"Who are you?"
Maka looks down at Soul, his head bandaged. He's in the hospital. She looks around at her friends, one by one.
Black Star points to himself, "Soul, what's my name?"
"Black Star, Tsubaki..Kidd..Liz." Soul paused when he came back to Maka, his eyes squinting, "Is this your girlfriend Black Star?" Soul snickers, "She's flat-chested. She's too small for you."
Maka's eyes are wide, and wet. Her cheeks are numb from running in the cold to get Soul's sorry ass here, their mission failed with a blow to his skull. Her lips part, "You don't know who I am?"
"Soul, stop messing around. It's Maka." Lizz scratched her head, "This isn't funny."
"What do you remember?" Kidd asked Soul, looking through the cabinets.
"I remember all of us sitting at Tsu's place. It was the day before school started, and we were all nervous. So, we were eating a shit ton and watching movies." Soul put a hand up to his head, "What happened?"
Maka's eyes are swelling, and the blood that was trying to return from the cold left again. She was numb. Everyone was looking at her, ready for her to burst. She wiped her mixture of snot and tears on the back of her sleeve, "I'm going to go get some air."
She trudged out, leaving everyone behind her.
"I really don't know who that girl is Star," Maka heard with her hand grasped tight along the door.
She heard Black Star draw in a heavy breath, "She's your meister. You've known her for nearly three years now. You live with her, you both hate each other but not actually."
"Is this a joke? I told you many times I'm never getting a meister!" Soul's voice gets rough, and she knows he probably has a headache. She opens the door, carefully.
"Oi, Maka. You're face looks beat up." Kidd looks up from the chair. This is the first time Maka has registered her appearance, she's caked in blood and dirt. Her face must've been swollen from crying, and she also could smell the faint metallic mixture of blood lingering.
She realized the cold water sinking and spolshing in her boots as she walked over, "You guys should leave, and give Soul some rest."
"Don't order around my friends. I don't even know you," Soul turned towards her, eyes fierce.
The jabs in her chest came back, repeating the motions and speeding up their pace. She turned towards everyone and they all seemed to know, gathering up their coats and hats. Tsubaki spoke first, "Soul, Maka is going to take care of you. Just let her. You might regain some memories by spending time with her."
Kidd agreed to this, giving a medical perspective before they headed out.
They sat in silence for what seemed to be forever before Soul broke it,
his arms were crossed along his chest, his eyes closed. "You can go home, you don't have to stay."
"I know." Maka whispered, barely making noise.
"Stop crying, there's no reason to cry." Her hands were clenched on her thighs and she looked anywhere but him. He sighed heavy, "Did I really know you?"
"It's not fair."
"Speak louder, flat-chest." Soul rolled over on his side, looking at her.
"It's not fair! You remember everyone else, but I'm the one that.." She slowed down her pace, retreating.
"Look, weirdo, go home." He rubbed a hand over his face, yawning, "Come back tomorrow, clean yourself up. Have a nice shower, bring me some food...and pictures. Of us."
Maka sniffled and walked towards the door, wrapping her scare poorly. She cringes, Soul always wrapped it for her.
He wakes up with the feeling of him never having slept, and to Maka. She's opening his windows and she has the hiccups. Soul pulls the covers over his mouth and grins, she's rubbing her eyes because the dust must've found a way to get into her. "Morning." She flinches at his voice, and he guesses he's scared away the hiccups. He looks over to the table, a stack of books all aligned with dozens of bookmarks flinging out of them, "I don't read. Why did you bring me books?"
"They're mine." She places a bento box-lunch in his lap and retreats to the table, opening a books and placing the bookmark back next to her glass of water.
Soul unwraps the bento box, and starts eating it. His eyes widen a little, "I've ate this before!"
Maka turns to him, "It's your favorite."
Soul looks at her apologetically, "So, I've learned a few things in the past twenty-four hours."
She closed her book, not bothering with the bookmark anymore, and turned her chair towards him to listen, "What are those things?"
"One, you are a flat-chested girl." He chuckles, "Two, you are a geek. Who brings seven books to read?" Maka opens her mouth to talk, but he keeps going, "Three, you are a great cook. Better then me, and that's hard."
"You suck at cooking, Soul." Maka smiles, for the first time he's ever seen. His chest thumps and she reminds him of spring. He notices when she talks, he feels sleepy. Her voice reminds him of a little girl that's half-asleep.
"I do not."
"Do too."
"How'd you know?" He shoots at her.
She looks hurt, and he quickly apologizes. "You're right. I do."
"Whenever it's your turn to cook, you burn the food." She goes into her mind, "Oh! I brought the pictures you wanted." She opens her bag to pull out a stack of freshly developed photos. She throws them in his lap next to the food, and he puts the bento box on the side-table.
He glances at her, she's eagerly waiting for him to open the package, and he does. The first picture is a picture of Maka and Soul in a field, he knows this was taken by someone else because of the angle. She looks happy, the field's grass is swaying and it looks windy. She speaks up, "We went on a picnic with the gang."
He smirks and flips to the next one, a picture of Maka and Tsubaki brushing their teeth and laughing. Then one of Maka and Soul in their baseball jersey's playing baseball with everyone, Maka's hair shooting out in every direction, "We were on separate teams because we were in a fight."
"Who won?"
"Tsh, me." She smiled again, her eyes creasing.
"Don't lie just because I lost my memories." Soul joked, and flipped again. Soul was playing basketball with Black Star, and Maka was handing him a water bottle. Then one of Maka in Soul's lap, reading. They must've been watching a movie or something, because he was half asleep; his arms wrapped around her. "Were we?.."
Maka looks into his eyes; for a second he regrets asking. He remembers her greens, he remembers looking into them because it was like the calm that came after his red. The red that was always calmed down by the green, being held and cradled to ease. She makes a small smile, "We were, but you never made it official."
Soul knitted his eyebrows together. He wants to remember this girl as a whole, but it hurts his head trying to dig out old memories. They keep flying back to him in bits and pieces. The next picture made him laugh, Maka was covered in blue frosting, pouting. "What's this?"
She laughed too, making him more happy, "I made a cake for your birthday...and I fell in it trying to give it to you! You ate it anyways, though." The flash startled him, he remembers her falling, and him scooping a little from her cheek with his finger, eating it and thanking her.
"I remember that," he told her.
She looked at him, "After that we went to a theater, and you played the piano until I fell asleep." He wanted to remember this, of course, but it never came. No sudden flashes. No shattered memories.
This picture was of Maka, in shorts and a tank top, sitting on the roof of the school eating a popsicle. She was laughing and choking on her popsicle, her eyes squinted. "Say Maka, what am I like?"
"What do you mean, stupid?" Maka looked up from the picture and he placed them into his lap.
"Like, to you, who am I?"
"You're Soul. You've always been aloof, arrogant..blunt, apathetic. You like to fight with me over trivial things, and then we end up not talking until the other apologizes. You love your motorcycle, and you always try and get me to ride it." Maka puts her hands under her chin and Soul listens intently, waiting for more.
"You can't sleep when it's raining, you hate the color orange. You get a headache when you wear your headband too long, and you hate when people ask you too many unwanted questions."
"Keep going," he urges her.
"When you're really happy you lick your lips before smiling. You always dog-ear my books, and I hate you for it." Maka paused, "Oh! You're a in-the-closet cuddle whore."
"A what?" He laughed.
"I'll be reading on the couch, and you'll come out of the shower all sleepily and crawl on top of me, and won't let go. Sometimes you even fall asleep."
He stops laughing and frowns, "I really don't remember it."
Her eyes lower for a second, and he feels a pang inside him, "How much did you cry when I asked you who you were?"
"More then I've ever cried."
"You looked wet, how did I hit my head in the first place?"
She sucked in a breath, "We were on a mission, it wasn't a big one either. I was under a big piece of granite and you pushed me before getting hit. I ran you all the way here. It was snowing, that's why I was wet." Soul hummed to this, still frowning.
"How did we meet?" He asked, and continued eating the bento.
"I followed your music to the music room during a weapon/meister meeting. I thought it was dark, but I loved it. You hated me because I heard it, but I just asked if you wanted to be my partner. You agreed."
"I'm really dumb to agree to a book-worm like you." He said in-between chewing.
"You probably don't remember the first time you scared the shit out of me either." Maka's tone saddened.
"When was that?"
"We were on a different mission against Chrona, and you threw yourself in front of a blade," Maka put a hand under his shirt.
"What are you-"
She inched it up slowly, revealing the beginning of the scar that still gave her nightmares, "This is the result."
Soul took off his shirt, examining the scar, "Holy shit! This must've hurt."
Maka closed her eyes, remembering the scene. Soul's memories starting coming, one after the other. "I sort of remember that. I can feel the pressure under the scar."
Soul woke up, and this time it was night. Maka was sitting down next to the bed, head in Soul's lap, sleeping. He looked down at the girl he so desperately wanted to know. He dreamt of her.
She stirs in her sleep, her eyebrows making her look mad, and Soul rubs a hand along her cheek. He knows he's done this countless times, he knows how she feels and he tugs out her pigtails-almost on command. He places the ribbons on his night-stand and runs his fingers in her hair. He takes the stack of pictures and begins to look through them again, this time more carefully.
In a few pictures, he notices her wearing his shirts, and then his hats. In one, they were done playing baseball and she had dirt along her cheeks, bat behind her shoulder, grinning. His hat was on her, backwards and his teeshirt was muddy. Soul could tell she'd won just by her expression. He goes to the next picture, a picture of him in a black suit..with a red dress shirt underneath. Maka was next to him in a black dress, with black wedges. Soul's arms were around her and they looked happy. He looked happy.
This was at Kidd's party right?
Yeah, because Maka spilled her beer all over the leather couch, and Soul ran with her through the backyard catching fireflies, and laughing.
Then he remembers when ever the got in a fight he'd bring her home a new book she'd wanted, and leave it outside her door.
Memories started flooding back, her cooking, watching movies, fighting, missions, class...
Soul shook her awake, she mumbled sleepily before rudely yelling at him. He grinned at her, "I know who you are."
Maka's eyes widened and she smiled, a real smile.
"The first time I told you I loved you was when you were making me breakfast. You made me french toast, bacon, and scrambled eggs even though you were really mad at me." Soul was cupping her cheek and she was leaning over him now.
"The first time I told you that I loved you, I was at home. I was mad because you left me in the all alone, and it was Christmas. I was on the couch when you came in, covered in the cold snow with a stack of like fifty million roses and you said that you saw me smile when a guy gave his girl roses, and it wasn't really your thing." Maka breathed, she was so close to Soul now, "Then you pulled out this," and she lifted up her collar to reveal the necklace Soul had custom made, "I've never taken it off since that day."
"I'm sorry."
"I know."
"I love you."
"I know."
"I love you. I love you. I love you."
"I love you too, Soul."
Author's note:
I usually don't like mushy shit, but here you go. Especially the ending.
Mush mush mush.