled out of a dog-eat-dog world, could fall so easily to something he could see only with the aid of a powerful microscope... He closed his eyes and let his thoughts lead him, and he fell asleep within a matter of moments, dreaming of healthier days in which he could help everyone he was just beginning to love.

Patty pushed the door open with the back of her hand and smiled, silhouetted by the light shafting in from the halls. Liz cracked an eye open at the sound, smirking at her sibling and craning her neck so that her temple pointed towards their meister.

"Thought he wasn't allowed in here," she said, scooting into a more upright position. It was a 24 hour flu to them and a decade flu to her, but at least she was beginning to feel better. The puking had stopped, at least.

"Don't talk so loud, Sis," Patty scolded, smothering a giggle with her palms. "He's sleepin'." She crept into the room with exaggerated sneaking posture, sliding up beside the bed and laying a hand across her sister's forehead.

"Sis feels a little less warm," she said, nodding her approval into the darkness. Liz smiled against the hand, though it was clear that the gesture was directed at their meister.

"He was getting ready to punch some sucker out, wasn't he?" Liz asked. Patty giggled again, nodding.

"Flu bug, the bastard," she said in a deep voice that was probably meant to imitate Kid's usual monotone. "I oughta give the son-of-a-bitch a piece of my mind."

They had refused to let him in at first, but she would let him stay - besides, he'd probably never seen the flu before, anyway. It was just his typical, knee-jerk reaction to things that were out of the ordinary: He needed to understand.

It meant a lot to her. Flu bug - the bastard. He would've done something if he could. That was all that mattered.