that situation when you spend ten minutes sitting, almost finished with the fic process, and can t decide to keep title honorifics or not. keep going back and forth in mind: literal backspacing, rewriting, backspacing. and then decide to do it, because it s personally awkward to refer to Stein as just "Stein" or "Doctor"/"Professor" (though this is preferable and can be used much less awkwardly).

anyway. fic. oneshot. set during the battle with Chrona and Ragnarok, and also set shortly after Soul gets infected, Stein (*i* can refer him just fine as Stein, but if it's a character it s just weird. WEIRD.) operates on him.

STORM, THE CALM AFTER
/pseudonymosity
Set during and after the first momentous vs. Chrona fight.

Soul's hurt (understatement, but reality). Maka's not. And there is something wrong with that.

Soul is hurt and okay. And there is something wrong with that too.


She closes her eyes tightly and she's waiting, with splintered nerves that shock her system and prickle across her skin. She screwed up, continually runs in her head.

The sensation of Soul leaving her grip. She thinks it's fear, gripping her instead - so tightly that she has even lost sense of her own Weapon.

She screwed up, continually runs in her head.

Her eyes open when there is a certain something in the air, that demands all of her attention.

Soul.

She screwed up. It doesn't continually run in her head. Her thoughts stop there and her head, her thoughts empty out into this invasive haze of static.


The moment the door behind her clicks closed, seconds after Stein-hakase informs her of Soul's condition, that the operation was a success, she knows. She just knows that there is a "but," that everything is not quite as it seems - not quite what Stein-hakase was trying to assure her of. It isn't so much the fact that Soul is just lying there, breathing slowly, but shallowly, that is so disorienting. It's not the lingering stench of biting disinfectant and surgical metal. It certainly isn't the crumpled blood-drenched, tattered clothing tossed to the side.

It's the quivering of her soul, in response to seeing his contrasting still, steady one. Despite a stable state, there's something discordant about him and his soul. Just barely perceptible, but discordant all the same.

And she shudders when her eyes focus, blurred yet clear, on the shadows of him, of his bed, stretched out and seeping against the floor - black, black. And she can't help but think, remember, see - blood, blood. Seeping against that cathedral floor, under crevices to stretch out eagerly to the other side of those stupid doors.

(She's in two places at once. She's here, in Death City, her home, and with Soul. But she's also there, in Italy, home of her biggest mistake to date, and with Soul and Papa and Stein-hakase and those people and that thing.)

Something is wrong. And there are no notes to refer to, books with information to memorize, or professor or adults to be guided by, to inform her what that thing is.

Holding his hand makes everything almost worse. No amount of hand holding stops her from her anger, her frustration, from the disquietude settling deep, deep.


quote for this fic is creepy as ef, when applied to their situation.

"Change always comes bearing gifts."
Price Pritchett