There are too many of them. Stein knows this. There were only supposed to be a pair of the fallen clan left to deal with, a brother and a sister who survived when the rest of their family were wiped out by the first DWMA assault. It was sloppy for the first team to miss them at all, but Stein treated most of the injuries from the first wave, and even he has to admit that staying and being thorough would have resulted in at least two deaths, maybe more depending on how hard the pair fought. So he and Spirit went out to handle the remaining survivors. It was supposed to be easy. It was easy, until the meister felt a flicker at the back of his Soul Perception. The cold awareness hit him even before he got a good count, intuition saying too many even before he knew how many that was.
They put up a good fight. They're winning, actually, for several minutes, but Stein is still just one person, legendary meister or not, and somewhere around the eighth collapsing enemy he can feel the heaviness of exhaustion in his muscles, a foreshadowing of death too impatient to wait for the actual last breath to leave his lungs.
He keeps going, starts blocking with Spirit's handle as well as the blade itself, waits to use Soul Force until the last possible second to incapacitate the enemies as long as possible, but they just keep coming and he keeps slowing. He doesn't say anything aloud but he can feel Spirit's awareness of his movements forming into shadowed certainty at the back of his head.
Senpai, he starts, but Spirit speaks up and cuts him off.
I'm not going anywhere.
It makes Stein smile in spite of the situation. I didn't expect you to.
It doesn't happen during the brief conversation. Stein has had Spirit in his head enough that he can keep up his end of a discussion without missing a beat of combat, and this is no more a distraction than usual. It's a breath after, as the meister swings hard through one of the approaching enemies - there are fewer of them, now, than there were, but still too many to ease the panic winding cold through Stein's veins. The scythe blade slices neatly through the torso and grasping arms alike, and Stein twists in the opposite direction with an extended palm to catch an approaching monster full in the face.
It's not that he doesn't know there is an enemy behind him. It's just that he's out of options, with the scythe clutched in one hand and the other barely coming up in time to stop the first incoming attack. Even as it is a claw rakes along his hairline, tears the skin and sends a flood of hot liquid across his cheek even before the pain hits.
Then his balance shifts, and there is a chill all through his body as he knows what has happened, some instinctive part of his soul flinching back before he feels the hurt. He can hear breathing sharp and hard behind him and he recognizes that breathing, he's spent years listening to it through bedroom doors and next to him while he doesn't sleep, more recently. Then there's an impact, the weight of two forms at once slamming into his shoulder, and only his expectation of the hit allows him to keep his footing. They shift away, and he's turning and Spirit is stumbling forward, stabbing forward with a weapon-form arm, and Stein doesn't need to see the spill of blood across the dark of the weapon's jacket to know.
The creature over Spirit's shoulder gurgles and crumples, and Spirit stays on his feet for a second longer. Stein is walking towards him, movements cold and stiff with the impossible weight of the knowledge he won't accept, and Spirit turns to look over his shoulder at the approaching meister and manages a smile. He has always had a beautiful smile.
"Stein," he says, and his voice is the same even when it trembles in his throat. "I just saved your life."
"Senpai," Stein starts. He can't feel his lips, can't feel his throat. The word sounds like it's coming from a million miles away. "Senpai, what did you do."
"I told you," Spirit says, but his voice is shaking worse, now, and he chokes and turns away to cough wetly. Stein comes forward, reaches out to brush his fingers against Spirit's shoulder, and he's close enough that he can see the color that the weapon spits up, the way the blood drips between his fingers. Spirit brings his hand away, stares at the liquid for a moment. Stein can hear the wet sound to his sucking inhale and he's reaching out for the back of Spirit's coat, grabbing at the weapon with his free arm as the redhead smiles faintly and murmurs, "I always hated blood."
Stein's got him as his knees give out, takes enough of the other man's weight that they both go down to the ground relatively slowly rather than collapsing. They still end up on the ground, though, Spirit's shoulders digging into the support of Stein's arm and Stein's fingers clutching into a desperate fist in the front of Spirit's shirt. It's red, now, blood spilling out of Spirit's body to stain the pale cloth until it's a perfect match for his hair.
"Senpai," Stein says. His voice is shaking. "Stay with me."
Spirit smiles, reaches up to touch the line of the meister's face. "You sound scared. You've never sounded scared, before." His face crumples into pain for a moment and he coughs up another mouthful of blood. "I'm dying, aren't I."
"No." Stein forces his voice into perfect calm, this time, icy with the effort. "No, you're not going to die. You're not."
"I can't breathe," Spirit says, and it's true, Stein can hear him fighting for breath. He's certainly got a punctured lung at the very least, probably worse from the continuing flow of blood staining his shirt. "If you're afraid, then I'm not going to make it."
"You are," Stein says. There is an irony, that for once Spirit is the one calm and steady and he is the one going to pieces. It's not amusing as much as it is horrifying, further evidence of what he knows, still knows, can't run from forever or even for very long. His glasses are blurry and he pulls them off, drops them and instantly forgets where they landed, and Spirit's fingers come up against his cheek. His hand is cold. Spirit has always been warm, before.
The weapon opens his mouth to speak, but instead of sound he coughs up more blood. It stains Stein's shirt, lies sticky and hot against his skin as if Spirit is spitting up all the warmth in his body in liquid form, leaving him cold and shaking.
"Spirit," Stein hears himself saying, the sound choking and desperate, and Spirit shudders but manages to smile again, tips his head in against Stein's arm as his hand drops to the meister's shirt.
"You never call me that," he murmurs. "Not since we were kids. Don't cry, Stein."
Stein doesn't know why Spirit is telling him not to cry. He's not crying, he just can't see straight, so when he leans in his mouth hits Spirit's forehead instead of his mouth, and he can't quite breathe without a sobbing sound but Spirit's the one who can't breathe, Spirit's the one shaking, not him.
Eventually the shaking stops. Stein takes a breath but he can't hear anything over his own painfully harsh inhales so he catches in a lungful of desperate air and holds it, waits and waits and waits for the echoing inhale from the form in his arms. He waits until his vision is going blurry, until his head is swimming and his lungs burning for air, and there's still nothing from his partner.
"Spirit?" he asks. He sounds plaintive, lost, like the child-self he talked to in the midst of his own Madness. "Senpai?"
It's not until he hears the voices in the back of his head, the dark insanity that Spirit always kept at bay, that he knows that he's lost him.
At least the awareness doesn't linger long.