Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
He was gone. Marie sat in her room, staring at the stitching on the walls, looking at the sterile perfection that she had marred with her very being. She looked at the sheets he had let her use, the stitching that covered them. The bed she slept on was even covered with it.
They were all identical to the stitches on his face. The ones on his chest, the ones that encircled his arm. They were identical to the ones that curved delicately around her stomach, the stitches that reached up to just under her left breast. She curled around the pillow that he had given her, running her fingers around the stitches on it as well.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
Marie could hear the people downstairs talking quietly and looked up as there was a quiet yet incessant knock on her door, tears in her eyes as it swung open a moment later. Spirit stood there, his normal suit replaced with a black one. He was even wearing black gloves. He took in the sight before him and moved to her side, holding her close to him.
"Marie, he wouldn't want you to be like this, you know that. He did what he did so you could have a shot at a happy life. He wouldn't want you crying your eyes out like this." Spirit said quietly, barely concealed tears thick in his throat.
"You're wrong. He's a sadistic man…" The weapon's voice trailed off. "He… He'd probably be laughing right now, you know how Franken is."
"Not when it came you, Marie. You know that. He would never do anything to hurt you." Spirit said gently.
The dam broke again and Marie collapsed against Spirit, sobbing. The man held her for a moment before there was another tentative knock on the door frame. Azusa Yumi stood in the doorway and Spirit extricated himself, leaving the two women to their grief as he walked out of the room and outside, lighting a cigarette. He took a deep breath of it and blew the smoke out before tossing the still lit cigarette to the ground. He watched it carefully to make sure it didn't start a fire, but let it burn, the smoke curling up into skulls in the cold air.
"That's for you, Stein." He said quietly.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
Marie sobbed against Azusa, the younger woman rocking the death scythe.
"I never told him, Azusa. I never told him how much he meant to me, how much I loved him!" Marie wailed.
Azusa gently smoothed the distraught woman's hair, wincing slightly at the sight of mascara on her white shirt. "Marie, he knew. All of us knew. You may never have said it aloud, but he knew every day that you loved him. He woke up to you, went to sleep to the knowledge that you would be there when he woke up, to take care of him. He relied on you more than he would ever admit it."
"I just wish I had told him, I wish I could tell him. Why, Azusa! I should be the one in the box, not him!" Sobbing erupted from the woman again and she trembled violently from the force of it, losing her voice to the grief.
"Shh…" Azusa hushed her quietly, letting her friend weep against her. Tears pricked in the corners of Azusa's eyes and she blinked quickly trying to rid herself of them. She couldn't stop them and soon silent tears were flowing down her cheeks for the man she claimed to not care for.
The man that had saved her best friend's life at the expense of his own.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Marie sat in the graveyard beside his grave for a long while after everyone else had left. The moon came up and she sat there, talking to the grave, wishing that she could be pouring out everything that mattered to the man that should be sitting beside her. The laughing moon looked down at her and became solemn.
When the light of the sun peeked over the horizon it too seemed to sense the woman's sorrow and the day was drab and dull.
Marie was still sitting there, tears on her face when Spirit slipped his hand under her arm and hauled her to her feet. She collapsed against him, fresh tears pouring from her as he guided her away from Stein's grave.
Stein's last moments, moments that Marie had never seen and had been sworn to secrecy, replayed in Spirit's mind and he shuddered slightly as he remembered Stein's last words.
The scientist smirked even through the pain he was in. He had finished all of the necessary work to ensure Marie's survival. A pale hand traced the line of fresh stitches across Marie's skin and a true smile flitted across the scientist's face.
He looked up to the sky, one hand resting on the battery that was powering the contraption that was serving as his heart. His actual heart beat steadily in Marie's chest now.
"I always wondered if I would ever be able to truly give my heart to her, Senpai. I never did imagine that it would be such a literal transaction." A wry chuckle escaped the scientist even as the man hit his knees, overcome with pain. He looked at the death scythe and then over at the woman. "She'll figure it out, of course, Senpai. She'll know what I did. I only hope that she doesn't hate me then."
"She won't, Stein. It's not in Marie's nature to hate." Stein just nodded, fishing a cigarette out of his lob coat.
"You can't tell her, Senpai. If she knows how much she meant to me she'd pine away. She deserves to be happy. You can't tell her I loved her."
Spirit just nodded, wondering how they had ever let themselves get into such a dire situation as Stein took a drag from his cigarette and then collapsed face first into the snow. Tears fell from his face as he rolled the scientist over.
Stein was already gone. Even without Soul Perception he could feel Stein's soul detach from the meister's body and hover above it. A few moments of focus and he could see it, one of the perks of having partnered with the man for so long. Slipping a bag out of his pocket he snared Stein's soul in it with a sigh and tied the drawstring around Marie's limp wrist.
Snapping out of his memory Spirit opened the door for Marie and helped her into the car. The woman sobbed the entire drive, and Spirit had to carry her into the lab. He forced her to eat some of one of the multiple meals that had been brought, and then forced her to go to bed to sleep. Settling down on the purple couch Spirit waited, unwilling to leave his best friend's love by herself in her time of need.
A/N: The poem is Funeral Blues by W.H. Auden. I loved the poem when I read it, and it spawned this angsty one-shot. I thought it only appropriate to include it so others could enjoy it.
I don't own the poem or Soul Eater.