The blade slithers into her flesh and they both scream. He struggles fruitlessly against his shackles, because the broken flesh of his wrists is nothing, the blood running slowly down his hands is nothing, the pain in his body is nothing nothing nothing. He can feel every bit of what is being done to her, the hot iron against her flesh, melting it, scarring it, cooking it, through their bond, and all that matters is getting to her, saving her, but he can't, he can't! He is utterly powerless, utterly helpless, weak and useless and stuck. "MAKAA!" he screams, but his voice cracks and he realizes he's crying.
Slowly, almost lovingly the gray and black blade (his blade, Soul realizes with a jolt) cuts into the pale skin of her stomach. The soft wet sound of her flesh splitting is sickening, it's all he can hear, it makes him yell and struggle all the more, and when she looks at him blood dribbles from her mouth and coats her chin and sweat and snot and tears smother everything else and her green eyes are rolling mad utterly desperate and she screams his name "SOUL" the sound warped and broken and wrong wrong wrong-
Something breaks inside him, a part that never should be broken, and suddenly the world is dark and fractured and madness bubbles up inside him, so thick and viscous and tremendous that it gushes out his mouth and ears and nose (but that's okay because he doesn't need to breathe anymore anyway). Somewhere far away someone is screaming and someone else is screaming too and when he looks at her she is a mess of red and slime and pale worms sprouting from her belly and he sees his colorless doppelganger standing there, its arm a scythe, coated in blood, and laughing-
He is wrapped in thick damp suffocation and he thrashes and yells and the shock of hitting the floor does nothing to awaken him from his terror. As fast as he can he stumbles upright out the door into the hall ignoring pain from stubbed toes and bumps and it is only by slamming hard into something upright and warm, throwing him back, that he reaches blindly and meets fingers. Slender fingers, fingers he can never not know, at once intimately familiar and utterly alien.
"Maka," he says, and then she is in his arms, sobbing his name, clutching him so tightly he can't breathe. He can feel her against him, her heart going a million miles an hour, her body warm and whole and completely unharmed. He hugs her to him, presses his lips to the top of her head, breathes her in, the most powerful sense of relief crashing down around him. The girl he loves is not dead, not dead, not dead. But as the relief dies he realizes something: they're resonating, fast and deep, the rate so high that he can peer straight into the depths of her soul, hear its song, all jagged chords and sharp bursts of utter terror, and in the maelstrom of her thoughts- oh shit oh fuck nonononoNO- he sees his nightmare playing over and over, feels the whole damn thing all over again, this time from her perspective, and he feels like he's been punched in the gut. This was his burden, his horror, and it was never his intention to share this with her, never never. He hurthis meister, he hurt Maka, and this is the ultimate betrayal, a knife in his chest cutting him to pieces with every beat of his heart.
"I-idiot!" Maka says tearfully, and smacks him in the chest, not hard. "Why didn't you say something sooner?!"
"Do you think I want to…to tell you something like that?!"
"YES!" she says, and pushes him away. Involuntarily, his body begins to tremble all over again.
"Do you know," Maka says, "how many nights I stayed up worrying about…about…?"
He frowns. Staying up? But wouldn't she have to be sleeping to eavesdrop on his nightmare?
"Not that," she tells him. "This." And then her lips are on his and his mind is suddenly as empty as a cloudless Nevada sky.
Her mouth is warm and soft and tastes of cherries.
"Damn, Tiny Tits," he tells her when they break apart, because it's all he can think to say. "Where'd you learn to kiss like that?"
"Shut up," she says, and in the moonlight he can see that her face has turned that adorable shade of pink.
"I'm sorry," he says into the silence.
"It's alright. If anything, resonating in our sleep means we're getting stronger."
This time, he kisses her, and later, they fall asleep in a jumble of pajama-clad limbs on her mattress, because they've just unearthed something new and wonderful (and secretly, they're both still a little scared).
Soul's nightmare does not return.