Second Set For SoMa Week 2016 Prompt 2: Can't Sleep

Disclaimer: I do not own Soul Eater

Soul's operation had Stein working ceaselessly through the night. The man had staunched blood and gone through two rolls of bandages on the helicopter flight back to Death City. Maka had no difficulties watching what unfolded. Her father and Stein had done what they could and she sat down on the side to take it all in.

When she went home after Soul was deemed stable, she lay awake, staring at the back of her lamp with dim green eyes. Maka had fixed her unseeing gaze at the blue lampshade and though of her partner.

Soul had not deserved this; to be treated like a patient, a victim of circumstance. He was her partner, a hero, her best friend. Getting him hurt should never have been an option. It wasn't fair that he was in a gurney, healing from wounds that were meant for her. It was her inability that had caused this. Her weakness in battle proved how incompetent she was.

Maka clenched the pale pink of her sheets and allowed herself a sob. This was her fault. Perhaps, if she had blocked as Soul had told her to, he would be less injured. If she hadn't forced him to accompany her to the cathedral, he wouldn't be hurt at all. Instead, she had tried to do more than the mission and go try to save those group of arrogant souls who fought with her partner. He was worth so much more than she could verbalize.

The longer Soul slept, the more restless Maka became. Stein had promised that Soul would recover, but every time she saw him, he was still breathing shallowly in a coma-like state. Closing her eyes only brought back the disturbing image of Chrona slicing through Soul's chest like it was paper, like there was nothing easier. No matter how many times she showered, she imagined his blood seeping through her gloves and skirt. The brown and red had dyed her uniform and refused to wash out. Maka threw them away and spent the next few days eating sparsely and being unable to sleep for more than three hours without being thrown away by a vicious nightmare in which her partner never opened his eyes.

About a week and a half after Italy, Stein gave Maka a stern lecture on the importance of rest. It didn't change anything. Her father tried to coo her to sleep as he had done in her childhood, but the ever present thought of facing a nightmare with Soul dead prohibited sleep of any kind. It was only when Maka was alone with Soul, letting her bare fingers play with his piano hands, that she felt any facet of solace at all.

Sweetly, in the silence of her partner's IV drip, his heart monitor and his breathing, she sat herself down for the twelfth time and took up his hand.

"I'm a little selfish, aren't I?" she asked quietly between them. She thumbed the back of his hand as if to remind herself that he was still physical; still with her. "Maybe more than a little." Maka rubbed his knuckles. "Do you think I'm selfish? Me wanting you to get better for the both of us?" She took a breath. "If you wake up, I'll do your share of laundry for a month. How does that sound?"

She got her customary mute response and brought his hand up for her cheek. "The apartment's not the same without you, you know? Get well and come home. You have so much homework to make up for."

"Liar." If she hadn't seen his lips move, she wouldn't have believed it. "We can't have that much otherwise you'd be doing it."

"I finished it," Maka shot back, but she had tears in her eyes and a wobbly smile. Nothing could soothe her soul better than the slow voice of her weapon partner.

"You look exhausted."

"Better than you," she said softly, leaning into his weakened hand.

"First time we ever landed here, huh?"

"It's going to be the last time," Maka vowed.

Her partner frowned. "Get some sleep," he said. Soul pulled his hand away and gently pressed the pads of his fingers against the underside of her eyes. She knew he could see the shadows, could feel the wetness of her cheeks. She hadn't really looked at herself since their mission in Italy and she could only imagine that she looked both worn and weathered by the stress and overhanging guilt.

"I'm not tired."

"Liar," he sighed again, taking her hand and closing his eyes again. "I know I'm exhausted."

"Yeah." Maka used her spare hand to rub away some of the tears, tears that she didn't want Soul to see even though it was too late. "I'm going to stay with you for a bit. Is that okay?"

"Cool." Soul squeezed her hand, seeming to already grow drowsier every moment longer. "Don't forget though."

"Hmm?"

"You've got to do my laundry for a month."

She coughed out a laugh and watched her partner fall asleep again. Maka rested her head in the pillowing of her arm while the upper half of her body leaned over his cot. She fell asleep not five minutes after and felt more at peace than she had in a while.