Maka glared exhaustedly at the ceiling of her bedroom, rubbing her temples to try and relieve her throbbing headache. After yet another unsuccessful training session, the fifth of such in as many days, and Maka was beginning to feel the toll of their failure to maintain resonance. It had all started after the Battle for Brew. Between the whirling magical tempest on the island and the continual strengthening of Asura's madness wavelength, the combined effects were enough to excite Soul's Black Blood to near-unmanageable levels. Maka suspected that without her anti-demon wavelength, she wouldn't be able to wield him at all. Even so, the negative effects had steadily mounted – what had begun as a nosebleed after their resonance ended had quickly escalated into incapacitating headaches. Today's attempt had caused her to pass out with the strain within ten minutes, her soul rejecting his wavelength as incompatible, and she knew that Soul wasn't in much better shape.
She just hoped he'd manage to hang on to his sanity until they defeated Asura.
Soul flopped down on his bed, groaning as the motion agitated his headache. The training session today had been an unmitigated disaster, to say the least, and he honestly wondered why Maka was still even trying. For all her smarts, she really didn't know how to quit – Soul probably would have abandoned ship well before he drove himself to unconsciousness in the attempt to save it from sinking.
'And whose fault is that, exactly?' whispered a voice in the back of his head.
"Shut up, Oni," he grumbled. "I'm too tired for this shit today."
Ahh, yes. Because it's all about you, isn't it? It's because of you that your meister pushes herself so hard. It's your fault that she's been so tired lately, your fault that she can't use her abilities to help people. Because she's so focused in trying to fix a boy who can't be mended, mm?
Soul snarled quietly into his pillow, trying to dislodge the demon from his head. It wasn't working.
You can struggle all you want, Soul. I'm not going anywhere. Although your meister? The Oni chuckled. She'll be leaving soon. You and I both know she will.
"I said. Shut. UP!" he roared, surging up from his bed at its words. It receded from his thoughts, leaving only the echo of a laugh behind. The damned demon might have pulled back, but he'd won this round. Breathing hard, he slowly sat back down on his bed, head bowed as he tried to collect himself. It was definitely getting harder to control his blood.
He would have asked Stein for advice, but Doctor Nutjob had finally lost it about a week ago. While he didn't particularly like the man, Soul knew that he desperately needed Stein's expertise on madness and how to control it – even more so given that Stein was the only one who understood Medusa's research notes on the Black Blood. So unless the man had a miraculous return to sanity, which was about a one-in-a-billion chance until Asura was defeated again? Soul was screwed. Even Maka's angel soul could barely help him anymore.
He glanced up when he heard a light scuffling noise, unsurprised to see his partner hovering anxiously in the doorway to his bedroom. She must have heard him shouting at the Oni. Meeting her eyes, he gave a slight jerk of the head to indicate that she could enter. She settled carefully next to him on the edge off his bed, taking one of his hands between her own. Usually, he would be having a major case of butterflies at her touch. This situation, however, was so far away from usual it wasn't even in the same hemisphere.
"Are you okay?" she asked softly, green eyes pinning his own for a moment. He looked away.
"What does it look like?" Soul scoffed. Maka glared at him, and he sighed. She was just as stressed about all of this as he was.
"The Oni's been acting up again, hasn't he." Her statement didn't even try to be a question.
"Yeah. He keeps saying shit…" Soul trailed off into contemplative silence. What did the Oni mean by Maka not being around, exactly? He might just be playing into Soul's fear of Maka leaving him. Decent grounds for it, anyway – all of this wasn't easy for her to deal with, either. But he was at least tentatively confident that Maka wasn't going to leave him, especially now that the Kishin was awake, and he knew that the little asshole in his head knew that too. So if it wasn't that, then what was it?
His thoughts were stilled when Maka rested her head on his shoulder, still holding his hand between hers.
"Don't worry too much about it, Soul," she said. "It'll be okay."
"I know," he replied. "It's just kinda hard not to when he's chattering away in the back of my head."
Maka sighed. "It'll die down when we defeat Asura, I'm sure. We just need to keep it under control until then, okay?"
Soul pulled away from her. "And how are we going to do that when you can barely even hold my weapon form?"
"I don't know," she said, weariness coloring her words. "But we'll figure it out. We have to."
She released his hands and stood up, turning to walk back to her room. "I'm going to go to bed. I'll see you in the morning, okay?"
Soul hummed in acknowledgement and closed his eyes. He settled back onto his bed as his door clicked shut, tired enough for once to actually fall asleep. That's probably good, he thought hazily, the weight of drowsiness pervading his limbs. He was pretty sure that no one was supposed to stay awake for three or four days in a row.
When Maka opened her eyes, she was standing – still in her pajamas – in the center of the Black Room.. But it wasn't the Black Room that she was used to. The room in which she found herself was octagonal, with white walls and blue accents. The floor tiles were in shades of purple and white, and formed a design instead of the plain red-and-black checkerboard pattern of the Black Room she knew. Brass sconces on each wall held a candle, and there was small table in the center of the room that bore a gramophone. A scratchy jazz tune emanated from it. There was no piano.
Something was wrong.
"I see you've noticed the change in the décor?" said a familiar voice behind her. She turned to face him, blinking in mild shock.
"Soul?"
"The one and only," he replied, sardonic grin quirking up one corner of his mouth. It might have just been a trick of the light, but he seemed… washed out. As if he was only an apparition from a faded photograph, instead of solid flesh and blood. Maka's eyes narrowed at the thought. Blood. Black Blood. The Oni…
The realization hit her like a thunderbolt.
She scrambled back into a defensive stance, watching the Oni – still masquerading as her partner – with a wary eye.
"What did you do to Soul?" she spat. The Oni chuckled.
"My, my, you do catch on quickly, don't you?" he said, walking forwards. Maka retreated, flinching slightly when she felt the solid wall behind her back. "Unfortunately for you, Soul won't be joining us this evening."
Her eyes narrowed. "What do you mean by that, exactly?"
"You'll see. After all," he continued, grinning, "it's not like you're going anywhere."
Maka looked down, noticing for the first time the tendrils of Black Blood that had wound themselves around her limbs. The Oni flicked a finger at her bonds before she could react and they tightened instantly, splaying her limbs out against the wall. The oily strands were anchored seamlessly into the walls, shackles and manacles of manifest madness. She hated them. Although she already suspected that the attempt would be useless, Maka tugged at the ones on her wrists. The restraints writhed, then contracted and burned. Tiny tendrils of Black Blood split off of the manacles, digging into the delicate skin of her wrists and sending out more minuscule spikes to tear through the muscle and tendons. Unprepared for the sudden pain, Maka let out a soft scream and stopped pulling. The spikes receded, and she felt a trickle of blood spilling down the underside of her arms.
"Ah-ah-ah," reprimanded the Oni, his slightly manic grin distorting Soul's familiar features. "We can't have you struggling. After all, if you struggle, I might… just… slip." The last three words were punctuated by the Oni walking his fingers up towards the lacerations on her wrist, nails digging into the soft flesh of her forearm as he went. Maka snarled.
"Whatever it is you think you're doing, it's not going to work. I've got a Grigori soul – you can't hurt me," Maka gritted out.
"Brave words from the girl in her pajamas," the Oni said airily. "Besides. I already have."
Maka's wrists throbbed as if to emphasize the demon's point. Glancing at them once again, Maka's eyes flew wide with horror as she saw the restraints start to shift again. This time, they were melting. Trickles of Black Blood flowed off of the cuffs, dripping down onto the open lacerations of her skin and just as quickly disappearing into her bloodstream.
"And now the real fun begins," said the Oni, his gleeful grin distorting Soul's features once again.
He twitched his fingers, as if to play the piano.
The Black Blood ripped through Maka's insides.
And she screamed.
When Soul woke up to the late afternoon sunlight streaming into his eyes, he was immediately struck with two realizations. One was that last night was the first time in almost a month that he'd slept without nightmares from the Black Blood or the Oni. The second was that Maka would never have allowed him to sleep in this late without at least attempting to wake him up.
It might just be nothing, he thought, in a desperate attempt to calm the paranoia that had suddenly gripped him. She was tired too. Maybe she's just still sleeping? Yeah. Probably just that.
The anxiety was still there, however, unwilling to loosen its grip on his mind. Especially after what the Oni had said last night.
I'll go check on her, he reasoned. Just to be safe, and all that.
He padded across his bedroom, weaving around the small pile of yesterday's clothes he'd left on the floor, and crossed the hallway to his partner's room. Sure enough, she was still asleep. Soul almost turned to leave, but he hesitated in her doorway. He looked back at her. The last time she'd slept in beyond ten in the morning, she had complained somewhat violently of the disruption it caused to her circadian rhythm. Sleeping until almost 3:00 in the afternoon would leave her PISSED.
Decision made, he walked over to her bed and lightly jostled her shoulder. No response.
"Hey, Maka, wake up," he said, shaking her a little more vigorously this time. Still nothing. He was starting to worry again, dread building up heavy on his lungs. He didn't want to try shaking her again; he didn't think that was a good idea. Instead, he reached out with his soul. He wasn't a soul perception prodigy like she was, not by any means, but he knew her soul inside and out. If something was wrong with her, Soul would feel it.
The instant he made contact with her soul, he almost broke away from it straight away. Slick, oily waves of wrongness had replaced the calming pulse of her anti-demon wavelength, and its melody had shifted from its usual steady rhythm to a jangling, discordant tangle of notes. It felt… well. It felt like his own, when the Blood was acting up. But that should be impossible, right?
I told you she would be leaving soon, said the Oni in the back of his head. The little demon sounded viciously amused.
"You son of a bitch. What did you do to Maka?" he ground out, every muscle tensed with some indescribable mix of anxiety and rage.
She asked the same of you last night, the Oni replied, vicious amusement still thick in this voice. After you stopped coming to the Black Room, I got to do a little redecorating.
"What do you mean, 'redecorating'? And I'll ask you again. What the HELL did you do to Maka?"
I took her out of play, that's all. With the Kishin's madness wavelength about, you and I both know that it was only a matter of time before one of the two of you snapped. I'm merely helping the process along.
Soul felt a serrated edge of panic claw through his abdomen at the Oni's words. Shit. Shit shit shit. He had to wake her up.
Oh, you won't be getting your little meister back for quite some time, the demon said conversationally. Soul could almost hear the grin spreading across its too-large mouth. Not when you can barely stand to touch her soul.
He flinched, remembering his near-knee jerk reaction to Maka's soul, pulsing sluggishly with the black blood. The Oni's voice turned to one of cruel humor. It sickened you, didn't it? Feeling the Blood through her soul? Your meister has to touch that every time you two resonate. How it must repulse her.
Soul's fist slammed into the wall, knuckles splitting and bleeding onto the cheerful yellow wall. He ignored it.
"Shut UP, you bastard," he snarled, blocking out the Oni's twisted amusement. He closed Maka's bedroom door to view the full-length mirror on the inside of it, breathing heavily and dialing the Death Room's number in the condensation. After a few tense seconds, Lord Death appeared in the glass.
"Hello, howdy, hi, Soul! What did you need to ask me?"
The Shinigami's voice was pleasant, although his tone sobered slightly by the end as he took in Soul's somber expression.
"Lord Death? We have a problem."
Maka hung limply from her restraints, Black Blood still steadily trickling onto her lacerated wrists. The once-pristinely white surface of the wall was now smeared with her own blood. Her entire body was screaming. How long had she been here, she wondered, in this absolute farce of the Black Room? Sometimes it was the Oni torturing her; short and squat with his wide, wide grin, alternately conducting the Black Blood inside her body with sweeping gestures and tearing into her with his own sharp nails.
But sometimes it was Soul.
Oh, she knew it was only the Oni in disguise as her partner. She knew that now. But when the little demon was tearing her apart with Soul's hands and his face and his voice, saying the things she'd always feared he'd say… It was hard to remember when all she could process was pain.
Right now she was alone in the room, scratchy jazz record playing in counterpoint to her ragged breathing. He liked to let her heal. Her anti-demon wavelength struggled against the Black Blood to repair her body, only to be worn down and abused once again when the Oni returned. And he always did. It could have been days, for all she knew, or weeks. Time was strange in the Black Room.
She closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, Soul was standing in front of her. He looked exactly the same as he usually did in the Black Room, dark pinstripe suit and all. He looked the same as he had the last thirty times he appeared to her. She flinched away from him the second she registered his appearance, cringing into the wall and gasping with pain as even the slight motion aggravated the wounds scattered across her body. But when no harsh words or harsher abuse was forthcoming, she looked up to find Soul still standing before her. Instead of the Oni's toothy grin, however, he bore a look of horror, rage, and hurt. The Oni never looked like that, not even when he was wearing her partner's visage.
"Oh, Death, Maka, what did he do to you?" he murmured, fingers skimming over her wounds. Maka hissed at the near contact, and he drew his fingers back.
"How do I know you're really you, and not the Oni?" she managed to ask. The words fell hoarse and painful through her cracked lips. Even though this version of Soul was displaying emotions and care that the little demon never had, she was still wary. The Oni had taken a sadistic pleasure in breaking her slowly with her partner's hands.
"Do I look like him to you?" asked Soul, the sarcasm in his voice a thin cover for panic. "Do I feel like him?"
Maka shook her head, gasping as it aggravated her wounds again. Any motion hurt. Everything hurt.
"I can't – I don't. I can't feel you at all."
It was taking all of her soul's energy to heal her and fight off the Black Blood, much less attempt any kind of Perception or contact. As desperate as she was for the comfort of his soul, she barely had the energy to remain lucid at this point.
Soul nodded and stepped back, slipping his thumbs into the pockets of his suit pants. He tilted his head to the side, just enough to shadow his eyes, and all of his previous emotion drained away. His mouth stretched wide with the Oni's grin.
"Good," he said. "Then I won't have to worry about you trying to contact him, will I?"
Dread and despair flooded through Maka's battered body, the faint curl of hope his appearance had engendered snuffed out as the Oni continue to grin. A tear leaked out from the corner of her eye, stinging her battered cheeks as it dripped down. She bowed her head, arms and wrists screaming as they bore her full weight. She should have known it was too good to be true. She and Soul hadn't been able to resonate in weeks. There was no way he could have come.
Silent tears continued to trickle down her face as the Oni tore her apart with her partner's sharp teeth and her fears' sharp edges.
Soul paced back and forth by the foot of Maka's bed in the Shibusen dispensary, the repetitive motion providing a metronome to the chaos of his thoughts.
"So you're saying that she's in a coma?" he snapped, casting a tense gaze towards Mira Nygus. The slender, bandage-clad nurse was currently standing by Maka's bedside, writing notes on her clipboard.
She sighed, dark eyes flashing up to meet his own. "I'm really not sure. To all intents and purposes, Maka's only sleeping."
"Then why won't she wake up?" he replied, fear and impotent rage warring in his voice. His meister, his partner, was somewhere he couldn't help her or protect her and it was driving him mad. His pacing finally stilled as Nygus rose and laid a hand on his shoulder. Soul thought it was probably meant to be comforting. It wasn't.
"I don't know. Normally, Doctor Stein would handle cases where there's a problem with the patient's soul, but…" She trailed off, making an undefined gesture with her free hand before dropping it to her side once more. Soul bowed his head, eyes downcast to the tile floor.
"Okay. Okay," he muttered, almost to himself. Sinking heavily into the chair by Maka's bed, he rested his elbows on the mattress's edge and dropped his head into his hands.
"I'll be in the office. Come get me if you need anything, or if her condition changes," Nygus instructed softly, before turning to close the ward room's door with a quiet click. The scythe's stoic silence was her only answer. As she walked down the hallway towards the dispensary's well-organized office space, Nygus wracked her brains for any way to help the meister-weapon pair. She could tell that Soul was beating himself up over Maka's condition. He wasn't at fault, no one could have foreseen this, but she could tell. Any weapon would probably feel the same worry and anxiety. Even more so if the damage to their meister was in any way connected to themselves – in this case, Soul's Black Blood and its interference with both their resonance and their souls. The poor kid was doing an incredible job of keeping himself collected under the circumstances.
It was unfortunate that Dr. Stein had finally succumbed to madness. As the resident expert on madness, as well as the de facto authority on the Black Blood after deciphering most of Medusa's research notes on the subject, his knowledge would be invaluable in such a situation. As it is, he was currently on something akin to house arrest until he regained his sanity. Marie Mjolnir was looking after him, she recalled with a faint smile. The cheerful hammer weapon was certainly quite a counterpoint to Stein's aura of passively detached menace. Nygus remembered attending Shibusen as a student alongside them, with Marie's then-partner Joe Buttataki often present as well. Maka would have liked him – they both had incredible soul perception abilities.
"Joe," she breathed, eyes widening. With Stein gone, the soul perception prodigy was the closest thing they had to an expert on this type of thing -if anyone could help Maka, he could. Turning quickly on her heel, Nygus strode as fast as she could towards the Death Room. If Lord Death as willing to help, and she strongly suspected he would, she might just have a lead on healing the scythe meister. Maybe her weapon partner would feel a little better with the new information.
Soul snapped awake from an uneasy doze to the sound of the dispensary door opening. He'd been out for several hours, judging by the tired sun dipping below the horizon, and Maka's condition hadn't changed in the slightest. She was still sleeping, body motionless save for the rise and fall of her chest and the flickering of her eyes beneath their lids. Standing up to face the door, Soul swiped a quick hand over his sleep-bleared eyes. Nygus had returned, bringing with her a man. He was tall and muscular, with dark blond hair and a deep tan. He carried with him a faint scent of coffee.
Nygus stepped forward. "This is Joe Buttataki, Soul. He has one of the strongest Soul Perception abilities ever recorded to date, and with Dr. Stein unavailable he's the best person to help you and Maka."
The tall man – Joe – extended a hand to Soul with a slight smile. "Call me BJ. It's lucky that Lord Death had already called me in - I was just outside Death City when I heard about your situation."
"First lucky thing that's happened to us in about a week," Soul said flatly, shaking the man's hand. He didn't have time for pleasantries. Not with Maka's soul on the line.
He tersely explained what had happened to Joe, including a brief description of the Black Blood, the Oni, and its abilities as well.
"-and when I went to try and contact her soul, it felt… wrong. Messed up." Like it had felt when they'd fought Crona and Ragnarok the second time, he added silently. Only then, she'd willingly given herself over to the madness and Soul was there to pull her out. This time, all he could do was sit beside her bed and tear himself a new one for not being able to help her.
"I see," BJ said thoughtfully. "Would you mind if I took a look at your souls for a moment? It might help me to clarify a few things."
Soul shrugged. "If you think it would help, I guess." At this point, he didn't care if the older meister asked him to tap-dance down the hallways in stripper heels if it would help Maka. Tensing up slightly as BJ reached out to touch the center of his chest, he sat incredibly still while the man's callused palm rested on top of his scar. BJ frowned slightly as he (presumably) observed the scythe's soul, the corners of his mouth drawing down and his eyebrows narrowing. Soul flushed dark with shame. He knew that his soul was fucked up, that had been an established fact from Day One even without the Black Blood's influence, but it didn't make it any easier to see other people's reactions to it. Well. Other people than Maka, at any rate, because his tiny blonde meister had somehow not minded it one bit.
After what seemed like an eternity, BJ retracted his hand from Soul's chest; thankfully, he offered no comment on the nature and peculiarities of the weapon's soul. He reached out to rest a palm over Maka's sternum in silence, long fingers almost brushing her collarbones. Soul watched as he tensed up, assuming that he'd just encountered the conflicting mass of Grigori soul and Black Blood madness that had replaced his meister's normal wavelength. He wondered if the contamination of Maka's soul had somehow grown as bad as his own.
A few tense, silent minutes later, BJ turned around to face him once again.
"Well?" Soul asked. The only outward indication of his anxiety was the frenetic motion of his fingers, twitching as if desperate for a keyboard.
BJ shook his head slowly back and forth, as if searching for an explanation. "Maka's soul… It shows similar traits to yours, likely from the effects of the Black Blood. The contamination doesn't appear as bad, though, due to her anti-demon wavelength."
Soul nodded sharply. This was nothing he hadn't figured out on his own. From the older meister's tone, though…
"There's more to it, isn't there?"
BJ nodded. "There is. Not only is the anti-demon wavelength in conflict with the Black Blood, it also appears to be healing wounds inflicted on the soul itself. They seem similar to injuries sustained from a soul-force attack, but there's no other wavelength signature involved except the Black Blood."
"The Oni," Soul spat, banked fury at the little demon flaring up once again. He turned away from the other man, one hand running over his face in an attempt to compose himself once more. It didn't work.
"The Oni? But isn't he isolated to your own soul?" Turning around, the scythe saw that BJ was frowning slightly in obvious confusion. He sighed, resigning himself to a more in-depth description of the little demon's tricks.
"You said that Maka's soul had Black Blood around it, right?"
BJ nodded.
"When we resonate too much, sometimes the Black Blood carries over to Maka as well. Usually her anti-demon wavelength takes care of it, but since the Kishin woke up her wavelength hasn't been as strong and the Blood's been getting stronger. Still not enough to overcome the anti-demon wavelength all the way, but more than plenty to get its foot in the door – especially for the Oni. He's been gunning for Maka ever since he realized she was a threat to him," Soul explained, fingers still twitching frenetically against his thigh.
"And when was that?" BJ asked, his tone that of an investigator gathering information moreso than one of idle curiosity.
"When we fought Crona and Ragnarok the second time. She went under the Black Blood to try and understand the kid's wavelength, and the Oni flipped his shit when she came back out." He winced at the memory. The little demon had thrown a tantrum after he figured out what had happened, and the resulting headache hadn't faded for days.
"I wonder…" BJ murmured quietly, almost to himself. The room was quiet enough for Soul to catch the words, however, and he closed the distance between them with a single step.
"You wonder what, exactly?" he asked, voice tense. He knew Maka would have Chopped him for being so rude to an adult, especially one who practically amounted to a teacher, but he couldn't bring himself to care.
"You said you hadn't been able to resonate recently, right?" he asked slowly, with the voice of someone connecting the dots on some enormous discovery. Soul felt a brief flicker of hope.
"Yeah. I guess my wavelength had been distorted just enough to throw us off, or something. Why?"
"If Maka was able to reach the soul of the Demon Swordsman by fully integrating the Black Blood into her system, then don't you think that you might be able to reach her soul again now that the Black Blood has affected you both in similar ways?"
Soul stared at him. Blinked.
"You really think that'll work?" he asked, skepticism barely concealing the swell of hope the older meister's words had given him. BJ stood up and stretched, raising his arms above his head, before turning to face Soul once more.
"At this point, I'd say it's probably your best shot," he said gravely. "I have to go speak to Lord Death about something, but I wish you the best of luck with trying to help your meister."
Soul nodded tersely as BJ left the room, returning to his seat at Maka's bedside. He stared at his partner's hands, turning the older man's words over in his head. It would be pretty fucked up if the only reason he and Maka could resonate again was because she'd sunk to his own level of damage. On the other hand… what if it worked? What if his attempts at resonance actually went through this time? On the other hand, BJ had said that her soul was injured. What if his attempts at contact only made them worse?
The question is, am I willing to risk her soul by trying to help her or by not trying at all?
After thinking it over for only a few moments, Soul had reached his decision. He reached out and clasped her hand with both of his own.
"Soul Resonance," he murmured, closing his eyes and extending his wavelength in a movement he'd done with his partner so many times. He found her soul, the warmth and intensity of her anti-demon wavelength almost completely subdued by the Black Blood's constricting tendrils. His heart fell in despair, clenched in the same indelible sadness aroused by something precious irreparably broken. Doubt gripped him, trepidation running through his mind in a million flickers of 'what if', but he shoved the feelings back down once again. He couldn't afford to doubt himself, not when Maka's soul was on the line.
He pushed against her soul, wincing as the Black Blood surrounding it lashed out against him. The attack wasn't as strong as he had expected, as most of the Blood appeared to be focusing inwards. That was bad. It meant the Oni was planning something. Gritting his teeth against the pain inflicted, he reached out further with his soul's wavelength, trying to make contact with Maka's battered soul beyond the confines of the Black Blood. He felt it briefly, a tiny tendril of her wavelength slipping against his own. He grasped it as quickly as he could, connecting to it with all the strength of desperation.
He had to retreat just as fast.
The second his wavelength made contact, her entire soul convulsed in unbearable agony. The shock of the sensation detached Soul from his connection with her wavelength, leaving him panting and gasping as the aftershocks of the agony rippled through him. He could see Maka's soul ahead of him in the darkness, still convulsing with agony as the tendrils of Black Blood dug in deeper to the glowing orb. Soul narrowed his eyes. The Oni was fighting him back, and it hurt, but not as much as the thought of leaving Maka - his meister, his partner – in the throes of that agony. That wasn't going to happen. He wouldn't allow it. Soul's lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl as he plunged forward once again, all the while apologizing desperately for her pain.
Maka drifted in a haze of semi-consciousness. Her soul finally depleted of its reserves of energy, she'd stopped being able to heal so much as a scratch. The Oni still came to her, though, his sharp-tipped claws ripping through what little of her skin was still undamaged with enough precision to direct the blood flow away from his still-pristine suit and jacket. He had gotten bigger, she remembered absently, claws leaving wider and wider gashes across her skin as time went on. Or maybe she'd gotten smaller. She wasn't sure. It wasn't just time that was strange in the Black Room. Regardless of the maybe-not-so-little demon's true size, Maka decided that she felt smaller. The pain of her injuries had shrunk her world to two tiny pinpricks of vision right in front of her, right before Soul had torn out her eyes the first time. Or was it the Oni? She couldn't remember any more. She merely hung there from the wall, bloodstained and grime-stiffened pajamas shredded beyond any modicum of decency, and waited for one or the other of them to appear. They always did, and after so long under their ministrations she was battered and broken beyond any emotion save dull acceptance.
She thought she'd felt something earlier, a brief flicker of desperation that wasn't hers flashing behind her eyes, but she knew it was impossible. The Oni had made sure of that, Maka thought, the stabbing burn of the Black Blood around her wrists and ankles now a constant instead of a punishment for struggling. The session of torture administered to her immediately after the emotion had appeared had been one of the worst bouts of agony that she could remember. The Oni had orchestrated her tainted blood in a fury she'd never before seen, one that had elicited the last of the screams that her abused throat could produce. After that, she had been reduced to low, almost animal keening as he tore her apart from the inside, but Oni didn't seem to take his usual twisted pleasure from once again debasing her to something raw and pained and less than human. His actions had instead carried an edge of urgency in the place of his usual languid enjoyment. She wasn't sure why.
She'd had a protector once, a partner. Or she thought she did. He had white hair and white teeth and a sharp, sharp smile that was also so sweet, as if he showed it for her alone. But that had to be wrong. Because Soul was her tormentor, even crueler than the Oni, and she feared him. Soul's sharp, sweet smile was one he only showed her when he was done with her, as her blood pooled on the purple tiles of the floor. It was darker now, a dull maroon, distorted and changed by the oily poison of her cuffs – a far cry from the healthy crimson that she thought it ought to be. Maybe, when it was all black, her captors would be done with her. Maka wondered if she would then be allowed to die. She should probably be dead by now. She continued to hang from wrists rubbed raw to the bone in places, eyes downcast; her labored breathing was a harsh counterpoint to the old jazz record still playing on the gramophone in the room's center.
Thud.
Maka twitched at the sound, so out of place in the closed cycle she'd been living. She didn't want to know what it was or where it came from, only whether it would cause her more pain. Her experience this far had taught her that it probably would. She only cast her bloodshot eyes up towards the source of the noise when she registered ragged breathing emanating from it. Her tired brain only processed white hair before instinct took over, convulsions of pain rippling through her body as she cringed away from the figure on the floor as far as her manacles would allow. He was back, he was back, he was early, no no no NO –
She squeezed her eyes shut, unwilling to look at his face as he tore her apart again.
She missed the look of crumpled despair that spread across his face.
Soul lay sprawled on the floor of the soul-scape room, wheezing in counterpoint to a scratchy jazz record and mentally exhausted after the battle he'd fought with the Oni to get inside it. Although it resembled his own Black Room in architectural design, he was loath to use the appellation when the room itself contained no black to begin with. He hadn't seen much as he tumbled through the ceiling, but he'd noticed that.
Feeling a wetness soaking through the sleeve of his shirt, he turned to look at it and flinched back in shock. The fabric was soaked in blood. He trailed his gaze over the floor, almost scared of what he'd find. There was a pool of the red-brown fluid sitting stagnant on the purple floor tiles, spreading out from the base of the wall behind him. And from that section of wall hung his meister, beaten and bloody almost beyond recognition.
Her limbs were spread-eagled on the gore-streaked surface, wrists and ankles restrained with black loops of what Soul would be willing to bet was hardened Black Blood. What little clothing she had left to her was soaked in blood, both fresh and dried, and her hair was a matted tangle. Gashes both large and small crisscrossed her skin, the pale flesh made more of gaping red mouths than of intact surface. Her wrists were rubbed raw and her joints were distended. Soul was no medical expert, but he didn't have to be to notice the unnatural angles of her broken bones. She looked up at him, green eyes dulled and bloodshot, and immediately cringed away. Convulsions wracked her slight, battered form as the motion pulled at her wounds, and Soul felt the heavy weight of dread settle in somewhere just behind his sternum. She was gasping, now, short pants that seemed to claw their way out of her bruised throat, and Soul watched her lips move slightly as a low moan drew itself from her body. He surged to his feet, insides constricting as Maka desperately tried to cringe back further.
"Oh Death, Maka, what did he do to you?" Soul murmured, slowly approaching his partner. The moans grew louder, hoarser, her cracked lips forming barely perceptible words.
"- no, nonono no you're early why are you early why are you doing this again you did this already Soul I know you're not real you can't be real you're not REAL-"
Not real?
"Maka, it's me, I'm real, I swear," he said, trying for reassurance and achieving only panic. What did she mean, he wasn't real? Soul reached up to touch her somewhere she was uninjured, and she flinched back when she registered his motion. He quickly dropped his hand.
"It's me," he whispered, nearing silence as he sought to keep calm. Almost unconsciously his soul reached out to touch hers, seeking the comfort he associated with his partner's soul, and he flinched when he contacted it. It was dull and muddled, the wavelength distorted with the Black Blood and weakened to an alarming degree. He supposed, distantly, that it made sense; after all, it was her soul's body that had taken so much damage. Maka's head bowed further, reduced again to sharp panting. Soul frantically sent her strength and comfort and energy through the tentative link, willing her to be okay even as her blood continued to drip to the floor. He looked around, somewhat expecting the Oni to appear at any moment now that Soul had finally reached his partner.
After an interminable length of time, Maka finally looked up at him once again. Her unhinged murmuring had ceased with the contact of his wavelength, and her emerald eyes seemed sharper than they had when he'd first arrived.
"Soul…?" she asked in a whisper, clearly not daring to believe that it was true. Soul looked away from her, disgusted with himself. He had allowed this to happen. It was HIS Blood that had caused this, his demon, and Maka had paid the price. He looked down at his shoes for a moment, before shaking his head to snap himself out of his pity party. He didn't have time to indulge in that now.
"Yeah. It's me."
Silent tears trickled down her face, cutting a path through the dried blood on her cheeks. This time, when he reached up to touch her, she didn't flinch away, somehow trusting in his soul wavelength enough not to fear him as she had before.
"I didn't think… How are you here?" Maka asked, as Soul crouched down to inspect the cuffs of Black Blood around her ankles.
"There's a guy back at Shibusen who came in to take a look at your soul. Joe something-or-other."
Maka interrupted, eyes wide with the same look she reserved specifically for famous authors and sometimes their characters.
"Joe Buttataki?" she rasped excitedly.
"Yeah," Soul replied, slightly bemused. "You know him?"
"No, but he has the most powerful Soul Perception ability in Shibusen's history. We learned about him weeks ago – weren't you paying attention?"
Her tone was irritated, if weak, and Soul chuffed out a small laugh. Only Maka would get on him about his schoolwork when she's beaten bloody.
"I told him a bit about what had happened, and he said that since your soul had Black Blood on it like mine that we might be able to synch wavelengths again. Kinda like what you did with Crona when you tried the whole 'going batshit for science' thing. Hold still, I want to try something," he continued, setting his hands on one of the ankle cuffs.
"What are you going to do?" she asked warily.
"It's my Blood, isn't it? I should be able to manipulate it to some degree."
He closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to shift the restraint from a solid to a fluid. It grappled with him, no longer as attuned to his wishes as it used to be, and he grappled right back. No way in hell was some witch's experiment leftover going to get the best of him, especially not when he was fighting for his partner. Eventually it wavered, then splashed to the ground, swirling in the puddle of blood still on the floor. Funny. He supposed that the Oni couldn't be bothered to add a drain into his décor. Swiftly moving to the other ankle cuff, he repeated the process once again. This time, it fought harder, as if sensing his intent. He still beat it back, though, sheer stubbornness – a trait he'd gotten in no small part to Maka – enough to overpower the dark substance. He almost started working on the first of the arm cuffs before Maka made a small noise of protest. He pulled back, eyebrows furrowed in an unspoken question.
"If you do them one at a time…" she started, then paused, searching for the right words. "I don't think I can take hanging from one arm."
Soul flicked his eyes down to gauge the distance from her feet to the floor, and realized that what Maka had said was true. If he released the first cuff on its own she would be left dangling several inches above the ground on one wrist. It was rubbed raw to the bone in places, weeping blood and clear fluid over a thick layer of partially-healed and peeling scabs. He nodded in acknowledgement of her words.
"Okay. I'll try to take them both down, then."
"If you let me drop, I am going to make your skull my new bookshelf when we get out of here," she warned, the threat losing much of its bite from the exhausted tone of its delivery. Soul cracked a grin and gave her a mock salute.
"Will do. Okay, hold on," he said, reaching up to lay one hand on each cuff. He exerted his will on them as he had her ankle cuffs, but this time they both fought back harder against his control than the first two combined. They started to squeeze in on Maka's wrists, his meister releasing a pained whimper as the bands of Black Blood began to crush down on the bones. Soul gritted his teeth, exerting every ounce of control he'd learned over the Blood on the oily substance and willing it to change. Slowly, oh so slowly, it did. It wavered, shifting consistencies between steel and toughened rubber for a moment, before Soul's will won out and it splashed to the ground. Maka crumpled as her support flowed away, but Soul caught her inches before her head slammed into the blood-covered floor. She yelped weakly as the motion jostled her numerous wounds, breaths quickening as another wave of pain rolled through her slight frame. Soul murmured apologies for the pain as he shifted his arms around her into a more comfortable position, one arm slipped beneath the crooks of her knees and the other one pillowed behind her neck and shoulders.
"Fuck, Maka, I'm so sorry, this is all my fault, I should have gotten to you sooner -"
His words were cut off by Maka's soft shushing and the twitch of her fingers on his thigh. She glared at him with as much strength as she could muster.
"No. This is not your fault, Soul. None of this is your fault. If you want someone to blame, try Asura. Or Medusa, for cooking up the Black Blood in the first place."
Soul knew the words were meant to comfort him, but they rather lost their effect when her blood was literally staining his hands a dull crimson. He closed his eyes and gently cycled up the strength of their resonance, bolstering Maka's soul with his own energy. It was all he could do for her at this point. Maka sighed as the comfort of her partner's wavelength, so long denied her, now wrapped her soul with its warmth. They remained there in near-total silence for a moment, each drinking in the other's comfort and closeness.
Wait. Silence?
"Well, isn't this a touching scene?" drawled Soul's voice from somewhere behind them.
The scythe was sorely tempted to whip his entire body around to investigate, but he knew that doing so would only injure Maka further. Gently lowering her body to the floor, he ensured that she was in a stable position before giving into the urge. He slipped into a combat pose on instinct, only to find… himself. His double stood before him as if he were looking into a mirror, wearing the same pinstripe suit in which Soul always found himself in the Black Room. He was leaning up against a small, round table bearing a gramophone, one hand braced against the table's edge while the other held the needle away from the record. Soul studied him intently, eyes flickering up and back across his double's features. The resemblance was nearly perfect, he noted, down to the slightest detail in composition. The only difference was the eyes. His double's eyes weren't the bright crimson that he was used to seeing in the mirror. Instead they appeared to be washed out, duller – the same dark grey as which his own eyes would appear in a black-and-white picture. Huh. This must have been what Maka meant by him not being real, he realized abruptly, and glared at his doppelganger.
"Oni," he growled, baring his pointed teeth as his double smirked.
"Soul," replied the Oni, voice the same mix of sardonic politeness as it usually bore in his bulbous-red-skinned form. He extended an arm to the walls of the octagonal room, as though welcoming the weapon to his domain. "I see you've noticed the changes in décor."
"What did you do to my meister, you son of a bitch?" he spat, having not missed the way Maka had flinched against him the second the little demon had opened his mouth. Actually his mouth, since the Oni was wearing his skin.
"Oh, a little of this, a little of that," the demon answered flippantly. A sadistic gleam appeared in his eyes and his mouth stretched wide in a smile, an Uncanny Valley grin that exposed his teeth all the way to the back. Soul tensed.
"A little of… hmm, how shall I put it?" the Oni continued, raising one hand palm-up. He snapped suddenly, as though remembering a word he'd almost forgotten. "Ah, yes. A little of something else."
At the last two words he twitched his fingers towards Maka, and Soul stood frozen in shock as their Resonance link nearly shut down under the weight of the agony flooding through it. She let out a hoarse whimper as her back arched in pain, and it was clear that whatever the Oni was doing was tearing through what she'd managed to heal after he got her out of the cuffs. He could see her skin roiling as the Oni continued to gesture. And with a sickening jolt of clarity, he realized that the bastard of a demon was directing the Black Blood through her veins.
His muscles snapped into action as he let out a wordless snarl, leaping at the Oni with one forearm transformed into a scythe. The Oni ducked out of the way untouched, but Soul's maneuver had served its purpose – breaking the Oni's focus on torturing his meister. Maka slumped back against the wall, breathing hard, low sobs of pain clawing their way up through her throat.
"You bastard," he grated, eyes flashing with fury as he faced down his demon. The Oni had the arrogance to brush at invisible lint on his suit jacket, only deigning to look at Soul when he was certain that it was as impeccably clean as usual.
"That won't work on me, you know," he said conversationally. "I'm made of the Black Blood. Your little experiment with the Demon Swordsman should have taught you that your blade is, in a word, irrelevant."
Soul barked out a humorless laugh. "Good to know. But I wasn't planning on using my blade."
A brief flash later, the transformed limb was back in its original flesh-and-blood state. Soul braced his feet and stared at the Oni, extending his hands as if to push against a heavy object. The Oni's brow creased, obviously unsure of Soul's plan, and the scythe bared his teeth again in a grin. Good. Let the bastard wonder. He concentrated hard on the Black Blood, and on the waves of madness emanating from the mass of it that comprised the Oni's body. Maka's cuffs had been a test run. This time, it was the real deal.
Whipping one hand up to his mouth, he bit down on it briefly but hard to break the skin. He looked at the resulting wound for a second, watching a bead of blood well out of the perforated semicircle at the base of his thumb, before turning his palm out to face the Oni once again. He chuckled, low and dangerous in the back of his throat. This son of a bitch hurt his partner. He was going to pay for it.
"My blood's black too, in case you hadn't remembered," he taunted. "Now get back where you came from, and leave. My partner. The hell. ALONE."
With the last word, he tugged at the Oni with all the strength he could muster, drawing Black Blood from its form and reabsorbing it into his bloodstream. The bastard came out of his soul, and Soul could get him the fuck back in again. The Oni struggled, pushing against his wavelength with the strength of a cornered cat. He flickered back and forth between Soul's own appearance and his usual red-skinned one before finally remaining in the latter, energy levels literally being drained away. Soul could feel the burn in his veins as his blood grew denser, attempting to accommodate the new mass, and he told his veins to shut up. If Crona could keep Ragnarok packed up in his skinny-ass body, Soul could do it too. Maka picked up on his plan, fiercely adding her own anti-demon wavelength – or what was left of it – to the fight as well, purging some of the Black Blood in Soul's system and making room for more.
Eventually he fell to his knees, his soul too exhausted by the two consecutive battles with the Oni to continue. The little demon in question was currently only about the size of a housecat, fuming impotently at his decrease in size.
"You haven't seen the last of me, you know," he warned.
"You know," Soul replied tiredly, "that threat would pack a hell of a lot more punch if you were taller than a foot and a half and saying it. As it is, you're just kinda pathetic."
He reached over and grabbed the little demon by the collar of his suit jacket, taking a slight but vicious pleasure out of watching his bulbous eyes pop as he choked.
"Don't you ever," he said, emphasizing each word with a shake of the Oni's squat body, "mess with my meister again. Don't even try."
"As I recall," started the Oni in a valiant attempt at snideness, "you- GACK-"
Whatever he was about to say was cut off as Soul squeezed his throat proper.
"Don't," he said flatly. The Oni nodded as vigorously as he was able, clearly eager to do whatever would get Soul to ease up on his throat at all, and the scythe weapon released his crushing grip on the little demon before hurling him into the floor.
"Get. Out."
The words dripped with venom, and the Oni scrambled to agree, clearly prioritizing his own skin over anything else. Soul stood where he was, panting heavily as he tried to exert some kind of control over the roiling Black Blood. His breathing calmed, heart slowing down from its breakneck sprint to something approaching normal, and he looked over at Maka and smiled. She grinned back, a tiny and lopsided thing that barely twitched up the corner of her mouth. Soul knew that it was the equivalent of a beaming smile. He chuckled lightly, somewhat overwhelmed with shock that his ridiculous scheme had worked. Then he choked. It was suddenly a lot harder to breathe.
Maka looked at him in concern, registering his distress. He noticed her wounds closing up, the smaller cuts just scratches by now, and he understood. Her soul was purging the Black Blood from her system, closing the brief window of compatibility that had been the only good thing about this whole ordeal.
"I guess it's time for me to go," he said breathlessly, her soul's wavelength pressure constricting his larynx. "I'll see you on the other side, okay?"
She nodded slightly, closing her eyes as she focused her wavelength inwards. The pressure on his lungs eased up a little, and he took the opportunity to withdraw his soul from Resonance before it was forcibly rejected. The backlash from that would hurt her even further. Floating back to his body through the dark mid-space where souls resided, he desperately hoped that he'd done enough for her.
It had been three days. Three fucking days, and Soul hadn't left her side for more than was absolutely necessary. He knew that her soul had a lot of damage to repair, Death he knew that, but he couldn't help but be plagued by what-ifs. He sighed, resting his forehead on the wall. He'd had to beat off Death Scythe the other day, the older weapon having finally caught wind that his precious darling daughter was in trouble. By some miracle he'd been absent from the Death Room when Soul had called in that first morning. When he'd finally returned to consciousness three days ago, he'd awoken to the rest of their resonance group standing around him. Black*Star had been perched on top of the medicine cabinet for some reason, Tsubaki standing quietly beneath him, while Kid paced agitatedly behind the Thompsons. It was one of the first times that Soul had seen Kid express this level of emotion over something that wasn't asymmetry, and it caused a strange warmth to rise up in one of his internal organs. Maybe his spleen or something. Liz was sitting in one of the visitor's chairs, Patti snoring lightly on her shoulder. When he stirred awake, they all rushed forwards to hug him in a small tidal wave of limbs, firing off what seemed like a hundred questions at once.
After the collective glomp session was over and Soul had explained what had happened, they all immediately left to go and help him settle in to the ward room. Tsubaki and Black*Star brought him several changes of clothes (along with one for Maka, when she woke up), the Thompsons managed to find a fold-out cot and a pillow in one of the many utility and storage closets scattered around the massive school, and Kid informed Nygus and the rest of the medical staff in no uncertain terms that Soul was going to stay right there with Maka until she awoke.
Soul was pretty sure that of all of the things his friends had done for him since he came back from the White Room, as he was now calling it, Kid's contribution had been by far the most deeply appreciated. He could have run back to the apartment for clothes, although he wouldn't have wanted to, or he could have stayed in the outfit he had on that day. He could fall asleep pretty much anywhere, even on the floor. But no way in hell was he going to leave Maka alone in her ward room any more than he absolutely had to, especially not if she could wake up at any moment.
It had been three days since he confronted the Oni in the White Room.
He had hoped that he wouldn't have to wait a fourth one.
Staring out the window, he observed Death City lit by the laughing crescent moon. Its teeth were free of the dripping blood tonight, and he wasn't sure whether that meant it was full or not. Knowing the city, the full moon was probably when it drooled blood. He wondered, absently, whether that would create some confusing schedules for werewolves, but shook off the thought as irrelevant. The only werewolf he knew was Free, and his own particular brand of lycanthropy was well outside the bounds of any werewolf lore he'd encountered.
"Well, I think I'm going to go to bed," he murmured, loud enough for Maka to hear him if she was listening. He wondered how she was doing in the White Room -if she was healing, if there was lasting damage, if she was even able to come out in the first place. He wondered, even, whether she was still in the White Room at all.
He took her still hand with his own, stroking his callused thumb over its back. He wondered if they would ever be able to resonate well enough to fight again. He desperately hoped so. It would suck without her.
"Goodnight, Maka," he said into the stillness, before rising from the bedside chair and settling back into the cot that the Thompsons had brought him. He pulled the thin blanket over his body, giving the Black Blood a cursory scan before he succumbed to sleep. It had been quiet lately. The Oni was clearly still licking his wounds somewhere in the bowels of his soul, a fact for which Soul was thankful. He hadn't even had a nightmare in quite some time.
He curled into himself slightly, back towards the wall as he laid there at the foot of his partner's bed. He drifted off to the sound of the air conditioner humming, hoping that his partner would be okay tomorrow.
He was asleep before he could hear his partner's whispered reply.
"Goodnight, Soul," she said softly, a tiny smile around her eyes as she saw him curled by the foot of her bed. She would talk to him tomorrow. They would definitely have to talk about what happened, both on his part and hers – although Maka would be happy to bury the memories as deep as they could go. But that was for tomorrow's sunlight.
Tonight, they would sleep.