Author – lmd84

Character/Parings - Death the Kid, Liz and Patty Thomson, Death Scythe, Shinigami

Genre – Gen, Introspective

A/N – First attempt at Soul Eater fanfiction. Thought I'd take a stab at two of my favourite characters. Enjoy. I think I might have over-estimated the 'insanity wavelength', but the thought was fun to explore. The structure of the chapters is a little odd, thanks to me not planning it quite right. Kid would be unimpressed. I wanted to split the three sections.

Summary - A Death Scythe and a Shinigami, though not the one you might expect. Spirit and Kid have a conversation as the world quietly begins to fall apart. Spoilers for the 'Fight to the Death' chapters (chapters 14 through 23).

The Grim Era

Chapter 1 - Unbalance

He hadn't noticed. Liz yawned widely and risked a look at Death the Kid. Walking with a stately air towards his father's room, the boy seemed distracted, gazing dully ahead of him without really paying attention to the corridor the group was in. But what worried Liz more, right now, was that Kid had utterly failed to notice the single smudge of ink on his right shirt cuff. Hell, she berated herself silently, years with the obsessive shinigami had made her able to notice tiny things like that, even as bone-tired as she still was since the fight against Kishin just over a week ago.

"Heey, Kid!" Patty waggled a hand in front of Kid's face, "Cheer up!"

"Hmm? Oh, sorry. I was….miles away." Kid sighed coming abruptly to a halt in the otherwise empty corridor. A minutely misaligned portrait to the left of him, cuff still stained, he seemed a shadow of his usual self, so much so that the normally oblivious younger Thomson had noticed and was endeavouring to break his bleak mood.

Patty's eyes widened and she drew close to Kid. "Miles away where?" She grinned, giggling, "You've been like this since the mad-eyed thing attacked us!"

Kid flinched, not an unusual motion for someone acutely aware of the world's asymmetrical anomalies, but in this case the sisters felt his discomfort. In a single blow he had been thrown to the ground by a creature bound purely by Shinigami's power for almost a millennium. It was, in the scale of things, a crushing defeat, literally and otherwise.

Pain, fear, madness had gripped all three during the fight in that horrid basement, and Liz was certain that it would be a long while until the shadows of the vault would leave them completely. If at all. She and Patty weren't strangers to difficult circumstances, but this was the first time since they left the streets that they faced such dangerous odds with their powerful yet obsessive master by their sides. If they didn't watch out, next time Death the Kid would suffer more than just a ruined suit, flesh wounds and a concussion. Naturally, he had considered the former to be the most important, even complaining about it whilst being checked out in the infirmary. The whole mess had left the trio, Technician and Demon Pistols alike, troubled.

Patty wasn't sure why they were headed to visit Shinigami this early in the morning. Normally Kid's father contacted him if he wanted them to meet, causing Kid to go through his usual ritual of checking the angle of every piece of furniture, portrait and candle in the house before leaving. She wondered if Shinigami asked for Kid several hours before he needed to see him, because he knew just how long his son would take getting ready to leave. On this occasion, they hadn't been summoned. Kid had merely announced at breakfast that they were going to visit his father, and that was that. In mutual admiration and just a bit of awe, Patty and her big sister would follow Death the Kid anywhere.

They reached the huge double doors which led to the vivid, cloud-filled space that housed Shinigami's mirror. Kid reached up to push the doors open, only to pause and clench his hand into a fist. He cocked his head on one side, as though suddenly aware of something. He raised a ringed finger.

"Liz. Patty. Would you please leave me here, alone?"

Liz exchanged a glance with Patty, frowning at this sudden change of heart.

"You walked us all the way here to decide you want us to go?"

"I could be in bed!" Patty wailed, only to receive a kick on the ankle from Liz. "Quiet." the elder girl hissed, "Just…go with it, okay?"

Both turned to Kid with almost identical amiable expressions.

"Sure. We'll see you at home, right?" Liz just knew Kid could tell she was forcing the smile. Spoiled and occasionally slow he might be, but he had come to understand something of his Weapons' methods of dealing with his eccentricities. Right now, she wanted Kid to deal with whatever it was that had been bothering him since the episode with Kishin and Medusa. And if that meant leaving him on his own for a bit, well, then Liz would have to deal with that herself.