(A/N): I'm finally delving into the beautiful world of Soul Eater! Hopefully I can do it some justice. This is set after Maka and Soul's first encounter with Crona and Ragnorak at the basilica. The last few scenes are sometime after.

Happy reading!

Summary: Resonance. The quality in a sound of being deep, full, and reverberating; the power to evoke enduring images, memories, and emotions. For Maka, it is the bond that links her and soul together.

Constructive Interference

Stein's glasses glinted white in the overhead lighting of the classroom. His stitched smile hooked itself upwards, lopsidedly splaying itself across the side of his face where skin met cheekbone. He was calculative, perusing her body as if he wished to tear her apart.

He did wish to tear her apart.

Maka kept calm.

"So, dear Maka...you wish to learn more about resonance, is that it?" he spoke breathily. His eyes traced a pattern across her scalp - lines he could cut along in a neat snip-snip pattern. "I must say, it's a rare occurrence for a student like yourself to seek help with such a basic concept."

He was toying with her, Maka realized, but she wouldn't let that phase her.

She spoke in a clipped, straight forward tone, "Soul and I don't sync up like we used to." Her hands gripped the fabric of her blouse nervously. She swallowed her pride. "I think it's my fault."

"Now why would you say that?" He was still smiling. Maka shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

"I hurt him."

"Technically, Crona's weapon hurt him."

"I am the Meister and I-"

"Maka," Stein warned. He held the vowels of her name out, testing the way they felt against his tongue. "He jumped in front of you by himself. He was fully aware of the consequences."

"If I hadn't-"

"Look," he sighed, "the first rule about resonance is that it involves two parties." He swiveled in his seat, twirling over to a drawer under his desk and pulling out a crate. Maka watched intently. He opened it up, cradling two metal objects that gleamed brightly against the flourescent lighting of the room. Maka hated how Stein's classroom felt and smelled like a hospital - like sanitation and disinfectant; like operation and the setting of bones.

"What are those?" she found herself asking, pointing to the metal objects Stein had recovered from his drawer.

As if pulled by a string, Stein's smile quirked upward. "They're tuning forks," he stated. "I'm going to show you something." Stein began to take other things out of the crate too. There were two small wooden boxes, hollowed out on one side, and the top of them sat stands for the metal forks. There was a small rubber hammer that he picked up too, which he placed beside the cigarette in his mouth. Maka cocked her head to the side. She was quite curious.

Stein did not place the forks on the stands just yet. Instead he regarded her carefully. "Maka," his breath curled around the room like cigarette smoke, "our souls are beautiful little things. I wish I could open yours up to show you." He licked his lips. "I wish I could open everyone's up. We are fascinating creatures. Pulsing underneath our ribcages, perhaps tangled in our minds, and swimming in the blood coursing through our veins - our souls are breathing. They are beating, and they are oscillating against our bones. Can you feel it?"

Maka could feel it. When she closed her eyes, she sensed the tiny hum of her own soul, waves of power emitting from it and dancing throughout the room. It was singing. She felt the presence of Stein's as well - it gave off an eerie sound, it's wavelength distorted and off-sync. When the two of theirs met, there was a flat line - a standing-out of phase note that felt wrong.

They weren't in sync.

Partnering up with Stein would have been impossible, Maka thought. She didn't know how her papa had managed.

"Is that all you can find?" Stein asked, as if reading her thoughts. "You're a bright girl, I'm sure you can manage more." He was demanding that she search for something else. But what?

Maka furrowed her eyebrows. She closed her eyes again, concentrating on the sounds rippling through her. She was enamored.

And then she heard it: a small musical whine that seeped into her senses. It was familiar, so much so that it dusted her cheeks with pink and brought a sudden warmth to her chest. Deep dramatic sounds began to fill the air, its waves trickling through her line of vision as if miming the pressing of keys on a piano. Maka's mouth opened in a silent 'O' her skin beginning to itch.

This was soul's wavelength.

Despite their distance she could feel him. It was such a powerful and beautiful thing, his soul. Maka waited for their lines to cross. His wavelength got close to her, wrapped around her own and began to meld together. Crest met crest; trough met trough. They began to rise.

But then, she couldn't help it, Maka's mind was hit with a vision of Soul. His chest was a pale line across her vision, the muscles rippling across it suddenly jagged and misshapen. They met along a junction that swelled with great purple lips: a battered laceration that bled with angry lines of blood and puss and injury. He was scarred, stitched up unevenly and Maka knew - she knew she knew she knew - it was all her fault. She hurt him. She had failed as his Meister.

Their wavelengths suddenly crashed, falling into a dead stop of no sound. They were completely out of sync.

Frustration choked Maka. She glared at Stein, that sadistic creep! "I told you!" her words flew at him like knives. "Our wavelengths don't...they aren't-" she was interrupted by Stein's laugh.

"Maka, you have no idea how much I want to dissect your brain right now! The emotions running through your head," he giggled, "they must seem so fascinating."

"You're mad."

"We're all mad here."

Maka pursed her lips together. "Well, I did what you asked, okay? I sensed our souls. I've dissected our wavelengths." His eyes gleamed at her words. She glared. "What exactly was the point?"

"The point, Maka dear, is this." He took the mallet in his hand, twirling it around ever so slightly, before taking one of the forks and hitting it. A small hum enveloped the room. It rung like a bell. "A soul by itself can be a fragile thing. It's vulnerable. Weak. It needs to be nurtured, and what better way to do that than through a body?" He placed the fork on the stand, and suddenly the sound was amplified, ringing out at a louder pitch. Maka's ears perked up.

"A body," she voiced, breathless.

"Yes. Aren't our bodies wonderful instruments? They are the vessels that host our souls, and through them we can use their power for so many many things. We amplify our souls, Maka." He pointed to her chest. "In there, your soul is resonating." She felt her stomach leap.

For a moment in time, Maka let her vulnerability show. "My soul is weak. I can't protect Soul like I want to."

"Maka, when the two of you partnered up, you made a bond. A soul-linking pact. If your soul is weak - his is too." His eyes swept along her lineaments. "It's not because of your body either - it's your mentality. The cogs and wheels turning in your brain." He gave an almost hysterical laugh. "They need to be oiled. I can help you with that!" His spindly fingers reached toward her. Maka leaned backwards.

"So what you're saying is...our minds shape our souls?"

"What I'm saying is you need to believe in your soul, Maka. You need to believe in Soul's as well. Trust and faith - these things are what make you stronger." He tilted his head up to the ceiling. His tone was wistful. "You know, the partnership of a weapon and meister is a funny thing. Everything you do plays off of each other. You must feel it, when Soul is troubled - the muddied thoughts that circle his soul - you feel those too. It's the same for happiness. Emotions are disgusting things, aren't they?" He sighed. "Maybe you've even felt love."

Maka's throat tightened. "L-love!?"

A low chuckle escaped Stein's mouth. It rumbled across the room. "You're family aren't you? The point is Maka, even when you don't think it, your souls are in tandem." He took the mallet in his fingers once again, tapping it against his chin thoughtfully.

Maka looked at the wooden boxes. Stein had taken the metal fork out, ready to put everything away, but stopped himself. He looked at her with a funny glint in his eyes. Maka couldn't quite place what he was thinking. His spider-like fingers reached for the metal tuning fork lying flat against the table, the one untouched. He placed it snugly on the wooden stand. They made eye contact, Maka and Stein, before he smiled big and open...Cheshire-like. He picked up the other fork, and gently tapped the mallet against it.

The sound reverberated through Maka.

He placed it on the wooden box, and the sound doubled. This time, however, when Stein took the metal fork he had just hit out of the box, the sound didn't stop.

It was still amplified.

It only took Maka a few seconds to realize that the sound was coming from the fork he had not hit. How the heck-

"Acoustic resonance," Stein stated. "If you produce a wave at just the right time, you can excite another. Mainly because these both have the same natural frequency. You and Soul do this without trying." Stein looked through her. "Let go of your fears Maka. Stop worrying about your faults. Trust in your partner, and let your souls resonate."

Maka stared at him with big owl eyes.

The chime of the forks followed her for the rest of the day.

"Soul," Maka cried out. The white haired boy turned to face her.

He had been released from the hospital for a while now, but she hadn't had the courage to face him in the way she wanted to. Sure, she visited him. She held his hand as he slept in the nurse's office, his chest pale and uncovered - the scar spanning across his skin like a deep frown. She had watched him sleep and kept note of the soft breathes that trickled out of his mouth, his chest rising and falling evenly with each one. And she had prayed-hoped-begged for him to be okay.

And he was.

So they had gone to their regular classes, and they had walked home together, and they had teased and argued with each other, like everything was normal. But everything was not normal.

And now...now she was finally facing him head on.

They were in the school hallway after class. Soul had gone up ahead, because she told him she was going to the library to check out a few books. So he was surprised to hear her call out his name so frantically. It made him stop dead in his tracks. Maka stalked up to him with her heart beating wildly.

"Soul," she repeated and held her hand outward toward his own.

He looked at her curiously, barking out a gruff, "Wos all this about?" Maka shook her head, words failing her, and shoved her hand closer to his chest. Her eyes screamed, take it.

So he did. His pale hand met her own, locked in place like a hammered down nail, and she was reminded of the time they first met, forging a partnership that was supposed to last a lifetime. Maybe it still would.

They shook hands.

It was a start to something, she knew, because Maka felt their souls thrum.

Maka's wavelength was high and violent, stretching throughout her like a beacon - Soul followed it. He sensed her presence and felt her shift, holding out her glove-clad hand for him to take.

And take it he did. There was no longer a burn when they touched. Instead there was a hum of appreciation, a melodious sound that crept through his ears and spread throughout his body. Maka heard it too, because she smiled brightly. So brightly that Soul forgot how to breathe. So brightly, that Soul's soul grew brighter with it.

Constructive interference, Maka thought, remembering one of Stein's lessons. The way their wavelengths matched up - the way they thrummed and folded over one another, creating something bigger, something so very powerful - it had to be the sync she was searching for. They were resonating.

They were in perfect harmony.

"Soul," she spoke, her voice like steel and confidence coursing through her, "let's go!" She raised him up over her head and slashed down upon their opponent in one fatal swipe.

A flash of white followed.

"Do you trust me?" he asked her, his hot breath ghosting over her skin.

This was something completely foreign to Maka: a resonance produced not through the transformation of weapon, but something else entirely.

There was something hot plummeting in the pit of her stomach. Her skin was itching, prickling across the apples of her cheeks and spanning across the bridge of her nose down to her neck. She realized that it was actually a heated blush. Her fingers fumbled against his broad back.

"Yes," she breathed, her mind going blank.

Soul's lips hovered dangerously close to her own. The closer he got, the more she felt their wavelengths pulse. The energy was consuming her, drowning her in bliss and excitement. He was going to do it. For the first time Soul was going to-

His lips met her's. Her senses were overpowered with the scent of him: the smell of sweat and motor oil, of hard work and determination. He was intoxicating. His soul was burning against her own.

Trust me, it screamed. This is who I am. I am broken and out of tune; I am sharp and demanding. I will play a song of sorrow and anguish, and it will wrap around you like a scarf. I'm sorry, but I have nothing to give you but my protection. You have my loyalty and my appreciation. Your soul is half of my own. And if you so wish to accept it, I offer my love as well.

Maka never felt such a high and powerful wave be produced.

"Soul," she sang across his lips. She pulled back from his lips, much to his disappointment. A noise of protest ripped through his throat, but Maka silenced him with a finger to his mouth. She kept him close to her, foreheads pressed evenly together. Her hands found their way to his face, framing it under her touch. "Ever since I met you, I've always had faith in you; I trust you with my life." She kissed his cheek, his eyelid - the tip of his nose. "My love for you is smooth and seamless. My love for you is strong and true."

He stared at her with wide, dream-filled eyes, before they began to glint with mischief. He smiled at her with his big shark teeth. "Trust a softy like you to get so emotional over a kiss."

"Oh shut up! I am not emotional." Her glare could burn a hole through him. Thinking it over, she decided he should receive a well deserved Maka-chop, which she thoroughly delivered.

Somehow, their souls hummed together anyway.