It's Time:

A/N: While this story centers on an OC meister and his weapon, the second half has plenty of Soul and Maka, and other canon characters make appearances throughout. I centered it on an OC warlock for several reasons: I wanted to use an outsider's perspective on the DWMA and its denizens to see how others might view the characters and institutions of the story world we know and love. I also wanted to explore the idea of the magical world (witches and the like) and the implications of being constantly hunted. Finally, I thought it would be interesting to have a character who was in love with Maka from afar, since in most fanfic I've read, Soul is the object of outside interest rather than his meister.

I hope you have fun with it-I certainly had fun writing it.

Obviously, I do not own Soul Eater, Ohkubo does. I also do not own the lyrics to "It's Time"—those would belong to Imagine Dragons. For efficiencies sake, this author's note will be the only acknowledgement of ownership: use of Soul Eater and "It's Time" appear throughout the story.

Finally, the newly added cover image is by kribart on tumblr. I adore it.

Chapter 1: Into the Lion's Den

This road never looked so lonely
This house doesn't burn down slowly
To ashes, to ashes

He was going to die for the girl he loved, the girl who hardly knew he existed. Maka Albarn, two star meister. He might even die by her hand. How the hell had that happened? Oh, yeah. He'd wanted to live a normal life. Normal. Safe, if he were honest. He'd never meant for it to come down to this, but if he'd discovered anything in his years at the DWMA, it was that things do not always go according to plan. After all, this whole unrequited-love-from-afar-towards-someone-who-woul d-certainly-want-to-kill-you-if-she-knew-the-whole -truth thing had certainly been very far from his agenda when he'd come to Shibusen.

Yeah, that was where it had all begun. And as his life flashed before his eyes, he knew he was totally screwed.

A few years ago, all he'd wanted to do was figure out a way to pass through life without ending up skewered by some passing death scythe, or worse yet, a blundering DWMA student meister/weapon pair. That was when he got his brilliant idea to hide in plain sight. Well, sort of. He'd never have done it just to hide. He wanted access to their resources so he could learn how to never be found. To pass as human forever. To live out his life in peace. He just wanted to be left alone. To do that, he decided to spend some time right in the heart of the proverbial lion's den. And so, Gareth Rayne, first year NOT meister, was born.

Gareth was, purposefully, a completely average student in the NOT class. He did not draw attention. Okay, sometimes he drew female eyes; he was good looking, he knew that. With medium brown hair he wore parted and falling just to his grey eyes, sharp features, and a tall, lithe build, he turned a few heads. Worse, every now and again, he failed to be as average as he should. He couldn't hide his looks, and his intelligence sometimes flashed out like the sun peeking out from behind the clouds. He could not always bite back his wit. Yet, he managed. Whatever else they thought, people did not think he was a warlock. That was the point, right?

Because Gareth was a warlock. That was his problem. Warlocks (or wizards or sorcerers or necromancers or whatever you wanted to call them, but it all boiled down to men born with magic) were exceptionally rare. Just as witches only passed their magic to the female line (but pretty much every daughter born to a witch would be a witch), warlocks only passed it to the male line, but not every man with a warlock father would have the magic. Sometimes, generations later, a warlock would be born to two completely normal, human parents. Warlocks were far less predictable than witches that way.

Of course, he was not born to two normal parents. No, he was even more a rarity than that. Gareth was born to a warlock and a witch. This was almost unheard of, as warlocks and witches were very different and generally at odds. They had no use for one another in general. They had a long-standing antipathy and tended to annoy one another more than anything else. Like most magical beings, when they found themselves in the territory of another, one would generally leave so as not to attract the wrong sort of attention. There were many things that most humans misunderstood about the magical world, but the most problematic one was this: most witches and warlocks weren't actually evil. It was really a problem of reputation and scale. Warlocks and witches had a lot more power than your average Jane, and when they did go bad, it was spectacularly destructive. And there was more temptation, of course. Power could be a very corrupting force, so when they went bad it was very, very bad. Some believed witches and warlocks had an instinct toward destruction they termed the "sway of magic," some sort of destructive drive, but Gareth had always cried bullshit. He had no such drive, nor did anyone else he knew well. Of course there were some he had heard of who were entirely wicked, and some who skirted the line, just as with all people (assholes came in every species, as it were,) but most of them were perfectly normal and wanted to blend in and live normal lives. They just wanted to be left alone.

That was all his parents had wanted. They had found themselves in the same small town decades ago. They had each liked it there, each wanted to stay. When they discovered one another, they had each refused to leave. A rivalry developed, as the warlock and witch quietly tried to drive each other away. The rivalry became a friendly rivalry, and then, eventually, something… more… had come of it. He was a part of that whole more thing. They'd been married a long time now, living normal, peaceful, "human" lives, raising their son together. They even kept their small town clear of pre-kishin and other magical nuisances. Those things tended to attract attention of the DWMA variety, and that was the last thing they wanted. Overall, they had managed to build a relatively stable life together, and Gareth had had a mostly normal, even loving childhood, if you forgot about the occasional problem with kishin (because it was an unfortunate truth that magical concentrations tended to attract pre-kishin and the like, and two warlocks and a witch in the same household was certainly a magical concentration) or vengeful relatives. But that fear of discovery had constantly haunted them. Gareth had known all about weapons and meisters and Shibusen, kishin and witches and other warlocks, from the time he could say the words. He'd had to. Those were the things that would likely kill him.

The child of a witch and a warlock, Gareth was the product of genetics. Magic came easily to him, something like breathing, which might be hailed as a good thing if his very presence didn't tend to attract trouble like flies to honey. Along with the magic, he had inherited his father's calculating mind and at least a part his mother's charm; he could be charming when he felt like it, which admittedly wasn't often. He got his father's normal coloring and features with a sharp cast courtesy of his mother, who was a Cat witch. That was another thing, he supposed, that confused most humans. There were magical animals, like that cat that his crush lived with, but those were rare and certainly not witches. All witches, however, had an animal spirit that drove their magic, and his mother was a Cat witch, with sleek jet hair and shining amber eyes; from her he had inherited his angular features. The resultant slightly exotic boy next door looks managed to gain the occasional look from some of the girls, if not the one he actually wanted to look. Fortunately, he didn't even try to excel as a meister, and at the DWMA, might tended to draw notice far more than anything else could. If girls looked, it was only long enough to establish that he was as average as he wanted to seem.

At Shibusen, blending in had been the point. He was here for a reason. Because the thing was, he didn't want to have to live his life in fear that some idiot weapon/meister combo would stumble across him at the wrong time and cut off his head to eat his soul. He didn't want to end up as demon weapon food or even kishin fodder. He wanted to figure out how to blend in totally, with no chance for discovery. Sure, there was soul protect, but it wasn't fool-proof—there were those who could see through it, though they were yet rare, and it went to shit the moment he used magic. Plus, even if it were fool proof, his presence would always attract pre-kishin and other magical assholes because they could sense the magic even with soul protect. It was a real problem when all you really wanted was to be normal. It was a real problem when you did not actually want to get your soul eaten by some Shibusen idiot who didn't have the god damned brains to know you weren't actually a threat. So here he had come, because the only place with the accumulated knowledge to help him solve the issue, to figure out how to make him essentially human and not a magical beacon of trouble, was the very place that theoretically wanted him dead. Here—the library here—was his chance. There was no other such accumulation on all things magic, not even in the witches' realm. He ought to know; he had certainly looked there. So into the heart of Mordor he went. After all, they would never expect a perfectly average warlock to be hiding under their collective noses, right?

Get in, do what he'd come for, get out; that was the plan. Things went along swimmingly at the start. At the initial first-year gathering, he scouted the room for a weapon partner. Since his goal had nothing to do with being a meister, all he really needed was a valid excuse to be here; who didn't much matter as long as that person wasn't nosy and he could stand spending time with the him. In the end, he had simply chosen based on weapon. Shane Ackley was a bastard sword, black and menacing, and Gareth thought he would look pretty damned badass swinging him around. Hey, even he wasn't totally above looking badass. Plus, the mellow, friendly, laid back blonde seemed like a good fit for his plans. He knew he could tolerate him over the long-term immediately, and that he'd be unlikely to get in his hair. He was also the type to go with the flow, so Gareth didn't see him pushing to get into the EAT class now or ever. Really, he looked like he should be out surfing rather than figuring out how to manage life as a weapon. Plus, again, he was a badassed black bastard sword in weapon form. He was perfect.

The first thing Gareth hadn't planned on was actually becoming friends with his weapon partner, but he supposed it was inevitable if the guy wasn't a total ass. They spent most classes together, they roomed together, and Shane was a good guy. He liked to hang out; they played a lot of video games and basketball, but he was willing to back the fuck off when Gareth needed him to, which was often, so it worked out well. Sometimes, though, his weapon partner could get ridiculous notions in his head. Early on, he'd hated being called a bastard sword—thought it was sort of insulting—insisted he was a hand-and-a-half blade. While Gareth sort of understood that seeing as he had never much liked the term warlock (he preferred wizard or sorcerer since they sounded less menacing,) things tended to be called what they were called, and most people called men with magic warlocks and swords that could be used either one or two-handed bastard swords. So, when Shane mentioned this concern, Gareth just pointed out that Bastard Sword had a much more cooly fierce, badass ring to it. That he was awesome as a weapon, a Black Bastard. Shane loved the sound of that, so much so that another ridiculous idea was born, one that had Gareth slightly panicked. Shane came within a whisper of changing his name to Black Bastard, which sort of crossed the line from badass to arrogant prick and would have drawn all sorts of the wrong kind of attention. Gareth had to do a bit of fast-talking at that point. As his friend exclaimed his intentions to him while they caught a burger after a round of hoops, his meister managed a mask of indifference (barely) and shrugged.

"Hmmmm. I suppose it would be interesting. After all, someone has to outdo the Soul Eaters and Black*Stars of the school eventually, right?"

"Uh, huh…?" His friend's jaw went slack. "What do you mean outdo?"

"Oh, nothing. A name like that is just a bit of a challenge. I'm sure we're up for it. You can count me in."

"Challenge…?"

"Yeah, challenge. When you have a name like that it's like a taunt. Everyone knows who you are and wants a piece of it. Look at how many fights that Black*Star idiot gets into."

"Oh, yeah, there's that…"

"And guys like that, well, they aren't known for their pleasant personalities, right? I didn't realize we were thinking of joining the EAT kids, but I have no objection if you…"

"Alright already, I get it. A name like that will make me sound like a douche. I'll stick with Shane."

"Cool."

Shane wasn't stupid, but he was easy to sway. Or maybe Gareth just had a knack with these things, an ability to tease out common sense and laugh off what wasn't worth worrying over. Maybe both. Either way, it made Shane a perfect weapon partner. Easy to appease, willing to go along with things. He didn't often question Gareth, either, and those rare times when he did, he accepted whatever answer he was given. Once Shane asked why he was so interested in the library. Gareth shrugged and said that he had once seen a man killed by a witch and had become interested in witches; he wanted to figure out how they hid so well so he could know how to spot one. It was a half-truth at best, but good enough for Shane, who never asked again. Yeah, Shane was a good guy. His best friend. Practically his brother at this point. Sometimes veering off plan wasn't such a bad thing.

But sometimes it was. Another thing that hadn't gone according to plan was that Gareth wasn't alone. He had never, not once, thought that anyone else would be crazy enough to do what he was doing, only he was wrong. Aside from himself, there had been two witches at the DWMA when he arrived. TWO. The first he recognized immediately as the school nurse and almost fled right then and there. The woman had a bad reputation even among witches, and she was powerful. He had seen her at witches' conclaves and his mother gave her wide berth, which was enough reason to do the same. The only reason he didn't bolt the first day he saw her was because he was pretty sure she didn't recognize him. If he was just an average NOT student, then he was below her radar. There was no reason she should recognize him. If she'd seen him at all it was in passing, and he'd looked like a girl.

Oh yeah, that part was embarrassing, but it was the only way he could get into the witches' realm, and warlocks were lame and scattered and didn't have a fucking realm. He'd begged his mom to go when he was five, and after some discussion with Mabaa, he had been granted reluctant permission to enter, but only as his mother's lost "niece," Gria. Mabaa didn't mind his presence; she was particularly fond of her mother, a distant grand-niece, but didn't want the panic of a man—especially of the warlock variety—being allowed to roam freely among some of the more traditional witches. To make the journey, he had to spend time under a spell that temporarily turned him into woman. He hated having to do the whole sex swap, and could have done without this particular part of his life flashing through his mind before the end. Especially since he had visited the witches' realm a lot while at the DWMA; it was the only safe place where he could experiment with what he was learning, after all.

The second he actually knew, sort of. They were the same age and he'd talked to her once or twice in the witches' realm when he'd looked like a girl. Again, she didn't seem to recognize him—even if he looked similar as a girl, he was still a girl there—but every once in a while, she did a little double take when he passed. They didn't talk, and she didn't say anything, so he hoped if she did know what he was she kept her trap shut. After all, he knew her secret, too, so she had as much to lose as he did. And she was a Raccoon witch, and not some nasty, evil Gorgon like the school nurse, so he didn't fear her, either. What he really wondered was what the hell they were doing there. That Medusa woman was probably up to something sinister, he'd figured, and he'd been right. Kim had not been so different from him, really. It seemed she'd craved something like normalcy or safety. Well, who didn't?

Yes, for a while, even with the occasional curve ball, things had gone along very, very well. Getting in and out and going on with his life had been a very real possibility for months, a year even. And then… Then he had started to notice Maka Albarn.