Author's Note- I've got quite a few SE projects back-burnered to percolate and occasionally be worked on, but since Learning Curve is just oneshots and Legend of the Scythe-Meister has apparently decided to run into a brick wall and just stand there stupidly for awhile, I figure this one can be pushed up to the front of the stove for awhile. Especially since I've been meaning to write this literally since entering the fandom, and actually know where it's going. And speaking of where it's going... if you don't enjoy ~le angst~ turn back now. It's going to be balanced with a nice dose of SoMa fluff but I'd say this definitely qualifies as Sad Eater nonetheless.

This strictly adheres to anime canon, not manga canon, which is not usually the way I roll but for the purposes of this story just go with it, because it gives me a bit more wiggle room with regards to what Maka does- or more importantly in this scenario, does not- know about Soul's family.

1. Say Uncle

"It came like a sudden gust of wind
Leaving them bewildered to ask how.
I recall last time we met, you said we'd meet again;
The irony is only bitter now."
-Vienna Teng

"You can give me all the puppy eyes you want, we are not buying a ten pound gummy bear, Soul."

"But Maka... it's a ten pound cherry gummy bear!"

Maka rolled her eyes. For someone who was- hypothetically- a grown man, Soul Eater could be incredibly childish when he wanted to be. "Yeah, and if we buy it you'll eat it all in a single night and make yourself sick... again. Put it back."

Soul shrugged. "Fine," he said with a pout she was pretty sure he hadn't meant for her to see, and which she found far cuter than she probably should have. As he turned away to take the enormous red confection back to wherever he'd found it, she heard him mutter, "Candy police."

"I heard that!"

"You were supposed to," he shot over his shoulder.

Maka smirked, and swung their shopping cart around to tail him back to the candy aisle just to be absolutely positive he wouldn't try to find a way to sneak the enormous gummy bear anyway. Soul had the self-control of a toddler when it came to food, and sweets in particular, as she had learned all too well over the years.

A few years ago, grocery shopping was an individual chore. As with everything else in the Albarn/Eater household, they took turns, one of them trudging a few blocks down to the corner grocery store to get their necessities for the week. If Maka did their grocery runs for the week, then Soul took care of the laundry, and vice versa. When he cooked, she took care of the cleaning and if she took out the trash, he did the dishes. They had established the routine when they were twelve years old and it had served them well for years.

Somewhere along the way, however, the individual chores had blended and blurred at the edges and the chore chart Maka had made years before had fallen into disuse. If Maka was washing the dishes, Soul was right there with a towel to dry, and if he was vacuuming, she was running around the living room like a mad thing with a featherduster. Similarly, the process of buying groceries had become a joint effort.

Maka couldn't say she minded in the slightest. Soul's company was rarely (if ever) unwelcome.

Once she had ensured that no monster-sized candy was going to find its way into their shopping cart without her consent, she hauled their shopping trip back on track by herding her weapon back in the direction of the frozen foods section.

As she was browsing the selection of frozen vegetables, Soul let out an annoyed grunt. "Green beans from a bag, really?"

"Well, what's wrong with that?" She knew the answer to that, because they had had this exact debate no less than thirty times over the years, but it was a well-rehearsed dance by now and she wasn't about to miss a step.

He glared at the bag she was holding as if it had done something to personally offend him. "They don't taste as good."

"There is literally no difference between the taste of fresh and frozen beans, Soul."

"Says you."

She rolled her eyes. "Yes, because your palate is so much more refined."

"As a matter of fact-"

"Oh please, you and I both know you'll eat anything put in front of you!"

"Not true!"

"Yes true!"

He huffed in mild annoyance. "Only when we've been on a mission and I'm starving!"

"Which is always."

"Even if that was true, why not eat something that tastes better if you have the choice?"

Maka set the bag aside, already knowing how this was going to go but not quite willing to let it go just yet. "I don't know, maybe because fresh produce costs more and even with your salary as a death scythe it never hurts to be fiscally responsible?"

It was Soul's turn to roll his eyes. "Maka, the thirty-cent difference isn't gonna break the bank, okay?"

Which, admittedly, was a really good point. Once they had graduated and their spot on the pay grade had increased from the stipend allotted to students to the salaries afforded a fully-fledged death scythe and three star meister, they were certainly able to afford a few of the finer things in life. It was a decidedly pleasant change of pace.

"Alright fine," she conceded. "Go get your stupid fresh beans."

Maka tried very hard not to laugh at the pleased grin on his face as she gave in, or the way his ordinarily lackadaisical slouching walk picked up into an enthusiastic half-jog as he headed in the direction of the fresh produce. Soul's ridiculous over-enthusiasm when it came to food was oddly endearing after all this time.

"And don't say I never did anything for you!" she called after him, smirking at his retreating back.

Her relationship with her weapon was hard to define. Officially speaking, they were friends, and they had been friends for so long that she honestly had a hard time remembering when he hadn't been in her life. They had shared quarters for almost that entire time. Although they'd upgraded to a larger living space and left their old apartment to Crona and Blair just before their graduation from Shibusen seven months earlier, the comfortable certainty of coming home to the familiar rhythm of life with Soul hadn't changed a bit.

By the time they were sixteen, their soul bond had elevated to such a degree that they were nearly always in a low-level state of connectivity, not quite on the level of resonance but more than adequate to feel the familiar brush of each others' soul. It wasn't unheard of among pairs that had been bonded for as long as they had, and much like their unusually high resonance rates, the effect was more pronounced between them than was usually seen. Maka loved it, loved the comforting feeling of having her partner's consciousness only a heartbeat away from her own, always nearby. She didn't think her head would feel quite right without the reassuring hum of Soul just beyond the edge of conscious thought.

They had only become closer since she had made Soul a death scythe only a few short years previously. Their goal was accomplished but their work was just begun, and since Maka already had plenty of experience helping Soul manage his black blood, Shinigami-sama had seen no reason to separate them after Soul earned his new title. They were the dream team of Shibusen and everyone knew it; splitting them up would have made no sense, and Maka was grateful for it.

The idea of being separated from Soul hurt.

Actually, it hurt a lot. It was quite normal for the partnership between a weapon and meister to be a life-long bond, but it also wasn't uncommon for partners to separate or trade off, depending on the situations they were confronted with and the skill combinations required for various missions. Flexibility was a survival tactic in their line of work. Nevertheless, Maka couldn't even begin to comprehend the idea of wielding anyone else. They might bicker a lot (these days it was rare for them to actually fight, but they never had given up the well-worn habit of pushing each others' buttons), but Soul was her best friend, her partner. She could count on one hand the number of times they had been separated for more than a couple of days since they were twelve. They were all tangled together in the composite entity of Soul-and-Maka; to deconstruct that was practically an impossibility in her mind.

After all, she loved him. And that was what made their relationship so difficult to define.

It wasn't as if he didn't know. It was impossible to hide something like her growing romantic feelings for him when they were resonating, just as it was impossible for him to conceal the utter contentment he felt when they curled up together to watch a movie or the way the sight of her in a pretty dress made his heart pound twice as fast as normal. She knew he could sense her feelings, because she could sense his. His affection for her leaked through their bond every day, emphasizing and amplifying her own feelings. This thing was mutual and they both knew it. They just hadn't taken that last step from friends to... whatever it was their relationship had been building towards all these years.

Maka was sure their friends thought it strange that they hadn't gotten around to saying out loud what they both knew was happening, but she didn't. She and Soul had always done things on their own schedule. It had taken them forever to learn to successfully resonate, but now they had one of the highest resonance rates in history. It was the same with their relationship: they would take the leap when they were ready.

And if that might be taking a little longer than it had to because Maka was frightened of letting down the last simulacrum of a barrier between them, then so be it. It wasn't as if either of them was in suspense as to whether their affections were unrequited. They could take their time and enjoy the anticipation, right? Soul would be patient with her. She didn't even have to ask if he would wait, because even without the benefit of the revealing bond between them, she was pretty sure he knew her well enough to understand the reasons for her delay.

That was how it had always been, Soul able to read her as easily as an open page while she struggled to understand the inner workings of his mind. In some ways, Soul was as much of a mystery to her as he had been on that very first day when he had bared his soul to her in the form of a haunting, maddened melody. She knew him so well, knew his likes and dislikes and all his weird quirks (of which there were many), knew what his hair looked like first thing in the morning before he'd had a chance to tame it with hair gel, could read the most minute changes in his body language with pinpoint accuracy.

Despite all of that, however, he remained something of an enigma. His moods and opinions were clear to her, but the thought processes that went into them were a great deal harder to work out. Equally mysterious was where her partner had come from. Soul never talked about his past if he could help it. She knew he'd grown up out East (Connecticut, he had mentioned once), and obviously he'd studied music from a very young age, but beyond that she knew very little. He'd made it clear very early on in their partnership that his childhood and family were sensitive subjects, and she didn't push it. Someday, she was sure, he would let her in on that part of his life.

"You gonna buy that ice cream or just keep trying to melt it with your brain?"

Maka jumped at the feeling of Soul's breath against her skin and the sound of his deep voice so close to her ear. "Soul!" she exclaimed, not even making what would have been an utterly futile attempt to hide the flush that crept over her cheeks. "I swear, you're worse than Blair with how quietly you walk! Give me some warning next time you're gonna come creeping up on me!"

"I did," he said dryly. "I said your name like three times."

"...Oh."

"Space cadet." He tugged on one of her pigtails playfully, then glanced back at the little container she was holding. "So are we getting the, uh... peppermint fudge-ripple supreme or what? Jeez, that sounds gross."

"I will never understand your aversion to peppermint," she muttered.

After completing their purchases, Maka and Soul walked back home, cheerfully debating the merits of cinnamon toothpaste and its' hypothetical advantages over the traditional mint-flavored variety. They each carried a small mountain of paper grocery bags in their arms and contented smiles on their faces.

As Soul attempted to balance a number of his bags against his hip in order to unlock the front door of the modest little brownstone, Maka faced a similar struggle as she tried to reach down to pick up the rolled-up newspaper waiting patiently for them on the doorstep. Gravity nearly got the best of her as the jug of milk she was carrying almost tumbled to the floor, but she caught it at the last moment, forgoing her free hand with a huff of annoyance.

She glanced up and was met with the sight of Soul smirking at her in amusement. "What?"

"You know, you could just set something down."

Maka finally managed to snag the paper and stuff it into one of her bags, right beside the dry cereal. "Says the boy who just performed a three-limbed juggling act just to get the door open."

He shrugged. "Guess I'm just more talented than you," he suggested, giving her that cocky grin that absolutely did not give her stupid fluttery butterflies.

"Or maybe you're just full of crap," she said, hip-checking him out of the doorway to precede him inside and cheerfully ignoring his sputtering complaints.

They set about unpacking their groceries with a fluid ease and familiarity that stemmed from having lived together for almost half their lives, to say nothing of the soul bond between them. They didn't need to speak, moving around and past each other as they went about their task nearly on instinct. The contents of the grocery sacks all but flew to their respective places in the cabinets and refrigerator. Simple daily chores had become, for them, almost as easy to complete in tandem as their graceful battle form... albeit with significantly less chance of serious injury.

Once they were finished, Soul set about making himself a sandwich while Maka settled herself at the kitchen table, unfolding her hard-won newspaper with the intent of bringing herself up to speed on world events. She started with the international pages before working her way through the national news and eventually down to local events. It was a habit she had taken up during the months that Asura's madness wavelength had run rampant across the globe. She had been fascinated by the pattern shifts that could be detected in human behavior around the world as the madness began to leech into the subconsciousness of susceptible people; she had been captivated with tracking the subtle changes that could be read writ large in world events that would have been undetectable to anyone who didn't understand the cause behind them but which appeared glaringly obvious to her.

Part of her fascination, she could admit now, had stemmed from her need to understand madness itself. The black blood that ran in her partner's veins had been a weight on her mind in those days even more than it was now. A part of her had hoped that if she could only understand the way Asura's wavelengths affected other susceptible people around the world, she might be better able to help Soul manage his own weakness to madness. Looking back, she was glad she had because, as had been proved during that final battle, even she had underestimated the potency of the black blood and the toll it had exacted on Soul.

With Asura defeated and his wavelength neutralized, madness in all its forms had a far less powerful hold on the world and the need to study its movements around the world had become far less pressing. Still, the habit had remained, and she faithfully read the Death City Sun-Times each day when it arrived on their doorstep.

"Anything interesting?" Soul asked, his tone making it apparent that he could not possibly be less interested in the contents of the paper. Maka shuffled the pages a little to hide her grin at the realization that her weapon just wanted to talk to her.

"Eh, nothing much," she replied. "Kilik made the international section again."

"Yeah? What for?"

Maka skimmed the article. "Apparently he and the twins took out three pre-kishin at once... in downtown Buenos Aires."

She didn't even have to look up to vividly picture Soul's grimace. "Bet that was messy."

"Looks like it." Kilik was an extremely skilled meister and Fire and Thunder, now approaching fourteen years of age, were a very powerful pair of weapons, but their combined skill set was not really well-suited for crowded urban environments. Too many explosions by far. Flashy elemental weapons certainly packed a punch, but were far too unpredictable and chaotic, in her opinion. Maka far preferred working with Soul.

Soul stuck his head in the fridge, rooting around for their freshly-bought jar of mustard. "So, not much happening besides Kilik costing Shibusen a small fortune in cleanup costs?"

"Guess not," Maka said, passing disinterestedly over an article about stock market trends. "Wait, no, it looks like there was a plane crash in upstate New York."

"Bummer," Soul remarked, shutting the fridge with the mustard clutched triumphantly in hand.

She nodded. "No kidding. I guess it could've been worse, though. It came down in the mountains a couple days back, so it wasn't in a big urban area or anything, and only one person died. It says here it was a little private jet, belonged to the man who was killed. Some violinist, apparently."

Soul froze very abruptly on his way back to the counter where his half-finished sandwich was waiting. "What?" he asked.

Maka glanced at him curiously. His soul had abruptly gone... for lack of a better word, rigid. "Uh... I said the plane's owner was the only fatality," she repeated.

"Yeah, I heard that," Soul said in an impatient tone she recognized but couldn't logically connect to a sad but fairly innocuous newspaper story. "You said the guy was a violinist, right?"

"Um, yes? Soul, what-?"

"What's the name?" he interrupted.

After a moment of staring in puzzlement at her suddenly tense partner, Maka returned her eyes to the paper. "It says his name was, uh... Wesley Evans."

The jar of mustard shattered on the tile.