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No one tells you about the side effects of godhood, he realizes (many, many years too late). No one tells you about the dull ache in your chest as you watch your friends grow old, about the midnight realization that you will be as you are now forever, maybe.
Black☆Star locks these things away in the back of his mind, takes down the mirrors in his house, and pretends he hasn’t already figured it out.
Maka’s hair is just as white as Soul’s now, her limber arms withered to wrinkled husks, and still she swings her scythe around with the ease of a woman fifty years younger than her. Black☆Star hasn’t sparred with her since she was in her forties, and she claims he’s ‘no fun anymore’ whenever he turns down her offers.
She comes to him with Soul one night, asking for ‘one last round,’ and something in his chest twists grotesquely, because Maka was never the kind of person to speak with such finality.
It doesn’t rain for her funeral, and Black☆Star curses the sky for not mourning with the rest of then, calling it disrespectful. The half-hearted joke does nothing to lighten his spirits. He didn’t expect it to.
Maka looks peaceful in death, surrounded by flowers and loved ones weeping at the side of her coffin. Soul doesn’t come near it, lingering on the edge of the pavilion like some pale and lonely ghost. His eyes are dull and his smile is gone and Black☆Star has barely recognized him for a long time now, but there’s nothing either of them can do to fix that. The fingers of a pianist shake with age and with grief as Tsubaki rubs his shoulders, mumbling inaudible and ineffective reassurances.
“She shouldn’t have been the first to go,” Black☆Star mutters as they look down on the body of their dearest friend.
Kid gives him a look that’s somewhere between pity and sympathy, and Black☆Star doesn’t know which is worse.
“You’d have said that no matter who it was.”
Soul goes next, not too long after Maka, and the hole in Black☆Star’s chest grows just a bit bigger. He fills it with collected souls and empty promises and pretends that everything will be alright.
Funerals become a familiar affair. Tsubaki squeezes his hand during the eulogies as a faint comfort (her hands are so wrinkled and bony now, her hair is so grey, god, when did she get so old?), though she knows it doesn’t help much anyway. She cries more at Liz’s funeral than Kid does. She cries more at Patty’s too (Kid does not attend Patty’s funeral).
“You’ll be alright without me, right?” she asks him when her hands grow too weak to push herself out of bed in the morning, and Black☆Star can’t do anything but ask beg her to not talk like that. “You won’t be alone, at least,” she reassures him, trembling fingers brushing his hair from his eyes. He used to think it was silly for her to treat him like a child, but he still gets carded at bars and goes to sleep with a light on all these years later, and now he realizes that he’ll miss it more than he can bear.
The camellia blossoms he lays beside her grave smell foul.
“It had to happen someday,” Kid tells him with a hollow voice and tired eyes when Black☆Star comes to ask him why the fuck Tsubaki had to die (“You’re the fucking god of death, aren’t you? Answer me!”). “Everyone dies in the end.”
Black☆Star’s fingers form a fist before his mouth forms his next word, and the crunch of his knuckles connecting with Kid’s jaw is the most beautiful thing he’s heard in years. Kid remains standing despite the impact, but now there’s anger in his eyes. Good.
“You don’t fucking die-” Kid’s hand is gripping Black☆Star’s throat before Black☆Star can finish his sentence off with an insult. The anger is still there, burning in his eyes, but damn, it burns cold.
Kid’s fingers tighten. “Neither do you, you know.” When he releases his friend from the chokehold, Black☆Star realizes that he doesn’t need to gasp for breath. No blood rises to the surface when he coughs and wheezes reflexively, and it occurs to him once again that he is not human. He hasn’t been for a long time now.
Black☆Star wipes the bile from his mouth and lashes out, grabbing Kid by the collar and pulling him close enough to kill. Hot tears bubble from his eyes (how long has it been since he’s actually cried?), and he doesn’t bother to wipe them away.
“You think I wanted this?!?” Black☆Star’s voice cracks from the strain of yelling. “You think I wanted to watch all of them die? I never wanted to be a fucking god! I wanted to be more than that, to -” He breaks off mid-sentence, the hand gripping Kid’s collar going limp, and before he knows it he’s crying on Death’s shoulder. Kid’s arms slowly reach up to embrace him, holding him gently, and at some point it becomes clear that he’s crying too.
“I know,” Kid mumbles through his tears. “We never asked to be gods.”
There’s no one left to tell them that things will be alright, and no one to calm them down when rage and hatred at the unstoppable march of time gets the better of them, but at least they don’t have to fear death. Black☆Star snaps Kid’s neck, Kid gets back up to pulverize his spine, and sparring becomes their replacement for communication. It’s easier to break bones than mend invisible wounds.
Black☆Star never thought that there would be this much anger in loneliness.
They visit the cemetery after bandaging each other’s wounds, knowing that the fractures and scabs will be gone by the morning. Black☆Star replaces the withered camellias on Tsubaki’s tombstone, Kid lights another candle for Liz and Patty, and together they lay a wreath of lilies on Soul and Maka’s shared grave.
“You ever wish that you could be buried with them?” Black☆Star asks Kid in a rare moment of something between weakness and remorse. Kid shakes his head.
“If I wanted to die with them, I would have.”
“I thought you couldn’t die.”
“I told you, if I wanted to, I could have.” Kid sighs and tugs the scarf around his neck just a bit tighter. “But I guess I don’t want to die after all. I’ve still got things to do here. I’m still a shinigami.” He sounds more like he’s trying to convince himself of something he doesn’t truly believe than like he’s relating simple facts.
Black☆Star kneels down in the cold grass, gripping a handful of it and pulling it out like a bored child.
“That’s something, I guess. I don’t even have a reason to keep going, I don’t think. I'm just too fucking stubborn to give up and kick the bucket, apparently.”
Kid kneels besides him and places a hand on his shoulder, his lips curved in the first smile Black☆Star’s seen from him in years.
“That’s a good enough reason as any, I’d say.”
Their single flimsy reasons to live on don’t seem good enough some days, so they become each other’s motivation to keep moving. “You’ll never beat me if you’re dead,” Kid tells Black☆Star as their fists collide, a grin on both their faces. “Like I’d let you have the last laugh,” Black☆Star snarls, meeting his rival’s strike with equal force. Exchanging blows is still easier than exchanging words, but they talk in other ways now. They’ve been stuck on this wretched earth together long enough to figure out that bruises and bloody knuckles are a poor substitute for emotional support.
Their wounds heal and their bruises fade, but the dull ache never quite goes away.
“Godhood is a fucking joke,” Black☆Star grumbles as they’re sitting on the balcony of DWMA, watching the sun set for what must be the millionth time. Kid clucks his tongue and takes another picture (“It’s nice that they’re never exactly the same, you know?”).
“You’ve told me that a thousand times already.” Kid isn’t exaggerating. The frustrated comments build up over the years.
Black☆Star sighs and makes a grabbing gesture at Kid. “Gimme the camera.”
“Why?”
“I wanna take a picture of you.”
“Again, why?”
“Just give me the camera, okay?”
There’s a photograph of Kid on Liz and Patty’s tombstones the next time that Kid visits the cemetery.
Kid smiles. It’s an odd gesture, but a good one.
It’s hard to tell if they come together out of shared loneliness or out of a need for comfort that won’t fade away after so many years. They don’t do it for love, they tell each other and they tell themselves, they do it to fill a void that’s been left empty for too goddamn long.
Kid’s lips are as cold as a death that neither of them will ever know when they press to Black☆Star’s throat, leaving marks that’ll be gone within the hour.
“It’s a lot less hot when the hickies don’t last,” Black☆Star breathes into Kid’s skin, sucking a dozen little round bruises and tracing the lines between them with gentle fingers (he didn’t think he could be gentle, but, oh, god, he can).
There’s no pet names or i-love-yous, because they don’t need to love each other for the sex to be good. Kid tells Black☆Star that as a shinigami, he isn’t given to carnal desires, and Black☆Star tells Kid that he knew that already. They’re not doing this for pleasure anyway.
Kid doesn’t mind it when Black☆Star stays the night, because Gallows Mansion is a large and empty place, and he’s unspeakably tired of spending his nights alone.
“I love you,” Black☆Star gasps with Kid’s head between his thighs. It’s strange how fast empty words can fill with meaning (10 years is not ‘fast’ by any means, but to them it feels so much shorter than that), how quickly loveless flings become more than was ever intended.
“I love you,” Kid mumbles as Black☆Star kisses his cheek as a replacement for ‘good morning.’ The sunlight filtering through the curtains pales in comparison to the brightness of Black☆Star’s smile.
“I love you,” they reassure each other as they hold hands in an ancient graveyard, making sure they both know that they’ll never be completely alone.