This is my entry for Soul Eater Resonance Bang 2015!
First I'd like to thank my artist NotZilon for creating such lovely fanart to accompany my story. Talking to you about the story and Soul Eater lore was really fun, and I really appreciate all the help you gave me :) A big thank you also goes out to my beta squad: sandmancircus, l0chn3ss, professor maka, and therewithasmile. Without your guidance, this fic would be naught but me facedown in a pile of trash. Thanks also go to salt chat for your encouragement. Thank you to the mods for organizing this event! And lastly, thank you, readers, for giving my fic you attention and feedback. I hope you enjoy it!
The cover art was drawn by NotZilon.
"Dead folks can't hurt you none. It's the ones that are alive you have to watch out for."
Liz Thompson, curled up on her absent meister's throne with a worn paperback copy of Peyton Place open in her lap, read this line and felt her mind dart away from the story and back to someone she didn't expect-her mother.
She didn't think of her dead-beat mom often. At first, Liz missed her because someone had to feed Patty, someone had to find safe shelter beneath bridges and down shadowed alleyways, someone had to beat back the onslaught of urban predators who had wanted a piece of both girls since the day they first stepped on the streets. In the months after their mother's abrupt abandonment, Liz had desperately wanted that person to be anyone but herself.
Time gave Liz distance, which in turn gave her perspective. Mom had tried to love them both in her own way, but that didn't change the fact that she was a heinous, negligent bitch who gave up on parenthood. Liz would never forgive their mother for that. Never. And so Liz stopped thinking about their mother altogether. She became Patty's caretaker, Patty became her universe, and their lives took off from there.
Dead folks can't hurt you none, but what about the people in between life and death? The people who are missing, or unaccounted for, or simply stuck?
Liz had cracked open her favorite smutty historical romance Peyton Place for the umpteenth time to find some entertainment during the most boring Thanksgiving holiday she and Patty had ever had. Everyone the Thompson sisters knew had vanished to their own corners of the globe almost overnight. Maka and Soul were somewhere in Bumfuck, New Jersey celebrating the holiday with family. Tsubaki and Black Star used the long weekend as an opportunity to surprise Tsu's parents in Japan. Kim and Jackie were undoubtedly making kissy faces at one another in a dark corner. Ox, Harvar, Kilik, and the twins had certainly gotten lost, though she didn't know where. Thanksgiving dinner was truly a lonely event.
At least their friends were in the same dimension. Kid was back in the witch realm with Professor Stein and Spirit Albarn, negotiating with Maba at a diplomatic summit. Judging by the sparse communication from their meister, the summit wasn't going so well.
The grim reaper last spoke to his weapons on November 26, Thanksgiving Day, through the full-length mirror in the Death Room. "They want reparations for all the witches slaughtered by a Shibusen weapon or meister," Kid had explained. "Eight hundred years worth of conflict and I'm supposed to find a way to apologize for every single soul lost. The concessions Maba is demanding are truly appalling."
"But they killed way more of our people," Patty said. "Don't we get to make a stink about that?"
"Witches are essentially immortal, and their memories are much better than ours." Kid sighed, his breath fogging up his side of the mirror. "Not to mention their record-keeping. We can't even name half of our dead because no one under Father's regime bothered to write them down, but harm one hair on one witch and you'll have thousands scrambling for justice. If I hear one more peep about Flemeth Grimoire, Circe Swine, or Death-damned Jenny Greenteeth, I may truly go mad."
Liz raised a skeptical eyebrow and put her hands on her hips. "Kid, you're Lord Death," she said simply. "They can bitch and moan as much as they want, but the truth is that you're the bigger fish. There's a reason those witches insisted you leave us at home. You scare the crap out of them. Remember that and Maba will cave."
The golden, skull-shaped irises of Kid's eyes warmed at that. "I miss you two," he admitted. "You keep me grounded. Keep my head on straight."
"And we miss you, you pale-as-hell lima bean," Patty said with a smile. Rather than offend, Patty's comment spurred Kid to genuinely smile.
They said their goodbyes and vowed to have a real Thanksgiving the moment Kid was able to come home. Until then, Liz and Patty would switch between prowling Death City and keeping vigil in the Death Room, just in case someone needed them.
So there Liz was, sitting on Kid's throne, morosely flipping through her ratty copy of Peyton Place and wondering whether or not their mother was looking up at them from somewhere in the second circle of hell.
On the other side of the Death Room, Patty had happily assembled a tower out of Jenga blocks and was slowly extracting a brick near the base. She puffed out her cheeks in concentration, adamant that she wouldn't topple the tower so soon. The brick had nearly cleared the tower base when the room was awash with a bright blue glow.
The Death Room mirror was 12 feet tall and outlined in a thin, brassy frame that drew the eye to a cartoonish skull mounted at the very top. The glass shined blue, signalling an incoming call. Excited, Patty bolted towards the mirror, taking her entire Jenga tower down in the process. Liz dropped her book, stretched, and sauntered over.
When the glow finally faded, the girls flinched at the sudden materialization of an abnormally strung out Kid.
"Bah!" Kid grasped the frame by both sides. His usually collected visage was wild with urgency. "Ladies, we have a situation," he said. "There's been a death at Soul's childhood home, and he is currently under suspicion. Fortunately, deathscythes fall under Shibusen jurisdiction and can't be questioned by local police," he added, casting a furtive glance at something offscreen. "Maka was able to stall by requesting Shibusen's presence, but we are stretched so thin…"
Upon hearing Soul's name, Liz covered her mouth in shock. Patty was also taken aback by the news, but she was always the sister who could bury bad news beneath a happy smile and wide bambi eyes. Patty didn't need any additional information to know what to do. "On it, Kiddo!" She said with a salute. "So when do we head out?"
"Immediately. And please, give Soul my sincerest condolences." Kid sighed and touched his fingertips to the glass in a broken gesture of comfort and loss before his image disappeared, leaving the sisters in the Death Room, comfortably unaware of the horrors and heartbreak waiting for them.
With a little help from foes-turned-friends Free and Eruka, the Thompson sisters found themselves magically dumped 2,482 miles east. Liz landed on her ass, in the mud no less, while Patty touched down on her feet. Even brief meister training had its perks. They didn't have time to change into anything more appropriate than Liz's casual capris, Patty's jean shorts, and their tight tops, so the two sisters had no choice but to shiver in their midriff-baring shirts and trudge forward.
The house's dark silhouette loomed against a gunmetal sky. Surrounding its vast property was a thick layer of leafless forest, and above the treeline Liz could see the lonely chimney of another house cutting into the air. Down the long, winding driveway, police cars idled with red and blue lights flashing through the dusk. If there was an ambulance, it was gone now. Liz and Patty were not strangers to mansions or ornate architecture, but something about the unforgiving cold and gloom made the property appear particularly haunting. The house and its garden had all the trappings of beauty, but death hung on every flower petal and dirtied every brick with its foul taint.
A sickly prickling sensation crawled up Liz's arms, and she shuffled her bag of clothing and toiletries underneath one arm so she could snatch Patty's wrist. She didn't know why, but she needed to keep her sister close.
They were three quarters of the way down the drive when a frowning policewoman strode out of the house to meet them. With her other arm, Liz instinctively clutched her bag to her torso. Patty, too, tensed. They had always been unnerved by police.
The feature that stood out most to Liz was the depth of the policewoman's frown lines. Had this lady ever smiled in her life? Everything else about her, from the tightness of her coiled bun to the severity of her small mouth, suggested an unwillingness to yield to anyone, let alone two muddy blondes.
"It's about time you arrived," the officer said, briskly shaking both of their hands. Her voice was husky yet firm, just like her strong grip. "I'm Sergeant Mary Bollero, the officer in charge of this investigation. Now that Shibusen has deigned to send someone to question your deathscythe, my work can finally continue. The family is inside. Shall I show you the scene?"
Without further prompting, Bollero turned to her right and stomped through the grass towards the left wing of the house. Liz and Patty followed obediently behind her. A sick feeling of deja vu swept over Liz and she wished this responsibility could fall on someone else's shoulders.
The grass was thoroughly trampled all along the side of the house. Once they rounded the corner, the sisters saw the stone bricks stained dark crimson. The paramedics had removed the body, but they hadn't managed to clean up all the blood. Nearby the bloodstains, a patch of African violets had been utterly flattened.
"Paramedics removed the body ninety minutes ago," Bollero informed them. "We'll have autopsy results soon enough, but we were able to make some inferences. The death occurred on the roof, which we've closed off. The victim had substantial head trauma from hitting the ground, and possibly a gunshot wound to the head as well. Our running theory is that he shot himself on the roof and then toppled himself over the side. Usually people choose to jump or pull the trigger, not both. A bit overkill for a suicide, in my opinion."
They hadn't even seen the corpse and Liz already felt a little woozy. "Yeah, sure."
"What happened to those?" Patty asked, pointing at the crushed African violets.
Bollero clicked her tongue. "The deathscythe was the first to reach the body. Knelt on the ground there and tried resuscitating the victim, but it was no use. The victim's soul was gone. Whether it was the bullet to the head or hitting the ground that did it, Wes Evans was too far gone to be saved."
Liz abruptly turned around and began to bite her nails, unwilling to envision that scene. She had already developed a toxic dislike of this policewoman. The body, the victim, the deathscythe-it was like those involved in this tragedy were things instead of people, and that made any named reference that crossed her lips feel sarcastic and cold. It was the kind of language nuance only a demon weapon would be sensitive to, because when your identity was wrapped up in being someone else's instrument of violence and destruction, you took your humanity seriously.
As Bollero walked around to the front of the house, Patty silently mouthed a few choice words behind her back.
They followed the policewoman back to the front of the house and onto the porch. Before reaching for the door, Bollero turned towards the sisters. She surveyed them with curiosity before the line of her mouth went hard.
"I'm going to be straight with you," she said. "You're not here to be little Nancy Drews. You're not here to play CSI. We contacted you because no one knows where the victim's younger brother was during the murder or how he made it to the body so quickly, and I'm not allowed to question him. Once your precious deathscythe has a solid alibi, I expect to continue my investigation without any interference."
Bollero's tone of finality and indifference told Liz and Patty all they needed to know. They weren't there to work side-by-side with the police, but to quietly remove a sticky legal hurdle that happened to involve a powerful deathscythe. The enlightening autopsy report Bollero kept referring to wasn't going to be shared; the sisters weren't going to get any information from the police. No fingerprints, no photographs, no nothing. They were on their own.
The house appeared foreboding when Liz and Patty walked down the driveway, but their dread increased tenfold when they got inside. Like the garden, the place was seemingly a very pretty and well kept home. The walls were adorned with tasteful paintings of men on horseback, sweeping landscapes, and coy shepherdesses surrounded by rosy-cheeked piglets. A pair of small tables against the hallway walls supported vases of fresh flowers with deep red and orange colored petals. A large cupboard displayed rows upon rows of delicate china and teacups, though it looked like the contents of that formidable cabinet hadn't been opened in ages.
The Evanses wealth wasn't flamboyant. It was oppressive. It oozed out of the drapes, the Turkish carpets, the flowers. Every accent piece was specifically chosen and positioned to show off the family's pedigree for maximum effect, causing any visitor to feel scrappy and dull in comparison. Patty's large eyes darted around the room, likely from the sensory overload. Their choices were either to look at the decor or at the grieving family. When they finally came face-to-face with the Evanses, Liz didn't blame Patty for avoiding the latter.
There were eight of them in all including Maka, which meant there were seven grim, apathetic faces staring at Liz and Patty when they finally arrived.
Bollero was brief in her introductions.
First was Annette Veneer-Evans and August Evans, Soul and Wes' aunt and uncle. The long-haired August sat in a chair and stared listlessly into a glass of whiskey while Annette paced behind him with a cigarette in hand. They would have reminded Liz of a reclining lion and a prowling lioness had Annette's skin not been so botoxed that she appeared almost serpentine.
Next was their young daughter Mary-Catherine ("No, it's Merricat," she said in protest), who was fiddling with her cell phone, and their teenaged son, Seth, who looked as if he smelled something awful. They were both squeezed into a single armchair, with Merricat perched on the arm and Seth glowering in the center.
Last were Soul and Wes' parents, retired orchestral musicians Victor and Cressida Evans, who were viciously clinging to each other. Victor's most definitive feature was his broom mustache and box-like jowls. His wife Cressida was a slight woman, with black, wavy hair gathered in an alligator clip, her dark face tinged red and raw from weeping. When he realized that the Thompson sisters were there, Victor looked up at them with a look of sardonic contempt.
Their friends were found in the center of the family tableau, and they were the most chilling sight of all. Soul and Maka sat on opposite ends of a small couch, holding hands at literally arms length while they avoided meeting eyes. Maka looked the better of two; her eyes were puffy and her cheeks pink from dried tears, but she brightened when she saw the sisters arrive and gave them a small wave. Soul simply stared at the floor with a tight jaw, as if he were willing himself to disappear.
Aside from buckets of money, another thing the Evans family had that the Thompsons didn't was eerily consistent genetics. Every single Evans man had the same sleepy eyes, the same thick white locks, the same lanky build. The main differences were the varying effects of age and their variously coiffed/wild hairstyles. Liz wondered what went wrong in order for Soul to be the only Evans to manifest the weapon gene, because surely an ability like that doesn't happen by accident.
Annette, Soul's aunt, snuffed her cigarette in a dish and greeted the girls once she realized that no one else in the family would.
"You're from Shibusen, aren't you?" Annette spoke airily and extended a thin, pale arm. When Liz shook it, she noticed that the woman was trembling. Patty noticed this too; she was uncharacteristically gentle as she shook Annette's white hand. "Please," she said with a small gesture towards the room. "Sit down and make yourself comfortable."
The offer didn't make any sense. No chair in the grand room looked fit for sitting, and the sisters fidgeted awkwardly, not sure what to do. Above the couch where Maka and Soul sat apart was a large mirror mounted on the wall. Through its reflection, Liz saw how alien she and her sister were amongst all this finery, like two strays who had wandered inside to get out of the rain.
Soul's father was less civil. "This is who Shibusen sent?" Victor said in a dry, scathing voice. Though he continued to comfort and cradle his wife against his chest, Liz could see that he was quietly seething. "We've been waiting for over an hour! For teenagers! In belly shirts!"
"We came from all the way in Nevada on short notice," Liz explained without humor. "Back home, belly shirts are an occupational hazard." She was tempted to add that they weren't teenagers, but bit her tongue. Nodding to Patty, Liz procured her Shibusen identification card while her sister followed suite. Apart from her age and weapon status, the cards displayed the new titles Kid had bestowed upon his weapons shortly after the Battle on the Moon.
Elizabeth Thompson- The Right Hand of Death
Patricia Thompson - The Left Hand of Death
In truth, Kid was rarely consistent with which sister he wielded in which hand, but that didn't make the new titles any less impressive and intimidating.
Holding both cards in one of his long-fingered hands, Victor appraised the ID cards with a frown. He kept looking between the cards and the two young blondes before him as if he couldn't believe they were the same people.
"How do I know these are valid?" he asked.
"Don't you see the skull?" Patty asked with sugary sweetness.
Appeased, Victor handed back the cards. "So I suppose you two will be working with the police. I don't want you snooping around my home without a search warrant, or questioning us without a lawyer present."
Bollero stepped forward. "Their only concern is confirming your son's whereabouts. They will be gone shortly."
"My son's whereabouts? Your people were the ones who wrapped him up and wheeled him away without telling us," Victor said. Clumsily shoving his wife to the side, he pointed a finger at Liz and Patty, and then at the police woman. "When are you releasing the body? Will you tell us anything about how he died? I don't believe for a single second that Wes would hurt himself, and I won't be kept in the dark!"
Everyone in the room stiffened at exactly the same time. "I meant your other son," Bollero said quietly.
The map of fury Victor had been wearing so proudly vanished, and his wife sighed. "Oh, Vic."
Soul stood up and dropped Maka's hand. "I'm going upstairs," he mumbled. His shirt sleeves, Liz noticed with churning horror, were stained with blotches of murky red-souvenirs from his fruitless attempts to save his elder brother's life. Maka popped up from the couch, and after shooting a short panicked look towards Liz and Patty, she followed Soul out of the room.
"We oughtta follow them," Liz whispered to her sister. "The last thing I want is to get lost in this place figuring out where they're shacked up. And I definitely don't want to be alone with these people."
"Roger, roger," Patty replied. They sidestepped out of the room unnoticed while the family devolved into harsh whispers and accusations. When the sisters had finally cleared the threshold and were free to chase after their friends, they heard the disembodied voices of the Evans family echo through the halls.
"You can't blame me for this Cress, he wanted nothing to do with us for eight years!"
"Well that was a dramatic exit. Heh, maybe he's channeling Wes' spirit."
"That was uncalled for, young man-"
"Daddy, can I tell the police lady about the Blight Ghost now?"
"Shhh, Merricat! She isn't interested in your little stories-"
"Victor, don't you realize he's never going to come back again after this? We're going to lose everything by the end of this weekend. What are we going to do?"
Soul was essentially pulling his meister as he stomped up a wide staircase without a single glance behind him. Liz trailed after them, pausing only to keep Patty on task when she stopped to stare out a dark window. Once upstairs, Soul darted inside a room.
The bedroom they ended up in was bigger than any Liz or Patty ever had slept in. It contained a four poster bed, a large cabinet with a flat-screen television, and a walk-in closet deep enough for Patty to do a full cartwheel. Other than these main pieces of furniture and the couple's small amount of unpacked things, the room was bare.
"This was Soul's room when he was growing up," Maka said, gesturing like a tour guide. She was trying to eat up the silence and soothe the tension, only to freeze at the sound of a sharp squeak. One of the floorboards was warped upward, and even the slightest pressure caused the whole floor to squeal. "It's an old house," Maka added with haste. "The Evans family homestead for seventy years, apparently. Both Mr. Evans and August grew up here too, though I forget who slept in this room…" She looked to her weapon for details.
"'Scuse me," Soul mumbled under his breath. He bolted into the adjoining bathroom. The door slammed behind him, leaving the girls alone. When Maka sat on the bed, the sisters looked for an additional chair, and when they found none Liz leaned against the wall and Patty sat on top of the rickety spot in the floorboards, which squeaked beneath her weight.
"So how are you guys holding up?" Patty whispered from down below. "Has Soul, you know, has he…" She made her right hand into a claw and drew a streaking motion from her eyes to her chin.
Maka took a moment to understand. "What? Cried? Oh, no." The meister then rubbed her eyes. She looked absolutely exhausted. "I wish he did. A few tears would be so much easier to deal with than the constant stonewalling. These last few hours have been a nightmare."
A few hours was not enough time to process a death-a sibling's death. It was no wonder that the family hadn't quite fallen over the precipice of grief yet; a world without Wes was too new to them to feel real.
While they waited for Soul to reappear, Liz felt as though her guts were coiling themselves in an unending, painful loop.
Liz lived for Patty, and she had always been comfortable enough in her role as older sister, mother, and protector to accept that she would die for her, too. But since Kid was in the picture and Liz didn't plan on dying before her time anyway, she hadn't truly envisioned what would happen after such a sacrifice. Now she was witnessing that dark hypothetical timeline play out for one of their best friends in horrid detail.
Soul didn't have a brother anymore. Who was looking out for him now? Who was sucker-punching bullies and making sure he got home safe? It was a silly line of thought, considering that Soul was the Last Deathscythe and perfectly capable of fighting his own battles, but it struck the same nerve exposed by parental abandonment and rubbed raw from a lifetime of close-calls.
The bathroom door flew open, and Soul moved back into the main bedroom like a slow-moving rain cloud. His face was red and clammy, as if he had splashed himself with cold water. Soul lowered himself next to Maka on the bed, the absolute portrait of a man emotionally running on empty.
They all stared at one another. This was supposed to be the part where Liz and Patty took the lead, but neither really knew where to start. "Well I guess we're only here to make sure you guys aren't prime suspects," Liz said, internally chastising herself for simply repeating the obvious. Thinking back to Bollero, she added, "I mean, we aren't detectives. This is like a formality. And you don't have to worry about us blabbing to the police if your alibi is awkward or weird. Like making out in a closet."
"Or doing drugs," Patty said, trying to be helpful.
Cringing, Liz elbowed her sister in the upper arm. "Or anything too embarrassing for the police to hear," she clarified. "So, Soul, what were you up to at, um…" Liz shot Maka a questioning look.
"Seven thirty," Maka supplied.
"Right, seven thirty. Where were you and what were you doing at seven thirty?"
Soul responded with a shrug at first, but when he saw the three girls continue to stare at him, he grumbled, "I was hanging out in the upstairs study, listening to music. When I heard the gunshot, I looked out the window and I saw-" Soul stopped short and swallowed thickly. "I hardly remember what happened next. I just bolted, leapt through the window, and landed in some flowers. I know it sounds weird but that was the fastest way to get to him. I didn't even think, I just acted."
"It doesn't sound weird," Liz said. Demon weapons were built from tougher stuff than normal people. If she saw Patty sprawled on the ground, she would have leapt out the window, too.
"Did you see Wes' soul? You were the first person at the body."
"No. I didn't even look."
Coming from the self-proclaimed Soul Eater, this seemed unlikely. Human souls tended to stick around for a few minutes before floating into the sky and eventually dissolving as their essences crossed over to wherever death lead them-unless they were physically collected or consumed.
"Listen," Liz said. "Patty and I have been messed around by cops before. What they're looking for here is an alibi. Simply telling us where you were doesn't mean anything if there's no way to prove you're telling the truth."
"Telling the truth?" Soul asked, taken aback. "You think I would lie about this?"
"Officer Bollero told us no one saw you at all right before the murder, and I'm not sure they'll understand the whole window thing. And to be honest, the fact that Wes' soul is unaccounted for doesn't look good for you either. If you just-"
"You think I ate my brother's soul?" Soul shot her a scathing look scarily reminiscent of his father. "Fuck this, andfuck you. I don't care whether anyone believes me. I was alone, listening to music. That's the truth. That's the story I'm sticking to."
There was no brighter red flag that screamed "Hey, I am lying" than "That's the story I'm sticking to," and all three girls knew it instantly. Soul was never as good at bullshitting as he thought he was, and it was downright concerning-no, incriminating-that he was desperate enough to try.
What reason did Soul have to keep his whereabouts a secret? The first and least optimistic explanation was that he did kill Wes and he was trying to conceal that fact, but that didn't jive with who Soul was. It was no secret that the deathscythe was a gold medalist in the loyalty olympics. He didn't harm people who were close to him-he protected them with his own flesh and bone. Another possible explanation was that Soul knew who killed Wes and was covering for them. Given the loyalty complex, this seemed more likely, but who in the world did Soul care so much for that he was willing to cover up the murder of his own brother?
Liz's eye slid towards Maka for a single moment before she shook her head. While hurting a loved one was out of character for Soul, it was literal heresy for Maka. Plus if she was in on it, she wouldn't be so eager to make Soul talk. And there was the matter of Maka's soul perception, which would make getting away with murder so much easier for her and so much harder for….
"Hey!" Liz said, turning to Maka. "You have the most powerful soul perception at Shibusen. Did you sense anything weird? Was Wes' soul giving you any vibes?"
Maka's ears turned beet red, and she exchanged an uncomfortable glance with Soul. Oh, Liz thought. They had already talked this over. "I don't remember," Maka admitted. "When it happened I was downstairs. Mr. and Mrs. Evans were teaching me to play piano, and it absorbed all of my attention."
Soul snorted. "Scales aren't that hard," he drawled.
"I'm not a human radar!" Maka snapped. Her voice was a mixture of hurt and anger. "You can't seriously expect me to use soul perception to spy on people at every waking hour of the day!"
"It's just weird that of all the times you turn it off-"
"At least I can tell them where I was and what I was doing!" Soul rose from his chair and walked to the window as if he were trying to escape Maka's words. "The only reason Liz and Patty are even here is because you refuse to tell the truth to the police-you are implicating yourself in Wes' death. Don't you realize how serious that is?"
"That's rich, my brother is dead but I'm the one who doesn't grasp the seriousness of the situation." Soul stared outside the window in a moment of painful listlessness, and his shoulders sagged beneath the weight of his grief.
Maka joined him at the window and put her hands on his shoulders. She hugged him, and they finally saw Soul let down his guard as he returned the embrace. Meanwhile, Liz glanced towards the door, wondering if this was the time to peace out before they imposed any longer on the grieving couple.
"What was Wes like?" Patty asked, curious. Liz blinked, horrified at herself for not asking that question sooner. They knew nothing about Wes. They had been talking about this abstract event that happened three hours ago, but they hadn't bothered to investigate Wes as a human being. Soul, too, was surprised to hear Patty ask him something so candid. Maka stepped away to give her weapon space as he searched for an answer.
"He was…" He audibly swallowed to smooth out the husk of his voice. "A talented violinist, a musical genius, and the family pride. Obviously that also made him a careless, entitled dick who expected the world to be handed to him whenever he asked for it-and believe me, Wes asked for it every chance he got. He thrived on attention, got off on being pampered. Wes was also a meddler. Couldn't keep his nose out of your business, always thought he had the solutions to all your problems, and wouldn't fucking leave you alone until you heard him out."
Soul slowly turned back towards the sisters, and Liz instinctively trained her eyes to the ground to avoid seeing his pain firsthand. "But he never gave up on people. Never gave up on me, and I spent years trying to push him away. I was gone for eight years, and he hugged me like I never left. I can't think of a single reason why anyone would want to kill him. Wes was the best of us, and we are all worse off without him."