Pairing: Soul/Maka [Soul Eater]
Rating: T-M for mature themes
TW: miscarriage
Song Artist: Belle & Sebastian
A/N: Heavily based off of The Time Traveler's Wife

you made me forget my dreams
when i woke up to you sleeping
there was blood on the sheets again
and the view outside the window
of gardens in bloom
obscured by all the troubles we've had

He couldn't recall everything- it had all turned somewhat hazy and bleak- but he remembered staring at an enormous painting hung up on a stark white wall, and Maka by his side, staring up at it alongside him. It was of what he thought was a French family, but the colors were all sucked out and faded, and the people were faceless. There was a child in the picture too. One scrawny girl with a massive bonnet on her small head, the string tied under her jaw and over her throat. A girl…

He wakes up to a stifling scent of something awful. It takes a few seconds for his eyes to inch open. Once they're exposed, they're immediately cascaded with the morning sun that backlights Maka's face. She is serene. He hasn't seen her face look quite that peaceful in what feels like such a long time. It's the only thing showing, as the rest is tucked underneath the thickness of blankets. It's the essence of tranquility; her every facial muscle is relaxed and unperturbed, her mouth slightly opened. She looks as if she's forgotten everything she's been through recently.

Which brings Soul's attention back to the horrid odor that disturbs the otherwise angelic peace that emitted from Maka's being.

It doesn't take him more than four seconds to realize what the scent is, and under two more to realize its implications. His gut feels twisted and disfigured, and nausea waves through him like a sea brushed by heavy winds. It's blood. And not menstrual blood. It can't possibly be for the two reasons that menstruation didn't smell so strongly, and because Maka was pregnant. He suddenly feels like crumpling inside of himself and weeping, but he pushes both that and his nausea out of his conscious. Slowly, he sits up, wishing there was a way to go about this without waking her.

And all of the insatiable sadness that he tried repressing the first time this had happened hits him right then, and he gasps, tears pooling and dripping from his eyes with no hesitancy. He tries to remain noiseless as he squinches his eyes shut and lifts the sheets off of himself and Maka.

He doesn't look, but he can nearly hear the sticky pools of blood, half-dried into the bedsheets, being lifted up as Soul pulls off the covers. The stench intensifies, and he keeps crying. He doesn't look at any of it. He just turns his attention back to Maka's face, trying to hone in on the serenity it held just a moment ago.

But her eyes are open now. Her face resumes the expression it had worn a few months or so ago, the last time this had happened. Recently, she'd tried rearranging it to something happier and more uplifting. He didn't know who she was putting on the front for, but he assumed it could have been for the concealed baby. Now, she looked like a rubber band who had stretched itself so far, trying to reach something desperately, only to be snapped back, cruelly. Her face was more vacant than he has ever seen it, eyes dull and devoid of their usual organic vivacity. He guessed they'd been artificial as of late anyways. She didn't look at him as she spoke. "I had such a nice dream."

He was still streaming with tears, and he quickly sniffed his dripping snot and wiped away his tears with a contracted fist as he responded, "Yeah, me too."

"But I don't remember it anymore." Her eyes were staring up at the ceiling, but she didn't look at anything. Truthfully, he'd completely forgotten his dream as well. Something about a bonnet? "Oh," he feebly gave her back.

"Maybe if I talk about it I can remember," she suggested to no one. She hadn't been talking to him from the start, but she needed his voice to encourage her to speak. He knew that much.

"Go ahead," he encouraged. He hated seeing her so spaced out like this, but knew he couldn't change a thing, so he shouldered that too.

"I had a dream," she began. "And the first thing I remember from it was that I was traveling somewhere, like I'd been assigned to go on a mission. You weren't there though. Someone was…" She blinked, and Soul could almost see the clouds behind her eyes that she was trying to clear away. "I was walking into this cafe, I think it was…and this…" Maka let out a soft gasp, remembering. "This girl. With long hair. She came up to me. I don't know why. But we held hands as we walked, and she was talking to me about…something." She grimaced, faintly shaking her head. "God damn, I can't remember what she was telling me about. She was so excited to talk to me, and I can't even remember a damn thing she said to me…"

By that time, Soul's tears had seeped into his pours, and the faucets in his eyes stopped leaking. He was beginning to feel as spacy as she was. Maybe it was how dreamy her voice was, he just felt lulled into a quiet and drained emptiness.

"Go on," he insisted, needing her to continue for some reason.

Her eyes were a bit less empty now. They were filled with hazy obstacles that she was trying to peer through. "And then…she…then…" And Maka stopped. Stillness overcame her entirely. She looked petrified.

"Maka?" Soul crinkled his eyebrows together, like a child who was in the middle of hearing a story and had to hear the ending.
"What happened then?"

The only think that moved in her in response was her mouth, and just barely. "The kishin. I'd forgotten about the mission completely. It burst through the window. It went for her…" Finally, Maka started showing emotion. Tears were collecting on her eyelashes as she blinked faster and faster. "There was so much…"

She didn't need to answer, so instead, she just laid there and sobbed, screaming in her cries here and there. Soul cried too. She was still covered in the blood she'd awoken from, and it was still everywhere.

With that thought, Soul immediately set up a bath and stripped the sheets for the second time.