Hey, guys! What's up? I hope you guys had a totally awesome Christmas! I was gonna make a Haikyuu! fic for my friend as a Christmas gift, but that kinda fell through. Anyway, I was suddenly inspired to organize all the stray documents I had that were not currently filed away in my extensive and maddening filing system that is my mind and computer. I got a bunch of fanfics straightened out, which will be a huge help because the documents will actually be where they go when I need them, but I also found a few things I had completely forgotten about. Such as this fic. I have no idea where I was going with this fic or if I even WAS going somewhere in the first place. Either way, I polished it up, gave it an ending, and decided to post it as a new one-shot. (But seriously, I think this was born of my complete hatred of these types of assignments that I get from every single teacher at the beginning of every year. I don't want to write it, you don't care about reading it, why bother? But this still doesn't stop them from taking a grade on them. Rats.) Thank you guys for reading! Please review and let me know what you think, I always love feedback! Merry Christmas, my little darlings! I hope you all enjoy!

Disclaimer : I do not own Soul Eater.

She hated this.

It didn't matter how smart she was, how many books she had read, how good her grades were, or how well she could fight. None of that could change her utter helplessness in this situation. She hated it so much, but it seemed she could never truly escape.

The self-survey.

What do you like about yourself? What don't you like? Why? What are your hobbies and how have they influenced your life? Who is your role model and why do you look up to them? If you were a color, which one would you be? Write a paragraph about the person you trust the most... Etc.

If you didn't already hate yourself, have some sort of inferiority complex, or low-self esteem, you probably would by the end of the last question. Unfortunately, Maka wasn't exactly the strongest in that department. Sure she wasn't a hot mess, but she had some baggage. But then again, who didn't?

Trust was kind of a strange subject with her. When she was little her father taught her why trusting people and having high hopes were a bad thing. He hadn't set out with that in mind, but in the end she had learned her lesson. Similar to the old saying 'if you want something done right, do it yourself", she had vowed to not put her faith in anyone again. She refused to let her fate rest in the hands of someone who would only ever let her down. This had unfortunately tended to extend to herself. Often times she had no idea what she was doing, walking blind so to speak, and sometimes it affected her more than she liked.

Love was another thing that seemed completely foreign to her. But she had read somewhere once that love was built from trust, so she guessed that explained why she couldn't seem to grasp it. So she didn't trust. She didn't love either, and she was fine with that... Sort of. People couldn't be trusted. She was a person, so she was included. People who couldn't be trusted didn't deserve to be loved. She was alone in her own little world. She was fine with that.

Yet when she had first listened to that haunting melody, something clicked. The notes bounced off the walls and reverberated in her chest, where she could feel it vibrating in her soul. She didn't know where it came from, who had been dancing with the ivory keys, what kind of person they were, or anything at all. She could just feel it in her heart, on the same wavelength, the familiar sounds of loneliness ringing in her ears from the foreign melody. It was strange, unpolished, and erratic, but it felt real, raw, and magnificent. She had been numb to everything for so long, but the soft twinkling and jarring clashes flowed together, filling up her chest with a warm feeling. Something that whispered at the edge of her mind that she had felt this before, but blew her mind with the likes of nothing she had never seen.

It sounded almost too good to be true. The peculiar person with an unusual appearance that just so happened to be the only scythe weapon had managed to pique the interest of and be interested in the scythe-specific meister who had a more than unusual personality. And neither seemed to mind. Yet when they shook hands, and that smile stretched across his face as he looked her in the eye with a certain sort of joviality as he said his name, she felt at peace. It combined with the small bubbling feeling and warmth in her chest, all three completely foreign feelings that she hadn't felt in a long time.

How could she explain the change he had brought about in her life? He was lazy, vain, and interrupted her studies more often than not. He was also strong, understanding, and managed to teach her things she never imagined without even trying. It had been a rocky road, some give-and-take and some useless squabbling, but she learned that it didn't matter what was going on, where they were, or how stupid she was being, he would always be there if she needed him; that he wouldn't just abandon her, now or ever. She discovered that there were words to describe how she was feeling. Words that were so simple but completely baffling to her. The bubbling in her chest was called hope, the warmth that surrounded her whenever he was around or brought up in her thoughts was called love. The sense of calm that washed over her, soothing the ache in her chest and taking a million pounds off her lungs, dropping her shoulders by a good few inches and bringing a slope to her face as a feeling of security wrapped around her was called trust, the thing more fragile than glass that had completely shattered her before. She couldn't open up to him all the way, not yet. She still had some baggage to deal with on her own. But... Maka knew, every time she looked at him, that she'd get there one day. With Soul at her side, she could do anything. Including face her fears and find her one true love without freaking out every few seconds about them leaving her for someone more gorgeous.

How did you explain someone like that? Someone who didn't seem to do anything yet always managed to surprise her. Someone who didn't talk but still somehow managed to say the right thing. Someone who awakened every one of her deepest, darkest fears only to drive them away. Someone who loved sushi so much that he kept insisting they have it for dinner once a week, but knew that she hated it so afterwards he would pop about five bags of popcorn and watch movies with her that he hated because he knew she loved them and they made her happy.

"Yo, Maka!"

Maka whipped her head around towards the source of the sound that had shattered the library's silence. Standing in the doorway a good thirty feet away from the table where she was seated was a familiar mop of white hair, red eyes, and slouched shoulders that lounged lazily on the doorframe in a 'cool, casual' way. Wide green eyes met a razor-sharp smirk as the quiet atmosphere was further demolished.

"Quit being such a nerd! That homework is lame, let's go get some grub!"

Despite the seemingly rude words, a small smile broke out on her face and twinkled in her eyes. Shoving the offending assignment in a random book that was then shoved in her bag, Maka quickly bounced up from her seat to meet him at the threshold.

It didn't seem to really make sense, and there were no combinations of words in any of the sixteen different languages she could read that could explain it, but his effect on her seemed to break every law in the history of science and logic. She wasn't even sure how he did it. He was just… Soul. It was so hard to describe.