Nothing In This World Is Strange.

(Title: Monitored.)

Author note: I do not own this.

…

…

Time is flickering to a stop and shuttering forward.

He glances a fraction to his left. Liz is there, staring forward with a sharp expression. He can feel the tension in her, bound tightly to her muscles and bones. Her hands are out of her pockets, fingertips brushing the thighs of her jeans as she inhales.

He glances to his right and a second passes with all the drawn out expanse of an hour. Under the yellow-white shine of hospital lighting Patty looks no better than her sister. Kidd can see the hollows under her eyes. He knows that her skin has never been this particular shade of pale. (Not even when he first caught sight of them in an alleyway. No, not even then.) There is worry and a fierce sense of protectiveness streaking across her soul. It is as bright as a nova.

They stand in the hallway, white tile under their shoes, the unbearable smell of bleach and copper and acid present in the air. Kidd tugs at the bottom of his suit jacket and notes that both siblings have again taken up sentinel closer to him than normal.

There are a few empty gurneys pressed up against the wall, the closest one to them catches his eye. He fixates on the glint of the metal and tries not to think about where they are. He can hear phones ringing. Nurses chatter and scrape pens across papers on clipboards. Monitors hum and beep. The muted television screen down the hallway blinks images, the national news station.

He isn't sure when he backed himself against the wall, but nobody has spared them so much as a glance. Between the adrenalin kicking around in his body and the light (it seems to reflect off of everything) Kidd finds himself trying to remember how to breath.

A nurse comes out of one of the glass walled rooms, Liz moves. The eldest weapon takes a half step forward, opening her mouth to call after the scrub clad nurse. Kidd isn't looking at Liz, his glances are ghosting over the doorway the nurse just exited. He had not bothered to ask which room the scythe technician was assigned. Patty had gently grasped his forearm after forging his name on the visitor sign in sheet, wordlessly guided him forward.

He assumed the siblings knew where they were going.

Liz doesn't take more than three steps from him before he senses Patty's soul brushing against his own and reaching out to her sibling's. The oldest weapon freezes mid-step and backtracks to Kidd's side without a sound. Time pauses for a few heartbeats as the young reaper recognizes their actions for what they are. Anxious paranoia.

Part of him is pleased that they are uneasy, he gains a measure of comfort knowing that they can be out of their element. He instantly regrets the thought, because he would never wish this stomach knotting residual fear on anyone.

The three of them do not speak as they hold conference, light strands of their resonance link broadcasting their thoughts as a young white-coated doctor glances at a chart out in the hall. Liz is apologizing in a steady stream of whispers that sweep around Kidd's soul like vapor. Kidd cannot deconstruct the way she is apologizing, it feels like a plea for forgiveness and a cold admission of sins wrapped up in a prayer. Patty keeps touching him, her soul sparking against his in resonance and somewhere outside of their link he realizes that her hand is on his elbow. The youngest weapon is assuring both herself and him, repeatedly and soundlessly mouthing that they are together again. He can feel her silently forming a hundred oaths swearing that they will never let him go.

The two siblings are smothering him with scraps of unorganized memories and thought. He picks out some of it, quiet moments Patty offers forward of breakfasts spent alone. Liz is showing him snapshots of Gallows mansion's front door. She is trying to explain to him how difficult it was to enter the house without him, or the knowledge of where he was. She tells him that Patty hadn't touched anything and then forces forward a blurry memory of the two of them trying to ease the front door closed as softly as they can. They had been fearful, careful. Gallows became a tomb, a memorial to maintain until he was returned to them.

Time has been steadily speeding forward, what feels like a week passing as they stand in the hospital hall. Kidd is absorbing everything from their resonance, even as flashes of his imprisonment leave blindingly white impressions against his eyelids. He is dazed, swaying on his feet as Patty tells him (a stream of specific emotion and a smattering of images cross the link between them) that they could almost feel his presence with them whenever they were in the house. The memory of something old and dark and all encompassing in it's emptiness mashes against his consciousness.

Kidd closes off their link, assembling temporary walls to hold back his memories from them. They will learn everything in time, he promises himself this. Liz snatches the words from him before the link completely fades, Kidd feels her swirl a question against his soul.

They fade back into the real world, Kidd feels out of sync with his body for a moment and flexes his fingers. The gritty brightness of the hospital causes both siblings to squint for a moment. Kidd steps forward and feels Patty's shoulder bump into his upper arm. He inhales as the two siblings fall into resonance again, wordlessly reaching for his soul to complete their circuit.

He connects to them shallowly, letting them feel the tenor of his emotions. He hold back his thoughts.

He is crossing the hallway, eyeing the name on the chart in front of him. It doesn't say "Albarn" or bear any of the Academy insignia, so he moves down the hall toward the next clipboard. Both Patty and Liz ignore the charts. The eldest pistol is looking back over her shoulder and the youngest has slid in front of him, keeping her head forward. Their anxiety and level of focus unsettles him to the point where he re-reads the name on a chart three times before he recognizes it as "Albarn." The simplistic image of a skull is stamped on the bottom left corner on the first page of the chart. Kidd slides the clipboard off of its hanger beside the door and hands it to Liz.

The eldest pistol doesn't spare the chart a second glance. She is too occupied keeping watch over the hallway. Her glance is fixed to the back of a nurse's sneakers as they vanish around a corner. She exhales, the hallway is empty for a few precious moments.

Patty is gently forcing the door open, white knuckling the handle as she tugs Liz across the threshold. Kidd slides inside and pivots to face the two siblings as the door clicks shut. One of Kidd's eyebrows is cocked upwards as he whispers a calm question across their link. Both siblings look suddenly tired as they try to explain, the resonance hums darkly when Liz mutters something about wanting to be left alone.

The volume in the room is suddenly turned on, the in-out of the scythe technician's breathing and the steady blip of her pulse across a screen feels a shade too loud. Soul shifts against the wall, his hand tightening against a cheap plastic cushioned chair, knuckles turning bone white.

Soul is speaking his name, nodding a fraction and setting his mouth into a grim line. Kidd catches the spooled tension wound tight at the edges of the weapon's tone. He can feel Liz glancing at the closed blinds with something that feels like approval and a curious fear. Across the room, behind the scythe technician's bed is a window with its blinds pulled open wide. Soul is looking at their trio with a gloomy respect.

Kidd shifts his weight from one hip to the other, finally stilling himself and swallowing back the dry patch in his throat. He lets his eyes set themselves on Maka. Patty is easing behind Kidd as he steps forward to the base of the technician's bed. Liz's voice registers in the young reaper's ears as she asks Soul why the blinds are shut. Kidd smirks a little as the red-eyed weapon replies. Soul hadn't wanted anyone bothering his technician.

The young reaper is thankful for the privacy. He feels a pang of homesickness, the seclusion of Gallows calling to him. Time slows and folds inward onto itself.

Maka looks smaller than she should, a frail assemblage of a body instead of the capable warrior he knows her to be. He feels her soul perception register the extra bodies in the room. It reminds him of spider silk floating along a light breeze. The scythe technician's mind stirs under the weight of morphine and broken ribs.

He knows that she wants to speak to him. Her soul is already pressing insistently into his own, asking for contact. Behind him Liz grimaces. She can feel the link become complicated.

The young reaper slides Maka's soul away from his own (Liz exhales, the link between them shifts back into place like a clock being wound) he guides her back into sleep.

Kidd freezes as time catches up to him, a rush of sound and the glint of light from the window off the metal framing of Maka's hospital bed. He stares at his hand, it is open and facing palm down, inches away from the soft cotton of the scythe technician's blankets.

He cannot remember how it got there.

The young reaper looks around quickly. Liz is perched beside the empty plastic chair, Patty stands next to the door and shifts her weight cautiously. Soul is quiet, eyeing the palm of Kidd's hand with a cold stare. He is shaking off the feeling of warm darkness and the memory of gopher's face, furious as he landed another blow to Kidd's ribs.

He pulls his hand back and tugs at the bottom of his jacket. The material felt dull and altogether not the same as he remembers it. Inside their resonance link he is greeted with images of the second floor master bathroom shower at Gallows mansion. He recognizes their effort, feeling the gritty fragments of rock in Liz's hair and the dust still clinging to Patty's arms and legs. He is grateful for their patience with him and quietly asks one more favor of them. They bring their attention to a broad point within the link, listening, waiting.

He inhales deeply. Inside the link he requests to stay a few moments more, he pleads for their patience and reverently swears that he will explain everything in time. Liz attunes herself to the last portion of his words and he feels her shudder with the understanding that there is so much between them now. So much space they need to fill, so much that could have happened to him.

Patty's anger at the thought of being him being harmed is violent, a nova that could set the world aflame without effort. She is crying her apologies, her blood signing with the need to destroy anyone who could have possibly harmed him. Their combined anger and agony fill up his lungs for a moment. He cannot breath without tasting their emotions in his mouth.

Kidd whispers that they are here now. Woven into the words is the silent plea for calm. Liz quiets herself, tuning down their resonance until her and Patty are dull voices in the back of his mind. He calmly reminds them that they are safe. He swings the focus of their joint attention to Maka's form on the bed. Time jolts forward and he pulls himself together.

Resonance is turned down, nothing more than a warm hum along Kidd's spine. He smirks shakily, glancing at Soul. The weapon has moved to stand on the left of his technician's bed and is looking at the young reaper with intensity. (Kidd is distantly aware that they are in this room because Soul allows it.) The weapon is exact movement and sharp lines, tuned into his technician. Protective.

Kidd inhales again.

Monitors are beeping out the scythe technician's steady pulse. Kidd is quiet when he looks at Maka's thin right collarbone. He breaths out a thank you. It is part prayer and part reverent offering, the sound makes Soul go still.

The red-eyed weapon is prodding for an explanation. He is already saying that anyone would go after Kidd, that comrades are not allowed to leave each other to rot in demonic literature. That in reality the pistol siblings would have gone after him alone, so in a way he and his technician were only providing back-up. Kidd arches a brow and the weapon is quiet.

He speaks suddenly and with all the composed calm of his birthright. He is speaking only to Maka's unconscious frame. Soul listens, waiting. Kidd tells the scythe technician that she had come across another grigori soul. He explains that the soul's owner was the least helpful and powerful of Noah's henchmen, and that he had been assigned to be Kidd's caretaker.

The young reaper continues, eyes glancing between Maka's jaw and the patch of blanket pinned down by her arm. He tells her he heard Noah issue the order to collect her. He is quieter when he tells the space between her fingers that he spent time worrying about her. He pries his eyes from her jaw line to glance at Soul.

It is difficult to tell time properly in the place where he was held. He tells Soul this and then clears his throat. He mutters a calm apology and then corrects himself, it was difficult, he says. Kidd catches Soul wince and reminds himself that he is no longer in that place. He smirks and looks back at the scythe technician.

Kidd tells her that he mocked the henchmen when he returned without her. He continues, directing his glance at the open window as he says he is proud of her, and that he expected her to properly handle her opponent, no matter whom it was that Noah sent. Soul is still, looking at the ground as Kidd speaks.

The young reaper's face becomes expressionless when he tells Maka that she had unknowingly saved her weapon's life by evading capture. Kidd's tone is matter-of-fact when he says that Soul would have been killed, as he was not wanted for Noah's collection. He hears Liz inhale hard at the words. The red-eyed scythe runs a hand through his hair quickly. His eyes are questioning when he finally meets Kidd's stare.

He glances back at the thin scythe technician, tugging on the cuffs of his jacket. The room is silent. The resonance link between himself and the two siblings is quiet and empty.

Kidd cannot explain anymore. Had she been awake, Maka would simply run her soul against his own. Instead he is left scrabbling for words, talking to a girl who cannot hear him while hiding from the world in a hospital room. His frustration sparks across the link and it is absorbed by Patty in a moment.

It is Liz who steps forward and shatters their chaotic moment of peace. Her heels click across the floor and she appears at the young reaper's side. A second later Patty makes the same movement, her arm brushing against Kidd's in a familiar way.

Time is lurching backwards and spinning around like a top. Kidd is not sure he can count the seconds since someone last spoke, has it been years? He is unaware of the day or the hour for a span of heartbeats. Patty calms him, wrapping him up in a semblance of order as she counts the hours, minutes and seconds since they reclaimed him from his prison.

He cannot bring himself to question her. There is something undeniable and strange in the way she knows exactly the moment they got him back.

The eldest pistol is feeling around Kidd's soul for the proper words. Her technician has lost the ability to finish his task. She can feel that there is more to say, not much more though. She reaches into him, across his being and gently takes the words he has to offer her. He protests, insisting deep within their resonance that the words are not enough. Liz knows there is a truth to his statement. Patty echoes her agreement deep in their link.

The siblings speak aloud in unison. Their voices have rarely harmonized outside of a resonance link and the effect is stunning, coldly graceful and pitch perfect. Soul is wide-eyed as they speak their technician's words. They owe her much, and she has their thanks.

Kidd does not know when he had stopped paying attention to sound but it hits him again. Liz is opening the door and Patty is easing him out into the hallway. The world beyond Maka's hospital bed is not nearly as quiet. It is less peaceful too, Kidd notes. Nurses are walking the halls for their rounds, doctors carry folders and syringes full of clear liquids. The wheels on a cart clatter and squeal somewhere out if sight. There are voices and the sound of a baby crying very distantly. A phone on the wall rings. The tile is scuffed underfoot.

He had aged a millennia inside that place. He had existed as nothing more than a thought, the spark of a life and the energy of a soul. For a time he had forgotten his body, had been forced to simply be without it. That sort of darkness had been warmth and light and chaos. In it he had found salvation and hell.

He had imagined their deaths, over and over. The deaths of everyone, the frozen empty landscape of the earth after he had his way and made it nothing. He had seen his ability, so far beyond that of his father. He had known that he could bring the world to its knees and re-define order and symmetry and chaos. All of this he found within himself. Within that blank warm nothing, that dark.

Kidd is unaware that he had stopped moving. Patty is behind him, her back nearly pressed into him as she tries to attune her soul with his for resonance. Liz stands in front of him, soul singing with sparks of anxious panic. Her eyes are gunmetal and sapphire. One of her hands is clasped around his shoulder.

He inhales sharply and she glances over his shoulder, checking for an enemy that is not there. He can hear it now, her words inside their link. She is telling Patty that it is alright, that they will be alright. Patty's streak of panic is as bright as her sibling's, screeching across their connection like a phoenix.

They make their way down another hallway, turning and sliding past a set of closed fire doors. Kidd is sure that they do not have clearance to be in this part of the hospital. Patty observes that there seems to be nobody around to say otherwise. Liz is keeping her end of the link relatively chatter-free and Kidd dives after her threads of thought and speech. He pauses mid-step when he hears the eldest weapon's thoughts.

She is calm, but Kidd can feel the residue of unease in her mind. She doesn't know what he is capable of right now. She is thankful that she has him back, terrified that he was locked in the bottom of the book, chained there by gods-only-know-what. She is scared that the all-forsaken thing could have hurt him, in ways and to extents she will never be able to heal. Not even with Patty's help.

Kidd looks at her, and while she does her best to stare forward and keep a firm grasp on his hand he spots the cracks in her perfect composure. Her mind races inside their link. Her thoughts have drifted to Maka's grigori soul and her ability to fight insanity while sleeping. Kidd winces as Liz wonders if the scythe technician can coax the young reaper back to sanity.

Patty has wandered from them, arms crossed and knees slightly bent. She faces away from them, looking down a wide hall. He can feel her focusing on the conversation inside the link.

Liz is pulling her hair into a ponytail, tugging harder than needed on her blonde strands. Resonance sparks with the edges of her thoughts. She isn't willing to move Maka into Gallows yet, they all require long showers and a quiet night away from everyone and everything else. She wants him to calm down at the sight of perfectly symmetrical art and the unparalleled state of spotlessness they have kept the kitchen in since his departure. She cannot protect him nearly as well when they are amid civilians, though should it become necessary she has no problem turning Patty into an arm cannon and blowing the hospital away. They need rest, even though she knows he has to see some sort of paranormal medical professional about the state of his ribs, some of them must be broken.

He waits as she apologizes, mentally re-arranging their schedule. She delays their going directly home in favor of visiting professor Stien. They are taking the stairwell fire escape as she debates the pros and cons of taking a cab to the Academy grounds. He smirks and almost laughs, instead it sounds more like a feline noise, reminding her that he has a magical flying skateboard. She diplomatically tells him to shut his shinigami word hole but agrees that flying skateboard is the best way to go.

Kidd's perception of time saunters around. He is in a daze when they ghost over the Academy's front stairs, the board tottering and unstable in the air. The young reaper brushes off the gentle push of Liz's soul, regretting the action as the black white emptiness soaks into his mind again.

He cannot shake off the memories.

Liz is transforming back, wrapping her arms around their technician and adjusting her stance on the board. Patty is sliding out of Kidd's unconscious grasp. Inside their patched-together resonance Kidd is mute. Patty is calling for her sibling's attention and Liz is reaching, knees shaking, for the familiar weight of Patty's weapon form.

Kidd's pinky catches on the trigger as Liz wraps her hand around the technician's and tries to move him into a more manageable position. Patty knows better than to fire, adding bullets to their impromptu landing would cause more harm than good. Still, the pull on her trigger sparks a response… and she fixates her attention on Kidd's soul.

For a very long moment their resonance link is bright silence.

They are fifteen feet above the hard stone of the Academy's pavilion. Liz's knees buckle as Patty begins to scream their technician's name. The sound of the younger weapon's voice is too loud, echoing off the abstract edges of their resonance. They collide with the stone and jumble into a heap. The darkness brightens as Patty blinks into human form. Then all is quiet.

They are on their way to the professor's office when Stein seems to materialize out of the shadows, uttering a quick sentence before turning on a heel. His coat billows like a sail behind him as he walks and Liz wonders if he normally moves this fast. She is trotting after him, the young reaper's weight against her back as Patty brings up the rear.

All the hallways feel the same as they follow the professor. Liz is trying to ignore the way the scrapes on her forearm and ribs sting. Patty is wound tight with tension, ready to switch back into pistol form and unleash a hail of bullets should any of the shadows in the hall turn into the creatures from that book. Or worse, should Stein turn around with scalpel in hand and a nasty gleam in his eye.

The siblings are edgy and a bit too exhausted looking when Stein finally comes to a stop in front of the door to the Death Room. He holds the massive wooden door open, hand pale against the black paint. Liz isn't in the mood for formalities and Patty understands enough to gently prod Stein forward and insist that he enters before them.

The professor isn't an idiot. He can feel the chaos in the link between the trio, but there is nothing he can do about it. When he clears the guillotine hallway and comes to a stop under the perfect blue of Death's sky he refuses to meet the reaper's glance.

At first the professor doesn't turn around, but he catches the way the eldest sibling hisses as she kneels on one knee to deposit Kidd's body on the floor. He spins around on the ball of one foot as Death passes by. The reaper is frozen in place for a heartbeat too long, expression blank.

Patty is standing, her eyes skimming across the room and knees slightly bent. Liz is on the ground. She hasn't moved to get up, one hand gripping Kidd's jacket lapel tightly. Neither of them move as Death approaches.

The professor stays where he is, a quiet observer to something he isn't sure he should be watching. Patty's lip curls back slightly and exposes her teeth. Liz exhales hard, finally taking her eyes off of the young reaper. She looks instead at the boy's father.

The eldest weapon's presence is commanding, even as she sets her jaw and gets to her feet… she exudes hellfire and ice. Stein observes, as soon as the older pistol stood up the younger sank into a low crouch. He can see the organic fluidity of their resonance with his own soul perception. They are still humming with adrenalin and a protectiveness that causes Stein to pause.

The sound of footsteps on tile pulls the professor's attention back into the present. Liz is walking toward Death. The look on her face still lethal, but slightly softened. For one insane second Stein thinks she is going to punch the grim reaper right in his mask. Her soul is bubbling with anger and bitter hostility.

"Something is wrong with his soul."

She grits out the words like they are poison.

Death slides around her, moving without the jaunt of actual steps. Patty growls, the sound is low and fierce as the cloaked reaper comes closer. Stein misses the exchange but he is sure that Liz must have ordered her sibling to stand down, because Patty goes silent a moment later.

Death glances over his shoulder, not at Liz, but at Stein. The message is abundantly clear. The man has overstayed his welcome. Death's voice is a monotone when he tells the professor that they can continue their conversation later. Stein cocks his head a touch to the left and nods.

His footsteps are quiet as he leaves.

The four are left alone under a perfect sky.

Liz can feel the tension in Patty's leg muscles as acutely as if they were her own. Their resonance link is a second skin, a unity. Patty breaths and automatically Liz matches the motion. When her eldest sister flexes the fingers of her right hand Patty feels the need to become metal and energy and soul.

"His soul -"

"I know that already."

The reaper isn't blinking, his monotone words hang over them.

Patty lays a palm gently over the center of Kidd's chest. His heartbeat is still there, fluttering underneath her hand. Liz catches shadows of the sensation.

Death hasn't moved. Time shutters to a standstill for the three of them.

And then Kidd gasps, the smallest of uneven exhales. Patty feels it as the air leaves him, Liz's eyes widening a fraction. There is tension in their technician's body, arching his spine and bowing his neck. The heels of his shoes scuff against the floor as his legs bend and kick outward.

Liz is spinning around as Patty begins pulling their resonance link open and pulling the young reaper into it. Her eyes are wide, calm and focused as she leans over Kidd's body and presses her forehead to his. Patty's eyes slide shut as her hand presses firmly against his breastbone.

The eldest pistol is frozen where she stands as Patty begins tearing at their memories. The inside of their resonance is a carefully executed mess, growing more complex and raw with each passing second. Patty is pressing memories and emotions into Liz, reaching for the darkest blurs of half hewn mental images and soaking the pair of them in every emotion she can reach.

Death glides forward. Has his son always looked so frail? Has the boy always appeared as human as he looks now? The reaper kneels, his cloak pooling and dissolving into trails of vapor. He can hear the youngest weapon breathing in time to Kidd's shallow pulls of air. He is close enough that he can reach out and touch them both, but Patty seems unaware of him.

Inside the sibling's resonance the axis of the world is shifting. They are raw, so hyper aware of every thing they have ever felt in the course of their entire lives that Liz is a heap on the floor. Her body refuses to hold her upright. Patty is still destroying everything, layering pain and hurt over impossible joy and so much violence. It is hard to breath. Gritting her teeth, Liz finds that Patty is somehow pushing air into their lungs.

The oldest weapon is trying to assemble a thought and finds herself scrabbling for words as they slide farther into abstract, indefinable tar pits of emotion. Her efforts are not in vain. In the same instant her perception of time is thrown forward and Patty murmurs a reassurance against her sibling's soul.

True peace lies between rage and serenity.

The epiphany is small but absolute. With the last scraps of her coherent mind Liz relives the moment she first saw Kidd wear his cloak.

Death is careful as he eases the limp body of Patricia Thompson off of his son. He can feel the resonance link running seamlessly between the three of them. It sparks and hums as Patty tumbles onto her back, one arm tangling itself around her torso.

He glances back, spotting Liz's frame sprawled across the floor. Death smirks in admiration. The siblings were still trying to repair the chaos in Kidd's soul. He expected no less of them.

Kidd gasps again, the siblings inhale to match him and Death hears the sound in stereo. He pauses, resisting the urge to shake Kidd's shoulders until the boy wakes. Death could almost swear that Kidd was sleeping, caught up in a bad dream.

Only that was not the case.

The reaper spreads his fingers out, hand hovering a half foot from Kidd's chest. He begins to focus his soul, seeking out the energy that could only belong to his son. It is simple to force resonance with the young reaper. Death can feel the imperfections of the link, like crooked seams in a garment. He can feel, distantly, the link strung out between Kidd and the two siblings.

Death sighs, pushing his mask up off of his face. His hands morph themselves back into what they had been, once upon a different time. He has the same yellow eyes and two bright streaks of white crowning his head. He presses one palm against the chest of the young reaper.

It is not a simple task. Death closes his eyes and stretches out his soul, feeling around for the familiar tinges of insanity and panic that lace his child's soul. The panic eases away quietly. Insanity stays rooted, sticking itself to all the memories Kidd has of his time inside Noah's book.

He tries pushing against it, overpowering it until it gives, only it doesn't. It simply moves into Patricia and Elizabeth. He slides himself away from Kidd's soul and the insanity returns, diving deeply into the soul of the weakest person in the resonance.

Death grimaces and calls the insanity forward, offering it power and feeling it slide across his own soul before he walls it in and blinds it. There is light and darkness in equal measure residing in the soul of Death. The light turns the madness, the insanity, into a burnt out shell of a thing. It smolders and crumbles to ashes before it fades into nothing.

Death rises to his feet and watches the shadowy hem of his cloak wind toward his son's figure. He smiles and pulls the mask back down over his face. His hands balloon back into white extremities.

Kidd wakes first, eyes snapping open and iris' blowing outward before settling back down to normal size. He rolls over, unsteady on all fours as he automatically reaches for Patty. Death feels Kidd reaching for the siblings across their resonance link.

"They will be alright."

Kidd is kneeling beside Patty, but he spares his father a short glance over his shoulder.

"What happened?"

Death doesn't answer, the clouds in the perfect blue sky have gone still.

"How much madness was in that book?"

Kidd's eyes fix on the floor beside Patty's shoulder.

Inside their link Kidd can feel Liz pulling herself back together, re-aligning her body and mind. He looks to her collapsed body and sees her ribs expand and contract evenly. Patty's soul is humming along, a dull yellow that grows brighter with each heartbeat.

He can feel them putting something important back together, organizing something between the three of them. Their resonance clicks and clatters along, warming and cooling sporadically.

"What did you do?"

Kidd stands and looks at the eyeholes in his father's mask.

Death cocks his head to the side slightly and clasps his hands behind his back.

"I brought you to order."

The young reaper narrows his eyes, confused.

"You altered my soul?"

Death can see the concern flickering across his son's face. The child is uneasy, scared for the safety of his partners.

"I removed the insanity that had unbalanced you."

"And?"

Death is caught off guard for a moment.

"And what?"

"Something else happened, why aren't they awake?"

It is only now that Death realizes Kidd has placed himself between his weapon partner and his father.

"They were attempting to repair your soul."

Kidd is only half listening to the reaper. He reaches inward and quietly searches for the siblings, they are there. They feel tired and dulled down, less intense than their souls normally feel. He gently asks if they are alright. Patty nods and Liz offers a slight smile. He can feel them prodding their soul's against his. Checking for damage and instability.

"…they did a good job of it too."

Death's voice is serious, flat and quiet.

The young reaper looks his father over. There is something stiff and formal about him. Kidd is curious, full of questions about the last several hours of his life. It feels like a blur, none of it comes to mind easily and what does feels surreal.

He doesn't have time for questions right now. Not when everything is so raw and wide-open. He inhales a breath and feels Patty's soul stir restlessly.

"Will you wake them?"Death nods a fraction at the request.

"Brother to sleep…"

Kidd's voice feels hollow as he speaks. Death doesn't laugh, instead he glides across the room to his mirror.

…

Author's note:

This one got away from me a little. There was so much I wanted to cover, and cover properly. (Forgive me for having Death remove his mask. I tried re-writing that moment, but I couldn't. It felt correct to do it that way.)

This collection has been going for over a year. I blame myself for that. I was going to end at eight chapters. Then there was another idea, a few more ideas here and there. This chapter alone clocks in at over five thousand six hundred words. I thank you all for your patience, though we are not quite done.