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He couldn’t take it anymore.
Death the Kid linked his fingers in front of his face, resting his chin on his thumbs as he sighed, closing his eyes and trying to relax. When he opened them back, however, they immediately fell again on the figure on the other side of the dinner table, the source of all his troubles. The cause of his suffering.
Crona .
Kid’s scrawny nuisance sat across from him, between two of his other esteemed guests, Maka and Black Star, both of them engaged in conversation while Crona seemed content with listening to what they were saying with an absent-minded smile. Kid wasn’t hearing whatever it was they were talking about, however. His eyes were fixed intently on Crona, his distress growing by the second.
Why, oh, why, did they have to be placed at the other end of the table, right across from him?
It did seem to only make sense when he was thinking up the seating chart, having Patty and Liz each by one of his sides, with both the other weapons sitting across from each other and their meisters by their side further down the table, with finally Crona, the Meister-weapon hybrid, sitting at the tail end. It even worked to split the genders evenly, as long as Kid didn’t think too hard about his own place in the equation. But now, he realized grimly, that decision forced him to be face to face with the person that at the moment he hated the very most.
Kid kept staring, as much as he tried to stop himself, and at some point Crona lifted up their eyes from the table and the two of them locked eyes, at which point Crona realized how much Kid must have looked like he was plotting murder.
Crona made a tiny choked noise, their eyes widening in sudden fear and discomfort. Kid tried to signal some conciliating gesture, but before he had the chance, Maka seemed to catch on to Crona’s reaction and immediately raised a hand as to tell Black Star to shut up as she looked at Crona and then followed their eyes back to Kid’s face, her expression hardening.
Great, here’s the cavalry.
"Kid."
He raised his eyebrows at her inquisitively, almost playing dumb.
"Is there a problem?"
Her tone was calm, casual even. One who didn't know her wouldn't even assume the underlying message to that was "Do you wanna square up or what?"
Kid sighed deeply, then slowly rose up from his seat, standing up straight with his hands behind his back. That was it. It was time. No more hiding. That situation had to be addressed, whoever it may hurt.
"Attention, please, everyone." He cleared his throat. "I need to make an announcement."
He looked down at his guests. Liz, Patty, Soul and Tsubaki were looking at him with puzzled faces, while Maka had assumed an unamused expression, Crona looked away softly rocking sideways with anxiety and Black Star, who'd turned his attention back to his meal when Maka cut the conversation with him, just kept eating without paying mind to Kid.
Kid gritted his teeth. "Black Star!"
The other boy just pointed at his own ear with his fork still holding a piece of meat in it. "I'm listenin'!"
Kid groaned, but proceeded nonetheless. "I'll preface this by saying you are all valued people to me, and I appreciate the presence of every single one of you here in my humble abode."
"Pfft, humble," Soul murmured.
"We live here, though," Liz interjected.
"Could you please ," Kid said, raising his voice. "Not interrupt. As I was saying, you're all welcome into my home, as my friends."
" However, " he proceeded, ignoring other snide remarks from Soul and Liz. "There are some things that need to be addressed. This house is not a place of lawlessness. This house has rules , rules such that you must all follow if you wish to continue to be welcomed into it. I have, in other circumstances, tolerated certain behaviours from you that I find to be abominable, because I believed it was not my place to correct them. But when it comes to this house, I simply cannot let those pass."
"Boo, get to the point."
And he was going to, alright. Kid pulled his right hand from behind his back, index finger rising up in the air before slowly making its way to pointing straight at Crona. "You," Kid said in an accusatory manner. "Have offended me far too much thus far, and this situation of yours must be corrected before I ever direct a word to you again, let alone let you into my house."
The four guests closest to Kid just stared at him with varying degrees of shock, with Crona looking like they were about to cry, Maka looking like she was about to make Kid cry, and Black Star being— well, Black Star.
He cleared his throat again. "I am, of course, talking about your hair."
"Their what? " At that, Maka got up from her own seat, incredulity written all over her face. "Did you make all that theater for that ? What does that even mean ?!"
"What do you mean, 'what does that mean'? Have you looked at their hair?! It's horrendous! It's completely asymmetrical! There isn't a single strand in this mess that is the same length as another!"
He turned to Crona, who seemed to be trying to disappear into their seat. "Who even cut your hair, anyway? A blind lobster?!"
Crona gulped, trembling. "I-I— I don't-" they stumbled on their own words. "I'm sorry, I never… learned how to do it. Lady Medusa would just give me scissors when it would start making it difficult to see but… my room wasn't very well lit… and I didn't have any mirrors… and Ragnarok would sometimes just get impatient so he'd just—" they stopped talking, choking on their own tears.
The room fell into a somber silence, the only sound being Crona's sniffling. Kid watched as Maka held their right hand with her left, and used the other one to gently swipe away their tears, a soft expression on her face. The rest of the guests — Black Star included this time — just stared at Kid like he'd just kicked a puppy — which he basically did, in all fairness.
"Uh," he stammered. "Well, that's, hm, that's unfortunate."
Maka's eyes went from Crona to Kid, her expression changing in a millisecond — and, man , if looks could kill, Maka would never need another weapon in her life other than the one she was wearing in her face right now.
"Uuh, which, which is why!" He started again, trying to get himself out of that pickle quickly. "Which is why I believe that I, as your host, should personally aid in addressing that matter."
Crona looked up at him with uncertainty. "W-what—"
"Come here tomorrow and I'll give you a haircut." Kid concluded, crossing his arms in front of his chest smugly. "Free of charge, no strings attached."
Maka looked like she was about to say something in response, but Crona spoke up first.
"Are you sure… it's not any trouble?" They looked down nervously. "Am I not gonna be bothering? More than… I already do."
"Not at all!" Kid reaffirmed. "I insist."
"Well, if you say so… I would like that."
"Perfect!" Kid clapped his hands together. "It's all settled then. Shall we continue the meal?" He didn't wait for a reply before sitting back down and turning his attention back to his plate, infinitely satisfied with the end result of the conversation.
He was already too focused on his meal to notice Maka starting to take a book out of her bag before Soul rested his hand on hers. "Not worth it," he'd said in a low voice, and this time Maka decided to spare Kid from cracking his skull open.
-💀💀💀-
Kid surveyed his tools attentively, humming a little song to himself. Everything seemed to be in order: the spinny chair positioned right in front of the center of his large studio mirror, the scissors of various sizes displayed from bigger to smaller on the table by his right side with the clippers on the one by his left. An assortment of hair products and a water spray bottle were also distributed equally between the two tables, and far behind him, Kid could spot the sketchbook propped up on the easel with his flawless schematizations of how he planned to fix Crona’s hair once and for all.
“Alright!” He clapped his hands in satisfaction. Now he just had to wait for them to get here.
“Hey, Kid.”
He turned around to face Liz, who’d just walked in.
“Don’t you think you were a little, you know, a bit of an asshole to that kid yesterday?”
Kid frowned, tapping his chin with his finger. “Hmm, was I? I may have overreacted.” He then waved his hand dismissively. “No matter. We won’t have to worry about this after today.”
“Yeah, but, I mean...”
“What.”
“You know they only agreed to your weird arrangement thing because they want you to like them, right.”
Kid stared at her blankly. “And?”
Liz scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Look, at least apologize for making them cry, will you? Geez.” Saying that, she turned around and left him with his thoughts.
Kid scratched his head, unsure of himself. Had that interaction gone worse than he’d concluded? Sure, he was painfully aware of himself sometimes, how sometimes he went overboard in the pursuit of his, well, aesthetic, but Crona did say yes, didn’t they? Which meant they understood why that was important to Kid. And in regards to them crying, well, Crona cried about everything. Kid could recall times when they’d cry about things like having someone hold the door open for them, or have a full-on breakdown over Maka telling them that sea turtles didn’t stay to watch their eggs hatch and just left their babies to their own devices — somehow they found that to be more cruel than any of the horror stories they could supply of their own childhood. So how big of a deal was it to make them cry, really?
His thoughts were interrupted by the melodic sound of his 8 note sequence doorbell, meaning the time for his appointment had arrived. He proceeded to walk towards the front door, opening it up to an anxious-looking, fidgety Crona, with Ragnarok right over their shoulder.
“Man,” Ragnarok spoke up. “What kinda faggoty doorbell is that?”
“Ragnarok!” Crona reprimanded.
“Ah, welcome!” Kid exclaimed. “Come in, please. I just got done setting things up.” He stepped aside to let Crona in, then led them down to the room where he’d set up the makeshift hairdressing salon.
“Shall we begin?” He walked up to one of the tables and picked up a scissor, opening it and closing it just to get the feel of it.
Crona looked around, hesitant. Their gaze stopped at the corner of the room with Kid’s sketchbook. “Is that… Is that me?”
Kid glanced at the sketchbook again. “Yes, don’t worry about that.” He reached out and grabbed Crona by the arm, pulling them towards the chair, the other yelping in surprise.
“I’ve made some plans already, but in the interest of client satisfaction,” Kid said as he wrapped a towel around Crona’s shoulders. “I want you to tell me exactly what kind of cut you want.”
From behind them, Kid watched Crona’s expression grow nervous in the mirror. “I don’t know how to choose a haircut. I’ve never done this before.”
Ragnarok, who’d retreated into their back, decided to come out to interject. “Just shave their head and get done with it already!” he said impatiently. “How’s that symmetry for ya?”
“No!” Crona cried out, their hands covering their hair. “I don’t want my head to be shaved, I’ve never had a shaved head! I wouldn’t know how to deal with that…”
“No shaving then, fine.” Kid re-stated the instructions. “Just leave it up to me then.” With that, he got to work.
He worked in silence for several minutes, focused on evening out the similarly placed strands of hair before doing anything more adventurous. Crona didn’t try to strike up conversation at any point either, just quietly stared at their own reflection the whole time.
At some point, Ragnarok started acting up.
“Geez, what’s with all this silence, huh? Is this a funeral or what?” He popped out of Crona’s back, startling Kid and making him nick away at a spot of their scalp.
“Ouch!” Crona whined.
Kid’s blood went cold. Carefully, he looked through Crona’s hair, trying to locate where the scissor had hit, and his eyes fell on a tiny cut in the back of their ear, barely deep enough to bleed out and most importantly, far away enough from the scalp to not mess up anything. Initial scare subdued, Kid directed an angry glare at Ragnarok.
“You almost ruined it, you insufferable puppet!” he yelled. “Go back where you came from and don’t come out until I’m finished.”
“Yeah? And what if I don’t? What are you gonna do? Call the police?” He cackled in delight, before Kid’s sideways fist descended on his bloated little head and hit it with a loud bonk.
“Ow! Hey, watch it, you little shitstain! I could eat you for breakfast!” Ragnarok threatened, but a threat without much weight behind it, given he proceeded to just retreat into Crona’s back while moaning pathetically.
Kid huffed, annoyed. Why didn’t they all hit Ragnarok more often if it was that easy to make him shut up? He thought about how most of the time Ragnarok only ever insulted Maka, and how for as much as she tended to be very liberal with her use of fists to solve verbal offenses, she rarely did so against Ragnarok, the biggest of offenders in that department. Probably because she wasn’t quite sure how much of what Ragnarok felt was also felt by Crona, and Maka would never risk hurting them.
Oh well, he wasn’t Maka, though.
He continued to work in silence, the threat of Ragnarok interrupting him again theoretically subdued, before he remembered he’d just nicked Crona in the head and didn’t check on them.
“Oh, sorry, are you alright?”
Crona locked eyes with him through the mirror, a confused look on their face. “Hm, yes?”
“I mean, because I just hit you on accident,” he clarified.
“Ah! Right. I-It’s no problem, really. I don’t really bleed anyway,” they murmured, somewhat absentmindedly.
“Alright.” Kid went back to working on the haircut, but a thought kept nagging him. Was Liz right? Was he too much of a douche to Crona? He didn’t feel like he treated them any differently than the others, but then again, the others usually met his more eccentric and socially unfit behavior with objection, while Crona seemed to just take anything people said to them in stride.
Kid frowned, suddenly feeling guilty. He decided to try and lighten the mood with some small talk, only to realize he had no idea what he could possibly talk about with Crona.
“So,” he started carefully. “No chaperone today?”
“Huh?”
“I meant Maka. She didn’t come with you this time?”
Crona shifted uncomfortably. “Uh, no. I-I asked her not to come.”
Kid raised his eyebrows. “Oh? Why?”
They looked away, squirming. “She seemed really mad at you. I didn’t want you guys to fight. I wouldn’t know what to do if you started fighting.”
Pause.
“Right”, Kid said, because I was being an asshole , he thought. He grumbled, as the guilt kicked back in. Silence settled in again and Kid tried to come up with something else, any conceivable topic they could possibly talk about, still drawing in a blank for some reason. Surprisingly, though, Crona was the one to speak up after a while.
“Hey, Kid,” they muttered hesitantly. “Do you… Do you hate me?”
What .
“Hmm, no. Even I can see that hating someone over a haircut is a little unreasonable.”
“N-not because of that, I mean…” They gulped. “Because I betrayed the DWMA.”
Oh.
“That was a long time ago,” Kid answered.
Crona shifted in their seat, looking down. “That doesn’t answer my question…”
Kid knew that. Truth was, he didn’t know how to answer. He and Crona were never particularly close, as he was now realizing through this painful incapacity to find enough common ground to strike a conversation, but he never thought too hard about why . As far as he was concerned, Kid usually just thought of them as “Maka’s weird friend — or partner or something — that she picked up from the trash.” But now that they’d mentioned it, he’d never felt particularly excited to get too close to them, and the more he thought about it, the more it seemed unlikely that feeling was caused exclusively by Crona’s uneven haircut.
But could he say he hated them? He was certainly not very eager to trust a literal witch spawn, especially after seeing first hand what they were capable of, with the betrayal perhaps just serving as encouragement for him not to change his outlook on that.
Kid gritted his teeth. He didn’t like that, being this close to someone he distrusted, but also the other way around as well: he knew the others liked Crona and believed they’d more than made it up to the DWMA past their betrayal, and Kid wanted to be able to trust them too. He felt it was more personal to him, with the academy being his family legacy and the offense against it being essentially directed towards his father.
His hands stopped for a second as he came to a realization. His involvement in the situation, the reason he couldn’t easily see past an offense against the academy… Was that not the same reason Crona did what they did in the first place? Family, Kid knew, family was what bound them to each of their places in the chessboard. Family and legacy. Crona had their own to prioritize and uphold. When spying on Kid’s family legacy was their own mother’s will, could Crona ever really have done anything else?
But then again… How much did that matter, either way? Crona had permanently severed their connection to their only blood family — if “death” was good enough of a deterrent for a relationship, anyway. They’d made their choice, and their loyalty clearly lied with the DWMA. More than that, it lay with Kid and his friends, with Soul and Maka and Black Star and Tsubaki and the Thompsons. The people they decided to really care about. The people they decided were going to be the real family whose legacy they’d fight to protect.
“K-Kid?”
Kid looked at Crona’s scared face through the mirror. He let out a small chuckle. He’d always figured Crona was pretty much a paradoxically overpowered wimp, capable of all that killing but incapable of standing up for themselves, but now looking back, they’d managed to stand up to their parent when it really mattered, the one thing Kid had never been able to do.
“No, I don’t think I do,” he answered finally. “In fact, I admire you, even.”
Crona’s eyes widened in surprise. “R-really? For what? What did I do?”
Kid smiled warmly. “Isn’t it obvious?” He picked up the towel draped over Crona’s shoulders and dramatically pulled it out, throwing it behind his shoulder. “It is, of course, because your hair is now perfectly, absolutely and flawlessly symmetrical.”
Crona assessed their appearance in the mirror. Kid had re-aligned their bangs just a little over their brow, with the far side strands being longer than the rest but equal to each other. He’d removed much of the spoof in the back, leaving it all at the length of roughly an inch or so.
“I-It looks good. Thank you.” They blushed, then said under their breath, almost too low for Kid to hear: “I hope Maka likes it.”
Kid smiled, amused. “What was that? I didn’t hear it.”
“Nothing!” Crona yelled, getting up quickly. “Th-thank you for this, Kid! I’ll be on my way now!”
“Eh? Don’t you want me to wash—” But they were already leaving the room. “...Well, okay.”
He followed them as they headed for the front door, suddenly remembering something. “Hey, wait up.”
Crona turned around to face him.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry.” Kid scratched his head and sighed. “I was rude during dinner yesterday. I shouldn’t have put you in that position.”
Crona frowned. “N-no it’s, it’s fine. Really.”
“No it’s not. And you shouldn’t pretend it is. You should stand up for yourself more, Crona. I’m sure you’re capable of it.”
Crona stared at him for a few seconds, weighing in his words. Then with a pronounced nod, they opened the front door and left.
-💀💀💀-
Outside, Crona slowly felt their own hair with their hands, the prickly feeling of the short hairs on the back of their head wildly unfamiliar to them. They weren’t quite sure what to make of the new haircut, whether they should feel anything strong in particular about such distinctive change in their appearance. It made them overwhelmed to think about.
“Fuckin’ finally! Let’s take a look at how much he screwed you up,” Ragnarok shouted excitedly as he burst from Crona’s back. He proceeded to poke and prod at their hair, no doubt mostly just to annoy them.
“Ouch, stop!”
“Hell, look at this! He managed to make you look even more faggoty! Mad props to the guy, didn’t know that was possible!”
Crona gritted their teeth. “I said.” Their hand closed into a fist. “Stop!”
Their fist went up in the air, hitting Ragnarok in the round chin of his little volleyball-looking head with a mighty right hook. Ragnarok whined and cursed before retreating into their back once again.
Crona looked at their fist, frowning. Despite what the others would say, that they should be less permissible of Ragnarok’s bullying, they were always a little scared fighting back would ruin their relationship with Ragnarok, and what if they stopped being in good terms with their bodymate? Crona wouldn’t know how to deal with that.
Today, however, after the time spent with Kid, learning that he didn’t actually hate them — he said he admired them, even! — Crona was feeling a bit more self-assured. If Ragnarok wanted to be mad at them, then so be it.
Opening a tentative smile, Crona started making their way to Maka and Soul’s place, excited to show their friends their brand new look.