Dear Kid
"I'm heading to the academy Dad, catch you when I get home!" Lord Death the Kid did a double take as his son shot past him through the main hall of Gallows Manor, heading for the massive double front doors. He stopped abruptly only a few feet away, staring at his skull-emblazoned watch then looking up at his parent, "Are you gonna be okay here by yourself Dad? You get all weird this time every year."
The elder read the worry in the teenager's eyes and smiled. He was such a good kid. She would have been proud of him. "I'll be fine, go and have fun."
"You sure?" The younger reaper persisted. His father always seemed just a little bit melancholy, no more so than on this day every year. He'd disappear into the old unused suite next to his for the entire day and come out tired and sad.
"Quite. There's just something I need to do today, that's all." His son frowned deeply, ready to argue further when Kid gave him a little nudge toward the door. He went, but with resistance. Stubborn, like her. Odd how much he acted like a woman who'd died centuries before the boy was born.
"Fine, just make sure you eat or something." A flippant wave made a bad attempt at covering worry and his offspring was on his way out the door, muttering something about stubborn fathers who didn't know how to take care of themselves. The action made Kid smile, reminding him so forcefully of her that he could almost hear the echoes of her voice.
Lost in memory he strode down the left wing hall, remembering one particular instance where she'd said something similar, and then started cursing him and struggling playfully when he threw her over his shoulder and carried her off to their room, Patty laughing happily even after they disappeared and got caught up in a whole other struggle.
Kid sighed wistfully at the memory and opened the door to the suite next door to his, closed as always. He stepped inside, looking over the magically preserved room, everything still as it was the last time it was in use over nine hundred years ago. It still smelt of gardenia perfume and crayon wax.
He moved to the door on the right, easing it open as he had every year on this day for centuries to reveal pale blue carpet and white walls, the four-poster bed dominating the room covered by a gauzy white curtain. He moved over to the bed untouched from when it was last made, exactly one thousand and one years ago today, the last morning anyone had woken up in it. He reached out and smoothed a hand over the stray strand of golden hair still left on the pillow.
Her hair had always been long, even into her elderly years. Long and golden, like spun sunlight, he remembered, moving his hand away. He reached up beneath his cravat, fingers brushing a old and heavy silver locket containing a lock of that golden hair. A lock of hair and a picture of them as teenagers, caught in a kiss by a close friend. It had been taken a thousand and one years ago today too.
His gaze shifted to the deep red kiss mark on the large mirror on the wall, her favorite lipstick and the same color she'd smeared on his lips the first time they kissed. A picture of him was tucked into the frame, reminiscent of the way teenage girls stuck a picture of their crush in their lockers. He grinned, remembering how embarrassed she'd been when he found it, face the same color of ruby as the paint on her lips.
He stared at the image of his teenage self, noting for the first time how much his son looked like him at that age. Like looking into a mirror. He smirked at the irony of that, wondering what she would have thought of him, and more so what she would have thought of the boy's sky blue eyes, almost identical to hers even though that was impossible.
He wandered to the pale blue chaise lounge in the corner, noting with fondness the crimson stain of polish on the upholstery of the arm. Her favorite nail polish, the same red as her favorite shirt and her lipstick. She'd been so mad when Patty had snuck in and scared her while she'd been painted her nails, shrieking and sending him dashing in, running from where he'd been taking his shower in only his towel to find Patty rolling on the floor giggling and Liz suddenly silent. It had taken him quite a while to figure out why.
He shifted to move to another part of the room in his yearly ritual when his foot bumped into something, sending him sprawling to the floor. Kid frowned as he arranged himself in to sit properly and carefully pulled out the offending object from beneath, revealing it to be a huge leather-bound box, worn even in its preserved state. A box with his name taped to the lid.
The box was markedly old, leather cracked with age, it must have been there from well before the room had been frozen in time with a spell. He gingerly opened the metal latch, dark and worn bronze sliding open with a metallic creak. Inside were piles upon piles of letters, thousands, worn to various degrees with age.
A red envelope was on top, obviously intended to be read first. He picked it up with suddenly unsteady hands, noting his name was written on top in handwriting still familiar even after hundreds of years, even uneven as it was. She had always had beautiful penmanship, though arthritis had made the letters shaky and abrupt, different from the looping and flowing writing of her youth.
He eased open the flap and closed his eyes with a sudden flash of sorrow, the scent of gardenias immediately filling the air, fresh as if she'd just sprayed some in the air, reminding him of the way he used to watch her dress in the morning, the last step always a spritz of perfume. Kid pulled the papers from inside, unfolding them and opening his eyes to read:
Dear Kid;
How long did it take you to find this? A couple of centuries probably. (He snorted inelegantly at this. She'd seriously overestimated him. Patty would have been disappointed.) Anyway, you're probably wondering what all this is.
They're letters, one for every day we were together. I knew someday I'd have to leave you and I wanted to give you something to hold onto. I wrote the first one after you fell asleep that first night and never stopped. This is the last one.
I'm going to die today.
I saw it in your eyes when I woke up this morning. As I'm writing this you're in the back of the manor in the kitchen, making my favorite tea and trying not to fall apart. (He remembered that morning with sickening clarity. She never got to drink that cup of tea.) I'll probably sneak away to put this in the box in a few minutes, but there's still a few things I need to say before I finish this.
First off, there's a huge box Patty and I hid in our dressing room in the closet. Inside is stuff we put together over the years before she'd died, for your son, so he could know us. I know we're not related to him or anything but we love you, and he's part of you, so we love him too. There's letters and tapes and all sorts of stuff in there, even a few scrapbooks. Make sure you show it to him, okay? Especially the pictures from Black*Star's bachelor party. (Of course she'd included those. Still impossible, even from the grave.)
There's so many things I wish I could ask you about. If you remember everyone, and everything that happened back then. If you still think about me. If you ever fell in love again. (I wouldn't be upset if you did, or if you are. I'd be glad. I never wanted you to be alone the rest of your life, even if I am a jealous possessive bitch sometimes.) How your son turned out. What he's like. What you're like now. If you still love symmetry. If you still wear that cravat pin and that torn up old trenchcoat. What your weapons have been like. How the manor looks. What Death City looks like. Even just how your day was. Most importantly, I wish I could ask you if you're happy.
Do you remember the night of our first anniversary? (Of course he remembered. He could never forget, it had been the best night of his life.)How you took me out to the center of the garden in that black ballgown I loved, the one still hanging up in our dressing room? Even as old as I am, it still feels like yesterday. The way you apologized for not being able to marry me and give me a family. The look on your face when I told you it didn't matter, and kissed the shock right off your face. When you insisted on us saying our vows anyway, all alone in the moonlight. The way you kissed me afterward. I still get weak knees thinking about it. (As a matter of fact, he did too. There had been something otherworldly about that kiss.)
I meant every word. I still mean them. Always will. It's my most treasured memory, the happiest night of my life. And maybe it's selfish, but I hope it's still yours too. That maybe even after all this time you still feel the same way. Wherever my soul is when you're reading this, it's still yours. Again, being selfish, but I hope I still have a part of yours.
I'm getting tired now, tired enough that if I don't go now, I might never get to. There's about ten thousand more things I could say, like thank you for everything you've ever done, but there's no more time. So instead, I'll just say the most important thing.
I love you.
Always, forever, aeternum, every other word that means the same thing. By this time you probably know them all. (Actually he did.) Even though I'm gone now, I still love you, more than you'll ever know, more than words can ever say. For all the times I didn't say it, for all the times I wanted to, for every day we're apart and everyday after we're back together again. I love you.
Te amo,
Liz XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO
Beneath was a crimson lip print, slightly sloppy but still in the same red as the one on her mirror.
Oh Liz.
Kid stared at the letter in his hands for a long time, silent with equal parts joy and grief. Joy and grief and love so strong it still shook him to the core of this soul. He finally forced himself to look away, staring at the stacks of letters. Liz's gift to him. He stared a little harder at something tucked in the corner of the box and gently shifted the envelopes aside to pull it out.
A bouquet of black roses. Her bouquet of black roses, dried and tucked away for safe keeping, a tangible reminder of their vows, four platinum bangles holding the stems together. He smiled slowly, fingering the familiar smooth metal and feeling a lingering echo of her wavelength in the bands before replacing the delicate treasure. The letters held echoes as well, the feel of them soothing his soul like nothing else he'd ever felt. She was there, in those letters, in the bouquet, even in his very soul, a lingering whisp of hers still clinging to his that he could finally remember how to let himself feel. She'd never really left.
He folded the pages of the letter again slowly and placed them back in the lone red envelope, for the first time noting the date in the upper right-hand corner. The day she died. An examination of the other envelopes proved they had the same notation, ranging the decades they'd been together. He put the last letter aside and with a small smile pulled out the first.
Dear Kid;
Um, wow.
Geez that sounded stupid. Lemme start again.
I decided I'm gonna write you a letter every day, to keep for later. First of all, I want you to know I love you. I still can't believe you feel the same, it's like some kind of fairytale...
He found his smile widening the more he read, even laughing. He ended up pulling out the second one, then the third, hours drifting by as he lost himself in her quick wit and sweet nothings. Her soul was in these letters, memories flooding over him. For the first time since she died, he felt whole.
"Dad? Where are you? And what's this door doing open, no one ever goes in here..." LD (He stubbornly refused to reveal to anyone the initials were short for Little Death. He often wondered where his father had come up with the embarrassing moniker.) poked his head inside the one suite he'd never been in. He knew it was magically preserved somehow from when his father's first weapons were alive, but beyond that the rooms were a mystery.
"I'm in here." Kid spoke up from somewhere out of his vision. The teenager hesitantly stepped into what looked like a sitting room, noting the crayon drawings littering the walls and the smell of some kind of flower. It smelled familiar, but he couldn't place it. Frowning with preoccupation he walked over to the wide open door on the right, his father plainly visible amid piles of old letters.
A tentative scan of the older reaper's wavelength revealed not the deep sorrow he normally felt from his parent on this particular day, but an unexpected ease, bittersweetly happy. It was though something tight inside the older man had loosened.
Intrigued he crossed into the room, looking around at the blatantly feminine decor. A mirror immediately caught his attention, a lipstick mark like the ones girls at the Academy left on various surfaces, and a picture. At first he thought it was of himself, but a closer look revealed the figure had golden eyes, not blue like his own. It was his father.
Curious now to the point of blatantly asking, he crossed the short distance to where his father was reading another letter, carefully avoiding the fragile papers and seating himself across from the man everyone now knew as Lord Death the Kid, "Who's room is this? And what's with the letters?"
"I was wondering when you'd ask. They're from the woman I love -the one who used to have this bedroom- my wife. If things had been different, she would have been your mother. And it's high time you met her."
"I'm heading to the academy Dad, catch you when I get home!" Lord Death the Kid did a double take as his son shot past him through the main hall of Gallows Manor, heading for the massive double front doors. He stopped abruptly only a few feet away, staring at his skull-emblazoned watch then looking up at his parent, "Are you gonna be okay here by yourself Dad? You get all weird this time every year."
The elder read the worry in the teenager's eyes and smiled. He was such a good kid. She would have been proud of him. "I'll be fine, go and have fun."
"You sure?" The younger reaper persisted. His father always seemed just a little bit melancholy, no more so than on this day every year. He'd disappear into the old unused suite next to his for the entire day and come out tired and sad.
"Quite. There's just something I need to do today, that's all." His son frowned deeply, ready to argue further when Kid gave him a little nudge toward the door. He went, but with resistance. Stubborn, like her. Odd how much he acted like a woman who'd died centuries before the boy was born.
"Fine, just make sure you eat or something." A flippant wave made a bad attempt at covering worry and his offspring was on his way out the door, muttering something about stubborn fathers who didn't know how to take care of themselves. The action made Kid smile, reminding him so forcefully of her that he could almost hear the echoes of her voice.
Lost in memory he strode down the left wing hall, remembering one particular instance where she'd said something similar, and then started cursing him and struggling playfully when he threw her over his shoulder and carried her off to their room, Patty laughing happily even after they disappeared and got caught up in a whole other struggle.
Kid sighed wistfully at the memory and opened the door to the suite next door to his, closed as always. He stepped inside, looking over the magically preserved room, everything still as it was the last time it was in use over nine hundred years ago. It still smelt of gardenia perfume and crayon wax.
He moved to the door on the right, easing it open as he had every year on this day for centuries to reveal pale blue carpet and white walls, the four-poster bed dominating the room covered by a gauzy white curtain. He moved over to the bed untouched from when it was last made, exactly one thousand and one years ago today, the last morning anyone had woken up in it. He reached out and smoothed a hand over the stray strand of golden hair still left on the pillow.
Her hair had always been long, even into her elderly years. Long and golden, like spun sunlight, he remembered, moving his hand away. He reached up beneath his cravat, fingers brushing a old and heavy silver locket containing a lock of that golden hair. A lock of hair and a picture of them as teenagers, caught in a kiss by a close friend. It had been taken a thousand and one years ago today too.
His gaze shifted to the deep red kiss mark on the large mirror on the wall, her favorite lipstick and the same color she'd smeared on his lips the first time they kissed. A picture of him was tucked into the frame, reminiscent of the way teenage girls stuck a picture of their crush in their lockers. He grinned, remembering how embarrassed she'd been when he found it, face the same color of ruby as the paint on her lips.
He stared at the image of his teenage self, noting for the first time how much his son looked like him at that age. Like looking into a mirror. He smirked at the irony of that, wondering what she would have thought of him, and more so what she would have thought of the boy's sky blue eyes, almost identical to hers even though that was impossible.
He wandered to the pale blue chaise lounge in the corner, noting with fondness the crimson stain of polish on the upholstery of the arm. Her favorite nail polish, the same red as her favorite shirt and her lipstick. She'd been so mad when Patty had snuck in and scared her while she'd been painted her nails, shrieking and sending him dashing in, running from where he'd been taking his shower in only his towel to find Patty rolling on the floor giggling and Liz suddenly silent. It had taken him quite a while to figure out why.
He shifted to move to another part of the room in his yearly ritual when his foot bumped into something, sending him sprawling to the floor. Kid frowned as he arranged himself in to sit properly and carefully pulled out the offending object from beneath, revealing it to be a huge leather-bound box, worn even in its preserved state. A box with his name taped to the lid.
The box was markedly old, leather cracked with age, it must have been there from well before the room had been frozen in time with a spell. He gingerly opened the metal latch, dark and worn bronze sliding open with a metallic creak. Inside were piles upon piles of letters, thousands, worn to various degrees with age.
A red envelope was on top, obviously intended to be read first. He picked it up with suddenly unsteady hands, noting his name was written on top in handwriting still familiar even after hundreds of years, even uneven as it was. She had always had beautiful penmanship, though arthritis had made the letters shaky and abrupt, different from the looping and flowing writing of her youth.
He eased open the flap and closed his eyes with a sudden flash of sorrow, the scent of gardenias immediately filling the air, fresh as if she'd just sprayed some in the air, reminding him of the way he used to watch her dress in the morning, the last step always a spritz of perfume. Kid pulled the papers from inside, unfolding them and opening his eyes to read:
Dear Kid;
How long did it take you to find this? A couple of centuries probably. (He snorted inelegantly at this. She'd seriously overestimated him. Patty would have been disappointed.) Anyway, you're probably wondering what all this is.
They're letters, one for every day we were together. I knew someday I'd have to leave you and I wanted to give you something to hold onto. I wrote the first one after you fell asleep that first night and never stopped. This is the last one.
I'm going to die today.
I saw it in your eyes when I woke up this morning. As I'm writing this you're in the back of the manor in the kitchen, making my favorite tea and trying not to fall apart. (He remembered that morning with sickening clarity. She never got to drink that cup of tea.) I'll probably sneak away to put this in the box in a few minutes, but there's still a few things I need to say before I finish this.
First off, there's a huge box Patty and I hid in our dressing room in the closet. Inside is stuff we put together over the years before she'd died, for your son, so he could know us. I know we're not related to him or anything but we love you, and he's part of you, so we love him too. There's letters and tapes and all sorts of stuff in there, even a few scrapbooks. Make sure you show it to him, okay? Especially the pictures from Black*Star's bachelor party. (Of course she'd included those. Still impossible, even from the grave.)
There's so many things I wish I could ask you about. If you remember everyone, and everything that happened back then. If you still think about me. If you ever fell in love again. (I wouldn't be upset if you did, or if you are. I'd be glad. I never wanted you to be alone the rest of your life, even if I am a jealous possessive bitch sometimes.) How your son turned out. What he's like. What you're like now. If you still love symmetry. If you still wear that cravat pin and that torn up old trenchcoat. What your weapons have been like. How the manor looks. What Death City looks like. Even just how your day was. Most importantly, I wish I could ask you if you're happy.
Do you remember the night of our first anniversary? (Of course he remembered. He could never forget, it had been the best night of his life.)How you took me out to the center of the garden in that black ballgown I loved, the one still hanging up in our dressing room? Even as old as I am, it still feels like yesterday. The way you apologized for not being able to marry me and give me a family. The look on your face when I told you it didn't matter, and kissed the shock right off your face. When you insisted on us saying our vows anyway, all alone in the moonlight. The way you kissed me afterward. I still get weak knees thinking about it. (As a matter of fact, he did too. There had been something otherworldly about that kiss.)
I meant every word. I still mean them. Always will. It's my most treasured memory, the happiest night of my life. And maybe it's selfish, but I hope it's still yours too. That maybe even after all this time you still feel the same way. Wherever my soul is when you're reading this, it's still yours. Again, being selfish, but I hope I still have a part of yours.
I'm getting tired now, tired enough that if I don't go now, I might never get to. There's about ten thousand more things I could say, like thank you for everything you've ever done, but there's no more time. So instead, I'll just say the most important thing.
I love you.
Always, forever, aeternum, every other word that means the same thing. By this time you probably know them all. (Actually he did.) Even though I'm gone now, I still love you, more than you'll ever know, more than words can ever say. For all the times I didn't say it, for all the times I wanted to, for every day we're apart and everyday after we're back together again. I love you.
Te amo,
Liz XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO
Beneath was a crimson lip print, slightly sloppy but still in the same red as the one on her mirror.
Oh Liz.
Kid stared at the letter in his hands for a long time, silent with equal parts joy and grief. Joy and grief and love so strong it still shook him to the core of this soul. He finally forced himself to look away, staring at the stacks of letters. Liz's gift to him. He stared a little harder at something tucked in the corner of the box and gently shifted the envelopes aside to pull it out.
A bouquet of black roses. Her bouquet of black roses, dried and tucked away for safe keeping, a tangible reminder of their vows, four platinum bangles holding the stems together. He smiled slowly, fingering the familiar smooth metal and feeling a lingering echo of her wavelength in the bands before replacing the delicate treasure. The letters held echoes as well, the feel of them soothing his soul like nothing else he'd ever felt. She was there, in those letters, in the bouquet, even in his very soul, a lingering whisp of hers still clinging to his that he could finally remember how to let himself feel. She'd never really left.
He folded the pages of the letter again slowly and placed them back in the lone red envelope, for the first time noting the date in the upper right-hand corner. The day she died. An examination of the other envelopes proved they had the same notation, ranging the decades they'd been together. He put the last letter aside and with a small smile pulled out the first.
Dear Kid;
Um, wow.
Geez that sounded stupid. Lemme start again.
I decided I'm gonna write you a letter every day, to keep for later. First of all, I want you to know I love you. I still can't believe you feel the same, it's like some kind of fairytale...
He found his smile widening the more he read, even laughing. He ended up pulling out the second one, then the third, hours drifting by as he lost himself in her quick wit and sweet nothings. Her soul was in these letters, memories flooding over him. For the first time since she died, he felt whole.
"Dad? Where are you? And what's this door doing open, no one ever goes in here..." LD (He stubbornly refused to reveal to anyone the initials were short for Little Death. He often wondered where his father had come up with the embarrassing moniker.) poked his head inside the one suite he'd never been in. He knew it was magically preserved somehow from when his father's first weapons were alive, but beyond that the rooms were a mystery.
"I'm in here." Kid spoke up from somewhere out of his vision. The teenager hesitantly stepped into what looked like a sitting room, noting the crayon drawings littering the walls and the smell of some kind of flower. It smelled familiar, but he couldn't place it. Frowning with preoccupation he walked over to the wide open door on the right, his father plainly visible amid piles of old letters.
A tentative scan of the older reaper's wavelength revealed not the deep sorrow he normally felt from his parent on this particular day, but an unexpected ease, bittersweetly happy. It was though something tight inside the older man had loosened.
Intrigued he crossed into the room, looking around at the blatantly feminine decor. A mirror immediately caught his attention, a lipstick mark like the ones girls at the Academy left on various surfaces, and a picture. At first he thought it was of himself, but a closer look revealed the figure had golden eyes, not blue like his own. It was his father.
Curious now to the point of blatantly asking, he crossed the short distance to where his father was reading another letter, carefully avoiding the fragile papers and seating himself across from the man everyone now knew as Lord Death the Kid, "Who's room is this? And what's with the letters?"
"I was wondering when you'd ask. They're from the woman I love -the one who used to have this bedroom- my wife. If things had been different, she would have been your mother. And it's high time you met her."
