A/N: For the record, just imagine that in the night before the story's time-line Maka and Soul went on a pre-kishin hunt that ended up pretty bad. Also:
Italic mean thoughts and flashbacks - hope it doesn't get too confusing! Enjoy :D
Don't Do That
His scar stings.
He walks down the hall in a hurry, skipping a step or two in favour of his worry but briskly avoiding any unnecessary contact with the retreating students of Death Weapon and Meister Academy. As soon as the last warning bell rang, he told Death Scythe and Professor Marie that he was going to leave for a quick check-up in the Infirmary.
They didn't protest, even when the training was supposed to last at least one more hour.
And he dares to admit that their hurry in sending him off unnerved him more than the fact that the God-dammed scar is causing troubles again.
Itchy. The thing feels somewhat itchy, he notes with disdain. Not the itchiness that makes you want to scratch and rub until it goes away but the type that burns beneath the flesh and even though he wants to do something about it – like pour freezing water on it or something – he can't. He grabs the shirt directly above the dry wound and groans.
Probably the best idea before doing another move would be telling Maka. The young scythe is well aware of his meister's worry, and the last time he 'felt something in his chest' it was then clear that the Black Blood was being used improperly –
- on the other side of the globe, by Medusa.
It's amazingly creepy how things work these days.
`»O«´
The emptiness of the corridors is eerie. Silence in Death City, anywhere at all in Death City, did not mean something good. Unlike her idiot partner Soul, who didn't even bothered on telling her that his scar was still doing joyous wonders with his body, she actually enjoys the sound of people talking here and there.
Silence is never a good sign.
"Stupid, stupid, stupid!" Maka fumed as she descended the Academy's back stairs in a quick pace. She completely forgot to return the Library's books with all the hurry of leaving the classroom to see Soul. When she realized that she went running up to the top of DWMA before the area went off limits like it was usual on Wednesday afternoons.
It took her only 15 more minutes, but still! She has never been this forgetful. But it's when she reaches the end of the stairs and lands a step on the dust filled arena that the real surprise hits her.
The Fields are something close between huge and humongous – tons and tons of free space filled with nothing more than sand, rocks and, the worst of it all, dust from when the wind blew by. In the distance she could faintly see the silhouettes of two people, a man and a woman sitting on a rock that was big enough to curve on the top and provide them a shade from the sun.
It was supposed to be three people there. Where's Soul? "Miss Marie! Papa!" She set one foot down and gained speed so that she could reach the two as fast as possible. Her heart clenched inside her chest; was there something wrong?
Her capability of thinking was then rudely interrupted by a kick in the shin.
She swiftly opened the door to the infirmary. "Soul? Are you-" Her voice got caught in her throat at the familiar sight in front of him.
Her weapon was quick to push his shirt down, concealing his damaged skin from public view and brushing off the aura of déjà vu coming from his meister.
"Here you go." Both teens turned their heads to Naigus who appeared from the corner of the room where a neatly placed closet was filled with labelled drugs. "We want to keep whatever is happening inside your blood stream controlled, so Lord Death as instructed me to give you these pills in case you felt something related to your scar."
Soul took the plastic bag in his hands, folded in neatly and shoved it in his back pocket. "Okay."
"The Black Blood is a serious matter Soul." She glanced at Maka. "Make him swallow those pills by force if necessary. Do you need me to keep you up with the problem?"
"No need." The petite girl smiled at her teacher. "I'll make him spill things out." She glared at the scythe while he looked at the window like it was none of his business. Why the nerve of the guy! Here she is, worrying about him so much that she's going to grow bald one day, and he's whistling at the dammed window.
From her place Nigus smiled sheepishly and walked over to the door. "I'll leave you then. Sid is having problems keeping up with Black*Star, so I'm going down there and be useful for the rest of the afternoon. If you need anything at all make me know – I'll know how to deal with the situation."
In politeness, Maka bowed and murmured a quiet thank you. She doesn't understand why the majority of the learners love to disobey a teacher's orders and go as far as to worship it enough to turn it into a sport when they were all so nice and preoccupied with their students.
When her frame stood upright and looked up, hoping to be alone in the room with her idiot of a partner so that they could have a tête-à-tête, she found the adult still glued to her place, and looking quite bothered about something that she apparently wasn't getting the point.
Her mind wandered.
She fell to the ground with a 'thud' and let out a gasp. A sharp pain shot up from her shin to the rest of her body; it burned!
Not knowing very well what just happened the blond quickly regained her posture and got up with her fists next to her chest, however, she did not see the foot aiming at her, nor did she saw that she was currently shielded from the outside world by a group of four strangers.
Whoever those people were, they were current with her situation because she was hit on a very fragile place. She fell on her knees and grasped her stomach. The bastards somehow knew that her last enemy made her belly quite the fragile spot to be hurt, as it had been stricken too many times in one night. And how did she know that their attacks weren't just pure luck?
Because they hit her again, and again, and again.
At their fourth strike she had had enough of the child's play. She grabbed the first thing she saw and was happy to find out it was an ankle, with its owner coming down along with a weapon. Her legs gained some force and she managed to sit herself.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" She asked with fury, murderous intent in her eyes as she found out that the strangers who attacked her were three girls that belonged in a EAT class, the year below her.
"You are the worst partner a weapon can have! How many times has he run off to the Infirmary complaining about that mark, do you even know that?"
The blond waved her hand at the adult. "Hey, wasn't Black*Star causing problems downstairs?" At this Naigus sobered up and nodded. Before leaving she looked inside the room one more time but Maka waved it off and finally closed the door.
When she looked at Soul right in the face she saw the bead of sweat that ran from his forehead and down his face. "Just to set things straight before you jump into any conclusions: I was going to tell you but you already left class and-"
"Why didn't you tell me that it hurt?"
Soul gaped. "You already jumped to conclusions!"
"Of course you moron!" She stepped closer to him and dropped dead on the bed he was sitting at. She welcomed the strange felling of her skin being rubbed by her palms and stretched her arms wide open. Soul kept his attention directed at her with morbid curiosity. "This isn't going well…" She deadpanned.
"What?"
"What?" She asked in disbelief. What were they talking about? She coughed onto her fist.
"He just passed by us, clutching his shirt for dear life."
Maka's eyes widened. Clutching his shirt? For dear life? "H-How-"
Another voice spoke. "See! You don't even know how serious it is! What type of meister doesn't know when his partner is having problems?"
Sitting up, she stretched her back so much that it seemed that a stick suddenly grew in it. She wasn't a girl to slouch, but the pain above her waist was making her want to.
Carefully, she looked at the boy beside him and took one of Soul's hands on her own. For a moment Maka admired the pianist's fingers, trailed a long scar on his palm and sucked in a deep breath before staring directly at his eyes. He was begging to feel worried about her lack of conversation, she could tell. Usually she would boast around and let her words burn inside his head because she knows things that apparently he doesn't.
Soul doesn't know that she notices his faint movements, every day, in which concerns the wound that crosses his chest. She sees every scratch, every scrape, every graze, and she can't do a thing.
And she told him! She told him not to be reckless, asked him to stop throwing hisbody in battlefield for hersake. The idiot doesn't listen!
She begged him to stop giving away his life with the excuse of saving hers, but he is a thick-head, a kid who doesn't listen to anyone, a guinea pig who doesn't like being tested with drugs but does so for her. Like a snap, in a blink of an eye, before she can pronounce any letter of the alphabet. It annoys her so much.
"Maka?"
That he takes pleasure in suicide and then blames her for the act.
"Maka!"
"Do you have suicide intents?" It's one question, one simple question that she would love with all her heart and soul to be answered. He looks at her with wide-eyes, laughing a bit when he wrongly perceives a sick joke inside his brain.
She doesn't laugh. She doesn't feel like laughing anymore; she wants to punch him in the face because two nights ago he had done the same thing her naïve persona thought was a discussed and buried under one hundred feet deep underground matter.
Yes, he had done it again – did she forgot to mention that?
"Get this straight." The young Death Scythe recomposed his posture so that his torso was facing her petite form directly. "You are my meister and I am your weapon, my job is to protect you." He tightened his grip on her hands. "I am ready to die for my meister!"
"Don't give me the same I'll-die-for-my-meister speech. Listen here Soul Eater, nowhere, and I really mean nowhere in the book is said that the weapon must be prepared to die for his meister. It's clearly written and more than specifically explained on the fifth rule 'Between Partners' that it's the weapon's obligation to keep the team secure while the technician handles the practical stuff."
"Oh! Right, right of course." He flicked both his wrists at the same time and waved his hands in the air for a dramatic effect. "Like you said lady Albarn, master of rule and order of DWMA - I am in charge of the protection of the team!"
"The way you do it is not the correct one! The rules are so clear, can't you understand them?" He folded his arms in front of his chest stubbornly and looked the other way, clearly not in the mood. "Stop being such a big baby!"
Playing with her thumbs, she concentrated on directing her anger elsewhere and it was certainly better out the window. Ok, next tactic- the problem here is that they're both acting like usual, curling up on a corner and waiting for the right moment to glance up and see if the storm has passed.
Her stomach hurt like hell, but she brushed it for later. "Lord Death doesn't like separated classes. In EAT classes the pair has to remain together because, well, they're in EAT classes. We are the ones who choose to have a future like this, fighting kishin eggs for a living and making the world a better place."
"I know I know. It's the same old crap really." He gets up and leans against the wall with his hands shoved in his pockets. She's happy to see that he too is trying to regain his cool and talk at a level that she would expect of him. "They want us to 'divide chores', while we both figure out how to end a battle, I watch your back and warn you and you hear my words and fight."
"Right." She smiles. "A partnership."
He shakes his head. "It's not a partnership unless we both suffer the same consequences. If you die, what will I gain with it? I will be useless then."
"Now you're just being plain selfish." Thorns that were hidden from her sight are now painfully clear as a black dot on white paper. They share a silence for a moment and she can see how Soul struggles with his words, trying to explain a topic from his point of view, which she already understood, now more than ever.
Soul lifts his head but doesn't say anything. His mouth is a grim line and it adorns his handsome features in a bitter sight. Her fists curl besides her hips, her mind reconnects his words and his fake promises said along the time they were together. The truth is: Soul's a liar – Maka hates liars.
"Oh GOD give me PEACE! People don't die for anything unless they are forced to in a really desperate situation! People live and fight because they know it's the best resolve! You know why? Because people know that limp bodies lying dead on the floor will do no good to society! Have you ever heard of the dead rising from the ground and protect anything at all from danger? HAVE YOU?"
There was silence. Maka's breath came out raspy and tired. She breathed in an out heavily and unevenly, trying to regain her last bits of dignity – but she failed that task.
"How will you protect me then Soul? How?" Tears stung as they escaped down her face. "Stop being stubborn and live for me! Fight for me! Don't be that kind of an idiot!"
Soul stood glued to the wall, his eyes nailing her with no possible escape.
Tiredness swept her body, she lowered at such a level that she ended up sitting on the cold floor of the room, leaning her back on the bed's supports. "God I'm such a-a oh hell I don't know. I am so sorry, so sorry! I just-guhh…" It's not his fault; it's just that she is wounded in physical and psychological pain and her mind is working mostly on auto-pilot at the moment.
A hand reached out for her shoulder and her back was pressed to a warm chest. A familiar voice invaded her senses, soothing her nerves and calming the rest of the crowd as well. "I-I think that's enough Carla, you didn't need to go this far."
"Don't protect her; you know that his pain is her fault! If she did things right and fought like she does in class nothing would have gone wrong. It's like she's doing it on purpose."
"Don't do that." She was so deep in her thoughts that she never noticed the young scythe's advances. He was now next to her crouching at her side and cleaning her face with his hand, wiping away the sweat from her previous running and brushing a few strands of hair so that he could have a better look at her. "I actually am kind'a suicidal."
"What?" Her curiosity was clean, but her disbelief was a growing jungle.
Soul shrugged. "You are always training, always aiming to the top. Between your strength and mine, I say you win in any way, at any time." The scythe sat next to her with his hands still in his pockets. "But I can't change, it doesn't matter what I do my movements are marked and I can't pass them, so I managed a way of making your trust in me grow and keep up a active role in our partnership."
"You're not inactive. In fact, the one who did all the work at the beginning was you remember?" She huffed. "My dreams were to create a Death Scythe better than my papa and I didn't even know how to handle a scythe."
He smiled at the memories. How Maka had asked him for directions on the first time, to take the lead just how she does when she's dancing with him. "I never failed to lead you when you needed, but that's becoming pointless."
"But that's good! I don't get you. We are close of becoming equals, yet you do something stupid along the way and I fall back!"
Soul groans. "I know that! And I'm really sorry, okay?" He rubs his face with his palm. "I panic when something goes wrong! I know you always have a plan but sometimes you pull a fast one and leave me dumbfounded while you rush to a fight with no warning!"
Remorse fills her insides and she grabs her stomach on impulse. The girls had been right all along, she's not suited to be someone's meister, at least not until her mind doesn't figure out what's wrong with her.
He notes where her hands are clutching and memories of their last fight flow recklessly. "Hey, does it still hurt? Back there you even vomited blood at some point." Her forest-green eyes looked at him with hurt and sorrow and his heart twisted so much he could feel it screaming at him to stop the sight.
"I am so sorry Soul, but we should end the shenanigans."
The breath of his lungs disappeared at her sentence. "Don't play around Maka."
"I'm not playing around, I'm serious!" And she really was, and her fearless expression scared him shitless. "This is not wealthy, you enter a combat not knowing if what I'm doing is the right thing or not and I end up carrying your sorry ass to the nearest hospital!"
"Well sorry if my sorry ass is such a heavy burden to deal with!"
"IT IS!" She covered her eyes with her forearm, just to make sure that her eyes weren't leaking salty water. "Can't you see I don't want to lose you?"
His feelings were disarray at the moment. Soul sure wished he could be a Maka right now, so that he could find the right words and spill them out for her to understand that he felt the same way; she was a very important person to him. He scooted closer to the blond and positioned his body so that he could circle her frame between his legs and lean her back in his chest and not on the frigid metal. He felt her flinch under his touch when his arms came to rest around her belly, a fact that worried him a lot.
The warmth of his lips was felt on the top of her skull. "You are very important to me too, and you can't see that either." She squirmed, trying to get out of his grasp but he didn't let her. "I'm not the bes when it comes to explaining you know. Saying things like 'You are an amazing technician' don't fit my cool, so, I'm only going to say this once, hear it or lose it." He sucked in a deep breath and she felt his cheeks grow hot beside her ear. "You are an amazing technician, why do you doubt that?"
The girl patting her back was of a different opinion. "She's not a show-off, if that's what you're saying. She is the best student at the Academy! So she made a mistake - the situation must have been pretty bad if it ended up the way it did."
Maka looked up and saw a worried face, a familiar one, one she remembered seeing not long ago in a NOT class. The annoying girl's voice behind spoke and confirmed her suspicion's.
"Don't take her side like that Tsugumi…"
The black haired girl wearing twin pigtails smiled in triumph.
If Soul Eater was to die, and furthermore because of her, her quickest resolve would be a rushed fall and a quick stop. Maybe she's exaggerating, she wouldn't go as low as to commit self-pain but it would never be the same. So fond of him she has been, and only now does he notice?
The teen beside her speaks again. "I promise I won't die, but I'll still be protecting you with all I've got, doesn't matter if I get hurt." She was about to protest but he cut her off. "No matter what you say, your soul deserves a brighter life. And I-" Maka looked up too meet his gaze. Whatever he was thinking was giving him a hard time.
"Just drop it. I think I'll think better tomorrow." Her shaky arms searched the floor for support but his clutches were like strings of steel, not letting her get away. "Soul let go."
"I can't." The weapon shook his head next to her neck and she shivered at the feeling of his hair on her skin. "I love you too much to let you go."
All time stopped.
Silence came up again – and she hated silence!
Nothing good ever came with it.
"Y-You don't mean that." A single tear ran down the corner of her eye, the sick feeling of disdain and déjà vu returning stronger than a typhoon. Her throat felt so dry that deserts were blessings in comparison.
His expression remained with the grim line and his cheeks puffed out with pink after what was his first confession. She still doubts his intentions, so what? He's still no going to let her go. Still shielding her from all the dangers of the outside, he cups her heart-like face and brushes his nose against the trail of her tear.
"Please…"
"I'm not going to let you go." He smiles faintly after seeing that she is fighting back the tears, keeping her eyes shut with all her might. "We'll survive this mess, don't worry 'bout it."
The kiss seals the contract, the one he made on his own account but she followed it anyway – because she trusts him blindly, not wanting to have anything else to do with the future problems that all this concern will surely arise in the future.
Finding out that his fans stopped haunting her was just a second relief.
Well, and this is the end of my first Fiction, a one-shot about Soul and Maka!
~~(.)~~