This isn't a book, this isn't a movie, this isn't a happy ending.
She's been here before, kneeling on the cobble stone slick with his blood.
Her hands saved him then, took the two broken halves and pressed them together at the jagged seam. Her hands kept him alive then. Held him together until he healed.
Until he could sit up.
Until he could walk.
Until he could fight.
There are too many pieces this time. She only has two hands and there are pieces falling away.
Letting his blood pour to the ground around her.
Letting his innards fall out into her lap.
Letting the light fade from his eyes.
This isn't last time. He cries, tears track pink lines down his sodden face. He begs her not to let him die.
Please I don't want to die
Please I don't want to go
Please maka, I'm scared
She holds his soul in her hands. It is the only thing not covered in blood.
There is no last-minute confession. No dying breath wasted on the unresolved feelings between the two. Only a rattled cough and silence.
They bury him in the endless fields of the death room. Kid takes his soul from her numb shaking hands. And she can't feel him anymore.
There is no Soul to resonate with.
There is no Soul to hold her hand.
There is no Soul to argue with.
Not that it stops her from screaming at him.
From begging him to forgive her.
How dare he leave.
Please come back.
She can't feel him and slowly she can't feel herself either. So used to feeling her emotions doubled back and thrown at her through their resonance, she can only feel the absence now. The gaping hole in her chest where his soul should be.
She is only half of her destiny.
She is only half of a team.
She is only half of a soul.
Maka knows she can't go on living here. If what this is counts as living. This wading through the hours hiding under her covers. Trying to stop her soul from searching for his.
She is searching for him, in his room, between his sheets, in his clothes.
Blackstar hasn't left her living room in two weeks. He brings her food sometimes. Sometimes he just sits on the corner of the bed and shouts. At her, at soul, at himself. Tsubaki tried to make him leave that first night but he knows maka too well. He knows her coping. Knows the bladeless pencil sharpeners that filled her desk draws after her parent's divorce. He's seen her darkness and this is the worst it's ever been.
Someone forces her into the shower, she thinks it was Liz but all she registers is a bit of blonde hair. The water is cold and after a while her hands are as numb as her soul.
She balls them into fists and pounds the shower walls, trying to beat feeling into them. Shards of yellow tile start to fall in the bottom of the bath. Streaks of blood and ceramic dusk congeals on the lip of the tub.
Someone's yelling at her but she can't hear over her own screaming.
She can't feel the cuts in her feet
She can't feel the glass in her hands
She can't feel the soul in her chest
Blackstar bodily drags her from the bathroom. She's soaking wet, naked, kicking and screaming. There's no room for embarrassment in her empty chest.
Kid doesn't come to check on her. He's busy with the mission they left unfinished. Sid was sent to dispatch the kishins but the witches are still a problem. Their madness keeps Kid or Stein from being able to interfere directly. Sid can't handle everything on his own and currently, Blackstar won't leave her couch.
She remembers her briefing from before. Three witches, an estimated twelve kishin guard dogs around their lair. There were twenty, she got through fifteen before they killed Soul. The oldest manipulates madness, the other two are conduits, like weapons, they take her magic, amplify it and send it back to her.
Sid cleared all the Kishins the front door is wide open and Maka knows exactly where it is.
There is a training scythe under her bed. The last gift her mother ever gave her. It's short and dull but it'll cut through a witch with a little extra force.
There is a friend between her and the door. She can't feel his Soul but she knows he's there. The great gatekeeper to her life.
There is no way she can get to her Spartoi uniform, it's still covered in blood anyways.
She climbs down the fire escape outside Soul's window wearing his piano man shirt and sweatpants. He'd be pissed if he knew she was going to get blood on that shirt, it was his favorite.
The streets of death city are never quiet, people tend to notice when someone walks past carrying a short scythe. No one questions the meister.
She cuts her way across the alleyways catching buses here and there until the very edge of the last town in the county comes into focus.
She's cut her way through two new kishin before she gets through the door. Her scythe is dull and nicked. It feels clumsy in her hands top-heavy and too small but it wraps around the first witch like a snake. Maka's foot plants it's self in the center of the witches chest and pushes her back onto the blade yanking it through.
It's messier when your closer.
It's messier when you have to saw through them with a dull blade.
It's messier when you can't see through her tears.
Soul's shirt is torn and bloody. He'd be so pissed off if he could see it now.
She hacks at the second sister taking an arm off then a leg before she can get the blade around her neck.
The blood loss makes her eyes blurry too by the time the Oldest sister gets home. Maka is tired. One of her knees is swollen beyond use and her scythe blade is too dull to take another witch out.
But she picks it up swinging it around for a moment before running for the older witch.
This isn't a great Spartan legend.
She doesn't die for a great cause. She doesn't go down in battle with the biggest villains blood on her hands. She doesn't leave her friends with a great motivational speech, a reason to avenge her death so it isn't in vain.
Maka gets caught by the throat the witch's razor sharp claws tearing through her neck leaving her actively choking on the appendages. Trying to force a growl out around the hole in her throat. She claws at the hand around her neck, thin lines of blood run to join the flow from her gaping wound.
Most of her throat is ripped out when they find her. The rest of her had been tossed into a miscellaneous pile of witch bits, left to rot away with them.
Soul's shirt is beyond recognition; he'd be pissed.
Her soul rests heavily on the design highlighting the slim outlined what had been a G chord before a kishin tooth had torn through it.
She is buried in the endless fields of the Death room beside Soul. Kid takes her soul from Sid's steady hands and finally, she can feel him again.