Imperfect
Summary: His imperfections follow him around, and make it hard to function. Kid's life thus far in stages of mental illness.
WARNINGS: Er...mental illness mentioned constantly, melodrama, probably DARK!Kid, probably not politically correct
The little boy stares at himself in the mirror, silently. A thin hand, barely any baby fat still clinging to it despite his age, reaches up to stroke the three white lines that run through his hair, ending halfway.
He's only four, but he's intelligent, and he knows that such imperfection should not be stood for in his world. But he doesn't know what to do.
He's only four, but he already hates himself.
At eight he starts wearing a hat, either a knit cap or something that resembles a fedora. This is partly to hide the white stripes, and partly so people won't ruffle his immaculate hair.
(He's already tried dyes. They don't work on Shinigami, which is a total shame.)
Then he realizes that the caps cause hair to go askew, and fedoras have the bad habit of tipping to the side.
He stops wearing hats after this.
(He doesn't come out of his room for a week.)
At ten he moves in to a new house, a gigantic place of blacks and whites, perfectly symmetrical because that's what he told his father he wanted.
His father says that he can't live at home anymore, it's too dangerous, he's old enough to fend for himself, and he'll visit plenty, okay?
Death the Kid takes his father's word, because if he doesn't what can he do?
Even though there is nobody there to tell him what to do, which most ten-year-old's would adore, he just makes himself stricter rules.
He wakes up at eight every morning, because eight is good number, and it makes him feel safe. Then he does something normal. (Pretty normal. Kinda.) Usually, he reads a book, or lays in his bed and listens to music. He likes classical, just as everyone expects him to, but he also likes other kinds of classics. Like rock. Sometimes he goes outside, to a tiny little park near his mansion, or even just to his back-yard. This is so his father won't be disappointed, or worried that his son is a shut-in. Because he kind of is. He doesn't need the outside.
(The only other living beings that enter his house are his father and his tutor every day of the week.)
The mansion keeps him busy for a while every day, usually from eight to nine or ten, arranging and rearranging all the furniture, dusting it off, sweeping and washing the floors, washing all of the plates over and over, and, most importantly, making everything perfectly, wonderfully symmetrical. Then, after all of this cleaning and dusting and symmetry-making, he takes a shower (shampoos his hair eight times) and then, after changing back into his casual clothes, washes his hands eighty times. (He counts.)
Then, he reads until he falls asleep. He never falls asleep until he wants to. He's glad that he can rebel against his obsessions, even if it's just a little.
They don't control him.
Not really.
At ten and a half, he stops caring about going out, and his father notices, and because he can't take time off of his work for his beloved little boy, sends Spirit to check up on him.
Spirit obliges, even though at this time he usually wants to go home to his little Maka.
He goes to the giant mansion, shaking his head when he sees it. Shinigami-sama, despite the fact that he has been around for such a long time still doesn't realize that leaving his obviously mentally unstable child alone. Even though Kid is mature...Spirit always worries a little. The child obviously isn't...damn, what can he say that'll sound politically correct?
The child obviously isn't sane.
He feels guilty thinking about it, and knocks on the door. The strains of some classic rock song drift along the mansion. (Welcome to the Hotel California...such a lovely place...such a lovely place...)
"Death the Kid?" He calls, the full name feeling clunky and awkward in his mouth, but he's never been able to really get to know the little boy. (Kid isn't so little anymore, but he's small and so thin.)
Nobody answers, and he suddenly feels afraid, fatherly feelings kicking in.
Then, he hears the sounds of sobbing coming quietly down the hall, and runs to the bathroom where they're coming from.
There stands Kid, chest heaving and eyes shining as he clutches the part of his hair that the sanzu lines are in and holds a large pair of scissors to it, and tries to cut.
"Kid! Kid! Kid!" Spirit tries to get through to the boy.
The scissors don't cut, it isn't possible. He's Shinigami, he can't cut off his sanzu lines.
"Kid! Let go!"
Instead of letting go, Kid flings the scissors at the mirror, watching them break the glass, shatter it. He chokes out thick sobs, and sinks to his knees. "I should be dead!" He almost screams it in his hysteria. "I should die! Why be alive? Why, why can nothing can be beautiful?!"
Spirit has no idea, but he tries to calm the child down anyway. "Every-thing's beautiful, Kid! It just can't be perfect!"
Kid just cries harder.
When word gets out of what will forever be referred to as 'the meltdown' by Kid, he is institutionalized.
He undergoes grueling psychological tests that he's never taken before, as doctor's wonder what exactly is wrong with him. OCD--it's been obvious from the start. But the erratic mood swings? The moments of hysteria?
He is soon diagnosed as a depressive Obsessive Compulsive. He's given all sorts of medications. Anti-depressants and anti-psychotics and anti-anxiety...not much really gets through to him. Counseling is suggested, but he refuses to go to any sort of therapy, and they barely try, so they have to make do with the medication.
His father gives him the first bottle (all the rest come in the mail every month, like clock-work). Anti-psychotic medication.
The little boy looks up at his father, blinking slowly. "Am I crazy?" He asks, very seriously.
His father doesn't know what to say, but his unsaid words hang in the air between them, thickly.
I thought you already knew.
Eventually it's decided that even though his immune system is largely resistant to the pills, the anti-psychotic's work best, and he begins to take those.
They don't work very well, and a period of time in which he is drugged goes straight through his eleventh year, which he can barely remember, only that he was excruciatingly unhappy. One thing he does remember, though--before his lucidity was permanently altered.
So, no, they aren't much help.
Well, they are, sort of, because he stops being quite as obsessed with symmetry.
He ends up just giving up on the medication, but continues taking it every day. That way, when anybody asks him--though they usually don't, because nobody's around him anymore--"have you been taking your meds?" or any variation of that, he can truthfully answer "yes". Because he is, but every day, after swallowing them and waiting eight minutes, he sticks his fingers down his throat--just like his doctor taught him to just in case he swallowed anything he shouldn't--and throws it all up.
So he starts being just as OCD as usual.
And that's okay, because on the pills he feels like he's flying above all the world, all the time, looking down, and not truly understanding what's going on.
He thinks he might be afraid of heights now.
He's twelve when he meets Elizabeth and Patricia (because that's who they are then, Liz and Patti don't quite appear until later).
He meets them while at a meeting in Brooklyn. (One that he is nearly forced to go to, and it feels weird because he barely ever sees the outside world of his own except for grocery shopping once a week.)
They're street girls he doesn't care about at all except for a few things, a few things that he notices.
They're sisters, though not twins, and certainly not identical.
They're weapons, and in that form they are identical.
They're tough as nails, at least the older sister is, good fighters--though certainly no match for him.
He invited them back to be his weapons, and the only reason he eventually gets Elizabeth to agree is for her sister, who is sold on the idea after just a few moments of persuasion.
He's thirteen when he starts actually calling the girls Liz and Patti.
And he's almost fourteen when Liz finally has him go out and go to a coffee shop out of his (sort of) own free will.
It's kind of sad, Liz thinks, when Kid, who is happily re-organizing the little sugar packets (blue near the top, pink near the bottom) in their little boat, offhandedly mentions that he hasn't been downtown for years, even though Death City is almost his city.
She asks him, almost jokingly, where he's been all that time, and he replies that he's been in his house, of course.
He's always had everything he needed on his block, with a small market being barely eight steps away, he says he's never needed to go out.
She lets out a derisive laugh, and says, what idiot thought you could handle being on you own?
He blinks at her, golden eyes through long eyelashes.
And shrugs.
(Because he isn't on his own anymore, and he isn't going to let his new happiness be marred by moments such as these.)
He's fourteen and a half when he starts at Shibusen and meets everybody. Well, he's already met Maka, but he hasn't seen her since before he was ten, so it kind of doesn't count.
He knows everybody considers his disorder a sort of all-encompassing quirk, and he embraces that, because when he knows that people don't take his problems seriously, he's sure he can learn to not take them seriously either.
Sometimes, after failing one too many tests he knew all the answers to, he takes the pills that have been in his medicine cabinet for who-knows-how-long, and then gets the best grades in the class.
And then he goes and throws them up.
At fifteen he realizes that slowly but surely, his OCD has begun to become something less serious, something more of an everyday thing everybody lives with.
It kind of fits.
And maybe, he thinks as he checks the paintings on his walls for the eighth time, Maka standing next to him, having come to pick him up for a meeting everybody's having at Deathbucks, that he might be okay some time.
At sixteen, while everything is going so much better for him, he gets sucked into a book.
In the Book of Eibon, minutes turn into hours and hours turn into days and days turn into weeks, and he barely brings himself to care. All he cares about, desperately, are his friends, and his symmetry, which in a way is better than it was at first, when symmetry was his only friend.
The bruises are perfectly visible and perfectly imperfect on his skin which has lost any color it ever had.
He's afraid he will never get color back, because everything is black and white now.
And now that he's stuck only with his thoughts or people that beat him at all hours of the day, he feels his mind start slipping from him.
He wonders if he's going crazy again.
And he holds on his hope, that there maybe will be somebody who will rescue him some time.
And whenever he hopes, he thinks he might be going crazier than before.