A/N
Maka will not be in this story. Just pretend she doesn't exist.
Sorry not sorry.
xXx
It's so dark. So cold.
Where am I? I don't remember.
Soul, where are you? You promised I'd be okay.
How did we end up like this? Always like this.
xXx
"What're you still doing hanging around here?"
I blinked, slowly coming out of a confused daze, falling out of my imaginary world. Bright vibrant colors faded back to varying shades of gray. I sighed at the loss, the empty feeling that settled in my chest as I came back to reality. I closed the heavy tome in my hands with no small amount of regret and ran my hands almost lovingly over the faded leather cover. I lifted my head, and the last vestiges of inked words slipped away.
I saw his eyes first, always the eyes, and then the rest of him half hidden in shadow with his hands buried in his jacket pockets. Those red eyes shone out at me from the darkened eave of the library doorway, burning in their intensity. I breathed out, a soft exhale at the sight. I'd know those eyes anywhere.
"Soul."
He looked like a ghost, with his pale skin, his white hair shining dully in the dim lighting, and when he smiled, his sharp teeth were fully on display. I watched as he came closer, his lips curling in distaste at the dust-filled library. The shadows around him seemed to move, always shifting. Following him into the room in direct defiance of the sunlight that filtered in through the window behind me.
He stopped right in front of me, close enough to touch, if I had wanted too. I tilted my head to look at him, and it was with a certain amount of fondness that he reached out to brush his hand against my cheek, pushing away a lock of hair that had fallen into my eyes.
Then again... maybe he looked more like a demon.
"Come on Lyra, you don't want to be late for class, do you?" He was taunting me, an avid protester of my following rules, my dedication. But I didn't mind. He held out his hand, knocking aside a small pile of books near the edge of the table as he moved to tug me to my feet. I frowned at his obvious lack of respect, -books were powerful- and leaning over to pick them back up, was caught completely off guard when he pulled on my arm instead. The books went tumbling out of my grasp and onto the floor again. Soul's shit-eating grin glimmered as he observed the mess he'd made before disappearing. And with an air of mock seriousness he said, "We'll make it in time if we hurry."
I rolled my eyes. As if he cared.
I looked back, watching the dust float above where I'd just been sitting, watching as my dreams faded. "Professor Stein's not there yet?" I asked suspiciously, stumbling slightly as he pulled me faster out the door and down the hallway. What sounded like a question was meant as a statement. Professor Stein was always late, and Soul wanting to be in class early at all was enough to put me on edge. I leveled narrowed eyes at his back, but was quickly distracted as we moved into the bustling hall, the ever-ominous warning bell prompting more than just the pair of us to hurry to class.
We bumped into and around the other students as we maneuvered down the hallway, my short height a clear disadvantage as shoulders and elbows mapped out a constellation of bruises up and down my arms. I winced as a particularly harried boy knocked against me, some of the books in his arms grazing my jaw as he buzzed past. Not that Soul noticed. Which was actually rather unusual for him. Staring hard at the back of his head, I gripped my partners hand tighter, not wanting to fall. Behind or otherwise.
"Nah, he's busy talking to Lord Death, said it was something important." He shrugged slightly before opening the classroom door for me, waiting while I went in first, choosing to follow close behind as I found an empty seat next to Kid. Moving past and up a row, his hand brushed my shoulder as he slid in beside Black Star.
Being as hyper-aware of Soul as I was, I was slow to pick up on the other hand slowly tracing molted patterns on my arm. Noticing my quickly discoloring skin, Kid sighed and gently pushed at my shoulder, turning me to face him. "You should even those out," he told me. "Otherwise they won't line up right." He pinched the skin of my upper arm suddenly before holding up both my arms to compare and I scowled, shooting him a dirty look and shifting further away in my seat as the dull sting receded.
"Your concern is appreciated." I snapped waspishly, swatting him away.
He wasn't moved by my hiss of pain, simply raising an eyebrow as he raised both hands in a placating gesture. "Simply trying to help."
Soul snickered, and his arm brushed mine as he leant over me to bump fists with Kid in an oh-so manly fashion. He lingered, his arm draping past me to rest on the back of Kids chair as though he knew it would irritate me. Even with the fabric of his hoodie brushing my shoulder I had to stretch up to elbow his stomach impatiently, wanting him to get his arm out of my face. He ignored me as he leaned back, putting his feet up on the desk like the cool guy we all knew he thought he was.
Kid, unruffled by my sour attitude, tapped my shoulder, this time being careful not to touch my arms, and passed me the binder of notes I'd left at his house after one of our group study sessions the day before, which never went well when Black Star and Patti were together in the same room. The cover stuck uncomfortably to my fingers and I grimaced at the soda covered pages. I squinted, tilting my head at a different angle to see if that would make looking at some of the more questionable stains easier. It hung from my fingers precariously, and I let out a soft sound of disappointment. It was practically useless now, the meticulous notes I had painstakingly written smudged beyond repair. A complete waste of effort. Twice as terrible if one took into account the fact that Soul opted to use my notes as well, instead of taking his own.
"Is that... cheese?" Kid didn't answer, but the giggle from behind me was more than enough to confirm my suspicions. I gently held it by one edge, shifting until I could safely drop it into Souls lap. Pretending not to hear the rather unflattering - and quite feminine - squeak of protest behind me, I had turned to Kid with an unimpressed look. "Thank you?"
Simply rolling his eyes at my bland tone and stoic expression, Kid pulled another binder out of the dark leather bag sitting by his feet. He set it down in front of me with a surprising amount of flourish, twitching and tweaking until it lay situated at the exact center of my desk.
"I took the liberty of remaking your notes, but better," his eyes flashed. "Perfectly symmetrical." He smiled proudly at me. "And clean."
My eye twitched and I couldn't tell if my smile seemed as insincere as it felt. Kids' need for absolute perfection could be endearing, but it led more often than not to the 'accidental' destruction of my property when he deemed it unfit and not at all up to his standards. The feeling of frustration was easy to hold onto, only partially dissipating as new, 'improved' versions were returned to me with his own personal seal of approval.
Patti had leaned down from the row behind us as I was lost in thought, and I jumped back, startled, as she stuck her face uncomfortably close between us. "He even color coded them. You're such a nice guy Kid!" She looped her arm around his neck, putting him in an affectionate choke hold and ruffling up his hair as she laughed.
He spent the next few minutes obsessively combing his hair back into place.
••••••••••
Not even fifteen minutes later the door burst open, and Professor Stein was sent sprawling as his chair caught against the door jam and fell over, spilling him rather ungracefully onto the floor. The class just sat in silence; this had happened too many times to be worth a reaction. No laughs, no frustrated sighs, no concern. There weren't even any of the customary wonderments over why he was wheeling a chair in when there was already one – an identical one – situated behind his rarely used desk anyway.
We all watched as the professor got up as casually as he could manage, the screw in his head looking just a bit loose - although I had always believed he had more than just the noticeable screw loose - and began writing on the board in his hazardous scrawl, before passing back papers to the class. I half-heartedly took notes, drawing in the margins when I ran out of things to write that were actually relevant. It was with a resigned groan I realized this would be one of the classes where the amount of useless information he spewed was twice the amount of anything worth learning.
Hence all my time in the library.
But the clock was winding down, and instead of running out of steam, as was typical for many of his lectures, the professor only seemed to become more and more excited. I grimaced.
"Do you think we're watching another dissection?" I whispered, tilting my head back to look at Soul, who was eyeing the newest caged animals sitting in the corner of the room. I followed his gaze, my stomach turning itself into knots the longer I looked.
Lord Death tended to turn a blind eye to some of the things people under his employ did, and this was no exception. The things huddled in cages could hardly be called animals anymore, and I had always assumed the reason we used them in class was because they were failures of whatever experiments the professor did outside of student knowledge. Soul jabbed at my cheek with his unused pencil to get my attention and crossed his arms behind his head.
"Eh." He sighed. "I don't really care. Besides-" he leaned over and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, pulling me closer towards his chest in a joking manner. "-I've got you to help me if we have to do any actual work right?"
I would have laughed if I hadn't known he was serious.
Black Star suddenly cheered from a few seats away, standing up in his seat while Tsubaki looked on, mortified, urging him to sit back down as she quelled under the stares of the other students. The sudden shriek had startled half the class, most of which had been falling asleep if they weren't already, and many a pair of accusing eyes drifted in his direction, mine included. Black Star, however, was oblivious and waving a piece of paper Professor Stein had just given him. He was proudly displaying it to the class. "This is it! I'm one step closer to surpassing God! See?!"
I squinted to get a better look, intrigued despite how many times a day I heard him say that. His autograph-like signature covered the top of the page and underneath that was the final grade for the test we'd taken last week during the end of our second semester. I hadn't glanced at the paper sitting face down on my own desk, but stained and crumpled as the paper clutched in his hand might have been, the red marker on Black Stars' paper was large and easy enough to read.
65%
"Bow to me! "Black Stars' laugh echoed, and before I could fully tune him out one of his customary speeches was already underway to anyone that would listen. Liz frowned, and leaned her elbows on her desk as she looked at her own test. "Wasn't there a ten-point curve?"
I had to put my head down at that. Really, I did.
Patti giggled at her sisters' incredulous tone and poked at Kids cheek as he panicked over the fact he'd gotten 107%. "Yup there was!" She said. "I got a ten!"
Soul snickered, still gazing back at his best friend. He grabbed my bag from the seat beside me, dumping it into my lap. I had to duck as his feet swung past my head and over his desk until he could slide in to whisper in my ear. "So, he just barely passed. Tch, figures."
I turned on him. "Oh yeah, and what did you get?"
Soul grinned. "Cool guys like me don't get anything less than an 80." The corner of his test was just barely peeking out from underneath his arm, the number 79 clearly visible in the same bold red letters Black Stars had been in. I smiled at him, and turned to rest my head lightly against his shoulder.
"What about you?" he asked after a moment. I shifted in my seat, cheeks turning a light shade of red under his scrutiny. Setting my bag down in front of my feet I turned to shove at his shoulder.
"I couldn't possibly tell you after you told me how great your grade is," I repressed an eye roll at his smug smirk. "I'd feel too bad." If only he knew. My own paper, marked with a distinct 110 on the top right corner had already been shoved into the bottom of my bag.
I'd burn it later.
Soul hummed, a rough sound that rumbled through his chest. "I can tutor you, you need all the help you can get, right?"
Kid choked on a laugh at his offer on my other side. Slightly annoyed, and careful not to get caught I pinched his leg, pleased to him let out a pained yelp, and then it was my turn to cover up a snicker.
"Right."